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Before we start... yes, yes I did recycle a couple paragraphs from my other story. What are you gonna do about it? Report me for plagiarism?
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Inspired by TlkFluentSarcasm 🙇♀️ go read their stories right now or perish... even though 99% of you guys came from their story to mine anyways... 👩🦯
Summary: Obligatory Burial Mounds fic. It was bound to happen at one point. Gotta love it. Happy ending of course. Burial Mounds is a sentient being who is honestly just really bored of playing with dead things. Enter Wei Ying.
Tw: Gore gore gore galore.
•••
Wei WuXian fell. He really didn't think he could fall any lower after losing his core, but then there he was—literally falling. His arms flailed as if he could catch the smoke spires. The wind whistling in his ears and making whips of his hair was not loud enough to denounce Wen Chao's laughter. From his seat in the sky, the man in red looked like a demon king with his whorish concubine. Wen ZhuLiu—his right-hand man, his core-melting hand—did not watch, and Wei WuXian perhaps hated him most for his indifference. He walked these fields of war with no hunger, and yet he hunted for meat anyways.
Stygian clouds soon swallowed the Wen's sky. After that, it was nothing but darkness.
Wei WuXian's tired eyes fell as he tried not to think of the ground waiting to catch him—death waiting to receive him.
He just fell.
He wondered if Jiang Cheng was waiting for him in Yiling, tea in hand and gold threads warming his heart. Hopefully, the sudden Sect Leader was only half as loyal as Wei WuXian been in his wait; the only thing thinner than his face was his patience after all. Jiang Cheng should just forget about him. That would make this easier.
He prayed that his Shijie would not waste tears on him. She'd already spent too many on this war, enough to water a garden.
And he hoped Lan WangJi would find someone else, someone good like himself. Blessed to have been his soulmate, cursed to have never come together, Wei WuXian thought back on their time with bittersweetness.
I wish I could have said 'I love you' just once.
Or at least goodbye.
Wei WuXian stopped falling abruptly. His hair swished as it tumbled down his shoulders, tamed. Did I... what... am I...? He looked around, holding his breath as cold, slimy fingers the size of tree trunks wrapped around his body. Clouds of recent had come together and taken the form of a Giant's hand. Being held by such a thing terrified him.
Did the burial mounds just... save me?
But that couldn't be further from the truth, because what the Burial Mounds thought in that moment was: this will be fun.
The resentful hand pulled him down, finishing the job.
Feathery feet scurried in his head. In. That was the first thing Wei WuXian noticed upon waking up. Beetles were sifting through his yawning maw of a skull. He tried turn away, to show these scavengers that he wasn't a corpse, but he couldn't. He tried to move his fingers and toes. Again, he could not. That was the second thing he noticed—every bone in his body broken.
Am I really dead...?
Wet pops clicked in his throat as he tried to speak—to say what, he wasn't sure, maybe to assure himself he was alive. He choked as one of the roaches scurried from his mouth.
Wei WuXian managed a gurgled, "Sh... Sh'ie..." before falling into a fit of coughs. It hurt. Chunks of bone battered his lungs, grown tender from hoarding resentful air. It hurt so bad.
Eyes closed, he laughed. He laughed until he couldn't breathe, but that didn't take long so he laughed some more. There he lay, four limbs twisted like tree roots, spine splintered and a face imploded, and still he was not allowed to rest.
He was like a fucking roach himself.
Wei WuXian sighed.
The only warning of what came next was an experimental poke to his back.
"Wh—"
Oceans of pain sunk him like a kraken latched to a ship. He was pulled under, drowned, deeper and deeper into the murky depths and all he knew was the pressure of the sea around him. Hurt, hurt, hurt! Every bone and every muscle and every nerve! Resentful energy was inside of him. Resentful energy was tearing him apart.
But Wei WuXian was resolved. He wouldn't scream. He wouldn't yield to torture.
However, that all fell apart when he felt the resentful energy roughly shove itself into his head.
"S-sto—AHHHH!"
His eyes rolled back. Drool dribbled down his cheeks. Babbling in agony, vulnerable and scared, he cried for the two people he loved most
Shijie! Lan Zhan!
Swarms of resent suddenly burst from every pore in his body. He blacked out.
His second awakening was accompanied by a fullness he hadn't felt the first time.
The resentful energy has fixed him. Kind of.
Pink brain matter no longer fell from his head, but his skull was still cracked and weeping in countless places. Although his spine was in one piece again, his legs were left to rot.
It wanted something from him. This was only a preview of what it could give in return.
Suddenly, a slimy whisper slipped inside his good ear. Wei WuXian, do you want revenge?
Come, A-Xian. Come take your revenge. For me, for A-Cheng, for our mother and father.
The voices began yelling, overlapping.
Wei Gongzi, take your revenge!
Wei WuXian! Wei WuXian!
Take your revenge, A-Xian! We can give you revenge. Stay with us forever.
There was a sword hovering in the clearing, bending the light. It was thrumming. It was alive.
Wei WuXian remembered the horrors of that blade all at once.
He remembered wading through the broth made of half-digested remains, how it clung to his knees like mud. He remembered drawing forth a strange sword. He remembered the thousands of gut-wrenching memories that weren't his own and how he lived those thousands of gut-wrenching lives in a millisecond; they belonged to souls claimed by the very sword he dared to unearth.
He remembered it all.
Wei WuXian never wanted to touch that sword again.
Wield it and you will be free.
"N-no... wanna g'home."
Wei WuXian, you have no home anymore.
Just take it, A-Xian. Don't you want revenge?
Haven't you seen what we can do? Accept us, Wei WuXian, and we will tend to the rest of your miserable body.
Accept us!
Wei WuXian—
"Sh-shut up!" He howled, and the world fell into a deceitful silence.
And then he heard it. Him.
"Wei Ying."
Wei WuXian felt his heart stop for a second time.
"Lan 'an...?" He craned his neck, no matter what suffering it brought him, he looked at Lan WangJi. The man was white and resplendent, so sterling that the black smog refused to touch him.
"Really 'ere?"
"Wei Ying, I'm here."
Lan WangJi crouched down in front of him, stroking his bruised face with a palm as smooth as jade. His touch left the feeling of roses blooming on his cheek. Wei WuXian leaned closer, letting him fix the pain of his maimed body and make everything feel right again, even if just for a moment.
"Lan Zha', take me 'way..."
Take me home.
The hand roaming through his hair stopped.
"Away? From here? But Wei Ying, why would we leave this place?"
...What?
"I said," Lan WangJi started as a black membrane slid over his eyes. His tight skin rotted into wrinkled, sallow flesh. Patches of hair were yanked out by the handsy gust, and Gods, Lan Zhan was rotting right before him. "Why. Would. We. Leave?"
Wei WuXian was horrified. He tried to pull away as it decomposed further, but the creature had already rooted its nails deep within his cleft skull. He wailed as the ghoulish Lan Zhan started dragging him—through the filth of death, through the mounds of festering entrails and scurrying beetles.
"No, no, no, no, no! P'ease don'!" Wei WuXian desperately clawed at its wrist as it pulled him ever closer to the living sword.
Wei WuXian grabbed a sharp-edged bone and thrust it through the ghoul's hand like a stake. He was roughly dropped to the ground, but without use of his legs, he could only grab fistfuls of dirt and heave himself forward inch by tender inch. Have to get away!
The creature was watching him struggle in morbid amusement. When it grew tired of the sight, it grabbed him by the ankle and, with the same bone, pierced him right through the meat of his calf.
Dragged again but by his armpits, Wei WuXian lost all will to fight back.
The creature stopped before the sword and it sat them both down. Slumped back like a rag doll in that thing's chest, Wei WuXian silently cried. He cried not because he was afraid, but because he wasn't.
In it's arms, he felt comforted, warmed, loved, and he was reminded of a dream he once had.
It was a dream in which pink magnolia danced and green grass swayed; in which he was leaned back in Lan Zhan's chest while the man guided Wei Ying's hands from behind, along the fragile strings of a zither; in which Lan Zhan whispered praises with lips pressed to his hair, smelling of eucalyptus imported from a land oceans away.
"Wei Ying, won't you stay with me forever? Don't you love me?"
Wei WuXian hiccuped and sobbed. It's not him. It's not him. But it looked like him and it sounded like him and it felt like him. "L-love La' Zhan more than an'thing."
"Mn. Then, should we grab the sword together?"
Wei WuXian nodded limply. He had no idea what was happening. His thoughts streamed like spring water from the fissure in his head. All he knew for sure was that Lan WangJi said he loved him, Lan WangJi was holding him, and he felt safe with Lan WangJi.
Guided by two hands holding either of his, Wei WuXian reached out for the sword and grabbed it from the air. The false Lan WangJi's tightened so he couldn't let go once he realized the mistake he'd made.
"N-n-no!"
As the broken Young Master screamed with the pain and heartache of thousands before him, the Burial Mounds once again thought, this will be fun.
Bonded souls were always fun to mess with.
This time, Wei WuXian woke up to the sensation of dry fingers in his hair and a dank cave breath licking his face. He was... so tired, but at least his body seemed to be put back together.
"Please, let me go..."
"Hush, Wei Ying. It's okay."
Shadow Lan WangJi filled his breast with air and when it came back out, it came as a ghostly song.
No... no!
He knew that song.
That song that should never be defiled by evil, should never touch the teeth of sin or a tongue of lies.
But now that it did, it churned Wei WuXian's stomach. Every note turned into something blatantly disfigured and untuned.
Empty. Every note was empty.
Instead of echoing in his chest like an earthly lullaby, it killed him for a second time.
Wei WuXian whimpered.
That hurt the worst.
Three Months Later
Lan WangJi couldn't believe what he'd been told, or rather, he chose not to. Entombed in a crypt of denial, the Jade descended the grand staircase of Wen RuoHan's indoctrination bureau with his eyes forward and his fist at his back. Wei WuXian couldn't be dead. He couldn't be. Lan WangJi's core still spun in gentle revolutions—his heart still drummed with life. If his soulmate was dead, he should feel it, he should die inside with him.
He's not dead. He's not dead. Wei Ying is alive.
"Do you believe what that Wen soldier said?" Jiang Cheng asked, suddenly beside him.
Lan WangJi gazed out at the black mountains.
"No," he lied.
"Wise not to believe anything a Wen says. Such a low ranking officer has probably never even been in the same room as Wen Chao anyways."
Lan WangJi ignored him. His fingers tightened around the cement guard rail. His nails snagged, almost ripping from their beds and for once he didn't care what happened to his zither fingers.
"Sect Leader Jiang, HanGuang-Jun."
Both men turned.
A group of Lan disciples cradled hundreds of swords in their arms.
"Your swords."
While Jiang Cheng retrieved his Sandu, Lan WangJi grabbed Suibian. Thumbing the knotted wood of its sheath, Lan WangJi finally shed a tear. Just one fragile bead of glass, nothing more than dew on a blade of grass. His hand should not have been first to wield it—that honor belonged to Wei WuXian.
The Jade snatched Bichen and walked away.
He waited until nightfall to break away from the caravan. Both Bichen and Suibian at his hip, he slunk into the woods, off the beaten hunting trail. He needed to see for himself whether that Wen soldier was telling a desperate truth or a dead man's lie.
Far from the group, he tossed Bichen to the dirt. It landed inches from the ground, humming softly as it floated there like a hover fly.
Lan WangJi froze when a branch snapped behind him. However, knowing whose careless foot had offended the thicket, Lan WangJi turned slowly.
"Where are you going?" Jiang Cheng snapped, brandishing his Sandu so familiarly one wouldn't know they'd been parted for three months.
Lan WangJi eyed him.
"Why does Sect Leader Jiang care what I do?" He finally demanded. He didn't have time for this.
"I don't, but Wei WuXian does. If he's not really there and you get hurt or worse, then what? He'll be heartbroken and I'll have to deal with it."
'I'll have to deal with it.'
Wei WuXian was little more than a burden to the Jiang, something he had to 'deal with'. Lan WangJi's white-capped knuckles glowed beneath his skin.
"You claim to care for him yet you do not acknowledge him as your brother, let alone a Jiang."
"What?"
Lan WangJi was being petty. He knew so, but he did not care.
"You do not call him with affection—you refer to him with the same regard as a servant! You are unworthy of Wei Ying and unworthy of my time."
"How dare you speak to me like this! You know fuck all about our lives!" Zidian scorched the grass beneath his feet.
"Tell me then, why has he been allowed to receive the Zidian so many times in your presence? If Lady Jiang was in such a position, would you still sit back and watch? While it's true I don't know everything, I know enough." Bichen waned under Lan WangJi's weight as one foot dug into its polished blade. "Do not get in my way again, Jiang WanYin." He stepped onto his sword and took wing.
Jiang Cheng followed.
He could barely keep up with Lan WangJi's spiritual prowess, even with his false core. The Jade streaked across the velvet sky, his outpour of energy outshining the stars.
Centuries ago, the Burial Mounds were a beautiful range of mountains and valleys. Those mountains flirted with the sky and their valleys cut deep into the bowels of the earth. Grassy plains only bowed to the silvery bodies of water full of leaping fish. Life thrived in abundance. Then the war came, and with the war came blood, and with the blood came death. Like chimneys, dead bodies released smokestacks of resent into the air, while guts and blood seeped into the willing soil. The forests and grasslands withered away into black husks of what they once were.
Today, only death prospered. Skeletons seemed to shoot from the soil like peonies flexing their fingers towards the sun that never shone. It was a cannibals garden.
Lan WangJi was immediately beaten down by the oppressive smog. He pushed forward even when he bled. He pushed forward even when thoughts that weren't his own flashed in his head.
He pushed forward towards Wei WuXian.
"Wei Ying!?"
Jiang Cheng searched in a different direction.
Resentful energy was gathering up ahead. Lan WangJi, like a fool, trudged ever closer. The closer he got, the louder the wind hailed and the louder the disembodied voices became.
But through it all, Lan WangJi heard a familiar melody.
"WangXian..."
What terrified him was that it wasn't Wei WuXian's voice.
He looked towards the gaping mouth of a cave from which the faint song had been regurgitated. Billowing black smog wafted up from the cave like the breath of pestilence. Crows crowned the arched entrance with talons flexing against stone; watching, waiting. As the corvids chittered at his approach, Lan WangJi started to draw his sword, but that was warning enough for the crows. The mischievous birds took to the skies in a plumage of slick, sable feathers. Lan WangJi released the half-drawn sword when their figures became smudges on the horizon. The hilt smashed loudly against the sheaths cavity in warning.
The cavern seemed to swallow him whole as he passed through its mouth, and he half expected jaws to snap shut behind him.
"Wei Ying?" Lan WangJi tried again. In the bowels of the beast, there was nothing but night. Between his index and middle finger, he slipped a blank talisman from his sleeve. He took a steadying breathe before injecting it with his spiritual energy, Then, he let the talisman settle into his palm, where it folded itself into an origami butterfly, glowing a gentle blue as it fluttered to life.
Aided by the butterfly's light, he could now see a small bundle of raggedy clothing tucked into the crevice of a boulder. The Lan moved closer and gasped.
It was Wei WuXian.
His back was pressed into the jagged rock in a way that couldn't be comfortable, and in his arms he hugged a black dizi. His pale cheek was squished against the flute's body.
"...Wei Ying?" With a careful, almost frightful quality to him, he sunk to the ground and reached out. Knuckles trembled as they brushed across the man's forehead. His skin felt like it could burst into flames at any second. When the light-bearing talisman moved closer, Lan WangJi's heart stalled.
Wei WuXian looked... dead.
Amethyst veins were sorely flush against his eyelids. The man's round, doe-eyes twitched behind those thin hoods, though they did not open. His paper-thin skin displayed a projection of bones beneath, and aside from the dark bruising scattered on his body, Wei WuXian was the same color as a corpse.
"Wei WuXian!"
Oh. Jiang Cheng found them.
The man had shouted so loud that whatever sleep Wei WuXian had found was gone. Drearily like a newborn fawn, he blinked up at the two men. Recognition settled in first—bright and glimmering. Wei WuXian smiled weakly at his brother.
"J-Jiang Cheng..."
His gaze drifted over to Lan WangJi.
That was when the fear settled in. His eyes bulged and he shook his head as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing.
"N-no... no! P-please! A-anyone but Lan Zhan! Anyone else!" Wei WuXian wailed. He hugged himself and tried to shove his body further into the crevice, still shaking his head and mumbling hysterically.
Both Lan WangJi and Jiang Cheng were stunned into a dumb silence.
Wei Ying was... afraid of him?
"Wei Y—"
"Sh-shut up! S-s-s-stop calling me that!"
Bichen clattered on the cave floor as Lan WangJi took a shaky step back.
Jiang Cheng seemed to come back to himself at the sound of WangJi's sword.
"Lan WangJi! What the fuck have you done!?"
His fingers filled with static. "I-I don't know, I—"
The Burial Mounds was clouding his judgment. Jiang Cheng pressed Sandu's freshly sharpened tip to WangJi's bobbing throat and maybe the Mounds were clouding his own judgment for he took it like he deserved it.
"Oh. I see. This why you wanted to come here so badly! Why you did so in secret and why you told me to stay back! You wanted to shut him up once you found out he lived."
"No! I would never—"
Jiang Cheng howled in anger and plunged Sandu forward.
•••
Uh oh a cat fight 😩