content warnings: most of this chapter is pretty tame, but there is one scene that touches on some heavy topics. be on the lookout for:
- depiction of a panic attack caused by immediate physical danger/vulnerability
- brief flashback to an event of verbal sexual assault + intimidation
- very brief reference to nightmares about the possibility of physical sexual assault
to skip this part, when you arrive at "here goes", ctrl+f "worries", or, to be really far away from peripheral vision reading dangers, "fucking suck"
- and, later: brief (like one kind of long sentence) in-universe text with imagery of gore, self-harm, and possibly cannibalism, as well as capslock repetitive text

The Sunshot Campaign was devastating.

Cultivation wars were a recurring phenomenon within history, but said history was a long one, and they only came every few centuries; this one, moreover, had been preceded by a fortunate period of peace. The end result was that a war just as violent as the previous ones—far more so, really, given the advances in spiritual technology—was wreaked upon a world far less equipped to handle it, and far more densely populated. Apartment blocks hollowed out by blasts from spiritual weapons, plagues of fierce corpses and resentful spirits kept from their peaceful rest by the turbulence and violence, whole cities evacuated; the world fleeing like swarming bees while above their heads the superhumans that were cultivators thunderstormed their way through an accelerated seismic shift of politics. The civilian death toll was staggering and unprecedented, and when it was all over every registered sect in existence came together and built a peace agreement, to ensure that such violence and bloodshed would never again be visited upon the world.

Not even a year after this solemn oath was sworn, Wei Wuxian went and fucked it all up again.

How dare he, was the universal reaction. How dare he! Had he not seen with his own eyes how many people had been killed? Oh, but surely he didn't even care—the man had made a name for himself during the war with not only his profound skill at violence, but his methods of inflicting it. Walking the dark path! Desecrating the dead, denying them their rest, to puppet their corpses as his weapons! A single note on his flute, and an army was raised, all tearing nails and snarling teeth! Of course it would be him who would so blatantly violate the peace treaty to try and resurrect the mighty force that had been the Qishan Wen army. Of course it would be him who would compel the cultivation world, with bitter regret in their hearts, to go against the treaty they had just sworn and once again take up arms, inflicting the superhuman devastation of their violence upon the world. The siege at Yiling had been far less widespread in its destruction than the full-blown war that had preceded it, but the city had still needed to be evacuated, and the damages were lasting. Traces of resentful energy from the corpse armies the Yiling Patriarch had summoned to defend his miserable life lingered in the air, still at potentially unsafe levels even months later; and the city's name would never again escape the shame of having birthed and harbored, however unwillingly, such a monster.

After a lengthy and thoroughly regrettable struggle, however, the beast was subdued; torn apart by his own corpse army, in a very karmic fashion perfect for impressing upon young children the self-defeating nature of evil deeds. There wasn't even enough of him left to bury. The real, living army he had been gathering was crushed as well, and work on building peace could finally begin in earnest.

Or so the official story goes.

Mo Xuanyu has spent enough time poking around Internet forums to have thoroughly learned by now that the great sects' telling of anything is bound to be complete bullshit. A sizable underground niche of people are all very aware that the Lanling Jin sect committed countless war crimes it refuses to acknowledge, that it persecuted noncombatant Wens after the war was over, that everyone else was perfectly willing to turn a blind eye or even lend manpower to the effort. No one, the whispered consensus goes, was free from blame. The great sects were entirely at fault and continue to be irredeemably corrupt. And yet the Yiling Patriarch remains a controversial figure even in these spaces; debates raging back and forth to the point where his name can grant an instant ban from some forums. He tortured innocents, people say. You're still swallowing sect propaganda? others say. You're willing to defend a guy who was documentedly evil just because he said fuck you to some other evil people? is the rejoinder. Okay, first of all, documentedly isn't even a word—

Mo Xuanyu has no real opinion on that front, so he stays out of it. He does, however, err on the side of believing people who point out the remains of a tent city found at Yiling after the siege, diapers and baby food shoplifted from surrounding stores in the months prior, the footage of the Yiling Patriarch making impassioned speeches at a banquet he crashed that do ring very true, and very cool. Speeches that someone who hates corruption could rally behind. Mo Xuanyu's personal opinion is far more embarrassing, and, well, personal. Mo Xuanyu's personal opinion is that he'd been in middle school when the Yiling Patriarch became the enemy of the cultivation world, and he was too busy with other life stuff to concern himself about why everyone hated this guy, but there was a lot of footage being passed around of his wicked methods—footage of the man in question, young and slender with his cursed flute at his lips, a storm of wicked energies whipping around him while his eyes crackled with dark and forbidden power, looking badass and cool and, well…

…undeniably hot, really.

In retrospect, with that kind of gay awakening, it's hardly surprising he turned out like this.

The point, however, is that no matter how evil or justified or sexy the Yiling Patriarch was, at the end of the day he's still dead as a doornail, torn to a scattered half-devoured pulp of flesh and viscera oozing resentful energy like a used teabag oozes bitter water. That's undisputed fact. There's a famous photo of the human-sized blood splatter left behind in the Yiling warehouse he operated out of, the same blood that was DNA tested for final confirmation of who the gory mess used to be. And his soul fared no better; the so-called wicked tricks he practiced had already damaged it irreparably, a series of hairline cracks, so that the subsequent three weeks of nonstop exorcisms performed on the location were rather like taking a steamroller to a china set. Body or soul, there is no part of Wei Wuxian that could remotely, in any way, be "brought back".

And yet that is what Nie Huaisang has just suggested.

"The Yiling Patriarch," repeats Mo Xuanyu, just to make sure. "You're saying we're going to bring him back?"

Nie Huaisang nods, looking mightily pleased with himself.

"That's not possible."

"I wouldn't be so sure," says Nie Huaisang, and then sharply taps his fan against thin air as though to forestall an objection. "Ah-ah! I know you have questions, but this is where we get into the very sensitive fine details that you don't actually need to know yet. I'm not yet clear on some of them myself. Are you ready to start on preparations?"

The promise of reviving a conclusively dead man, with no other clarifying details, really doesn't do much to dispel Mo Xuanyu's confusion, but it's clear this is as much as he's going to get; and at least there's a conclusive goal in place now. A goal that, although Mo Xuanyu won't admit it, he really is kind of excited about. He may not be a hormonal middle schooler anymore, and he may be far more jaded and aware of the numerous political factors in play, but there can be no denying that all that shaky wartime footage makes the Yiling Patriarch, with his fluttering robe, red-crackling eyes and piercing flute, look extremely cool.

Even if he did torture innocents which isn't really something you can take the great sects at their word on anyway.

"I'm ready," he says.

"Excellent," says Nie Huaisang. "Now! You're going to be studying using some highly classified materials that can't be moved out of the place they're in, nor can I let you know where in the Unclean Realm they are. Which means you'll be living next to them for the next week, essentially. Whenever you're ready to move in to your new quarters and start working, I will lead you there blindfolded, and your things will be brought to you. You won't be a prisoner, but if you wish to go out you will have to alert me or one of the guards on duty so that they can blindfold you and drop you off in the middle of the Unclean Realm. This is all a security precaution and is in no way a personal attack. Are you all right with this?"

Mo Xuanyu's skin is crawling, his trapped-animal radar pinging rapidly, but does he have a choice?

"Yes," he says. "Understood."

"I'll take you there tomorrow morning so we can have the day ahead of us to work," says Nie Huaisang. "Be here at 7:15 tomorrow morning. Make sure to get a good night's sleep. Any questions?"

About a million, but none that he knows how to articulate. "No. Thank you."

"That will be all, then," says Nie Huaisang, and Mo Xuanyu rises, bows, and takes his leave.

He doesn't get a good night's sleep. He lies awake staring at the ceiling, thinking about the Yiling Patriarch, about being twelve and easily impressed and feeling all that raw power straight through the grainy phone recordings, reaching right for him; the wailing of the dizi like a lament from another world. About the bloodstain on the ground in Yiling. About being wanted by the entire cultivation world, without a single ally by his side.

After a while he gives up on that and spends a while hurting his eyes watching cat videos on his phone in the dark, barely paying attention; after that he rummages in his backpack for any stray sleeping pills and bites off half of one, which is enough to do the trick. But he's hardly well-rested by the time he knocks on Nie Huaisang's door at 7:18 and is met with the Sect Leader opening the door himself.

"Here's how it's going to work," says Nie Huaisang, without preamble. "You can't know the way to where I'm about to take you, and I can't risk you memorizing the route or seeing where it is. So I'm going to take away your vision and sense of direction for the time it takes us to walk there, but discreetly. We want people to think I'm just escorting a disciple somewhere perfectly normal. I'll warn you about corners and steps and all that so you don't need to worry. Understood?"

Mo Xuanyu is immediately back to full freakout mode. That sounds like hell. But does he have a choice? "Understood," he chokes.

"Good. We'll start now." Nie Huaisang produces a talisman from his sleeve. "This is for your sense of direction. Can you unzip your jacket?"

Mo Xuanyu is still wearing the Qinghe Nie collectible jacket; it's good camouflage. He unzips it, and Nie Huaisang sticks the talisman to the front of his shirt and zips it back up. The world goes a little wobbly around him, as though he's just been spinning in place for a full minute and made himself dizzy.

"Good," says Nie Huaisang, pleased. "Now your eyes. Are you ready?"

Mo Xuanyu nods, teeth clenched. Of course he isn't.

"Here goes," says Nie Huaisang, and delivers a series of quick, sharp taps to Mo Xuanyu's face and neck. Acupuncture points, he dimly recognizes. Quietly, like a star going out, his vision goes black.

He's alone in the world. Nie Huaisang's hand is on his shoulder, a warm heavy weight. He doesn't know which way is the office door and which way is the desk and which way is out, out of here, he's the most defenseless and vulnerable he's ever been and alone with an incredibly powerful man who could do anything, fucking anything to him and no one would believe Mo Xuanyu any more than they'd hear the voice of an ant crawling in the dirt, that hand is still on his shoulder and it's squeezing—

"Mo Xuanyu!" It doesn't sound like the first time Nie Huaisang has said that name. "Breathe!"

Mo Xuanyu claws the air in through his convulsing lungs, forces it back out. It doesn't do much to help, not when he's a rabbit standing in the shadow of a wolf. Why was he worried about not having any allies on his side once the job is done? He already doesn't have any. No one in the world is on his side, not against this. "Don't touch me," he chokes.

The hand on his shoulder disappears. That's worse. Now Mo Xuanyu has no idea where Nie Huaisang is at all. The invisible world spins around him and he doesn't know if it's the misdirection talisman or just him. "Don't touch me," he repeats frantically, even though no one is touching him, because saying the phrase is like holding out a shield in front of him. "Don't touch me, don't touch me, don't touch—"

A series of taps on his face. Mo Xuanyu jerks back violently, but not before the world blinks back into visibility around him; Nie Huaisang is in front of him, face in a concerned frown. Mo Xuanyu can't tell if it's genuine human concern or the face of someone whose computer has started malfunctioning. His chest is still heaving.

Nie Huaisang's lips press together in a thin line; it is a while before he speaks. "I am many things," he says finally, voice quiet and even. "Not all of them very good. But I am not Jin Guangyao."

Saying that—as if he knows. As if he's reached into Mo Xuanyu's memories and seen the moment—Mo Xuanyu's incriminating hand still in the drawer, stuck there in fear, Jin Guangyao's scintillating and meditative smile. A troublemaking [LIPS MOVE, INDISTINCTLY] in such a widely admired man's room, going through his drawers… we'd hardly need to add to the story to make it sensational, would we? Walking around the bed, watching every one of Mo Xuanyu's limbs begin to shake uncontrollably—this is how the Lanling Jin sect works, through intimidation, through holding the massive hammer up high and watching everyone stare up at its shadow and sweat. The hammer is coming down now, slowly, but gaining momentum for the crash. Tell me, says the most powerful man alive, and there is a snake crawling out from between his lips, where should I tell them you tried to touch me? His hands move over his body, ghosts moving on gold silk. Here? Or here? You can pick, if you want. I'll give you that liberty—

—one more step and Mo Xuanyu flinches violently away, skittering backwards into the shadows like a cockroach from the light. Cockroaches pouring out of the corners, out of his skin, crawling over his arms. What? asks Jin Guangyao, still ever so cordial. You think I'd try to touch you? My father's bastard? You must be mistaken. It's you who wants to do that to me, isn't it?

—which is not nearly enough to keep him from nightmares of what if, of that voice continuing smooth and inexorable and the bed right there and hands ON HIM—

No, Nie Huaisang is not Jin Guangyao. But if he wanted to be, there would be nothing in the world Mo Xuanyu could do to stop him.

"You can say that," he pants, and can't say much more. The message is conveyed.

Nie Huaisang worries at his bottom lip with his teeth. For a moment, there is silence in the room, but for Mo Xuanyu's harsh breath, and the inquisitive twittering of one of Nie Huaisang's songbirds in its cage.

"You don't trust me," says Nie Huaisang at last. "That's fine. I wouldn't either, if I were in your position. But there are some things that you can trust in, aside from myself as a person."

"Yeah?" asks Mo Xuanyu, too harshly.

"Our common goal," says Nie Huaisang. "The fact that I need you for this whole operation, and no one in my position would risk doing anything that could leave immediate psychological scars and damage our working relationship. If I broke your tr—well, if I acted in unexpected and harmful ways to you, you'd be a lot less willing to work with me, and I wouldn't go and do that to myself. Not when we're so short on time. You can trust in that, at least. And—" His mouth twists in distaste. "I've done a few things many people would kill me over. But I do not act out of personal sadism. There are lines I will not cross."

Mo Xuanyu considers it. It's a tenuous bridge on which to build any kind of bond of trust, but logistically it makes sense. He should really just accept this explanation and stop being a fucking pussy about being blindfolded for a while—they have a goal to accomplish. Jin Guangyao needs to get what's coming to him.

Jin Guangyao needs so, so badly to get what's coming to him.

"All right," he says out loud, "it's—fine. Good. It's cool. I'm over it. Let's try again."

"All right," says Nie Huaisang, and then reminds him, "By the way, I do have other plans for this morning, let's try to make it quick," and the world goes black again.

It goes without issue this time, which isn't to say that it doesn't fucking suck. Mo Xuanyu's teeth are clenched, heart hammering in his stomach, fist squeezed tight in the depths of his pockets because apparently they're supposed to act natural to keep from being discovered. He has barely any sense of up or down, barely enough directional faculties left to obey Nie Huaisang when he whispers "left" or "right" as they approach a corner. His attempts to remember where they just came from, what route they just took, what turns they've been taking, slip through his mind like water through fingers. All there is is the ground under his feet and the presence in front of him.

Indoors. Outdoors, on the grounds of the Unclean Realm, the scent of pine needles on the air and the wind knocking flags and draperies against stone walls; Mo Xuanyu snatches at the feeling like a prisoner on the way to execution, the last breath of air before darkness. Inside again. Down a stairwell, down and down, their footsteps echoing, Mo Xuanyu's heartbeat echoing. A hallway where sounds feel thick and muffled and oppressive, like the ceiling is low, like they're underground. Nie Huaisang stops to do something with a lock that opens with a beep and click, and then does so a few more times after that. Hallways, stairs, footsteps. Like a labyrinth. Blindfolded and unable to keep track of his steps like this, Mo Xuanyu is a labyrinth all on his own.

When Nie Huaisang says, "All right," normal volume, not whispering, Mo Xuanyu nearly jumps out of his skin with tension. A moment later his vision is restored, and Mo Xuanyu gasps with relief like a drowning man coming up for air as Nie Huaisang unzips his jacket and pulls off the talisman. Three dimensions settle back into place around him, like a computer simulation loading.

"We're here," says Nie Huaisang, "that wasn't so bad, was it?" and without waiting for an answer, continues, "I'm going down to the vaults to get something. You aren't allowed to come, of course. Wait right here—" and sets off down what turns to be a bare concrete hallway, windowless and low-ceilinged. The opulence of his Sect Leader robes looks muddy and flat under the fluorescent lights.

There are, Mo Xuanyu notices, guards stationed on either side of the door they just came through. Dressed in security vests, not bothering with hanfu, swords strapped to their backs. They watch him without emotion.

One of the lights flickers a little.

Nie Huaisang comes back in a flurry of silk; balanced in one arm is a stack of flat wooden boxes. "This way," he says, and leads Mo Xuanyu to an elevator. "I won't take away your vision again, but keep your eyes closed while you're in here, all right? I don't need you knowing what floors we're going between. Just security protocol."

Mo Xuanyu obediently shuts his eyes. The doors slide open and he follows Nie Huaisang inside, keeping his eyes closed through the lurch of the motion beginning, and then ending. The elevator dings. Nie Huaisang walks out with a rustling noise and Mo Xuanyu follows him, finally opening his eyes to witness a hallway identical to the one they just left.

More walking. Mo Xuanyu wonders if they're ever going to get to the heart of the maze, when Nie Huaisang stops in front of an unmarked door, turning the handle and pushing it open with his free hand. "Here," he says, switching on the lights.

It's… a cultivational workspace. Desk, blackboard, smooth spacious floor to practice drawing arrays, a hand mop to wipe away the evidence. A closet with folding doors that no doubt holds all sorts of materials. Despite everything, Mo Xuanyu's hands itch with curiosity.

"This is where you'll be working," says Nie Huaisang. "Next door on the left—" he jerks his head "—is where you'll be sleeping when you're not working, we've got a bed in there and your things will all be brought down. Bathroom is down the hall to your right. You'll have a meal brought to you three times a day, and if you need anything, just ask—within reason, of course. Use the buzzer by the desk. Any questions?"

"Well, yes." Now seems as appropriate a time as any to ask; maybe Nie Huaisang will finally give him an answer this time. "What will I be working on, exactly?"

Nie Huaisang shifts the stack of boxes in his arms and beams. "You're going to love this, I think. Here, come in—"

Mo Xuanyu enters; Nie Huaisang follows, then brushes past him to the desk, where he sets the stack of boxes down and lays each one out. There are three, each the same size, each flat and narrow.

"Ready?" says Nie Huaisang, and Mo Xuanyu nods. Despite himself, his heart is quickening with anticipation.

Nie Huaisang undoes the latch on the first box and lifts the lid, and—well. The boxes aren't exactly fancy, but they do have that traditional rich-people elegance associated with one of the major sects. Sanded dark wood, brass latches, a satin lining inside to keep the contents safe—which is why it's something of a shock when said contents turn out to be a single battered notebook.

Spiral. Cardboard cover. Probably about twenty yuan at the corner store. A stain on its surface setting it wrinkled and wavy like the surface of the ocean.

"There," says Nie Huaisang in satisfaction, and Mo Xuanyu realizes he's opened the other two boxes as well. A quick glance confirms the others hold notebooks as well; different brands, but similarly cheap, similarly used. Post-its and torn bits of paper stick out of all of them. "There are techniques in here the Lanling Jin sect will never be able to get their hands on. Not unless they steal them from under my very nose."

Mo Xuanyu's curiosity is more than piqued. He reaches for the first notebook, then glances at Nie Huaisang. "May I?"

"Go ahead," says Nie Huaisang, with a wave. "These are your study materials for the next week. Although you'll have to pay for any damage, of course."

Mo Xuanyu does not have that kind of money. Gingerly, he picks up the nearest notebook and opens it, mindful of the cardboard made fragile and fuzzy with age. The first page, without any preamble, is an explosion of diagrams in blue ballpoint pen ink, something about an array… the flow of resentful energy from the cardinal directions into the center by means of this, and this, and…

It dawns on Mo Xuanyu then, what he's holding in his hands. "Holy shit," he breathes. The cheap dingy notebook feels warm against his palm now; he turns the page with added reverence, flattens his palm against the paper as though he can touch the spirit of the man who left this cacophony of notes.

"You like it," surmises Nie Huaisang, sounding as excited as if he's showing off his own creation. Mo Xuanyu turns another page, carefully. A large corner of the next page is ripped off, but the messily scribbled notes—degrees of intensity of resentful energy?—work around the tear, as though the paper was torn back when it was still blank. "I thought you would."

"This—but—" Mo Xuanyu traces the page. One phrase—really explosive!—has been underlined hard enough that the line dents the paper. "I thought all his notes were accounted for."

"Not all of them," says Nie Huaisang, leaning his palms on the table. "He had multiple hiding spots for his things, and, well. I wasn't Sect Leader yet, but I had a few favors to cash in with some of the Nie cultivators leading the siege." He tilts his head; his hair brushes the desk. "If this information gets out I'll kill you, of course."

Mo Xuanyu doesn't plan on telling people. A small greedy part of him thinks this is his secret now, something he will guard jealously close to him—the fact that he's touched the Yiling Patriarch's journals, read his thoughts firsthand. Of course, it's not his secret, it's Nie Huaisang's, but he still has no plans to share it. "Yes. Of course. I know."

Nie Huaisang regards him a moment more, a bit of amusement flickering in the corner of his gaze. "The yellow sticky notes relate to the technique you absolutely need to master by the end of the week," he says. "The pink ones are other techniques and theories that might prove helpful during the mission. You can peruse the notebooks as much as you want, but just remember it's all top-level confidential and any damage to them will be on your tab. Oh, and the main technique requires both a caster and a target, so I'll be sending inner disciples for you to practice with. Any further questions?"

Mo Xuanyu thinks about it, but only briefly; the cheap ink on the page beckons to him in its fantastic scribbled bursts, and that's far more important. "No, Sect Leader Nie."

"I'll leave you to it, then," says Nie Huaisang, and leaves, and the week begins.

On the one hand: Mo Xuanyu is a prisoner in all but name. He's allowed to go back up to the surface if he wants, but in order to do so he'll have to submit to the same process he did to get here, that awful vulnerability, all of which is horribly unappealing. So he stays here, in the windowless workshop and the windowless bedroom, with all those tons of earth and concrete pressing down onto his head. The fluorescent lighting turning his skin and his food pallid and dead-looking. The bathroom doesn't have a shower—even his bedroom is clearly another top-secret laboratory hastily repurposed into a living space—so he has to scrub down while standing in front of the sink. He's under guard all the time, too, which is really fun; as though someone thinks he's going to grab the sacred scriptures and make a break for it. All in all, he feels like a rat in a cage, and it sucks.

On the other hand: the Yiling Patriarch's literal actual notebooks. Full of information the outside world has never laid eyes on. Mo Xuanyu can forget his situation for hours on end, immersing himself into the wellspring of knowledge contained in the pages and marveling at Wei Wuxian's unparalleled genius. There's a lot of work to be done to master the main technique he has to learn, which is fiendishly difficult, and Mo Xuanyu spends a lot of time working with the inner disciples Nie Huaisang has sent. They seem to be an odd assortment of buff and imposing in the typical Qinghe Nie style, and sly and unassuming in the manner of Nie Huaisang; either way, they don't make any conversation outside of what's necessary for practicing the technique. That's fine; Mo Xuanyu isn't one for conversation either. He's not here to make friends.

He wonders how much they know. How much they're allowed to know. If Nie Huaisang would dispose of them, the way he would of Mo Xuanyu, if they became a liability—or, if Mo Xuanyu were to finally slip up, if one of them would be sent to finish the job.

At night, when the Qinghe Nie disciples have left, and Mo Xuanyu has done all the solo practicing of minor techniques that he's ever going to do, he spends a lot of time just poring over the notebooks. There aren't just techniques written in them—there are diary entries, shopping lists, reminders—HOOK UP WATER FILTRATION SYSTEM TOMORROW DON'T FORGET—doodles, brainstorms of ways to strengthen the wards around the tent city and who to enlist to help. Added to the wrinkles and stains and, on one page, a big footprint with shoe tread, and it's like looking into a snapshot of the Yiling Patriarch's life before he died. Mo Xuanyu is riveted.

The diary entries: stream-of-conscious, prone to rambling, and written in barely legible handwriting as if the author couldn't write fast enough to keep up with his thoughts. Some are positive and optimistic—Great news, A-Yuan loves his new tiger plush! I've been calling it the Yin Tiger Plush whenever I play with him, which he plays along with, but Wen Qing isn't happy about that because she says it could get him to say dangerous and misleading things if we're ever captured. Also it's already super dirty because he won't stop bringing it everywhere with him, even the nasty creek. Pretty much everything here is kind of dirty haha. The laundromat in town is nice enough to let wanted refugees and war criminals use its facilities, but we've got so many people here it would look kind of suspicious if we all did our laundry at once. And the only place to shower is the rest stop half a mile away, and again we can't use those all at once so as to avoid suspicion, so everyone's always a little smelly. It doesn't bother me—Wen Qing says that's because I'm a horrible swamp monster who never learned hygiene—but it does bother some of the others. Especially Wen Qing, who complains a lot about the lack of sanitary medical conditions. Oh but also we stole Wen Ning a pair of Tripp pants the other day and he looked fucking incredible, I cracked up for an hour and he gave me the puppy dog eyes and said should I take it off Wei-gongzi, and I said no no it looks great and he said why are you laughing then and I couldn't explain—

Others are simply neutral, a terse record. Fortified the wards today—added two layers of corpse guards, an extra five points on the main protection array. Scraped together enough money to buy takeout, saved it for the older ones. Uncle Six sprained his finger helping to patch up the main warehouse wall, Wen Qing wrapped it and told him not to use it for at least three weeks. Almost out of bandages but it should be easy to steal more. A-Yuan asked for an hour of playtime today

And some are… disturbing. There's never anything just sad—no simple, clear-phrased Today I worried about our future or anything like that. It's always either a deliberate avoidance of any real negativity, or… well, an explosion. FUCK, reads one page, over and over, in increasingly sprawling and illegible handwriting. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK REND THE FLESH TEAR THE FLESH STRIP THE SKIN OFF MY ARMS WITH FINGERNAILS LET THE WORMS CRAWL IN I CAN STILL TASTE IT I CAN STILL TASTE

The air conditioning ticks and hums through the room like a heartbeat and the little digital clock reads 3 AM as Mo Xuanyu traces over the jagged pen marks with his fingers. In one place the writing was so forceful it tore the page. "You and me both, buddy," he murmurs. On the opposite page is an arrow pointing to the mess with IGNORE ALL THAT : ) written in much more legible writing.

The doodles: No one ever mentioned Wei Wuxian was a pretty good artist; maybe that isn't considered important next to all the, the desecrating of the dead and greatly increasing their ranks. The most consistent subject of the portraits is a little kid Mo Xuanyu doesn't recognize, but is probably the A-Yuan mentioned in the diary entries, and who seems frankly pretty adorable. Or maybe the person drawing the pictures just adored him. After that is a man he vaguely recognizes as the Ghost General—if only because of the corpse veins on his neck, he looks way different and way more harmless in these images than in the war footage of him—and a woman who Mo Xuanyu reasons was probably the Ghost General's female accomplice. Relative. Sister? The one the diary entries call Wen Qing, at any rate. He never paid too much attention to all those war stories. There are a few other faces that only appear once or twice each, most of them old.

Then there are the ones that Mo Xuanyu is pretty sure were drawn from memory. They're missing the crisp lively depth of drawings from reference, and anyway he recognizes most of their subjects, and Wei Wuxian wouldn't exactly have been able to get them to sit for a portrait during the time he was using those notebooks. There are a lot of drawings of a woman it takes him a while to place as Jiang Yanli, Wei Wuxian's shijie whom he eventually heartlessly slaughtered—or so the sects tell it. Mo Xuanyu isn't sure what's true and what isn't anymore. A few portraits of the Jiang sect leader, younger-looking and with significantly fewer stress lines. And—this is the unexpected bit—a frankly surprising amount of what looks like one of the two Lan heirs. The younger one? They look so similar, it's hard to tell from a drawing, but the complete lack of smiling in the pictures suggests it's Lan Wangji.

Mo Xuanyu knows that Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian, polar opposites that they famously were, had some kind of relationship between them; that they weren't strangers and felt some type of way about each other. That's about the extent of what he understands. From the vague things he's heard around and about, he gathers that they were either bitter enemies or bosom friends or bosom friends who became bitter enemies, which leaves a whole lot unclear and is not something he really cares to find definite answers to. Celebrity gossip never interested him, cultivational or not. But the sheer volume of drawings of Lan Wangji in here, right alongside Wei Wuxian's adoptive family and the people he was camping out with at the time, suggest the relationship was probably a positive one.

Huh. Another mystery solved that didn't really need solving.

In the last couple days Nie Huaisang starts to come down to visit, to lay out the details of the plan Mo Xuanyu has been studying to carry out. Mo Xuanyu is made to memorize schedules, faces, blueprints, procedures, made to repeat them back at Nie Huaisang until he can do it without thinking, and then Nie Huaisang leaves him to frantically work on the last steps of mastering the main technique for another few hours before he comes down and drills it into Mo Xuanyu's head all over again, just to make sure it sticks. Mo Xuanyu feels like the last week of the semester, right before exams—head stuffed full of information, cracking open under the pressure of a deadline, trying to get all the preparations done in time. Like finals, it'll be over soon, but first he has to make sure that all his training was worth it.

And then, six days after he first came down here, Mo Xuanyu gets the ritual right. Really truly right, without it wearing off in five or ten or thirty minutes. The next attempt after that fails, but the third doesn't, and neither does the fourth, or the fifth, or the sixth; something about it has clicked into place deep within him and he knows he's finally gotten it.

He's done it. He's gotten it. The sweat of the week lies heavy and crusty on his skin and his knees nearly give out from under him—but of course, the work has only just begun.

Nie Huaisang is alerted, and sweeps into the underground base like a storm from above. "Congratulations," he said, beaming, but also looking harried, and Mo Xuanyu is plunged into darkness again and borne back up towards the light. It sears his eyes when he emerges, the feeling of fresh air alien on his skin. "Are you ready?"

—and there is only one answer Mo Xuanyu can give.