A Ghost of Snow

14. Confusion

Judging from the reaction of the three Lans, Wei Wuxian could tell that whatever was written in the letter was nothing good. Honestly, he was a little nervous and a part of him wanted to burn the paper scroll and continue to be ignorant.

But when he looked at Baixue, the sheer amount of desperation on her normally stoic face compelled him to read it. However, before doing so, he looked at Lan Zhan once again, and he could swear that Lan Zhan's eyes looked like they were on fire, he wondered what could have made him so angry that it was even visible on his face. With a quick glance at the other three people in the room, he began reading. Midway, his breath hitched, this girl, what had his grandmaster done! This wasn't a human at all. It did not shock him much though, he had long thought about the possibility of something like this, he had even done something similar with Wen Ning.

As he read further, a few tears escaped his eyes. So it was true, they were related, in a sense, she really was his little sister but at the same time she wasn't. He looked at Baixue, who was busy staring out the window, he wanted to know how she felt about all this but he wasn't that brave. This question would be left for later. The more he read, the more he was horrified. He could not understand why Baoshan Sanren would do such a thing. No matter what was at stake, this was beyond even being cruel, it was terrifying to even think about doing something like this to someone.

When he was done reading it, the first thing he did was really burn the letter. Before anyone could question him as to why he did it, he spoke with a sense of finality, "If anyone gets their hands on this information, the world would be in chaos." He sighed before continuing, "People covet power and this is as powerful as it can get." He joined his hands in respect and bowed to the three Lans, "I request that it doesn't leave the privacy of this room."

He looked at Baixue who was still busy looking at everything but him. She did not spare him a glance even when he was practically in front of her. Wei Wuxian had always come off as an outgoing person and yet at this moment, he found it difficult to initiate any kind of conversation with this young lady who was supposedly his sister. He was about to walk past her, but stopped, and raised his hand and with a gentle stroke on her head said, "I will find a way." And the next moment, he was out of the door.

Wei Wuxian kept walking until he reached the waterfall where he had once had a duel with Lan Zhan. As soon as he was sure that he was out of the sight of any living person, he fell on his knees as a muffled scream left his throat. He wasn't really sure if he was sad or hurt or just plain angry at how things had turned out.

At this point, he didn't even know if he should laugh or cry at this fateful turn of events. He just wanted to rest but it seemed as if the universe didn't want him to catch a break just yet.

What he gathered from Baoshan Sanren's letter was that his mother was indeed pregnant with her sister when his parents left him in Yiling. Baoshan had supposedly found her almost dead at the foot of her mountain when Cangse Sanren had begged her to save her child. She didn't know that her disciple already had a son and thought that she wanted her to save the child in her belly but it was near impossible to save the child's body if the mother was already dead.

But she couldn't bring herself to ignore the final request of her disciple so she preserved the baby's life force. It wasn't until after a couple years that she successfully created a body for this spiritual soul. She had used the only thing available to her as a medium to build this very human-looking body, that was snow. That explained why Baixue's skin looked so pale almost translucent. Putting the baby's soul into this snow body and bringing it to function the way it did, had taken a lot of her energy resulting in the weakening of her own body. But she had still taken time to train this young girl for years to become a cultivator of great calibre.

It was only years later, when the rumours of a Yilling Patriarch reached her that she found out that Cangse Sanren had a son and it dawned on her that when she had begged her to save her child she might have been talking about this son that was named Wei Ying, Wei Wuxian. Since the baby in her belly wasn't even a month old, there was a high chance that she didn't even know that she was pregnant.

When she learned how the cultivation world had turned its back on Wei Wuxian, she felt even guiltier about not having saved and raised him back then. In her guilt, she had somehow managed to bind Baixue's soul to Wei Wuxian's using the very last of her spiritual energy resulting in her own demise. She was bound to him by a debt of life making, protecting him the only purpose of her existence. This explained how Baixue had appeared just in time to save him.

Wei Wuxian felt confused, he wasn't sure if the both of them could be considered siblings. He felt guilty about how her life had unfairly been bound to his. It wasn't her fault that their mother had failed to explain that she had a son, it wasn't her fault that Wei Wuxian had turned into a demonic cultivator being hated by the world. He couldn't understand why she had to be punished this way. If his grandmaster was still alive, he would have made sure to make her pay for what she had done to his sister. No one deserves to be tied down to another against their will.

He couldn't stop himself when another scream left his throat and then another and then another, he realised that he was wailing like a madman in a place that was really quiet. He was sure that his cries would be heard by the entirety of Cloud Recesses but even with this realisation he couldn't stop himself from screaming at the top of his lungs, "WHY? WHY?"

His screams eventually died down as he now spoke in a whisper, "Why couldn't you just let me die in peace? How do I undo this?"