"Yes. What happened?"

"I don't know," she says, lips pressed together thinly. "There was just suddenly a sea of fierce corpses, and this was the only room in the whole building where the wards worked." 

"Mm." He looks over at Jiang Wanyin. They'll have to keep moving, find the next one.

"Are any of you hurt?" he asks the lady.

"Not badly. A few bruises is all." 

Back to Jiang Wanyin. "Let's go."

Nod. 

The next Wen outpost doesn't appear to have any survivors, and is burned to the ground. 

"We should keep going until we find one still burning."

"I take it this didn't happen last time either." 

Well. Some things eerily similar to this did happen before they found Wei Ying last time. But he can't tell Jiang Wanyin about that. "Mn."

The next one is more like the first in terms of amount-of-burned-ness. 

The one after that is still on fire. 

They land and run towards it. Is anyone outside nearby? Can they see anyone inside as they approach?

Nobody alive is outside. There are several fierce corpses, just standing there, not doing anything. 

The doors are closed. Nothing inside is visible. 

They will burst inside, if the building is sufficiently not-completely-on-fire as to allow that.

The first morning he'd woken up in his old bed at Lotus Pier, he'd thought he was dreaming. 

He had dreams like that, sometimes. Dreams of happier times. Usually they were of the few blissfully happy months between when Lan Zhan had come to visit them in Yiling, and been convinced by A-Yuan's pleading to stay, and--well, everything that came after. The best months of his life, full of love and light and joy, followed by the worst; Shijie's husband's death, then Wen Ning and Wen Qing's, then Shijie herself, and finally, at the siege that had almost wiped them out, Lan Zhan had died five feet away from the tree where A-Yuan had been hiding. 

He had plenty of nightmares, too. Nightmares of watching it happen, of killing himself like he had been so tempted to do and leaving A-Yuan all alone. 

Dreaming of Lotus Pier in the specific interval between when he had been expelled from Cloud Recesses and when Jiang Cheng had come back was unusual, but shijie was there, and the lakes, and--well, it was a good dream. 

He revised that assessment when he woke up still there the next morning. 

He tried everything he could think of to force himself to wake up, and--nothing. This was, somehow, real. 

Everyone was alive. Shijie was alive. Wen Qing and Wen Ning were alive out there, somewhere. Lan Zhan was alive, and he had never cursed himself before for punching that stupid peacock, but he did now, because if he hadn't he would have woken up at Cloud Recesses and could have gone to see Lan Zhan immediately. 

He almost did that anyway, grabbed Suibian and flown over (he could do that now, his golden core was still his) but...

But these people were alive, but they weren't safe. The Wens had already started their encroachments, as the waterborne abyss they had chased into Biling Lake proved. If he didn't do anything, there would be a war again. Cloud Recesses would burn, Uncle Jiang and Madame Yu would die, and...

No. He wasn't going to let history just repeat itself. 

Which meant he needed to find the people who needed to die, and end them, without it being connected to Lotus Pier. 

His younger body had never been thrown in the Burial Mounds like garbage, but in the end, that didn't matter. He was still the same person who had invented demonic cultivation, and the inferior flute he cut for himself out of green bamboo, too hasty to try to recreate Chenqing, sufficed for his purposes. Not for this timeline were the massive armies of the undead he had marshalled in the Sunshot Campaign. He gathered a handful of the strongest fierce corpses he could find, and set off. 

The first Wen Outpost that he came across fell silently in the night, each living soul within snuffed out by precisely-controlled fierce corpses before an alarm could be raised. He went through their documents, then burned the place to the ground. 

The second one was more populous and, more importantly, contained an actual medical staff. None of them were Wen Qing, but for all he knew they were her friends, and he really didn't want to piss her off, even if probably in this timeline the Wen siblings would have no particular reason to give him the time of day. That was--fine, that was objectively much better than Wen Ning dying and coming back as a sentient fierce corpse who couldn't eat Shijie's soup when she gave it to him with a smile. 

The third didn't have doctors, but it did have a significant civilian staff, which he made a point of sparing as well. If it meant there were witnesses to his methods, oh well, he could just put the flute down after he was done cleaning out Qishan of the rot that was poisoning it and went home and picked up his sword again. None of them had seen his face or anything. 

The fourth one contained Wen Zhuliu and Wen Chao. 

He didn't make them suffer as much as he had the first time. Wen Zhuliu he killed first and quickly; he still had something to lose to the man, after all, this time. Looking at the man's body, head tilted at an unnatural angle from his snapped neck, sent an overwhelming wave of relief through him. Jiang Cheng's core was safe. 

Wen Chao he took his time with a little, but not very much. The man was pathetic without his bodyguard to shield him, and it had been child's play to draw it out, wounding him dozens of times before finally hacking his head off. It hadn't been a pleasant death, but this timeline's Wen Chao, while presumably guilty of numerous sins Wei Wuxian wasn't specifically aware of, had not in fact committed the specific misdeeds that had earned him his slow descent into madness in the original timeline. 

He is pondering these things, Wen Chao's severed head dangling from his fist by the hair, his robes soaked in Wen Chao's blood (and probably other people's too; the corpses that had taken care of the rest of the outpost weren't especially tidy) when the doors burst open. He turns to look. 

He stumbles, which he almost never does. Catches himself.

He's too late, is the first coherent thought he has. Too late. Wei Ying is covered with blood, and he must have already lost his golden core because he left his sword behind and he's dismembering bodies and why else -

He doesn't know how he possibly failed this badly, how he possibly managed to push Wei Ying into Demonic Cultivation this early. He's so young, they're both still young, and it isn't going to matter they aren't going to get more time he failed - 

He needs to get between Wei Ying and Jiang Wanyin, Wangji thinks feverishly. He needs to keep everyone else away. Keep Wei Ying safe. 

He walks toward him, wading through the gore. "Wei Ying," he whispers.

Lan Zhan is here. 

Lan Zhan is here and alive and god, how could he have forgotten how beautiful Lan Zhan was. 

It doesn't occur to him to wonder what the fuck Lan Zhan is doing here. That would require him to be able to have coherent thoughts right now. 

He drops Wen Chao's head like the irrelevant piece of rubbish that it is and runs towards Lan Zhan, throws his arms around his neck and kisses him. 

Wh -

Oh. Okay, kissing. No more thoughts, only kissing.

He has no idea how or why this is happening but it probably doesn't matter. What does matter: Wei Ying's mouth. Wei Ying, solid and alive in his arms. Wei Ying, holding him back. Kissing him. Kissing Wei Ying. Okay.

(Jiang Cheng shrieks and covers his eyes and is summarily ignored)

In this young, strong body with its strong golden core, he doesn't have to come up for air for a long time. 

Long enough, even, that by the time he does, he has regained the ability to string together a single entire sentence. 

"Lan Zhan, what are you doing here?"

His voice. His voice his voice his voice. His arms. Wangji wonders if this is what fainting feels like.

"For you," he manages to say, which makes no sense. "I came for Wei Ying. Won't let you die.

-- Did. Did you kiss me?" 

"Yes! I'm not going to die, Lan Zhan, I've got the situation completely under control, I promise." 

And then, to illustrate at least one of these points, he kisses him again. He wasted way too much time not kissing Lan Zhan last time and he does not plan to make that mistake again. 

He swoons. The swooning is not visibly or tangibly observable in any way, but it's definitely happening.

He should probably stab himself in the leg again, what is happening.

"Promise to let me help you."

"Lan Zhan, if anyone finds out you were here, the Wens will have no choice but to declare war on the Lans. I can do this without anyone finding out it was me. That's why I left everything behind at Lotus Pier, if I did this using Suibian somebody might recognize it." 

"What is this for? Your goal, Wei Ying?" 

"I know this sounds insane, but a week ago I woke up in my bed at Lotus Pier after falling asleep eight years in the future. The future was horrible and I have to stop it."