[this fic is also up on ao3 under the username flowercities. it is not a repost, i am the author of both. the ao3 fic is currently up to chapter 6; i will be gradually uploading chapters to here in order to catch up]
[also, one single category for the entire genre of manhua? what the fuck, fanfiction dot net. what the fuck]
Mo Xuanyu buys a ticket for the 10:30 train to Qinghe, stuffing his Jin sect robes into the bottom of his backpack and checking constantly around him for any cultivators. There's no telltale hanfu in sight, but if Jin Guangyao sent anyone after him, they'd be in plainclothes; his meager cultivation ability isn't quite up to being on constant high alert for anyone around him with strong spiritual energy, and by the time the train pulls in his hands are trembling from the effort but he doesn't think anyone is tailing him. Yet. Probably, they weren't expecting him to be able to break out; the surprise will at least give him a few hours' leeway until someone comes to check on him. By that time he should be in Qinghe.
They'd kept him a prisoner in his own dorm room with added locks both electronic and spiritual, but they hadn't been counting on demonic cultivation.
Mo Xuanyu pulls out his phone. It's a new one; he destroyed the old one as soon as he left the sect, smashing it under a loose brick in a dark alleyway while still breathing hard from the flight from Koi Tower. After creating the first new contact, he taps the pencil icon next to the number, hands still shaking a little; a drawing box comes up, Mo Xuanyu scribbles the password seal with his fingertip, the message screen opens.
Former Lanling Jin disciple Mo Xuanyu formally requests political asylum from Qinghe Nie sect.
Then he leans his head back against the train seat and passes out for a while.
When he wakes up, the train is pulling into the station; Mo Xuanyu blearily picks his head up off the headrest and then shakes himself a little in anger. He'd planned to stay awake, moving from car to car so as to never be in the same place for long, but he supposes if he's still here and not back in Jin Guangyao's holding cells there was no real harm done. Slinging his backpack over his shoulder and standing up, he checks the two notifications on his screen.
- Of course! Happy to have you ^_^
- I'm assuming he made his move. How much does he know?
Mo Xuanyu types out a reply as he moves with the crowd onto the platform, still scanning his surroundings.
Not sure. I think he was more suspicious of me snooping around than anything concrete. Whatever it was, he thought it was enough for him to ruin my reputation
The reply comes promptly.
- What did he do?
Accusations. I'd rather not talk about it.
- My lips are sealed :x Where are you now?
Just got to Qinghe.
- By train?
Yes.
- I'll send a disciple to the station. Stay where you are~
- Ask for the password. They should reply with "pine colors exquisite beyond eaves"
Mo Xuanyu frowns at the phone, jittery with impatience and paranoia. He doesn't want to stay where he is. Weaving through the crowd, he ducks into the bathroom and into a stall, checking his makeup in his phone's front-facing camera. It's a lot fainter than it used to be, to the point where he's not sure it'll be effective. Some of it must have rubbed off on the train headrest. He redoes it with quick, nervous gestures, switching between the camera and the tab he has open from last night on how to evade facial recognition software; he has no doubt the Lanling Jin sect can demand surveillance camera footage from anywhere in China. Or maybe he's just paranoid.
When he's done, he still looks like he fell asleep with a face full of makeup and rolled around on his pillow multiple times, but at least it's in a very deliberate way that will hopefully keep cameras from picking up on him. He leaves the bathroom, leaning on the wall outside and spending the next few minutes restlessly scanning the crowd.
It isn't long before he spots someone heading directly towards him; a broad-shouldered and muscular girl in civvies, whose spiritual energy has that roiling thundercloud quality of Qinghe Nie cultivators. She comes to a stop before him and looks him up and down.
"Mo Xuanyu?"
Mo Xuanyu hesitates, then remembers the texts. "Um. Password?"
"Pine colors exquisite beyond eaves," says the girl, and grabs his arm. "Let's go. The longer we wait the more likely someone on Jin Guangyao's payroll is going to spot us."
They take a private car to the Unclean Realm, sliding under the streetlights like any other civilian vehicle. The girl doesn't make conversation. Mo Xuanyu is jittery and tense, expecting at any moment the flash of Sparks Against Snow in the crowd, a sword through the windshield—the paranoia has been building for months, bubbling up under a tight lid, and now that Jin Guangyao has decided to dispose of him, all of it has exploded forth. He isn't safe anywhere anymore. Making an enemy of the most powerful of the four great sects is suicidal.
They pull to a stop in front of the gates to the Unclean Realm, vast and dark and hulking in the night. The girl shuts the car door without a backward glance, pulls out her sect I.D. card, and swipes it through the card reader wired to the centuries-old stone wall. The portcullis rises in heavy silence, and Mo Xuanyu feels rather than sees the spiritual barrier part to make way for them. They make their way through the dark of the Unclean Realm, passing by buildings in the night, navigating austere hallways made all the more intimidating with the nighttime. Finally the disciple knocks on an ornate door, and a voice from inside calls, "Come in."
They enter. It's not the main room from which Nie Huaisang conducts sect leader business, nervous and cringing against the heavy backdrop, but his side study; a mess of a place, ancient clashing with modern, three computer screens arrayed on various tables. One of them is playing some kind of vintage drama with the sound off. The other two have a covering over them that prevents them from being seen at any side angle. The man himself is lounging in a swivel chair, and turns around as they enter; not in the manner of a movie villain so much as that of someone who really enjoys having a swivel chair and making it wheel around at the slightest opportunity. His ornate sect leader robes hang loosely open to reveal an artfully faded band T-shirt underneath, and he's eating a pudding cup.
"So you made it," says Nie Huaisang, friendly. The disciple closes the door behind them, resets the seals ensuring their privacy.
"I did," confirms Mo Xuanyu. He thinks he should definitely bow—Nie Huaisang is a sect leader, one of the most powerful men in the country and maybe the world—but Mo Xuanyu feels strangely unmoored from the whole thing. The last sect leader he knew, after all, turned out to be a lying sack of shit who got Mo Xuanyu exiled for snooping around in his dirty business; he's more than a little disillusioned with great men in general.
As far as formalities go, he settles for speaking politely.
"What did you find out?" asks Nie Huaisang, digging in his pudding cup for the last traces. Straight to the point.
Mo Xuanyu hesitates. "Xue Chengmei was never actually executed," he says. "The Jin sect had him work for them instead. Jin Guangyao is hiding—something, involving his marriage, I don't know what. And there's a lot of under-the-table money and resources being funneled into research facilities in the countryside, more than stated in the official accounting books."
Nie Huaisang licks the spoon. "Which facilities?"
Mo Xuanyu thinks about it. "Somewhere in the south of Henan. Luoyang, I think?" He can't help but feel a prickle of irritation. "I wasn't a spy on a mission, Sect Leader Nie. I did a little digging out of my own curiosity and got locked up for it. I can't be expected to know that much."
"No one is expecting you to," says Nie Huaisang, sticking the spoon in the cup and setting it aside. Mo Xuanyu tenses. Is Nie Huaisang expressing low expectations of his potential use? He's not stupid—he knows the Nie sect leader is only helping him as long as Mo Xuanyu can provide something in return. If expectations of him are low, that means shaky prospects for his future; single-use, and then cast aside.
Or maybe he's just being paranoid like he always is and Nie Huaisang is simply reassuring him he's done enough.
"Want one?" offers Nie Huaisang, snapping a pudding cup off the rest and holding it out. Mo Xuanyu shakes his head. Nie Huaisang peels the cover off and retrieves his spoon.
"You'll be rooming in the south dormitory," he says. "You won't be attending classes, because our curriculum is different and you won't know the material and that will draw undue attention to yourself. If anyone asks, however, you're a guest disciple. Try to keep your head down and not attract too much attention." Another spoonful of pudding. "Legally, of course, you're perfectly allowed to be here. But we want to keep word from reaching Jin Guangyao for as long as possible."
"Understood."
"I'll send for you if I have any more need of you. Which I probably will. Any questions?"
"No, sir."
Nie Huaisang nods. "Good." He slides Mo Xuanyu a small envelope. "Here's your guest ID and your room key. Do you need a map?"
"Yes please."
A map is handed to him. On the screen playing the muted drama, the end credits start to play.
By the time he's heading toward the dormitory, it's starting to set in. He's safe. He's safe. He doesn't have anything to worry about for a while more. The walls of the Unclean Realm rise up around him, thick and dark and comforting, and he's safe. It's such a new and unfamiliar state of events, he doesn't really know what to do with it.
The fear and anxiety he's been carrying in his chest for so long, packed into a tight painful ball so it won't overtake him, is starting to come undone, to release. The emotions are escaping into the rest of his body, their residue washing through him. By the time he buzzes himself into the dorm and heads toward his assigned room, he's shaking; emerging from the shelter of weeks' worth of adrenaline to confront the rest of himself, and the havoc that constant paranoia has wrought on it.
He takes out the key Nie Huaisang gave him, goes to fit it into the lock, and—
Oh, he—
He dropped the key.
He went and dropped the stupid key, that's, that's really…
The first sob bubbles up through his throat and Mo Xuanyu knows what's coming. Not in the hallway, he thinks desperately, and retrieves the key, and manages to get the door open. By the time he enters the room it's already in full swing; Mo Xuanyu wraps his arms around himself, slides down to the ground against the door, and cries loud and wet and undignified, cries like he never allowed himself to during those fateful last weeks at Koi Tower, his chest heaving with the release of tension.
It feels good to. It's something his body needs to do, to expel the last of Jin Guangyao's poison. He hopes the walls are thick.
Finally the last of it drains out of him. He feels exhausted and tenderized and cleansed, the tension released from his body. That was good, he thinks, retrieving his water bottle and taking deep gulps; spilling a little into his hand and wiping it around his eyes so that the coolness relieves some of the swelling, the crusted salt. He feels better now.
What now. Does he need to make any security checks? Is there anything he's forgotten? His mind starts going through the protective wards—the talismans he puts up around the door, the seals on the windows—before he remembers; he's in Qinghe now. Not Lanling.
He's fine. It's fine. He can just… fall asleep. Without worrying about whether he'll wake up in Koi Tower's prison, or at all.
What a surreal thought.
He picks his exhausted body up off the floor, drags it to the bed, and faceplants inelegantly into the pillow; a moment later peels himself up off the covers again to tug off his shoes and throw them into the corner. Then he lies back down and becomes a corpse.
It's so nice to just get to be a corpse for a little.
He expects not to be able to fall asleep—expects to be plagued with the no-longer-necessary paranoia, compulsively reviewing which steps and protections and little details he might have overlooked that could spell his doom—but he underestimated the depth of his exhaustion. His eyes close, and almost immediately everything drifts away.