Earlier in the year I gave the hypothetical question of "If I were to write something, what would you want me to write?" and someone mentioned a crossover of Untamed(or MDZS) and Detective Conan, and my brain went "HMMMM." Months and months later, I finally have something to show for it haha. I could have put this out a month earlier if only I'd sit down and edit _;; Anyway, whoever requested this, I hope you like it! It's complete and I'll be posting one chapter a week til it's done. Thanks to Meridiangrimm for bouncing ideas with me in the early planning of this story!
If there was an ideal way to visit China for the first time, Conan was absolutely sure that this was not it. For one, they'd only come because of a sketchy prize trip Kogoro got for some mountain getaway. A trip for three, so lucky him, he'd been dragged along. Which was a problem considering 'Conan' didn't have a passport. Plane shenanigans and a new extra-short-term antidote had been the answer there, so Conan—or Shinichi, rather—got into China in one piece, but it turned out that this mountain getaway was in the middle of nowhere.
And their rental car was… kind of terrible.
It had broken down two kilometers from the parking lot for this place, only for them to find that the only way to reach it was to literally walk up the mountain with hundreds of stairs and gravel pathways like it had been designed by some person who thought cardio was the only way to live life. It had taken a phone call to get the car replaced, an hour of exhausting climbing, and Kogoro swearing under his breath as they dragged their suitcases to reach the gates. Gates that looked like they'd be more fitting in a monastic setting than a resort.
Honestly, at this point Conan had started to wonder if the resort existed at all, except there had been several cars in the parking lot, and there were people wandering around that weren't in old-fashioned robes with cellphones and cameras in hand, so clearly this place was famous for something. Definitely not for its logistics as a tourist place though.
That was about the point where a …monk?... of some sort came up and greeted them, triple checked the tickets, and led them to the plainest looking guest rooms he'd ever seen.
Honestly, there were no electric outlets, a basic overhead light, a working bathroom, and beds with mattresses so thin that they barely qualified as such.
"What the hell?" Mouri fumed after their guide had left them with a time for dinner in stilted Japanese and a handful of English pamphlets. "What is this, a hotel or a monastery? There'd better at least be good food and booze up here."
"Actually," Conan said, picking up one of the pamphlets that seemed to be made up of things guests were not allowed to do, "it looks like alcohol is forbidden here. As is smoking and other recreational drugs."
"You're shitting me." The pamphlet was ripped from his hands as Kogoro squinted at the English and Mandarin printed on the page. "What kind of shitty resort is this?!"
"It's not a resort," Ran said, looking at a brochure with pictures of the mountain and the compound's buildings. "It's a place for people to retreat from the modern world and reconnect with their inner selves—or something. My English isn't that great." Ran looked at her father. "What kind of contest did you enter?"
"One of those ball lotto thingies. There's a little old Chinese lady by the racetracks with a food shop and she had a drawing going…"
Sketchy. Very very sketchy, Conan thought, side-eying Mouri. What small shop would have a prize be an over-seas trip? "Please tell me there are return tickets," Conan said.
"Oi, of course there are, brat!" Mouri growled, swiping at him. Conan ducked away with the remaining brochure in hand. "Ugh. Should have known this was too good to be true."
"Well," Ran said, always trying to put a bright side to things, "At least we get a few days to see China. And it's really nice up here. Maybe this is still a good chance to relax. The brochure says they have tea ceremonies and meditation and music that you can take part in."
"Let me guess, flirting with guests is also forbidden," Mouri grumbled. "Please tell me there's at least a hot spring here."
"Nope, but there's a cold spring," Conan said, eying the map. A cold spring, flower and rock gardens, a dozen or so buildings, and, weirdly, an area just labeled 'animals.' Was it a petting zoo? Farm animals? Dogs?
"Who the hell would want to swim in cold water?" Mouri asked. He heaved a sigh and sat on one of the dubious-looking beds. "Ugh. Maybe I'll just hole up here and catch up on my sleep."
"But… We should take the opportunity," Ran said. "You like music."
"I like Pop music. With a place like this, it's probably all traditional stuff. Maybe I'll just hike down to the nearest town and stay there while you two enjoy the monastic life."
"Otou-san," Ran complained.
Honestly, Conan wouldn't mind not having Mouri around for a while. At the very least, he wouldn't have to endure his snoring. There had to be something here that would catch his interest, so it wasn't like he'd get bored. If nothing else, there were probably some trails with a great view considering they were on a mountain.
Maybe he'd go find some pretty sights and take photos for souvenirs. The Detective Boys would probably like that.
"Well, whatever we do, we should probably eat dinner here," Conan said. "The timing seems pretty strict according to the notes." The map had a bullet list of different numbers with descriptions. Each meal wasn't more than an hour long, and breakfast was held at six in the morning. Conan hoped there would be coffee or having to get up that early was going to be hell.
Mouri huffed a sigh. "Fine, but if it's miserable after a day, we're leaving."
Ran smiled and started unpacking their bags into the provided clothing chest. Conan took another look at the map. The trails looked like a nice enough way to pass some time. Although after all that climbing, he would prefer someplace to relax.
Well, there was a library listed. Even if they didn't have a large selection of books in other languages, he could probably find something interesting there until it was time to eat.
"Ran-neesan, I'm going to go to the library for a bit."
"On your own?" Ran asked, looking up from arranging socks to one side of the chest.
"It should be fine. If I get lost, I can ask for help. There's a lot of people here."
"Be careful then!" Ran said, letting him go like he knew she would. "It's only an hour until dinner so don't stay too long!" Mouri didn't even look up from where he was flopped on one of the beds, an arm thrown over his eyes.
Conan smiled as he shut the door behind him. Now he could explore.
*o*o*
Wei Ying couldn't say that the Cloud Recesses were his favorite place in the world. There were hundreds of nit-picky rules, it was literally in the middle of nowhere up a mountain, and the cell reception and internet speed both sucked. But it was also where his boyfriend lived, and between that and the fact that he'd brokered a deal to use their library for research even after his controversial theories on cultivation got him more or less excommunicated from the rest of the cultivating world went a long way toward making up for the drawbacks. The Lan had the biggest collection of cultivation texts, probably even bigger than Qishan Wen, not that they ever shared their knowledge with other sects. Wei Ying was willing to put up with rules, and working with tourists or clients so that he could keep working on his theories.
Did those theories have to get looked over by a council to determine if he could move on to practical testing? Yes. But most of them actually got approved, and the talismans alone were earning him a permanent place in the Lan's stuffy academic hierarchy.
Talisman research was why Wei Ying was in the back corner of the library today, crowded in by tall shelves of stupidly old books and scrolls. The sort of books that were old enough that most of them were hand-written and bound in traditional styles. Only cultivators bothered to go back this far. Visitors, when they chose to go in the library at all, tended to stick with the more modern, mass-printed sections of the library.
Which was why it was noticeable when soft footsteps lingered near his aisle.
Wei Ying looked up from a text on the evolution of warding talismans in the last three hundred years to spy a child frowning up at the labels on the shelves. Probably wondering why there were so many shelves dedicated to occult and religious things. Or maybe not, Wei Ying thought, as the child muttered something that definitely wasn't Mandarin or any other dialect that Wei Ying knew. So, foreign guest maybe?
"Are you lost?" Wei Ying asked in English, figuring that was the safest bet with a foreigner.
The child twitched in a way that would have been a jump-scare if he hadn't clearly stopped the motion before it could fully start. Wide eyes framed with thick-rimmed glasses looked his direction. "Oh, excuse me. I didn't mean to interrupt," he said. Accented English, but not Chinese accented, and not completely American either. Wei Ying had watched enough English television to hear that much, but like heck if he could place where in the world the rest of the accent came from. Being Asian didn't necessarily have to mean he was from Asia.
Wei Ying shoved the musings of linguistics aside to size the kid up. Kinda scrawny, in shorts and a button-up that would fit in with the preppie civilian clothes some of the Lan wore. Definitely needed new glasses because those were so big they didn't look like they were made for his face. "Just looking around?" Wei Ying asked since his first question hadn't been answered.
"Uh…" The kid sized him up right back, lingering on Wei Ying's long, messy hair, and the black ripped jeans he kept because they were so comfortable. "Yes. I was hoping to find something to read."
"English?" Wei Ying asked. He pushed his research aside; nothing that wouldn't keep for a bit.
"Mm, or Japanese."
Ah, Japanese. That solved the linguistic mystery. "There is an English section, but I don't know how much of it is children's books." If anything, the section was full of self-help books, meditation and spirituality guides, and a rag-tag collection of fiction books left by guests over the decades. The Mandarin language books had a whole section for kids in comparison.
The child wrinkled his nose a bit, like Wei Ying had given him an insult. "I can read adult books."
"Uh. Okay." In English? Wei Ying eyed the kid. Maybe he was just…a bilingual prodigy or something because most kids that little weren't reading proper chapter books yet. Well, he could roll with that. "Follow me then, I guess."
There was something unnerving about this child that Wei Ying couldn't put his finger on. Not the requesting adult books; kids wanted to act older than they were all the time. It was more the way he moved, like someone aware of his body in the way kids weren't, and how he looked around. There were a lot of children who'd visited—or lived at—the Cloud Recesses, and while the Lan kids were mostly polite and quiet, even they got easily distracted and fidgeted and all those other things kids did before adults trained it out of them. This kid looked more like someone who'd been on a few too many night hunts gone wrong, which wasn't exactly the sort of thing that indicated a safe childhood.
Maybe that was why he was here though. Maybe someone had sent him along for the Lan's special brand of 'therapy.'
The little corner of foreign books was probably the most comfortable area in the library, in part due to it being the area that tourists used most often. There were chairs with actual cushions and Western style desks in contrast to the traditional seating in the deeper parts of the library. The lighting was brighter and it looked like a place someone could relax in instead of someplace only fit for hours of private study.
Wei Ying waved a hand at the shelves. "There isn't many, but this is it."
"Thanks," the boy said, zeroing in on the nearest shelf like Wei Ying's troublesome donkey would go for an apple. He skipped straight past the self-help, meditation guides, and art books, straight to the sad collection of fiction.
This kid was definitely looking at those books and judging them.
"…is this really it?" He wrinkled his nose at the spine of a paperback novel that Wei Ying had found very… evocative. Provocative? Hell, his English wasn't good enough for the kind of prose in there. There was only so many times someone said the word 'cock' before he figured out that a chicken wasn't involved.
"That's really it," Wei Ying said.
The boy sighed and picked out a well-read novel that looked like some kind of cheesy, themed mystery.
"You know, there are other things to do."
"But only an hour until dinner," the kid said, pulling himself and the book onto one of the chairs.
Oh yeah. Food. Hmm. Wei Ying could go to the dining hall tonight. Or he could skip and Lan Zhan would probably sneak food to him later. Eh, he was pretty sure he was getting to the interesting part in the book, where people truly started innovating with talismans. "Happy reading then," Wei Ying said, waving as he turned back toward his study nook. The boy hummed distractedly, apparently already engaged with the novel. Good on him then.
Wei Ying went back to taking notes.
*o*o*
The library was huge, and it wasn't what Conan had hoped. Between not knowing Chinese beyond a few words and phrases, the different meanings of similar characters, and not knowing how the classification system worked to even begin sorting out how things were organized, he was left with only a shelf's worth of books to leaf through. Well, no, two shelves. But the other shelf was non-fiction, and even if Conan's English was good enough to read novels, it wasn't good enough for the sort of technical terms he'd be finding in most of those books.
For such a big library, it was honestly surprising how few people were in it. Conan had passed a few people near the entrance, and a few more tucked away in the stacks, but they had all been dead silent as they worked, making the library feel like a cartoonish stereotype where if he so much as spoke, someone would appear to shush him.
Thankfully, one person looked a bit more approachable in the back of the stacks.
The books there were older, some hand-bound and clearly showing signs of years of use. Not that Conan could tell what they were about. The man in the corner was young, with ripped jeans and dark clothing and paper strewn around him, standing out like a sore thumb in the pale neutrality of their surroundings. Not wearing the robes that some of the people were, or the modest dress of many of the guests, but clearly comfortable here from the way he sprawled in the chair and the number of books piled on his desk.
He'd looked up and met Conan's eyes, spoken English first, and that was the only reason he felt he could interrupt. It felt wrong to interrupt the silent studiers, but not if he was being addressed first.
Conan was lucky that he spoke English—actually pretty good English, though maybe it wasn't surprising considering that there were tourists here, and enough of them spoke English for there to even be a collection of English books.
No Japanese though. A few in French, or Russian, a fantasy novel in Spanish, and a couple that Conan didn't immediately recognize the language, but no Japanese. At least he was proficient enough in English to enjoy a mystery novel, even if it looked predictable and had a tacky pun in its title.
Conan almost lost track of the time reading. The hush of the library was surprisingly peaceful, and the actual contents of the novel weren't terrible. If the story was going where he thought it was, it might be a nice twist to the usual tropes. But the clock was ticking, and meals were only available for an hour. Resolving to finish the book later, Conan returned it to its place and stretched.
It was kind of nice to have a minute to just read. No cases, no homework, no small children at his heels or being self-conscious of how he acted for a bit.
Back to being a grade schooler, then. Ugh.
It was a few minutes past time to eat already, and Ran was probably starting to wonder where he was. Conan paused before he left, though, because the man that showed him the books hadn't left yet either, and if he'd immersed himself in books again, he might not remember to eat. Not that it was Conan's business whether people took care of themselves or not, but this person had been kind enough to spare a moment. Conan could spare one back.
The man was back to being hunched over the desk, frowning down at what looked like an arcane diagram in the book closest to him. The notes on the table had similar scrawlings with little offshoots of characters around it like they were commentary or something. What on earth was he studying?
Conan cleared his throat. The man twitched, leaving a streak of ink on his notes. Why write with a brush when there were perfectly useful pens or pencils? "Excuse me," Conan said. "It's dinner time. If you wanted to eat, you should probably go soon."
"Mm?" The man messed his hair up even more as he ran a hand through it, strands pulling free of a messy bun. He blinked at Conan with a distracted frown. "What about dinner?"
"It's the time the brochure says they're serving it."
The man looked at a backwards wrist watch. "Oh. Huh. Time flies." He stretched, back popping like popcorn, and offered Conan a grin. "Thanks, kid, but I was going to skip it and have my boyfriend sneak me illicit food later." He winked, like this was a secret, but considering Conan had just met him, he probably just told this sort of thing to anyone. "You should go though, since guests don't have that option." Ah, not a guest confirmed. "I recommend heavy use of any condiments on the table; the food here is bland as hell."
With that, he gave a friendly wave and Conan was left pausing for a moment before leaving. Well then. Not a guest, allowed to access anything in the library from the look of it, and dating someone who had access to the kitchens, or at least a kitchen. If that person was a native to this place, it had to have been interesting circumstances that led to him dating a man that looked like the opposite of this place's aesthetics.
*o*o*
The food was just as bland as he was warned. Conan picked at vegetarian fare with little enthusiasm as Mouri glowered down at his food like it personally insulted him. Besides the clack of bowls and chopsticks, it's dead quiet too, because everyone was discouraged from speaking. Ran, at the start of the meal, had tried a positive
"It looks very nutritious," but even she looked like she was wishing for some kind of spices. The food would be perfect for a monk or someone recovering from starvation. Not so much for people tired and hungry after a long day getting there.
"Is this a prison or a monastery?" Mouri grumbled under his breath, pushing tofu and cooked greens around the thin-broth soup.
Ran gave him a warning look. One of the guests had already been stared into silence for breaking that particular rule and she clearly didn't want the negative attention directed their way.
Conan gave up on the bitter greens and focused on his rice. That, at least, was cooked to perfection even if it hadn't been cooked with anything to add a bit of flavor. The silence was boring, and with nothing to hold his attention—the food certainly wasn't managing that—Conan turned to people watching.
The guests looked to be from varied walks of life, and from around the world. Surprisingly, only about half appeared to be Asian. How people from Europe, Africa, or the Americas had even heard of this place was beyond his understanding; Mouri hadn't even found a web page for it. And yet there almost thirty visitors from the looks of it, not including Conan's group. There didn't seem to be anything obvious about why they were here, but Conan could guess that it involved a need for some kind of retreat from the modern world, or maybe some form of therapy considering some of the books in the library.
Which only raised questions for why Mouri had ended up with tickets to this place. This wasn't exactly the sort of thing anyone pictured when they won a 'getaway' in a foreign country.
The guests closest to him were around college age, toeing the line of no conversation at meals by elbow nudges and exaggerated facial expressions that had each other biting lips to hold in giggles.
All except for one of them.
Conan forgot about his food entirely, focused on a girl at the edge of the group that kept glancing toward the door like she was waiting for someone to enter. One of her friends nudged her and she gave a grimace-like smile before going back to door-watching. She'd barely touched her food.
Conan narrowed his eyes as the girl's neighbor whispered something to her, a response back, shared frowns and a glance at the door before a shrug and the soft hum of a dismissal. The cold stare of the permanent residents turned their direction. The girl didn't even seem to notice, her worry now joined with frustration.
Something was wrong.
Of course something was wrong. When had he last been able to enjoy a trip without something going wrong? Conan sighed and started paying closer attention to the group and anyone looking at them. Statistically speaking, if someone was dead—it was practically a foregone conclusion with how his luck seemed to run these days—then they probably were done in by someone in the friend group. Barring the odd habits of serial killers, most murders were done by people who knew the victim. Sure, there was the odd random shooting or stabbing from a mugging gone wrong, an occasional hit and run car accident, or other accidental murders, but premeditated murder tended to be personal.
Conan really hoped that their friend was just running late.
*o*o*
Wei Ying finally had a breakthrough about a half hour later, finally finding a source that actually brushed on his research without condemning it wholesale. He was furiously scrawling notes and theories and ping-ponging ideas as fast as they came to him when the dull clang of a bell started somewhere on the premises. Not, he realized, the same bell for meal call or wakeup and curfew. This, resonating and repetitive, was some sort of alarm.
In the year or so that Wei Ying had been at the Cloud Recesses, he had never heard this particular bell. There had been incidents with visitors, an escaped ghost, and a bunch of cattle somehow getting all the way up the mountain, but none of them had ever triggered that bell.
Wei Ying put down his writing and left the deep stacks for the nearest window.
Outside, the distinctive white robes of Lan cultivators moved with impressive speed—considering running was forbidden—in pairs in all directions. Patrols. And coming up the path was a cultivator with a body, red staining white. Shit.
From this distance, it wasn't clear if the body belonged to a resident or a guest, but the fact that they were being carried in someone's arms instead of a stretcher probably meant that whoever it was had died. …He really hoped it wasn't a resident. No offense to the guests, but he'd grown a bit attached to some of the people here.
This was probably way outside his allowed duties, but really, who could sit back when someone was dead? Wei Ying abandoned his work and headed toward the body. He could help. Surely someone was going to play Inquiry to figure out what had killed the person, but it didn't mean he couldn't find out more at the site. No one here might like the fact that Wei Ying wasn't squeamish about sensing and interpreting resentful energy, but no one could argue that he wasn't good at it.
He could feel threads of resentment as he got closer. They were taking the body to the clinic, probably to examine it for injuries and cause of death. However this person died, it wasn't a good death.
"Hey," he said to one of the power-walking cultivators moving his direction. "What happened?"
The man—Wei Ying really should know people's names by now and yet—grimaced. "A guest fell off a cliff. One of the junior disciples spotted him while on patrol."
"On one of the walking trails?"
"No." The man gave a quick shake of his head. "A good ways off them, closer to the ward boundaries. Guests aren't even allowed in that area."
"An accident?" Wei Ying asked, already knowing it wasn't with that kind of resentment lingering already.
"Yet to be seen. I think they're planning to play Inquiry after everyone is escorted to their lodgings." The cultivator shifted, eyes darting in the direction he was headed. "We're doing a sweep on the off chance something got through the wards. Lan Qiren will direct you where you'd be useful."
Without a goodbye, the man hurried away. Wei Ying frowned after him. Well, he wouldn't be reporting to Lan Qiren. That would only get him stuck doing something boring and tedious like babysitting the rest of the guests when he could be actually useful investigating. Wei Ying cast a look at the path toward the clinic. Look at the body first, or the cliff? Hmm. The body wasn't going anywhere unless it woke up as a fierce corpse and fought its way out. The cliff, on the other hand, was outdoors and subject to the whims of nature—or tampering.
Wei Ying wasn't the least bit surprised when he found Lan Zhan heading the same direction. Alone, but who would order around the current Lan heir if he didn't want to take a partner? Naturally, Wei Ying could fill that role just fine. They'd done night hunts together enough that it's easy to fall into step.
"Lan Zhan," Wei Ying said.
"Mm." Lan Zhan tilted his head toward an area of the mountain that Wei Ying had never explored—it was a large mountain, and for all he liked to slip in and out of the wards sometimes on his own, it wasn't like he'd explored everywhere.
"Inquiry?" Wei Ying asked as they stepped off the path.
"I will perform it on site. My brother will play to the body."
"Ah, because the spirit could be either place." Some souls stuck with their corpse. Others, especially people with violent deaths, frequently haunted the place they'd died in. Rarely, there were lingering traces in both places, resentful energy talking whatever path it could as it leeched into the environment.
Whoever retrieved the body left a marker charged with spiritual energy, and the closer they get, the more Wei Ying could feel the tingling pulse of it. The marker, he would admit with no little pride, was one of the talismans he'd made in recent years to aid night hunts. Yeah, there was always flare talismans, and modern tech was great for communication, but sometimes a hunt got interrupted or there were details that needed double checked at a later time. Having a marker made things so much easier to find.
There was the chill of resentful energy underneath the hum of the marker, subtle enough that most cultivators probably wouldn't notice. Something so fresh, the spirit often hadn't fully regrouped yet, hadn't even had a chance to fully feel the impact of their unjust death. It made it less of a haunting here, and more of an echo, the malicious energy of whoever did the act twining in with the growing resentment of a spirit piecing itself toward consciousness. Wei Ying came to a stop by the marker talisman with Lan Zhan at his side.
"Bet you a bottle of Emperor's Smile that it was murder," Wei Ying said, looking at the sharp drop ahead. In spring, it might be a small waterfall, but without snowmelt, it was nothing more than a patch of rocky ground with a nice view—unless someone were to fall off the ledge and onto the jagged rocks below. The body had to have been flown out; this wasn't a spot to easily climb from any direction.
"No bet," Lan Zhan said. He pulled out his guqin and settled on a nearby boulder.
"But it would be such an easy win," Wei Ying said wistfully even as he crouched down to examine the ground. Footprints, but it was hard to tell if they belonged to more than one person; they were all approximately the same size.
"I will buy you some later, no bet needed."
"Ah, breaking the rules for me. It's no wonder your uncle thinks I've thoroughly corrupted you." Wei Ying snorted as Lan Zhan kept a perfectly unimpressed look on his face. "You love me."
"I do."
Wei Ying almost tripped over his feet as he stood up, sputtering. "You can't just say things like that! There's a maybe murder scene right there!"
"Hm." The tiniest smile flickered at the corners of Lan Zhan's mouth before his fingers touched his instrument's strings. Then it was pushed away, Lan Zhan's whole bearing shifting to his task.
Wei Ying only knew a few phrases of the musical language, but he could appreciate its eerie beauty, the call and answer along the strings.
At any rate, something was answering. Time to do his job. Wei Ying took a breath, centering himself and his energies. People, things, could leave impressions.
Resentful energy could gather in a touch, or an object. Here the energy seemed to slip in close to the footprints at the edge, almost like there hadn't been ill intent until last moment. And yet the energy didn't retreat with the footsteps away from the cliff either, like it appeared out of nowhere and vanished just as quickly.
Wei Ying frowned at the scruff in dirt and gravel right at the edge. The slip of a foot. A bit of blood on a sharp rock jutting up near the lip of the cliff—maybe an attempt to catch himself? He'd have to see the body to know for sure. And below—
There was a lot of blood down there. A broken bone through the skin or a head wound. Maybe both. The rubble at the bottom was jagged enough that it could have been a quick death if the victim had fallen at a bad angle. Or maybe a good angle because the other option was a slow, agonizing death as he bled out.
There was resentment down there though, gathered in the blood, so it probably hadn't been instantaneous. A quick death wouldn't be this strong this fast. The victim must have had time to think of regrets or anger or the pain.
He pulled his sword out of the qiankun pocket sewn into his pants, stepping on it without bothering to unsheathe it. Suiban carried him down, its blade patient and level as they balanced a handful of centimeters above the blood. Ah. There, the impression of fingers scraped in the patch of sandy pebbles tucked between larger rocks. An attempt to move, maybe, but injuries prevented it.
Wei Ying glanced up at Lan Zhan, the sounds of Inquiry still plucking to life above him. …Technically Wei Ying wasn't supposed to do what he was about to do. But technically no one explicitly said he couldn't do it, just implied. Lan Zhan wouldn't care so long as he was careful though.
It was a bit like Empathy, but not quite. There wasn't any spirit before him to connect with or to direct the memories he was seeking, but there was blood and resentful energy, and that was imprint enough if someone knew how to access it. Wei Ying was very good at accessing resentful energy.
He touched a finger into the congealing puddle before him. It was already cool, sticky in the way blood could be, and not at all appealing to touch. Maybe five years ago that would have bothered him more. He'd seen worse than a puddle of blood—touched worse than a bit of blood—by this point in his life.
The resentful energy sparked when he reached for it, curling and clinging like an oil-slick mess, coating his finger and up his palm in black wisps of power. It pushed at him and Wei Ying did what good, righteous cultivators were not supposed to do and let it in.