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rayan12sworld · 3 months

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Something is wrong with A-Zhan!

By:HeloSoph

Summary:

Something is very wrong with Lan Xichen's younger brother.

First, he didn't wake up at his usual time.

Then, when he did wake up, he called him xiongzhang.

And as if that wasn't enough, he hugged him!

A-Zhan, the boy who hates physical contact since their mother's passing, hugged his brother on his own accord!

And as if the day couldn't get weirder-

“A-Zhan.”

“Yes, shufu.”

“What did shufu say before he let you and your dada go?”

“To get something we like.”

“And what did A-Zhan do?”

“A-Zhan likes Wei Ying.”

Lan Qiren’s eye twitched again.

OR: Lan Wangji time travels and decides to change everything.

Chapter:6/6

Words:15,306

Status:completed

(Dark lan wangji)

Like he killed everyone in the first time line 🫡

Wei Ying is Lan Qiren's cabbage

If what Nie Huaisang had written had even a semblance of truth, he won’t have to worry about his injured back soon. And as long as he does as instructed in the letter, he will be with Wei Ying soon, too. If not, he’ll just kill Nie Huaisang too. After all, lying is forbidden. And lying to him about Wei Ying– giving him false hope – is even more unforgivable.

For he knows that Jiang Wanyin did blame his Wei Ying for the deaths of his family and sect members, as if Wei Ying didn’t lose the same people too. He hadn’t been able to intervene back then, not with the war blowing in all their faces. One man’s bitterness was of little insignificance. But now, Lan Wangji will make sure that the Jiang Sect Leader pays for everything. In full. He is the paragon of righteousness. His bitterness, after all, is not insignificant. It is righteous. It is justice. He is justice.

~~~

It looked lived in. But that can’t be true. His zhiji, his bright and cheerful, full of energy Wei Ying was long dead. Even before his death, this was not the room he lived in. ‘This lying bastard,’ Lan Wangji’s eyes turned cold as he looked at Jiang Wanyin and fixated on the bead of cold sweat that left from his hairline and threatened to fall in his eyes. He should gouge those eyes out, Lan Wangji absentmindedly made a note to himself. “I’ll take everything that belongs to my zhiji, and I’ll start with that golden core. Who gave you the right to use it, you bastard?”

In Qinghe, Nie Huaisang felt a severe headache for a week. When his headache subsided and he woke up, it was to his brother by his bedside, fretting over him. ‘Lan Wangji’s love for Wei-xiong is no joke.’

“You!” He got up and pointed at Lan Wangji, shaking with rage. Lan Wangji looked at him with a crazed look in his eyes, “Stop pointing those fingers at me unless you want them broken.” “Lan Zhan, that’s not a nice thing to say.” Wei Wuxian held Lan Wangji’s face in his hands and gently reprimanded him as if he were a misbehaving toddler, not a man fully capable of– and intending to– causing bodily harm to the Jiang Sect Heir. “Wei Ying..” Wei Wuxian understood that Lan Zhan was not sorry, so he didn’t push. He simply kissed his forehead, right on his sacred ribbon, “I’ll wait at Jingshi, come back quickly, hmm?” “Mn.” Having gotten his answer, Wei Wuxian collected his stuff and went back to his shared residence with Lan Wangji to wait for his zhiji to be done here. Lan Zhan never liked Wei Ying seeing him when he got like this. He claimed that Wei Ying might not like him anymore if he saw him like this. Wei Wuxian claimed that he would love him anyway. In the end, just to reassure Lan Zhan, Wei Wuxian always listened, not wanting to see his zhiji unhappy or in doubt even for a single moment. With Wei Wuxian gone, the room’s temperature somehow fell even lower. And this time, Jiang Wanyin noticed too. Everyone stood frozen in their place as Lan Wangji effortlessly grabbed the Jiang Sect Heir by the throat and lifted him in air, the boy’s feet dangling in the air as he tried and failed to pry the strong hand away from his throat. As the boy’s face started turning the same colour as the nine-petalled lotus embroidery on his shoulders, Lan Wangji spoke, “I hear another word about my fiance from your mouth, your corpse will greet your family when you leave here. Do I make myself clear?” The Jiang boy struggled against Lan Wangji’s steady hold for some time until his vision blurred. It was only after his vision started spotting that he made an attempt to nod. He was thrown to the ground like discarded trash after Lan Wangji decided his answer was acceptable. For now. As Lan Wangji left and the Jiang Sect Heir choked on the ground, coughing up a storm, the rest of the guest disciples still stood frozen in their place.

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thisisallthehattersfault · 10 months

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Since AO3 is still down and we’re all going feral over it, here: Have the first chapter of what would have been my Bottomji fic but got completely out of control

There is always something to kill, this close to the ruins of Nightless City.

The nighthunt itself began, if not routine, then at least not strange in ways that could not be explained. A rockslide nearly buried a small village at the edge of the mountains that border what was once Qishan, but the Nie sect reacted swiftly and skillfully. The villagers were rescued with minimal casualties, the survivors given temporary shelter, and Nie Mingjue was working quickly to help find long-term solutions for how and where the villagers will live, now that their home has been destroyed. Lan Wangji likely would not have come to help after his business in Pingyang concluded -- were it not for the startling influx of resentful creatures.

It is perhaps inevitable, in the wake of any disaster, that some resentful creatures will be drawn to the scene. This is why cultivators address mundane disasters in their territories to begin with -- an avalanche, drowning, or forest fire may technically be the jurisdiction of the local magistrate, but its immediate aftermath always brings work for a cultivator. Even for such a small number of deaths, and in such a remote location, a handful of gui and yao are to be expected.

What is not expected is the horde of gui, yao and guai that fell on the mountain like ants to a corpse, spilling out into the village below. Nie cultivators were forced to address the attacks rather than focus their attention on excavation, and more villagers suffocated or were crushed in the time it took to drive the creatures back.

Lan Wangji must stay and offer assistance. Xiongzhan will be unhappy at his late return, but it cannot be helped. The Nie are formidable. Their method of cultivation makes them uniquely suited to carving through large swaths of resentful creatures at a time, but they are still outnumbered, and worse, they are separated by necessity. The very fighting style that makes them able to stand in the midst of such chaos, forcing the outpouring of enemies to break around them like stream water parted by a boulder also makes them a danger to any allies who may stand too close. In the bedlam, the risk of accidentally striking and killing a friend is high.

So: Lan Wangji, steadily making his way up the mountain, using his qin to offer support to the Nie cultivators who cannot allow their own sect siblings close enough to defend them. The farther up the mountain he goes, the stranger the situation seems. Perhaps if the creatures’ ranks were made up primarily of human corpses, it would be explainable. A mass grave, disturbed by the rockslide, would account for the concentration of resentful energy in this specific area. However, the gui are few and far between. Most of the creatures they face are yao and guai; walking trees with grasping limbs and bloated, mutated forest critters, thrashing lengths of vine that have grown hungry mouths at their roots. There is something evil here, and it has been here for some time, soaking into the soil and drenching the air.

It is grueling work. From afternoon to dusk, they fight together to push back the horde. Lan Wangji alone can fight without his sword, and so he does, hovering on Bichen to weave between trees that occasionally attempt to snatch him from the air, plucking singing notes from his qin to lay down cover fire from above. For the most part, the Nie have the situation handled. He is here only to ensure that none of them die in the process. In this, he is successful, although blood is still spilled. Some of it is his.

They are never truly at risk of defeat -- although numerous, the creatures are not especially strong -- but Lan Wangji is nonetheless exhausted and worn by the time the killing is done. He has chased the last of the guai (a haunted tree stump, skittering on its roots like spider-legs) past the treeline and into a clearing before dealing the final blow.

The clearing itself is unremarkable; a pocket of space in the stifling density of the forest. The only thing of note is that there was a shrine here, once. It is rubble now, beaten down by the rockslide just as the village below had been. This alone is not strange. What is strange is the scattering of ward stones, now cracked and misaligned, that dot the clearing around the shrine. What is stranger still is the heavy wave of thick, cold resentment, pouring from somewhere in the ruins of the shrine.

Something had been sealed away here, and now it is not.

Lan Wangji weighs caution against necessity. It is possible whatever waits in the ruins of the shrine will be more than he can handle. His hands and fingers ache from the bite of his qin strings, and he has depleted enough spiritual energy that it would be unwise for him to try and fly home without resting for the night, but this is clearly the source of the outpouring of resentful creatures. If it is not addressed swiftly, more creatures will come. The village nearby has been evacuated, but this mountain is an important pass for travelers and merchants, and there are more villages. If the number of resentful creatures grows, it is unlikely they will all be found and dealt with before they can spread out and claim more victims. People will die.

Carefully, he approaches. There does not appear to be anything active within the ruins. He can sense no movement, and though it is hard to tell through the fog of resentment, he doesn’t believe he senses any killing intent, either. Whatever it is, it is leaking enough resentful energy to have poisoned this entire section of forest, but it does not appear to be doing so intentionally. A cursed item, then?

He uses Bichen to prod through the rubble, taking heed not to touch anything with his bare hands. There are more layers of broken wards, shattered in the avalanche. Eventually, he finds a box. It, too, was once carved with seals, and it, too, is broken. This is perhaps another strange thing. Whatever is in this box was very thoroughly sealed away. It is unlikely a mere avalanche would have been sufficient to destroy every single layer of protection surrounding it. Lan Wangji cannot say for certain what would have been sufficient, because the item the box contains has not been removed from the box, so it seems unlikely that the shrine was destroyed on purpose. Unless whoever sought to claim the item died in the attempt, and is now one of the few human corpses dotting the mountain?

Again, he uses Bichen to nudge aside shards of broken stone, at last revealing the artifact leaking resentful energy like water from a basket. He blinks. The face staring up at him blinks back.

The item is a mirror of polished bronze, gleaming the colors of the sunset overhead. There is a thin wrapping of chain and wire encasing it, yet another layer of seals, though Lan Wangji cannot fathom what might be left to seal, with the mirror pouring out so much resentment. Regardless, this last layer of protection is unbroken. He will take care to ensure it stays that way.

Nie Zonghui enters the clearing, wiping blood from one of his sabers. Lan Wangji explains his findings. There is a moment of discussion -- Qinghe is well equipped to store cursed items, but less equipped to neutralize them, and the sheer power radiating from this particular item would be better addressed than simply locked away, especially as that has been tried once, and already failed. Nie Zonghui helps Lan Wangji wrap the mirror in cloth, and carefully tuck it away in a qiankun pouch. They take rubbings of the remaining seals and ward stones to be examined later, as Lan Wangji’s knowledge in this field is too rudimentary to parse exactly what the wards may have been for. The Nie disciples do a final pass through the forest in search of any resentful creatures, and Lan Wangji plays several rounds of cleansing.

Some of the Nie attempt to invite Lan Wangji back to Qinghe for the night, in thanks for his assistance. He is offered mulled wine, then tea when the disciple is reminded by their sect-siblings that the Lan do not partake. He is promised food and an invitation to dice games to celebrate the day’s victory.

The Nie disciples cluster together. They throw their arms casually about one another’s shoulders. Many of them count heads, and visibly relax when the last of their companions make their way into the clearing. They tease and shove one another, grinning. The youngest whine at aching feet and empty bellies, and are laughingly scolded by their elders, even while field rations are passed around to tide everyone over until they can have a proper meal.

Lan Wangji would not be good company for such a group. Lan Wangji is very rarely good company for anyone. He politely declines. The Nie disciples insist on at least escorting him to the nearest available inn, the next town over, and because they are going the same direction to return to Qinghe Lan Wangji makes no attempt to refuse.

Despite the Nie reputation of brutishness and militarism, Lan Wangji has never known them to be lacking in hospitality. Even if he is only shown such regard because he is the younger brother of Lan Xichen, who is well known to be Nie Mingjue’s oldest and dearest friend. Nonetheless, he is reminded as they travel that there will always be a bed available for him in the Unclean Realm, and that the hot springs are his to use as he sees fit, should he choose to spend the night in Qinghe after all.

It is tempting, but to take advantage of their courtesy would mean locking himself (and them) in an uncomfortable pantomime of etiquette. Should he accept the offered bed, social obligation would dictate that he join their company for the evening, while they attempt to indulge in their drinking and dice games and he lingers awkwardly on the sidelines, intrusive and invading. He has no interest in such things, and they most certainly have no interest in his stilted attempts at socializing. He declines once more, and reassures Nie Zonghui that he intends to go promptly to bed and leave at first light, and as such, staying in the Unclean Realm would be both wasteful and disruptive. The Nie are stubborn as a rule, but Nie Zonghui has known Lan Wangji for most of his life; they have spent many a day quietly existing in one another’s presence. When Shufu visited the late Nie-Zongzhu and Xiongzhang visited Nie Mingjue, Lan Wangji and Nie Huiasang were typically shoved together, and Nie Zonghui was assigned to watch the younger boys. As such, he only sighs, nods, and bids Lan Wangji safe travels. Lan Wangji returns the courtesy.

This late at night, the main room of the inn is nearly empty. The owner, who had been all but sleeping at the desk, jerks sharply upright when Lan Wangji approaches to pay, and blinks sleepily through their transaction. The qiankun pouch will hold the mirror safely for the night, though Lan Wangji will have to hurry straight home come morning. In the still and quiet of his room at the small but serviceable inn, he bathes, and eats, and goes to bed.

Dawn brings with it a sense of urgency. The resentment from the mirror is leaking from the qiankun pouch -- only barely, so faint Lan Wangji had not noticed it until he was halfway through dressing for the day, but it is leaking all the same. He eats breakfast quickly, meditates for only as long as is necessary to ensure that his qi is circulating at acceptable levels after yesterday’s strain, and departs from the inn. He is in the air before the last colors of sunrise have faded from the sky.

He lands, once, for lunch and to play cleansing for the mirror. He does not linger.

Trouble does not arise until late afternoon, when he has already passed between the border of Lanling and Gusu. He is considering landing again -- he will make it to Cloud Recesses before curfew, but he would like to play another round of cleansing for the mirror before he arrives -- when the choice is taken out of his hands.

It begins with a prickle at the back of his neck. Instinct alone has him swerving sharply, tucking his chin to his chest as a bright and burning thing grazes past his head, close enough to feel the heat of it. He doesn’t get a chance to see what it was or where it came from -- there is another, forcing him to pull up sharply and clench his jaw through the wash of vertigo, and another which he barely avoids as he wrenches himself through the air, and then --

Pain.

The stink of burning silk.

Like a stone, Lan Wangji plummets.

What he sees, as he scrambles to tear off his burning robes and regain his footing on Bichen, is this: dead, human-like things that twitch and jitter. Their flesh is charred. Cracks where the burned skin has split show a deep orange glow, like an ember not yet coated in ash. If they at one time had discernable eyes or noses, that time has passed. Their faces have melted and blackened. Only their teeth remain in lipless mouths, ash-gray and chattering, occasionally revealing the scorched lump of their tongues. In the sky, among the fresh air, he had neither heard nor smelled them. On the ground, he can do both. They stink of burned meat. They move with the clicking and clattering of bone dice on a stone floor.

Lan Wangji has seen a great number of terrible things in his life, and has built a strong stomach in response, but there is something wrong with these creatures, in a way he can neither explain nor articulate. Something unnatural. There is a dull clenching in his gut, not-quite-nausea, as his instincts rebel against the very existence of these -- things.

Lan Wangji lands hard. Jerks to one side as one of the creatures throws another palmful of strange, sticking fire at him. Dodges back and back again.

They are, he learns quickly, fast. He spends a hundred breathless seconds dancing half-hazardly from burning blows, every frantic toe-tip step taking him away from one attack and towards another. The creatures pounce. Lan Wangji evades. At last he scrapes together the scant second he needs to call Bichen back to his hand.

They are, he learns quickly, durable. His first slash carves neatly through the chest of one of the creatures, cleaving through black flesh and charred bone. There are no organs inside, only the fireheart gleam of dying coals beneath the outer husk. Sparks fly from the wound to sting Lan Wangji’s hands and face, float drunkenly in the air. Burned flesh crackles like wood on a fire. Clicks itself back into place. The creatures gnash their awful stone teeth.

They are, he learns quickly, intelligent. His next blow jolts to a hard stop, Bichen wrenching in his hand as it’s caught -- first between black fingers and then between gray teeth, the creature thrashing to disarm him. A scorched foot snaps out, thuds heavily against his sternum hard enough that something cracks, sends him reeling back. The place the creature touched him burns.

When he drags in his next breath, it is choking-thick with smoke and resentment. The taste of blood lingers on the back of his tongue.

One of the creatures lunges for his abdomen, and Lan Wangji must again abandon his sword. The dance drags on.

It is a misstep that leads to terrible understanding. The place he has been attacked in is a stretch of dry, rocky land with sparse vegetation. He knows he is being driven onto unsteady ground, but he cannot find an opening to break free. Again and again, Lan Wangji must dodge back from grasping fingers. Again and again, he must seek footing on precarious piles of stone, or twist at the last second to avoid catching his foot in a deep groove.

It is perhaps inevitable that he eventually fails.

When he does, it is because he is forced to take uncertain footing to avoid yet another blow -- one which glances close enough to singe the skin of his ear. The stone gives out under him, sends him stumbling, and in that moment one of the creatures snatches the qiankun pouch from his belt and disengages from the fight, leaving the three others to continue their assault.

It opens the pouch with quick, clever fingers, the gesture sickeningly human in such inhuman hands. From the pouch, it draws the mirror.

The creatures give off heat like bonfires, but Lan Wangji feels himself go cold. There is much he does not understand, but this, at least, seems simple. Whatever these things are, and whatever that mirror is -- they cannot be allowed to have it.

The sun will soon set. He has his signal flares. He can send one up once it is dark, and hope it is seen by someone. Anyone.

In the meantime, he needs to retrieve the mirror.

The next blow is nearly perfunctory. Lan Wangji is no longer the main target, he has become a loose end, and so killing him is a lesser concern. That’s good. That will have to be enough.

Again, he throws himself to the side. Again, he is chased. Again, he forces his body to move.

A quick step, a moment of breathing space. He calls Bichen once more to his hand. She plunges through the chest of one of the creatures on her way back to him, and although the creature does not die, it slows.

He will make this be enough.

This time, he knows they will try and disarm him. He will not allow them to do so. One of the creatures jerks towards him and swiftly loses a hand. The other is sent to the ground with the force of his blow as he thrusts Bichen into its empty chest and heaves its body away from him. The creature holding the mirror makes an -- awful sound, a choking, rasping thing, a scream with no air or voice to shape it. It drops the mirror. Its fingers are crumbling to ash.

A hand closes around Lan Wangji’s ankle, dragging at him. He feels the scorching heat of it all the way through his boots. He stomps on the wrist of the grasping creature with all his force, and is gratified by the charred-wood crackling as it is crushed to nothing beneath his heel. Thus freed, Lan Wangji lunges.

He cannot kill them. Every blow he lands closes itself. Every limb he cuts off reattaches. Only the creature who touched the mirror seems at all properly injured, still hacking its terrible noises of distress. Its disintegrated fingers have not grown back. Lan Wangji would perhaps try to use this advantage, if only the mirror were not spewing more resentment than any living creature could feasibly withstand, clogging the air and limiting his vision. It sticks to his skin and in his mouth and down his throat and settles in his lungs and stomach. He wonders if this is what it feels like to drown. He wonders if the resentment will kill him before his core can destabilize, before he can qi deviate. He wonders how this all went so wrong, so fast.

He wonders if he will get to see Mother again. If she waited for him, or if she has already reincarnated.

Half-blind, he dives for the mirror. Feels the displacement of heat and air as the creatures follow. He lands first. They land on top of him.

Stone teeth, hot like a griddle, latch onto the meat of his shoulder. It is a pain that is difficult to describe, to be cut and torn and burned all at once. The press of the creature on his back is hot enough to blister his skin through all five layers of his robes. The mirror against his stomach is cold like frozen steel. It burns, too.

He wonders if Xiongzhang and Shufu will forgive him for not saying goodbye.

His core churns. His qi surges under his skin. He will have only one chance -- he is strong, and his strength will have to be enough. One great blast of spiritual energy. At worst, it will be felt all the way in Cloud Recesses and that will be as good as a signal flare. Perhaps there will be something left of his body to be buried. Perhaps the mirror will be retrieved.

Lan Wangji coils his qi tight in his chest, gets ready to push --

The resentment spikes, trembles, and crashes over him like a Yunmeng storm. The shock of the cold freezes him solid, leaving him gasping through stiff lungs. Winter itself settles in his marrow.

Then, just as quickly, spring returns. He thaws.

He is surrounded by piles of ash, and he is alive.

He is alive?

Lan Wangji breathes. Raises a hand to feel his pulse point. His heartbeat is erratic, but it exists.

He is alive.

Dazed and dream-like, Lan Wangji rises slowly to his knees. His body hurts. His meridians ache in peculiar ways, likely damaged from what he just tried to do to them. He is very certain he is not dead, but in the strange, hazy headspace he’s found himself in -- dizzy and disbelieving, exhausted and, paradoxically, strangely exhilarated -- he’s not entirely sure he is conscious.

He sees, now, what caused the creature’s fingers to crumble to dust. The final layer of protection, the delicate lace of wires and chains, has been torn away from the mirror. It is unclear whether the seal was broken by the creature or by the spirit within the mirror.

Because there is undoubtedly a spirit within the mirror. The face peering up at Lan Wangji is not Lan Wangji’s own. The face is sharp-featured and handsome, clever silver eyes and a feline grin.

The man in the mirror points that grin directly up at Lan Wangji. “Aiyah,” he says, half-laughing. “That was close! Are you alright, Lan-gongzi?”

#MDZS #The Untamed #Lan Wangji #Wei Wuxian #Wangxian #Dark fairy tale AU #this will eventually be wangningxian #but in this chapter its just lwj and wwx at the very end

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