Chapter Text
There is a child in the Burial Mounds.
No, not that one. A different one.
There is a child in the Burial Mounds, and he somehow got through the wards on his own.
When the wards go off, it no longer induces the complete panic it did when Wei Wuxian first installed them. After all, he once had to do an emergency patch job for about 6 hours straight when it was found they had tripped for a squirrel. They were originally set to all living things, but the alive human presence on the mountain and the reduced resentment in the air has apparently made the Burial Mounds tempting for small creatures that previously avoided it.
Now they only alert for living things above a certain size. (Wei Wuxian considered making it human-only, but he doesn't want any dangerous creatures wandering around unattended. Yiling has dogs.) Today the residents of the Burial Mounds hang back at their homes, and Wei Wuxian goes to investigate, eyes blazing red and intimidating aura cranked up to the maximum, just in case. He can't really stop Wen Qing from trailing behind him with needles up her sleeves, but he can at least insist she stay out of sight.
Whatever he was expecting, though, it wasn't this.
A scrawny, filthy child, perhaps ten years of age, grinning toothily up at him and seeming not at all intimidated by the aura of general malefic intent. In his right hand he's holding a knife; his left hand is missing the pinky.
Wei Wuxian drops the Yiling Laozu persona immediately. "How did you get past the wards?" he asks, dumbfounded.
"Ghosts like me," the boy declares, and doesn't elaborate.
It's a concerning statement. Wei Wuxian doesn't see what it has to do with anything. "But how did you get past the wards?" he presses.
The boy draws himself up, his dark eyes glittering sharply. "I just asked," he says. "I went up to the barrier and they said 'Xue Yang, do you want revenge' -" Wei Wuxian chokes- "and I said 'Well of course, but I have something else to do at the moment'. And they let me in."
Wei Wuxian's heart is racing. Had- the spirits of the Burial Mounds spoke to this child? He focuses his senses, and can feel that the boy gives off his own faint aura of resentment. It doesn't hold a candle to Wei Wuxian's, or even to that of any run-of-the-mill ghost or demon, but it shouldn't be possible. Have the Burial Mounds done this when he spoke to them, or was the child like this even before?
Is he even telling the truth? Did someone send him here with an ulterior motive? He hopes no one would stoop that low, but he no longer trusts them not to.
"And what did you come here to do?" Wei Wuxian asks.
The boy smiles again, smaller this time but blinding in its exuberance. He bows clumsily and says, straightening up, "Yiling Laozu. This one has-"
Unfortunately, that's when a needle comes sailing out of the underbrush and embeds itself in his neck. The kid's eyes roll back in his head and he crumples into a heap.
Wei Wuxian whirls, aghast, as Wen Qing strides purposefully toward him. "Wen Qing!" he protests. "Must you be so eager with the needles?"
She eyes him disapprovingly. "I must, if you are so eager to stand around talking to child assassins."
"Ch- Child assassins," he says, indignantly, even though he had also had a thought along those lines. "Really? He was going to kill me armed with, what- a knife?" He bends down and pries the knife from the unconscious child's fingers, then hisses a little and squints at it closer. Actually, there's an unusual amount of resentment attached to this knife as well. (Which is to say, any. The amount of resentment a knife should usually have attached to it is none.)
"What?" asks Wen Qing sharply, noticing his distraction.
"Nothing, nothing!" He waves it off, not wanting to stir up trouble before he has a better grip on the situation. If it's to do with resentment, it's safest if he takes care of it on his own.
"Wei Wuxian-"
"Let's get him back to the village and see what he has to say for himself when he wakes up, eh?"
Wen Qing releases a short huff, packed with all the essence of a much longer sigh. Wei Wuxian bends down and throws the strange child over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, belying the carefulness with which he holds onto the much-too-light body as they start back up the path into the Burial Mounds.
*
The kid - Xue Yang, he said his name was - wakes up sooner than expected. Wei Wuxian is idling in the cave that contains Wen Ning's body, hoping to work on one or two of his ideas in the meantime. However, Wen Qing shows up in the entrance after maybe half an incense time, her face drawn tight in a frown.
"Wen Qing? What's wrong?" he asks.
"He bit me," Wen Qing says flatly. Indeed, she holds one of her hands up for him to see, and when he looks closer he there are tooth marks ringing the base of her thumb, deep enough to be oozing blood. He winces, all too sympathetic to the experience. But at the same time, he's a little impressed. A human has to bite with real intent to actually draw blood.
"What did you do to him?" Wei Wuxian asks, standing up and dusting off his hands.
"Nothing," she huffs, leading the way out of the Demon-Quelling Cave. "I was trying to begin my checkup on him." The line of her shoulders relaxes as they draw out of the cavern- she is always quiet about her discomfort, but it can't be easy for her to be in the same room as her brother's corpse. They walk the short path to the hut that is being used as Wen Qing's combination living space-slash-doctor's office.
The kid is on his back on the cot, still mostly paralyzed from the neck down but struggling as much as the situation will allow. Well, of course he was aggressive, Wei Wuxian thinks- waking up restrained like that and subjected to Wen Qing's less-than-friendly bedside manner.
The scowl drops from the boy's face instantly as he catches sight of Wei Wuxian in the doorway. "Yiling Laozu!" he exclaims, eyes still a bit wild despite the bright tone in his voice. "Tell your minion to leave me alone."
Wei Wuxian and Wen Qing's eyebrows both hit their hairlines. "She's not my minion," he says, miffed on her behalf. "She's my doctor. And she's smarter than me."
"No one's smarter than you," scoffs Xue Yang. There is no insincere flattery in his voice; it seems like he honestly believes it.
Wei Wuxian is starting to suspect this might be much more complicated than a child-assassin situation; this kid sounds like a fan. "Why don't you apologize to Wen Qing so she can let you up," he says, crossing his arms over his chest.
Xue Yang eyes her apprehensively. His mouth twitches. Then he gives her a sweet smile and says, patently false, "I'm sorry, Wen-guniang."
Little brat! Wei Wuxian lets out a snort despite himself. Wen Qing eyes the boy just as apprehensively as she goes and removes the needle, and he leaps up, scrambling back on the cot to get out of grabbing range. He starts rubbing the feeling back into his numb limbs, glaring. "Where's my knife?" he asks after a minute.
"You don't need it right now," Wei Wuxian tells him. Actually he has several questions he plans to ask about that knife.
"Yes I do!" the boy protests. He pauses, then draws himself up as much as he can, puffing up his chest and giving Wei Wuxian a glittering look of determination. "I came to join your army."
Wei Wuxian wheezes. "My- No. Frankly, I don't even have an army, and if I did, there wouldn't- I wouldn't be letting ten-year-olds join it."
"I'm twelve!" Xue Yang snaps, as if that's much better. Wei Wuxian should have factored in that he is probably small for his age, clearly malnourished as he is. "Also, I saw all the fierce corpses guarding this place. I'm not someone stupid you can lie to," he adds with a sneer.
Wei Wuxian pinches the bridge of his nose, sighing. "I don't know what you've been told, but we're not looking to take over the world or anything," he says. He's unable to keep a trace of bitterness out of his voice as he continues, "We just want to live here and be left alone."
"Then- then make me your disciple!" Xue Yang blurts. His eyes round imploringly, and he hastens to speak before he can be cut off. "I would be really good at it- I've taught myself some tricks, you know- and we can make people leave us alone-"
"No." Wei Wuxian's voice is flatter this time, final. Xue Yang recoils, then his face twists up in anger.
"Why not?" he demands. "If you think I'm not good enough- Give me a chance, Wei-qianbei. I'll show I can be useful-"
"It's not that," Wei Wuxian interrupts him. This entire conversation has his stomach twisting uneasily. "I don't want to teach this to anyone. It's not a game, and using resentful energy can be bad for you."
Wen Qing's steady, incriminating gaze is burning a hole between his shoulderblades. Wei Wuxian shifts uncomfortably and focuses on the kid, who, if anything, looks even angrier.
"What," Xue Yang retorts scathingly, "and getting starved or beaten to death is good for you? This is the reason I've lasted this long, and if you-" He chokes himself off, seeming to have said more than he meant to. All that's left is for him to glare viciously in defiance.
Wei Wuxian looks upward as if the heavens might actually deign to help him. It's been clear to him since the moment he caught sight of the boy that Xue Yang is a street kid. Now that he's here, Wei Wuxian couldn't possibly feel good about kicking him back out to try his luck on the streets of Yiling with the dogs. Not when the boy has followed the rumors of the Yiling Laozu here, seeking- what, refuge? What a world that he thought the evil lair of a demon was his best bet.
Wen Qing would say they can't afford any more mouths to feed, and she's right. In fact, she's shooting Wei Wuxian a sharp look right now, well appraised as she is of his bleeding heart. But Wei Wuxian simply cannot act in defiance of his conscience- that's half the reason he's squatting on the Burial Mounds right now in the first place.
He must take too long deliberating his next move, though, because Xue Yang's expression twists further and he leaps to his feet, fists balling restlessly at his sides. "Fine!" he shouts, something almost wounded in his voice, "I'll just go back and tell them I do want my revenge, then-"
"No!" Wei Wuxian yelps, a frisson of adrenaline jolting through him. "No, don't- definitely don't do that. I'm not saying you have to leave, what I mean is... Stay. Here." He flaps a hand in the boy's direction, trying to gather his words. "Not as part of my army, or as a disciple, just... Stay."
Xue Yang is watching him very carefully now. Eyes narrowed, shoulders drawn up defensively. Like he might make a run for it if he senses anything the slightest bit amiss. "...Stay," he repeats, dubiously. "And what would you get out of that?"
Wei Wuxian's heart pangs. This kid is too young to be so entrenched in thinking this way, only he's not, not really, and that just makes it worse. Wei Wuxian remembers more of his time on the streets of Yiling than he's ever admitted to anyone, and thus has an unfortunately excellent idea of what exactly has instilled this sort of calculated wariness in the boy.
"You can do chores," says Wei Wuxian, outwardly bland. "We always need an extra hand around here. There's the radish fields, and we're still working on construction- too many old people, not enough able bodies, and all that." He could have the corpses do it, theoretically speaking. If he weren't working so hard to keep as much resentment as possible out of the settlement. "We'd feed you. Mostly radishes, but. It would be every day." He conspicuously does not promise three square meals a day. No one here is getting that. But by the look of the kid, even a bowl or two of radish stew a day would be an improvement.
Xue Yang is still squinting at him like he's trying to work out his angle. At his side, Wen Qing is doing the same, but this is perhaps more at his sudden tongue-tiedness than anything else. Wei Wuxian can usually babble and banter all day about anything. This situation has taken him off-guard in more ways than one.
Finally, Xue Yang seems to relax a little, though it's more a drawing-in of tension than a dissipation of it. He tilts his chin at Wei Wuxian, a glimmer of mischief surfacing in his dark eyes. "If you let me stick around," he drawls, "I'll follow you around and find out all your secrets anyway."
Bold, this one is! Wei Wuxian's startled into a laugh, and he feels a premature fondness trying to rise in his chest. Delicately, he slides that away for later. He's aware this may not turn out well - Xue Yang isn't harmless just because he's a child; if he's survived this long alone among the beasts out there, it's because he's grown a set of claws and fangs to match. Not to mention whatever it is he's been doing with resentment, which Wei Wuxian certainly plans to investigate later.
"You're welcome to try," he says, "There's just one thing you have to keep in mind." He lets a bit of the Yiling Laozu surface in him again, resentment unfurling into the air like smoke. "The people in this village- they're under my protection. If you do anything to harm them, you'll be lucky if I let you leave. Understand?"
Hm. That may have been a bit harsh, if Wen Qing's hissed intake of breath is any measure, but Xue Yang only bristles up a little against the threat. In fact, his eyes go unnervingly round at the blatant display of power, like a cat about to pounce. "Yes, qianbei," he says, cheeky but not insincere.
Wei Wuxian lets the aura drop. "Good," he says, and turns his back on the kid, one hand waving lazily in the air. "Follow me, then. I'll take you on the grand tour!"
*
Xue Yang observes his surroundings with interest as Wei Wuxian rambles. The intensity of his gaze is striking, even when focused on the most mundane of things. He's not yet said anything about the place being a dump, but Wei Wuxian caught the flicker of surprise in his eyes when he first took in the ramshackle buildings.
It's not long before a loud gasp rips through the air and a small, muddy blur streaks across the ground to clutch at Xue Yang's leg. The boy yelps and instinctively tries to shake off the weight, but goes stock still when he sees that it's a toddler. He meets Wei Wuxian's eyes warily; Wei Wuxian gives him a thin, cold smile, trying to silently communicate that This is your first test and if you are mean to A-Yuan you are dead to me.
"What are you doing there, A-Yuan?" he calls much more warmly.
The kid lifts his head, eyes sparkling, to holler, "Xian-gege you did it!"
"Did what, my little radish?" he asks. Xue Yang is still paralyzed, regarding the parasite on his leg with extreme suspicion, as if A-Yuan is an undefused bomb.
"Growed me a new brother!!" A-Yuan exclaims.
Xue Yang raises an eyebrow. Wei Wuxian is stumped for a few moments, but then he remembers that conversation. "I sure did!" he says brightly, and Xue Yang's other eyebrow shoots up. "A-Yuan, this is your new friend, Xue Yang. He'll treat you nicely, won't he?"
He looks pointedly at the older boy. With extreme caution, Xue Yang lowers one hand and, nose wrinkling, give A-Yuan a grudging pat on the head.
"...Yang-gege?" asks A-Yuan hopefully.
"...Yes," says Xue Yang, carefully.
"Yay!" A-Yuan lets go and toddles back over to Popo, who has kept an appraising eye on the situation.
The older boy watches him go with what looks like a constipated expression on his face. "You have a... Kid. Here." The statement is more than a little disbelieving.
Instead of pointing out that Xue Yang is also a kid, Wei Wuxian goes, "Mhm. He's Wen Qing's nephew. His parents and older sister died in the Jin labor camps, before I broke out the last of the Wens." He doesn't let his smile waver for a moment.
Xue Yang stares after the child. "...Sick," he comments, with no particular force of emotion. His fingers twitch and he shoves his hand into his robes.
*
"That is the most unsettling kid I have ever met," Wen Qing says.
Wei Wuxian says, "I like him."
Wen Qing says, "You would."
*
That first night, Xue Yang just stares blankly at the bowl of thin radish soup that has been shoved in front of him. Then he looks up and asks, "What do you want for it?"
Wei Wuxian, sensing that it is not going to work right at this moment to explain that it is free, bullshits something on the spot. "You were nice to A-Yuan," he says. "You deserve soup."
Xue Yang squints at him, then seems to accept this and falls on his meal with gusto. He eats like a wild animal, and Wei Wuxian feels a bitter twist of nostalgia.
The kid disappears before anyone can think to assign him quarters. They don't have much space to spare, anyway - and Xue Yang shows up bright and early the next morning, strolling around like he owns the place. Wei Wuxian decides not to confront the matter, for the moment. In the mellow heat of summer, it doesn't make much difference if he's indoors or out, and maybe the kid doesn't trust them enough to sleep near them yet. He puts a pin in it. For later.
The knife quickly vanishes from where Wei Wuxian put it, but he doesn't worry about that for now, either. He doesn't consider it a sign of malicious intent- after all, he himself doesn't feel safe unless he's carrying Chenqing with him at all times, whether or not he's planning to use it.
Somehow, he keeps pushing off questioning the boy about his use of resentful energy. It's easy to claim he's too busy - it's easy to be too busy, with all the bustle of daily survival and his increasingly desperate attempts to awaken Wen Ning.
Xue Yang is surprisingly helpful for all that he bristles at any sign of authority. He likes to complain, but when he settles down he completes his chores with the same focus he applies to everything. Weeding, peeling potatoes, hauling wood- he finishes it with a brisk efficiency and then goes about his own devices. Usually stalking Wei Wuxian and wheedling him about demonic cultivation, or sneaking out to the rest of the Burial Mounds.
It's the last one that's a concern. With the Burial Mounds largely under Wei Wuxian's control, it's much less dangerous than it used to be, but some parts of it are still so steeped in resentment that Xue Yang could easily be torn to shreds by the vicious spirits there. Wei Wuxian tells him as much, and tries to forbid it, but if the order is not accompanied by threat of significant bodily harm, Xue Yang seems to think he can ignore it.
"That boy's in the hills again, gongzi," Uncle Four hollers at him after a few days of this, so Wei Wuxian throws his hands in the air and goes to see what Xue Yang is actually doing out there.
The answer, it turns out, is 'finding the most intact corpses he can and carving them apart to examine their organs'. Wei Wuxian is almost completely unfazed by any form of gore at this point, so the scene in itself is not concerning to him. Xue Yang doesn't seem to be attempting any demonic cultivation on the corpse either; the faint seams of resentment running through his body lie placid and still, apart from the passive effort it takes to keep the choking energy of the Burial Mounds from affecting him too much. It seems that what he's looking at here is a simple case of morbid curiosity.
Hm. Hmmm. Who else does he know who studies the minutiae of the human body?
Wei Wuxian has an absolutely terrible, wonderful idea for a solution to this.
He drags a complaining Xue Yang back to the settlement by the wrist and hauls him in front of Wen Qing with a dazzling grin on his face.
"No. Absolutely not," says Wen Qing, scowling.
But it's only a couple of days before she is taking on an increased role in what Uncle Four is now laughingly calling their shared custody agreement. Xue Yang being Wen Qing's part-time assistant keeps him out of Wei Wuxian's hair for a good chunk of the day, and- crucially- out of the hinterlands of the Burial Mounds.
(As far as he knows. They still don't really know where he goes at night.)
Wen Qing starts him on basic cultivation exercises, something which Wei Wuxian has pondered off and on but hasn't been able to stomach doing himself. Xue Yang is positively exuberant about this, and it seems to make up for his lingering distrust of her. He treats her more like Wei Wuxian- someone whom he nominally respects and wants to please- if not with the same level of adoration.
He also gets assigned homework: tracing characters with Popo. Wei Wuxian finds out about this because Wen Qing sidles up to him with a look on her face like she has just eaten something sour and says to him, aggrieved, "None of us thought to teach him how to read."
It's like he's walked straight into a wall. It should have been obvious - he certainly didn't know how to read before the Jiangs took him in. But in the midst of their simple lives in the Burial Mounds, it failed to cross his mind at all.
There's something in it that makes his heart twinge, watching Xue Yang at Popo's elbow, avidly tracking stroke after stroke by her leathery hand. The complexity of it all seems to frustrate him frequently, but he's determined to learn. He often ends up throwing himself on his back in the dust like a much younger child, sprawled out in exaggerated distress, and whenever A-Yuan sees this, he runs over and pats his shoulder to comfort him.
All of this means he has less time to stalk Wei Wuxian in pursuit of his secrets. It, unfortunately, doesn't mean he has none.
*
See, when Wei Wuxian told him "You're welcome to try," he did not actually anticipate just how tenacious he would end up being.
Xue Yang trails him like a duckling every chance that he gets. Even when Wei Wuxian's moods grow stormy or slightly manic from lack of sleep, it doesn't deter him- the kid just makes himself smaller, quieter, and follows at a distance. On the better days Xue Yang peppers him with questions, and even as Wei Wuxian tries to ignore him, he has always been able to think more clearly when he is voicing his thought process out loud, and he'll find himself unconsciously rambling away about every detail as he gets lost in the workflow. Of course, a lot of it goes over Xue Yang's head, but he listens to every word, bright-eyed, head cocked like a bird.
He's especially curious about Wen Ning, where most of Wei Wuxian's attention is focused at the moment. No matter how many times Wei Wuxian shoos the kid out of the cave, Xue Yang always finds a way to creep back in while he's lost in thought. When he wants to be, the kid can become so silent, so still, that he's little more than a stone in Wei Wuxian's perception. The ribbons of resentful energy he carries with him, twined right down to the marrow of his small bones, only serves to help him blend in further to the background of the Burial Mounds.
That's why Wei Wuxian doesn't even notice at first that Xue Yang is also tailing him out to the edge of the mountain when he needs to refresh the wards and check on the fierce corpses guarding the settlement. He doesn't realize until he catches the kid whistling to himself and recognizes it as one of the common tunes he plays on Chenqing.
This might actually become a problem, Wei Wuxian is forced to conclude. Xue Yang is learning far too much just by being here, and it's hardly as if he could toss him back out now. He has a feeling only the harshest of methods would actually keep Xue Yang away from the knowledge he covets, and that's not something he's willing to do. The damage the kid might be doing to himself concerns him just as much as the idea that Xue Yang could use the knowledge to hurt others someday. He hasn't forgotten, after all, that the spirits asked the boy if he wanted revenge.
He asks him, one evening. Perhaps a month after the boy's abrupt arrival to the Burial Mounds. Wei Wuxian is staring at the stars, twirling Chenqing idly in his fingers as he contemplates the crushing weight of the future. Resisting for once the ever-present urge to flee in the face of it like a small scurrying animal, retreat to tinkering and testing and losing himself in the labyrinthine corridors of his own unquiet mind...
He doesn't do that tonight. He's thinking. He's always taken responsibility easily. (Always had to play the hero, says a voice that sounds like Jiang Cheng's.) It's unlike him to shy away from it. And Xue Yang has carved out a place here already, and a shelf of his own in the vast recesses of Wei Wuxian's heart.
There's the boy himself: sidling closer, toward the Yiling Laozu and away from the warm lights of the settlement behind them. Out here, they're just on the edge of the strongest wards, the ones that keep the lion's share of resentment from disturbing the Wen remnants. Out here, the wind is easier to hear than the soft sounds of living chatter; the wind that's always present, that sounds more like a sighing, gasping sob, or the start of a stifled scream.
Feels like cold fingers, stroking along his collarbones, like dry lips at his ears that whisper Ours, ours, ours...
"Xue Yang," he says, the words feeling strangely shaped on his tongue for all that he's said them many times before. "Who is it that you need to take revenge on?"
The boy is quiet for a moment. When he speaks, there's a growl in his voice; a challenge. "The man who did this to me," he says, and thrusts out his left hand for Wei Wuxian to see.
The one with the missing pinky. The one with the misaligned bones, the slightly crooked fingers; the one that Wen Qing suspects causes him chronic pain, likely on a daily basis, but certainly in the cold and rain at least. She's never been able to get a good look at it, no matter how she's nagged him.
(Wei Wuxian's entire body lights up now, in the pressure of an encroaching storm; every bone he broke on his first trip to the Burial Mounds, searing like a broken promise, like he's coming undone.)
"Will you kill him?" asks Wei Wuxian mildly. He doesn't pry any further. He knows now that Xue Yang guards his secrets jealously, with a wary defensiveness that borders on panic.
To this Xue Yang says, "When I'm through with him." And he smiles, but it's not his usual exuberant grin, the one that lights up his whole face and makes him look even younger. It's small and mean, just a baring of teeth, one that draws attention to his prominent canines. It's a smile that makes Wei Wuxian think of the Sunshot Campaign. Of grim certainty on a thousand too-young faces. It makes him think of reversed talismans, of the cold lucidity of resentment that felt like insanity in the morning light. It makes him think...
"What?" Xue Yang snaps, ruffling up. Something of his thoughts must have shown on his face. "It's not like you're one to talk. Everyone says how you tortured all your enemies to death. Now you're going to judge me? You going to tell me I can't?"
Wei Wuxian lets his breath out harshly. "It's not that." He's committed a myriad of sins, but he isn't a hypocrite. It's just that... "You're so young."
He can see immediately it's the wrong thing to say. Xue Yang's expression shutters like a slammed door. Goes eerily blank. And then he's drawing himself up like a cobra, hissing, "So what? How could you ever understand? If I didn't toughen up I'd have died. How could you possibly know what it's like to-"
"I do," he says. "I do know."
It just slips out, involuntary. Xue Yang stares at him, indignant, uncomprehending. In just a moment he'll regain his breath, launch into another screed. Is Wei Wuxian really doing this?
Wei Wuxian is really doing this.
"My parents died when I was four," he says. "Jiang-sh- Jiang Fengmian didn't find me until I was nine. Where do you think I grew up?"
Xue Yang swallows audibly. His eyes are dark and fathomless, studying Wei Wuxian's face as if in search for a lie. "Where?" he whispers.
Wei Wuxian smiles humorlessly. "Right here," he says, gesturing widely. "Well, not here here- on the streets of Yiling. Fighting for scraps with the-" He has to actually gulp and force the words out. "Fighting for scraps with the dogs. I'm still terrified of dogs, you know. That's what they used to say about me - the first disciple who was afraid of nothing but Yu-furen and dogs."
Xue Yang just keeps staring at him. There's something brittle in his expression. Something turning over behind his eyes. "But you got powerful," he says.
Wei Wuxian doesn't know what it's a protest against. Maybe it's a request for confirmation. "I did," he answers, carefully neutral. "And people think that's all I remember. Just bits and pieces."
"But it's not," Xue Yang asserts. Clearer this time, more confident.
Wei Wuxian nods, suddenly tired. "But it's not."
There are several long moments of silence. A weight of unspoken experience between them. Things that don't need to be said. And then Xue Yang's expression starts to twist- a struggle to reject the fragile familiarity they've shared. "So - so what," he spits. "You, you took pity on me - "
"Hey now," he tries to interrupt, loudly- "Does it have to be pity? Can't I just do things because I want to?"
"But not enough pity to actually teach me properly - "
"Xue Yang!" And it's sharp enough that the boy's mouth actually falls shut, that his eyes dart up to burn into Wei Wuxian's. And he's tired. He's so, so tired. "I don't want you to end up like me."
Xue Yang looks incredulous. And Wei Wuxian can understand this: from the kid's perspective, he must be the picture of success. The recipient of unimaginary fortune. Taken in by a great family, become a prominent young cultivator. He owes the Jiangs a debt he can never repay. But that's not who he is now. And that's not who Xue Yang is trying to emulate. The Jiangs who took him in are gone. His rising star has burnt out, and only the light-devouring husk of the Yiling Laozu remains.
He never thought, when he was creating this path, that it might be seen as a quick route to power for those who had no other way to obtain it. Had never foreseen desperate children, willing to stake everything on a devil's bargain. For perhaps the first time he starts to understand the almost ideological horror his tricks strike into proper society.
"You don't have to end up like me," he says, softer. "I know you can be better."
Xue Yang lets out a short, harsh bark of something approximating laughter. "Better," he says. Looks like he wants to flee, or scream. "Are you kidding me? Better?"
Of course he's not. Xue Yang is driven, to the point of obsession. He's clever, in a way that belies a deeper kaleidoscoping brilliance. Charming, when he wants to be- almost magnetic, despite the way his eyes sometimes glitter the wrong way in the sunlight. Like a reptile's. Like a predator's. But his most jagged edges are already sanding down a little, here in this place, facing acceptance for the first time in his life. Given a bit of care, Xue Yang could accomplish anything he wanted to. Wei Wuxian's certain of it.
In the steady, unyielding silence, he watches the boy nearly crumple. Xue Yang blinks rapidly, holding on to his composure by the skin of his teeth. "I don't get it," he says. "I don't get you at all. You're- you're soft, Wei-qianbei-" And it's like he really, truly is only noticing it for the first time. He flings an arm out. "All of you! All of you are soft. I don't listen to a single thing you say. I mouth off, I sneak around, and no one's tried to beat me a single time-"
"Do you want us to?"
He rightly ignores this. "For anything! I even- I bit Wen Qing," and it's funny how scandalized he sounds. At the time he did it, he didn't know that she was the real one to fear. He scoffs, but the sound is soft, almost more wonder than derision. "A group of lunatics like you people shouldn't be able to exist in this world. And you- you!" He points an accusing finger, "You're acting like I'm, I'm good, but still not good enough to teach me..."
Driven, with a mind like a steel trap. It really does have its downsides. "Just focus on your golden core, Xue Yang," he sighs. "Then you won't need to use tricks like mine."
"But you still do?" the boy shoots back. His gaze is cutting, far too sharp, and Wei Wuxian finds he can't say anything. We need to start on a house for you, he thinks, out of the blue.
"I'll learn anyway," Xue Yang says finally. "You can't stop me."
He knows. He doesn't think anyone could.
Wei Wuxian has assumed, somewhere in the back of his mind, that his cultivation style will die with him. The cultivation world won't suffer it to continue. It won them the war, but weapons can be put down in peacetime. How naive! Xue Yang's arrival is a physical representation of the fact that isn't true. Can't be true. Even if he teaches no one, leaves nothing behind, it will always remain that people now know it can be done. There will always be imitators. And some of them will succeed.
The only question remains, what is Wei Wuxian going to do about it? Can he do anything at all?
Maybe Lan Qiren should have thrown a sword at his head during that lecture, instead of a book. The world would be better off for it.
The thought is funny, so he laughs. Bubbling up from somewhere inside of him, thin and hiccupping. Xue Yang looks at him oddly for it. He lets it go on.