Something is murdering women on their way home. To stop the blood running in the streets, Shen Wei knows he's going to have call someone far more supernatural.
Disclaimer: This might be a little too gumiho rather than huli jing....
For Chinesedramas
Fourth time I've tried uploading! Here goes!
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The man who looked like Zhao Yunlan was barely breathing.
Shen Wei knelt beside the bed, his heart heavy in his chest, one hand entwined with Ah Lan's, the other twisting the loose threads of the quilt.
The other part of him, the modern man who had known Zhao Yunlan for five months and lost for a year, is panicking. He cannot move, can only act out the words and actions of the older past version of himself. Usually they want and do the same things, including blush at the same time, but at other moments like this, the disparity is massive.
Ah Lan lies turned on his side towards Shen Wei, still enough to mimic death, his pallor a terrible grey, made worse by the black robes that hang too loosely on his broad frame.
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He wasn't Ah Lan. An all the ways that mattered he was, indisputably Ah Lan, but here in this strange time, in this dream, Shen Wei knew he was someone else. A name that eluded him, like trying to grasp smoke.
Here Shen Wei wasn't unaware of the real world, but lived these moments again. Treading the ground upon which he had walked as someone else, another Shen Wei.
Here in this dreams he was Xiao Wei. Another man, from another time, but he...they still loved Ah Lan, fiercely and unapologetic.
And Ah Lan was dying.
Perhaps because he had already lived this life, perhaps because he had spent two months with blood clogging his throat, lungs rotting, body failing, he understood the signs. Perhaps the memory of this knowledge was so entrenched in agony, it couldn't be forgotten.
But he was. Zhao Yunlan lying in this uncomfortable bed, in a cottage deep in the mountains was fading.
How does a creature washed in legend die? What can kill a nine-tailed fox? Or six tailed as he was here?
Shen Wei's fingers let go of the blanket threads and stroked long wavy hair from a feverish brow, his skin glowing a light bronze in the candlelight. Shen Wei lifted the edge of the quilt and drew back the loose green robe, his younger mind rebelling at the thought of what he might find, his older self's fingers sure.
There along Ah Lan's midsection was a bandage, stained red.
Shen Wei looked up as his alarm clock began to ring. What happened to you Ah Lan?
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"What will save him?"
The question hung in the air, almost visible in the grey tinged light of the long shadows of the room. It could be dawn, or dusk, or twilight, the world muted and cold.
