𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐢𝐚 ⚣︎ mo dao zu shi x male reader

twenty-two.

cursing silently, lan y/n snapped back to the voice in his head, "are you going to help me or not?"

he could hear the qiong qi holding back a laugh. "well aren't you a demanding little vessel?" the qiong qi said. "but, fine. if i get to kill the wens, why not?"

as if he had returned from being frozen in time, lan y/n felt something push him from behind his back. jiang cheng grabbed his hand and huaisang grabbed his arm as the two boys pulled him downward. they landed on their backs, while lan y/n landed on top of them, his body hovering over them both as he used his intense, resentful aura to shield their bodies from the rain of flaming arrows.

huaisang whimpered as he squeezed his eyes shut and gripped lan y/n's arm. lan y/n comforted his timid friend by giving him a soft smile, "just hold on a little longer, it'll be over soon." he says. jiang cheng looks at lan y/n through his gray orbs, worry evident in them. "lan y/n..." he says. lan y/n leaned down, resting his forehead on the crook of jiang cheng's neck. "it's okay. just stay underneath me, no arrows will hurt you." he assures.

just like he said, none of the arrows seemed to land anywhere near them, as all the arrows that rained on top of lan y/n burned away into ash. the arrows stopped. "hurry and load more arrows!" wen chao screamed from the top of the cliff to the wen disciples. lan y/n took that as a chance and he stood up, pulling up jiang cheng and huaisang, who was clinging to his arm, with him. "is it over?" huaisang asked, still clinging to lan y/n's arm. lan y/n quickly pried huaisang off him, "not yet, but i need you two to leave, now." he pushed the two boys away, towards the cover of the forest. he yelled, "go!" but jiang cheng tried to reach out to him. he called, "lan y/n-"

but with his resentful energy, he blocked the two boys from coming any closer to him. "make sure my brother gets out alive." he told them as he gave them a serious look. "you have to go back as well, for wei ying." jiang cheng looked from the deathly serious lan y/n, who was trying his hardest to convince jiang cheng, then towards the seething wen chao, who was rushing his men to finish loading their arrows. jiang cheng stepped back, breathing heavily, as again, he was faced with a difficult decision. leave him or die with him. but he didn't have enough time to decide, as lan y/n was already running towards wen chao, his hands enveloped in a red aura.

huaisang squeezed his eyes shut. he didn't want to leave him, but he and jiang cheng couldn't outrun an entire army of wen disciples. having lan y/n distract them all while they all fled was their best bet. he grabbed jiang cheng's arm and told him, "jiang-shixiong, let's go!" jiang cheng glanced back at lan y/n. "we can't leave him!" he yelled to the nie disciple. "we don't have a choice if we want to live!" huaisang barks back. "don't be selfish, huaisang!" jiang cheng yells back.

"it's exactly why we have to leave! we have to return to our clans and get help! we can't fight those wens when we're all scattered and weaponless like we are right now!" huaisang reasons. "we have to think practically, jiang-shixiong. i don't want to leave him either, but i... we're going to return for him."

jiang cheng's fingers curled into a fist. he didn't want to admit it, but everything huaisang told him was true. he took one final look at lan y/n before he ran away with huaisang.

lan y/n saw them running from the corner of his eye and he smiled in relief. "what the hell could you possibly be smiling about?!" wen chao asked him. "nothing really, i was just thinking of how much fun it'll be to make you beg for mercy as i make you bleed." he held up his hand, which was wrapped in an aura of malevolent energy, and he smiled wickedly.

"hell yeah! let's kill them all!" the voice inside his head yelled. "no." lan y/n whispered as he took up a fighting pose. "what?! no!" the voice yells. "please, don't kill them... just.." lan y/n tightened his fist as he glared up at the wens. "i'm afraid i can't respect your wishes this time, child." lan y/n felt like his head was spinning as he hallucinated the figure of the qiong qi, standing behind him and casting his giant shadow over his much smaller figure.