The morning after the conference, Wei Wuxian dragged himself into Wen Qing's lab for his daily tests. They had moved now to a baseline of dynamic meditation for 5 days a week. Two days a week, they accepted core development test ideas from other researchers (mostly Lan) for testing their effectiveness relative to the other methods. Wei Wuxian thought it was sort of hilarious how desperate the Lan seemed to be to be able to find some evidence that sitting still in absolute silence for hours on end was the best way for cultivators to grow their cores. Wen Qing joked that it was like the Christians when Galileo tried to tell them that the earth wasn't the center of the universe.
It wasn't explicitly stated, but Wei Wuxian got the feeling that part of why no one had started to question why the research hospital was providing free housing for a patient who was no longer on death's door was because he was willing to do what they asked in terms of weaving in their suggestions into his weekly routine.
That was why he was nervous about approaching Wen Qing about the night lead that the Nie sect heir had mentioned. Not only was Wen Qing likely to tell him he wasn't ready, but Yiling was eight hours away even by high speed rail. He would be gone at least three full days, maybe more, given how vague the information about the hunt had been. That meant no in-person check-ins during that period, since Wen Qing would not be able to leave work for so long.
"How did the conference go?" Wen Qing asked as she hooked him up to one of the sensors.
"You never told me how gossipy the cultivation world is. Evidently most of the people had showed up just to see the drama between GusuLan and MolingSu."
Wen Qing snorted as she took her readings.
"That sounds about right. Who did the Lan send?"
"The Second Jade," Wei Wuxian responded, keeping his voice neutral.
Wen Qing's lips pressed together in amusement. "I'm sure that went well for MolingSu. I've never worked with Hanguang-Jun directly, but I've been in a few discussion conferences where he was also attending."
"And?" Wei Wuxian prompted.
" And it was clear why everyone was terrified of him. He doesn't say much, but when he does, he makes it count. He says what he thinks is correct, and he does not care even the slightest bit if he pisses someone important off in the process. The fact that what he says almost always is correct makes people not want to debate with him. It's quite entertaining to watch, actually."
"Hm. So you two have a lot in common, then," Wei Wuxian said, grinning at her.
Wen Qing narrowed her eyes at him.
"You should know better than to try flattery with me. What do you want?"
Wei Wuxian put his hand dramatically over his heart, making Wen Qing have to adjust the position of the sensor to keep the reading from being disrupted and earning him another glare.
Wei Wuxian laughed. "Qing-jie is so mean to me! What makes you think I want something?"
Wen Qing rolled her eyes as she finished her reading. "Because you've looked on edge since you got here. Now, what is it that you want to ask?"
Wei Wuxian rubbed the back of his neck. "Ah. You're too smart for me. We'll, I'm not sure it's exactly something I need to ask. But I got a lead on a night hunt."
Wen Qing went still. "You have formed a nascent core, but you're nowhere near ready to be cultivating with your sword again. What ever happened to looking for teaching positions? Now that you have at least some patents registered to your name, you might have more luck."
Wei Wuxian stilled, and Wen Qing immediately noticed. Her eyes narrowed.
"Wei Wuxian. What did you do?"
"Nothing! Qing-Jie, why are you so suspicious?"
"Because I see your ridiculous face every day and I know what it looks like when you did something stupid." She crossed her arms and glared at him. "So? What was it this time? Did you already go on a night hunt and injure yourself?"
Wei Wuxian raised his hands in defense of her words. "No! I came to talk to you first. I just… Lan Wangji might have said Cloud Recesses would give me an interview for the Talisman guest lecture position."
Wen Qing's suspicious expression didn't change.
"Let me guess. You turned him down," she said, resignedly.
"I've looked into it a little. In case the Jiang ever try to come after me for the patents. Even in the civilian world, if you come up with an idea while working for a company, they usually own the idea. It's even worse for cultivators. If I work even as a guest lecturer for GusuLan, they would have solid grounds to claim anything I patent. Especially if I'm working for them on talismans, and then I go and patent a bunch of talismans. It's not even like it would be an unrelated topic."
Wen Qing looked nonplussed for a moment, then sighed.
"Not every sect is as bad as the Jiang," she said, but she no longer looked angry.
Wei Wuxian shrugged. "Maybe not. But I'm not going to risk it when Popo has gone through all the trouble to get the patents filed for me. We have a plan for the others. If it doesn't pan out, then I guess I'll look for other jobs, but for now, this night hunt is my best bet. I don't want to end up under the control of another sect."
"Being a guest lecturer wouldn't make you belong to a sect."
"No. But since I don't belong to any other sect, they could definitely claim my ideas. It's not worth the risk."
Wen Qing didn't look happy, but she didn't disagree.
"I don't know enough about it to say, but you should check with Popo before making assumptions about how the other sects work. Either way, your core isn't strong enough to use your sword yet. Night-hunting would be too dangerous. Especially when it looks like you're somehow able to pull on other energy when your core isn't able to provide what you need."
Wei Wuxian stilled. "What do you mean?" he asked, even though he already had a hunch.
He hadn't asked any questions about the new sensor she had fitted him with after she saw the night hunt video. But that didn't mean he hadn't paid attention to what it was.
"Wei Wuxian," Wen Qing began in her most serious doctor's voice. The one that usually meant that what she was going to say would be difficult but necessary to hear. "I know you don't want to think about the last night hunt. I am not the right kind of doctor to help you deal with that type of trauma. But there is something that you do need to be aware of, from a medical cultivation perspective."
Wei Wuxian's hand went automatically to the small device strapped to his chest.
Wen Qing nodded. "You've clearly figured at least some of it out, even if you didn't ask me about it. I know it will be difficult, but I would like to show you a very small part of the footage from that hunt."
Wei Wuxian's face must have done something because Wen Qing spoke quietly. "No one else will be visible in the clip I will show you. Only you and the demons."
Wei Wuxian could feel his heartbeat racing. He didn't want to watch it. He didn't want to remember. But he also knew that Wen Qing would not be asking him to if it weren't important. If he was going to try to hunt without a strong golden core, then he needed to know what she was going to tell him.
"All right."
Wei Wuxian watched the video by pretending he was watching someone else fight. It helped that his own face could not be seen, since it was his body camera that was recording. He carefully shut down the memory of what he had felt in that moment, the fear, the panic. The grief.. The clip Wen Qing showed him was only about 30 seconds long. He saw the ring of spiritual fire. Heard the heartbeat accelerating. Saw that the fire was not going to be strong enough.
And then he saw the shift.
Heard the heart rate drop and saw the fire surge.
She stopped the video, and he stared at the frozen screen in silence for a moment. He had done that? Somewhere in his body, he knew how to do that. He wasn't even sure he could successfully reproduce the talisman he'd used in that moment. But what had happened in that clip was more than just the talisman.
"My core wasn't going to be enough," he said, still looking only at the screen.
"Yes," Wen Qing replied carefully. "I would imagine, in a nest like that, there would have been a tremendous amount of resentful energy around you."
Wei Wuxian nodded, feeling his anxiety rise. Her words evoked a memory of that moment. The scent of death from past kills the demons had taken back to their nest. The sound of the desperate fighting around him. The feel of the resentful energy pressing in on him, surging against his meridians. The idea that had flashed across his mind, put into action before he could even fully consider it..
He'd thought about it before. Established cultivation relied on the cultivator's own spiritual energy. Exclusively.
That's what all the texts said. Anything else was considered heretical by the sects.
Except that there were artifacts that some cultivators used in history to enhance their power. And those weren't considered evil, unless they were used for evil things. There had been rumors that the Nie sect's swords enhanced their strength, that it didn't all come from the cultivators' core.
So there was a grey area, but it was tricky, and absolutely never discussed or questioned. It wouldn't take much to be condemned as a demonic cultivator, even if he never tried to channel the spiritual energy of another cultivator, or never used his power to control a living human. Most cultivators didn't bother to differentiate between actual demonic cultivation and things like cultivating the ghost path, or simply channeling resentful energy.
But Wei Wuxian had.
He had researched enough to know that they were not at all the same. Was Wen Qing going to report him to the council? Madam Yu definitely would, if she ever had found out about his research. He had been so careful to never talk about his ideas in front of anyone else.
And that's all it had ever been. Ideas. Until the hunt where he'd watched his sect leader die, and saw his martial brother in danger, and had decided to put it into practice.
"You sensed the resentful energy when you approached the site," Wen Qing said. "The others didn't seem to notice it, but you did. Even Sect Leader Jiang didn't sense it."
Wei Wuxian managed to not flinch at the mention of his dead sect leader. This wasn't the time to feel guilt.
"I've always been sensitive to it. It took me a while to realize that others weren't."
He finally turned to face her. He couldn't bear the thought of losing the family he had only just found over this. Panic began to surge through him. He had to make her understand.
"It's not demonic cultivation. I've never even tried to channel another cultivator's spiritual energy. I've never taken control of another human. I can just… sense resentful energy. It's not the same. It's not demonic cultivation. I—"
"Wei Wuxian," she cut him off. "I know. I know it's not. I watched the video. The whole video. It's unlikely anyone else would even notice what you did."
Wei Wuxian studied her, looking for the lie… for judgement or disgust. All he saw was concern.
And a fierce curiosity.
"What I want to know is how you do it. How you controlled it. And I want to know if it damages your core or your spiritual pathways when you do."
The wave of relief that washed over him left him momentarily speechless. She was not going to report him. She was not going to cut him off from seeing her family.
Wei Wuxian drew a steadying breath, pushing past the lump in his throat and tightness in his chest.
Wei Wuxian had never met anyone who had the same sort of mind that he had. A dangerous mind, Madam Yu had called it. She was probably right with that one, because there was a hunger inside him to understand things, to ignore rules or boundaries that weren't grounded in anything but dogma, fear and ignorance. He wanted to know . He wanted to try.
Wen Qing looked at him and felt the same way.
He felt a smile forming as he processed this.
"Ok. So… how do we do this without you losing your funding?" he asked.
Wen Qing gave him a slight smile in return, then immediately replaced it with a stern look.
"First, we're going to call it 'ambient' energy, not resentful energy. And I'm going to monitor your core and meridians while you try to access it. Have you ever done it intentionally before?" Wen Qing asked.
Wei Wuxian shook his head. "I never even realized I did it until you showed me." He hesitated, then decided he could trust her enough with the whole truth, and added, "But I had thought about it before. And researched it a bit."
Wen Qing nodded. "Then let's try being methodical, rather than chaotic, and see how it goes. I know this goes against your nature, but please do your best," she added, drily.
Wei Wuxian huffed in mock insult, but couldn't help the grin from spreading across his face.
It turned out that having no functioning golden core meant that there was nothing to purify the resentful energy. Even the small amount that Wei Wuxian channeled as a test in Wen Qing's lab was still detectable in his meridians hours later, with only a small amount of dissipation.
"With the volume of resentful energy you channeled in the demon nest, it would have still been in your core at the time of the surgery, if it dissipated at the same rate. There was none in your system, though. So having a golden core enabled you to purify the resentful energy out of your system much faster. Without one, you'll have to be careful. I don't know how much it will interfere with your new core forming, if you have it building up in your system. There is a lot written about the damage it can cause, to the spirit and the mind. It's unclear how much of that is fact or fear-mongering, but we cannot disregard it."
Wei Wuxian grimaced. He had hoped he would be able to use resentful energy as an alternative form of cultivation. But he didn't want to do it if it meant he'd never get his golden core back.
"But you don't know if it affects my core development or not," he said.
Wen Qing gave him a sharp look. "Are you willing to risk it?"
"I'm willing to test it. That's what this fancy monitor you hooked me up with is for, right? We don't have to wait for it to be a lot of damage before you'd be able to spot it. We can mitigate the risks, just like we are with the test of the other cultivation methods. You can't tell me you don't want to figure out how it works."
Wen Qing didn't look happy, but she also didn't deny it. She had the same dangerous thirst to know that Wei Wuxian did. She just was more disciplined about it.
"Let's take readings while you go through your meditation exercises this week. Text me when you start and when you stop each day, and I'll check the readings to see if it accelerated the dissipation rate, or if it changed how your core is responding."
Wei Wuxian agreed. He needed to know before he went on a night hunt whether he could draw on resentful energy or not as a back-up plan.
Lan Wangji looked up from where he was finishing his extensive, intentionally excruciatingly detailed report on the cultivation conference when there was a knock on his door.
"Enter," Lan Wangji said.
He was surprised to see it was his brother who opened the door. Lan Xichen had a packed schedule, just like Lan Wangji, and did not usually come by unannounced during working hours.
"XiongZhang?"
"I just thought I would stop by and see my Didi," Lan Xichen said, smiling in the benign way that immediately put Lan Wangji on high alert.
His brother was not 'just stopping by'. Lan Xichen looked over Lan Wangji's shoulder at the screen.
"Are you still working on the summary from the MolingSu cultivation conference?" Lan Xichen asked innocently.
Lan Wangji narrowed his eyes.
"Mm," he confirmed.
Lan Xichen's smile widened, which was never a good sign.
"Excellent! I look forward to reading it."
"It will contain great detail on all of Su Minshan's speeches on musical cultivation, as well as intricate descriptions of his performances," Lan Wangji said primly.
Lan Xichen's smile faltered. "Ah. I see. Then perhaps I will skim through parts. Though there are definitely parts I am looking forward to reading."
Lan Wangji paused. "I cannot imagine which part of the conference you would have found compelling."
Lan Xichen laughed softly. "Ah, Wangji. Am I going to need to brace myself for a complaint from the MolingSu sect?"
"I merely stated my opinion when asked."
Lan Xichen's chuckle made Lan Wangji's own lips twitch. "You'd think Su Minshan would know better by now, given how long he has studied everything about you."
" XiongZhang ," Lan Wangji said sharply.
The last thing he wanted to think about was Su Minshan's uncomfortable fixation with him. He had hoped that being expelled from the sect would have been the end of it, but evidently it had not.
Lan Xichen held his hands up in appeasement. Lan Wangji hoped that his brother had accomplished whatever teasing he had felt the need to indulge in, but Lan Xichen's next comment put an end to such wishful thinking.
"Mingjue called. He mentioned something about a rogue cultivator you met. In the hotel bar ."
Lan Xichen's stress on the last word made it clear just how unlikely he found it that Lan Wangji had entered the bar by coincidence. Almost as unlikely as Lan Xichen dropping by his office for a simple visit.
"Mm," Lan Wangji said, returning to his writing, feeling his ears heat. He should have known better than to hope that someone would not have mentioned his exchange with Wei Wuxian. But with Nie Huaisang there, it was unavoidable.
Lan Xichen watched him for a moment. Both men were quite comfortable with extended silence, which was unfortunate, because that meant that Lan Wangji couldn't use his usual tactic of 'icy, pointed silence' to get his brother to leave.
"He is the one who had applied for the talismans guest lecturer position?" Lan Xichen asked.
"Mm," Lan Wangji responded.
"And you refused to interview him. But then he turned out to be some sort of talisman prodigy."
Lan Xichen waited for a response. Lan Wangji told himself he wouldn't rise to the bait, but the words came out anyway.
"He said he had no credentials or references. He is not even a cultivator. He did not meet any of the stated requirements for the position." Lan Wangji pressed his lips together to keep more words from coming out. He sounded defensive even to his own ears.
"I see. It is natural to not have offered him an interview, under those circumstances."
His brother sounded very conciliatory, which was always when he was at his most dangerous.
"I heard he turned you down when you offered him a chance to interview for the position," Lan Xichen said. "Perhaps rather than a guest lecturer role, we should consider something more permanent."
Lan Wangji gave up trying to write, turning to glare at his brother, though his brother's proposal had definitely piqued his interest. It was rare—nearly unheard of—for the Lan to offer sect membership to an adult cultivator, much less an adult non- cultivator.
"Mingjue sent a picture of him that Huaisang took. He's very good-looking, don't you think?"
Lan Wangji's phone chimed. He looked down to see a message from his brother. He did not open it.
Lan Xichen laid a hand briefly on Lan Wangji's shoulder before turning to walk towards the door.
"Ah, didi. It's been so long since I've had something to tease you over. I will have to give Wei Wuxian my thanks when I meet him."
"You will not," Lan Wangji stated.
Lan Xichen just smiled his infuriatingly calm smile, and left.
Lan Wangji glared after him for several moments. Then he picked up his phone and opened the message.
It had two photos. The first was of Wei Wuxian, lounging against the bar with dark, intelligent eyes, a laughing grin, and a drink in his hand. The photo was taken from an angle that showed the fine bones of his face and drew attention to the narrow span of his waist, accentuated by the red trim of the belt he wore over his black robes.
The second was a photo of Lan Wangji, taken during his brief exchange with Wei Wuxian in the bar.
Lan Wangji took one look at the expression on his own face and immediately closed the photo, glaring at his phone. The next time Nie Huaisang asked him for a favor, he would take great pleasure in turning the man down.
Lan Wangji had gone down to Caiyi to purchase some talisman paper from a shop that had a reputation for specializing in rare, high-end cultivation equipment. The shop was near the hospital, and Lan Wangji always enjoyed walking through the park that was across the street from it.
It was mid-afternoon, with the heat of the unusually warm day at its peak. As he approached the park near the hospital, he saw a man and a young child practicing what looked to be some sort of martial art or meditation forms, but they were not any that Lan Wangji had ever seen. The fluidity of the movement of the man spoke of mastery of whatever style it was. As he got closer, he realized the man was Wei Wuxian.
The sun was high in the sky, shining down on Wei Wuxian and the child, making them seem to almost glow in the light. He was wearing a tight-fitting, worn-thin red tee-shirt and black, loose-fitting pants similar to what he saw civilians wearing when they practiced Tai Chi in the early morning. The pants looked completely different and slightly scandalous the way Wei Wuxian wore them, riding low on his hips.
He didn't understand how the man was able to take something traditional and make it seem so shameless, the same way he had with the cultivation robes. Though, in that case, he had seemed to have been trying to elicit such a reaction from others. This seemed less intentional. Though perhaps it was just a habit, drawing attention to the curve and suppleness of his body.
He had propositioned Lan Wangji when they had first met. It was unlikely Lan Wangji had been the only cultivator he had approached. Perhaps others had taken him up on it, even at the conference. The idea made irritation flare, though he knew he had no right to be annoyed. The private activities of others were of no concern to him.
Still, he found himself unable to look away from the talisman expert and the young boy.
The child was mimicking Wei Wuxian's movements somewhat clumsily but clearly with his full effort.
Wei Wuxian didn't seem to be focused on correcting the child's stance, though he was keeping watch on the boy.
"Try to feel the energy flowing inside you. Feel it in your belly," Wei Wuxian said, pausing to lightly place a finger over the child's lower dantian, three fingers below his belly button. "You were born with energy here. It is the base of your qi. Picture it like a golden sea inside you."
The little boy nodded in determination, closing his eyes.
"Try to focus on feeling it flow as you move," Wei Wuxian said. "As you breathe, you take in energy from around you into your lungs. Concentrate on feeling the energy here," Wei Wuxian placed a finger on the boy's solar plexus, where his golden core would form when he was older. "Feel the energy from within you flow and mix with the energy of your breath as you move. Don't worry about the exact steps. Just focus on your breath, and feeling the energy move inside you."
Lan Wangji tensed at the instructions. These were not simple meditative exercises.
The child did not look like he was more than four years old, yet Wei Wuxian was teaching him things that described how to form a golden core. Except the method was completely wrong, and the child was way too young to be able to achieve it. None of the sects began serious training before the age of six, GusuLan included, and there were very clear reasons as to why.
The foundation of the core and strong meridians were critical to get right. Other mistakes in cultivation could be corrected, but those could not. And after the body had matured, the formation of the physical elements of the spiritual pathways became more difficult and less effective.
Lan Wangji had been put in the position to have to tell more than one hopeful applicant that came to them at an older age that their core was not properly developed, and that they would not be able to build a strong enough core to ever be able to work as a cultivator. It was heartbreaking for them, and not something he would wish upon anyone. It was better to wait and receive proper instruction than to rush it and end up ruining all future hope.
He must have been standing too long watching, because Wei Wuxian suddenly turned, as though having felt his gaze upon him.
"Hey, Lan Zhan!" Wei Wuxian smiled, waving at him despite him already looking in their direction. "Did you come to tell me you decided to take me up on my offer?"
The boy moved to Wei Wuxian's side as Lan Wangji approached, pressing shyly against him and clutching the fabric of Wei Wuxian's loose pants as he looked up at Lan Wangji with wide eyes, taking in the cultivator robes he was wearing. Wei Wuxian laid a hand on the child's shoulder to reassure him, the movement natural and instinctive, speaking of closeness.
"Shameless," Lan Wangji said, though he did find himself soaking in the details of how he could see the slight sheen of sweat on Wei Wuxian's skin. It would make his skin slick and pliant beneath one's hand.
Lan Wangji pushed the errant and irrelevant thought aside. As a cultivator with a strong golden core, Lan Wangji rarely felt the effects of the ambient surroundings. His distraction by the sight of Wei Wuxian's perspiration was likely simply due to lack of interactions with non-cultivators.
"A-Yuan, where are your manners? Why don't you say hello to Hanguang-Jun. He's a famous cultivator!"
A-Yuan looked up at Lan Wangji for a moment, then released Wei Wuxian's pants in order to perform an approximation of a cultivator's bow. No one but his brother knew, but Lan Wangji had a soft spot for the youngest disciples. A-Yuan was even younger than the children entering the sect, but still had the pure, simple earnestness of early childhood that drew the protective side of Lan Wangji to the forefront.
Lan Wangji returned the gesture with formal precision, looking at the child despite feeling Wei Wuxian's eyes on him.
"Hello, A-Yuan," Lan Wangji greeted. The child seemed to lose all his shyness at the greeting. He stepped forward, smiling up brightly at Lan Wangji.
"Xian-gege is teaching me how to cultivate a golden core!" Wen Yuan said excitedly. "Then I can be a cultivator, too!"
Lan Wangji frowned, shifting his gaze to Wei Wuxian.Even if well-intentioned, Wei Wuxian might be setting the child back from his aspiration of being a cultivator. Lan Wangji was one of the senior cultivators that helped assess whether a child was ready to begin cultivation. One of the greatest joys he had experienced was watching the way a child's face lit up when they first were able to feel their tiny golden core in their chest. It was a moment of significant accomplishment in their young lives, marking their entry into the cultivation world, separating them from regular civilians at a fundamental level.
Forming a core properly meant they would live longer, be less at risk to sickness and weather, and have the protection and resources of GusuLan to guide them on their path. He had done everything in his power to ensure that children in his territory were never robbed of that chance, no matter how well-intentioned.
"It is best to learn cultivation from someone with a golden core," Lan Wangji said sternly. Wei Wuxian's entire being went utterly still, his smile vanishing as his expression shuttered. "Untested approaches can do more harm than good. Movement is disruptive to early core development. That is why we wait until children are older."
It was possible Wei Wuxian did not know he was putting the child at risk by his unorthodox teachings.
Wei Wuxian huffed out a derisive breath.
"Xian-gege has a golden core! He's a great cultivator!" Wen Yuan said somewhat defensively, moving back to stand by Wei Wuxian's side.
Lan Wangji felt his temper rise. Had Wei Wuxian lied to this family, claiming to have a golden core when he clearly did not? Had he turned down the offer to interview at Cloud Recesses because he had already decided to sell his services as a 'cultivation expert' on false claims of having a golden core?
It was possible Wei Wuxian considered himself a cultivator based on his extensive knowledge of talismans. Most would disagree, as the root of being a cultivator was having successfully cultivated a golden core. Regardless, it was not appropriate for someone to train a child on things they did not know, particularly core development. Lan Wangji could not condone it, no matter what intentions or other skills the instructor had.
"A-Yuan," Wei Wuxian said, glaring at Lan Wangji. "We should head back home."
A-Yuan's small brow creased into a worried frown. "But we haven't finished the exercises. You said we should try to do them every day when you talked to Popo about teaching me."
GusuLan had worked to have laws passed in both the civilian municipalities as well as in Cloud Recesses itself that banned the teaching of cultivation by non-cultivators after a spate of charlatans who claimed to be actual cultivation experts who sold their services fraudulently to desperate or gullible parents, only to ruin the child's chances at ever being able to cultivate.
"It is illegal for non-cultivators to sell cultivation instruction in the GusuLan district," Lan Wangji said.
Lan Wangji's words seemed to snap Wei Wuxian out of whatever had held him silent.
"What the fuck? I'm not charging him. Not everything is about making money." Wei Wuxian took the child's hand, his grip gentle despite the clear anger that was practically radiating off him. "Come on, A-Yuan. Let's go home."
Lan Wangji felt frustration surge through him at how easily Wei Wuxian was brushing off his concerns. "Even without being paid, the development of a child's core is not something to take lightly."
Wei Wuxian stopped looking back over his shoulder. "Yeah. I know. But you're wrong about the cultivation training."
"GusuLan's approach is based on over a thousand years worth of learning," Lan Wangji said coldly.
Wei Wuxian smirked.
"Yeah. And how many of those 'thousand years' were spent questioning anything or experimenting? How much was just blindly doing the same thing over and over? Because kids can learn way earlier than six or seven. You just need to know the right way to teach them."
Lan Wangji bristled. He was willing to be lectured by Wei Wuxian on talismans, but when it came to core development, only one of them had one.
"How do you know your way is correct, when you do not have a core yourself?" Lan Wangji asked.
While there was nearly insurmountable evidence that Wei Wuxian was wrong, he would at least give the man a chance to present his arguments. He had made the mistake of discounting Wei Wuxian's theoretical knowledge before.
But his question only seemed to make the man angrier.
"Piss off, Lan Zhan," Wei Wuxian said tightly, his voice rough with emotion.
Lan Wangji watched them leave, wondering why Wei Wuxian had been so angry, when he could not even defend his point of view. It was an obvious question to ask. And if the man had theoretical knowledge, then he had the opportunity to say so. The more he interacted with Wei Wuxian, the less he felt like he understood him.
And who was the child? Was he a relative? The child had called Wei Wuxian 'Xian-gege', not a-die or baba.
Lan Wangji should report him. Even without payment, it was illegal for non-cultivators to train a child that was not their own. The child had seemed young and bright, and it would be a shame for his chances of cultivation to be ruined.
But his sense of Wei Wuxian was that he was not the sort of person to pretend to know something that he did not. Wei Wuxian was nothing like Su Minshan.
One of the elders in his sect had mentioned there was a new research project involving core development that he had gotten involved with. Lan Wangji decided he would speak to his elder to see if there was, in fact, any evidence at all that Wei Wuxian was correct before he reported him.
There was something about Wei Wuxian that always left him feeling frustrated and irritated, but also questioning things that he had never questioned before.
Wei Wuxian struggled to keep his emotions in check as he walked back to the Wen apartment with A-Yuan. The thing was, he could actually understand why Lan Wangji had intervened the way he had. In other circumstances, Wei Wuxian would even have applauded it.
As First Disciple, Wei Wuxian had been in charge of training his shidis and shimeis . He knew how important core development was. But being called out for not being qualified to train A-Yuan just because he no longer had a golden core had stung.
As had the fact that he couldn't even really correct Lan Wangji about how wrong he was about the 'correct' method for core development because it would out him as the anonymous research patient that Wen Qing was working with. While that in-and-of itself was not a breach of the NDA, it would lead to questions that could rapidly put him there.
The whole situation was incredibly frustrating. And it fed off the larger frustration that his slow, incremental progress in growing his tiny core was creating. It didn't matter that Wen Qing was telling him he was forming it much faster than a child at a similar development level. The fact was he didn't want to wait two to three years before he had a core big enough to night-hunt with.
And the only person who seemed like they had a core worth attempting dual cultivation with had nothing but contempt for Wei Wuxian. Lan Wangji was the type of cultivator that Wei Wuxian had always wanted to have met back when he'd had his golden core. They could have been rivals, challenging each other or maybe even working together (though Madam Yu would never have allowed it).
But now, Lan Wangji only looked down on him as a non-cultivator who didn't even know enough to properly train a child.
By the time they'd reached the apartment, Wei Wuxian had his temper back under control.
But he couldn't deny that his motivation to take on Nie heir's suggestion of a night hunt had only increased. He might not currently have much of a golden core, but he could still night hunt, if he picked the right ones.
And he was also going to try harder to find someone he could be compatible with for dual cultivation. He just had to work himself up to it, a bit.
The thing was, there was a reason that junior disciples were not sent alone on night hunts. Even if the night hunt appeared to be very simple. Wei Wuxian knew this, but he'd still pushed ahead to do the hunt. He cursed his recklessness as he watched yet another spirit enter the clearing, heading for the array.
If the spirits started feeding resentful energy off each other, things would go very bad very fast.
They were miles from help, out of cell phone range, and what had seemed to be the case of a possible benign spirit (singular, one spirit) and some confused witnesses turned out to be something else entirely. Something that currently had over a hundred restless spirits temporarily held in his spirit binding array.
Which had only ever been tested on one spirit. As strong one, but still, only one.
"Ah, fuck," Wei Wuxian said as yet another form emerged from the edge of the clearing.
It was a good thing he'd drawn the array extra-large to make it the focal point of the video. The spirits definitely shared a similar source. Even ignoring the fact that they were in the middle of fucking nowhere, several hours of hiking through the wilderness to even get to a road, much less a town, most of the spirits showed a similar sort of trauma when they flickered between what they'd looked like in live, and what they looked like in death.
Their manner of death had been violent. Most were unrecognizable. He would have said landslide, but there was no village close enough to make sense. His mind raced, trying to connect the dots. There weren't too many ways that so many people could end up here, and die so terribly.
Only two of them looked like they were dressed for any sort of hiking activity. The rest definitely did not. Yet there were no roads anywhere nearby that could have brought them here, so that eliminated most options.
They had started by filming the interviews of people in the area, but there had been no hints of something like this. How did so many people go missing and no one noticed?
All the interviews had done was highlight a common issue with night hunts, which was how conflicting and sometimes unreliable eyewitness reports could be. Some people claimed the 'sightings' had been just the wind through someone's laundry, left on the line overnight. Others claimed to have seen the ghost of an old man, or a young woman, or not even a ghost at all, but a ghoul of a small child.
Before they had even come to Yiling, Wen Ning had run some natural language processing scans searching online news forums and social media posts about the ghosts, and they had gotten a lot of similarly conflicting information.
There was no consistency except for the fact that everyone agreed that there had been no violence done. It explained to a certain extent why no sect had sent anyone to investigate. There wasn't much money to be made, and no imminent threat.
But the frequency of the sightings had been increasing. There had been rumors of ghosts in the mountains for years. But over the past few years, there had been more and more reports. Whatever it was, it appeared to be escalating. When that started, it sometimes got dangerous very quickly. Someone needed to check it out before civilians ended up hurt, and it looked like Wei Wuxian was the only one who had volunteered.
Which brought him to the current situation. He'd stopped counting when the number of ghosts reached over a hundred.
"Wei Laoshi?" Wen Ning asked, his voice sounding uncertain.
Wei Wuxian had drawn a second array around Wen Ning as a fail-safe once the ghosts started flooding in, despite the man's objections. Wei Wuxian was the one who had decided to go on a hunt when he wasn't ready. Wen Ning shouldn't get hurt because of it.
At least not if Wei Wuxian could help it.
"Yeah. I know. It's a lot more than we expected, right?"
Wei Wuxian's only solace was—if they pulled this off—his channel was going to get a huge boost. Wei Wuxian looked around at the surrounding mountains. Wen Ning was holding the expensive night-vision camera that JustAFan had sent them to use, which would provide a good second source to go with the bodycam that Wei Wuxian had on his harness.
Just a loan, so people will be able to see the clothes even if you are outside at night , the note attached had said.
Wei Wuxian thought JustAFan had a bit of a flare for the dramatic with some of his suggestions he'd sent along with the camera on specific angles and positions he was supposed to take, but—since the whole point was to get attention to his streams in the first place—he couldn't really object.
He had been nervous about having Wen Ning this far from a medical facility, but the man had insisted on coming with him. Now Wei Wuxian wished he'd been firmer in refusing. Wen Qing had given them a large qiankun bag full of medical equipment to take with them, but since mostly what Wen Ning required when he had an episode was rest, the worst case scenario was they would need to make camp and rest a day or two in the middle of their hunt.
With no prior violence and Wei Wuxian's ability to sense resentful energy, he had thought it would be safe.
He would just have to figure out how to put them to rest. In order to do that, he needed to find out how they got here, though there was really only one option he could think of.
Wei Wuxian approached the array.
"What happened to you all?" He asked, his voice soft. Most of the ghosts ignored him. He wasn't sure if it was because they couldn't see him, or just didn't think he was worth trying to communicate with.
"Where's a Lan when you need one?" Wei Wuxian murmured. Music seemed to be a more effective way of speaking with the dead than words. Unfortunately, Wei Wuxian did not have experience with that.
There was one way he knew how to communicate with the dead, but it was risky, even by Wei Wuxian's standards.
Though not as risky as letting the current situation escalate.
There was a sound in the bushes that had Wei Wuxian's head turning. Whatever it was, it was physical, not just a spirit.
A small ghoul-child moved forward, drawn to the array. On her back was a tiny backpack, with a teddy-bear dangling from the open front pocket. The child approached the array, but Wei Wuxian stopped her before she could enter it, using a different talisman that was able to temporarily freeze low-level creatures.
The ghoul-child was more resentful than the others spirits, though still not high-level. He worried that if she entered the array, she would escalate the other ghosts, making them more powerful and possibly too much for the array to hold.
He cursed softly under his breath. If his core was even just a little bit bigger, he would have been able to handle it if she got loose. As it was, there would be no room for error. He looked back at Wen Ning, whose eyes were wide at the sight of the growing population of spirits. If the array failed, or if the resentment of the spirits started to feed off each other, things would go south very fast.
Wei Wuxian wished there was a sect close enough to send back-up, but the whole reason they'd chosen Yiling was because none of the sects covered it.
"Ok. So this is a bit more excitement than we were expecting," Wei Wuxian said, trying to keep the nervousness out of his voice. "So we're going to skip a few levels and go to some things that are a bit more advanced. I'm not going to describe what I'm doing here, since this is definitely not something I want anyone trying at home."
Wei Wuxian turned to Wen Ning. He knew that Wen Qing was probably going to kick his ass when she saw the video, but more and more ghosts were arriving, and he didn't really want to test just how many spirits the suppression array could hold before it was overwhelmed. He'd cast it to last about twenty-four hours, but that was assuming he had only been trying to hold one spirit. He had no idea how the volume of spirits would shorten the length of the spell. But strengthening the array significantly would require either more blood than he could spare or more qi. There might be a bit more he could do with his blood, but his core was so pathetically weak it might as well not even be there.
He didn't have time to fuck around and guess. And there was really only one way to know for sure.
"Ok. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to strengthen the anchor points of the array, given how much it's holding," he said, slicing into his palm. He'd need more than just a few drops from the tip of his finger this time.
"Then, my partner here is going to be my anchor. A-Ning, I need you to stay fully in the warded area, and play the alarm on my phone if I'm not back in two hours," Wei Wuxian said, unlocking his phone and setting the alarm, then handing it to Wen Ning.
Not having a golden core meant he was tired more than he used to be, so he'd taken to using an alarm to make sure he wasn't late to getting to the lab in the mornings. Back at Lotus Pier, one of the disciples always came by to wake him up, along with the rest of the group, so he never had to worry about it. The sound he'd found online to use as his alarm was similar in pitch and tone to the clarity bell he had carried as a Jiang. Hopefully, it would be enough to do the trick.
Wen Ning looked at him in confusion. "Where are you going, Wei Laoshi?"
Wei Wuxian sat down in the lotus position, near the ghoul-child. He could allow one of the spirits to possess him, but having a physical body that the child was still anchored to made it very slightly less risky, even if the child was more resentful.
"Wherever she takes me," Wei Wuxian said, sitting down in a lotus position. He looked at the ghoul-child, meeting her gaze and letting her read his eyes. "I want to help you. And the others. Can you show me what you need?"
The child looked at him, her dead eyes flashing with resentment. Wei Wuxian slowed his breath, concentrating on the flare of resentment he felt from her, and tried to connect with it as he slowly reached his hands out towards the child, palms up.
"I'm going to touch you. And you can show me."
"Wei-laoshi, I don't think this is safe," Wen Ning said anxiously.
"We don't have a choice. There are so many of them. I don't think they'll wait much more. The resentful energy is building. It will be much more dangerous if we leave them. We're here. We can help."
The child had been watching, listening to their words. She reached out, placing her small hands on Wei Wuxian's palms.
And the world around him vanished.