Red Sun

Yiling Laozu, Wei Wuxian, Wei Ying, wakes up — and that’s where his problems begin. He was not supposed to wake up. He didn’t want to wake up. But he is awake, and he lies staring at the ceiling, feeling the rays of the dawn sun on the skin of his face, which has never been seen in Ylling, much less in the Burial Mounds. He lies there, hearing breathing somewhere to his right, somewhere farther into the room, but afraid to look. He lies and looks, looks and lies — he must not think. But he starts, he remembers, and he can’t stop. He clenches his teeth so hard that he feels his jaw ache, his face contorts, and the world swims over as he lets the tears just flow, flow and flow. He’s close to his breakdown, he’s so close to screaming, but he can’t. He can’t, he can’t, he can’t. Wei Ying swallows his sobs, and turns back against the wall, wrapping his arms around himself, trembling and not breathing. Hands on his body, they are pulling him, he is tearing him; Jin Zixuan falls before him, the bell drowns in his blood; he thinks: 'tear me', and the corpses obey him; his shijie, his beautiful-unbelievable-unspeakable shijie is bleeding into his hands; he hears Jiang Cheng’s angry, because it cannot be fear, shout as the dead men tear him apart; Qing-jie leaves, Wen Ning bows to him: thank you and goodbye; he feels someone’s fingers on his cheek, cold but not angry, he hears: 'I will protect you, I swear on my name W—'. It hurts so much. Shijie. It hurts so much that he coughs — Jin Rulan — blood stains his sheets, but he doesn’t notice. He coughs — Jiang-shushu, Madame Yu — coughs — Jin Zixuan — and coughs. Popo, Uncle Fo, Uncle Tu, Uncle Wang, Aunt Tu, Aunt San… “Wei Wuxian?” Jiang Cheng's voice goes through him, and the pain is deafening, he coughs-coughs-coughs. I’m so sorry. There’s so much blood. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. He thinks the blood is running down his face. “Wei Wuxian!” he sees the face of Jiang Cheng, his shidi, whom he has betrayed in so many ways, Wei Ying wants to fall even lower than the floor, wants to worship before him a thousand times. But instead of words, he feels blood flowing from his nose. A-Yuan. His heart is breaking. And he groans for the first time in an eternity. It hurts, so unimaginably painful, hot and cold, he is beaten and slashed, he gathers only to break. A sob breaks into a sob as he grasps his chest, his heart beats harder than ever, it hurts, it hurts so bad. Jiang Cheng is gone, running out, and he can hear his loud voice somewhere further away. A smile lights up his lips as he catches the rays of the sun again, forcing himself to straighten on his knees when footsteps are heard. Hanguang-Jun appears in a glow of white, Zewu-Jun right behind him, and he wants to ask: 'Have you come to take me away? ' — but Wei Ying finds himself laughing. Yiling Laozu’s madness is what it is. He laughs, laughs and laughs, and can’t stop even when he hears the beginning of their music, he lets the darkness take him, he so doesn’t want to wake up.

***

Qi Deviation. His strong, impossible and infinitely stupid shixiong, his older brother, has a qi deviation. Jiang Cheng had to start his day by hearing a cough, more painful than it should be from someone who saw him off for the evening yesterday with a smile and unbridled energy. He opens his eyes only to see Wei Wuxian, the head disciple of the Sect Jiang, Wei Ying, all in the blood that seeped through his coughing hand. And it flowed and flowed, out of his mouth, eyes, ears, and nose. And his shixiong gasped, and there was nothing he could do. Jiang Cheng doesn’t even remember running, screaming louder than ever at the Lotus Pier for someone to help him. Very undignified behavior for an heir to the sect, but his shixiong’s blood soaked his knees, his shixiong couldn’t say a word, his shixiong was dying, and he didn’t know what to do. Jiang Cheng was just lucky enough to run into the Twins Jades first thing, he doesn’t know what he looked like, what his face looked like, but Zewu-Jun, the collected and calm Zewu-Jun, quickly realized from his snippy words that they needed a healer, and told him which way to run. He saw that he had raised a ruckus, but he didn’t care about curious faces, he didn’t care that he was running through Gusu Lan in his lower robes, breaking several dozen rules, he thought of nothing but his goal, and he even dodged Lan-laoshi when he tried to tell him something. He — did — not — have — time — for — them. When he returned with the healers, the music of the Lan Brothers was playing, extremely soothing and effective, and very insistent. Jiang Cheng had not studied spellcasting through music, but he could catch a moment when a lot of qi was put into the notes to make them more effective. It also calmed him after the fact. His shixiong was taken from his sight and he was not allowed to go with them, he knows the Lan Clan has questions, but he can barely bring himself to pull himself together because there is more blood; how much blood can a man lose before it becomes fatal? The end of this laughter will haunt his nightmares.

***

Wei Ying wakes up. This event alone almost makes him howl like a wounded animal. His whole body is tense, his muscles are stretched and his limbs are not obeying properly, and his meridians are burning. The silence of the night and the lonely burning lantern of the healer on duty greet him, but Wei Ying does not let it be known that he is awake. They killed his son. He stares at the ceiling again, not blinking, not crying, exhaling as if he had given up on the very idea of life. Laughter bubbles in his chest, threatening to open his ribs and twist outward, a smile strains his lips as if through the threads in the corners of his lips. His heart cracks. Wei Ying feels so tired, so useless: 'look at him, unable to protect anyone, destroying everything he touched, and now unable to rid the world of himself as he should', he hears inside him somehow the voice of Madame Yu, the only person who saw his true nature from the beginning. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry… When he blinks, hours seem to pass. The sun touches his skin again, and he can only turn his head toward the window. The light warmth seems foreign, his hands clean and full of calluses from his sword, not from re-stitching the same fabrics, not from the chips of ebony when he built houses, not from the stones on which he slept and ate and worked. Not from the life he lived. Was it all a dream? Was his mind so hard, so thoughtful, so realistic? Could he have imagined all those years? Could he have invented all this pain, love, and loss? Had he really lost his mind, as everyone said? Did he leave Burial Mounds for the first time? He feels himself grinning again, looking at his unharmed hands, so young, so unencumbered, so not his, as he sits up and pulls down his red ribbon, parting his hair. (Of course, none of the Lans touched his hair, they honor their rules too much for that). “Wei Wuxian!” and it’s Jiang Cheng, with rounder cheeks and bigger eyes. More innocent, more kinder, more open. His shidi, whom he lost through his own fault. Because Jiang Cheng would never look at him with care. Not anymore. Never. Wei Ying doesn’t know what makes him flinch when he smiles (could he see the madness in his eyes and reveal it?), and he’ll have to work on that. “Good morning”, he tries to say a little more cheerfully than corresponds to the present, and completely fails if he sees the doubled concern of his former shidi. He’s going to have to work really hard on this one. Because fate hates him and made him right when he wanted exactly nothing from the world. Wei Ying, Wei Wuxian, is not yet Yiling Laozu.

***

It takes Wei Ying a week to pull himself together, to reassemble what was once his mind and heart, and to try to put the pieces together. Unfortunately, he has lost some pieces, and put others in the wrong place and the wrong way. He still looks at the sun on his slightly tanned skin; he still can’t bring himself to eat more often than once a day; he still can’t smile in a way that doesn’t scare off or alarm those around him. Then, a long time ago (four lifetimes ago, it seems) the burning of Lotus Pier destroyed his heart, and the fortune of his shidi, his younger brother, shattered his golden core. But he would give it again, and again, and again, he could not bring himself to regret it. He had given part of himself and it seemed wrong to give her back, it was unnatural; Wei Ying thought he had stolen her. (As if he had cheated not only death, but life itself, the very essence of things.) Burial Mounds came for what was his mind. Many souls, even more voices, even hungrier desires, even louder their cries. He had seen so many lives, so many people whose bones had become part of the soil of the dead earth — forever chained; longer than the oldest gods in Heaven. The voices whispered stories to him; they showed him wars and downfalls. They showed him violence and cruelty. It seems that Wei Ying left them a piece of himself. What came out of the Burial Mounds was not the Wei Wuxian or Wei Ying the world once knew, he had become Yiling Laozu before people even gave him that name. (The Burial Mounds loved him, he knew it, they told him, and they let him go. They sang him stories of stars and suns in particularly dark moments, when he knew only the cold of their graves; they brought him what little food he could call, however rotten and black, but he would prefer it any day to dead human flesh; they sheltered him when it became unbearable, when he wanted to disappear and his will alone was not enough to survive. And he loved them back. A painful, strange and poisonous love, stained with darkness and blood when he left. And he returned, and they easily accepted him and the people he brought, and he played them music in return every day for their generosity). It took him time to find those undistorted parts of himself, and to construct something that might resemble himself from his youth. His deflection qi was the most useful point in this plan. (But he couldn’t call it his greatest pain; he still remembered how Wen Qing had spent two days carving a golden core out of him.) We had to work even harder to convince Jiang Cheng that he was okay (talk more, make a high tail again, don’t run away from lunches) and no less effort toward Lan Z… Wangji, which was a surprise (smile, he asked, even skewed and twisted, but smile at him sincerely and if he wanted to; most often Wei Ying sits with him and the rabbits in silence without a smile, watching the sun shadows; sorrow on his slumped shoulders, like an unbearable blanket). Lan-laoshi and Zewu-Jun, with tactful and sad looks, wanted to know about the reasons for his qi deviation, which he could not name. His body clean of dark energy, he was healthy in everything but his mind — fractured, spotty, and frantic — that the only logical reason was: mental turmoil. Wei Ying didn’t even know what, of all things, might have been a 'mental turmoil', but dismissed it with the ease of a real fifteen-year-old. To put it in a long drawer, to wait for it to rot, and then to revive it to remind him of himself. A separate story is how he dissuaded uncle Jiang-zongzhu from coming in his letters because Wei Ying knows that he’ll take him to Lotus Pier and… he’s not ready to see his old home. Heck, he doesn’t think he can look at Jiang-zongzhu and not get a second qi deviation. He will fall down in front of shijie and bow at her feet until he passes out as soon as he sees her. All of the above makes him feel even more tired and, surprisingly, a little irritable. A glorious change from emptiness, but not a favorable one. He let things run their course during the week, not recalling anything too grandly noisy or dangerous in the Cloud Recesses, except the Watery Chasm, which hadn’t even arrived in town yet. This is probably the reason why he feels not anxiety, but anger, when something goes wrong. Completely and utterly wrong. Wei Ying wants to believe that he would have remembered the appearance of Wen Ruohan himself in the Cloud Recesses. If they had met in the war, Wei Ying would have easily said that he hated the man. But here, now, when he has lived with the remnants of Wen for three years, when he has raised A-Y… hurts, don’t think of that name, it hurts too much, like his child. Wei Ying doesn’t know how he feels about this man now, other than wariness and fair apprehension. This man will start a war. And… okay, fine, this very man is walking this way, toward the crowd of invited disciples, where Wei Ying is lost between Jiang Cheng’s shoulder and someone in gold from the Sect Jin. His fingers are reaching for his belt, not Suibian’s scabbard, but Chenqing isn’t there because his dizi doesn’t even exist yet. Wen Ruohan was exactly as he had seen him from afar and as he had heard him from Qing-jie’s stories: majestic, noble and commanding, dressed more for a fight than for a reception or conference. In sun-embroidered, expensive silk, with rubies and quartz in earrings and a sign on his forehead. However, Qing-jie always described his eyes as a heavy winter or icy fire, if he could imagine it. (The sun that never gives heat, — she says as her voice grows sadder and more detached, and Wei Ying replies nothing.) Instead of ice, he sees fire. Instead of cold, he sees warmth. And… Wei Ying is far from understanding people in recent years (if Qing-jie is to be believed, he has never been close to understanding other people’s emotions toward himself) but… this… softness? Wei Ying blinks again for a surprisingly long time, because Wen Ruohan, the man who gave the sect to burn down his house, who let his bastard-son do whatever he wanted, is standing right in front of him. At arm’s length. The rest of the disciples have parted and, honestly, Wei Ying is ready for anything, his mind flipping through thousands of mascot options because he doesn’t think he can beat this man in a sword fight, when: “Marry me”, will be the first thing he hears from this man; literally his first words to him in two lifetimes. The silence descends enough for Wei Ying to think that his mind is making him hear things again that never happened. Unfortunately, however, the world has never been lenient with him. “Wei Wuxian”, begins absolutely bluntly Wen Ruohan again, and Wei Ying’s eye almost twitches, “Yiling Laozu, be my spouse”. When he finishes his sentence, Wei Ying barely feels the fear that should be, he doesn’t even notice anything other than to say with a dead voice and a blank face: “Never”. Wen Ruohan hums, tilting his head, his ruby earrings swaying with the movement. “I didn’t think it would be easy”, he agrees with his denial, but doesn’t deny his idea, which absolutely everyone around him can understand. And then the silence explodes with whispers and shouts.

***

When he first met Wei Wuxian, he hardly remembered him: a brash boy, the head disciple of the Sect Jiang, all in black and red, with a cocky look and even more cocky words, defending his nephew’s honor — no one for him in the world of the cultivator; no one in his plans; no one in the greater scheme of things. (The stars decided otherwise; this boy was deadlier than any sun he had ever met, hotter than fire and colder than the darkness beyond the sky.) Wei Wuxian — is the true cause of his downfall, his Sect, his empire, his war. He was sorry they never met on the battlefield, as it was worth it. The Nightless City burned with green fire, its warriors rose up, attacking their former allies, and the eerie and harsh melody of the dizi accompanied the carnage. Wei Wuxian stood on top, in the night sky, like a shadow, like a ghost, a portent of the end of his rule. Wen Ruohan thought that he really wanted to fight him, the man who had almost single-handedly destroyed his army; he wondered what the man might say to him; for he had started this war because he had not seen anyone remotely equal to himself since the death of his dangerous in mind, but easy to laugh at, friend. But he’s stuck in a battle with these kids with the blood of sect leaders in their veins, who are either dead or too cowardly to be here. And he dies stabbed in the back, which, frankly, shouldn’t surprise him. Nie Mingjue, who couldn’t inherit even a grain of his grandfather’s intelligence (and isn’t that sad, Wen Ruohan once called that man a friend), chops off his head. Everything else — history written by the victors. Everything else — the bodies that are left of his lineage, of his blood, of his family. Everything else — the tragedy he dragged everyone into. Noble and just, what a joke. When Wen Ruohan died, he did not consider himself a loser. Only when he saw what Nie and Jiang had done to his legacy, what Lan had done to the records of his ancestors, what Jin had done to his people did he understand what defeat was. As an echo of himself, a mere fragment of a soul that had been laid to rest, that had been banished like a real demon, he could only watch. It was depressing, it was drowning, it was devastating. He didn’t think he had a heart to ache, but he felt that a quick death was better than what they had done to his brother’s family. (And wasn’t that too much of a risk for Wen Qing? When she sheltered A-Yuan, his grandson from his foolish second son, who had first done something of value as leaving an heir for him. His legacy to rot in other people’s lands). And then Wen Qing escapes with the promise of help and returns, because if there is anyone in whom the blood of the Wens sings with their devotion to their word that hardly anyone remembers, it is her. (He really should have made her the second heir, after Wen Xu, by killing the elders. He thought she was more like her mother than Wen Yun, his brother). And then he comes, Wei Wuxian, the cause of their destruction, and he holds out his hand to the remnants of Wen, men whose veins contain the blood of those who took everything from this man, and Wei Wuxian smiles at them, arranging the slaughter for them. And then Wei Wuxian takes them under his protection, giving them a place, forgotten and abandoned even by the gods, which they could call home. And then Yiling Laozu, the title that man has earned by right of his too much heart, stays with them. Wen Ruohan learns for the first time what the very justice and righteousness that once ruined his brother looks like when the man turns his back on his own family because he does not want to pull his brother and sister along with him. Wen Ruohan first learns about kindness when this man refuses food in favor of old people, a couple of women and a child, when he begins to build them houses with his own hands, driving corpses and stealing a hammer and a couple of nails from Yiling. Wen Ruohan first learns of mercy when this man does not turn his back on A-Yuan, where Wen Qing felt it her duty to tell him whose son, whose grandson. (“I don’t care”, said Yiling Laozu, carrying the sleeping child in his hands trembling with fatigue, “I will not judge the child for his father, whatever he may be”. “Why…? Why are you so kind?” asks Wen Qing, almost defeated, still disbelieving that such a thing is possible. Wen Ruohan understands his niece perfectly. Wei Wuxian smiles at her, instead of stars. “I try to do what’s right. There are enough wrong things and wrong people in this world without me”, he grins, his face contorted into something heavy, burdened, the wind fluttering his red ribbon, the same shade as the sky above them, “even if everyone blames me for them”.) Wen Ruohan learns of this man’s strength and genius when he brings Wen Qionglin back to life, barely distinguishable from anyone but the boy himself. Stronger, calmer, but unwavering, as all who share his blood, the blood of Wens, must be. Wei Wuxian is impossible. And this is what strikes him more than his own death. How can such a man exist? (At the same moment, Wen Ruohan vows to himself that he will do whatever is possible for this man in any of the next lives.) Wen Ruohan knew how the world did not like unselfish people like Yiling Laozu. ('Bao-ge, what have I done wrong? ' asks his didi, and he would give much to remember how to show sympathy. How to express what he wants to say. That Wen Yun is not to blame for other people’s choices, for their actions. That was the last time he saw his didi). Watching a man like Yiling Laozu split, and not being able to do anything about it — is more painful than he could have imagined. One death after another, blood after blood of those for whom this man had won a losing war, for whom this man had given his soul and mind to the Burial Mounds. The world has never been a fair place, and people have never been fair, but that was beyond tragedy. Wen Ruohan felt that he was watching for an inevitable disaster. From the death of the Jin heir and the death of Yiling Laozu’s sister, to the departure of Wen Qing and Wen Qionglin (who know more about duty than his own sons) there are two months of complete madness for Yiling Laozu. There are blueprints, nights full of lonely I’m so sorry, and embraces of death, when even the dark energy took pity on its master. Yiling Laozu ignored sleep and rest as a given, and on the best days, on days like this — it was bliss to simply pluck a paper from his hands and convince him to eat. Arrays, one on top of the other, jumbled so bizarrely and immensely that it took one’s breath away, and dizzying anxiety, when no one could sneak into Yiling Laozu’s cave. But Wen Ruohan is a shard of a ghost, and unlike the others, he could see the notes and hear words other than the confused: sorry. There is the quiet time, there is the stifled I can fix this, there is in the sobbing I must, before exhaustion takes over someone else’s torment. And Wen Ruohan remembers it all. He is not gifted with Yiling Laozu’s genius for creating something great, but he is talented at reproducing rituals and complex arrays. Without energy, however, he could not reproduce something so costly, and he does not know where to get it. And then his niece and nephew leave, and the old men with them, and though he wants to witness the end of his brother’s children and see them off with the dignity they deserve, he remains in the cave. His grandson binds himself in a fever, and Wen Ruohan can only run his intangible fingers across the child’s forehead while Yiling Laozu is choked with cries and grief at the side. Is this how his kind will end? (When his friend, Nie Tao, all in dark green with no hint of light colors, swinging his hand in front of him with bracelets of gold, silver and copper at the same time in a chime, said that his pride would ruin his entire clan — did he mean it?) Yiling Laozu’s too big a heart was what ended up ruining him. The Yin Tiger Tally was clearly not what defeated him, Wen Ruohan understood this well — the rest of the world did not. But when Yiling Laozu stands before their entire world of cultivators, clutching that Tally, bleeding from the sword blow of his own shidi, a smile dances on his face. Wen Ruohan knew that smile (he saw it on Li Qiu’s face, all mournfully white in the sunset-orange light, with tear-wet cheeks and laughter on her lips, undeniably collected and beautiful his brother’s wife, as she had hundreds of times before, before she stepped from the balcony down to the edge of their mountains; 'Wen-zongzhu, may I ask you to take care of A-Qin and A-Ning? ') he knew that something terribly, terribly stupid was going to happen. So he acted. Oddly enough, the best plans are the surprise plans. And all the power that was supposed to dissipate, to disrupt the atmosphere, to raise the pressure — fell into his hands. How easy it was to catch what wanted to be caught. Wen Ruohan would never have thought that dark energy had desires, but right now he could clearly feel it thundering: protect him. And isn’t that the only order he would gladly follow?

***

When Lan Qiren said that Cangse’s son would bring trouble he… he just didn’t think on this scale. He should have known better, much, much better, considering that the boy had inherited her beautiful face and her unwavering temper. No rules or discipline could have prepared him for what was going on. Little-heartedly (for which he will rewrite the rules thirteen times tonight) he rejoices in the same expression of despair on Jiang Fengmian’s face that he himself is experiencing. Lan Qiren does not know what is worse in this whole situation: that Wen Ruohan, head of the Sect Wen, came to their clan personally and uninvited and… did the most inappropriate thing he had ever seen, offering such a thing to a boy of fifteen (Lan Qiren is careful not to think that Wei Wuxian is even younger than his second nephew), or that the same boy rejected said sect leader without a hint of fear or doubt, as if was asking for a diplomatic conflict. Worse, the conflict didn’t happen, and that Qishan Wen didn’t take advantage of the situation and start a war. No, it would seem that Wen Ruohan really — as repugnant as they were at the mere thought of it — had crush on this young man. (And isn’t that awful? Wen Ruohan celebrated his centennial less than a decade ago, his own first-born a little older than Lan Qiren; how can this man even look at a young man who only received his sword two autumns ago!) And not only that, this young boy had previously had qi deflection, to top it all off. As he ponders this, he wonders if the boy’s qi deviation could have been something the leader of the Sect Wen might have caused. Could Wen Ruohan, so fond of moving around stealthily, have met Wei Wuxian in the city and taken advantage of him? Lan Qiren is uncomfortable with the answer he finds, given Wen Ruohan’s heartless reputation. And he is the one who has not yet decided how to tell his reasoning to Jiang Fengmian. Lan Qiren felt himself turning gray more than three times these days. Wen Ruohan was escorted out of the Cloud Recesses with all politeness and restraint, but that did not mean that he did not remain at their gate, setting up camp. The man also might have mentioned once or twice that he could have just broken in, burned down their libraries, and taken Wei Wuxian away, but he doesn’t want to upset him. Were it not for circumstances, Lan Qiren would have admired the way his eldest nephew held that conversation and even led the boiling Sect Jiang leader away, for he felt his patience was one drop away from the end. Strangely enough, Wei Wuxian is the least bothered by what is happening. Of course, the boy is still recovering from the qi deviation, and his emotions may be inaccurate, sometimes opposite each other, but he doesn’t seem agitated or nervous. In fact, he almost always looks angry now, abandoning his usual hairstyle again, letting his hair down like his mother, and almost always forgetting his sword. Wei Wuxian even asked the second young master Nie to get him the simplest bamboo dizi he could find, as of course Wei Wuxian was forbidden to leave the Cloud Recesses on behalf of his sect leader. At one point, he began to feel like a participant in a theatrical performance when Wen Ruohan pulled the corpses out of the Water Abyss and put them in the phrase, “marry me”. Then, for the first time in years, Lan Qiren remembered what helpless despair was; he hadn’t experienced it in twenty years, not since he saw Cangse Sanren laughing at his expense (he would never admit it, except to a small and greedy part of himself: he misses her). As if his grief wasn’t enough for the world, he heard a short cutting sound, perhaps the failed note of one of the younger students, and the water ghouls rose from their seats, walking back toward the lake. For two moments they folded into a hieroglyph: “no”. Lan Qiren felt really crazy that day as he retold it aloud to Jiang Fengmian, soothing them both with cups of herbal tea. And, gods, don’t even begin to remind him of his younger nephew’s inappropriately harsh behavior these days, Lan Qiren himself is now on the verge of dropping everything and going into seclusion, but it would be too cruel of him to do that to Lan Xichen. Lan Qiren exhales heavily and thinks for the first time how Cangse Sanren would act in his place. No good answer comes.

***

“Why?” asks Wei Ying, tired of the show, though it was amusing to watch others wail. Wen Ruohan stands before him in the moonlight, his eyes glowing red, but not like his opposite, filled with dark energy, while his fingers twist a cheap but just as dangerous dizi while the flute in his hands. Wen Ruohan leans toward him because this body is fifteen year and it shorter than he is used to, despite the similar broad clothes and hairstyle he used to associate with Yiling Laozu; the one he was here and now. Wen Ruohan smiles at him like he has never seen before, and he wonders if Qing-jie and Wen Ning have ever seen it: warm, gentle and enchanted. “Because I swore I would give you the best; exactly what you deserve, Yiling Laozu”, he is not touched, but someone else’s eyes circle his face with affection, “I want to repay you, because the world will never do that”, Wen Ruohan offers him his hand again, raising it between them. “Marry me, and I will do anything for you, because you have done the same for Wens”. Wei Ying never did what he did for gratitude. Somehow he feels that Wen Ruohan knows this. Somehow it seems to him that this is not deception, that this is not a trick of his mind. Somehow it seems to him that he has a choice. Wei Ying always chooses in someone else’s favor. He takes someone else’s hand in return, if that is what will keep everyone he has ever loved safe: from death, from war, from himself. (And Wen Ruohan didn’t lie, he let Wei Ying know that he had done enough, and he could just live.)