[Tan Liansi: I'm sending this conversation to Xin Hulei, if something happens to me he'll know it was you]
[Little Menace: do what you want. Just come over]
While Tan Liansi is on the way, he picks up the two-way mirror Xie Bian gave him.
He's confused as to how it's supposed to work, so he holds up the round gold mirror in front of his face and taps the surface. "She's coming."
Only his own confused face shows up in the gold reflection. Yao Shen taps it again. "Hello?"
"Simple-minded creature, I heard you the first time," an annoyed voice snaps from behind him, almost startling Yao Shen into dropping the mirror.
"I didn't hear you," Yao Shen says, his tone slightly accusatory.
Xie Bian takes the mirror from his hands and sets it down. "I'm a ferryman of souls, do you expect fireworks to go off whenever I enter the mortal realm?" He raises one elegant eyebrow in mockery. "That would defeat the purpose of my role."
Moments later, a flurry of snowflakes whips up in the middle of Yao Shen's living room bringing with it Tan Liansi and her disdainful scowl.
She takes an unimpressed look around Yao Shen's living room, and then asks him. "You live like this?"
He didn't ask her here for her to judge his place. Waving between her and Xie Bian he makes some quick introductions, and adds, "but I believe you already know each other."
"Unfortunately," Tan Liansi says, crossing her arms in front of her chest.
"Well, you'll have to work together now," Yao Shen says, rubbing his temples. "Xie Bian needs us to get the flower that will heal Fan Wujiu, and we need Fan Wujiu to remove Xin Hulei's seal."
"I'm still not entirely certain on what your goal is with all this," Tan Liansi says, her eyes narrowed in suspicion.
"I want to make the ghost kings pay for what they did to me, and Xin Hulei..." he chances a sideways glance at Xie Bian," and everyone else...A lot has gone wrong in Youdu."
"On that much we agree," Tan Liansi says.
Xie Bian fans himself with a sigh. "Can we hurry this up? I don't have all day."
After a tense moment of silence, Tan Liansi finally nods. Xie Bian bridges the distance between them and nods at her chest.
She pulls down the collar of her shirt, revealing the twisting red seal burned into her chest, similar to Xin Hulei's.
Xie Bian draws a figure in the air in front of her, and when it coalesces into a geometric form he sends it forward towards Tan Liansi. She staggers backwards with the impact, a thin trickle of blood running down her lips.
Slowly, the seal on her chest starts dissolving until disappearing entirely.
She clutches her chest with a gasp. "That hurt like a bitch."
Xie Bian shrugs. "I never promised I'd be gentle about it."
"Can we go now? Will you help us?" Yao Shen asks.
There are too many sides to this conflict, between the remaining ghost kings, Si Wang's double-crossing schemes -- the sooner the sealed kings return the better.
"Fine, let's find that stupid flower," Tan Liansi says, her eyes filled with contempt.
---
This time, Yao Shen forgoes his convenient doorway and Xie Bian takes both him and Tan Liansi directly to the Howling Plains.
Just as he warned, the Howling Plains look deceptively idyllic. Although in the distance Yao Shen can see barren, hills and sheer, jagged rock formations, the Plains themselves are filled with blooming flowers and trees heavy with fruit.
"And we're supposed to find a single flower among all this?" Tan Liansi grumbles, waving at the tapestry of plants beneath their feet and stretching out as far as the eye can see.
"The sooner you stop complaining and start looking the sooner you'll find it," Xie Bian says.
He takes a large silver thread and wraps it around his waist. He gives each of the two ends to Yao Shen and Tan Liansi.
"Wrap this around your wrists, so we won't get separated." He looks out into the blooming plains with a determined look in his peach blossom eyes, the sweetness of their shape negated by the steel in his gaze. "No matter what you do, don't listen to the voices, and don't follow them anywhere. If you're in danger tug on the thread and I'll come find you."
"What if you're the one who gets into trouble?" Tan Liansi asks one corner of her lips curled up in disdain.
Xie Bian shoots her a withering look. "I'll be sure to die before asking for your help."
Yao Shen isn't in a mood to listen to the two of them bicker, so he goes on on his own, choosing a direction at random and keeping his eyes trained on the flowers beneath him.
---
According to Xie Bian's descriptions they're looking for a tiny, vibrant turquoise flower shaped like a cup with a long curling pistil.
The problem is that there are a lot of tiny blue flowers, and more than once Yao Shen holds his breath and drops to his knees thinking he's finally found it, only to realize the shape isn't quite right, or that the pistil is straight instead of curling.
So much time passes that he loses track of Tan Liansi and Xie Bian. Their silhouettes become distant points in the fields, until all the greenery swallows them up.
Perhaps the oddest thing about the Howling Plains is how normal they seem, after all of Xie Bian's warnings.
Yao Shen must be searching for hours and he has yet to see any resentful soul fragments.
Not five minutes after those thoughts cross his mind, he hears an eerily familiar voice.
"You must be tired, why don't you rest?"
Yao Shen grits his teeth and continues looking. There's no way Xin Hulei is in the Underworld. He can't, as long as the seal remains.
Whoever haunts these flowering plains will have to try harder.
There's silence for a while, and then he hears the voice again.
"Why are you going to all this trouble when you know he'll never forgive you?" This time the voice no longer sounds like Xin Hulei's. Instead it resembles his father's caustic tone, down to the condescending laugh at the end of all his sentences.
Keeping his head lowered, Yao Shen keeps searching.
"Stupid boy, never could identify a lost cause."
"Who are you even doing this for? For him or for yourself?"
Yao Shen keeps looking, his back bent under the Underworld's perpetual twilight. The reddish light bathes the fields of flowers in fire, makes the blue hues stand out even starker.
He tries to focus on what's in front of him, but the voices biting at his heels are relentless.
"You've always been selfish. All you do is for your own benefit. You can never admit that you're in the wrong."
"So you find excuses," the laugh is such a perfect replica that it raises all the fine airs on the back of Yao Shen's neck. "Nothing is ever your fault!"
Yao Shen keeps reminding himself to think rationally: Xin Hulei isn't here, his father isn't dead. The resentment fragments of all the destroyed souls of all who've come before him are only latching onto his insecurities.
He just needs to keep looking ahead and ignore what they're saying.
That's easier said than done.
"How long since you've seen your father? You said you would make it as an actor, but how many years have passed since then?"
"All these years of being an unfilial son and for what? A pipe dream that will never amount to anything."
"Is this what you dreamed of? Being alone and scared in a place you don't understand, thrown into a role you don't want?"
"Wouldn't it have been easier to become a doctor like father wanted?"
"You're a good boy, all these talks of fate and past lives, you know you're in over your head. All you ever wanted was a quiet life."
The worst part is that the voices aren't wrong. Yao Shen never wanted to be an actor because of the fame, or the money, he just wanted to make people feel the same way he did whenever he watched a movie -- like no matter who he was, it was always possible to be transported to a different life, a different reality.
He wanted to make others feel the same way he did the first time he watched Xin Hulei act.
How he went from there to scouring the Underworld wastes for a flower, on his hands and knees with tears streaming down his face he doesn't know.
Wind picks up all around him, ripping all the petals off a couple of flowers in front of him.
Yao Shen panics, what if one of those flowers is the turquoise nightshade?
He starts running, trying to leave the voices that chase after him behind, but they are relentless.
"How long will you need to run until you realize you're only running from yourself?"
Right off a cliff.
Yao Shen gasps with the sudden disappearance of the ground from below his feet. For a brief moment he soars above the barren wasteland of the Underworld.
It seems Xie Bian neglected to inform them that the 'Howling Plains' are actually a plateau.