The forest is dark, and calm, and quiet. Birds chirp in the trees, and herbivores snuffle around in the underbrush or bolt at the scent of a predator, but nothing more aggressive than nature itself can dwell long here without being discovered and dealt with, one way or another.
In a clearing, a brook winds its way through shallow curves in the hillside. Anything remotely supernatural that happened here would definitely be noticed within less than an hour.
Some of the tension goes out of his shoulders. "Ah, Lan Zhan, you're really too much sometimes. Not only tolerating demonic cultivation, but allowing Yiling Laozu himself to go free? What would people think?"
"Well, someone should. Guess I'd better be extra careful not to get caught, huh?"
"Wei Ying. He has spent the past thirteen years dragging any demonic cultivator he could find back to Lotus Pier and torturing them to death. He would not need to know that you are you. If he knew the events of Mo Village he would try to do the same to you."
"...Wow. He really hates me that much, huh." Sigh. "Guess I can't blame him."
"So if you're not here to expose the wicked Yiling Laozu's return to the world and bring me to justice, what do you want with me?"
"The soul-eating--oh. Oh. Oh, that's fiendish, except how it's not, no wonder the compasses didn't work. If she was granting people's wishes and taking their souls, that would technically be a legitimate transaction, so she doesn't register as evil--damn. You're saying you need my help with it?"
"Swords were ineffective. Arrows were ineffective. The only thing that successfully stopped her was Wen Ning."
"Wen Ning? Has seeing me again made you forget what year it is? He died before I did!"
"Apparently not. In the future Suan Yisabeila saw, you cut a flute and played it and Wen Ning appeared."
"Mn."
He finds a stalk of bamboo of the correct diameter, draws Bichen, and cuts an appropriate length, whittling holes in it much more carefully than Wei Ying counterfactually did in the fight that didn't happen.
He closes his eyes.
Wei Ying playing the song he wrote for them on a flute he carved for him is...
He is having a LOT of feelings right now. This is too many feelings. Put some back If he had ever been able to put any Wei Ying related feelings back at any time ever his life would be VERY DIFFERENT.
And--
after a little while--
preceded by an ominous jingling-chains noise--
out of the trees walks Wen Ning.
"What the fuck," he breathes, flute playing forgotten. "What the fuck."
As soon as the flute playing stops, Wen Ning stops moving.
Wrapped in chains all over, his expression is completely blank.
Wei Wuxian circles his startlingly-less-dead-than-previously-believed friend.
"Something's wrong...he's completely unconscious. And supposed to be dead. Tch. I suppose the Jins couldn't bear to throw away such a marvelous potential weapon," he murmurs, disgusted. "Hands."
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