The Nine-tailed Fox meets a new old friend
Wu Yun is frozen in place. This is the last place where he expected to hear Ling Yan's name.
The man approaches him with wide eyes, and then draws him into a tight hug. "It really is you."
Wu Yun's face is pressed against the stranger's bare chest, and he tries to struggle free of his hold. He smells of freshly picked lilies.
Lan Tian pulls Wu Yun away from the man, and steadies him when he almost trips. "Who's this?" he asks, as if Wu Yun is supposed to know.
Wu Yun looks at the man, who's still staring at him with a fond look in his dark eyes. "I think you have the wrong person, I'm not Ling Yan, and I've never met you."
The man throws back the long column of his neck and laughs. "Well, of course you'd say that, you have reincarnated, but I'd recognize your soul anywhere. You are Ling Yan."
Wu Yun can't do much more than gape at the man. He isn't sure what to say in the face of his certainty. Could he really be Ling Yan? Were his dreams not dreams but memories of his past life?
The man drapes a slim arm around Wu Yun's shoulder. "My name is
Lan Tian watches both of them with a frown of apprehension. If Wu Yun really is Ling Yan, that changes everything.
Xue Zhuan notices him looking. "And who might you be?"
He inspects Lan Tian from head to toe, narrowing his eyes at him as if trying to detect any hint of familiarity. "Are you the famous Shu Luan?"
Wu Yun turns to Xue Zhuan with disbelief in his eyes. "You know Shu Luan too?"
Xue Zhuan snorts. "No, I never had that privilege, but I did watch you piece his souls together for four hundred years."
Wu Yun's mind reels. Ling Yan did that? No, he did that?
"I can see from the look on your face that this is all too much to take in," Xue Zhuan says, rubbing Wu Yun's back with all the propriety of a long time friend.
Lan Tian dislikes his forwardness, but if what he's saying is true he has known Wu Yun far longer than Lan Tian has. Perhaps he is the one who presumes too much.
"The two of you should come to my palace, there's much we need to discuss."
---
Xue Zhuan leads them out of the brothel, and into Youdu's sprawling streets. They're stopped often by ghosts and demons alike, who bow to Youdu and call him "Your Majesty".
Xue Zhuan smiles and nods at them like a kindly emperor. Wu Yun watches the practiced ease with which he dodges the approaching dead and demons, and continues on his way. He's clearly one of the Kings of the Underworld, but he looks nothing like King Songdi.
Wu Yun wonders briefly what court he's in charge of, but Xue Zhuan announces, "We're here," before he has the time to say anything.
The palace looks like a collection of pavilions stacked on top of each other at odd angles. One of the the pavilions protrudes towards the street like a massive balcony, covering half the street under its shade.
The inside of the palace bears no resemblance to its outside appearance. An airy open hall opens into an inner courtyard, with a pond and small viewing bridge. Peach trees and a single weeping willow tower over the entire structure, raising above every floor, reaching out towards the square of open night sky above the courtyard.
Xue Zhuan leads them to some sitting couches overlooking the pond, and calls on to an imp to bring them tea.
He lays down on the couch, supporting his head on his bent elbow, affecting the same air of casual decadence he had at the brothel.
"So, you have memories of your past life," he says, addressing Wu Yun, who sits down on the same couch as Lan Tian.
"I have dreams, I don't know if they're memories, but I see bits of Ling Yan's life."
"Ever dream about me?" Xue Zhuan asks, his tone leading.
"Uhm, no," Wu Yun says, stifling a laugh at Xue Zhuan's dramatic pout.
"In any case, those dreams are memories, I'm sure of it." Xue Zhuan says.
The imp brings three tea cups and a steaming pot, and Xue Zhuan pours himself a cup of tea while still lying on the couch.
"How do you know Wu Yun?" Lan Tian asks, hoping in vain that Xue Zhuan will pour the hot tea all over himself.
"I don't know him in his current incarnation, if that's what you're asking," he says with a smirk. "But we met when he came to the Underworld, frantic and begging for anyone who could help him restore souls destroyed by a smiting weapon."
"Is that what happened to Shu Luan?" Ling Yan asks, remembering how Xie Xiu's sword turned what remained of Madam Ou into ash.
"That's what you said. You never did elaborate on what exactly led him to be struck down by a smiting weapon, but I believe you were trying to protect me." Xue Zhuan touches his open palm to his naked chest and bats his eyelashes at Wu Yun.
"Why would he be trying to protect you?" Lan Tian asks, at this point no longer trying to conceal his distaste for Xue Zhuan.
"In case it escaped your notice, Gods don't usually have much need to come to the Underworld asking for help, nor do they remain here in hiding, for over 400 years." Xue Zhuan shoots Lan Tian a sarcastic look and takes a dainty sip of his tea. "He was clearly running from someone, and he didn't want to bring me any trouble. Ling Yan was like that, always thinking of everyone else first."
And yet everyone in Immortal Mountain seems convinced Ling Yan killed his own shizun. Wu Yun can't help thinking the two accounts don't match. Could a person who always put others first, really kill someone so important to him, and attack his former sect?
"Did he manage to restore Shu Luan's souls?" Wu Yun chances a sideways look at Lan Tian's stony expression.
If Wu Yun is Ling Yan, then maybe Lan Tian could be...
"I was hoping you could tell me that," Xue Zhuan says, raising one leg over the sofa's armrest. "One day Ling Yan was gone, and so were all the fragments of Shu Luan's souls he had collected. I always hoped he had finished putting the souls together and simply entered the wheel of reincarnation."
"If you were so close, wouldn't he have said something before leaving?" Lan Tian asks.
Xue Zhuan narrows his eyes at him. "Aren't you sharp? Yes, of course, that always made me question if maybe whoever was after him hadn't finally caught up."
Wu Yun is disappointed that after almost getting to the bottom of Ling Yan's death he would run into another dead end.
His death, now, he supposes.
"I'm still not sure if I am Ling Yan," Wu Yun says, looking down at his hands.
"I know something that might help jog your memory."
Xue Zhuan gets up from the sofa, in a single fluid motion, making his flimsy robes billow after him like a cloud of smoke, and motions them to follow.
They circle the courtyard around the wooden deck, until they come upon an open room facing the weeping willow.
Xue Zhuan opens a few drawers in an ancient looking writing desk and takes out several sheets of paper.
He spreads them out on the desk facing the weeping willow. "Take a look."
Wu Yun does, and runs his eyes over exquisitely rendered paintings of Shu Luan's face. The brushwork is immaculate, and each painting brings forth the glimmer in his golden eyes, and the sweet curve of his smile. One of the paintings shows Ling Yan sitting on a swing under a weeping willow while Shu Luan pushes him. The happiness on their faces is palpable even through the cold paper.
"Ling Yan painted these?" he asks, turning around to face Xue Zhuan.
Xue Zhuan nods. "You did."
Lan Tian remains at a distance, watching Wu Yun run his fingers through mementos of a past life where there is no room for him.
A sense of loss settles at the bottom of his stomach like a stone. Dragging him down towards a riverbed of sorrow.
Xue Zhuan watches as a humid sheen glazes over Lan Tian's eyes, and approaches him. "It's something, isn't it? All that devotion."
Lan Tian doesn't know what to say, so he says nothing, his eyes fixed on Wu Yun's back as he skims his fingers through the paintings.
"Four hundred years of it...most people will never experience anything like that."
Xue Zhuan places both his hands on Lan Tian's shoulders, as they both continue watching Wu Yun.
His voice could almost be called gentle, as he whispers, "You think you're hurting now? Finding out that his heart belongs to someone else? Imagine watching it for hundreds of years."
Lan Tian turns to Xue Zhuan with a scowl, ready to tell him to stop goading him, but the sorrow he sees in his dark eyes is a mirror of his own.
He realizes that Xue Zhuan isn't telling him these things to be cruel.
"How could you stand it?" Lan Tian asks, voice barely above a whisper.
"The same way you will," Xue Zhuan says, all traces of playfulness gone from his beautiful face. "With the knowledge that having his friendship is better than having nothing."
Lan Tian nods. He already knew that Wu Yun didn't have feelings for him, what does it matter the shape the confirmation takes?
"Do you have any memories, or dreams rather, about being Shu Luan?" Xue Zhuan asks.
Lan Tian shakes his head.
Xue Zhuan sighs. "I'm saddened for the three of us, then."
A commotion at the doors of Xue Zhuan's palace draws their attention.
Two imps are trying to keep the doors closed while someone tries to make their way through.
"King
"To hell with his visits! I need to talk with him," a familiar voice says from the other side of the closed door.
Wu Yun turns around, still holding a drawing, and exchanges a concerned look with Lan Tian. That thunderclap voice sounds awfully like King Songdi.
The door opens with a loud bang as King Songdi kicks it open. He charges inside the palace, looking around until he spots Xue Zhuan in the room across the courtyard.
He storms towards them, still dressed in the same red robes he wore to court. He disappears briefly behind a pillar, and when they see him again, he's no longer a middle aged man with a long beard, but a tall young man, with handsome, severe, features, and an immaculate topknot securing all of his shiny black hair.
When he draws closer Wu Yun notices the scar bisecting his left eye.
"Xue Zhuan, I need your help finding two ghosts that disappeared from Youdu while waiting my sentence."
His eyes, one black, the other grey and blind, glance over Wu Yun and Lan Tian, while he makes his way towards Xue Zhuan.
He takes another glance and stops in his tracks.
King Songdi crosses his arms in front of his chest, and gives the three of them a scornful look. "I should have looked here first. You have a habit of taking in strays."