Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It had all started with that damn crane, Mei Nianqing decided.

‘Mei Nianqing’--as he was now known, having recently changed his name on a whim--‘recently’ being, oh, twenty or so years ago? Who could say, really; after the first three centuries of wandering, smaller periods of time had begun to lose their meaning. But he had a good feeling about this name; he had an inkling he’d return to it frequently.

It was like this:

Mei Nianqing--or, that is to say, the man currently going by the name of Mei Nianqing--had been bored.

And as anyone more or less immortal came to learn, boredom was a grave harbinger, a bad-bad omen if there were any; sources of amusement, after all, were vital to longevity, lest one succumb to the Big Boredom, the swelling bride to whom the universe and every star therein were promised.

Normally, Mei Nianqing was pretty good at staving it off--just find a tavern with three willing participants and he’d be set for shichen¹ at least. He brought his own cards.

One might expect that someone like Mei Nianqing, trained in the mysteries of numbers, in the stars, their cycles and portents, would have better ways of telling time than the level of wear on his current deck. But ultimately, when reflecting on his life, Mei Nianqing didn’t think in terms of years, lunar cycles, or dynasties; he remembered his life by decks.

And his current one had been crumbling. How he had managed not to lose this one in--what was it now? Fifty years?--he had no idea, but the cards were wearing thin, each threatening to splinter off into oblivion with every shuffle. Playing was pointless; with a deck this old he knew each card by heart. Every minute defect, each tea stain or tear or wrinkle was a fatal tell.

Why not replace it? Well, it still worked… Not to mention that for a brief period of time, Mei Nianqing relished in the rush of actually winning every now and then, dishonest triumphs though they were. But soon, even that rush faded.

Mei Nianqing was bored.

And with boredom came dread. Came sadness and depression and then void. He knew this cycle well, and by now he knew just how to break it.

A quest was in order.

So, when he woke one morning beside a riverbed and found himself face to face with an inquisitive-looking crane, Mei Nianqing decided that this, this would be The Sign that would yank him out of this most recent slump. He proceeded to follow that crane with dogged persistence.

Along the river to its mouth. Hiking along clifftops, until they hit another river and followed it to its source. Through grasslands and wetlands and swamps and mountains, Mei Nianqing followed that crane. Sometimes he fed it for the trouble, although it likely didn’t need any help in this regard. Nevertheless, it appreciated the extra food, and, pitying the wandering primate, sometimes the crane even fed him in turn.

Mei Nianqing decided that they were good chums, and when the crane granted him audience at the morning breakfast fire, he would inevitably strike up a chat with his unwitting travel companion.

“How’s this, my red-crested friend? I believe, right now, that you are Immortal Virtue, and I am mere man. You carve out the Dao for me, and I pursue you, tramping down on the road and collecting your fine feathers. In the end I will make a lovely fan of your sloughed plumage, and I will gift it as a token to my beloved, a symbol of my everlasting and unerring devotion. Seeing my intent, my beloved will accept the gift and hold it to his heart and we will walk the Dao together for eternity.”

The crane cocked its head.

“And then I will give you a nice fish for your efforts, my friend!”

Smiling genially, Mei Nianqing offered one of his morning’s catch. “Come on now, or I’ll eat it myself.”

Striding cautiously around the fire and bobbing its head, the crane retrieved the fish from its benefactor’s hand, then backed up and swallowed it whole. The beast then let out a contented, burbling squawk, nodded at Mei Nianqing, and flew off.

“Hey, wait up!”

Stamping out the fire, Mei Nianqing scrambled to gather his things and stumbled after it.

.

One evening, right around the golden hour, Mei Nianqing took out his weary card deck and shuffled through it fondly. The crane was across from him, curiously eyeing the dust floating off the cards. Mei Nianqing grinned back at the bird.

“What’s that, my friend? Would you like to play cards with me? I’m afraid we’ll need two others to do that. Do you have any other friends who might join us?”

Heartened, Mei Nianqing splayed the cards out. “Here look, I can show you which is which, then we can play.”

The crane stepped closer, still eyeing the cards. Then, without warning, it made a quick dipping motion and snapped away the greater part of the deck with its beak. However, realizing quickly that this was no fish, it flung the cards from its mouth and away-

-Away, which happened to coincide with a green, bubbling marsh.

“MY CARDS!”

Dropping the remaining scraps and clawing his face, Mei Nianqing watched his prized possession sink into the ooze with a mixture of horror and despair. His heart sank in a way it hadn’t in a long while, probably not since he lost the last deck. But this time there was a tang of shock to outline his grief.

He sighed. “Well, at least I’ve got you, my friend.”

Mei Nianqing looked to his side.

Or not… Apparently betrayed by the not-fish Mei Nianqing had tried to feed it, the crane had flown across the swamp, where another crane was waiting.

Another crane, of the exact same height and build--both were male.

Mei Nianqing watched with interest as they hopped around one another, flapping their wings and gobbling to the sky. A mating dance. He couldn’t help but feel a little indignant about it. So his friend of the past three months had this in common with him all along, and never had the courtesy to tell him?! Some friend!

In the end, the pair of cranes flew off with one another, faster and farther than the first crane had gone in any one night over the course of summer. Mei Nianqing gazed out at them until they were just dots, and then a moment more. He watched as they dissolved into the darkening horizon. He would not try to follow. It would be awkward and unbefitting, after all, to be a third wheel to such a happy couple.

“Goodbye, my friend,” he murmured. “I hope you never have the opportunity to feel your beloved’s talons tightening around your neck.”

Taking a deep breath, Mei Nianqing looked all around himself. Although he had already wandered for untold centuries, there were still many places that remained unknown to him.

That is to say, Mei Nianqing was lost.

Not just lost, mind you. Lost was nothing; lost was his usual state. No, Mei Nianqing was lost lost. Profoundly, incorrigibly, incurably, lost. Trusting his friend’s sense of navigation over his own sense of rationality, he had ignored the misbehavior of the sun, which had taken to staggering across the sky at, frankly, rather rude intervals, and which had apparently forgotten the difference between east and west during its nightly rest. Nevertheless, he could not dispute the fact that night was imminently approaching.

Well, he thought. He had lost his latest traveling companion, he had lost his cards, and on top of all that he had even gone and lost himself. There remained only two things to stave off the threat of boredom: sleep or death. As was his wont, Mei Nianqing opted for the former.

Unfortunately, his indeterminate--depending, after all, on the movement of the sun, which had already proven unreliable--period of rest ended up being no help whatsoever to his predicament: While Mei Nianqing had fallen asleep in a verdant swamp, he awoke in what appeared to be the courtyard of a mad eccentric. In place of that marsh where his cards had fallen, there was now a clear stone fountain.

Well now this was pretty egregious, he thought. It was like reality wasn’t even trying any more. Mei Nianqing shook his head, then looked up, and gulped.

There was no longer any sun in the sky.

Not due to clouds; there was ambient light all around, but the sky was clear. Mei Nianqing sighed. Well, it’s not like he hadn’t been looking for trouble like this, following that crane around willy-nilly for months on end. He resigned to this new fate of exploring the strange half-place he had blundered into.

But first, a bath was in order. After all, he had been trudging through swampland for some three days, relying only on his spells to draw small amounts of clean water from the mud and algae-choked marshes; just enough to drink, no more. Now that fate had gifted him with the sparkling waters of this...this ‘Fountain of Yearning,’ as it called itself, he would not begrudge his luck.

Ha, he thought. Fate indeed: he had been yearning, after all, to wash away all the grime from traveling. Without hesitation, Mei Nianqing stripped. He wasn’t afraid of being caught here; whoever had the warped sensibilities to structure their courtyard with this feng shui would likely be in a state of undress themselves, if they even had any concept in distant orbit of the notion of ‘undress’. And, moreover, if the owner of the garden actually stumbled upon him bathing in the fountain, well, no matter: should he face this admittedly embarrassing possibility, Mei Nianqing was more than willing to deliver a stern lecture on the importance of adorning one’s sky with exactly one, prompt, and precise sun.

So, thickening his face and preparing his rebuke, Mei Nianqing stripped. First he washed his clothes and hung them up to dry, then proceeded to dip a foot into the fountain himself. Mmm, nice and warm. He plunged the rest of his body in without hesitation.

Ahhhhhhhhh…

Had there ever been a body of water as good or sweet? He began sloughing the sweat-caked dirt from his skin, then dunked his head in, massaging the oil from his scalp methodically along each lock of his prodigiously long hair. This done, he waded for a bit. This pool was truly a thing of wonder. Every time he plunged his head back in, a wave of bliss passed through his mind.

Perhaps most curiously, when he was submerged, the water no longer felt like water. Mei Nianqing thought perhaps he could breathe it in, though he dared not try on impulse. Experimentally, he decided to first open his eyes underwater before attempting anything else.

This was a mistake.

Below his feet, the dirt he had shed danced hypnotically. Dancing--making the whole spring shimmer. Mei Nianqing looked up and could no longer make out the surface. Ahh, so his hand would be forced. He’d have to try breathing.

He started with a tentative mouthful, let it trickle into his lungs, then inhaled the rest with relief.

Okay, he could breathe. Good. Now to ascertain his environment. Mei Nianqing peered into the haze permeating the deep water, and began to perceive patterns within. Patterns, then landscapes. A sky with a proper sun. A grove with auspiciously placed stones. A cliff. A lookout.

Mei Nianqing swallowed. He knew this place, once. He didn’t want to know what it looked like now. Sounds interrupted his thought stream. Human sounds, like joyful stabs to his heart. Four boys ran through the woods, while one paced behind. His friends yelped and shouted with him, the him from back then. Mei Nianqing had forgotten what their happiness sounded like.

Or, perhaps he had just forgotten what they sounded like. He had chosen to suppress his most recent memory of their voices, and even that horrific experience had been centuries in the past. Mei Nianqing himself changed his own face and voice frequently, and if it weren’t for his occasional slip while under the trance of an extended card match, he probably would have forgotten the sound of the Wuyong dialect entirely.

Mei Nianqing wondered if His Highness still knew the sound of their voices, or if the curse had dissipated--if his friends had chosen to rest. Mei Nianqing hoped all of them, His Highness as well as his three murdered friends, had some opportunity for rest. He felt guilty, sometimes, when he experienced particularly good nights of sleep, knowing he was surely alone in this pleasure.

“Your Highness, Your Highness!”

Mei Nianqing watched himself bound back to his liege and tug on the latter’s sleeve.

“Play with us, please?”

The crown prince of Wuyong smiled down at his friend and nodded, composedly extracting the other young man from his sleeve.

“Very well.”

The boy then skipped over to the other three. “Er-shidi, san-shidi, si-shidi! His Highness is joining, so we’re doing the five-player variant!”

The crown prince strode forward, eyes flicking down to the deck in his friend’s hand. “Let’s make it more interesting. Wu Xing² rules.”

The other three boys humphed and scowled, but nevertheless complied. His Highness and their shixiong had specially designed the five-player ‘Wu Xing’ variant of their game, and rather than relying solely on strategy and luck, it also required strength, a wealth of spiritual energy, and strict cultivational discipline. That is to say, it was designed to ensure His Highness would always win, no matter what hand he was dealt.

Mei Nianqing shook his head and chuckled bitterly.

That had been the only kind of game His Highness liked to play, back then. Probably still was. He wondered idly if His Highness still played games nowadays. He looked down into his folded arms, then raised his eyebrows.

It appeared that Mei Nianqing now possessed double vision. In one dimension was his naked body, drifting in the water alone, while in the other, the one containing this sunny memory in which he could breathe the still-sweet air of Mount Tonglu, his bathing figure was transparent, nothing more than a ghost. Disembodied, then, Mei Nianqing loomed in closer to watch his old friends play their game.

Voyeur that he was, he got sucked into it before long. It was almost as if Mei Nianqing were playing it himself, and he shouted in vain at his past self,

“No, no! Wrong card, wrong card you idiot!!”

But it was no use. Unheeding, his younger self moved in the precise path Destiny had carved for him. “Stupid boy…” Mei Nianqing muttered to himself, not overlooking the sheepish way his younger self periodically glanced at His Highness and blushed. “...You could have won that hand if you weren’t so… distracted.”

Nevertheless, the boy remained preoccupied, and inevitably lost, as he always did. Afterwards, the other three ran off, leaving him alone with His Highness at the cliffside. Brazen boys, they were, with how close they got to the edge…

Well, if one tripped and fell, surely the other would always be there to catch.

Mei Nianqing swallowed, watching as the pair sat down at the ledge. He had a bad feeling about this memory; still, he couldn’t tear his eyes away. He couldn’t help getting lost and he couldn’t help losing. And, just as in the game, he felt as though he himself were playing, pulled into the stubborn, unruly whorl of his younger thought patterns, the free and careless thrum of his old heart.

The pair sat, his younger self leaning back and swinging his legs over the edge, His Highness holding his spine straight, posture perfect as usual. Both stared out at the horizon. There was something impossibly faraway in His Highness’ eyes, a burning determination. It scared the other boy a little bit, how powerful his liege was, how willful. That youth, not even a god yet, could bend the world to his liking.

It also ignited something secret in his chest.

They were talking about their dreams. His Highness spoke with quiet, smiling ambition, and the other boy’s heart bobbed uncontrollably. "I'll be with you every step of the way!" he claimed. He hoped against hope that it was true, that he would never lack the power or vision to continue following His Highness, to remake the world in his image.

Lost in His Highness' beauty, of mind and of form, the boy slipped. He leaned over and kissed His Highness' cheek. In devotion. In filial brotherhood. In something he dared not name. The crown prince chuckled, squeezing the other boy’s shoulder. He turned to him, and, so perfectly, tilted his face to place a chaste kiss in the center of his friend’s flushed forehead.

"Watch the trembling of your heart, ███. One must remain clearheaded and unattached to reach the skies."

The other boy nodded woodenly.

Of course. One's heart could not tremble if it plunged like iron from their cliff.

Mei Nianqing, the Mei Nianqing in the present--or at least so he thought--tore himself away from the vignette of his youth. He held a hand to his forehead. How many centuries had it been? How long ago had he forgotten what his given name sounded like on His Highness' lips? And, he wondered bitterly, what was the state of His Highness' untrembling heart, now?

Mei Nianqing breathed in, but this time he choked on the air, and belatedly realized that he was once again in the fountain. He surfaced, sputtering and hacking out the water he had swallowed.

He flopped out of the pool like a dying fish, water streaming from his sopping form. Clearing the water from his lungs and rasping out a strained breath, Mei Nianqing turned to the much more trying task of attending to his heart.

Well, perhaps he’d take His Highness’ advice for the time being and meditate. He’d have to wait for his clothes to dry, in any case. Plus, if someone came by and saw him like this, they probably wouldn’t question his nakedness, thinking him a sage rather than a maniac. Shuffling things around, Mei Nianqing sat in lotus position upon a rock tall enough that his ankle-length hair could fall loose over his shoulders without touching the ground, and began the next task.

(And, glimpsing upon the scene and taking the unmoving sage drying his hair for Laozi, a young man passing through imagined himself Confucius, and dreamed up a memorable discourse.)³

Some time passed--perhaps a shichen, perhaps a day, perhaps longer--before Mei Nianqing opened his eyes and stretched. Ah, the sun was back, demurely poking over the horizon like a timid red bride. Good. As it should be.

Only--

Mei Nianqing turned around.

Aiya, a capricious mistress after all! There it was on the other end of the sky as well; half east, half west… If east or west had any meaningful distinction in this place.

Sighing, Mei Nianqing muttered to himself about things beyond human knowledge. As he groused, he felt something strange tickling his lungs. Mei Nianqing opened his mouth to gag, thinking it was a last remnant from the Fountain of Yearning, but without warning, words poured from his throat in place of water:

“It is possible to describe the ineffable, but these words take you away from its reality. Before things are born, they cannot stop being born, and once dead, they cannot resist going. Death and birth are not far apart, but what causes them is beyond our sight. Notions of a cause or no cause are irrelevant. I search for their historic roots but they disappear into the past. I look for the end of the future, but it never ceases to arrive. Infinite, unlimited, there are no words for this. To try to define it is to place it in the same category as ‘Is there a cause or is there not?’ These are just words and they begin and end with things.”⁴

Mei Nianqing shut his mouth and clutched his throat, dazed. What the hell was that?? A rustle shook from behind him. Mei Nianqing turned around, only to see a startled goose-like old mortal scribbling zealously.

“Hey, young man!” Mei Nianqing shouted--for if someone could age as this mortal did, they were likely less than a century old, and hence ‘young’ in his eyes--, “Where are we?”

The mortal just shook his head and shouted, “My apologies, head priest!” then ran off.

Mei Nianqing sniffed. So he was a head priest now; that was new. Sighing, he looked back to the red half-suns on either side of the horizon, one end dawn, the other dusk. But, which was coming and which going, Mei Nianqing couldn’t say. Such things, of course, were beyond his sight.

His hair was now dry, and he methodically detangled it with his fingers for a time. Wretched luck he had, to grow hair so long. Most of his friends, save for His Highness, whose hair was equally long, not to mention well-maintained, possessed hair that hung to their knees at most, but alas, his parents had blessed him with the natural power to sprout hair that could reach the floor, provided he treat it kindly. Which he didn’t, most of the time.

Long like his life, he mused, weaving it into a secure braid with practiced dexterity. And yet, he thought, reaching the ragged ends, even these were at most twenty years old. Younger than his card deck. Younger even than the name ‘Mei Nianqing’.

After dressing, he thoughtfully rolled the tangles that had been combed away into a small bundle and tucked it in his sleeve. Normally, he’d cast them to the ground for some bird to pad its nest, just as anyone would. However, after soiling the fountain with the sweat of that old yearning, Mei Nianqing didn’t dare toss off something so precious as his hair. He’d wait until reaching a proper place, some receptacle designated for the disposal of personal items.

Which was--?

Well, somewhere.

Mei Nianqing began to walk down the forking paths of this strange courtyard, peering out at the scenery, every now and then coughing up pieces of wisdom and shooing away sages. For a long while, the landscape remained the same: flat grassland, punctuated only by statues both crumbling and newly painted, frozen in this uncanny, unwavering golden hour. Or, perhaps, not quite frozen. Sometimes he’d see a shiny, new-looking piece of foreign architecture, and then, after turning away for just a moment, it’d be half-sunk and shattered, indistinguishable from a wind-beaten desert yardang. A meager sprout could grow into an ancient oak in the blink of an eye, here.

Mei Nianqing huffed in frustration. Perhaps he had initially appreciated the novel liminality of this place, but it was now beginning to wear on his nerves, even as his cough subsided. Still, he dared not deviate from the well-beaten paths. He had learned his lesson after that bath and attempt at meditation.

At last, he came to a new landmark, at one moment a distant lump, in the next an eyesore that dominated the landscape, leaving him with no choice but to enter.

A labyrinth.

Mei Nianqing barged inside with a smile on his face and a flare of victory in his heart. After all, in a lost place like this, the only way to escape was surely to achieve a state of pure disorientation. Only when he reached the very heart of the abyss could he find that which he never knew he was looking for and return to the normal world with a bittersweet sense of fulfillment.

That was, like, the first law of mystical quests, after all.

He looped his braid around his head a few times as a makeshift blindfold to hasten the process, using his sheathed sword to probe his surroundings in the absence of sight.

Before long, he could hear a chirping sound above him, and paused.

“Ah? Who goes there?”

To his surprise, a voice answered: “I am a fellow blind wanderer of these caves, head priest.”

CAVES?? When had he entered a cave?!

Still, not wanting to deprive the other entity of their rapport, Mei Nianqing did not unwind his hair to take a peek of his surroundings. If it was a cave, then fine, he was in a cave now. If it wasn’t, well, this wouldn’t be the first liar he had encountered in his life.

He faced one in every mirror he passed, after all.

“I see. Well then, if I am a wandering immortal head priest, what is your nature, my fellow blind creature?”

“Head priest, if you are wandering, I am home. If you are immortal, I am short-lived, hidden away in my cavern, searching for soft things to warm my nest, that I may bring forth a new generation of my kind.”

Mei Nianqing felt a spark of triumph. “Excellent, my friend! We must have been fated to meet. Now, for a lump of soft stuff, I ask for just one thing in return: Please, little bat, tell me, what strange land is it that I have blundered into?”

“Bat…? Head priest, you need not bargain with this… er, bat. There is a tale passed down by generations of my kind, tales of a time before we made this cave our home. They tell us of a land of mazes, which is known as the garden of Destiny. They tell of a hooded man, who is the eldest of seven, whose name is Destiny, and who is like me and you: His eyes are blank as the nameless void. He wanders the garden endlessly with his book.”

The cave-dweller continued, “It is said that once, my ancestors came upon him, and he pitied us, blind as we were in a land of eternal sunrise. So, as it is told, he fashioned us this cave within his estate, that we may tell our tales in the safety of darkness. This is where we are, head priest.”

Mei Nianqing nodded. Yes, yes, he had heard of such a being before. When one lived as long as he had, one inevitable heard tales of the Seven, of the Endless, who watched even the dynasties of heaven as Mei Nianqing might watch a fluttering moth, lantern-bound.

“I thank you, noble bat.” He held out the bundle of hair. “In truth, I had been hoping for a place to dispose of this piece of myself, so you have done me two favors today.”

Fetching the lump of tangled hair from the man, the bat squeaked, “Today?” Flying off, it murmured, “I don’t know this word… Curious…”

Mei Nianqing stood for a moment, considering his options. Unfortunately, it appeared that this cave was no mystical abyss as he had hoped, but a mere playhouse for Destiny’s bats. Humphing, he decided to turn back. To do this properly, however, he would need his sight back. So much for his original plan… He unwrapped his hair.

The cave was pitch black, so even this did not do much. However, in the distance, Mei Nianqing could make out a light. Still using his sword as a cane, he ambled toward it.

Alas, the light was not that of the sun, nor even the ambient grayness that had preceded the twin half-suns. No, it was a lantern, carried by none other than--

Himself.

Himself, but older. Artificially, in appearance at least. But probably actually older as well, given that Mei Nianqing couldn’t remember changing his face to look quite like this yet. Nevertheless, it was definitely himself who staggered, clutching his throat, sobbing. Who tore off the false mustache and drove his sword into the earth.

“Oh, Your Highness, Your Highness, Your Highness…”

Mei Nianqing sighed. If this was a version of himself from the future, he didn’t want to see what would happen next. It was all too familiar, too similar to the past.

He turned around.

To his surprise, he was met with nigh-blinding light. How had he not noticed that the mouth of the cave was right there, if he had just turned around? He huffed indignantly, then hurried out.

Back to the sunlit portion of the labyrinth, then.

Well, maybe artificially blinding himself had been a mistake. Now, strapping his sword over his back, he just sprinted, making his decisions on a moment’s whim, until--

Wham!

He barreled into a large object. Truthfully, he hadn’t seen it coming.

However, although cloaked in soft cloth, that object did not budge. Mei Nianqing looked up, then gulped, staggering back.

“Ahhhh, my lord, I’m very sorry; I didn’t see you there!”

Destiny stood silently, while Mei Nianqing swiveled around, panic stricken.

“HOLD.”

Mei Nianqing blinked, then turned back to the tall cowled figure. He couldn’t run away if he tried. “Ahhhh, my lord… What would you have me do?”

Destiny chuckled, in a way that was a little too familiar to Mei Nianqing, as though stolen from another’s throat for his benefit. “HEAD PRIEST, YOU MUST KNOW THAT I HAVE HEARD THIS QUESTION MANY A TIME.”

Mei Nianqing laughed nervously. “Aha, right… Well…”

Destiny held out a parcel. “YOU ARE MISSING SOMETHING.”

Mei Nianqing’s eyes widened. “Th-thank you, my lord!” He took the deck from Destiny’s hand and shuffled through the cards, marveling at the intricacy hidden within their simplicity. “Umm, does this mean you want to play a round?” Mei Nianqing looked up, scratching his head. “I met a crane and a bat along the way who might be interested, but otherwise I have no other friends.”

Destiny shook his head. “NO. YOU WILL MAKE YOUR OWN FRIENDS.”

“...Oh.” Mei Nianqing shuffled a bit, reflecting on his position. Well, if he made it out of here alive, it’d be quite the story. He decided he’d try his luck with something audacious.

“So,” he grinned, motioning to the book chained to Destiny’s arm, “Can I see what happens at the end?”

Destiny made no visible response, but stated plainly, “IT IS POSSIBLE FOR YOU TO DO SUCH A THING. BUT IN DOING IT, I WOULD HAVE TO PULL BACK MY COWL AND MEET YOU EYE-TO-EYE. YOU WOULD NOT RETURN TO THE MORTAL REALM.”

Mei Nianqing squeaked. “Umm, no, no, it was just a joke, I promise!” At that, he turned around and sped away.

One unmasking was enough for his lifetime.

“FARE THEE WELL, HEAD PRIEST,” he heard behind him.

Mei Nianqing didn’t slow down. Not until the paths stopped forking. Not until both suns had set. Or risen, if there was a difference.

Destiny, he decided, was not something--or someone--to trifle with. Forethought of disasters could not deter their coming. He knew this all too well, even before entering the garden. So, sprinting away, he reinforced an opinion he had formed long ago: If, as had been hinted to him in this winding, labyrinthine garden, he ever became a true head priest, he would adamantly refuse to teach the art of divination to any of his disciples. History wouldn’t repeat itself, not like that, not if he had anything to do with it.

Although…

While he was still here…

He couldn’t imagine having the same opportunity again in his life…

Indulgent, he took one last look behind him, and saw a vision that was most certainly not from his past.

Himself, again, meditating on a smooth, rocky rampart beside a cliff. An eerily familiar cliff, at that. Short sprigs of grass and wildflowers grew in clumps upon the barren land. He looked content. Happy, even.

Mei Nianqing turned back, turned forward. In truth, he didn’t know how he usually looked while meditating. Was he always so satisfied? He had figured he looked sad, if anything.

After all, meditation was the easiest way to forget.

He shook his head, then continued on his way out. However, on his first step, he nearly tripped over something, and hopped a couple times to regain his balance. He looked down at the culprit, then raised an eyebrow.

It was a taut red string, spanning infinitely in both directions, as though spun from the twin half-suns.

Mei Nianqing crouched down to investigate.

As it turned out, there were voices emanating from either side:

The voices were alternately panicked, then relieved, and finally bathed in warmth. Mei Nianqing thought back to the mating dance he had witnessed upon entering this land.

Rising from the string, he chuckled and shook his head. “Ahh, to be young and in love.” He bowed to the red thread, echoing the words of Destiny:

“Fare ye well, young masters.”

And then, after some time, the head priest managed to exit the stranger parts of Destiny’s garden. Re-entering the mortal world, he realized with a gradual wave of shock and horror that he had been gone for a neat eighty years, and that heavenly dynasties had swapped like his old card deck. There were fresh tales now, of a valiant new martial god, the first in centuries to vanquish demons.

Peering down at his new deck, Mei Nianqing sighed. He had really been hoping for some bittersweet fulfillment there, but alas, all that quest had dealt him was a new hand. In truth, if he learned any lesson, it was this:

Do not follow a creature of the air for more than a month. Or, at least, in cases of extreme boredom, not beyond the changing of seasons, lest you spend a mortal lifetime bathing in yearning and coughing up wisdom in a place where the sun perpetually sets.

Chapter Text

She watched as the crown prince of Xianle ended his mad dash in the graveyard, unkempt, rattled, and chilled to the bone; she watched him chug the jar of wine. Drinking that much, it appeared he had made a choice. Temporary, but a choice nonetheless.

Tonight, Xie Lian would be accompanying Delirium. Or, at least he would be as soon as that red ghost fire flitting around him left to try and find help, to try and find strength enough to be more than a simple, powerless thing.

Delirium sympathized with the ghost, in that way. Sure, he hated her, as most children did when they were thrust from the safety of home and into her unhinged realm. Delirium wasn't good with kids; she could amuse them for a while with marvels pretty and strange, but when it became too much, when she became too much, well--she wasn’t the sort that could be less than what she was. But when she first saw this one, when he screamed:

"I HATE THIS! WHY AM I SO UGLY?"

Well, Delirium took a shine to him. To him, she granted the power of obsession.

Obsession, it was a kind of suffering, a kind of madness.

--But a power nonetheless.

Delirium watched the ghost hover helplessly about the prince. She heard his plea to just wait--

”Wait here until I’m strong enough to help, Your Highness, please…”

And she watched him fly off into the night, a fire who hadn’t yet grown wings.

It was then that Delirium set her sights on her newest ward. To greet the prince, she sang and danced in drunken ecstasy at the edge of the graveyard. It was an old dance, one she had learned when she was still Delight. The song she hummed on the other hand, had not yet been written:

Xie Lian staggered up and caught sight of her, then his eyes widened.

“Ah, I WASN’T DRINKING!” he shouted, panicked.

The jug was still in his arms. He hadn’t realized that his continued hold on it was what made climbing out of the pit so hard. There were many things he didn’t realize, in this state.

Delirium just giggled.

And then, prancing forward, she fell. This graveyard really was a nasty place to be at night, what with all the sudden pits--almost like the people manning the place were hoping for more bodies to feed the worms.

Still, even falling into a hole couldn’t keep Delirium from dancing.

Xie Lian bounded to the edge of the pit, finally dropping the jar and letting it shatter against an inauspiciously placed rock. “Here, let me help you up!” he shouted from the slippery ledge. He grabbed one of her flailing arms-

Xie Lian grabbed her arm, and explosions of gold that turned rapidly into dandelions and bumblebees filled his vision. He nearly lost his grip, but--

--Well, saving others tended to be easier than saving himself. He didn’t let go, and succeeded in pulling her up, getting an eye-full of her pitiful state in the process.

The young woman who had plopped down before him was half-naked and barefoot. Her only raiment was a worn gray outer robe with strange, colorful designs: flowers and centipedes, skulls and butterflies. Whoever deigned to embroider such madness must have been in a sorry state themselves, Xie Lian thought. Moreover, in his own drunken condition, the patterns--if there even was a pattern--seemed to shimmer and crawl over the fabric. Ragged, reddish black hair obscured her face. Her eyes were mismatched.

Delirium clutched her wrist where Xie Lian had held on and rubbed it, frowning. “...Ow… You interrupted my dance… Now you’ll never get to see how it ends. Now no one will. Not ever, not NO ONE… NEVER.” she murmured, lowering her head to bunch her tangled hair into a messy half-bun.

“Young lady, are you trying to get yourself killed?” Xie Lian struggled to maintain an air of authority over his slurred drunkenness. “You’ve--barely got any clothes on!”

Delirium pouted below her curtain of hair. “MmmmMMMMmMMmmmmm… That’s what San-ge always tells me… ‘Dress properly, Qi-mei, befitting of your station’. That’s him. But I think, I think stations are dumb. ‘Stations’ is just where you are.

“But nobody’s anywhere for too long.” She lowered her voice, whispering, “San-ge is though. It’s bad for him.”

Xie Lian listened in bafflement and no small amount of empathy. After all, where was he, if not--well, wretchedly--adjusting to a new station?

Ahh… But never mind that…

Rather than wallowing in self-pity, Xie Lian decided to figure out precisely what this other person’s station was:

‘Qi-mei’, so she was a seventh daughter… And ‘befitting of your station’? San-ge? So the seventh daughter of a noble family, with a protective third brother? But then how had she come to this state?

He huffed sardonically. Well, he could probably answer that one himself. He eyed her with pity, and thought about the raging Xianle noblewomen dragged by their hair to houses of ill repute. He thought about the bloody maple trees made more intense by the fires of a falling civilization.

He thought about not being able to do anything about it.

Well, this one, this one at least, he could help. He could try, at the very least. After all, here in this graveyard, they were kindred spirits of a sort. Bound, for the time being.

Finally, Delirium finished tying her hair--which at some point, apparently, had bedecked itself with vivid heads of fresh flowers--and lifted her own head up.

Xie Lian jumped in place, eyes wide.

“Y-young lady, w-what’s that on your face??”

It was pointless to ask; he could see it well enough:

The young maiden before him had painted a crude approximation of a smiling-crying mask on her face. And, if that weren’t enough, there were smaller faces scrawled over it, like some cutesy, mocking caricature of the human face disease. But how could she?! Human face disease was nothing to joke about; Xie Lian still shuddered at the havoc it had wrought in Xianle’s capital. The last nudge to the kingdom’s crooked and crumbling, war-shaken foundation, the push that sent it all cascading down. But on top of that, to wear the smiling-crying mask of human face disease’s perpetrator, Bai Wuxiang? Wasn’t this going too far?

“Young lady, who did this to you?!” Still assuming she was a noblewoman fleeing a terrible fate, Xie Lian could only conclude that she had not chosen to draw these things on her face, that it was rather the result of some patron’s twisted mockery. Pulling a handkerchief from his sleeve, he reached out to wipe it away. “Here, let me-”

“NO NO NO!!” Delirium skittered back, away from Xie Lian’s helping hand. “NO DON’T TOUCH ME!” A safe distance away, she folded her arms around her knees and muttered facedown, “...I don’t like being touched.”

Xie Lian swallowed, then nodded. “O-okay. Um, why don’t you stay with me then? I’ll make sure no one touches you.”

The young woman smiled and nodded, then sprang up, exclaiming, “Peaches!” She began skipping, and Xie Lian walked briskly to keep up.

“Young lady, wait, here--” Xie Lian unwrapped the silk bandage disguising his face and handed it to the girl. “Use this as a belt. It’s best not to walk around exposed in this cold.” He furrowed his brows. “...We’ll have to get you some shoes…” Xie Lian stopped, then pulled off his own patched, worn, and leaking pair, and offered them to her.

“Oh, umm, no you keep those… My feet aren’t really here… I think I left the original ones at home… Or the day after tomorrow at maoshi…² But!” She took the bandage in delight.

“Oh! Cute good snaky snake snake snake!” She nuzzled and kissed the limp band of silk.

Normally Xie Lian would have insisted on the matter of the boots, but as it turned out, drink hadn’t muffled the cold as much as he had hoped, and somehow the young woman’s words had a perverse logic, so he decided not to push. Putting his boots back on, Xie Lian frowned at the girl’s antics with the silk band.

“I’ll make sure you’re very good--” Delirium swung the silk and cracked it like a whip in the night air, “--But fast fast and vicious, when you want to be, HAHA! Um. But mostly good.” Giving it a last stroke, she tied it around her waist like a sash.

Xie Lian cleared his throat.

“So, young lady, where is your San-ge?”

“Oh… He’s all over the place. Are you going to sleep now?”

Xie Lian furrowed his brows. “No, I want to return you to him.”

“HAHAHA!!!” The girl’s laughter sounded like sour hawthorne fruit and a sharp breath of mountain air held underwater. “San-gege is busy. Always and always very much. But. Oh! Look! A corpse!”

Xie Lian snapped his head up. “What? Where?” In the distance, he could make out a silhouette that could possibly fit the bill, but as they approached, it disintegrated into the shadows. Not only that, but the shadows themselves decomposed and fluttered up into the sky, the stars blinking as the flying shades crossed in front. Xie Lian inhaled deeply, taking in the unsettling sight.

Delirium snorted. “...Made you look… It was just butterflies…”

Xie Lian attempted to control his breathing. It was just the grave-wine, he told himself. It was making him see things that weren’t there.

Without warning, a vivid red ghost fire descended upon them and seemed to attack the girl. Xie Lian moved to defend her, but before he could intervene, she had already deftly grabbed it between two fingers. She held it up close to her face.

“Oh, it’s you. Do you like butterflies? I could make you like butterflies…”

The ghost fire struggled in her hand, trying to escape her grip. Although Xie Lian had originally treated the ghost as a threat, he now felt a little sorry for it, especially given the somewhat gleefully predatory way the girl now held it.

“You should go, Little Red, and finish burning your body.”

She smiled wide and toothy. Her eyes shone like fresh rain over a battlefield.

“Then you can make a bunch of butterflies.”

At that, she flung the ghost far far away. Xie Lian watched it all as though underwater, his confusion growing. He almost wondered if that ghost ought to accompany their pitiful troupe, if only to light the way with its cold fire. He turned toward Delirium. “Young lady, do you know that ghost fire?”

Delirium pursed her lips, pouting, “I was his best childhood friend.” She looked up, the starlight glinting vivid in her mismatched eyes.

“But he doesn’t like most things from his childhood. ...Except you. Haha. He really likes you.”

Xie Lian listened to the words, but also kept an eye on his surroundings. It appeared that strange things were afoot tonight.

She continued to giggle. “He wants to do things to you. He pretends he doesn’t, but he does. He’s in Si-xiongjie’s realm right now…” She said it all in a sing-songy tone, a tune that sounded like over-aged peach wine, a sound that made Xie Lian feel drunker with each passing melody. Still, he felt like he shouldn’t abandon her, not on a slippery, dangerous, cold night like this. Like climbing out of a muddy pit, Xie Lian grasped onto his mission:

“...You sure know a lot of things, young lady. Can you tell me where your home is, so I can get you there safely?”

Delirium turned to face him, eyes bright. “That’s right! I do know a lot of things! I know things even my Da-ge doesn’t know, in his big ol’ stuffy book. I know the good stuff. But. You don’t want to go to my realm. Not yet, at least.”

She lowered her voice. “You’ll want to see Er-jie’s realm before mine. Most people do…”

Sighing, Xie Lian resigned himself to the fact that he definitely wouldn’t get any useful information from the young woman by asking directly. If anything, he’d just learn more about her dysfunctional family. What was it now? Stuffy eldest and third brothers, a second sister he would want to see, and a fourth sibling who? Housed ghosts? Or at least that one ghost in particular…

Baffled, Xie Lian decided to just focus on walking without tripping over branches and roots. Eventually, they’d make it to a place where he could get help.

Turning her head back to the ground, Delirium continued, her tune changing to the solemn sound of rancid milk.

“...There’s someone else, too, who wants to do things to you. Bad things. Put things where they shouldn’t be put, until you’re ground up meat. And then your parents, so he can be your only dad.”

She whispered, as though telling a secret. “But he can’t come near you when I’m around, not without coming to my realm himself. And he hates my realm, almost as bad as he hates my Wu-jie’s.”

Pulling back, she smiled wide, stretching her arms out in peach-scented euphoria. “He’s always in my Wu-jie’s realm. He’s got pearl pins all over his map, but she’s got everything in between, and she’s got her hook in his heart.”

She got close again, her breath like the flapping of moth wings in his ear, “But the secret is: those pins are what keep him bound to her. He thinks with each new one he’s taking away from her and stabbing her where it hurts, but what he doesn’t know is just how much my Wu-jie loves pain. So each time he puts a new pin, she wriggles in closer and eats up his guts. Like a worm!”

At that, Delirium crouched down and grabbed two handfuls of night crawlers from the earth, smiling to Xie Lian. “It’s called worm-charming.” She paused, smiling deviously. “I like it better than cormorants. For now. But when you go fishing, Your Highness, you must be careful which way the hook is pointing--it’s very tricky, but if you don’t see how it doubles back, it’ll stab you right in your neck!” Her eyes bugged out.

Xie Lian blinked. To characterize his disorientation would be to understand it, which he was precisely too disoriented to do. He wasn’t sure if this woman was mad, or if he was.

“Haha, that’s okay-” she answered, as though hearing his thoughts. “-Here, take some worms. They feel funny when they wriggle down your throat.”

Head spinning, Xie Lian wordlessly took a handful of earthworms, which seemed to multiply in his hand, slowly consuming him and all the space around him. The only option remaining was to follow this strange girl through the night. Follow her, and dive into this peachy pit of worms and butterflies.

.

The day after tomorrow, maoshi.

Delirium sat in the alleyway across from Xie Lian, who was just beginning to doze off. Putting her feet back on, she stooped up.

“Aw… You said you weren’t going to San-ge… Well-”

Delirium became suddenly aware of a presence of a figure at the opposite end of the alley. A tall white figure, wearing a smiling-crying mask. She beamed up at him.

“Oh, it’s yoouuuuuu~ Haha.”

The eyes behind the mask widened in fear; the figure disappeared just as soon as it had come. Delirium continued to smile. “Bye now~!”

Turning back to the younger crown prince, Delirium twisted her mouth, then undid the bandage from her waist and wrapped it back around Xie Lian’s neck.

“Er… Thanks for fighting off those soldiers… I probably would have just put worms in their brains anyway…” Rising up, she opened her mouth to say goodbye, but bubbles came out instead. She was gone before they popped, high up in the air:

Bai Wuxiang sent clones, sent ghosts, sent anything that would drive his protégé mad without having to be in her presence himself. Such measures were slower, but not ineffective: seeing masked faces in the mirror and out of the corner of his eye and behind his loved ones, Xie Lian did indeed slowly descend into madness. And, as befit his station, every now and then he would see her again, too: leaning on the side of a building, dancing in the moonlight, swinging her legs in a tree.

She watched over him. Delirium knew her place, knew it better than anyone, because she knew herself from the inside out. She had taken herself apart and forged herself anew.

Delirium was a respite, an elysian vertigo, an escape from the horror of sanity.

Her name had changed, as it did with every culture she passed by. But her purpose remained.

She was still the same.

And she watched over him, as Xie Lian’s throat and trunk were stabbed into meaty mush. She said hi to her Er-jie--

One hundred times, all at once.

Her hair caught fire in the aftermath. She nursed it with fallen flowers and charred bones.

The pieces that remained of Xie Lian spent some time in her realm, and then he went on his way. He was one of the more polite guests, if it meant anything.

Still, even she wasn’t sure if he’d ever be the same, after that.

Until--

.

A battlefield choked with corpses, before the wreckage of a ruined city gate.

Places like this made Delirium feel safe most of the time, because they meant her Liu-gege was near. All she had to do was call, and big brother Destruction would be there to protect and accompany her, with all the respect due her station.

Today, however, the air too was choked with the black energy of resentful spirits, and Liu-gege had told her recently that he wanted a vacation from places like this. He had spent too long in Mount Tonglu and he needed to get away for a bit.

So, it wasn’t Destruction who met her there on the battlefield as Xie Lian stoked his fallen soldiers’ resentment. It was someone else.

She sat on the muddy bloody ground and watched. Her hair was a hacked up nest in the wake of the fire, quite literally: Bees and butterflies made their home amidst the wilting flowers that still bloomed on her head.

“Nice headdress, Qi-mei.”

The newcomer stretched, leaning languid against a ruined rampart, and tittered at the tableau before them:

Two masked figures met in the center of the whirling field of evil energy: A ghost in black, kneeling, and an exiled god in white, extending a hand.

Delirium looked up. “Oh… Hi, Si-xiongjie…”

“What a show we’ve put on here! How dramatic.” Desire smiled, baring teeth. “How the nameless ghost craves.”

“Oh. That’s nice. I made him like butterflies.”

Desire twitched their nose. “Butterflies, butterflies, it’s always butterflies with you…”

Delirium still sat, resting her head in one of her hands, the tip of her fourth finger in her mouth. “Wouldn’t expect you to understand…” she muttered. “You’ve never been dissolved in a puddle of your own juice, and then come out the other end. You’re just a chrysalis. You’re just an empty shell, Desire.” Although her words bore hostility, her tone was calm and matter-of-fact.

Desire licked their lips and narrowed their eyes. “I’ll forgive you that slight, Qi-mei. But, since you bring it up, please enlighten me: How many of those who pass through your realm truly come out the other end? Can you say you’re better than me for having done it?”

Delirium raised her head toward the funereal white-cloaked figure of Xie Lian. “Him. He came out.”

Desire sniffed. “Oh? Forgive me for mistaking you, but it doesn’t look to me like he has.”

“You’ll see.” Delirium shook her head, then caught sight of the now-sentient silk band Ruoye, which was currently hissing viciously at everything around its owner. She glared at it. “Hey, bad, bad bad boy! You behave, be good!”

Having caught sight of her, Ruoye was for a moment taken aback, then retreated sheepishly back to Xie Lian’s wrist. Delirium smiled. “Good boy! Good boy.”

Desire smirked, folding their arms. “Qi-mei, don’t be so naive. Just because he has a little pet and that devoted fool with him, doesn’t mean he’ll come back to himself so easily. My boy’s a nice treat, but he’s the kind who dies for love. And what of then? Perhaps it will take decades, perhaps centuries, but that crown prince’s predecessor is a persistent one. This one won’t escape his fate.”

Delirium smiled and sprawled back in the grass, giggling. Desire flared a nostril and made a clicking sound in their mouth.

“And what could you be finding so funny right now, Delirium?”

“You don’t listen, Si-xiongjie.” Delirium looked up to the sky, a glint in her mismatched eyes. “The prince will be fine. Because.

“I made them like butterflies.”

.

Delirium had a purpose. Most people who passed through her realm didn’t make it out the other end. But that was fine. Her realm wasn’t really so bad to get stuck in, after all, at least in her opinion.

Delirium had a purpose, though it was often hard to discern, in the thick of it. And even remember, in retrospect.

But she knew things that weren’t written in Destiny’s book.

.

Out of a job once again, Xie Lian walked down the road and passed by a red flower blowing in the wind.

Sometimes he still remembered with a shudder those strange days during his first banishment. Sometimes he remembered a young woman, who seemed pitiful to him at the time, and yet, who could spark fear even in Bai Wuxiang’s empty heart. This too, he remembered with a shudder, hoping never to make her acquaintance again.

Xie Lian walked down the road and a red flower caught his eye. He tipped up his bamboo hat and brushed a finger against the delicate crimson petals.

“I hope we shall meet again,” he said to the flower, before moseying on his way.

.

Undesired, unappreciated, unremembered, Delirium had a purpose, folded deep within herself. Hers was a dimension untouched by the cruelty of the chrysalis.

Chapter Text

Mount Tonglu burst like a pustule on Wuyong's face: Long-anticipated, cystic. Lava spraying like blood, abundant in the infected veins below, all the while an indifferent, invisible force squeezed and squeezed, fueled only by the pure, undiluted sense of release: Destruction for its own sake--an ending, finally, finally.

Only, it never did end, did it?

Destruction pursed his lips and folded his arms. The armor girding his wrists scraped like bone on blade, like stone on stone:

Girder from abutment, screeching down from heaven and colliding with the molten rock spewing up from below.

Everything sounded like that, here. It had been over a millennium, but Mount Tonglu never stopped erupting. Not completely.

Destruction pinched his forehead. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Leave it to mortals to indefinitely prolong the fall of their civilization. Wuyong had extended beyond its reach; this was its time; its appointed tian nian¹ had been fulfilled. Wuyong was to be destroyed, and that was that. Or, rather, that was supposed to be that, before the newly ascended crown prince got involved, building his doomed rainbow bridge to heaven and ruining the balance of qi at its foundation, dumping his own resentment into the mountain like hot bacteria as though he could win against one of the Endless. Against a universal principle! And then the live sacrifices, and then the vengeful spirits and then--

It wasn’t meant to be like this.

Time passed. The crown prince was an emperor now, spotless and majestic. And his old kingdom was a landfill, a dumping ground, an unholy laboratory. Abominations were born here: the Yi Nian bridge ghost, the Reverend of Empty Words, and so many more. Destruction watched as they spawned amidst the molten rock, born of madness and despair. And indeed, Destruction often met his fifth and seventh sisters in this place that drew him by its nature. By his nature. He appreciated their company when they came around. It distracted him from the monotony of fire and blood.

Nevertheless, Destruction was trapped here, by his nature. His sense of duty. Trapped, like the foolish emperor who stomped around this old kingdom and splashed his bitterness around like this was still his kingdom. Souls remained trapped, while horrific beasts escaped into the mortal realm. Still, Destruction remained in the fiery prison.

That is, until that last thing clambered out of the kiln, trapped like them both behind funeral robes and that gaudy, mawkish mask and finally Destruction was disgusted enough to finally decide that he had finally had it. Finally.

There was only so much blood and fire and pestilential entitlement a man could take, and Destruction, despite not being a man himself, had had enough of this accursed place and that accursed emperor.

He spent some time touring the mortal realm: to the rice paddies of the south, where a rain-soaked kingdom was at war with a belligerent northern state. Things were getting tense. A princess slit her throat, staving off the inevitable for only a brief moment.

Yushi fell.

Destruction eyed the battle plans in Pei Ming’s tent, directed their movements for idle entertainment. Or, perhaps, to satisfy that ever-hungry sense of duty. He was good at this stuff, naturally. Destruction didn’t question his own actions.

Nor did the Xuli soldiers question his presence in their tent: from the lowest infantryman to the highest ranking general, they could all see him, could see how he towered over mortal men. They knew who he was without having to ask.

...Although his resemblance to this particular high-ranking general was more than a little curious. Destruction wasn’t sure if he should be annoyed or impressed, but either way, he took special notice of this general--this man molded in his image. Heaven and earth had outdone themselves, casting Pei Ming as they did.

“That one,” he whispered to the general’s advisor and best friend, “Your general. Great things await him.”

Rong Guang nodded, smiling proudly. “Yes,” he replied, “Yes they do.”

And then Destruction left the war tent, wiping dust from his hands like metal splinters from a snapping sword. He--

--He couldn’t help but feel like there ought to have been more fulfillment. He had just sown the seeds of Xuli’s destruction: a kingdom that took centuries to rise, about to go up in flames. He ought to be satisfied right now, he really ought to.

He shook it off. There were always more empires to topple.

Destruction tagged along with a band of Xuli mercenaries for the drought-cracked land of Xianle’s impoverished tributary. He watched the Yong'an forces clash against their oppressors and heard tell of a mysterious illness that had struck the capital: human face disease. It reeked of something all too familiar. He paid the general Lang Ying a visit--

--Only to cross paths with that disgusting masked thing again. So it was like this after all…

Destruction grimaced. He had seen Xianle’s crown prince in action, and he knew precisely what the emperor was planning.

Xianle fell.

Fell hard. Like a child tumbling down the stairs before it knew how to walk, pushed by a father who knew no other way to show his affection.

Destruction sighed, standing like a lone pillar in the middle of the swarming city. He watched civilians jump into the fire in a final, desperate attempt to alleviate their suffering. Everything beautiful was smashed; pleasure gardens soured with corpses and the debris of a once-decadent city. Nothing escaped the flames. Even cheery Death was too busy to stop and say hi.

Destruction looked on, and frowned. A sound from below awoke him from his stupor.

“OoooOOooOooooo… Hi Liu-gege…”

Destruction’s eyes flicked to where his little sister sprawled, half-submerged in a broken building. He helped her up.

“Oh, thanks Liu-gege. I was pretending to be a corpse for a while, and then I pretended to be a spirit and embedded myself onto a woman’s eyelash. But corpses don’t usually go mad, so I got stuck. Thanks.”

Destruction eyed his sister with a mixture of sadness and guilt, followed by guilt at feeling sadness and guilt. He reached up and grabbed a crow for her to play with. At first, it squawked in alarm, but then Delirium got her hands on it, and its protests went purple.

“Haha. You always know how to cheer me up.”

Destruction looked down to the rubble that had once been a statuary, a grim smile on his face.

Delirium giggled. “Hey, look, now it’s a green-spotted spicing whistlebird, Liu-gege. I did that.” She held it up for her brother to see. He looked down, and couldn’t dispute that there was indeed a green-spotted spicing whistlebird wriggling around in her hands. But it brought him no joy.

“Aye, Qi-mei,” he replied pensively.

“Nnnngggh…” Delirium elbowed her brother. “You’re all, um. I don’t know the word. What’s the word for the feeling of being coated in tree sap that’s gone hard, but when you try to lick your way out, it’s rancid and bitter instead of sweet?”

Her observation yielded a sardonic chuckle from Destruction. “Aye, Qi-mei,” he repeated. “That is how I am right now.”

“Oh. But what’s the word? I know there’s a word.”

Destruction closed his eyes. “No such word, I’m afraid.”

“Hm. I really thought there ought to be.”

“You could make one up and put it in someone’s head. Then it’d be a word.”

Delirium pouted. “But that wouldn’t make you less, um, what the word is.”

Destruction took a deep breath, full of fire and ash and death. “No. No, it wouldn’t. Any suggestions on what might?”

Delirium’s eyes widened. “Wanna come over to my place?” She beamed.

Destruction sighed. “Sure. Why not?” He ran a gloved hand through his tightly bound hair.

“Yaaayyyyy!! Liu-gege’s coming over! Oh I’ll put the fish just how you like them,” she gushed, tearing open a portal in the middle of the hot dusty fumes.

Destruction stepped through the portal and felt the familiar sensation of reality stretching and contracting in a feral rhythm around him. He smiled weakly at how the fish glittered and dove up to eat birds in the air. Delirium cradled the green-spotted spicing whistlebird close to her chest, keeping her gift safe from the hungry fish. Delirium’s realm was a seething chaos; there was always something to look at, but therein lay the danger--look too long at something and one might never look at anything else for the rest of one’s life. And then, tian nian stretched and contracted into an unrecognizable glutinous warp, one might find oneself kneaded so thoroughly into her dough that they’d never return to the dreary corner stall of their own reality.

But that was fine; it was nice here. Delirium’s realm wasn’t so bad, at least in her opinion. And it was especially nice when she had company. Destruction settled down onto something that could have perhaps been called a divan, and Delirium sat in something that could have perhaps been called a vanity across from him. She drew faces on her face.

Destruction sighed. “Very fashionable, those faces, aren’t they?”

“Mmmmmmm I think they’re nice. It’s good to not be alone. Those resentful spirits make good conversation, too.” She giggled. “One of them, the other day, was all, ‘AAAAHHHHHaaahhoooowwWWOOOOoooooOO!’ and then another said, ‘hrunggph hrunggph,’ and I replied, ‘The Taming Power of the Small has success. Dense clouds, no rain from our western region,’ and then both of them went ‘SCREEEEEEEEE’ for a while. Hahaha, they were nice.” She cocked her head, then shrugged. “Dead now.”

“Aye. Dead to begin with.”

“Yeah…” Delirium paused in her drawing, only to find that her green-spotted spicing whistlebird was gone. “Ohhh… Liu-gege, I’m sorry…” She lifted its remains up in her palms. They had morphed now into a collection of yarrow stalks divided in discrete bunches between her fingers. “I turned it into an augury.”

Destruction sniffed, mouth drawn into a solemn line. “It’s fine, Qi-mei. Don’t worry yourself about it.”

“No no no, you don’t understand. It’s for you.” At that, she threw the yarrow stalks up into the air, from which a symbol arose: The hexagram² ䷈. She knit her brows. “It’s probably what you came here for, and now you’ll leave even though you just got here and then I won’t have company anymore.”

Destruction pinched the side of his lips. “Ah, I see.” He studied the hexagram and momentarily mulled over whether rising to meet it would hurt his sister’s feelings. Momentarily, for the augury didn’t give him the option of ignoring it; it whooshed over to where he sat and filled his mind:

When Destruction opened his eyes, he was no longer in Delirium’s realm, but ankle-deep in the familiar paddies of Yushi. The air was drenched with hot rain.

He blasted a hole in reality to offer his sister some words in parting:

“My apologies for leaving so early, Qi-mei, and my gratitude for your augury. I’m tired of breathing the smoke of fallen civilizations. I’m going to take some time off from myself. If you wish to find me, I’ll be in the Rain Master’s realm planting rice.”

“...Oh. Okay. Bye, Liu-gege…”

Destruction smiled, and for the first time in a while it was full and genuine, as though the thick veil of steaming rain had washed away the bitter crusted sap. “Farewell, Qi-mei. Until next time.” He tipped his head in parting, then closed the portal in front of him and raised his face to receive the pouring rain. When he looked forward once again, a silhouette entered his vision: five bu³ away, a man who was also an ox stood, arms folded grimly.

“Whaddya think yer doin’ here, general?” The ox-man glared at Destruction, who looked down at himself, realizing he was still wearing full martial gear. In an instant, his armor poofed away, simple farmer’s garb appearing in its place.

“I believe you’ve mistaken me for someone else, my fellow humble servant.”

The ox-man continued to eye Destruction suspiciously. But, in the end, he walked over and tipped up his wide bamboo hat, revealing weathered tan skin, a nose pierced like a door knocker, and a drooping green weed clamped between his lips. “I’m sorry, mister; I mistook you for somebody else. Unfortunate to have a face like that round these parts--ya look a lot like somebody that did a bad turn by the lord o’ these fields.”

Destruction chuckled, rubbing his chin. “Or, perhaps, that person happens to look a lot like me.”

“Don’t joke around, mister. Lord Rain Master’s still injured, ya know.”

“Mm, indeed. ‘The Princess who Slit her Throat’, if I’m correct?”

“The very same. And I’ll have you know: Even though people tell her story like she’s a fortunate party, ascendin’ ‘n all, it ain’t been all peaches. They think it must be mighty grand, bein’ famous ‘n heroic. But they dunno how it feels breathin’ through a trachea that’s been sliced clean through fer years before healin’. Can’t escape things that’re done down here so easy.” The ox-man’s eyes stared into Destruction’s with no lack of mistrust.

“Ah. My apologies if I’ve offended Lord Rain Master,” Destruction replied.

The ox-man handed him several sheaves of unplanted rice. “No skin off my back. Here’s the rules: You wanna eat and sleep here, you work.”

Taking the bundles, Destruction bowed in salute. “Yessir.”

.

And so Destruction toiled in the Rain Master’s fields. Seasons passed, and then years. It didn’t take long for the population of Yushi to utilize his natural strengths. In spring, Destruction tilled the soil with arduous concentration, breaking up hardened dirt that green things might grow from the remains. He was good at this, could do the work of ten men easily, more than enough to justify his inert presence for the rest of the year.

...Because, as it turned out, Destruction was no good at planting or harvesting: sheaves crumbled and rotted in his hands as the summer sun blazed down, and come autumn, when he beat the husks against wood, he pummeled the grains, too, into a fine powder, indistinguishable from the dirt whence they sprouted. And that was when he didn’t smash right through the wooden boards.

So Destruction tilled. It took his mind off of things. Repetitive motions, thwacking into the fertile, black earth. The smell of soil and rain and dirt on his hands, it made him forget about everything that had been lost. You couldn’t mourn a pleasure garden if you’d never built one in the first place. The lost flourishes of Xianle faded from his mind as they faded from the earth.

-whump-
-whump-

He had some time on his hands in the off-season. His San-xiong would have a fit if he learned what Destruction had been up to during his leisure time. Granted, Dream would probably have a fit at the mere fact that one of the Endless could have leisure time to begin with. But Dream’d be especially perturbed by Destruction’s new hobby, encroaching on his realm as it did.

Destruction had taken up landscape painting.

It was a noble pursuit, yes, but here, in Yu Shi’s humble agrarian realm, his amateurish efforts went unmocked. Well, mostly. The ox-man wasn’t the kindest critic, but Destruction paid him no mind.

Sometimes, thoughts disturbed him while he painted. Thoughts like, ‘Would it really be so bad?’ and ‘You could just stay, forget your duty’ and ‘Aren’t you happier here?’ As much as he tried to calm his mind, questions like these haunted him with frightening persistence. He painted them away.

Delirium visited, sometimes, and added some color to his paintings.

Destruction wanted to keep his new hobby a secret from the rest of his family, but alas, he was interrupted in the midst of it. It had been over a decade now, and a sense of foreboding overwhelmed him. And one day, that dread crystallized as a familiar voice entered his mind. The words began as a murmur, then surfaced with cloying urgency:

“Liu-didi, I stand in my gallery and hold your sigil. Do answer, please.”

Reality hit, and Destruction’s arm slipped, ruining the subtle mist of distant space with a glaring black ink blot. He sighed gruffly, then answered, joining his porch with his Si-xiongjie’s gallery. Desire stepped through, looking just as slick, sleak, and cruel as ever, and gazed with lazy imperiousness at the humble place Destruction had called home for the past decade.

“Oh, you’re painting. How quaint.”

“Hello, Si-xiongjie.”

Desire leaned against the wall of Destruction’s hut, crossing one leg over another and folding their arms. “My regards, Liu-didi. Living the life, I see.” They lifted off of the wall and put two fingers to their lips. “Let’s have tea, Destruction.”

Destruction furrowed his brows, then shook off the unsettling feeling. “Uh, sure. Just let me start some water and--”

“No. Not now. Not here.”

Destruction stopped in his movements. “Okay. So when and where? And why, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Desire cocked their head. “Two days from now.” They scanned the landscape, then pointed. “There. How about there.”

“That’s the Rain Master’s cottage. She’d not take well to our forcing our way.”

“I don’t care. But, that does lead me to the ‘why’, Liu-didi. After all, Despair and I are both curious about this new lover of yours.” Desire smirked.

Destruction sputtered. “WHAT?? I’M NOT--!”

“Of course you’re not. Naturally, I would know if you were. But…” Desire tipped their head up as though inspecting the hut’s straw eaves. “That doesn’t change the fact that you haven’t been this estranged from everyone and everything since back when you were seeing Ishtar two thousand years ago. The ‘why’ of this meeting--Well, shouldn’t we be asking you? Why, Destruction?”

Destruction stood in place, tight-lipped.

Desire waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, don’t worry about it now, Liu-didi. Like I said, in two days we shall meet. You have two whole days to get your act together. But, please do have an answer by then, dear brother. Both me and Despair are just ever so curious. Ta, now!” At that, they stepped back through the portal and closed it with smug precision behind them.

Destruction sighed, then walked down the mountain to greet the Rain Master. Trudging down the narrow path, he clenched his fist and crumpled the botched landscape painting into its component fibers. From the silk fragments, broken moths twitched into being and quickly perished. There was nothing to be done; it was his nature. Destruction sighed again as he approached the cottage. Yu Shi sat at her porch, preparing cabbage and radishes for fermentation. He knelt below the porch and saluted, head bowed.

"My lady, I have a favor to ask."

Yu Shi looked up from her work, then methodically washed and dried her hands of the salty cabbage-water, and placed two fingers to her temple--she was not yet able to speak outside of telepathic communication.

“What is it, my lord?” Yu Shi had no illusions about Destruction’s identity; she had never been a soldier, but there were some things anyone who raised a sword knew in their bones.

“Ahem. Certain members of my family wish for me to play host to them in two days’ time. They requested your cottage for the occasion. My deepest and sincerest apologies, but some of my relations are not the type to bend to reasonable argument.”

Yu Shi tilted her head, expression unchanging. “Rise, my lord. It appears you ask no favors of this Rain Master.”

Rising, Destruction swallowed and looked up toward Yu Shi. “None other than your forgiveness for the presumptuousness of my prouder relations.”

Yu Shi looked him in the eye. “It is not for me to bear grudges against deathless archetypes, my lord. If my cottage is to be the host of illustrious guests in two days’ time, so shall it be, but--”

Her gaze flared in intensity, seemed to strip Destruction bare.

“--I trust they do not linger here. This is a simple place, for simple people to live, work, and pursue the way. You are not a simple person, my lord, and your way is not mine. You have dallied here for quite some time, but in the end, we all must return to the way. How could there be blame in this?”

Destruction pinched his lips inward and clenched his eyes shut, bowing his head once again. “Aye.” He exhaled, remembering the hexagram that brought him here in the first place: ‘Perseverance brings the woman into danger. The moon is nearly full. If the superior man persists, misfortune comes.’ Destruction looked up to the early evening sky, toward the waxing moon.

He’d have to be gone soon.

“I will ensure none among my family remain here after our gathering. Many thanks, my lady.” He bobbed his head, then offered a taut, weak smile in parting.

“Destruction.” Yu Shi had not broken the telepathic connection, and Destruction turned back toward her wordlessly. She paced evenly toward him and handed him a jar of spicy cabbage she had prepared two weeks before. “Take this. Savor it, and perhaps we shall meet again. On good terms, I hope.”

Nodding, Destruction took the jar. “Many thanks,” he repeated, before going on his way.

.

Two days later.

Despair showed up early, standing before Yu Shi’s porch like a scarred, stunted radish. Farmhands avoided her lumpy, naked form. She didn’t care; she was used to it. Most people avoided her, but few escaped her when she had her hook in their heart. Her victims, her clients, her unwilling companions, they were many and they were distinguished. She could pardon some simple farmers their aversion.

Leveling his own hut with a firm sense of completion, Destruction hiked down the mountain for the last time, and greeted his sister with a wide, gallant smile.

“Why hello, Wu-jie! You’re looking well!”

Despair’s expression betrayed no emotion. “Well? No. I am myself, as I am always.”

Destruction chuckled. “Yes, of course, and that is well, in my book!”

“Mn. If that is the case, if being oneself is the same as being ‘well’, then you are unwell.”

“Mmm, perhaps I am unwell then, but I am happy.”

“Are you now?” A new voice came from behind them. “Cut the crap, Destruction. I’d know if you were happy.”

Destruction turned around, eyeing Desire warily. “Would you now, Desire?”

Desire snapped back, “I would.”

Not wanting to get into a spat before even going inside, Destruction exhaled. “Well, is it just the two of you, or are more coming?”

Desire twisted their expression, examining their fingernails. “Qi-mei said she’d be here, but there’s no point in waiting for her, unless you particularly relish standing around in this dreary place.” They lowered their hand then shot Destruction a look. “Oh, wait. I suppose you do enjoy that. Inside, then.”

Destruction swallowed back his words, showing the twins to Yu Shi’s cottage. Yu Shi herself saluted to the siblings, then took her leave. Destruction walked in, about to set the table, only to find that Delirium was already there, making mischief in the kitchen. Currently, she was clutching one of the recently-sealed jars and directing a small bacterial universe of her own creation within it.

“Hello Qi-mei.”

Delirium looked up with a start, then abandoned the jar to hug her brother. “Hi Liu-gege!” she exclaimed, all smiles.

It cheered Destruction up a bit. He patted her on the back, then extracted himself from the embrace. “Will you come to the table? I’ll be right out with the tea.”

“Okay… Can I keep the jar?”

Destruction smiled beneficently. “Naturally. I don’t think the Rain Master would appreciate it being mixed in with the normal jars, either, Qi-mei.”

“Hmph, you don’t know that…” But, she didn’t belabor the point, instead skittering away to the parlor with her mini-universe.

Destruction took a breath, then began to prepare the tea. Yu Shi left an impressive selection for him to pick through, but Destruction stuck to a local variety. Stepping out to the parlor, he poured a cup for each of his siblings. He even allowed himself a moment to take in its particular terroir, the delicate curl of steam piping up and suffusing his pores with its comforting wet heat.

His moment of peace was not to last, but then, nothing did. Not when he was around.

Desire was the first to speak. “So, Liu-didi. We’re here. You’re here.”

“Indeed. And what catalyst brings you here?”

Desire smirked, sipping their tea. “Well, Perhaps you’ve not heard, cooped up in this dismal, insular farm of yours, but Xuli fell. Without you.”

Destruction furrowed his brows. “I played a part. Xuli lost its best general and his best advisor to infighting.”

Desire waved a hand. “Please. You think that was anything of substance? Xuli was all me.” They sniffed. “Ahh, Bai Jing, that beautiful, pining fool. Now, naturally, I don’t mind single-handedly toppling a civilization, but,” Desire began to pout. “I at least like to say hi to my little brother in the aftermath. So, what gives?”

Destruction frowned, looking into his teacup. “I was tired of the fire.” He spoke quietly.

“So destroy things with water for a while! Or wind! Who says you have to use fire? Do your job at the very least.”

Destruction twitched the side of his mouth. “You know what I mean.” He sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe I spent too much time in Wuyong.”

Despair cut in, “Ahhh, Wuyong… Such destruction.” Her voice curled like the steam from the tea. Snarled like her hook. “Such despair…”

“Indeed. And I was tired of it. And then Xianle…” Destruction raked a hand through his loosely-bound hair. “...It was like Wuyong all over again, and this time it wasn’t even mere happenstance. The old crown prince wanted the young one to follow in his footsteps, and it just--It never stops. I’m tired of it. I’m tired of the fire. I don’t want to step foot in Mount Tonglu again, or any of its little clones forced to fall by Wuyong’s crown prince. And I don’t want to see any of his little clones again either.”

Desire pursed their lips and rolled their eyes. “Compelling. Riveting,” they said dryly, waving an arm up with a flourish. “Destruction’s tired of himself. Call on the playwrights.”

Sprawled out on the table, Delirium responded to her brother. “Oh, wait… Xianle…?” She cocked her head up, putting a couple fingers in her mouth in contemplation. “Mmmm, he was nice. Came to my realm for a bit.” She then rose and peered pointedly at Desire. “But he left. Now he collects stuff. Um. Trash, I think. But the good kind. He’s really nice.” She beamed.

Destruction raised his eyebrows and stroked his chin. “Is that so?” He glanced at Desire, who flared a nostril.

“I’m afraid so, Liu-didi. Xie Lian is up and kicking. He’s no clone of Wuyong’s crown prince, if that’s what’s been keeping you away.”

Destruction huffed. “Well then, good for him. But it’s not just that… Agh, how do I express it? Xianle was so… All that art, all that architecture, all that literature--” He swished his hands in a dispersing motion. “-whump-, just like that.”

“Yes, Liu-didi, everyday art is lost. What’s so special about Xianle?”

“I don’t know… It’s just… It didn’t even live on in a meaningful way--And Yong'an’s style is just… It isn’t the same!”

Desire snorted. “Ah, so now that he’s done some landscape painting, he’s suddenly an expert on taste and style.” They rolled their eyes again.

“Liu-gege, it did live!” Delirium burst out, leaning over the table. Desire shot her a warning look, to which she stuck out her tongue, carrying on, “It’s true!”

Destruction’s eyes flicked from Desire to Delirium. “What are you on about?”

Despair addressed her twin. “Si-xiongjie, perhaps you should show him. Perhaps it will bring him back into the fold.”

Scowling, Desire twitched their nose and replied. “Hmph, fine.” They turned toward Destruction, a catty look in their eye. “You know, you’ve missed something by staying away from Tonglu all this time.”

Destruction furrowed his brows. “What do you mean?”

Standing up, Desire huffed loudly and shook their head. “Come on. I’m only showing you this because I’m in a good mood.” At that, they carefully rent a hole in reality and stepped through, beckoning the others to follow.

.

Yu Shi re-entered her cottage that evening to find four cold cups of barely-touched tea, and a jar containing a universe in miniature. She washed the cups carefully, and kept the jar in a safe place--it’d be an interesting novelty to show guests, at the very least. But heaven only knew what might happen if she allowed it to spill over into this one…

.

The four of them walked the tunnels of Mount Tonglu.

Delirium giggled. “Liu-gege, you’ll like this a lot. I think you’ll really like it.”

Destruction peered around at the dark chamber, then walked toward an aperture emanating silver light. The light, he soon discovered, came from the glowing silk of countless chrysalises strung over the rock walls, pulsing with dormant energy. Curious, he strode forward, entering a well-lit cavern. He widened his eyes.

It was so--

He was speechless.

All around him, carven images proliferated, in the unmistakable, rich, beautiful style of Xianle. Love radiated from the images lining each wall and thrummed through the cave, a precious time capsule of unconditional devotion.

Tears trickled down his face. He stood in place, mouth ajar, taking it all in.

Desire sauntered in, smirking. They sidled up next to one of the more erotic carvings, caressing its face. “Yes, yes, would you look at what you missed? Hmmm, the artist’s in the kiln right now, if you want to meet him.” They smiled smugly. “He’s within my sphere of influence, as you can see.”

Destruction croaked his words, lost in the immaculate, imaginative level of craft around him, “Aye. And Dream’s, I presume?”

Desire sneered, waving a hand dismissively. “Yes, yes. They made a little deal. But that doesn’t change the fact that the ghost is mine.”

“I made him like butterflies!” Delirium piped in. She pointed to the walls, where silk clung all around. “See, look!”

Destruction chuffed. “Aye.” He looked around again in wonder. Such a work was truly, inconceivably marvelous.

...And it wouldn’t have come into being had Xianle not fallen, had Xie Lian’s greatest devotee not died and refined his outward nature, had he not refined a powerful blade from his own right eye, refined his artistic skill with countless months of continuous effort. Destruction looked around at the thousand god cave, and he ruminated, reflected on his decade of breaking up dirt, of thinning sprouts--all so that new, robust growth might spring up from the ashes. And here, even here, in the fires of Tonglu, to see such a wonder.

Destruction took a deep breath, full of ash and fire and death. His tears dried, and he smiled softly, peering at his Si-xiongjie.

“Desire, I hope you will not resent me if I too wish to bestow a gift upon this ghost of yours.”

Desire huffed and rolled their eyes, still wrapped languidly around the erotic carving. “Go ahead. I don’t care. He’ll crave just as well, whether or not he bears the gifts of Dream and Destruction.”

“What will you give him, Liu-didi?” Despair probed.

Destruction chuckled in amusement. “Well, perhaps you could say it’s a carry-over from having resided so long in the Rain Master’s domain.” His smile spread heartily, wide and toothy and glad, with no trace of exhaustion. His eyes gleamed with anticipation.

“I’m going to teach him to make the skies rain with blood.”

Chapter Text

Death had seen it all: people so driven by misfortune and madness that they chose to follow her; miserable, unfair deaths; violent deaths; honorable suicides; deaths by sickness and by exhaustion--and that was just people. Death was everywhere, but the nature of her job varied from place to place and being to being: stars trickled by, in and out of sight, a few billion years to their name. Trees and mountains sank slowly back into the cheerful breast whence they had sprouted. Mountains and rivers, stars and planets, these were slow-moving and gracious, welcoming her embrace long before it arrived.

(The well-behaved ones, at least.)

Some things lived more mysterious lives. Even Death was bewildered by the entities lurking like spectral mildew in the poorly lit substructures of the universe--she caught glimpses while tending to the quick, flickering lives of bacteria in deep trenches, but there were other more obscure vaults left deserted by galaxies and other short-lived entities. Liminal places. What crept from those corners, well, even she didn’t think too long on them; nevertheless, when their time came, if their time came, she would be there too.

Some places, Death trod so frequently that her steps formed deep tracks in their fabric, much as she tried to remain light-footed. Some layers of rock told stories of Death's busier errand days. Sometimes, in such places, Death’s work was done all at once.

Wuyong had been hectic; a lot of souls slipped through her hands and into the lava. It couldn’t be helped. They looked at her with hate and fear in those days. Fleeing Death, they trapped themselves, so that when they burned for release, she could no longer reach them and grant them her gift.

Among them was a god, who had tried in vain to help. A god who convinced his people he’d save them from her. A god who failed.

He, too, burned for release. He pleaded and pleaded for her, over and over as the blades pierced through his heart. But that was the trouble with immortals: they tried so hard to escape her, sometimes they managed to succeed.

Like misbehaving stars.

That god would not die, but something new was born within him--necessitating, of course, her presence, for Death was not so much an end as she was an escort. It was a terrible birth, but it was inescapable for a place with so many buried souls. He’d keep them for her--

--Likely not in a way that benefited the souls themselves, but, well, if life wasn’t fair, what could be expected of Death?

She tried to be fair when she could. One birth; one death. Everyone got at least that.

Well, most everyone, at least--

It was one of the busier days. The air was brisk with the promise of winter, but in several places it steamed with fresh blood. Several wealthy nobles were currently learning--with acute, razor-sharp finality--that they had pulled one too many strings, that it was now time to pay the price no mortal money could settle.

“He’s gone crazy!” the townspeople shouted, scattering. “Don’t get in his way!”

One of them spat. “Serves them right, rich bastards!”
“Yeah! He Sheng, I support you! Kill ‘em! Kill ‘em all!”
“Kill ‘em all, He Sheng!”

A chant started on the outskirts of the massacre:
“HE SHENG! HE SHENG! HE SHENG!”
“KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL!”

Nevertheless, their encouragement couldn’t stop the arrows, spears, and knives from piercing him through. He Xuan died, but he didn’t stop killing. Death stayed out of his way. She knew his type, and she’d wait until he calmed down before approaching him.

But He Xuan didn’t calm down with death. He Xuan only grew bigger and more powerful. Blades still stuck out from his trunk, but He Xuan used his body like a well-stocked armory, only belatedly realizing that it was possible to leave the bleeding hunk of flesh behind and still carry on killing. Seeing himself like that, his cut-up muscle marinating atop the crisp crunch of autumn leaves, He Xuan didn’t feel grief. He didn’t feel indignation or melancholy, horror or remorse. He Xuan was dead, and he felt only one thing: He was hungry. Flickers of soul-stuff rose up from the steaming corpses around him, and He Xuan came to a stunning realization as he compared the well-formed solidity of his own soul to the others’ shy wisps: These people were nothing. Next to him, these wealth-fatted nobles and their guard dogs were mere animals. Livestock!

...And He Xuan was starving. Like a milk-seeking newborn, then, the ghost fed from the teat of his carnage, and grew steadily stronger. Seeing that the scholar He Sheng had become a vengeful ghost that consumed souls, most of the villagers scattered back to their homes, hoping the massacre would be enough to satisfy him. They’d try to bury his body the next day, or whenever the ghost calmed down.

However, when they went looking, both body and ghost were gone.

Secretly relieved that He Sheng wouldn’t continue to haunt their village, the people did what they could to revere their newly crowned folk hero. Their newly birthed ghost.

While the common folk were still hiding in their homes, He Xuan swept through the remaining denizens of the town’s biggest houses. He then collected his own corpse, leaving the rest to spoil in the open air.

That night.

Solemn and silent, He Xuan lingered near the fire and compacted his remains, fury still burning brighter than any pyre. The meal he had made of the town’s nobility could only temporarily sate him, after all. There was a face he had memorized. An arrogant, tyrannical face who had stolen his name, and he wanted nothing more than to feel that arrogance dissolving in his belly.

Death had waited long enough.

Gentle footfalls approached. “Hey.”

He Xuan felt her presence, but didn’t raise his head. “I know who you are. I’m not going with you.” Calmly, he compacted his ashes and hid them deep within himself. It had been less than a day and already he was powerful enough to form a physical body.

“I know. Just wanted to say hi.”

Confident in his ability to remain on the mortal plane, He Xuan allowed himself a glance. He flared a nostril and raised a brow.

Death was… not what he had imagined. She seemed nice, approachable, normal. He Xuan felt an echo of guilt, for she reminded him, in appearance, at least, of his dead fiancée: A person he had failed to protect. But Death was neither aristocratic nor beggarly; she wore simple black robes, and her up-do was ragged and uncombed. Her only adornment beyond the heavy kohl makeup was a golden necklace with a foreign shape: a person without legs, forearms, or a face. He Xuan didn’t look too long at it.

Death snorted. Death laughed.

He Xuan frowned. “What?”

She waved an arm. “Oh, it’s nothing. You just look a bit like my San-didi, all tall and gloomy like that…” She motioned to her face, bright with cheer. “You’ve got the same taste in eyes, at least.”

He Xuan’s face didn’t change. “Your San-didi?”

Death smiled. “Dream.”

He Xuan pursed his lips, looking up to the sky. “Dream. I used to dream. My dreams were intricate and clever. I dreamed beautiful, delicate things. And when I woke I carved them into words and gave them to my family and to my beloved.” He Xuan glared at the last glowing embers of the funeral pyre.

“I no longer dream.”

“You could, if you wanted to.”

“No. I have work to do.” He Xuan narrowed his eyes. Plans curled up with the last streams of smoke.

Death sniffed. “You really are a lot like him. Well-” She walked over to pat He Xuan on the shoulder, but he flinched away.

“I am not going with you.”

Death shook her head. “I know. I’ve met your kind before.”

He Xuan peered at her. “I’ll deliver you many more souls in my place.”

“HA! And you’ll steal just as many…”

He Xuan furrowed his brows. “...I can’t help being hungry.”

“Fine, fine. Well, bye. For now.” Her words were calm, her tone unthreatening. Death left the ghost then. And indeed, he did make good on his promise, delivering several thousands of souls to her as he racked up the power necessary to topple the money god. Ever-dutiful, Death collected the ones that slipped through the ghost’s fingers and dribbled from his lips.

Thousands of souls, and all to avenge four.

Death met him again in his underwater mansion, a palace crafted carefully to darkly mirror the one above, the one owned by a tyrant over friendlier seas. An abyssal mansion and a prison in one; a smart visual motif if there ever were any. He Xuan would have been a good poet, had he ample opportunity to dream.

“You’ve called the wrong person.”

Death watched the violent spray of blood as He Xuan wrenched Shi Wudu’s head from its body. Shi Qingxuan was still screaming in horror when Death approached the ghost once again.

She glanced back and forth between the Water Tyrant’s still-standing trunk and the sneering, arrogant head in the ghost’s hand. He Xuan hadn’t consumed a soul in over a century; Death figured it was because he was saving his stomach for this moment, the moment he finally got to avenge his stolen fate.

Finally, she bit. “You’re not eating that one? I’m surprised.”

“He’s not worth the rotten taste,” He Xuan snapped in response.

“I see,” Death said, collecting the Water Tyrant’s soul. “Well, what about him?” she asked, motioning to the still-screaming, now-crumpled Wind Master’s form.

“NO. No, he doesn’t die.”

Death raised her eyebrows, but before she could respond, Shi Qingxuan had stopped screaming, and He Xuan strode over to examine the state of his once-friend. The ghost seemed frustrated; queasiness pitched his gait.

Even though He Xuan had chosen not to consume the Water Master’s rotten soul, something still soured the savor of vengeance. It should have been sweet, but it was not.

He Xuan was frustrated indeed. Frustrated that the Wind Master had chosen to stay by his brother’s side, frustrated at the other’s unquenchable compassion, frustrated by his ineradicable weakness. Despite the ghost’s cold demeanor, Death could plainly see all the myriad frustrations swirling and blending and tangling in his lurching stature and gleaming black eyes. This one was even easier to read than her San-didi.

“Do you have anything else you want to say?”

Death watched solemnly as Shi Qingxuan regained sufficient consciousness to reply hoarsely:

“...I want to die.”

“Dream on.” ¹

He Xuan knocked him out, then eyed Death once again out the corner of his eye. Her arms were folded as she addressed him, her lips thin and stern:

“Well, be careful. Sometimes it’s better to die. San-didi can be cruel, but I’m not really so scary.”

He Xuan didn’t respond. Death left him to his spoils.

.

She hadn’t been lying. He Xuan’s mortal body had been stopped by a grand total of eighteen mortal blows, but Death knew of some who took a hundred or more yet lived. Immortals who begged for her release, cursed by their divinity to walk the earth with the scars and the lingering pits in their souls.

And those weren’t even the worst off.

Everyone always gravitated to the tragic stories of heroes, of martial gods who ripped through other mortals’ woven intricacies like spider silk. But what of the fallen? There were millions trapped in the still-raging fires of Tonglu, too warped beyond recognition to even know who or what to beg for anymore. Each had been human once, a fine mesh of hopes and humors, never before seen and never to be seen again. What of them?

No one told their stories.

But Death was fair, or at least she tried to be. One birth; one death. Most of the time.

Some, she might have wanted to kill more than once. Everyone had bad days, even her. And that stinky green nuisance, who didn’t so much ‘escape’ Death as ‘bite her hand and scamper off on hands and legs, cackling all the while,’ he tried her patience more than once over the centuries. A hand pressed to her brow, Death had watched Qi Rong go and sighed, knowing he’d be quite the handful in the days to come. But the aftermath of Xianle’s fall was a hectic time, and Death didn’t have the spare energy to go retrieve him.

She regretted that, in time.

Qi Rong was greedy, and vicious, and tacky. He clung to the mortal plane for eight centuries like a screaming bird trapped in tar, cavorting all the while that others might join his miserable soirée.

Who knew that it’d only take a guileless child to set him free?

Death hadn’t thought much of it when Qi Rong possessed a father and stole away his son. She collected the body’s original owner and listened idly as the man muttered about disloyalty and good-for-nothings. He passed on; Qi Rong, as usual, did not.

Not for a few months, at least.

As much as everyone else, Death had figured the ghost would kill and eat the boy as soon as he put enough distance between himself and the red-clad ghost king. She didn’t expect that he’d take his new paternal role so seriously, let alone sacrifice himself to save the boy…

But it was heartening. A story even her gloomy San-didi might appreciate.

Death was in a good mood on the day she collected Qi Rong’s soul, and not just because of him: at last, a majority of Wuyong’s trapped souls had escaped from Mount Tonglu. At last, the crown prince of Wuyong had, albeit unwittingly, freed the remnants of his still-screaming kingdom. An unlikely troupe of gods, mortals, and ghosts now coordinated in the imperial capital to trap the souls in an array and snuff them out one by one. It was a marvelous undertaking.

A spring in her step, Death cheerfully released the souls contained in the array. She watched with a grin as Shi Qingxuan and his humble collection of commoners held it down dutifully, and as He Xuan carried out the dirty work, disguised as his more sentimental red-clad predecessor. The ghost caught her eye as his replicated scimitar sliced through the pillar, harvesting the souls neatly for her to collect.

“I told you I would deliver many more in my place,” the ghost mumbled in her direction.

“That you did,” she replied, smiling. She then glanced toward the man who used to be the Wind Master, observing how poverty, broken limbs, and a healthy crust of dirt had not managed to quench his compassion, nor eradicate his inner strength. Perhaps, she thought, perhaps it was indeed better to live sometimes, despite all evidence to the contrary. But, she couldn’t stay to absorb the sentiment; she had work to do, and something was pulling her away, to the source of these souls.

To Mount Tonglu.

She arrived to an emotional scene. The crown prince of Wuyong was pinned to a wall by his own sword, attended to by his only remaining friend, the head priest Mei Nianqing. The crown prince of Xianle, meanwhile, was in the middle of an emotional exchange with the red-clad ghost king, who had in the past 800 years accumulated a number of titles--the Supreme Ghost King Hua Chengzhu, the Crimson Rain Sought Flower--who now knelt down before his beloved and slowly disintegrated into a swarm of silver.

Butterflies…

Grinning, Death had to hand it to her Qi-mei; they were quite the sight. Weak and wispy, Hua Cheng appeared to her for a third time.

Death remembered this one well. She had smirked at the scrappy ghost fire that rose from the battlefield all those years ago. Indulgent, she had listened to his practiced speech. It was romantic, just the sort of thing Death had a guilty pleasure for--all those coarse, sentimental folktales, the kind of plebeian pulp her San-didi wouldn’t deign to acknowledge in his vaunted palace. She had let him off.

Once. And then again.

Eight-hundred years ago, she watched with bated breath as the nameless ghost absorbed the bone-vaporizing, soul-sublimating hit of his fallen comrades' vengeance. If he were anyone else, Death might have collected what was left of him and escorted him from this world, but the scraps still whispered that same speech, and it was--

--Well it was cute, you know?

It got in the way of her sense of fairness. And today, too, Death was in a good mood.

“Well, you’re quite the slippery one, aren’t you?” She smiled warmly, leaning against a wall of volcanic rock.

Hua Cheng opened his mouth, but before words could come out, Death continued, waving her hand:

“Yeah, yeah, I know, you have a beloved still in this world, and you won’t rest as long as he remains. I know! I’m just here to say hi! I promise by the heavens and earth and by the first circle--if that means anything to you--I won’t take you away to what lies beyond this world. For now, at least.”

“...Many thanks, my lady. I’ll just need to linger a little while to re-form.”

“Sure thing. You can stay over at my place in the meantime if you want.”

Hua Cheng eyed her with suspicion.

“Hey, look, I swore by the first circle. That’s not a vow to be taken lightly, Lord Ghost King. You’ll heal faster in my realm, and then you can return. I won’t do anything to impede you--” Death cocked her head, thinking, “--well, unless you hurt my pet goldfish, in which case we’ll have issues. But beyond that, you have no need to worry.” She offered him a wry smirk. “You two are cute, and I love a happy ending. So!” She cut a slit in reality and made a beckoning motion. “You comin’? I can’t hang around all day; I’ve got work to do.”

Hua Cheng watched her wide-eyed for a moment, then bowed and stepped forward. “If it means I can return faster…” He then looked directly into her eyes--black irises, clear and earnest, sincere in a way he had only seen in one other person's. Hua Cheng looked back to Xie Lian’s teary-eyed form, then to Death. He swallowed. “Okay. Thank you, my lady.”

“Any time!” Death beamed.

.

A year passed. Hua Cheng slowly gathered back his strength, and kept a wary radius around Death’s goldfish, not wanting to take any risks there. At last, he was ready to return, having spent the last day furiously constructing lanterns.

With a salute, Hua Cheng bid Death farewell.

“My lady, I’ve finished recuperating in your realm. I’ll take my leave now.”

Death smiled, opening the door for him.

“Go get 'em tiger.”

.

Death was fair, most of the time. One birth; one death.

--Most of the time.

Nevertheless, she couldn’t begrudge the slippery ones their escape; she was sentimental that way, and sometimes she even relished the feeling as they dripped like rare sap between the cracks of her world-cradling hands.

Chapter Text

“To me, the one basking in infinite glory is you; the one fallen from grace is also you. What matters is ‘you’ and not the state of you. I… admire San Lang very much, so, I want to understand your everything. So, I’m very envious, that someone had already met that kind of you. It’s an affinity that only comes by chance and couldn't be begged for, and whether if that bond should continue, it’s three part fate, and seven part courage!”²

“My twin, I stand in my gallery and I hold your sigil. There is a matter I must discuss, concerning the old emperor.”

Chapter Text

He saw her for the first time when he was building the bridge.

Just a flash, barely distinguishable from the dispersing crowd of reluctant evening worshippers. But at the same time, she was markedly different from the other people around, more like a lumpy snaggletoothed radish than a person. And… naked? Was that woman naked? Was that even a woman? Wuyong’s crown prince had sharp eyes, especially as he drained every last drop of the gathered people’s faith, knowing by the numbers that it wouldn’t be enough. Knowing for the thousandth time that the numbers just wouldn’t be enough. Knowing it rationally in his mind, a fact his heart dared flout, that heaven was simply too high.

Every day he went to work and put in his all, and every day he fell shorter and shorter of his goal. But that was irrelevant, he convinced himself, soon, later, there would be a surge, as there so often is before something needs to be done. It would work out. No way but forward. Just keep going, and it would all work out.

And so he toiled on, becoming steadily weaker as unscrupulous gods stole his worship, as the fickle rabble left his temples. It had been two days since he gave the order to his vassals: Let them go. We cannot force them.

That burst of momentum that usually followed so faithfully when he reinforced his faith in certain immovable principles… It used to last him longer than this. Now, it only kept him at quota for a day. Still, he told himself, there would be a surge soon. He’d make it. His people would survive, and one day it’d all be better. He’d return, and he’d be loved once again. Any doubt of this only existed in the sterile realm of numbers, a realm he knew in his heart he had the power to overtake.

And then he saw her.

He saw her, and the doubt entered his heart.

Naked and ugly, her presence chilled his bones. It had already been over a year since his first temple had been desecrated, since he first heard his own people ignorantly griping about his inadequacy behind his back. It had been many months since they began doing it to his face. But he hadn’t let it sink in. Not until he saw her.

Not until her hook entered his heart, and at last the barefaced horror of all the accumulated words, all the dread and weakness and the reality of his situation rushed in at once.

The crown prince saw Despair, and knew then that things would never return to the way they were, least of all his heart.

But he was stubborn. Building the bridge was muscle memory at that point: stone over stone, day in and day out. He was the crown prince of Wuyong, and he’d damn well make good on his promise to his people. If anyone noticed the change, well, they didn’t say anything about it.

“Your Highness.”

“Yes?” he replied, mildly annoyed to be distracted from the task.

“Umm, I just wanted…” The other man scuffled his boots on the steps.

“There’s nothing you can do.” The prince snapped, only glancing for a brief moment toward his closest vassal. The other man was sheepish, shy, embarrassed, looking as though he wanted to embrace his prince or do anything that might vainly help steady the work. Perhaps once the prince would have found his vassal’s devotion heartening, but his heart had already been hooked through, and he couldn’t afford to spread the gash to his closest friend and confidante, even if it meant stripping the man of those titles. It was a strange contradiction, curling around and piercing him where he didn’t expect to be hurt. But there was nothing he could do; truly, there was nothing.

“...Okay,” his vassal answered, walking away head lowered, down the steps of the bridge, to the grassy cliff from which it sprouted, and away. The prince remained suspended, nothing but his own load-bearing inner power to hold himself up.

And then she appeared, the grass wilting and rotting under her bare feet, and the prince was no longer sure there truly was anything holding him up.

And then, one day, it finally happened. His hands shook. His muscles gave out. The bridge collapsed. Mount Tonglu erupted, and Wuyong fell. All at once. But the prince was prepared. He had known for months now. Ever since her hook made its hole in him.

She spoke to him for the first time on that day Mount Tonglu erupted, as he lay crouched on a still-floating section of the rainbow bridge, whipped by hot ash and lashed by spurts of lava that would incinerate any mortal. His clothes and hair were on fire. He ignored the pain of his skin continuously melting and regenerating. It was nothing compared to the lingering bite of the cold metal she wore on her finger. He eyed her with disgust. Despair looked out over the destruction and misery, and smiled, joyously carving a deep red line over her drooping breasts.

“It is good. Today is a day I will remember for ages.” Despair then uttered a low, burbling, hiccup-like sound, and the prince realized with horror that she was laughing.

“WHO ARE YOU!?” he demanded. Another voice answered before she could reply.

“Wu-jie, what are you doing?” A new figure appeared, tall and proud, clad in armor that covered his entire body, including his face. The prince couldn’t see his eyes, but the man’s voice carried some small pity. “He’s just a foolish youngling god who drew out the destruction of his kingdom. Is he not suffering enough?”

“I am doing my job, Liu-didi,” she replied, voice like cold ash that spelled the end of all things, that poisoned every celebration with its sullen gray presence. Her gaze didn’t waver from the still crumbling wreckage. “As are you.”

“Aye. Well, Wu-jie, don’t go too hard on him.”

Despair turned her head toward her brother. “I do not choose my thralls, Liu-didi. Nor the intensity of their torment. That is entirely up to them.” She glanced back to the prince, then toward Destruction. “It is not up to you.”

Destruction lowered his head. “Aye. Indeed.”

“It is good to see you, Liu-didi.”

“And you as well, Wu-jie.”

The crown prince watched in spiteful, pained confusion as the siblings spoke. That is, until they both turned to look back at him, and he knew. He knew then how little point there was in hating them, for they existed before the world was a speck of dust in the universe’s imagination, and likewise would outlive both him and this world, let alone his puny kingdom. Theirs was impermanence and its lingering promise; theirs were eyes that bored so coldly into his nerves that he could no longer feel the scream of pain in his rapidly burning and regenerating skin. Until--

“YOUR HIGHNESS!” A hand reached out to him. A badly scorched hand which had no business being here where the fire blazed bright. Nevertheless, it was here, and the prince wouldn’t allow himself to be the cause of his vassal’s destruction, if only to spite the beings who had just appeared to him. So he climbed down, saving himself only for the sake of saving his closest--

He swallowed. The prince wasn’t sure he could call anyone a friend, now.

He had failed, and now the consequences would come.

Months passed in agony. The prince staggered by her side, sometimes following, sometimes leading, sometimes accompanied by another being that Despair called ‘Qi-mei’, whose incessant giggling would forever haunt his most terrifying dreams. His vassals couldn’t save him. The crown prince bore the consequences of his failure, let the ungrateful masses stab him hundreds upon thousands of times. They had no more reason to be grateful; he deserved the punishment. And so he bled out over every torched temple and every desecrated statue. Because he allowed himself to. He became something less than human, then. Or, as his stubborn pride insisted, something more. He remembered the face of every perpetrator, each and every one: gods, humans, it no longer mattered. They were all mortal through the eye of the hook.

Perhaps he screamed. Perhaps he bore it in stoic silence. Who’s to say, after he killed all the witnesses? Himself? All he could remember of those days was turning his head to see where Despair would hurt herself next--perhaps her obscenely bulging belly, or her fat neck, or her dull eyes? Endless anticipation, watching Despair cut into herself. The pain of action and consequence dulled the pain of her hook. And, inevitably, the mad giggling of the seventh sister drowned it all out into an oblivious molten churning.

The prince returned to his vassals, but he did not return to himself.

‘Shattering boulders on the chest’

A street trick, and it had toppled an emperor. Jun Wu’s armor was in shards. The mountain collapsed, and his own sword nailed him to the crumbling wall. He couldn’t help but laugh. Again, he looked up, looked around for her, the only one who might appreciate the irony. He kept looking.

Time seemed to swirl, but Mei Nianqing’s words clung and pierced through the fog. His eyes, too, shone with something he couldn’t possibly place, not in his two thousand years of suffering, not since they were boys, swinging their legs on this very same cliff:

“You’re right, I don’t understand. It’s been so many years; you’ve been a god and you’ve been a ghost king. All that should be killed are dead, all that you’ve wanted is in your hands, so why are you doing this to yourself? What exactly do you want? What do you want to prove?”
.
“My dear Highness.”
.
“I just genuinely really miss Your Highness. I miss the once kingdom of Wuyong. I miss our people, and I miss the days before we ascended. That’s all.”
.
“It’s been so many years, Your Highness. Just watching you makes me tired. Very tired. How about you? Are you not exhausted?”
.
“Your Highness, you’ve lost.”
.
“Now free yourself.”²

Steaming rain came down, and washed the blood from Jun Wu’s face. Still he searched the area for her ugly, naked form. A sword pierced his heart, but it wasn’t cold, and it didn’t linger and curl like her hook. It was just, there. But where was she?

“I’ll keep His Highness company. After all, in the past, I didn’t stay by his side.” Sheepishly, Mei Nianqing walked over. From behind the head priest a bamboo hat was tossed on Jun Wu’s face, shielding him from the rain. The curse, meanwhile, seemed to drain of its own accord, as though his being defeated was all it took. He kept looking.

Where was she?

Jun Wu’s face was wet, but not with rain. Mei Nianqing knelt by his side, swatting away the fetus spirit and searching the emperor’s old, frail, and tired face with eyes equally old, equally tired and frail.

Despite being run through, something clenched in Jun Wu’s chest, and with a whisper he exclaimed, heart trembling and mouth agape:

“███… I-, ███, I’m finally free. I can’t see her anymore, ███!”

He breathed and felt his own impaled heart beat for the first time in millennia. He tasted his tears with relish, and smiled lopsided and ugly:

“She’s gone. She’s finally gone.”

Chapter Text

Xie Lian couldn’t move his head. He couldn’t move anything, in fact. The vaporous landscape before him was unfamiliar, but at the same time, Xie Lian sensed no danger from it; the heavy white fog bound his limbs, but at the same time, it held them in a gentle embrace.

This is fine… he told himself.

And for a while, it was. But, he couldn’t help but think that there was something that he needed to get back to; something told him he really couldn’t dally here in this half-place for much longer. It was then, when he finally tried to free himself, that he realized that the fog was perhaps a bit stickier than he previously assumed. The more he pushed, the more the air resisted and gelled around him, holding him securely in place. Well, if pushing didn’t help, perhaps he’d do the opposite.

Xie Lian relaxed completely, loosening every muscle, and, just as he suspected, the fog parted around him, leaving only--

Nothing. The only thing surrounding him was thin air, nothing he could grab ahold of, not with his hands nor with Ruoye, nothing in any direction.

Simultaneously panic-stricken and resigned to his fate, Xie Lian plummeted down.

Or up. All he knew was that he was falling, no end in sight. Who knew what would happen when he hit the ground? A rare moment of fear clutched him, thinking what his San Lang would do in his absence. Xie Lian tensed, the dread overtaking him.

He jerked awake.

Seeing his best friend and lover beside him, Xie Lian momentarily shivered, allowing the residual dread to seep from his bones and back into the earth. Hua Cheng felt the slight change and eyed Xie Lian, skimming a hand over the other’s muscular form.

“Gege, is something wrong? I didn’t--?” Hua Cheng murmured, kissing up along his shoulder.

Xie Lian exhaled, red-faced. “No no no, it’s nothing! I just… fell awake. You know the feeling…?” Xie Lian hadn’t felt it since he was a kid and had long since forgotten the sensation, but he still remembered the phenomenon. So, as waking awareness flooded his senses, he calmed, knowing that this was likely only a small side effect of their activities the night before. Late morning light shone through the wall carvings of their cottage on Mount Taicang, and with it, an understanding that many things would now change for him until his body reached a new equilibrium.

“Mmmm,” Hua Cheng hummed into Xie Lian’s neck. “I know it.” Twining his long limbs around the other, he added, “But gege need not worry. I can make a dream-net for him if he wants.”

Xie Lian chuckled, then pressed a kiss to Hua Cheng’s forehead. “No need, no need.” He then extracted himself from the other’s grabby, whining hands.

“Gege…”

“I’m just going to meditate on the porch, San Lang. You can join if you want.”

Hua Cheng frowned. “You know I can always replenish your spiritual energy after doing it, gege. You don’t have to cultivate more to make up for the drop.”

Xie Lian turned back and smiled. “Thank you, San Lang, but it’s just my usual routine. It brings me comfort. But if San Lang wants to join, I will have no complaints.”

Hua Cheng considered his options, and in the end decided to take his lover up on his offer. Hua Cheng joined, and so, while Xie Lian’s meditation had begun innocently enough, the ghost managed to tempt him away from it after only about an incense time. That it even took that long spoke to considerable restraint on both ends--after all, they had only just reunited the night before.

.

Xie Lian's cultivational practice was muscle memory at this point, carved into his neurons, tendons, and meridians like the gradual indentations on an old mountain staircase trod down by time. Breathing techniques, stretches and exercises, mantras and meditations--every day, or most days at least, he kept it up diligently, like a monk collecting leaf litter from temple grounds. And, provided he did all this successfully, his sleep would remain uninterrupted. Controlled breath, no drifting thoughts before sleep, and only a calm, misty void awaited him at night. For centuries, Xie Lian dreamed the dreams of sages. No matter his external circumstances, so long as he maintained the practice, Xie Lian would be neither rich nor poor, neither joyous nor suffering during his nightly rest.

Naturally, there were day-to-day proscriptions set to uphold both inner peace and spiritual power. No gluttony, no drink, and, of course, absolute celibacy must be maintained. Eight hundred years, Xie Lian kept it up, and eight hundred years, Xie Lian dreamed within the immortal ink-wash expanse that bordered the Dreaming from above.

Naturally, this also changed when the crown prince took a lover. Xie Lian fell asleep on his marriage bed tangled in the arms of his husband, and his thoughts were no longer quite so pure.

Xie Lian dreamed.

He marveled at the changing landscapes, a little bit clueless as to where he was, but still, he accepted it all without question. And, as he slowly changed and adapted to a new cultivational practice, he began to wander and explore the vast aethers and craggy corners of the Dreaming. When he woke, he felt heavier than he might otherwise have, but with heaviness there was also satiation, a sense that he had done something worth doing, even if it escaped him precisely what that might be.

It used to be that dreams, when they happened, were dread portents or delirious nightmares wrought by waking suffering, but now, they weren't so bad, most of the time. Xie Lian began to relish his nightly unwinding. He began journaling and recounting his more bracing or labyrinthine adventures to his husband over tea the next day. Hua Cheng nodded along and sometimes made suggestions for what he ought to dream next. Xie Lian chuckled at the ghost’s interjections--as if he had a choice! Nevertheless, he had forgotten what a pleasant thing dreaming could be, before Hua Cheng came along. He had forgotten a lot of things in those centuries alone.

It had never occurred to him, for instance, that dreaming was not so much a state as it was a place, that the barriers separating him from other sleepers were mere illusion.

Naturally, these things wouldn't occur to him until they became apparent, which happened gradually as his cultivation changed shape: abstinence now being switched out for mindful qigong practice, Xie Lian found himself more and more able to control his travels through the Dreaming. More and more, he found that his sleeping life could be almost as rich as waking, but there was a notable absence; Xie Lian enjoyed dreaming, yes, but he enjoyed waking into Hua Cheng’s arms immeasurably more.

Still, there was so much to explore in dreams. Xie Lian hiked along lush, multicolored grasslands and valleys, flew past the piney peaks of hills and mountains, waded through jeweled rivers thick with glowing fish. Sometimes, his dreaming life even mirrored his waking life, as he solved small mysteries and provincial conflicts for various denizens of the Dreaming. The problems here always had strange solutions: oftentimes, when Xie Lian recounted them, he scratched his head, wondering why he hadn’t thought of something simpler than bundling those yarrow sticks together and going on such a roundabout quest to seek out and restore the crow’s true heart and call.

Indeed, his nightly adventures often took several complex twists and turns before resolving neatly. And sometimes, they even carried over from one night to the next. Once, for instance, he spent several nights in a row passing through a desert that at times he thought he recognized from back during his time in Banyue. Idly, he wondered what might happen if he approached those familiar, sparkling soft patches and crossed through them. But he never gave in to the curiosity--after all, those liminal places seemed to bode quite the adventure in time and space, and Xie Lian was feeling a bit done with blood-racing and hair-raising adventures…

...For now, at least. After all, if he went off alone, who knew when he’d see San Lang again?

He kept to the well-trodden paths.

Past the shimmering deserts and through fantastical taigas and sparkling coves. Curious like a cat, Xie Lian pressed against the walls of his perception, which proved much more frail than he could have previously imagined. He passed through the threshold, and without even knowing it, crossed into the dreams of far-flung lands. As the nights went by, foreign architecture began to crop up along the path, and with it, foreign people with strange tongues, high of nose and deep of eye.

One night on the road, Xie Lian saw two men fighting: one man looked a bit like a lanky maple tree, with light brown skin and fiery red hair, while the other had black hair and a stumpy stature. The stakes were uneven, and before Xie Lian could intercede, one had already killed the other. Finally finding use of his legs, Xie Lian bounded over to the corpse-

-Or, not-corpse, it seemed. Xie Lian helped him up.

“Oh, oh, t-t-thank you. I-i-it’s no t-trouble, sir. This h-happens e-every day, y-y-you see.”

“Every day?” Xie Lian’s words seemed to bubble inside his lungs, and came out strange. Nevertheless, the other man nodded, seeming to understand.

“Y-y-yes. I-it’s p-p-part of our c-contract, y-you see. I’m Abel, a-and h-he’s C-Cain. W-we’re p-p-permanent features in the D-Dreaming, ap-ppointed b-b-by Lord M-Morpheus h-hims-self. Arch-, A-archetypes, you see."

A shout rang out. “Hey! Shut up you stuttering oaf, or I’ll kill ya again! Blabbing to strangers about our contract, how dare you!”

Xie Lian wanted to move in a defensive posture against the man named Cain, but alas, his dream-body betrayed him, stuck still in the mud. Beside him, the man named Abel piped up:

“B-b-but, he’s n-n-not a st-stranger! L-l-look, i-it’s the-the c-crown prince!”

The other man approached, stepping in front of Xie Lian and stroking his prodigious red mutton chops. “Ahhh, I see, it is, isn’t it? Hmm, my lord’s got some plans for you… You might join our ranks yet, little prince.”

Xie Lian could feel himself fading.

“Hmph, hasn’t got his dream-legs yet though,” he heard just before segueing back into waking--

--Except, no. No, Xie Lian was curious, and recognized without a doubt now that he was dreaming. He resisted against the whooshing whirl of the gates of horn, and by his own will and might, swam against the stream back into the Dreaming.

He materialized again crouched before yet another threshold, beyond which was a magnificent palace whose shape shifted and changed with every blink of his eyes. Rising and rubbing his head, Xie Lian saw that three giant, fantastical creatures guarded the doors: on the left was a golden beast that looked to be a cross between a lion¹ and an eagle, in the center was a fierce-looking red dragon, and on the right was a white winged horse. The dragon addressed him:

“Crown prince of Xianle. What business have you with the Lord of Dreaming?”

Xie Lian stared at the guardians wide-eyed. “I… don’t have business with this person… or at least I don’t think I do…?”

The guardian griffin on the left answered, “Hmph. You’d have to have put in considerable effort to get here, little go--”

Before the griffin could finish, angry shouts emanated from within the palace, and all three guardians tensed.

“How dare you leave him alone like that! And the things you said!”
“It is not my fault that he did not heed my advice. Nor is it my fault that you do not listen to reason.”
“Agggh, YOU!”

The griffin grumbled, “Looks like they’re at it again…”

The hippogriff on the right added, “You better scurry away, Your Highness. You don’t want to be around when they get at it…”

Xie Lian nodded, then turned away. Behind him, there was a flapping sound and a fourth voice:

“Ach, such unfortunate discord between our lord and his lady friend."

"What’s the issue this time, my lady?"

"Hmm, something serious I fear. The Lady Calliope is unhappy about how our lord has handled the situation with their son. She says he oughtn't have left him so cold."

"Mmmm, the lord won't take well to that…"

"Indeed, he hasn't. We shall see how the cards fall. But if I have any grasp of the events, I think it likely that the weather will be poor around here for some time."

"Aye indeed. Say, raven, would you mind escorting that poor fellow back to his proper realm? It seems this crown prince blundered his way to the heart of Dreaming. Best he doesn't linger if there's a storm to come."

“Of course, anything to take me away from their wretched discord. Fare ye well, guardians.”

“And you, raven.”

Xie Lian had been feeling a similar stuck-in-the-mud sensation in his legs, but as the guardians’ conversation came to a close and wings whiffled and flapped overhead, he found he could walk normally once again. Xie Lian looked up at his black-feathered escort and tried to address her.

“AWWWCCK, AWWWCCK!”

Bug-eyed, Xie Lian clutched his throat, confused.

“Oh, poor dear, I see you’ve been consorting with crows. But I am no crow, Your Highness, I am a raven.”

Xie Lian coughed a few times, and a clump of partially digested yarrow sticks and black feathers sputtered out. Blinking a couple times, he again attempted to greet the raven.

“Ah, ah, my apologies, err, how should I address you, my lady?”

“My name, Your Highness, is King Hatshepsut of Upper and Lower Egypt, Powerful of Kas, Flourishing of Years, Divine of Manifestations, the True One of the Ka of Ra, Daughter of Thutmose and Foremost of Noble Women. But it has been many years since I have ruled Egypt, and my successors have long since scratched my name off of any tablets they can get their grubby hands on. So, Your Highness, your own ‘Daren’ appellation will suffice.”²

“I see, my lady. I can relate… Well, not to being a king, but to having my temples desecrated, at least.”

“Mm. It happens to the best of us. But, I’ll have you know, my obelisks still stand tall and proud. May they remain until the snake Apep succeeds in his struggle against Ra, and the primordial waters again consume this world. That is to say, never.”

Not entirely understanding the raven’s references, Xie Lian just nodded along, watching their surroundings stream blurrily past. It occurred to him then that although his perception conveyed that his pace was normal, leisurely even, the geometry of this road was such that he could in fact traverse wide swaths of ground with every step. Realizing that this raven would likely depart from his side when their world-crossing journey reached its end, Xie Lian opted to take advantage of her presence and his current lucidity:

“My lady, you spoke then of a lord of this place. I also happened upon two men named Abel and Cain on my way here, who referred to someone named ‘Lord Morpheus’. Are these lords one and the same?”

“Indeed, Your Highness, they are the same. Lord Morpheus is our lord the Dream King. As long as the universe dreams, our lord exists and presides over his kingdom.”

“I see… Also, one of these men I met, the one named Cain, he said that the Dream King has plans for me. Do you know what he meant by that?”

“Ahh, yes. Well, our lord’s older sister has taken a shine to you and your husband’s story and put in a good word to Lord Morpheus. Not only that, but my lord is also pleased by the Crimson Rain Sought Flower’s handiwork. So, my lord has long considered bestowing an honorable position in his realm to the pair of you.”

Xie Lian scrunched his brows. King Hatshepshut’s answer only raised more questions.

“Ah, my lady, pardon my asking, but my husband’s handiwork? What do you mean by that?”

The raven cocked her head. “Your Highness, are you not aware of your husband’s great artistic undertakings? I was under the impression that they played an essential part in your riveting battle against the previous emperor of heaven.”

“Oh yes, of course! San Lang is very talented, creative, and strong!” Xie Lian beamed, reflecting on his husband’s achievements.

“Indeed. Well, it is not for me to reveal any more; you may ask your San Lang about it, if he is willing to divulge. But it suffices to say that all artists exist within Lord Morpheus’ purview, your husband included.”

“Ah, I see, I see. Well, I am honored! Oh, but, you also mentioned the Dream King’s older sister? And she put in a good word? Have I or my husband met her before?”

The raven flapped her wings. “Your Highness, have you not heard of the Seven Endless ones in your eight centuries? Well, if your husband is ranked third in his household, my lord is also a third brother. His older sister, the second of their household--the seven children of Night and Time--is Death. You have not met her since you were born, but your husband has, naturally.”

A chill ran through Xie Lian. “Death? And she put in a good word for us?”

“Mm. She has a weakness for melodramatic, romantic tales of eternal love, you see. Oh, she’s a lovely lady, when you get to know her.” King Hatshepsut looked at Xie Lian. “And, of course, everyone meets her, one day. Even gods like you.”

Xie Lian bowed his head. “Mn,” he grunted, subdued.

“Of course, if Lord Morpheus gets around to appointing the two of you, you might meet her at some formal occasion within the bounds of your--oh, what do you call it, over there where you live?”

“Tian nian?”

“Mm, yes, that. Your heaven-appointed years.” King Hatshepsut looked back and forth between the horizon and her passenger. “Oh, don’t look so glum, Your Highness. Lady Death is no one to fear. After all, your husband has already met her thrice, and when you wake, he will still be there for you, won’t he?”

Xie Lian knit his brows, then relaxed, smiling. “Yes. Yes, he will.” He exhaled. “My lady, if you don’t mind me asking, what brought you here? After all, weren’t you once human?”

King Hatshepsut flapped her wings. “Death, naturally,” she answered. “...And family drama. The field of reeds became less of a paradise, and Lord Dream had an opening for a raven. I was feeling adventurous and sought new experiences, so one night I met with him in dreams and he agreed to give me the position.”

“Ah, I see. And how is it, to live here?”

“Oh, well I suppose it’s a lot of things, Your Highness. You’ll see for yourself if you wander enough. One day, I’m sure, I’ll grow tired of it, and return to my previous afterlife--or, elsewhere.”

King Hatshepsut then stopped abruptly. “Ah, we’ve approached your people’s realm now, Your Highness. If you wish to return to the heart of dreaming, it is currently to the west of your realm. Lord Morpheus has situated it near Lady Calliope’s homeland for the time being; although if my intuition is correct, that might well change soon. But it’s no pressing issue for you, Your Highness. Go dream. May we meet again.”

Xie Lian saluted to her, bowing deeply. “Many thanks my lady, King Hatshepsut of Upper and Lower Egypt, Powerful of Kas, Flourishing of Years, Divine of Manifestations, the True One of the Ka of Ra, Daughter of Thutmose and Foremost of Noble Women.” He rose from his bow, then tipped his head. “Thank you for guiding me here, and for answering my questions. May we meet again.”

King Hatshepsut flapped her wings rapidly. “So polite! Well, if it’s me, flattery will get you everywhere! Fare thee well, Your Highness. I must away, to the cave where the Lady Eve awaits, to weather my lord’s bitter and at-this-point-inevitable storm.”

At that, she flew away with a shuffling whir, murmuring in her flight, “Ah men, always the first to smash their works and wallow in ruin. I was always partial to building, myself…” When she was out of earshot, Xie Lian looked forward, pleased to see that even in King Hatshepsut’s absence, he had managed to retain lucidity. Perhaps he was beginning to gain his dream-legs, so to speak.

From this western precipice, Xie Lian gazed out at the expanse of the realm, laid out like a map before him: the northwestern desert wastes, the southern paddies, the central plains and distant eastern coast. A single footfall, and a new landscape awaited him. Looking around, he began to gain his bearings. No longer could he see the entire realm at once--now, his primary view was of a mountainous training field. It seemed distantly familiar, but at the same time he couldn’t quite place it.

That is, until he heard the distant, unmistakable shouts of a certain fluffy martial god:

“Shixiong, shixiong, wait, wait up! Ahahaha, hey, stop running!”

A black blur whipped past, followed by a blue-and-yellow one. Xie Lian stepped to the side, not wanting to get in the way. As he cocked his head at the scene, Xie Lian gradually realized that although the training ground seemed flat and smooth at first glance, it actually sloped down inward into a solid maelstrom of grass and rock. Quan Yizhen chased the other figure--who himself seemed to be Quan Yizhen’s image of Yin Yu, face only appearing as a blank emptiness to Xie Lian--around the edges of the hole and slowly down. Part of Xie Lian wanted to both warn Quan Yizhen about the vortex and scold him for tormenting his shixiong--

--But, at the same time, it was only a dream, and it seemed cruel to deprive the boy of his fantasy.

Soon enough, Quan Yizhen had successfully chased ‘Yin Yu’ down the hole, and was himself running sideways along its edges. Xie Lian approached and peered down into it. Quan Yizhen’s voice continued to echo within the funnel as he spun down in ever-tightening circles:

“Shixiong! Shixiong! Shixiong! Hey… Please come back, shixiong! Please…”

Xie Lian looked away then, sighing and shaking his head. Poor Qi Ying… He wondered whether there was any end to that vortex, or whether it opened somewhere else, some lush valley where Quan Yizhen could spar with his shixiong once again, unwounded by their history. He hoped for that much, if only for Quan Yizhen’s sake.

A sound from a clump of grass interrupted Xie Lian’s rumination:

“Pssst… Your Highness, is he gone?”

Xie Lian turned his head toward the voice and crouched down. “Yin Yu?”

“SHHHH!!! DON’T LET HIM HEAR YOU!!”

From within the vortex a voice echoed: “Shixiong, is that you?”

“Oh no, now you’ve done it! Your Highness, please, quick, hide me!”

Xie Lian stuffed Yin Yu into his sleeve and ran off swiftly, leaping from mountain peak to mountain peak. Remarkable, this dream power, Xie Lian thought. Ever-curious, he wondered if perhaps he might be able to adapt it to real life. It seemed so easy, so simple to bend time and space in this state, like an open secret written in the lining of reality’s coat. Alas, Xie Lian was no good at sewing… He suspected the secret would promptly desert him upon waking, flowing and steaming off through the by-now-familiar ivory gates.

“Your Highness, is it safe to come out?”

“Oh, ah, yes, I think so.” Xie Lian fished Yin Yu from his sleeve and propped him on his shoulder. “So… You still dream, huh?”

“Err, yes. It’s where I spend most of my time as Chengzhu nurtures my soul to a solid state.”

Xie Lian smiled. “Huh. Well, that’s nice, I suppose?”

Yin Yu looked to the side. “Yes, I suppose. Serving Chengzhu… I am content to serve, Your Highness.”

Xie Lian’s beneficent smile twitched solemnly. “Your Highness Yin Yu, I have a question.”

“Yes, Your Highness?”

“Earlier, I had the honor of meeting the Dream King’s raven, King Hatshepsut. She told me that Dream’s older sister is the Lady Death, and that Lady Death is a kind one. You have met her, yes?”

“Yes.”

“I-is that really true? That Death is kind?”

“Oh yes! She truly is! I… I was more than willing to go with her, in fact…! Um, but, well, I still had a debt to pay to Chengzhu, so I was not allowed to pass beyond. But, Your Highness, the raven you met speaks true. Lady Death is… wonderful.” Yin Yu beamed.

“...I see.” Xie Lian cleared his throat. “Ah, Your Highness Yin Yu… if you truly wish to go with her and continue to the beyond, I’m sure I can convince San Lang to let you-”

“OH, NO NO NO, Your Highness, you misunderstand! I really do truly enjoy serving Chengzhu, make no mistake! I, I know what I said when I-” Yin Yu swallowed. “-When I died. But that was, I mean, my thoughts and feelings were all twisted by Jun Wu at the time! It was… unfortunate circumstances. But, since then, I’ve been able to reflect in this realm, and I’m not… well you know, everything is so fluid and changeable here! It’s, it’s um… very invigorating, and… it makes me realize that things that were so rigid before… they’re not so important anymore, you know?”

Xie Lian’s smile returned. “Well, I’m glad to hear that, Your Highness Yin Yu.” He took a deep breath, then scoped out their new surroundings. “Hmm, well, speaking of San Lang, I wonder… Given that I could find both you and His Highness Qi Ying, I wonder if I can find him around here as well…”

Yin Yu looked out, then down to the ground. “Oh… I don’t think Chengzhu would like me peeking into his dreams. Your Highness, thank you for the lift, but if you seek my lord, please put me down now. I’ll find my own way from here.”

Nodding, Xie Lian let Yin Yu down, then saluted in farewell. He looked away for just a moment, and when he looked back, the other man was gone. Hmmm, he thought. Onward, then. After that mountain-jumping jaunt, Xie Lian now found himself in the middle of a cracked plain with sparse grass. Fortunately, he could see a river in the distance, an anchor he could follow along with the continually flowing water. As he walked, houses and towns gradually began to crop up along the landscape. Looking into the windows, Xie Lian could see whole other dreamscapes, each an intricate, shimmering jewel of its own. Every cottage contained a universe, each vivid and pulsing with its own breath.

Some seemed more familiar than others: in one, Xie Lian saw a particularly burly daruma doll on a bed, surrounded by several seductively painted women that moved like puppets around him. Recognizing some of the features on the doll, Xie Lian frowned--had San Lang been through here? And what grudge would have caused him to change Pei Ming’s dreaming form like that? The women around the doll were all fighting and tugging for its attention, shouting a discordant sing-song refrain:

"Ay, Pei Ming, here, here!"
"No, me me, come with me Ming Guang!"
"Pei-lang, oh Pei-lang, please, no, me me me!"

They seemed on the verge of tearing the doll apart, but never quite got around to it, keeping him stretched out on the edge. Pei Ming himself was unable to speak, but sweat drops seemed to form on the wooden exterior, his painted-on features grimacing in fear.

Conflicted, Xie Lian bit his lip, but ultimately decided to let it go for now. He made a mental note to ask Hua Cheng about it.

Xie Lian was about to set off again, but was once again diverted by the very next window. Within this second house, three black-clad figures cycled busily about three tasks: at a desk, a woman tirelessly scribbled out paperwork on a scroll of seemingly infinite length--the room seemed to be distended with all the endless paper folds and coils.

Another, younger figure bustled back and forth with fresh tea, anxious sweat pouring down her face. This girl had to be simultaneously fast and careful not to spill the tea over the paper that proliferated throughout the room. But, alas, no matter her circumstances, upon successful delivery, the errand girl was forced to endure the harsh criticism of the woman at the desk. This stern-faced woman invariably found something to berate her about--too hot, too cold, too bitter, too sweet--it would never be enough, and the younger girl was allowed no reprieve from the relentless stream of criticism.

Meanwhile, a third, male figure stood in the corner, half obscured in shadow. This man’s cloak carried an oppressively evil aura, and he gazed imperiously over the work of the other two, all the while holding a torch and burning away massive sections of the scroll, which the youngest of the three was then forced to frantically patch back up before the woman at the table could see and scold her.

Looking at the scene for a while, Xie Lian began to suspect that the scroll was no linear progression, but in fact an endless loop--or, perhaps, something even more complicated, given the ample space for error between torching and mending. Huffing bitterly, he wondered what might happen if the third figure ever succeeded in burning up all the paper in the house, or if the first neglected her duties for even just a moment.

In any case, it seemed that Ling Wen’s work never truly ended, even in sleep- No wonder those dark circles on the head literature official never seemed to go away.

He passed by a third, vacant house, its windows cracked and its facade marred with graffiti; the only living things within were spiders and mice. Its roof, too, was missing, exposing the lavishly decorated interior to the wild and changing elements of the Dreaming. Given the architecture and the denizens of the adjacent abodes, Xie Lian had no doubt of this house’s once-owner. Xie Lian sighed, then turned away.

Back to the river.

Xie Lian considered his course of action: what with Pei Ming’s pitiable state, it seemed probable that Hua Cheng was near; hence, it was reasonable to continue searching nearby to seek out his husband.

After some time--although precisely how long, he couldn’t say--Xie Lian found himself within a bustling market in what could only be the imperial city, full of all sorts of lumbering and skittering dreamers, some wispy, some solid, all shapes, sizes, and colors mingling into a diverse whole.

Although, whether this was indeed the official imperial city of the Dreaming, the dream of the imperial city itself, or some particular person’s dream of the city, Xie Lian didn’t know. Either way, it seemed that as long as he sought his husband, Xie Lian would only be doomed to encounter his other friends, for another familiar voice soon attracted his attention.

“Oh, Ming-jie, isn’t this just the most beautiful jar you’ve ever seen! Look, look, if you examine it closely and turn it just so, you can see a whole other glittering universe! How magnificent!”

Beside Shi Qingxuan, there was indeed another figure who looked very much like the cold and regal version of ‘Ming Yi’ Xie Lian had first seen back in Banyue. Shi Qingxuan, too, was every bit the pristine and carefree heavenly official she once was, no detail of her precious female form spared in dreaming. Recalling Quan Yizhen’s dream, Xie Lian suspected that this ‘Ming Yi’ by her side must also be a dream version of that person, the one Shi Qingxuan had thought she had known for some six centuries.

“Look, Ming-jie! There we are in this universe! Oh! And ge’s there too, and we’re all living happily in one big house and also you never chew with your mouth open because it really does wear on the nerves my dear I’m sure you understand.”

‘Ming Yi’ glanced at the jar, then snatched it away and threw it over her shoulder. “No. I don’t like that one.”

Xie Lian widened his eyes and approached a bit closer. After all, that was He Xuan’s voice in ‘Ming Yi’s’ mouth. Could it be that Shi Qingxuan liked that voice, and added it to her dream-version of Ming Yi? Or was something more sinister at play?

Gasping in horror, Shi Qingxuan slapped her companion a few times with her closed-up fan. “Ming-jie, how dare you! There was a universe in that jar, and you just threw it away!”

‘Ming Yi’ just shrugged and popped some fried broad beans in her mouth. Xie Lian only had a moment to examine her face before the woman tensed, sensing that she and her companion were being watched. She then turned rapidly toward Xie Lian. Her eyes glared with cold warning. “Leave here,” she commanded, and Xie Lian realized in that instant that things were not as they seemed.

Or, perhaps, they were precisely as they seemed. Xie Lian wasted no time skedaddling. Behind him, the voices drifted into the distance:

“Ming-jie, who was that?”

“No one. No one of importance.”

In his flight, Xie Lian couldn’t help but chuckle a bit, thinking what Hua Cheng would do to the other ghost regent, hearing that.

But, where was Hua Cheng? Xie Lian upped his pace, jumping from mountain to mountain and scanning the wilderness with increasing desperation. Could it be that Xie Lian had dreamed too long, that his husband was already awake? Thinking back on his world-crossing adventure, Xie Lian began to truly worry. What if he had been asleep for days, or years even?? What would San Lang do without him???

Xie Lian stopped to catch his breath on a lookout within the central plains, around where Ghost City would be in the waking world. Slowly, he regulated his internal rhythms, and then surveyed his surroundings. In the distance, to the south, Xie Lian could make out the smoke and sounds of war. Could it be that San Lang still dreamed of the battle that took his life? Xie Lian cautiously approached, only to be distracted by a kerfuffle just over the next hill.

His heart warmed.

“Shut up shut up shut up! You’re all useless trash! Useless trash, all of you!”

Xie Lian peeked around the hill and smiled, peeping in on how Hua Cheng waved his scimitar impetuously about, shooing away several ghostly intruders, guarding what had to be the smallest shrine to the Flower-Crowned Martial God in all of existence, so small it could fit neatly into the palm of his hand. Hua Cheng, too, looked to only be about twelve years old, assuredly playing out some drama of his youth, continually fighting away his own bullies in the name of Taizi Dianxia.

Xie Lian watched for a bit, laughing all the while over little-Hua Cheng’s dogged persistence and valor defending his pocket-sized shrine with a scimitar as long as he was tall. When he finally finished chopping the other little wisps into insubstantial pieces, the little ghost puffed his chest out proudly, then turned E'ming from a blade into a giant red flower. He proceeded to tuck that flower into the shrine’s opening with the utmost care and gentility, yielding ever more laughter from the shrine’s god just behind the hill.

Hua Cheng whipped his small head around. “Gege??”

Coming out from his hiding place, Xie Lian clutched hands around his shaking belly and wiped a tear from his cheek. “Ah San Lang, don’t you think that blade’s a bit too big for you to be swinging around in a state like this?”

Terrified, Hua Cheng gaped at him, then immediately poofed out of the dreamscape.

Xie Lian scrunched his eyebrows. Had San Lang just woken up? Well, now that he knew for sure he wouldn’t find his husband in the Dreaming, there didn’t seem to be any more use in continuing his quest. The issue was now how he could possibly rouse himself, given how wakeful he already felt. Xie Lian looked around on all sides: forward, back, left, right, up, down--but nowhere could he find those faithful horn gates. He wondered whether attempting to sleep in this valley would work, or if whatever he dreamed in such a way would only take him deeper into the Dreaming.

He wondered if it made a difference, given what he had learned on this extended quest. Waking, or just another dream- Who really knew?

But then he recalled what King Hatshepsut had told him about San Lang waiting for him when he woke, and at once, Xie Lian remembered the secret to returning.

Silly me, Xie Lian thought, Forward, back, left, right, up , down- I had really only been searching in a single direction--

But the door he sought was on the inside, now wasn’t it?³

Xie Lian awoke to soft sheets, cool limbs, and a burning stare. He turned toward his also-just-awoken husband, giggled, and kissed him good morning.

“Hi,” he said gently, grappling into a firmer embrace atop the other man and cupping his cheek. “You know, that imagery really wasn’t very subtle San Lang, with the flower and the temple. You’re so shameless.”

Hua Cheng just moaned, butting his head into the other’s hand. “Gege is too cruel. This San Lang wasn’t controlling his dream just then. If he was, he wouldn’t have appeared that way.”

“Ahaha, I thought it was cute…”

Hua Cheng just frowned in response.

“Ahh, San Lang, don’t take it to heart. After all, I was only just, um, finding my dream-legs, is it? Yes, that’s what Cain called it--”

Hua Cheng’s eye went wide. “You met Cain?”

Gleeful, Xie Lian replied, “Yes! And Abel, and three creatures guarding the heart of the Dreaming, and a raven named King Hatshepsut, and-”

“Gege, you were in the heart of Dreaming? But that’s so far from where we were…”

“Mn, yeah. It was such a big dream, and, and--I remember it all, actually! I was so clearheaded, and I learned so many things, like how to leap across mounta--” Xie Lian scrunched his brows, “--Oh, wait, no, I don’t remember that one actually…But still, I remember most of it! Oh, San Lang, but the most important part is that--” Xie Lian punctuated his point with a kiss, “--in the end, I found you.”

“Mhmmhmm…” Hua Cheng murmured, pulling Xie Lian down and chuckling contentedly into his neck. “Gege, I’m so glad you found me, and found your dream-legs. Now that you have… There’s so much to show you!”

Xie Lian smiled over the other man’s shoulder.

“I can’t wait.”

.

After their morning play, Xie Lian recounted the full extent of his dream with Hua Cheng, who nodded along, smiling all the while, chin in palm. He made periodic interjections:

“The raven’s right about Lady Death. She is indeed a kind and sincere entity. She let me stay at her place while I gathered strength during our year apart, you know.”
.
“Mm, yes, Yin Yu and I have discussed terms. No need for gege to worry on his account--I only employ willing parties.”
.
“No, as a matter of fact I did not turn Pei Ming into a daruma doll. Whatever he’s up to in his own dream-house is his own sordid affair.”
.
When Xie Lian got around to his encounter with He Xuan, Hua Cheng just rolled his eye. “Yeah, Black Water could stand to get his shit together… But it’s none of my business,” he tagged on, waving a hand. “So long as he pays back his debt.”
.
At last, Xie Lian ended the tale, taking a deep breath and drinking the last of his tea. Hua Cheng folded his hands. “So, gege, you’ve learned the art of lucid dreaming. Is there anything you’d like to do tonight?” A glimmering and mischievous spark lit up in his eye.

Xie Lian thought, then huffed a laugh. “Well, maybe tonight I’d like to actually get some sleep--I have to say, that adventure really took a lot out of me!”

“Mm, I understand. Most of the time I opt to let my dreams carry me rather than wasting the effort on lucidity. But now that you’re able… oh, gege, there’s really so much that world has to offer! Sometimes I think…” Hua Cheng looked away for a moment, then shook his head. “No, never mind.”

Xie Lian blinked. “Oh, San Lang, that reminds me: King Hatshepsut mentioned that you’ve pleased the Dream King, but didn’t go into detail. Have you met him?”

Hua Cheng nodded. “Yes.” He frowned for a moment. “But I wouldn’t want gege to think less of me for the reason…”

“San Lang! Of course I wouldn’t!”

Quirking his lips, Hua Cheng looked down, then back at Xie Lian. “Well, back in the day I made a deal with Lord Dream. Back in Mount Tonglu… Gege, you know I couldn’t prevent you from seeing my early work…”

Xie Lian raised an eyebrow. “I was somewhat surprised at the jump in skill you made.”

Hua Cheng nodded slowly. “Mn. I made a deal with him. He opened a door in my mind which allowed me to more easily translate my devotion into form. In return, I made him his own thousand god cave for his lady friend.”

“Lady Calliope?” Xie Lian ventured.

“Yes, her. I’ll tell you now, gege, she’s a good woman, and if--” Hua Cheng cut himself off with a sniff and a shake of the head. “Well it’s not for me to speak ill of my beneficiaries. Lord Dream has his own peculiarities.”

“As do we all,” Xie Lian agreed. “But San Lang, I’m curious now. These Seven born of Night and Time--who are they, really? I’m afraid in my scrap collecting I really didn’t have my head in the game of metaphysical matters, but now I’m honestly a little bit embarrassed not to know of them…”

“Don’t be embarrassed, gege. After all, it’s often a good thing to not have met the Seven in person. Their existences underlie reality, but to be in their realms often constitutes an extreme and unbalanced state. I myself have met them all except Lord Destiny, and most of those meetings I have not relished. You, by the way, have met at least one of them in the past.”

Xie Lian widened his eyes. “Really? Which one??”

Hua Cheng took a curt sip of his tea. “Lady Delirium, the youngest. Back during your first banishment, she accompanied you during…” Hua Cheng swallowed, knitting his brows. “During the times I was unable to help.”

Xie Lian inhaled deep, then scrunched his own brows. “I’m not sure I remember…”

Hua Cheng leaned over, putting fingers to the other’s temples and looking into his eyes. “If I may…?”

Xie Lian nodded assent, and several visions entered his sight--a young, messy-haired woman in various guises, naked but for a strange cloak, surrounded always by a warped, multicolored haze--and then, he remembered.

“OH. Sh-she… Oh.”

Pulling back, Hua Cheng nodded soberly. “Yes. She indeed. She was the first one I came to know, before… Before you caught me.”

Xie Lian reached out to grasp his husband’s hand. He proceeded to spend the rest of his morning learning the lore of the Endless, of their natures and sigils, only a little bit aghast at how much he had missed over the course of his life thus far. Nevertheless, the knowledge didn’t change his day-to-day routine. After their discussion, he spent his time the same way as before: planting crops in Puqi’s fields, answering prayers, accompanying his husband in the provincial matters of Ghost City. He spent a couple nights resting properly before agreeing on a time and place to meet Hua Cheng in the Dreaming.

As for their first several nights together in the realm of dream, Xie Lian would be loath to admit the contents--after all, with the shifting nature of reality in the Dreaming, one could honestly say that no paths were bound; in that place, his and San Lang’s combined imagination was the only limit--that is to say, they found themselves rather distracted in those first few nights, and so happened to provide Dream’s si-dimei with ample reason to intrude on their san-gege’s realm.

But, after some time, the pair got used to dreaming together, and began to earnestly explore the realm beside one another, leaving behind the pocket-sized temple and prodigious red flower. They began their trek by meandering southward, approaching those distant clouds of war Xie Lian had witnessed just before finding Hua Cheng.

Great masses battled against one another, each shouting their own chant:

“FOR GENERAL XUAN ZHEN!”
“FOR GENERAL NAN YANG!”

Xie Lian slapped his forehead when the nature of the conflict became apparent. Even in dreams, it seemed, Mu Qing and Feng Xin were at each other’s throats, relentlessly vying for territory. Hua Cheng sneered and snickered upon their approach.

“Gege, let’s not linger here with these trash,” he advised, arms folded.

“Ahh, San Lang, but look at how many ambient dreamers they’re dragging into their conflict. This is no good, we really ought to stop…” Xie Lian put a finger to his chin in thought. “Although, actually, I’m a little surprised in the first place that Mu Qing’s involved with something like this… After all, we were both trained with the same cultivational practice. Shouldn’t his thoughts be just as clear as mine were before we…?”

Hua Cheng raised his eyebrows. “Ha! Does gege think someone as abrasive and unpleasant as Mu Qing would be able to find a lover?”

Shrugging, Xie Lian mused, “Well, not necessarily… But something, something must be keeping him from focusing properly before bed… Hm…”

“We could ask some of the soldiers,” Hua Cheng suggested.

Xie Lian smiled and took his hand. “That’s just what I was going to say!”

As though summoned by their accord, a group of soldiers came limping by, wearing the colors of Feng Xin’s army. Xie Lian intercepted them:

“Ho! Soldiers, I’m but a wandering traveler in these parts, but I heard there was some raging conflict between the lords of this country. Please, might you noble soldiers elucidate the nature of this conflict?”

At that, the men grew rowdy.

“Pah! It’s all that traitorous ingrate Xuan Zhen!”
“Yeah, ptui! He dared to steal from our general!”
“Damned floor-sweeper!”

Xie Lian cocked his head. “Oh? And what was it that he stole?”

“A precious pearl!” shouted several men in unison.

Xie Lian raised his eyebrows, then tucked his hair behind his left ear and motioned to his red coral earring. “Like this one?”

“No,” one of the soldiers answered. “A great and precious white pearl, over a li in diameter! General Xuan Zhen, the thief, stole it under cover of night from our general, and now we’re fighting to win it back!”

Several men in the troupe pumped their arms at that, shouting “Yeah!” at various intervals and volumes.

Xie Lian eyed Hua Cheng briefly, then saluted farewell to the soldiers. The pair walked west, then, hoping to hear the other side’s story as well. Along the way they passed myriad violent skirmishes that burnt up and terrorized the land.

Eventually, a new troupe crossed their path, and Xie Lian greeted them with similar formality. This group was better organized, but somewhat less passionate than the previous ones. By their account, Mu Qing had not stolen the giant pearl, but instead had received it as a gift from Feng Xin, and subsequently learned that it was in fact malformed and a posed terrible curse, promising bad luck for any owner and relentlessly sapping their strength!

Xie Lian frowned, and Hua Cheng clutched his waist and squeezed. “Gege, don’t worry. You’re here; the pearl definitely isn’t you.”

Xie Lian looked up at his husband. “That’s not what I’m worried about exactly, San Lang. What concerns me is that in all this, we’ve only heard stories, but even on the front lines, we haven’t seen Mu Qing and Feng Xin themselves at all. I’m afraid that something else is at work here…” Xie Lian looked down and rubbed his chin.

Hua Cheng replied, “Hmm, maybe. But, whatever it is, it must have something to do with this pearl. Let’s go find it. No matter what, it’s nothing the two of us can’t handle together.”

Holding his husband’s hand and smiling, Xie Lian nodded. “That’s right!”

The pair meandered further and finally found their way to Mu Qing’s stronghold, where indeed, there was a giant, milky white pearl--although Xie Lian had to balk about the notion of it being malformed--perhaps it was ever so slightly oblong, but to the naked eye it was most definitely spherical. Not only that, but it appeared that the pearl was neither stolen nor given--no, its placement was far too abrupt, by no means up to Mu Qing’s standards of interior or exterior design. And, moreover, Feng Xin definitely wouldn’t have gone to the effort to just dump something like this right in the middle of Mu Qing’s palace--no way would Mu Qing even let it through the gates! No, it seemed more likely that the pearl was not brought, but grown here, in the absence of both martial gods. Xie Lian continued investigating the pearl, and slowly, its nature began to unravel before him.

Xie Lian folded his arms, then approached the edge of the pearl, feeling its cold, hard exterior--only, now that he touched it, he realized that it only seemed to be cold and hard. In reality, it was actually rather permeable, and also pleasantly warm. Xie Lian widened his eyes, remembering the substance that had first introduced him to the Dreaming--it had to be the same!

Upon realizing this, Xie Lian also began to hear voices coming from inside the ‘pearl’. He listened in for a few breaths, and then went red.

“Gege, what is it?” A few paces away from his husband, Hua Cheng cocked his head, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

“OH, SAN LANG! DON’T COME ANY CLOSER IT’S REALLY NOT…” Xie Lian staggered away and wiped his hands on his robe, shaking his head, then turned toward Hua Cheng. “Ah, it’s really nothing San Lang! It’s just Feng Xin and Mu Qing are in there right now, um, ...trading idioms! Ah San Lang, will you give me some power? I think… before we break into this thing, we should maybe, um, change something about its form. Ah, I mean, the stuff inside is so thick and opaque… Maybe if it were water instead…?”

Just as he said this, however, it had already begun happening--slowly, cracks began to form on the pearl’s now-solid exterior, and water began leaking out.

“San Lang?”

Hua Cheng shrugged. “Wasn’t me. You know, gege, you don’t really need traditional power in this land. Just imagination.”

“...Oh.” Before Xie Lian could properly reflect on what he had just done, the pearl burst open, spilling great volumes of water all over the place, as well as two butt-naked martial gods. Hua Cheng sprang into action, snatching Xie Lian up and carrying him away in the air, hysterically laughing all the while at the others’ plights.

“Haha, what a prank, gege! Serves them right, to be humiliated like that after wreaking so much havoc on the Dreaming!”

Xie Lian wiped sweat from his temple. “Ha ha ha… yeah… They were definitely aha, definitely not naked to begin with ahaha…!” He nodded his head and crossed his arms. “I am both mean-spirited and mischievous.”

Below, both Feng Xin and Mu Qing scrambled to cover themselves with the wet shards of the pearl’s exterior, glancing at one another red-faced. Once the flood had passed, Hua Cheng and Xie Lian descended.

Hands on his hips, Xie Lian appraised them sternly. “You two! How long have you been like this? Look out at what’s happened with your land, how many innocent dreamers have been fooled into fighting a bloody dream-war by this stunt of yours! Now, I advise the both of you to wake up and consider the consequences of your subconscious actions!”

Both of the other martial gods gaped at their once-liege in stunned silence, then at one another.

“YOU!” they both cried in unison, before summarily disappearing from the Dreaming.

Hand to his forehead, Xie Lian shook his head, then turned back to Hua Cheng. “San Lang, let’s go. Hopefully tomorrow night they can deal with all their subjects and put a proper end to this war.”

Hua Cheng raised his eyebrows. “Hopefully tomorrow night they can deal with each other as well. Gege, what was really going on in that pearl?”

Xie Lian kept shaking his head and waving his arms. “You really don’t want to know, San Lang. Let’s just go.”

Flaring a nostril, Hua Cheng nodded in assent, and the pair continued along the path, only for another figure to block their way.

However, this figure was both familiar and non-threatening. She tipped her head to them both.

“My lords. Thank you for your intervention in that conflict. Those two had begun to encroach on my own realm and conscript my farmers. It is good that it is finished.”

Xie Lian saluted to Yu Shi. “It’s nothing, Lord Rain Master. We’re happy to help.” Raising his head, he added, “But what brings you to the Dreaming, my lady?”

Yu Shi cocked her head. “What do you mean, Your Highness? Sleep, naturally.”

“I mean… Well, before I was with San Lang, I always had a very meditative sleep, and never knew of this other world. I thought it would be the same for you?”

“Your Highness, it is not that my sleep is not meditative. It is simply a different practice. My meditation is work, and so I work in the fields during the day. At night, I continue to work in the fields, and so enrich the land’s subconscious.”

“Oh, I see!” Xie Lian saluted again. “My regards to Lord Rain Master, for this is a truly noble pursuit.”

Yu Shi just shrugged, made somewhat uncomfortable by the praise. “It is pursuit, Your Highness. Nothing more. In any case, I thank you for your service. Is there anything from my realm I could provide for you?”

Rising, Xie Lian pondered for a moment, then thought of something. “Oh, actually, yes! Lord Rain Master, in your dream crops, is there such a thing as tea leaves which produce invariably perfect tea, never too hot or cold or bitter or sweet?”

“Yes, Your Highness, there is. Is this what you wish?”

“Yes, yes, if you can provide this, I will be eternally happy!”

Hua Cheng raised an eyebrow at the exchange, but continued to observe indifferently. After Yu Shi handed the tea leaves over, Xie Lian directed his husband northward.

“Gege, where are we going?”

“To deliver this tea to someone who’d like it!” Xie Lian beamed, holding the bundle proudly.

“Mn. Better cover those--it looks like it’s going to rain.”

“Huh, reall--?”

Before Xie Lian could finish, thunder broke out over the sky and the wind picked up. Thinking quickly, Xie Lian imagined a watertight jar into existence and sealed them in. “Hmm, that’s odd… Why would Yu Shi make rain so soon after giving us the bundles of tea?”

Hua Cheng shook his head, opening a tent-like red umbrella over them both. “It’s not her. It’s begun to rain all over the Dreaming. Remember what those guardians were talking about?”

“Oh. So the Dream King is--?”

Hua Cheng pinched his lips. “Lord Dream keeps his own counsel. But, yes.”

“Ah…” Xie Lian exchanged a glance with his husband. “Well, it is not as though I am unaccustomed to rain.”

The pair walked along the sodden ground for several hundred li, until at last they reached a trio of houses in the north. Filling up with the heavy rain, the third still lay dilapidated, empty, and cobwebbed, while the first now lacked a window--assuredly something illicit and not worth mentioning was taking place on the inside. The second, however, was much the same as it was before, each among Ling Wen’s three selves going about their usual business.

Xie Lian turned to Hua Cheng and explained, “Ever since passing by here, I thought about ways I might be able to help Ling Wen, but most of them seemed like they wouldn’t end well. Each would create a state of imbalance or discord. So, maybe the only thing to do is to give the gift of good tea.”

At that, Xie Lian let go of the jar, letting it materialize within Ling Wen’s dream-house. The pair watched then, as Nangong Jie--meticulous as always--prepared and delivered a brew for the second Ling Wen. Xie Lian vibrated with anticipation over how she might react:

As it happened, Ling Wen took a sip, frowned for a moment, and then relaxed, smiling and exhaling deeply. She turned toward Nangong Jie, who flinched in fear; however, instead of suffering through a tirade, the girl only received a gentle pat on the head. Nangong Jie’s eyes blew up in shock. However, as every banquet must come to a close, the third Ling Wen took advantage of the momentary distraction, and managed to burn up a sizable patch of scroll, leading the second to scold the first with newfound fierceness.

Xie Lian turned away, then shrugged at Hua Cheng. “Well, it was worth a try.” Hua Cheng patted him on the back. “Gege is truly kind-hearted and noble.” Xie Lian smiled and burrowed into his side as they turned around, back to the path.

...Where yet another figure awaited them. This time, however, the person in question was unfamiliar to Xie Lian. This man was tall and imposing, dressed all in black. His features were such that Xie Lian almost mistook him for He Xuan. However, instead of waves flowing at the edges of the man’s robes, flames licked up. The man’s hair, too, was a little too mussed, while He Xuan’s tended to be slick, ever-glistening.

Xie Lian glanced to Hua Cheng, who, to his shock, was now saluting to the man, head bowed deeply. Xie Lian scrambled to mimic the posture.

“At ease, Crimson Rain Sought Flower.”

Hua Cheng rose then, and greeted the other man. “Well met, Lord Dream. Is there something you wish from this humble servant?”

Rising himself, Xie Lian noticed the peculiar way in which the rain dripped down the man’s face, the haggard and wary look in his gleaming black eyes, and the shaking in his hands.

Dream replied, “Come with me, Lord Ghost King. I would have you unmake something that sealed our contract eight centuries ago.”

Hua Cheng nodded. “Yes, Lord Dream. Whatever you wish.” Before leaving, he turned to Xie Lian. “Gege, I have to take this. Let’s meet back up in the waking world.”

Xie Lian blinked. Given the context, it seemed unwise to display outward affection toward his husband. He replied simply, “Sure thing, San Lang. If you’re done before I wake, I think I’ll head to the central plains region of the Dreaming.”

“Okay, gege.” At that, Hua Cheng left with Dream, who tipped his head ever so briefly to Xie Lian. With a widening spark of his eye, they were gone.

Xie Lian stood in place for a moment before continuing along the road. When he finally got moving, he walked down the river’s path at a rapid clip, his steps widening with every footfall. He wasn’t feeling rushed; it was more just that the residual energy of that spark filled his entire body with nervous, unreleased energy. Xie Lian soon found himself leaping just as he had that first night of proper lucid dreaming, from mountain peak to mountain peak. He lost his sense of direction, began running just for the sake of running. Who knew whether he was still even in the same realm when he finally stopped?

The rain had slowed to a drizzle, and Xie Lian took that as a sign to pause and catch his breath before it came pouring down again. He scanned his surroundings: he now stood at a cliff upon a lushly cultivated mountain--a mountain that seemed oddly familiar, and yet not. All around him were beautiful artworks and verdant gardens, not unlike the extravagance of Xianle at its height. But different, foreign somehow. Xie Lian shook his head, marveling at the splendor. Of course, he could wake up at any time if he wished to return to his husband, but at the same time, he felt a little silly to have told him he was returning to the central plains, when in fact, he wouldn’t know where to find the plains if he tried, at this point.

Xie Lian was lost.

He looked around himself and paced about, trying to gain his bearings, only to hear voices emanating from a nearby grove. There, five young men were gathered, playing a strange game that appeared to be a fusion of cards and cultivation. All five were dressed strangely, and yet, at the same time, it was all so familiar, though Xie Lian couldn’t place it. Their language, too, was simultaneously foreign and eerily intimate. Xie Lian kept watching them.

One of them, dressed all in white and wearing a bamboo rain hat, caught Xie Lian’s eye then. He spoke to his companions, and Xie Lian could now understand the words, as though a pathway in his mind had abruptly unclogged itself:

“I will abandon you all for this round,” the man stated simply.

One of the man’s friends, this one dressed in black, began bickering with him, “What? Now you want to play, now you want to stop playing! Make up your mind! Hey, could it be that you’ve finally just got a bad hand? Huh, I bet you’re only quitting to avoid losing, you spoilsport!”

The one in white merely smiled beneficently at his friend. “No, I merely wish to take a walk. When you’re done losing, feel free to join.”

“Hey!”

The white-clad one waved a hand dismissively. “Go play cards! You prefer the four-person variants anyway!” Then, still smiling, he turned toward Xie Lian. In a moment, he was at his side. Now that Xie Lian could see him close up, he didn’t seem to be quite as young as he did at a distance: His lips and eyes were wrinkled at the corners and his face bore the scars of what looked to have been a bad case of cystic acne. Nevertheless, his face still shone with carefree vigor. Xie Lian didn’t recognize the man, and contented himself to walk along the cliffside with him.

“Hello, fellow Daozhang,” the strange man greeted, fanning himself with an extravagant instrument of fine white, black, and red feathers. “What brings you here to this mountain?”

“Ah, to be honest, I was just running around blindly, and ended up here! Tell me, do you know which way the central plains are from this peak?”

The other man raised his eyebrows. “Why, this mountain is at the very center of the central plains, do you not see?” At that, he extended his fan out to the horizon, and indeed, Xie Lian recognized the landscape, like he was looking at a map from overhead--only, this map was different, from another time period perhaps, the global climate having shifted, the borders of rivers and deserts just ever so off from their usual locations, inconstant as the loess. Either way, he could not argue that this was indeed the very heart of the central plains. He slapped a hand to his forehead.

“Ah, right! Ahaha, I don’t know how I missed it… Hmm, but I suppose that’s what tends to happen when one blunders about, focusing only on what’s different. You lose what’s essentially the same! Ahhh, and then you go and lose yourself!”

The other man cocked his head, hands held behind his back. “I disagree, fellow Daozhang. Sometimes, the way to lose oneself is to focus overly much on what is the same, so that the essential differences escape.”

Xie Lian chuckled. “Well, I suppose there are many ways to lose oneself…”

“Indeed. Many ways to get lost. And yet, there is only one way to return.”

“Hmm…” Xie Lian was beginning to enjoy this verbal sparring. “Are you sure about that? Are the ways back not equally infinite?”

“Perhaps. But there is only one home to return to.”

“Ah, yes. On that, I will agree.” Xie Lian smiled.

“And where is that home for you, Daozhang?”

“Ahhh…” Xie Lian sighed. “My home is currently on some very important business with the Dream King, leaving me alone to wander the realm.”

Fanning himself, the other man raised his eyebrows. “The Dream King, eh? Fancy, fancy… Your home must be quite the important entity to be consorting with one of the Seven.”

Xie Lian smiled to himself. “Yes. He’s very important. To me, at least.”

The other man looked down and chuckled. “Indeed, indeed. Well my home is--” When he looked up, however, he found that Xie Lian was staring at him fearfully, clutching his chest and backing up slowly.

The man tipped his head, smiling sweetly. He closed his fan and placed it carefully back within his sleeve. “Ah, Your Highness, it appears that I’ve been unmasked. Don’t worry now, I won’t harm you here. But, I’m curious. What was it that gave me away?”

Xie Lian staggered back, pain and nausea erupting throughout his body. “Y-You…”

“Hmmm… Ah! It was my laugh, wasn’t it? Ah, how funny…” The man kept laughing. “The things we’re unable to disguise, no matter what mask we wear. But Your Highness, you should know that here and now,” he motioned to his face, “This is the first time I haven’t appeared in disguise to you.” He laughed more deeply. “And in the realm of fiction and fantasy, no less! Oh, Your Highness, come now, I’m not so scary anymore, am I…? At least, please tell me you learned just a little from my teachings? You were always such an eager and promising--if disobedient--pupil.”

Wide-eyed, Xie Lian just shook his head rapidly, still clutching himself. “I-I’m not ready to speak with you--!”

Jun Wu rolled his eyes, then turned away, raising a hand in farewell. “Well, if you ever want to spar, I’ll be here.” He was about to stride back to his friends in the woods, when one of them abruptly intercepted him, tackling him into a black-and-white embrace on the grass.

“I lost,” Mei Nianqing pouted. Scoffing, Jun Wu clutched the other man’s head and pulled him into a deep, grunting kiss. Xie Lian would avert his eyes, but he was a little too shocked to do anything but stare in disbelief and horror.

It was truly quite a long and indulgent kiss, both rolling back and forth on the cliffside like a rotating yin-yang. When Jun Wu finally lifted from the embrace, holding himself up with one hand and tucking Mei Nianqing’s hair back with the other, he murmured,

“What happened to the others?”

“Oh. They disintegrated again.” Mei Nianqing turned his head back to the copse of trees, where indeed, the other three men were now piled mush on the ground, their forms hissing and bubbling into the air.

Jun Wu also looked in that direction, then back at Mei Nianqing, cupping his face and planting a string of kisses along his jawline. “Ah. What a shame…”

Mei Nianqing giggled into the embrace, then looked in the other direction. Seeing Xie Lian there, his eyes bugged out and he pushed the other man off.

“Little Highness…!”

Finally finding use of his limbs, Xie Lian waved them around wildly, shaking his head. “No no no, don’t worry, don’t worry, feel free to carry on! I was just leaving, ah!”

Jun Wu then pulled Mei Nianqing back over, grinning cheekily and attempting to nuzzle back into his shoulder. “You heard him…”

But Mei Nianqing resisted, knitting his brows and clutching his face. “Ahhhh…” Sheepish and red, he looked Jun Wu in the eyes, hiding his own behind the gaps of his fingers. “Now I really feel like jumping off a cliff!”

Jun Wu raised his eyebrows, then rose up. He offered Mei Nianqing his hand, a serious expression taking hold of his face. Both men stood facing the precipice, fingers interlaced. Jun Wu glanced to his companion.

“Ready when you are.”

Smiling weakly, Mei Nianqing nodded briefly.

And then they jumped.

Xie Lian watched wide-eyed as they disappeared into the mist. Thunder cracked overhead, and in the blink of an eye the rain began pouring again. The mountain, too, changed. No longer was it lush and alive; Mount Tonglu was again the red-hot, roaring hell Xie Lian knew it to be. Above, chunks of the heaven-crossing bridge still floated.

And, far in the distance, Xie Lian momentarily thought he saw two red-crested cranes dissolving into the darkening horizon. But, perhaps it had only been a brief trick of light.

Xie Lian didn’t have time to linger on the possibilities, for a tide of lava was now gushing down, headed straight for him. Well, he didn’t have much choice now. He’d have to jump.

And so he did, aiming for the nearest bridge chunk. Alas, it was not to be.

Xie Lian plunged down--

--And awoke in bed with his husband in Ghost City. Exhaling, Xie Lian observed the dark interior of their room. Hua Cheng’s eyes--both his and E'ming’s--were still darting back and forth beneath their sockets, still deep in the dream. Xie Lian took several more deep breaths, and thought more deeply on those cranes he saw in the distance.

He thought about eternity, about Dream and his kind sister Death. All the while, he stroked Hua Cheng’s hair, waiting for his husband to awake in the dead shadows of night.

At last, that eye fluttered open.

“Gege… I didn’t leave you for too long, did I?”

Xie Lian shook his head, smiling. “No.” He pressed a gentle kiss to the ghost’s forehead.

Hua Cheng shifted, then sat up, putting a palm to his forehead and shaking his head. He sighed.

“So the Dream King had you destroy his thousand god cave?”

Hua Cheng nodded. “Yeah… But gege need not worry. Ours remains intact. And the door in my mind remains open.”

Xie Lian squeezed his hand. “Even if neither remained, it wouldn’t matter to me. As long as I have you.”

Sighing again, Hua Cheng met his eyes, and brought the other’s hand to his mouth, kissing at the fingertips. “I know,” he replied softly. “Hmmm…”

“What are you thinking about, San Lang?”

Putting down Xie Lian’s hand, Hua Cheng shook his head. “Lord Dream is…” He shifted his gaze to the room around them, seeming to put up a powerful barrier to protect their privacy. “...foolish, in my opinion. Every dalliance he has, he imagines it to be a true and undying love. But Lord Dream is Lord Dream, and his paramours are only mortal women. Although he claims to feel unmixed acrimony for his fourth sibling, make no mistake, Lord Dream is firmly in their grasp.”

Xie Lian frowned. “Desire’s, you mean?”

“Yes. Hmm, and I will admit, Lord Dream’s biases are not unfounded. Desire is a cruel one, perhaps the cruelest of the Seven. But to resist Desire, you must resist completely, not delude yourself into thinking you’re not within their realm when you most certainly are. I am Desire’s, as are you, but we are also each other’s.”

Xie Lian nodded in agreement.

“But Lord Dream refuses to belong to anyone, and so he will never truly care. He will never truly love. That is his tragedy.”

“...I see.”

Hua Cheng swallowed, looking Xie Lian in the eye. “But, nevertheless, he is Lord Dream, and his station will exist as long as the universe does.”

“Mm… San Lang, to live so long and never love…” Xie Lian looked down, then back up. “It would be more survival than living.”

Hua Cheng’s face was solemn. “Mn. I agree. I am eternally thankful and fortunate for gege’s presence in both my life and my afterlife.”

Xie Lian smiled. “And I am eternally thankful and fortunate to have my San Lang.” He brushed his lips to the other’s then. Only briefly. And yet, in that moment was something greater than eternity.

--Perhaps.

Hua Cheng sighed again. “Gege, there’s something else.”

“Mm?”

“In return for my efficient destruction of his shrine to the Lady Calliope, Lord Dream has finally gotten around to offering us that position of honor in his realm. If we chose, we could go live there, for as long as it exists, long after our last worshippers have faded to dust. Long after this world burns from the memory of the universe. It is not an offer to be taken lightly, gege.”

Xie Lian nodded, looking down.

“--But, there is a catch. If we were to agree to his contract, we would no longer exist in this world. We would be stories. Immortal, but stories.”

Xie Lian looked back up into Hua Cheng’s eye. He thought about lonely Dream, cruel Desire, and their kind sister Death.

He looked into his lover’s eye, and saw eternity.

Hua Cheng stroked Xie Lian’s hair back behind his ear. “We don’t have to decide right now, gege. The Endless are patient. Only, it wouldn’t do to wait until we ourselves have faded. Naturally, Lord Dream would prefer us in our flourishing. But I will bow to gege’s decision, whatever he decides.”

Xie Lian nodded solemnly, never once breaking eye contact.

“I’ll think about it,” he answered quietly.