#WangXian #HuaCheng #LanWangJi #TGCF #MDZS #Yaoi #BL #Danmei #Crossover

Summary:For ten years, Lan Zhan has worn mourning and kept silent about what died inside him. For ten years, Hanguang-jun’s frozen heart has not stirred even once. Until the day the rain fell red.

Not recommended for fans of canon pairings.

This is the author’s own work, adapted into English for an international audience.

Chapter 1

The Tonglu Mountains had long since fallen silent. Now a heavy, muffled stillness lived within them — the kind that presses against the ears, as if too much had been buried beneath it.

The river below reflected nothing. Not the sky. Not the moon. Only a dark depth in which it was impossible to tell where the water ended.

Leaves fell slowly. One after another. They touched the surface and stilled, as if unwilling to sink — like unspoken words that would never again be heard.

Hua Cheng stood at the edge.

His red robes clung to him like something left over from a former life — no longer needed, almost excess. As if he could cast them off at any moment, yet did not. The bandage over his eye had grown damp from the mist, but he did not remove it. Why? So as not to see the truth? Or so that the truth would not see him?

Xie Lian had left. Not died — left. It was worse than death. Death is an end, but leaving is an endless why? He remembered the warmth of his hand, remembered the quiet laughter in the rain, remembered the way he looked at him — not as a demon, but as a man who could still be saved. And then — emptiness, slow as poison you drink sip by sip, convincing yourself it is medicine.

“I lost him. Lost him. Did I even have the right to hold on? Was I not always the one who takes? Always the one who destroys?” Hua Cheng thought, and the thought turned in his mind like a knife in an old wound. “He gave me a name, gave me meaning, gave me forgiveness — and I… I could not even keep him in my memory. I forgot. Forgot his face. Forgot why I had once been ready to burn a thousand times for a single glance from him. I tell myself: I devour to find a path back to him. But I know that is a lie. I devour because I am afraid to disappear. Because to disappear means to admit that he is no longer there. That I am alone. And that is something I cannot admit. That is the one thing I cannot endure. But is this life? Is this redemption? Or merely another form of punishment I have given myself?”

He closed his eye. Inside, it was dark — like a prison where you sit alone and understand: no one will come to free you, because you are your own jailer. And the key is in your hand. But you do not turn it. Why?

He knew why. If he opened the door, he would have to see that there was nothing beyond it. That he was not crippled, not a victim, not a sufferer waiting to be saved. That he was simply the one who chose this darkness.

To keep from going completely mad, he began to feed.

He fed on others’ tears. Others’ screams. Others’ names — the ones people gave up themselves when they reached their limit. Every swallow brought him strength — and every swallow took a piece of who he once was. He felt it. Felt the memory of Xie Lian dim, as if someone were wiping it away with a wet cloth. And in that erasure there was a terrible logic: “If I forget him completely, I will lose all meaning. If I remember, I will suffer forever, but at least I will know why I exist. But without him… is that existence at all? I devour what belongs to others to fill the void he left behind. Perhaps if I devour enough — I will find a path to him. Perhaps if I become strong enough — he will hear me. Perhaps if I stop hoping — it will end. But I cannot stop hoping.”

Today, the boundary between worlds had thinned. It could not be seen — only felt. The air had changed: grown denser, heavier, as if stale breath lingered within it. The wind carried a scent — clinging, like blood not fully washed away. The scent of grief that does not let go.

A woman. Far away. In another world. Her voice broke, yet she continued to call out to the Heavens, hoarse and stubborn, like someone who no longer believes they will be heard: “Take my pain. My son… he was three. He screamed when the fire came. I held him, and then he fell silent. Every night I hear that scream. I cannot go on. Make it so that I forget I was a mother.”

Hua Cheng felt something stir within him… Compassion? Or envy? She was asking for something he himself could not allow: to forget.

He stepped forward. Silver butterflies rose into the air like shards of a shattered mirror that had once reflected his happiness.

He emerged into the cultivators’ world at night, at the edge of a village beneath the Gusu mountains. The moon hung high — white, cold, indifferent. It looked upon him the same way it looked upon all who suffered: without judgment, without forgiveness. Simply watching.

The woman knelt before a low altar. Wooden ancestral tablets, a bowl of incense ash long gone cold. Her forehead touched the stone again and again, as if trying to break the thought that would not let her live.

—I have come to your call, — he said. His voice was quiet, almost guilty. — Give me the name of your pain.

She lifted her face — wet with tears, hollow. There was not even a flicker of hope in her eyes. Only the exhaustion of someone who had struggled with herself for far too long.

—Lin Xue, — she whispered.

A butterfly touched her forehead. And in that instant, the scream of her son in her mind began to fade. It did not disappear completely — it remained, like an old scar. But the pain… it receded. Now it was the cry of a stranger, from another life. She sobbed, but no longer from grief — from the sudden emptiness that felt lighter than a full vessel of suffering.

Hua Cheng stood motionless. Power flowed into him — bitter, warm, alive. But inside, the emptiness remained. It always remained. And then he felt it — somewhere in the mountains, far away, another pain burned. Not the pleading cry he usually heard. Not tears. A quiet, stubborn sorrow that had lasted ten years and refused to die. It was sharp, piercing, like a knife driven into the heart and left there forever. White, like a ribbon upon the brow. Cold, like the strings of a guqin no one touched anymore.

“Who are you?” Hua Cheng thought, and the thought itself was almost painful. “Why does your pain call to me the way he once did? What is there in it that pierces this darkness I am trapped in? Is it because it is the same? Or because it is different? Or because I… I want it to be mine?”

He did not know the name. Did not see the face. But he knew: this pain was the deepest, the richest, the most dangerous.

Because if he devoured it — he might remember everything.

Or forget forever.

Hua Cheng turned west and took a step toward the Cloud Recesses.

Ten years of silence

The Cloud Recesses greeted the dawn.

The sun rose slowly from behind the ridge, as if with effort.

White paths, white robes — everything here had been brought to flawless purity. Nothing excessive. Nothing случайное. Even the wisteria grew as it should: orderly, restrained, not a single shoot straying from its allotted place. In everything there was a strict, unyielding order. Harmony. The very thing this clan had been built for. The very thing Lan Zhan had once believed in — and which now seemed almost unbearable to him in its perfection.

Once.

He sat on the veranda, watching the petals fall. The guqin lay across his knees, yet he did not play. His hands hovered above the strings, not touching them. In his ears there was silence — the one he had built around himself over ten years. Layer by layer. Stone by stone.

Lan Zhan raised his hand. A wisteria petal fell into his palm — pale lilac, almost white. He looked at it, not understanding why he looked. Why he noticed. Why he sat here at all, when he could have been in the meditation hall, on the training grounds, in the library — anywhere, so long as he did not have to feel how time slipped through his fingers, leaving nothing behind.

“Ten years. Ten years, and I am still waiting. For what? His return? A sign? Death?”

He did not know. He had never known.

The petal fell from his hand. Lan Zhan did not try to catch it.

Morning meditation by the cold spring was the only time he allowed himself not to think.

The water there was so clear it seemed not to exist. Only the cold, seeping beneath the skin, reaching the bones, reaching that very place where ten years ago something had broken. He sat motionless, hands resting on his knees. His breathing even. His pulse slow. Spiritual energy flowed through his channels like water along a riverbed, meeting no obstruction.

He was a perfect cultivator. Flawless. Untouchable.

“Then why do I feel dead?”

He opened his eyes. The water reflected his face — the same as ten years ago. The same features. The same gaze. Only in the depths of his pupils — where he did not allow himself to look — something had frozen. A longing so familiar he no longer noticed it. Like ice that had grown into the flesh and become part of it.

“I should have died with him. But I live. I live because… Why? Because the clan needs me? Because I am afraid?”

He did not know. Or did not want to know. He walked back to the jingshi, not feeling the ground beneath his feet. Everything here was painfully familiar: every stone, every curve of the path, every leaf on the wisteria. He could walk this path with his eyes closed. And often did. Because there was nothing to see.

Every evening, when the sun sank behind the mountains and the younger disciples fell asleep, Lan Zhan sat before the guqin.

His fingers settled on the strings, and he played Inquiry.

For ten years. Every day. Without fail. Even when his hands bled. Even when the strings cut into the skin to the bone. Even when Lan Xichen quietly asked, “Wangji… enough.”

Ten years. Three thousand six hundred and fifty nights. Three thousand six hundred and fifty times he asked the same question.

At first — with hope. He thought: perhaps today. Perhaps if he asked again, louder, more desperately — he would answer.

Then — with despair. When he understood there was no hope, yet could not admit it even to himself. He played because he did not know what else to do. Because if he did not play, there would be nothing left but to sit in silence and listen to everything inside him die. Because silence was worse than blood on his fingers.

Then — with nothing at all. Like a man who breathes, though he knows the air is long gone. Like a prayer recited without belief, yet impossible to stop, because if he falls silent — the dead will no longer hear, and the living will see that he has given up. His fingers moved on their own. The strings trembled. The melody faded into emptiness — into the place where his soul had once been. Where everything had once been.

Lan Zhan kept playing.

Every night.

As punishment — for remaining alive. As a prayer — to one who did not hear. As the only way to remain, just a little longer, with him.

The day stretched slowly, like patina creeping over old bronze.

The sun rose above the ridge, spilling an even, shadowless light across the walls. The disciples finished their morning meditation and dispersed to their studies. Somewhere in the distance, a measured ringing echoed—someone practicing sword forms. Behind closed doors, texts were being memorized. Everything moved as it always did.

Lan Zhan attended to the affairs of the clan: reviewing patrol reports, instructing younger disciples, examining records of night hunts. His hands worked on their own—sorting scrolls, marking decisions, giving orders. He did not notice when noon passed.

When the shadows grew long, he was summoned to his brother.

Lan Xichen was waiting in his study.

His brother sat behind the desk, sorting through scrolls. His face remained composed, but Lan Zhan recognized that look—gentle, thoughtful, filled with unspoken words.

“Wangji,” Lan Xichen said when he entered. “You look tired.”

Lan Zhan did not reply. He sat across from him, folding his hands over his knees, and waited. Lan Xichen let out a quiet sigh—almost inaudible, but Lan Zhan caught it. He always sensed when his brother held something back.

“Reports have been coming in,” Lan Xichen said, sliding one of the scrolls toward him. “Rather strange cases. People are losing… how should I put it… their attachment to what once mattered most to them.”

Lan Zhan took the scroll and unrolled it. The text was dry, restrained: names, dates, events. But between the lines, something else was written. A man who had hated his neighbor for thirty years suddenly said, “I can no longer understand why I felt such hatred.” Another, who had long mourned his wife, confessed, “I know I loved her, but now I feel nothing. As if it never happened to me.”

“No one has been harmed,” Lan Xichen added. “On the contrary, they all appear… calm. They say they have finally been freed from what tormented them for years. However, some of the elders remain concerned. In the places where this has occurred, traces of demonic energy can be felt. Something is disturbing the balance of the mortal world.”

Lan Zhan remained silent, rereading the lines.

“They say it has begun in the south and the east as well,” Lan Xichen continued. “At first, isolated incidents. Now they are appearing more often.”

He fell silent. Lan Zhan raised his eyes.

“In Gusu?” he asked.

“Not yet,” Lan Xichen hesitated. His fingers brushed the edge of his sleeve—a gesture Lan Zhan had known since childhood. His brother did that when choosing words he did not wish to say aloud.

“Wangji,” he said at last, his voice quieter now, as if they were speaking of something not meant for others to hear. “Do you remember how we used to visit Mother?”

Lan Zhan stilled.

“Every month,” Lan Xichen continued, not looking at him. “We sat by the door. I already knew she was gone. And you… you kept waiting. You knocked. You called. Uncle said it was useless. I said so too. You did not listen.”

He fell silent. And in that silence, everything that should not be remembered became too clear.

“And then you stopped,” Lan Xichen said finally. “Not because you forgot. Because you understood: one can wait forever. But that does not mean anyone will open the door.”

He lifted his gaze, and Lan Zhan saw something in his eyes that his brother never showed to others. Understanding.

“I thought,” Lan Xichen said slowly, as if afraid the words might scatter before reaching him, “that perhaps you should investigate these cases yourself. You have always been attentive to detail. And…”

He did not finish. He did not say: And perhaps you will stop waiting at a door that will never open. He did not say: I am afraid that one day you might wish for someone to come and take your memory away.

But Lan Zhan heard it.

He looked at the scroll without seeing it. In his chest, where there had been nothing but silence for ten years, something stirred. As if beneath the ice of a frozen river, water trembled—reminding him that it once knew how to flow.

People lose their feelings, he thought. They remember everything, but feel nothing. Would that… be easier? Or harder? If I could remember Wei Ying without pain… would I agree?

He did not know.

“I will go,” he said, rising.

Lan Xichen nodded, and something flickered in his eyes—relief, perhaps, or regret.

“Be careful, Wangji.”

Lan Zhan left without turning back. The scroll remained in his hand, but he did not grip it. His fingers were cold, as always.

That same evening, he sat before the guqin. His fingers rested on the strings—familiar, thoughtless. The melody was born on its own. The strings sang of what cannot be forgotten. Of what must not be forgotten.

Wei Ying, he thought, and the name alone made his heart beat faster. What would you say if you saw me now? Would you call me a fool? Or would you understand?

He did not know. He would never know.

The strings fell silent. Lan Zhan sat in the darkness, looking at his hands. Calluses marked his fingers from the strings. He looked at them as proof that time still existed. That something changed. Even if within, nothing ever did.

I will go to investigate these cases, he decided. Not because I must. But because if I remain here, I will go mad. Or perhaps I already have, and simply failed to notice.

Before leaving, Lan Zhan went to the library. He searched for anything related to such cases, but found only old records of spirits that fed on emotions. Nothing definite.

Perhaps this is… salvation, he thought. Freedom from what prevents one from living. If I were offered release from pain—would I accept?

He stilled. The question hung in the air, unanswered.

No, he realized suddenly. Because if the pain disappears, everything else will disappear with it. I will remain here, within these walls—white, pure, empty. And no one will know that I was once alive. That I once loved. That I once…

He did not finish the thought.

Lan Zhan left the library without taking a single scroll. Oil lamps burned in the corridor—their soft light spilling across the walls. He walked without looking around. Only when he stepped into the inner courtyard did he stop.

The wisteria bloomed in the moonlight. Petals drifted down slowly, circling in the air like snow that never melts.

He watched them and thought of how tomorrow he would leave. That perhaps he would find answers. That perhaps he would find nothing.

That it would change nothing.