Chapter Text
A-Qing shatters, and it hurts. It’s agony of a kind she hasn’t felt since she died. The phantom pain of the tongue that was torn from her mouth, a sensation captured and made eternal in the moment of her death, could not have prepared her for it.
A ghost can only feel pain as a dulled memory. After existing in this state for such a long time, she has nothing to compare to this. It tears through her like lightning. She’s coming apart, pieces breaking and splitting from each other as everything that might still be called her self disintegrates.
Somewhere beyond the sound of her own scream, she can hear Xue Yang grunt in pain. Bright, buoyant living energy is draining from him rapidly, even as his remaining hand still clings to the talisman he’d slammed into her incorporeal shoulder. A moment ago, it had filled her with satisfaction – after all this time, he will die. The monstrous hunger that had ruled her for so long had surged and made her bloodied mouth water with the promise of finally knowing satisfaction. She had been ready to lose her grip on this world and move on to the space between, where she’d down Meng Po’s soup in desperate gulps to wash herself clean.
She would leave the rest to Wei Wuxian, who had been so earnest in his grief for Xiao Xingchen and his determination to carry out her revenge. For the first time in so many years, she had felt something like hope.
Now, as she cries out with the pain of her very soul being torn to pieces, she cannot focus on anything else at all.
A nearby road.
The pain retreats slowly, then all at once, leaving only a distant throb behind. At the same time, an impossible weight crashes into her and pins her down on a ground that feels solid under her feet. She stumbles, and her arm jolts forward on its own. Her trusty bamboo cane slams into the ground and keeps her upright.
Colour erupts in front of her eyes. It doesn’t blind her, not like she remembers the sun once had whenever she’d stepped out of a dark room. She still blinks rapidly, trying to make sense of the blue and brown and grey she finds herself surrounded by. She’s heavy with blood and sinew, skin and bone. A heart beats in her chest. Her tongue twitches in her mouth.
A dusty road stretches out in front of her. People move on it, and they must be alive, though she can’t sense their life force. She sees knobby, sickly trees and high grasses and a thin film of mist hovering just above the ground in some places. The air she breathes is clear. High above in the sky, white clouds lap at the sun.
“Guniang,” a deep voice says behind her, and A-Qing whips around.
She holds her breath. She does not gasp. Her eyes, which are used to the colours and the humid air in a way her mind is not, do not water. But it’s a close thing when she sees the man who has joined her on the road, whose back is ramrod straight and who is dressed in jet black robes and whose cheeks are lightly flushed with the unmistakeable colour of life.
Song Lan leans back, startled by her sudden reaction. “If you really cannot see,” he says after some hesitation, “you should walk more carefully.”
She hasn’t heard his voice since that unfortunate day they first met. She had forgotten how crisp his pronunciation was. It makes him sound like he’s reading out a poem. Only very belatedly, she remembers to let her eyes go unfocused and stops gripping her cane like she’s holding on for dear life.
“Thank you, thank you,” she says. Her tongue shapes the words without issue.
Song Lan takes his fuchen from where it’s tucked into the crook of his arm and nudges her shoulder. The touch is gentle, and her body barely reacts to it. She thinks she can feel every groove in the wood.
“There are fewer people on the side of the road. It’s safer to walk there.”
She follows his guidance like she’d done the day everything fell apart. Now that her mind is readjusting to the sensations of a living, sighted body, the intensity of the déjà-vu finally registers.
A moment ago, she’s sure – the pain has burnt the memory into her like a brand – she’d been listening to Xue Yang die in the familiar, lifeless streets of Yi City. If she recognises this road correctly, she isn’t too far from that place, but it’s like all the years that separate this moment now from the one she just left behind have been erased at the snap of a finger. Like everything that happened, from Xue Yang’s betrayal to Xiao Xingchen’s shattering to the years she spent haunting the walls of her old home as a vengeful ghost, was only a bad dream.
Song Lan has left her by the roadside, evidently thinking her safe for now. His steps are sure and measured, the scabbard of the sword strapped to his back reflects the bright sunlight, and his heavy robes swing around his feet. She knows how those robes looked soaked with blood. Nothing in the world could convince her that it had been a dream.
Her feet carry her further down the road, trailing after Song Lan. Slowly, the reality of what’s happening to her takes solid shape in her mind. She’s back in that moment that changed everything, on the day before Xiao Xingchen died and she lost it all. Something has sent her here after Xue Yang disintegrated her spirit, though she has no idea what. Maybe this is how the unluckiest souls spend their afterlife: cursed to forever relive the worst of what happened to them in life.
If that were the case, she could do nothing that deviates from what she’s already lived through. She’d be a passenger in her own body, unable to do anything but watch the horrors she already knows are about to occur.
A-Qing purses her exhilaratingly corporeal lips and does something she’s sure she hadn’t done back then. She lifts her cane, swings it at the sky, and twirls around a few times, until her head is ever so slightly dizzy and some of the marketgoers send her curious glances.
Nothing stops her from doing so. She’s still where and when she was before, by the roadside on that thrice-cursed day, and she’s beginning to settle back into the sensation of being made of flesh.
Her eyes again zero in on Song Lan. He’s a few steps ahead, asking one of the passers-by about a blind daozhang, and A-Qing’s resolution hardens.
“Daozhang!” she calls out, almost like she had back then. “Why are you looking for that other daozhang?”
Song Lan freezes, and A-Qing’s chest tightens. His eyes, which she now knows used to be Xiao Xingchen’s, are wide and hopeful, and his voice wavers.
“You have seen him before?”
There’s no need to interrogate him. He might end up thinking her naive, but she knows his character. She’d trust him blindly.
Taking care to keep her gaze somewhere above his left shoulder, she clutches her cane in front of her chest and nods. “I’ve been living with a blind daozhang for some time! The sword he carries has frost flowers on it, right?”
Song Lan nods numbly, shakes himself, and responds with a strained, “Yes.”
A-Qing smiles. “We stay in a yizhuang not far from here. You can come with me, daozhang!”
“Thank you, guniang,” Song Lan says gravely. “Thank you.”
“Ah, you can buy me something as thanks,” she quips as she turns them towards the road. “Finder’s reward. I want some pretty rouge for my cheeks, daozhang. But you’ll have to pick the colour, because I can’t see!”
Too overwhelmed to respond properly, Song Lan hums vague agreement. A-Qing’s bamboo pole taps out the way ahead, and she lets it lead her down a path even a hundred years of horrors couldn’t make her forget.
The scattered trees with their gnarled bark look like old friends. The gates of Yi City are open, and though it had never been a busy town, there are people out on the streets, chatting and going about their days. Some of them have familiar faces, and one or two greet her when she walks past. She remembers their names. She doesn’t want to think about the fate they’d met at Xue Yang’s hands.
A fluffy cloud moves courteously to the side, letting sunlight shine down on them that warms A-Qing’s skin. Song Lan walks steadily behind her, and his solid presence soothes the parts of her that still feel brittle.
Over the years, she’d grown used to taking comfort in his company, and it seems like the habit hasn’t yet left her. Whenever Xue Yang had gone on one of his frenzied errands out of town and left Song Lan behind to guard Xiao Xingchen’s corpse, A-Qing had followed the subdued pulse of his resentful energy and sat by his side, sometimes for days at a time. After she’d been unable to save his life, she had owed him that loyalty. And it’d made things better, to know that there was one more soul who understood.
She can’t lead him to his death again. This might all be an illusion, some cruel trick played on them by the Gods. But if she’s willing to consider the Gods playing tricks on a petty nobody like her, it’s just as likely that someone in Heaven took pity on her. If it’s real, if she has really by some means been sent back in time, she can’t let this chance slip through her fingers.
She can change things. She can make Xue Yang pay and save Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan’s lives before it’s too late.
“Is the daozhang a friend of yours?” she asks innocently.
Song Lan hesitates, just like he had the last time. The answer seems to stick in his throat. “Yes.”
A-Qing inclines her head, pretending to think. “I guess he mentioned an old friend once.”
“He did?” Song Lan asks. Even in his clear voice, his disbelief sounds raw.
“Mh-hm,” she hums. It’s true, after all, even though Xiao Xingchen hadn’t talked about his former companion often. A-Qing never had found out exactly what had happened between him and Song Lan, but Wei Wuxian had heard the rumours people told about it. The memories that had become hers during the Empathy spell had filled in some blanks.
If things go well, she wants to hear the story from Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan’s own mouths this time.
“I’m A-Qing,” she adds while she leads Song Lan around a corner. “Why don’t you tell me your name, daozhang?”
“Apologies, guniang.” He stops, though briefly, to bow to her. “My name is Song Lan, courtesy name Zichen.”
“Good, good. It’s good to know what to call you,” she muses. “The man who lives with us, it’s been three years and he still hasn’t told us his name! He’s been mooching off two blind people for so long, but he still doesn’t even want to share who he is!”
She casts a subtle glance at Song Lan out of the corner of her eyes. His face has darkened.
“What sort of man lives with you and the daozhang?”
“A bad man! We found him dying in a ditch, and daozhang healed him and saved his life, and now he doesn’t want to leave! He’s mean to me all the time, and he always tries to skip out on his chores, and I know he’s shady because he never tells us anything about himself!” Gritting her teeth, she pitches her voice down to an irritated mutter. “Son of a pig and a lame donkey. Stupid, dirty, nine-fingered bastard! I hate him so much, but daozhang says we can’t throw him out.”
The thought alone makes her throat tighten and her flesh-and-bone arms tingle with fury. Her very limbs are urging her to move them, a feeling not unlike the resentful hunger that had driven all her actions for the past years, and she brings her cane down hard on the ground to relieve the tension. If she employs some creativity, she can imagine that she’s hitting Xue Yang’s head.
Beside her, Song Lan’s steps have become very stiff. “You say he has nine fingers?”
Instantly, her anger shifts into a vicious sense of satisfaction. “Yeah. But he never said how he lost that finger either!”
“How can you tell? You couldn’t have seen it.”
“Bah,” A-Qing spits and forces her brows into a frown to cover up how very proud she is that he’s picked up on her hint. “He’s lived with us for so long, of course I’ve noticed! Just because I’m blind doesn’t mean that I can’t notice things!”
Song Lan makes a noise of acknowledgement. With him walking behind her, A-Qing can’t properly look at him without giving herself away, and while she thinks she might drop her act soon once they’re all safe and Xue Yang is dead, the first person she tells should be Xiao Xingchen. So she keeps her eyes on the road and slows down her steps, falling behind just a little until she can make out the contours of Song Lan’s face at the edge of her vision.
He’s frowning heavily. The hand that’s carrying his fuchen is clenched hard around its handle, turning his knuckles bone white with the effort. Something about the sight sends a shiver down A-Qing’s spine.
She tilts her head in his direction, takes two careful steps closer to him, and lets her blank eyes go very wide. “Why are you asking, daozhang? Do you know that man?”
Song Lan twitches. The line of his mouth is thin and taut, but what he ends up saying is, “No. A mere twist of fate, I’m sure.”
He doesn’t elaborate, just keeps walking straight ahead, and it’s hard to tell from his stony face what he’s thinking. A-Qing takes the lead again, worrying at her lower lip. Her fingers itch with another one of those nigh-physical urges. She wants to cling to his sleeve, beg him to listen, and tell him everything she knows, so that he’ll face Xue Yang knowing about the corpse powder and take his head off before Xue Yang even gets to talk.
But there’s no reason why she would know Xue Yang’s name when Xiao Xingchen doesn’t. And he’d never believe her if she told him that this is not the first time she’s lived this day. She’ll simply have to hope that this puny seed of suspicion will be enough to steel his mind and give him an edge in the fight ahead.
-
They arrive at the yizhuang a little later than they had the first time around. Song Lan, who seems troubled in a more sombre way than A-Qing remembers him being, stops in his tracks halfway down the street, and when A-Qing looks up, she catches a glimpse of Xue Yang’s grinning figure as he steps into the yizhuang’s entrance.
The rage that floods her catches her off guard. She should be used to it – she’d spent years observing Xue Yang from the shadows, years during which her hatred of him had been the only thing keeping her tied to the living world. But somehow, seeing the crook of his mouth, his sharp canines, and the jovial swing in his step almost makes her vision white out.
When she catches herself, her heart is beating hard and Song Lan has gone pale as a sheet. Moving quietly in the way only a cultivator can, he touches his fuchen to her shoulder again and guides her closer to the yizhuang. Both of them wince at the sound of Xue Yang’s cackling laugh.
“Don’t speak,” Song Lan whispers. “This must be the man you spoke of. I know him.”
A-Qing doesn’t know if she could speak if she wanted to. She crouches down below the yizhuang’s shoddy window, clutches her cane to her chest, and breathes deeply to stop her head from spinning.
“Whose turn is it today?” says a voice, and all her resolve cracks like cheap pottery.
The words are muffled by the old walls, barely audible over the rush of blood inside A-Qing’s own head, but they send a wave of such warmth through her body that it feels like her heart stills. Tears well up in her eyes, and she hurriedly squeezes her lids shut to keep them from spilling. Her throat is tight. A childish impulse takes hold of her: she could jump to her feet now, run inside their yizhuang, and see him again. She could make up some sob story to cry about, and Xiao Xingchen would soothe her, pat her head, maybe even take her into his arms and let her cry snot and tears into his pretty white robes.
She wants nothing more. It’s a desire so overwhelming that this living body feels too small for it, and she for a moment yearns to cast off her skin and let all that she’s feeling leak out of her in swathes of resentment. But when she forces her eyes open again, they are almost level with Song Lan’s trembling hand around the fuchen, and that’s a grim reminder that she has to keep her wits about her.
“Come back, I’ll go,” Xue Yang’s grating voice calls inside the house. She’s almost missed the entirety of his stupid stick-drawing game. He sounds joyful in a way he hadn’t been in years in her own time, and his obvious glee at having fooled Xiao Xingchen is nauseating.
She holds onto that feeling and uses it to fuel the remains of her rage until her eyes stop burning. All she has to do is wait. Once Xue Yang is dead, she can come back here and spend the rest of the day talking to Xiao Xingchen. Nothing is going to take him from her ever again.
To the backdrop of Xue Yang’s playful mockery and Xiao Xingchen’s gentle laughter, she shifts around and cranes her head up to look at Song Lan. He looks back, his eyes wide and glossy, and unfreezes to tap the fuchen against her shoulder.
A-Qing follows him obligingly, first behind the house and then down the street, while behind them, Xue Yang whistles a jaunty tune as he leaves the yizhuang in the direction of the market.
Song Lan leads her to down two blocks of houses before he finally stops, takes a few laboured breaths, and turns around to face her.
“Qing-guniang,” he says. His pronunciation is sharp as a sword-edge again. “You said this man lived with you for years?”
“Three,” A-Qing confirms. “Why, daozhang? Who is he?”
Song Lan opens his mouth, clearly searching for words, then curtly shakes his head and presses his lips together. “He is a noted criminal,” he settles on saying. “A murderer and a cultivator of the demonic path. I’ve encountered him before. What has he done in the time he lived with you?”
“I told you, he’s been mean!” A-Qing pulls her shoulders up, making herself small the way she would if she were scared, and pitches her voice higher. “He lounges about all day, and he cheats the vendors at the market when daozhang isn’t watching. And he goes on night hunts with daozhang, hunting walking corpses and such.”
“He helps him?” Song Lan glances back up in the direction of the yizhuang. “Do they get along well?”
The question is rough around the edges, like it hurts him to even consider the possibility. A-Qing’s fingers tighten around her bamboo pole.
“Well enough,” she lies. “Daozhang laughs about all his stupid jokes, but daozhang’s a good man, and he doesn’t like all the cheating and how mean that guy is, so they disagree a lot too.”
If Xiao Xingchen later wants to confess to Song Lan just how much he’d liked their strange housemate, it will be in the safety of a world in which Xue Yang is a corpse being feasted on by dogs and crows. He surely wouldn’t be mad at A-Qing for lying if he knew it saved their lives, and for now, she needs Song Lan steadfast in his goal to kill Xue Yang.
She allows a few tears to spill out and wet her cheeks. “Song-daozhang,” she whines, stumbling closer to him on unsure feet. “Do you think we’re in danger? If he’s a murderer, do you think he’ll hurt us? What should we do?”
Her hand nearly brushes against his sleeve, and Song Lan pulls his hand back as if cut. A heartbeat later, he glares down at his own arm like it’s Xue Yang himself and smooths over his expression.
“Stay calm, guniang,” he says firmly. “I’ll take care of it. Go back home, and promise you won’t tell the daozhang any of what we just discussed. It would only disturb him unnecessarily.”
The blade of his sword – Fuxue, A-Qing’s mind provides, though she isn’t sure if she’d ever known its name before – gleams in the sun when he pulls it out of its scabbard. A-Qing bites her cheek and lowers her head to mask the flash of anticipation that runs through her.
“Yes, yes, of course,” she says. “Song-daozhang, you promise you be careful, yes? That guy is crafty, and daozhang always says he’s really quick in a fight!”
Song Lan, who has already fixed his black eyes on the street corner where Xue Yang had disappeared earlier, pauses and turns back to her, subtly lowering his head. “I’ll take care.”
With that, he steps onto his sword and takes off, a blur of black and silver in the sky. A-Qing watches until he disappears behind the shabby roofs of the surrounding houses, then tucks her cane under her arm and darts after him as quickly as her legs can carry her.
-
On his sword, Song Lan is much faster than her, but A-Qing has the advantage of knowing where he’ll find Xue Yang on his way back from his shopping trip. The few townspeople that aren’t at the market turn their heads when she rushes past, but she pays them no mind. The layout of these streets has become a part of her, and she weaves through their labyrinth effortlessly. When she reaches the little patch of forest where she’d watched Song Lan die on this day all those years ago, she jumps over knotty roots and fallen branches until the muscles in her thin legs ache and her ears pick up on the clang of swords.
The timing is still a little off, then. Last time, A-Qing had arrived before Song Lan and Xue Yang had started fighting, but this new order of events suits her fine. Maybe it’s just that this Song Lan hasn’t hesitated to attack.
“Speak!” Song Lan’s shout cuts through the heavy air. A bird flies up, startled out of its nest.
A-Qing hurries in the direction of the noise, and a moment later, she spots two dark-robed figures dancing around each other amidst the trees.
Song Lan is on the offence, keeping Xue Yang busy with one precise strike after the other. “You could have taken your revenge at any point. Why stay close to Xiao Xingchen for so long?”
“Can’t I just have some fun when I’m bored? It’s not like I had anything else to do!” Xue Yang’s cursed sword – Jiangzai, and how does she know this? – meets each of Song Lan’s attacks with a sharp noise while its owner ducks and twists out of range, sometimes escaping the edge of the blade by a hair’s breadth. Still, he’s grinning almost manically.
Quickly, A-Qing slips behind a large tree trunk and crouches down. Her teeth are digging into her lower lip; she’d hoped that Song Lan would go straight for the kill. Her crude plan might already have failed, and it makes her blood run cold.
“Why not spend a little time watching a skilled swordsman like Xiao Xingchen-daozhang nobly serve his community? I’m sure you can imagine, Song-daozhang,” Xue Yang continues nonchalantly, “that he has always tirelessly taken care of every threat he heard of. How fortunate I am to have a friend like that!”
A series of metallic clanks rings through the forest in rapid succession. It’s followed by a quiet, punched-out noise, and A-Qing scrambles to peek through a low bush next to her hiding place.
Xue Yang has disengaged and is casually twirling his sword in his hand, but one of his sleeves has been slashed to reveal a shallow cut on his upper arm. A few steps away from him, Song Lan levels Fuxue at him, ready to attack again.
“Make this short,” he bellows. A-Qing’s racing heart lightens.
“What, and if I say the right thing, you’ll let me live?” Xue Yang giggles. The next moment, he darts forward like a cornered snake, swiping at Song Lan’s legs. Song Lan reacts in time, but Xue Yang spins around easily to assault him with an onslaught of ugly feints and stabs.
“Did you know,” he lilts while Song Lan steadily parries him, “that when a person is poisoned with corpse powder, they’re pretty much indistinguishable from a walking corpse? Not even Shuanghua can tell the difference! And if you cut out that person’s tongue so they can’t cry for help…”
Xue Yang lunges. Song Lan’s lightning-quick response harshly knocks his sword to the side, but Xue Yang holds onto its hilt, follows the movement with his whole body, and jumps backwards. A flick of his wrist sends out a sword glare, which Song Lan only just manages to block.
Xue Yang lands a few feet away. He’s still grinning.
“I’ll let you fill in the blanks,” he calls. “What do you think, how many walking corpses has the helpful daozhang killed over the years?”
A-Qing digs her nails into the soft forest soil as she watches the blood drain from Song Lan’s face.
“You bastard,” he chokes out. “You filthy bastard.”
Fuxue seems to give off an eerie glow, which A-Qing is fairly sure is not reflected sunlight. Xue Yang huffs a laugh, but Song Lan is on him before he can say a word. He’s frighteningly quick. In a whirl of black robes, he moves through an unforgiving flow of strikes that leave Xue Yang no choice but to fall back step by step, and A-Qing realises with a bout of relief that he’s no longer holding back.
“You deceived him—” A ringing clash of metal. “You took advantage of his blindness—” Song Lan strikes again before Xue Yang can recover from the last one, piercing straight through his guard.
Xue Yang jolts backwards, but Fuxue’s very tip slices through the skin of his cheek. Even from a distance, A-Qing can see the dangerous gleam in his eyes that means he’s recalculating his strategy.
She knows what will happen next, and she’ll never forget what follows if she lets it. So far, Xue Yang had been all but digging his own grave with his taunts. Now, he leaps out of Song Lan’s range, wipes the blood off his cheek, and spits out his next words.
“And who’s the reason he’s blind in the first place, Song-daozhang?”
Song Lan startles. It’s subtle for now, and he’s got his sword back in attack position almost instantly, but A-Qing knows what to look for. The wave of grief that crosses his face is unmistakeable.
Xue Yang latches onto that sign of weakness like a leech.
“Funny that you think you can barge in here and make this any of your business,” he scoffs. “Last thing I heard, you told Xiao Xingchen you never wanted to see his face again! And now you dare talk to me like you’re still his friend—”
He’s cut off by a sword glare, followed by another strike of Song Lan’s sword. He deflects both. Song Lan keeps up his attacks, but his face is twisted in a pained grimace, and he’s slipping. Each blow in the barrage he throws at Xue Yang looks more desperate than the last.
A-Qing hadn’t really picked up on it the last time. To her untrained eyes, the whole fight had looked like a chaotic flurry of swords and billowing robes. But even from her patchy memories, Wei Wuxian had been able to tell that Song Lan had had the upper hand – had been the better swordsman and so close to winning several times – right until he’d lost his footing.
In a moment, Xue Yang will slip a hand into his robes to send out a cloud of corpse powder, and Song Lan won’t see it coming. It’s all going to repeat, only a little later in the day and a few steps further into the forest. A-Qing’s attempt to strengthen Song Lan’s resolve hadn’t been enough. Seven years of grief and resentment lodge in her throat, and she wants to scream.
She’s out of the bushes before she can really think about it.
“Leave him alone!” she shrieks at the top of her lungs. “You sick piece of shit! You dog-fucked slimy gutter scum!”
Both men freeze in the motion. Xue Yang’s wide eyes dart over to meet hers, then back to Song Lan, and for a moment, he looks puzzled. Then, Song Lan spins them around to put his own body between him and A-Qing and shouts over his shoulder, “Qing-guniang! Get out of here!”
A-Qing stubbornly shakes her head, but any words she might say to him die in her mouth. She can’t look away from Xue Yang’s face, which is twisting into a snarl she had seen only once before, shortly before Shuanghua had cut her tongue out.
His sharp teeth are on full display. What he’s doing with his lips can barely be called a grin, though the corners of his mouth are pulled up in a caricature of a smile.
“Look at that, if it isn’t Little Blind!” he calls, and there’s an edge to the cloyingly sweet cadence of his voice that cuts like a dagger. “Are you saying you’re in cahoots with the noble daozhang here? I’ve got to hand it to you, I knew you were a faithless little liar, but a backstab like this is low even for you!”
Without warning, he throws Jiangzai’s blade forward again, but Song Lan is there, parrying every blow before it can get anywhere near A-Qing.
Xue Yang isn’t even looking at him.
“We share our meals for three years,” he snarls, “and the moment some stuck-up asshole comes along and spews some lies about me, you take his side?”
“Shut up!” A-Qing screams back. “You lied to us! I always knew you weren’t worth the dirt under daozhang’s shoes, but you’re even worse than that! You’re a foul lowlife murderer and you’re fucked in the head, and I hope you die, I hope you never drag your grimy mug anywhere near daozhang ever again!”
Tears sting in her eyes now, which she can’t make any sense of. She should have gotten used to the sight of his face by now. Her half-baked plan to distract him is working. There is no reason for her hands to be shaking so violently.
At the same time, Xue Yang’s terrifying smile falters. “Where’s Xiao Xingchen, then? Didn’t he want to help his old friend? Didn’t you tell him who I am?”
A thin wisp of black smoke rises from Jiangzai’s blade and curls in tune with Xue Yang’s cold voice. That’s the only warning they get before he swings it at the ground, throwing up a cloud of leaves and dirt into Song Lan’s face. Song Lan’s sleeve blocks most of it, and he’s quick enough to dodge the sword glare that follows, but it’s enough to briefly break his guard of A-Qing.
“Qing-guniang!” he shouts again, more urgent this time.
A-Qing pays it no mind. She clenches her fists, stabs her cane at the ground, and shouts, “And what if I do? What if I run back right now and tell him? He’ll cut your head off himself, and I’ll dance on your grave, and—”
Xue Yang’s eyes go wide and wild. Song Lan jumps to stop him, but he’s too late. Quick as a whip, Xue Yang splits the blade of his sword in two. One half, he points at Song Lan to halt his attack, somewhere in the region of his throat. The other, he throws straight at A-Qing.
A hot, stinging pain shoots through her shoulder. It’s sharp in a way only a corporeal injury can be, muscle and sinew and blood vessels all screaming in unison, and yet, it’s nothing compared to the agony she went through when her spirit was torn apart.
A high-pitched cry escapes from her mouth all the same. A moment later, the split blade is wrenched out of her flesh again – Xue Yang has called it back just in time to stop Song Lan from taking his head off.
A-Qing presses her palm to the wound, trying to stop the blood from gushing out. The blade must have pierced her straight through, because she can feel something warm wet the back of her robes, too. It might have broken bone. The thought is sickening.
But she’s breathing just fine, and her heart is beating fast. She blinks to clear the tears out of her eyes and finds Song Lan, tall and straight-backed and furious, driving Xue Yang back with all his strength.
“Xue Yang!” he thunders. “My patience for you has run out!”
Xue Yang is fighting with two blades, and despite his impressive speed, he needs both of them to block Song Lan’s rapid attacks. The scratch on his cheek has wet half his face with blood. It doesn’t stop him from forcing his lips back into a grin.
“Stay out of this! Can’t you see this is a domestic dispute? If you want a say in this, where were you the past three years?”
“Stop talking!” Song Lan snaps and, in one brisk swing of his sword, cuts a hole in the side of Xue Yang’s robes and torso.
Xue Yang doesn’t even flinch. “Didn’t you want me talking before?” he spits back. His right hand draws a quick sword seal, and one of his blades flies out, spins around mid-air, and rushes right at Song Lan’s broad back.
A-Qing holds her breath, but she’s starting to understand why Wei Wuxian had thought so highly of Song Lan’s sword work. Fuxue slices through the air in one expansive arch, deflects the strike Xue Yang had aimed at Song Lan’s chest, then slams straight into Jiangzai’s other half.
It’s sent skitting over the uneven forest ground, and A-Qing throws herself forward to catch it. There’s a bit of her blood still on the tip of the blade.
Xue Yang bursts into laughter, like the loss of half his sword is one of Xiao Xingchen’s mediocre jokes.
“Come on, is that all you can do? I’d have thought they’d teach you better at your temple!” He barely sidesteps a lash of Song Lan’s fuchen, the ends of which whizz through the air like a thousand whips. “But then, your shifu wasn’t much of a match either when—”
The rest of his sentence dies in a gargling cough. He stops dead, smile still in place but eyes wide with shock. Fuxue’s blade is lodged deep in his chest. A-Qing catches a glimpse of silver where the tip juts out of Xue Yang’s back.
Song Lan’s knuckles are stark white around the sword’s hilt. Between heavy breaths, he gasps, “Do not dare mention him with your filthy mouth.”
Almost innocuously, Xue Yang blinks down at his own chest. “Hah. Song Zichen-daozhang.” He lets out a wet, rattling breath. “Really didn’t think you had it in you.”
Jiangzai’s other half falls to the ground, where it hits soft leaves and moss. Xue Yang’s black eyes gloss over, but they still flicker from tree to tree as if searching for something. When he finds A-Qing crouched on the ground, they go clear again. She holds his gaze.
His body sags forward. Song Lan winces and sidesteps it, pulling his sword free, and Xue Yang lands on the soft moss with a dull thump. Red blood drips onto the leaves from Fuxue’s blade. Song Lan is staring down at the sight, his face pale and entirely blank.
The wound in A-Qing’s shoulder throbs painfully, which is only just enough to shake her out of her stupor. As soon as she dares to move a muscle, though, her thoughts start racing. She pushes herself to her feet with the help of her bamboo pole – her shoulder protests loudly – and wills her shaky legs to move her closer to Song Lan.
“Song-daozhang!” she calls out. “Song-daozhang, is he—”
She can’t bring herself to say it, even after years of wanting Xue Yang dead. It’s fine; Song Lan would expect an ordinary girl her age to shy away from this kind of thing. Slowly, the panic drains out of her limbs along with all her strength, making her shiver.
Song Lan lifts his head. He’s so hoarse she struggles to understand him. “Yes. Guniang, your shoulder—” he starts, but the blood loss and the sheer force of her relief ring in A-Qing’s ears, and she has no time for his hesitation.
She’s on the next step already, thinking about what they’ll tell Xiao Xingchen. Maybe she can convince Song Lan to back her up and tell a bold-faced lie, something about a yaoguai that had attacked their housemate. Then Song Lan could pretend that he’d tried to help but arrived too late, and Xiao Xingchen would never have to find out that their housemate had been Xue Yang, and he’d never learn about all the people he’d killed.
He’ll mourn his friend. But A-Qing will be there to help him, and he’ll be happy to meet Song Lan again. Together, they’ll manage. Xue Yang is dead on the ground and won’t hurt anyone ever again, and it will be okay. She’s won. By the grace of whatever God decided to give her this second chance, they’ll be alright.
Tears are spilling from her eyes like water from a well.
Song Lan clears his throat. It sounds strangely distorted. “Guniang, you should sit down. I’ll treat your wound. I have bandages, and I should be able to stop the bleeding, but we’ll have to…”
He trails off, and a heavy frown settles on his brow when he looks off to the side. “What is—”
Something strange happens, then. A leaf that had fallen from a tree vanishes out of the air. A-Qing follows Song Lan’s gaze and is met with an incomprehensible sight: for all the time she’d spent blind, she doesn’t think she could ever have imagined the sight of nothing.
Song Lan whips back around in shock, but he’s only half there. In front of A-Qing’s eyes, he dissolves, alongside the trees and the moss and the blue sky and Xue Yang’s dead body on the ground beside them.
Frozen in shock, A-Qing tries to look down at her own hands, but she can’t move. Her hands tingle, then every single spot of her skin. She feels the weight of her physical body leave her, just before everything goes dark.