Bring him home

Our Core values.

Wei Ying was curled into Lan Zhan's warm chest.

His head was thrumming.

There was a dark mist clinging to his lithe frame. He could feel the core inside of him. It was almost surreal. But it was painful.

Lan Zhan was distraught. Wei Ying was sweating, and tears were glistening in his now shut eyes. He was grabbing at his head as if it was going to explode. They had been here for three hours like this.

Lan Zhi had told them that this was part of the core development; it was never certain when exacting that was going to be.

Wei Ying noted that this was three times more painful than having his golden core removed. So when the darkness finally overtook him, he was relieved.

After a while, the two had returned to cloud recesses due to Wei Ying's increasingly lousy health. It had started out small, really. He was more tired, had headaches always, he wasn't hungry, and if he did eat, it was quick to come back up. So they had come back.

They were greeted with great excitement, but the emotions were immediately less so after the condition of Wei Ying was discovered.

Lan Qiren had sent for Baoshan Sanren, but no one knew where she was, so there was no relying on her.

Jiang Cheng had come up to be with his brother for a week after he heard the news of Wei Ying.

Wei Ying was no stranger to the darkness.

He had been a starving child.

He spent three months in the Burial Mounds.

He had died.

Death was weird. Wei Ying was not really a fan of being dead. Though he had welcomed the feeling at the time, looking back, it had not been an enjoyable experience. Time was not something that mattered when death had consumed you. But to Wei Ying, it HAD seemed like an eternity because he was separated from his Lan Zhan. He found that sometimes death was just as uncomfortable as being alive. There was no physical form of pain, but death made up for it with its incredible amount of psychological torture.

There were times Wei Ying thought that the worst moments of his life were better than this form of death. It was hollow, and oh god, it was BORING. Wei Ying needed excitement in his life, and death just did not cut it. He had always given a lot of thought to death before. He hadn't been scared of dying. At one point in his life, he had been curious about it. He craved to know if it was relaxing or something of that sort. Those thoughts were very, very wrong.

Right now, Wei Ying felt drifty. He knew he was alive, but he was in this place, and it felt an awful lot like death. The same cold feeling. Just a black abyss. He was alone again. That was nothing new to him either. He had adjusted to the darkness he felt a wave of nausea hit the pit of his stomach. It was a bizarre feeling. He didn't feel like he was attached to his actual body.

Lan Zhan sat up as Wei Ying had quit shaking. He gently got up to go get a cold washcloth for his husband and call Lan Zhi to check up on him again.

Lan Zhi came about four times a day to check in on him. He had a medicine that subdued the effects of growing a new core, but it only worked for a little while. Once Wei Ying had tried to explain the feeling to Lan Zhan. But no matter how well he described it, Lan Zhan could never honestly know what this felt like.

Lan Jingyi and Lan Sizhui came to visit often. Sizhui was always worried about Wei Ying's well being.

After a week of this, Baoshan Sanren showed up. Everyone was relieved. Lan Zhi included, he was only doing what he could, and she knew so much more about this than he did. This was her creation essentially. She had heard word of the notorious Yiling Patriarch being ill and set off immediately for cloud recesses. Of course, she knew that it was, in fact, the core that grew more influential in him. She felt she needed to be there for her grandson though this. In particular, she was the person he gave him this so she would see him through the end of it.

" How is he," was her first question upon arriving.

" He is fairing well considering," Lan Zhi had replied, though the worry in his voice was evident.

" Take me to him," she said, and Lan Zhi led the way to the jingshi. Lan Zhan had a wet towel draped over Wei Ying's pale forehead. The boy was pale and had a sheen coat of sweat over him. There were dark purple bags under his eyes.

" Hello," Lan Zhan said, giving Baoshan Sanren only a brief glance before turning his pinched brow towards Wei Ying.

" How long has this been going on," She asked she stepped a little closer, and she could feel the power seeping out of Wei Ying. She closed her eyes; she could feel the purity of it—a dark core. Something entirely new to the world, something that would challenge the minds of many. She knew when she had given it to him that he would have to be strong to survive the power of the core.

" About two weeks," Lan Zhi responded, looking at the sinfully pale boy. Lan Qiren had said that he boy seemed as pale as he had when he and Lan Xichen had gone to get him from the land of the dead. This had unnerved Lan Zhan, he didn't like to think about Wei Ying like that. Even when the man had been dead, Lan Zhan had told himself that Wei Ying was simply gone for a little, and the two would be reunited once again. He had not been wrong.

The only real assurance that Wei Ying was, in fact, not dying was Wen Ning; he had an aptitude of knowing when someone was slipping from the human world. He also has a secure connection with Wei Ying, so the pull was even more reliable. Wen Ning was always giving comfort to Lan Zhan.

" The process is almost complete then," Baoshan Sanren said. " He should be okay by next week," she said, comforting everyone in the room.

The next week was going to be a ride. A long one. A bumpy one. But Lan Zhan would do anything to keep Wei Ying safe and happy.

He would fight with every ounce of fight in him to keep his Wei Ying safe and happy, and the world knew that.