Chapter Text

Things…well… things aren’t going particularly well. Perhaps that is putting it mildly.

”Junshang,” he hears Zhuzhi-Lang say, “Junshang, you need to eat.”

There is a bowl of lotus root soup steaming in front of him. He picks up the spoon. It makes a quiet *plop *when he drops it in. A bit of broth splashes out; it singes his cheek. Zhuzhi-Lang rubs it away and the cloth of his sleeve is so soft as he does. Then, Tianlang-Jun picks the spoon up again and brings it up to his mouth.

There is no broth in it.

His nephew sighs and, a moment later, wraps a hand around one of his own.

“Here, this lowly one will help.”

The bowl is empty by the time they are done, but he doesn’t feel full. He doesn’t feel hungry, either, though.

“Nephew,” he says, “I’m tired.”

”I know, Junshang.”

”I wrote a letter for Xiyan today.”

Zhuzhi-Lang stills for a moment before moving to clear the table.

”Junshang did? That’s wonderful.”

Of course he did. Why wouldn’t he?

“Yes. Would you deliver it for me?”

Silence.

“Nephew?”

”This one would be happy to.”

Tianlang-Jun smiles.

”Good, good!” His smile fades. “That’s… that’s good.”

He can hear the sounds of raindrops outside pounding down hard against their little home’s roof.

“When did it start raining?”

“It always rains, Junshang.”

“Really?” He mutters to himself. “How odd.”

He gets up from the table and wanders over to the bookshelf. His copy of Regret of Chunshan is already sticking out from the rest. The spine has been lovingly abused, strands of the thread beginning to unwind from one another, and the cover bent a hair out of shape. Even still, the ink on the pages is still as crisp as the day he bought it. He finds himself humming along with the words as he turns to a random page and begins to read.

Sometimes, though, he doesn’t even read it— just traces his fingers over the pages until they go numb to everything else. They are real and solid, and they bring Tianlang-Jun a solace he cannot even begin to understand.

He hums the ballad for a while, then a while longer. It pools on his tongue and crackles from his lips off-key. His voice is a low timbre, with a purr to it that he knows others have always found attractive. The key will come to him in time.

His lips grow dry and his throat parched by the time he finds it. He hums it again and again and again, like he is spinning a spool of thread that no one else’s fingers can reach. Like it’s a story only meant for him.

When he looks up at last, the world seems less fuzzy around the edges.

”Su Xiyan is dead.”

She’s been dead for more time than the two of them were together, now.

“Yes, Junshang.”

Tianlang-Jun sighs and closes the book in his hands. He tucks it gently back into its place on the shelf.

“Nephew,” he says, “I’m tired.”

He is so, so tired.

Zhuzhi-Lang takes his wrist and guides him over to the bed.

”I know, Junshang.”

Outside, the storm continues to rage.

******

Today, he sits outside and contemplates the charred and broken edges of the world that he has wrought— that he has won.

It is still raining. The droplets flood every corner of his vision, like the tears of a goddess crying out for help. They form puddles on the ground, slick and moist in a way that reminds Tianlang-Jun so very much of blood.

Blood.

He remembers the way the Old Palace Master’s blood had pooled at his feet as he severed the man’s neck from his spine, the way Xin Mo hummed in his hands with unholy power, the way it felt to destroy the last remnant left of Su Xiyan— Luo Binghe.

Blood, blood. So much blood.

A gut-wrenching scream had echoed through their makeshift battlefield that day in the form of one immortal master.

‘Would Su Xiyan have screamed like that for me?’ he remembers wondering.

He hadn’t expected to win that day. For beings like him, there are but two options in any battle— victory or death. On that auspicious day, he remembers thinking it a shame that he would never live to see his nephew’s wedding.

Winning had felt like fate handing him all the right cards at the wrong time.

‘This wasn’t supposed to happen,’ the whole world seemed to scream.

But what could Tianlang-Jun do but continue?

Revenge didn’t feel sweet. It didn’t feel much like anything at all. The world was burning around him, and yet he felt nothing.

Hadn’t he once been in love? Hadn’t he once had dreams?

There is rainwater collecting by his feet.

Tianlang-Jun decides he hates the rain.

*****

Zhuzhi-Lang is dead.

What was left of the four sects had found them and they had taken the only thing he had left from his grasp. Zhuzhi-Lang is dead and his body is going cold, and Tianlang-jun still can’t bring himself to grab his sword and still it storms outside.

He thought he was hollow before. That is nothing compared to the emptiness he feels inside of him now. Emptiness has made its nest inside of him and called it a home.

Seeing that similar nothingness in the eyes of the cultivators surrounding them, he wonders if they don’t understand this hollow feeling, too.

Laughter bubbles over from his lips, manic and lost and altogether wrong. Like the jarring sound of stones crashing to the bottom of a mountain in the wake of an avalanche, it comes out in broken shards that cut his mouth as they leave.

“Aiya, nephew of mine, what a mess we’ve made,” he coos warmly— manically— to the corpse curled in his arms.

Winning, had it really been worth this? Was anything worth this?

Even more than that, the question he’d been asking himself for months: Was this world of his even worth anything?

He imagines a universe where his beloved Su Xiyan never died. Where he hadn’t found out the truth of her death only after he’d merged the worlds. Where he didn’t look at the sky and see an empty, worthless eternity spinning its way forward— refusing to let him die.

What he would give to do it all over again.

He looks up at the sky. Water and mud soak through his robes and the wind lashes out at him like a thousand tiny blades.

Unnatural thing, it seems to call, let us wash you away.

The cultivators have begun to shout at him now.

He almost wants to sigh; must they be so loud?

“Tianlang-Jun—“

“—monster!”

“— Binghe— kill you—“

“— die, beast.”

He doesn’t try to fight back as the swords of ten men pierce him at once.

The pain feels good. It is freeing.

*I wish… *he calls to whatever force might be out there.

I wish… he thinks, refusing to let his body heal itself.

*I wish I could go back— to the very beginning. *

As his eyes close, he thinks he can hear the storm outside finally beginning to die.

*****

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