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Feng Xin can’t hear every single prayer. There’s far too many. Once upon a time, he had helped delegate Xie Lian’s. He sorted them into appropriate categories depending on the type of prayer and what offering was needed. Mu Qing had always been better at it than him, and eventually he had been forced to stop such a job altogether, for His Highness had grown so large that others had to handle the organization while Mu Qing and Feng Xin stepped up to different roles, but he had enjoyed it. There was a soothing sensation to it, to check them over and slot them in different locations and then never have to deal with them ever again. He isn’t a people person.
Now, unfortunately, Feng Xin is the god who has to answer every single one of those prayers.
There are some he doesn’t touch. Whatever mortals think, he’s not going to offer up help in terms of fertility or in bed. It sends a shiver down his spine just thinking about it. The wealthy he has to, simply because if you offer up that much and your god still isn’t willing to help you… Feng Xin is bad at politics, but he’s not THAT bad.
Aside from the wealthy, though, there’s another set of prayers that Feng Xin tries to pay attention to. Typically, prayers without offerings are put together in categories. If an entire nation is praying for something within your power, even if few of them have offerings, you try to fulfill that want if you can. If it’s for something personal, and yet you can scrounge up nothing, then a god is unlikely to cast their favor upon you.
It worked like that under His Highness, too – until the one day that they had stumbled across the boy offering up naught by a flower. Feng Xin and Mu Qing were no longer monitoring prayers, and that was… near the end of everything, when His Highness did not interact with prayers in the same way, but he had made a note, afterwards. “Some people don’t have anything to offer up,” he says. “But if they care enough to offer something, even if it’s of no monetary value… I’d like to consider their prayers.” Even if all they could offer was a flower.
Feng Xin has not seen His Highness for centuries. Despite his occasional searches, the way he keeps his ear to the ground for any word… he does not think he will see him again. He hopes, but it is a faint hope. So for His Highness, Feng Xin can do the same as he once did. (He… thinks Mu Qing might be the same, but maybe that’s overly generous of him. It’s fucking Mu Qing, after all.)
It doesn’t happen often. Most people don’t offer up trinkets or flowers or whatever the fuck, since it won’t help a god and normally it wouldn’t help their cause. He got a bun from someone who wished him well who must have been His Highness, two hundred years ago, and he only wishes he had been quick enough to jump on that before His Highness was gone. Now – now, all strange ones come directly to him.
“Sir,” says one of his aides, Su Xiyan, who neatly slides a scroll onto his desk. Feng Xin jolts, jerking up from where he had buried his face in his hands. Perhaps embarrassing, but she has seen him at much worse – aka every time he’s accidentally run into her. (He’s not so bad that he can’t even touch a woman, and he can interact with Ling Wen normally.) She doesn’t look amused, though, but gravely serious. “You have a prayer with an… interesting offering.”
Feng Xin picks up the scroll with a frown, but doesn’t open it yet. “Interesting?”
She’s not one to hesitate. “Blood,” she says, and Feng Xin feels cold. He unrolls the scroll immediately.
“Feng Xin, please, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have… please, if you forgive me, I…”
“It hurts. I know it’s my fault but it… it hurts. Please…”
“Feng Xin…!”
“Where.” Feng Xin can’t take his eyes off the words.
“Not from any temple of yours,” she says. “It would have been overlooked, but…” Blood. Xie Lian, for who else could it be, with an offering of blood as he begs for Feng Xin. Shit. How the fuck is he supposed to find him, then?
He grips so tightly the paper almost rips in his hands and then he forcibly sets it down and takes a deep breath. “...Alert me if there are any more,” he states.
“Immediately,” says Su Xiyan, and then she leaves. Thank fuck. Feng Xin needs to have a breakdown in private.
Xie Lian is strong. His Highness is one of the strongest people that Feng Xin knows, physically. Strong enough that after he ascended again, he apparently attacked fucking Jun Wu, and could hold his own enough that he wasn’t a squashed ant immediately. If everything hadn’t happened, he thinks Xie Lian could have grown enough to rival Jun Wu. And even if Xie Lian is… (he thinks of him, mad and choking on ghosts, vanishing and coming back with a crazed look in his eye that nothing could dispel) …different now, Xie Lian is not one to succumb so easily.
If he is offering up his blood, begging Feng Xin for forgiveness, begging for help…
Feng Xin doesn’t think he’s ever seen Xie Lian in such a state before. Never even imagined it. His god. His prince. He puts a hole in the damn wall just thinking about it before he throws open the door and stalks over to Mu Qing’s palace.
It’s not like he’s never been here before. When one of them has offered clear insult to the other, it’s not completely strange for one of them to go over and pick a fight and make everything worse. Usually they can at least think enough to go somewhere else for this kind of fight, since it’s not completely impromptu, but it’s taking everything Feng Xin has to not shake into a million pieces so he needs this now.
A wide-eyed guard lets him in and Mu Qing meets him at the door, folding his arms. He looks as cold and dismissive as always, and Feng Xin grinds his teeth. “What?” asks Mu Qing, eyes narrowed. “What on earth does General-”
“Can we talk.” He bites it out like it’s painful, because it is, and his eyes flicker to the middle officials around them, the one guarding the front and two more peeking curiously from behind Mu Qing.
Mu Qing surveys him, head-to-toe, and for a moment Feng Xin thinks he’s going to say no, before he jerks his head towards the rest of the house. “Get in here.” It’s galling, grating, but Feng Xin thinks of the offering of blood and swallows down his anger. He follows Mu Qing into his office and slams the door shut behind him, blocking out the two officials. “What?” Mu Qing demands.
Feng Xin knows the other is a paranoid fuck – there’s no way they’ll be overheard in here. “Have you… heard anything from Xie Lian?”
Whatever Mu Qing expected, it wasn’t that. He looks utterly dumbfounded before he recovers, frowning heavily. “Why the hell would I have heard anything from him? Have you heard from him? What’s going on?”
He doesn’t… he doesn’t know what to share. Feng Xin is a poor liar, and he can’t think of anything to make up on the spot. His mind is completely blank. “I got- a weird prayer from His Highness,” he says. Feng Xin doesn’t know what’s on his face, but whatever it is is enough to make Mu Qing unfold a little, to gentle from hostile to some form of concern, brow knitting. “With… a weird offering.”
Mu Qing opens his mouth, closes it, looks away. “...No,” he bites out. “I haven’t- received any prayers from His Highness.”
The title is said in a sarcastic way that makes Feng Xin instinctively bristle, but he lets it slide for once. There’s more important matters. “Tell me. If you get one, tell me. Keep- an eye out for it.” He doesn’t know what to do here. If he should tell Mu Qing everything, because even if Mu Qing had betrayed them… even Mu Qing isn’t that heartless, isn’t that terrible, and Feng Xin is loathe to admit it but Mu Qing is definitely smarter than him and can maybe figure this out.
Mu Qing scoffs. “You won’t tell me anything else?” Feng Xin doesn’t reply, chokes on his own words, and Mu Qing scowls at the wall. “Fine. I’ll tell you if I do, if it’s that important.”
“It is,” is all Feng Xin can say, and Mu Qing doesn’t argue.
Feng Xin gets two more agonizing prayers. Two more agonizing prayers. He would like to say that the offering is nothing but blood, and that’s… that’s mildly horrifying, that he would wish for that, but… The second prayer he receives has an offering of blood. Horrifying, terrifying, nauseating, but the third… “Nails,” says Su Xiyan. She’s much more stoic than he is, because Feng Xin knows his feelings are written across his face.
“...Metal nails?” he asks desperately, hopefully, and she shakes her head mutely. Xie Lian’s fingernails… After she excuses herself, Feng Xin leans over and gags on nothing, chokes on his own emotions. His Highness is trapped. If his fingernails are… then he’s desperately clawing to get out of something. It’s the only thing that makes sense. He’s injured and he’s trapped and Feng Xin has no idea where he is.
He’s resolved to go after Mu Qing and tell him everything at this point, when Mu Qing shows up at his doorstep. When he sees that pinched, white face, Feng Xin is quick to usher him inside and into privacy. “You didn’t say he was-” Mu Qing hisses the moment the door shuts, clearly agitated and unable to finish his own words. “Blood! Blood and fingernails!”
A wave of relief washes over Feng Xin. Mu Qing can help with this, and Xie Lian has realized, too. It’s not just him. Immediately, Feng Xin shoves all three scrolls at Mu Qing, and after fumbling with them, Mu Qing begins to read all of them. “He’s trapped,” says Feng Xin, entire body almost shaking with adrenaline as he steps from foot to foot to try to let it out. “Right? He’s trapped somewhere.”
“What the hell could trap him?” mutters Mu Qing, his eyes running over the words as he reads through the three prayers and then reads through them again, as if a second glance would change the words into something else. “He’s-”
He’s not His Highness, not anymore. He’s not even a god. The last either of them had seen Xie Lian… They meet each other’s gaze and then look away. They don’t know… what state he’s in. What could have happened.
(Feng Xin regrets returning too late, every time. He had left as ordered and returned to nothing. What happened to him? What had changed him so that he would fight against Jun Wu?)
“He’s not dead,” says Feng Xin, because that’s something. It’s something. It’s something he’s worried and wondered over, and he’ll hold that one single note of hope close to his chest.
“Yet,” says Mu Qing, because Mu Qing is the worst. “If it’s one of the calamities…” There’s only one calamity it could be, and Feng Xin feels ice cold at the idea of Crimson Rain getting his hands on His Highness.
“We’d know.” Feng Xin has more bravado than he actually feels, but he desperately needs Mu Qing to confirm it. “He- likes to boast. And brag. All that shit. He’d say something just because he fucking hates us.” Feng Xin doesn’t know why, but if he hates Feng Xin and Mu Qing, he probably hates Xie Lian too, so he would brag… right? Right??
It seems like it pains Mu Qing to agree, but he relaxes a little and nods. “He would.” For all they know, Xie Lian could be bleeding out in prison somewhere, unable to escape with his lack of godhood, but that… doesn’t feel correct.
Feng Xin turns and slams his fist into the wall. “Nothing,” he seethes. “We know- we know fucking nothing.”
“Shut up,” Mu Qing snaps, but Feng Xin knows that heat, knows that tenseness in his tone isn’t out of any real anger but of frustration, too. Feng Xin may never forgive Mu Qing, but he hasn’t… forgotten that a two-faced Mu Qing means that there is a face presented to them, that even if he humiliates, he will return with rice.
Mu Qing may be an asshole, but he doesn’t want Xie Lian in this kind of state. Neither of them do. “Fuck,” says Feng Xin, and he trembles with the weight of his helplessness.
There is nothing they can do. Nothing. Feng Xin receives more prayers, as does Mu Qing (less than him, he wishes he could be pleased to note, but he’s too distraught over the state of His Highness to do more than note that). Xie Lian gives no hints as to where he is – perhaps he doesn’t even know? – and there is nothing that either of them can do. Mu Qing and Feng Xin simply send each other a message when they’ve received another, and there is… no more news. Nothing to express.
Feng Xin hates feeling helpless, unable to save Xie Lian. He felt that before he was sent away, watching Xie Lian fracture into brittle pieces before disappearing, he felt that even before that, when Xie Lian ran himself ragged trying to help ungrateful people, and he feels that now.
Is he cursed to never be able to do anything? Cursed to never, ever be able to help his most important person?
He thinks that this is how it will be. That he will hear these prayers for the rest of his life or never again, and can never do anything to help, when Mu Qing beats down his door one day with a manic glint in his eyes. “It was Lang Qianqiu,” he says. His entire body seems lit up with adrenaline, and Feng Xin straightens, the energy infectious. “He was sparring with Pei Ming, and the move he used was one of Xie Lian’s.”
Mu Qing watches everything in the Heavens because he’s insane like that, so of course he’d watch this. It only takes Feng Xin a moment to remember what happened with Lang Qianqiu. The Gilded Banquet. His teacher, who hated the royalty of Yong’an. “He- But Xie Lian would never…!”
“He’s not perfect,” Mu Qing scoffs. “He could have. The Flower-Crowned Martial God, unable to bear-”
Feng Xin slams him up against the wall. “Shut up! He wouldn’t fucking do that!”
Mu Qing smirks at him, and it takes everything in Feng Xin to not punch that right off his fucking face. “And what if you’re wrong? What if you’ve overestimated him and so he rots in that grave?”
Slowly, entire body shaking with it, Feng Xin releases Mu Qing’s robes. His jaw works and he grinds his teeth. He-
He wants this to be wrong. He wants Xie Lian to not have done such a thing. To not have needed revenge against the people of Yong’an, to not have killed them after doing his utmost to save them, to not have fallen so far-
(Would you abandon him, if he had fallen? No. No, never.)
He wants this to be right. He wants Xie Lian to be buried in that coffin. To find him, after so long, to set him free and stop the prayers that are slowly dying, to wrap his arms around His Highness and just hold him and for him to be alive and safe and well-
“We’ll look,” Feng Xin says through gritted teeth. “We’ll… look.”
They don’t know the exact grave where Lang Qianqiu’s Guoshi is buried, and they cannot exactly ask their fellow god about it. Mu Qing is a much better liar than Feng Xin, but even he cannot come up with a lie strong enough to justify asking. Instead, they have to hunt. Search. Send countless clones and expend endless energy to search the lands, to trace old stories.
When they finally find the grave, though, they go in-person. A closed-off cave with a coffin inside. It is simple work for the gods to move the stones blocking the entrance, and as they step into the darkness, blood sticks to their boots. Fresh blood – after so many decades, how could a corpse bleed? After so many decades, how could a simple mortal yet live?
Feng Xin wants to destroy the coffins, just like that, but Mu Qing stops him. They do not know the state of Xie Lian – for it must be, it must be, it must be – and they remove the lids with care. One, two, three.
A pale imitation of his prince lays within.
He is starved, thin, skin shrunken down to nothing against his bones. His robes and hair and every bit of him are soaked with blood, continuously flowing from the trowel embedded within his chest. His fingernails are worn down to nothing, his fingers destroyed from scratching at the coffin. His eyes are closed, and were it not for the faintest rise of his chest, the quietest of whimpers from his lips, the blood flowing… Feng Xin would think him dead.
How can he be alive? How, how, how?
A cry on his lips, Feng Xin reaches for his prince.
There’s light.
Xie Lian’s eyes aren’t open, for there is nothing to see so it does not matter if he stares at his eyelids or he stares at darkness, but there is… light, somehow, on the other side of his lids. He’s on his stomach, and everything is soft. A bed? It feels like a bed. He still hurts. His fingers twitch a little, bandaged, and there’s a pain in his chest still, and the sores on his back and legs still ache.
Even a dream couldn’t get rid of everything, for this can only be a dream.
He peeks his eyes open just slightly – no harshness greets his eyes, though any light at all hurts after so long in the dark. Ah. Wait. Shouldn’t think like that. It’s a dream, so reality doesn’t matter. He can just enjoy it.
Xie Lian wishes it were a full dream, with no pain, but he will take this respite as he can.
Once his eyes have adjusted, he does his best to examine where he is. He is, in fact, on a bed. It’s… comfortable. Whoever this dream has summoned up – if there is anyone at all – has thoughtfully placed him on his front. It feels much better than laying on his poor back, after so much time spent on it. His gaze sweeps the room. It’s nice. Ornate. It reminds him of his palace in the Heavens, so many years ago.
It’s with that absent thought that three things dawn on him at once.
First – it is very much like his palace in the Heavens, to the extent that the decorations scream Xianle. It almost brings tears to his eyes.
Second – he can feel the qi in the air. The qi of the Heavens, running through him, healing him, and completely unmistakable from anything else. It’s… it’s real? It’s here?
Third – a man has his back to him, doing something on the table. A… familiar man. A man that makes this feel like all the more a dream, even if the feeling of qi disproves it.
Xie Lian tries to say something, tries to form words, but his throat and mouth are like the desert and he coughs harshly. It shakes his whole body as he squeezes his eyes shut, blood and bile curling from the back of his throat, and it takes everything he has to not throw up, to swallow that back down.
“Easy,” a voice is saying as soon as his coughing subsides enough that he can hear. “Easy. Drink this.” A straw is pressed to his lips, and Xie Lian manages to suck down some water gratefully, the cool wetness a balm, before it’s pulled from him. A whine falls from his throat before he can stop it. “Too much will make yourself sick.”
He opens his eyes again, and it’s real. Mu Qing is the one by his bedside, holding a cup of water, his eyes intent. Xie Lian supposes it shouldn’t be that odd that Mu Qing has a good beside manner – he had cared for his mother, after all. But why… why…?
“Mu… Qing…?” he manages to rasp.
A flicker of what looks like relief passes over Mu Qing’s face. “We heard your prayers,” he says, answering Xie Lian’s obvious but unspoken question.
“...We…?”
Feng Xin bursts through the door, desperation written all over him. “Your Highness!” There are tears in his eyes. Xie Lian can’t remember the last time he saw Feng Xin cry, and his hand is warm as he takes Xie Lian’s bandaged one in his own. “Your Highness, I…” He falters. “I’m… sorry it took us so long,” he whispers.
So long…? They were looking for him. They heard his prayers and they looked for him and they brought him to Heaven. Xie Lian… he… in desperation, of course, he had prayed. He never thought they would hear them, but he had anyway. No matter how they parted, he knew Feng Xin would not wish that fate on him. Even if Mu Qing hated him, Xie Lian had hoped Mu Qing wouldn’t hate him enough to want him to remain.
But he had never thought they’d listen. That such a quiet prayer from someone with nothing would be heard, let alone that they’d come for him.
His eyes flicker between the two of them. He wants to sit up, to properly take this all in, to look around and wrap his head around it, but Xie Lian still feels too weak to move. “Who… el… se…?”
Mu Qing shakes his head. “We didn’t tell anyone. You’re in my palace.” There’s hesitation there, hesitation and caution. Feng Xin trembles as he holds Xie Lian’s hand. Xie Lian has… has no idea what to even say. That they had smuggled him in here…
He had thought he was all alone. He had thought he had chased away everyone, or they had passed. But they… they…
Lying in Mu Qing’s palace, with Feng Xin holding his hand, Xie Lian weeps, surrounded by warmth. It’s light. It’s light.