Wei Ying stood amid the fire, breathing the smoke. It seared his lungs, but he could not keep it out. Nor could he die from it. He could not die, at all. And that was the crux of it, the reason for his melancholia. He had pushed it out of his mind, away from the consciousness that had to live in reality. But reality had broken again and he had remembered everything from when he had fallen into Burial Mound.

Nothing made sense. Nothing was supposed to make sense. Yet he wanted to force the noise to stop and give him a chance to think; to just think about it!

The edges of his sleeves were starting to smoke. There was nothing left and no one beside him, save the souls of the damned that had infested his body. He could hear them roaring and laughing louder than the flames; it hurt his head to the point blood ran from his ears and his eyes. All that they had given to him they took back. Many times the pain and suffering, many times the sorrow and despair. From that moment he had woken on the ground in Burial Mound, he had been walking toward this moment; because the unusual thing about him was not his powers or his intellect or his steel...it was that he was alive.

He should have pancaked on the ground when he fell from that height. At least broken an arm or a leg. Yet, he had woken whole and intact. That was ridiculous. He had not the luck for that and no miracles were going to happen to him. He had just pushed the truth from his mind because it was too painful. That he had not woken in that kind of state, able to immediately get up and walk toward the next fight. No, he had woke in a half-crushed state with bones sticking out of twisted, mutilated limbs. His whole torso had been ripped open on jagged rocks and the roots of fossilized trees; black, black, everywhere had been black!

Yet, he had not been dead. He had not died from the impact or the blood loss. Unable to move, he had just gone insane. From the horror of his body's terrible condition. Like all the others that had been thrown away into that place. And the madness had consumed him just like those souls had eaten his flesh. So, because he had not had any other choice, he had eaten them. They had fused and become one, the black plugging up the holes and healing him of his wounds.

Even later on, when Jiang Cheng had sliced open his stomach, he had not felt the pain or horror of seeing his organs popping out because that was so tame, so inconsequential to him. He had merely picked up the rubbish and shoved it back where it belonged.

He did not want to leave any bits and pieces behind!

He felt that everything he had done recently had gone wrong; like some alien, outside force was perverting it. There were only a few things he knew for certain, it had not started from the pass and the battle there. That was perhaps the most obviously suspicious event, though.

His hand bled as he clutched the Tiger Seal. This diabolical object, which had perhaps been the best friend he had ever had, was now forcing him to make yet another death-defying leap of courage. To tempt fate and throw himself into the fire? He had overcome water, darkness, despair, and gravity...what did he fear of fire?

Laughing, manically, aware that it was absurdly funny, he popped the central jewel from the Tiger Seal and put it in his mouth. Summoning all the darkness around him, he cast off his inhibitions and swallowed it. It sank into his abdomen as an uncomfortable lump. But then it immediately dissolved there and his body was torn and rent from within. Beyond what the spirits had done to him; this was much worse! He thrashed around crazily, casting the useless metal binding array to the side, and tearing his clothes and hair with his hands. He raged at the heavens and the hells, but more importantly, against the faces of those he loved; they had betrayed him, hurt him, killed his friends and his family.

There had been no love for him.

But he was pinning the very last shred of his dying humanity on the very thing that had brought so much pain and turmoil to him. Because that was the only thing that was still with him, here at the end.

His consciousness lapsed, but when it returned, he was sitting on a shelf in a dark place. He looked around, trying to assess the damages. There was a pain in all of his body. He could not remember much if anything, but a familiar voice spoke to him. "Wei Ying?!" A gentle, cool hand, a pleasant if masculine hand, touched his. "Wei Ying, do not go to sleep!"

Startled, he blinked and looked at Lan Zhan. They were in the turtle cave. The moment he had first found the Tiger Seal, before it had become the Tiger Seal, when it was still some ancient sword or relic. And the turtle, nearby, was slain already. He looked at his hands; they were pale and shaking from the exertion of taking on a four-hundred-year-old beast of carnage...but he gasped and looked to Lan Zhan sharply because there were markings of dull red and black etched over the backs of his hands.

Indeed, Lan Zhan had a terrible expression of worry and exhaustion on his handsome face. Everything about him seemed made up of two layers; his beauty at the base and then the grime and fatigue that lay over him. He was hurt. His leg was serious and warranted either amputation or healing skills far beyond whatever lay in the cave. The resentful energy of the million dead within the water, those who had been eaten or drown or died of some crime there, were crawling around and making a racket.

Lan Zhan could not hear them, though. Nor could he see them with his eyes. He could only communicate with spirits through Inquiry, and at the moment, he did not have a zither or energy left over. Instead, he merely suffered from it, without understanding the origins of his discomfort. His light coloured eyes dimmed and his upper body dropped as he started to succumb to the pain and disorientation.

Several of them had hold of his hair and his sleeves and were sucking what yang energy he had left right out of him.

"Shoo!" Wei Ying snarled at them, waving his hands about in the air and driving them off. "Away with you! That is not for you!" He found moving was too much for him and threw up, but after that, some clarity came to him. He was definitely not on Burial Mound. He was alone in the sealed cave with Lan Wanji and the dead turtle...and very many restless spirits. By itself, that was not so bad. But he had no way of knowing what the world outside was like. He could understand his soul migrating backwards in time, within his own karmic bonds, via the Tiger Seal...but he did not know if the world around him was the same or not.

If it was not, then he just had to live with however it was different.

If it was the same...then...that meant the war was...

Jiang FangMian, Madam Yu, Jiang Cheng...Jin Zixuan...Yanli...

He gulped and bit his wrist against the overwhelming ache in his chest. He wanted to see them! He wanted to believe that they were there, out there, waiting for him. That everything that had happened was a scary dream while he was drunk on filthy water and the fumes of a giant turtle. But as much as he wanted it, he did not believe it was possible. He could not allow himself to entertain such hopes. That was the proverbial 'too good to be true' that would only hurt more afterwards.

Instead, he focused his attention on Lan Zhan, who seemed to be panicking. Of course, he was intelligent enough to know who his prison mate had been shooing, but that did not give him comfort. Lan Zhan was very regal, very aloof. He tried not to mix with the environment. But even he was bound by the limits of his senses. Knowing that there were countless many dead around him and being able to do anything about it were entirely different. His eyes shifted, moodily, his brows pinched.

It was the first time Wei Ying had seen him look like that.

Reaching out to him, without even thinking about it, Wei Ying put a hand on his chest. "It's... fine." He said, in a gravelly voice that made his eyes water. "They are just seeking a way out. They want to finally escape from here and see the sky. For them, who have been waiting for hundreds of years, we're not of any consequence. But if they touch you, they'll suck up yang energy. It wouldn't normally cause any trouble, right? But it's just because we're in this condition."

With these words, Lan Wangji recovered his composure and took several deep breaths. He first fortified himself mentally, then made sure none of his remaining yang energy would slip away. The best bet was to sleep for around four hours and then cultivate, but with their injuries and lack of food and clean water, that was impossible. Therefore, he just concentrated on not letting himself get any weaker.

"Wei Ying..." He said, looking at his hands. "...you can see them?"

"Yes, I can." Wei Ying replied, honestly. "You didn't know?"

"Hm. I did not." The stoic reply, so completely honest, as usual. "Before...why did you speak such words, if you can see them?"

It was a rare occasion indeed that Lan Wangji asked anything of anyone, but such a bold, unforgiving question, so invasive, was a once in a lifetime situation. He was also waiting for an answer, with his clear eyes glinting dully in what little light there was within the cave. He had somehow started a fire, although Wei Ying only noticed it at that point. The flames drew his attention for a while; he had felt his skin blistering, but, the memory was fading away as time wore on.

"Yes." He said, softly.

Lan Zhan had looked down already, as if he had been ignored, but he looked up again sharply.

"Yes, I said some things back at the Cloud Recesses, didn't I? Such a long time ago, really, I forgot. Well, now. Lan Zhan, take my words as I intend them. Try not to plug up your ears with some rules and other people's opinions. When you play Inquiry, you have to listen, right? You have to be open to the souls around you. Maybe, those are not 'good' souls. Maybe they were murderers when they were alive. How would you know? But in death, maybe they found enlightenment, or maybe they're just lonely, so they answer you and help you. And that is 'good', right? So then what is 'good' and what is 'evil'?" He blinked. "First, I think that I just always had more to think about. There is my mother...but I was also homeless. I had seen the worst and best of humankind, but of the other half, it was just 'what is'. Because the spirits and the zombies and the ghouls never tried to hurt me, back then." He sighed, feeling the ache in all his bones as his blood pressure returned to a normal rate. "What other people cannot see, does not exist in 'their world'."

"Hm. That, I understand." Lan Zhan said, in his more normal voice. "Disturbing the dead..." He frowned. "...or manipulating them..." He looked around at the cave, his fingers holding his sleeves in. "...would that be called evil?"

"Maybe." Wei Ying smiled. "Well, Lan Zhan is a good person, so you maybe cannot think of it the way I do. Let us say I brutally murdered hundreds of people. I crushed them and stabbed them, ground then around until they were hideous. And then, I turned them into zombies. Now, that would be called evil, right?" He smiled, sardonically. "But if those people were the ones that burned the Cloud Recesses, then what? Or if they hurt the people at Lotus Pier? Yes, like that. So it's not just about what you do, its why you do it. And that's too complicated, you know? It's too much work to think it all out. So, people write down platitudes and come up with half-assed opinions. Back then, when that lesson was given about some-such, I honestly thought it was stupid." He looked down. "Lan Qi Ren...has probably never hated anyone so much he wanted to murder them. He had very likely never gone hungry or been hunted by dogs, either, or even just thrown away. So he cannot think about it the same way. I never said I would hurt innocent people, did I?"

Lan Wangji sat back, his eyes wavering. For a long time, he was motionless. One could barely even tell he was breathing. Then he lowered his eyes and he swallowed thickly. "I...felt intolerably angry, but not to that extent." He sighed, putting a hand to his leg. It was darkened and his lips puckered. "It's rotting."

Startled, Wei Ying pulled the cloth aside. The flesh was certainly withered and had a malodorous fume around it. The filthy water had created damp gangrene in the broken bone, leading to necrosis of the surrounding tissue. It would spread the infection to his entire body in just a few hours, but there was nothing they could do in the cave. There was a sword, but no means of staunching the blood flow from a crude amputation. Not to mention that, even if they did that, he still might develop sepsis from the amputation site.

On the other hand, Wei Ying had no intention of letting Lan Zhan die such a terrible death. That was not one of the changes to reality he would accept. Certainly, 'before', he had never spoken to Lan Wangji like that. Not that candidly. Lan Zhan had not asked him such a question, for starters, but even if he had, he would have just laughed it off. He would not have understood it and that would have probably just made Lan Zhan disappointed...or angry.

But since it was a different 'time', and since he had already 'died' twice over, Wei Ying decided to change his future. The past was...just the past. But from this point forward, there was something to be done. Which started with Lan Zhan. While he was not stuck in the Cloud Recesses, while he was in the mood to question the world, Wei Ying decided to lure him over. At least a little bit. So that he would at least have a friend to turn to at the end.

"Lan Zhan, what I'm going to do, you absolutely cannot tell anyone about! Not your brother or Qi Ren! Not even Jiang Cheng or Jiang FangMian know about it!" He reached out, grabbing him by the shoulders. "It is a secret that I will share with you, but only you! Because I think you are trustworthy!"

His cat-like eyes widened in shock. "Wei Ying..." He whispered it, likely because he had been grabbed. "...if it is such a secret, it should be kept!"

"No, I want to tell you!" Smiling, just a little, he lowered his hands to the corrupted leg. "And you'll want an explanation afterwards, anyway."

Sucking up the toxicity was easy with the Tiger Seal. From what he could tell, he really had merged with it and it was more or less connected to his cultivation. He had a golden core at the moment since he had not given that up as of yet, and that was preventing the Tiger Seal's overwhelming yin energy from corrupting his mind. But that was also why there was a pain in all of his limbs and he had been knocked unconscious. He smiled as the markings on his hands seared, but he was very used to pain. He could have told Lan Zhan anything about the markings, but he had decided to make up a more pleasant story. It would not change things too much. He would not drag it out beyond belief. But, it would hopefully buy him a little breathing room.

He also really needed to do something about the leg.

It could not be entirely painless, but Lan Wangji did not cry out at any point; he bit his sleeve and held it all in. Then, he spat out blood and sat back, panting. His leg was a normal colour, although it was still broken. He blinked at the smooth, lily flesh, the same colour as the rest of his skin. "This is...?" He looked up, realised he had indeed asked about it, and scowled at himself. "Excuse me."

Sitting back, the markings fading from his skin, Wei Ying smiled. "Indeed. I'd want to know, too. Then I'll tell you about it. It's not something I really 'remember', but, I have more or less gained a lot of information from my mother. My mother...you know about her in rumour, right?"

"Yes." Lan Zhan nodded once. "Then, she had taught you cultivation from that age?"

"No, her cultivation was hereditary. Because it passes down through the blood, it's dangerous for others to know. When you cultivate to a certain extent, apparently you can gain one or two unique skills; like an array or a song or something; and then that becomes a physical part of your body. Well, if you could give birth, what would happen? It would pass on to that child. I don't know about males, but with my mother at least, I inherited about half of her ability when I was born. I could not use them!" He held up his hands. "I could not use them until I was around six. When I formed my golden core, you see, a huge amount of information came flooding into my mind. I did not understand most of the complicated bits, but I knew about arrays and I could draw rather exceptionally well for a six-year-old...anyway, there was one command..." He lifted a finger. "...that I ever tell anyone about it. It scared me, so I never did. But obviously, that was because I was a child, so I couldn't protect myself back then! She..." He looked down. "...went off somewhere..."

He let the silence hang there for a long time, then swallowed and brightened himself up.

They sat together, just watching the flames until Lan Zhan dozed off.

The spirits had been clawing at the cave, leaving gouges in the walls. Due to their handiwork, the cave-in was overcome from the inside and oxygen rushed it. This was much better than the foul air left inside. They also got a little more light. Whoever was out there, Wen clan members he assumed, were shredded as the spirits giddily escaped into the ether. Letting out a sigh, Wei Ying put a hand to Lan Zhan's chest, measuring his breathing. He felt very comforted that it was Lan Zhan he had awoken next to him, although they had never gotten on all that well. "This time, surely...I'll be able to protect them all..." He muttered as he looked at the swirling mist around his hand.