Chapter Text
The first thought Wen Sushan has when the soldiers surround them, when the voices rise and throw words like knifes (angry yet smug, accusing yet triumphant) is of little Yuan. Little A-Yuan, left behind in the cave by the wood, where their hard work will never pay off, where there will be no one to harvest the fruits they negotiated so bitterly from the cursed and poisoned earth. He hopes that the little boy won’t be too scared, that he will be alright on his own until Master Wei wakes from his unnatural slumber. He hopes that he will live, that they both will, and accepts with crushing resignation that he will never know.
When he hears A-Yuan’s old granny sob beside him, just once and without tears, he knows her sorrow is not for herself. They all of them have no more grief to give for their own lot; they have been ghosts since the fall of their clan, living on borrowed time. And yet they still have something to protect, and so they still have something to lose. Under the afternoon sun, on at the steps of Lanling’s Koi tower, is where they lose it.
It has, perhaps, been inevitable all along, and perhaps they all know it. And so that one sob remains the only one, the only sign of their regret they will share with this hateful world, and all that is left to do is face their end with the same dignity displayed by the two children they came to see off on their own final journey.
The voice that cuts through the smugness and the accusations is quiet, stern, holding all the more power for all that it is rarely heard. Wen Sushan hears arguments in their favor and his dead heart beats once more – not in hope, because he knows the hatred and vengeance and the self-important justice that lies in the heart of man – but in distant, surprised gratitude that there is one more person who will not laugh when their corpses are hanging from the city walls.
One more person who thinks that their innocence is, at the very least, worth the breath it takes to point it out, who sees them die here, farmers and weavers and the ones so old they may not remember the latest war for all that they remember the one before, and does not think it just.
He does not have hope, until the first soldiers fall.
They are blown away by a force like a light in the darkness, blown back and then still, maybe unconscious, maybe dead. Wen Sushan does not look at them. Warnings are shouted and bows are raised, swords lifted. A man comes down the stairs, black hat and pale gold robes and a mouth that isn’t smiling as he says words like “consider” and “brother” and “If you do this, I cannot protect you.”
And Hanguang-Jun, looking like the light he is named after, lifts his sword in a warning that needs no words. The other man steps aside. The first arrow hits the stairs before them, deflected by a movement too quick for anyone to see, and Hanguang-Jun looks over his shoulder for only a second and says, “Go.”
Wen Sushan goes. Behind him is the sound of metal on metal; an arrow gazes his arm, causing pain he will not feel until much later, when all is over and his frantic heart is settling into another rhythm and the blood on the stairs is drying in the merciless sun. Beside him, a man gasps in a low voice and falls, and he will not know who it was, which of his friends, which of his cousins, until later when they can stop and see who of their family is no longer by their side.
He turns around one single time, to see a flurry of movement in light blue and white, like water and air, and wonders how something so ethereal and insubstantial can possibly protect them from the steel and the blood lust.
Then he knows only the sound of his running feet on stone, and then earth, and the gasping breaths of his family before and beside him and he does not look back again.
-
Wen Sushan is there when they tell Young Master Wei of the events that nearly doomed them, of the events that saved them. Little Yuan is sitting on the bed and has been since they returned; his tears have lessened when his grandmother took him in her arms but not stopped completely. The fear will not go from his bones for some time, and he wants Xian-gege to comfort him instead.
He cries for brother Ning and sister Qing, and wants them to come back.
Not everyone made it back here yet. Most did not. The way to Lanling is long. When they left the burial mounds, Jin soldiers were waiting for them, half an army of them, and took all of them along on their swords without any words being wasted, and Wen Sushan already knew, then, even if he did not yet acknowledge it, how this was supposed to end for them.
Some of the others had more presence of mind when they ran away. Some collected the swords of the guards knocked over by Hanguang-Jun as they ran. Six altogether they had, and five cultivators among their humble lot who never developed much of a golden core but have enough spiritual energy to fly a sword and take someone along. They were not fast, but they reached the burial mounds less than two days after they left them, more than one day after their escape.
A sixth cultivator, Wen Feng, stayed behind to defend the others until they are collected as well or found shelter, some place to hide until they are safe. A symbolic gesture more than anything, for what could a single aging fighter do against any who might have gotten past the powerful man who defended them first?
No one said it, but Wen Sushan knows that they all hope that if the others are caught, A-Feng has a chance to get away and tell his family in the burial mounds that they do not need to bother going back.
Wen Sushan is the one to tell Master Wei everthing, when he wakes up and cannot yet move. Granny holds his hand and A-Yuan pats his cheeks and babbles about safety when he notices that his brother Xian is upset. Their young master ignores all of them as if they weren’t there when he pushes himself upright on force of will and rage and fear half a day too early, when he stands and reaches for his flute and makes his way, stumbling but unstoppable, to the edge of their settlement that gets to live, maybe, for another day, another night.
It still feels like something ending; like something ended already and they are moving only through the echo that refuses to die between the rocks.
Wen Feng meets them when they reach the first trees, Master Wei nearly falling every few steps but inevitable like an avalanche. He is stopped by A-Feng and the look on his face as Wen Sushan’s cousin stumbles to a halt before them and falls to his knees before the man who saved them so many times, who saved sweet A-Ning and gave him and his sister another year not filled with pain and darkness, something that was good even if it did not last.
“I bring word from Lanling,” A-Feng says – he is one of the younger men in their home, only a little gray in his hair, and his brother died two days ago to arrows that were meant to kill them all. “The others are safe. They are not coming for us yet. Everything is in uproar.” He says, “I do not think they remember us, right now.” And the plea is there, perhaps, not to remind them, or maybe this is just information with no personal agenda – no fear, no bitterness over the fact that the death of his brother means nothing.
“It is as if we have been forgotten,” he says and Wen Sushan knows better, now, than to hope.
“Wen Qing and Wen Ning,” Master Wei says, speculates. It has been nearly three days – too much time to wait for an execution that needs no trial. But A-Feng shakes his head and doesn’t look up.
“There is unrest between the major sects. Zewu-Jun of Gusu Lan in on his way to take his brother home.”
The only movement in the still woods is the fist of the Yiling Patriarch, tightening around his flute. “For punishment?” he grits out, between clenched teeth.
Wen Sushan sees only that fist, does not dare to look up and see more as he remembers the swords and the arrows and the blood. He sees the fist and the top of his cousin’s head as A-Feng, too, keeps his eyes on the ground, keeps his face and his fear hidden as he shakes his head and whispers the answer and the darkness that shaped this place descends upon them once again.
-
The Patriarch returns a day later, dressed in fury and shadow. In this wake, A-Qing and her brother stumble into their settlement that they left not long ago never to return. They are pale and bruised and keeping each other upright – A-Ning supporting his sister because her legs won’t carry her much further without help and A-Qing supporting her brother because she always will.
Wen Sushan did not expect to see them again in this life and he hardly can, even now, through the darkness surrounding their patriarch as he walks back home, with nothing on his face and blood on his hands. His steps are too even, too measured, as if there were no weight to the body he carries cradled in his arms, covered by a white shroud that blows around them in the soft evening wind like a banner of war.
They all follow him into the cave but stay back, respectfully, as he places his burden on the bed of stone and straw that once held their dear A-Ning as they waited for the return of his life, where he pulls away the shroud – so carefully – and discards it like something disgusting. The body it hid is as beautiful as it was in life, dressed in plain white robes, not a single wound or blemish to be seen. Decay has not dared to mar it yet, and Wen Sushan knows it never will. Cultivators this powerful never rot, whatever remains of their golden core after death preserving them forever as either a tribute to their live or a mockery of it.
A-Yuan tries to walk over but his grandmother holds him back. No one dares to move while Master Wei brushes the hair out of HanGuang-Jun’s face, brushes out the wrinkles in his burial clothes. His fingers, dark with dried blood, are trembling as he takes hold of the pale, clean hand, but the fingers he is holding are still and will never move again. Wen Sushan wonders if their young master is aware of this fact, if it has sunken in yet. The blood on his hands says it has, the way his lips press against the inside of a thin wrist, the way they move against cold skin in words too quiet to hear, casts doubt and distant worry.
A-Qing ushers them out then, all of them, and they leave with the feeling that in right this moment the cave is not a place for them, or any living creature, to be.
-
They escaped certain death at the steps of Koi Tower. A-Qing and A-Ning escaped execution; no retribution was had for the murder of Jin Zixuan. The Yiling Patriarch took the body of Hanguang-Jun from his family and hid it away. Wen Sushan is waiting for the armies that will come for them, surely, any day now.
The days pass into months and no army comes.
-
