Chapter Text
It had been less than 24 hours since Jiang Cheng killed his brother and yet he found himself returning to the Burial Mounds. The blood was still fresh on his sword as he walked, slow and solemn, towards the very spot he’d run his brother through with it.
It was early morning, frost crunching beneath his feet as he walked across desecrated grass. The air was frozen, an unnatural stillness settling around him, broken only by the cries of circling crows. The further he walked, the deeper into the canyon he ventured, the more the silence persisted. The birds stopped following him eventually like some invisible wall of resentful energy barred their entry. Resentment dripped from the rock walls that funnelled him forward, sitting heavy in the air until Jiang Cheng was short of breath.
He wondered how his brother had endured it. Wei Ying had settled here, amongst the echoing screams of vengeful spirits and the damned, and he’d called it home. He’d lived here and, rightfully, he’d died here.
Through the decay, signs of life slowly emerged. There were small huts, clustered together like a hamlet. The first he passed had a small porch, the shattered remains of a makeshift rocking chair still slowly swinging back and forth. The next had a small vegetable patch by its door, though all the sprouting potato leaves had been trampled by the siege. Another had a patterned curtain in a blown-out window, the next a wreath of leaves on its door. Small touches that spoke of the characters that once inhabited them.
Jiang Cheng swallowed thickly. He blinked and saw the massacre of the previous day behind his eyelids. Warriors did not decorate their awnings with patchknit quilts. An army of demonic cultivators did not create dancing stone step paths through the mud to connect their homes. Did evil die and leave behind wicker baskets full of sweet potato greens?
Jiang Cheng blocked the doubts from his mind as he trekked on. He was here to find the home of Wei Ying’s research. Who knew what dangerous records he had lying around that could spell an eruption of demonic cultivation should they fall into the wrong hands? He had to gather all of his brother's heretic research and destroy it as soon as he could.
The famed Demon Quelling Cave lay at the brow of the Burial Mounds. It sat gazing over the small settlement, its gaping maw yawning, baring its rotten wooden teeth. There was a door at its very centre that was far too unassuming for the rest of the cave’s facade. It was small and wooden, with another wreath hanging from its handle.
Jiang Cheng approached slowly. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting but it certainly wasn’t the strong waft of incense that hit him like a wave as soon as he cracked open the door. The fragrance was surprising but pleasant, a reprieve from the scent of decay that permeated the rest of the canyon.
The soft morning light illuminated the inside of the famed Yiling Patriarch’s wicked refuge and it looked an awful lot like a normal bedroom. Dawn gave the room a warm glow, morning’s rays falling across an unmade stopgap bed and crawling towards a desk overflowing with unfinished drawings and half-hashed ideas. The bed had blankets piled high, all looking handcrafted and rustic. There were several candles melted down to the quick by the bedside, a book of poems with dog-eared pages perched atop the blanket heap. It looked far too much like Wei Ying’s childhood room in Lotus Pier for Jiang Cheng to stomach, all the way down to the dirty socks that lay strewn across the floor that he’d always promise to ‘put away later’ but never do.
With frozen joints, Jiang Cheng ventured towards the desk. It was an unkempt mess that he had no hope of sifting through. Surely somewhere in this pile of stickmen doodles were Wei Ying’s future plans for evil he just didn’t know where to start. How was he to pick apart the diagrams of talismans from the calendars for planting potatoes amongst the chaos?
Amongst the sea of carnage, however, was one bookshelf. It was just above the bed, a crudely put-together plank of dead wood that bowed dangerously in the centre. It was lined end to end with books, all in various states. Some were pristine, the pages barely thumbed through to the first half, while others looked like they were barely clinging to life, the pages held together by fraying leather strands and a prayer.
Jiang Cheng moved to get a closer look. He ran his fingers across the tightly packed spines, feeling the varying quality of the leather-bound books. His eyes landed on the first book in the row and felt a flare of anger in his chest. He recognised it, the purple of the Jiang Clan sigil emblazoned on its cover was unmistakable. His recreant brother dared hold onto anything pertaining to his clan. It was blasphemy.
Jiang Cheng took the book from the shelf and stared at it. The quality of its craftsmanship had pride for the Jiang Clan blooming in his chest despite it all. The leather was still soft despite its age, the clan emblem and swirling lotus flowers engraved in its flesh. Wei Ying’s initials were patterned in gold on the back cover.
Suddenly, the colour of the book was not the only thing Jiang Cheng recognised. He remembered this exact book as one that his Father had gifted Wei Ying for one of his early birthdays. His brother had lorded it around, showing off the golden cursive of his name on its back like it was a trophy. Wei Ying had kept it safely in his room for years, pride and place amongst his general mess.
Jiang Cheng’s throat felt dry at the thought of Wei Ying still having it all these years later.
He knew the book was too old to have anything pertaining to his evil cultivation in it but he still felt compelled to open it. Curiosity and maybe nostalgia got the better of him.
The first page had a drawing on it, spanning the whole spread. It was a family portrait, likenesses sloppy and childish but easily recognisable. A young Wei Ying had drawn himself, Jiang Cheng and Yanli front and centre, toothy grins spread across wobbly pencil faces. On their left were his Mother and Father, Jiang Fengmian smiling and Yu Ziyuan scowling but still holding hands. On the right was an estimation of Lotus Pier. The lotus flowers were as tall as the building but the sentiment withstood.
Something painful twisted in Jiang Cheng’s stomach. His finger ran slowly down the aged paper, carefully light so as to not smudge the charcoal. Wei Ying had always been a good artist, it was almost uncanny. In the years following this drawing Wei Ying had fine tuned his artistic skills. He’d used it for the sheer purpose of doodling lewd cartoons to fluster the uptight but Jiang Cheng had found it funny enough in his youth to not consider it a talent wasted.
It was the thought that his brother had kept this book with this drawing in it all the way up to his death that had pain flickering in his chest. They were by his bedside too. Had he turned to this drawing in the witching hours of loneliness?
Jiang Cheng carefully flipped to the next page. At the top was a date, penned in Wei Ying’s perfect chicken scratch. If Jiang Cheng thought about it he’d realise that he and Wei Ying would both have been fifteen.
There was a passage of text underneath. So this was his diary. Jiang Cheng tried to read but his vision just couldn’t focus on the words. There was a sudden feeling of tunnelling forward, the page moving simultaneously towards him while the words retreated back. He blinked to clear his head but it seemed to only make things worse.
His body felt weightless for half a second, his vision falling completely dark before he was bodily slammed back into consciousness.
He blinked.
The first thing he noticed was the warmth. The Demon Quelling Cave had been freezing, cold enough to have his breath fog white in front of him, but now he was perfectly warm.
He was staring straight ahead. The room around him looked similar to the bedroom in the Demon Quelling Cave but not quite.
It took half a second too long for Jiang Cheng to realise he was in Wei Ying’s Lotus Pier bedroom. Wei Ying’s dirty socks were still strewn across the floor.
He wanted to blink but his eyes moved without his permission like he wasn’t in control of them. He wanted to move, to run around the room and check the walls for stability, to check that this wasn’t all some elaborate play and he really was back in the old Lotus Pier. But, again, he had no command of his body.
The second thing he noticed, the thing that, when he did had his heart leaping into his throat, was that he was staring into a mirror. He was staring into a mirror and a young Wei Ying stared back at him.
This young Wei Ying moved closer to the mirror, putting a hair tie between his teeth as he raked his hands through his tameless hair, trying it up into a rough ponytail. Jiang Cheng felt his body follow along, he could even taste the fabric of the silk hair tie on his tongue.
The pieces were falling into place but he refused to make the connection.
Then he heard a knock at the door, a muffled voice calling out for Wei Ying.
The puzzle was finally pieced together when Jiang Cheng saw himself walk through the door.
A fifteen-year-old version of himself, at least. He could tell by the hair, he’d lost that specific hairpin during the fall of Lotus Pier.
“Are you still not packed?” He heard himself say.
“I’ve done a little bit.” He felt himself say. He heard Wei Ying’s voice.
He was in Wei Ying’s body, his memories, and there was nothing he could do but hang on for the ride.
He himself remembered this day, they were due to leave for Gusu the next day and his brother had predictably procrastinated packing.
“Define a ‘little bit’”
Wei Ying hummed, swaying on his feet while avoiding Jiang Cheng’s raised gaze. Jiang Cheng stared harder at Wei Ying’s silence.
“Well, I know what I want to pack. I just haven’t put it all together yet.”
“So, what you mean is you haven’t done a little bit of packing, you’ve done no packing and you’re making excuses.”
Wei Ying crossed his arms across his chest and pouted. “Don’t put it that way, it makes it sound bad.”
“I’m just saying the truth,” Jiang Cheng huffed, stalking across the floor and kicking at the stray socks that littered the hardwood. “You haven’t even thrown your dirties out for the wash.”
“I was getting to that-”
“Were you? What were you doing that kept you so busy? I thought you said you were feeling tired and had to retire to your room just before training. Surely all that rest gave you plenty of time to pack yourself up,” Jiang Cheng stalked towards Wei Ying. “Unless you were just looking for an excuse to get out of training,” Wei Ying shifted as if to stop Jiang Cheng in his path. Wei Ying’s hands behind his back scrabbled at the desk just behind him. “and were just using this time to slack off like the wastrel you are-”
Jiang Cheng lunged forward. Wei Ying had no choice but to duck behind the desk just to avoid the worst of his brother’s wrath. What he’d been trying so hard to hide forgotten in his haste to escape Jiang Cheng.
“Aha! You-”
Jiang Cheng’s retort died on his tongue as his eyes finally landed on the open book that Wei Ying had been hiding. It was a quick pencil drawing of the family at the pier.
Jiang Cheng stared down at the drawing for a long moment before returning his gaze back to Wei Ying who was blushing up to his ears.
Wei Ying couldn’t tell what Jiang Cheng was feeling. He’d sketched the drawing out on the first page of the book his Uncle had gifted him. He’d wanted to christen the start of the book with something good. He’d been trying to start his diary in it but had never found a day interesting enough to document at the very start of the book. He’d decided that a drawing of the family was the only thing worthy.
Wei Ying peered at Jiang Cheng from behind the desk. Jiang Cheng was staring curiously at the drawing. Then, he frowned as he chucked it back onto the desk.
He clicked his tongue. “You’ve made my head too big.”
Wei Ying chuckled. “No, I haven’t.”
“Yes, you have. I don’t look like that.”
“You do! The disciples spin tales of your massive head.”
Jiang Cheng scowled. “They do no such thing. You’re just a crappy artist.”
“Shiitake Cheng, they say. His tiny body and bulbous head, swimming in the rivers of Lotus Pier just like the mushrooms in Yanli’s soups.”
“Wei Ying, I will hit you if you don’t shut up.”
“You’d dare hit your dear brother?”
“I’d do it happily and you know it.”
Wei Ying feigned hurt. “You wound me, Jiang Cheng. How could you be so mean?”
Jiang Cheng rolled his eyes. “Stop being dramatic and start packing, lamebrain.”
“And now you’re calling me names? Do I mean so little to you?” There was a wry smile on Wei Ying’s lips as he watched Jiang Cheng’s face twist into a scowl.
“Stop it, Wei Ying.”
“Stop what?”
Jiang Cheng’s lips began to curl and Wei Ying couldn’t help but devolve into a fit of giggles. Getting a rise out of Jiang Cheng was far too easy.
Jiang Cheng snarled at him for a second before turning on his feet and stalking across the bedroom. Before Wei Ying could react, he bent down and grabbed one of Wei Ying’s socks, launching it at full speed at Wei Ying so that it slapped him across the face.
“Jiang Cheng!” Wei Ying cried though he couldn’t hide the amusement in his voice even as he tried to act offended.
“Pack your shit, Wei Ying.”
Wei Ying groaned dramatically. “Fine,” He trudged to pick up the thrown sock. He paused for a moment as he crouched on the floor. “Shiitake Cheng,” He mumbled just loud enough for Jiang Cheng to hear.
“You!”
Jiang Cheng blinked.
He was back in the Demon Quelling Cave. The book was open in his lap. He stared down at it with a twist of horror and awe. Nostalgia for his brother of old stirred in his stomach. That version of Wei Ying had died many years before yesterday, however.
He snapped the book shut. Wildly, he checked the front and back cover. He ran his finger down its spine, inspecting every ridge and bump. He opened it back onto the drawing across the front pages. He flicked quickly through all the pages. He could feel himself being drawn into any page that he lingered on for too long. He sped up. Finally, he landed on the last page, the last spread before hitting the leather back. He found it.
There was a talisman attached to the paper. It wasn’t one that Jiang Cheng recognised so he surmised it was one of Wei Ying’s creations. It wasn’t the first time that he had created something like this, he hadn’t been known as a prodigy for nothing.
It had the makings of a sealing talisman but the characters were all wrong and the order was all out of ordinary. It was still meant to trap but it wasn’t meant to trap spirits.
The penny dropped.
It was meant to trap memories.
Jiang Cheng snapped the book closed. He gripped the spine until his knuckles whitened. He stared back at the bookshelf that was filled end to end. He had to wonder if every single one of those contained similar talismans. He had to wonder if he was staring at the last years of his brother’s life all contained as snapshots within those very books. The thought was dizzying.
There was too much horror trapped within the pages of those diaries for Jiang Cheng to comprehend.
Jiang Cheng looked out of the crack in the door. The morning was still young. There was still time for him to indulge in these books. He shouldn’t. He hated Wei Ying. What use was it to wade through his dead brother's memories? All he’d achieve was emotional insecurity and yet he couldn’t stop himself from opening the diary once again.
He thumbed through a few pages, checking the dates and trying to line them up with his own recollection. There were plenty of entries from his study at Gusu. Jiang Cheng skipped them all. Now wasn’t the time for him to be reliving Wei Ying’s multiple attempts at sneaking Emperor's Smile into the Cloud Recesses. His own memories of that were fresh enough still.
He follows the dates until three months pass. Seeing it in such simple terms made Jiang Cheng realise just how little time Wei Ying spent in Gusu.
He avoided the pull of the pages until he settled on one that caught his interest. It was the day after he returned to Lotus Pier. The first line had his heart leaping into his throat.
“Madam Yu whipped me again today.”
And Jiang Cheng was falling.