Sunny, Part Five

Wei Wuxian lay face-down the whole night through; for the first half he turned over in his mind what, exactly, could have happened to Lan Wangji across all these years, and only toward the latter half did he drift, hazy and unmoored, into sleep. When he opened his eyes the next morning, Lan Wangji was nowhere to be found, while he himself lay primly upon the couch, both hands set neatly at his sides, arranged into a posture of perfect propriety.

Wei Wuxian flung off the quilt that had been laid over him, buried the five fingers of his right hand in his hair, and found that the absurd, prickling, nameless unease in his chest still refused to be shaken loose.

Just then the wooden door of the Jingshi was rapped softly, twice, and Lan Sizhui's voice came from beyond it: “Young Master Mo? Are you awake?”

Wei Wuxian: “What are you calling me out for this early?!”

Lan Sizhui: “Ear—early?… But, it's already the hour of si.”

The Lan rose at the hour of mao and rested at hai, exceedingly regular; Wei Wuxian rose at si and rested at chou, also quite regular, a full two double-hours behind their household. He had lain face-down half the night, his waist sore and his back aching, and so he said, with blunt honesty, “I can't get up.”

Lan Sizhui said, “Er, now what's wrong with you?”

Wei Wuxian said, “What's wrong with me. Your Hanguang-jun slept me!”

Lan Jingyi's voice rose too, blustering with menace: “Spout any more nonsense and we won't let you off. Come out!”

Wei Wuxian protested his injury: “It's true! He slept me the whole night! I won't come out, I'm too ashamed to be seen!”

Out beyond the door, several of the juniors exchanged helpless glances. No one might tread freely into Hanguang-jun's residence, and so they were caught between laughter and tears, with no way to simply march in and haul the man out. Lan Jingyi fumed, “What utter shamelessness! Hanguang-jun is no cut-sleeve—he, sleep you?! You'd be thanking heaven on your knees if you didn't try to sleep him. Get up! Lead that donkey of yours away and discipline it properly, it's been racketing us all to death!”

At the mention of his mount, Wei Wuxian scrambled up at once: “What have you done to my Little Apple?! Don't you touch it, it kicks!”

Lan Jingyi said, “What's a Little Apple?”

Wei Wuxian said, “My donkey!” He came out of the Jingshi and herded the few juniors into leading him to his mount, and was guided to a stretch of green grass, where the dappled donkey was indeed braying without end, raising a din without let. The reason for its bellowing was that it wanted to graze, but gathered upon that grass were several dozen rolling balls of white fluff, leaving it no room to get its mouth down.

Wei Wuxian said in delight, “So many rabbits! Come, come, skewer them, skewer them, roast them!”

Lan Jingyi all but breathed fire from every orifice: “Killing is forbidden in Cloud Recesses! Hurry and shut it up—the morning-reading class has already come round to ask about it several times! Keep this up and we'll be scolded into our graves!”

Wei Wuxian fed it the apple from the breakfast that had been brought to him, and sure enough, the moment the dappled donkey set teeth to apple it forgot all about braying and fell to chewing, crunch, crunch, working its lips. Stroking the back of its neck with one hand, he was at the same time scheming after the Jade Passage Token that hung on these juniors, and at the same time, pointing at the round, plump white rabbits littering the ground, he asked, “Really can't roast them? Is it that if I roast them I'll be driven down the mountain?”

Lan Jingyi, as if facing a great enemy, hastily flung both arms wide to bar his path and said, “These are Hanguang-jun's to raise—we only help mind them now and again—you wouldn't dare roast them!”

Hearing this, Wei Wuxian nearly toppled over laughing, thinking to himself: “This Lan Zhan, really! Back then I gave them to him and he wouldn't take them, and now he keeps a whole flock on the sly. Still claims he doesn't want them—who's he fooling? Spare me—the truth is, deep down he likes these soft, white, fluffy little things! Hanguang-jun, stone-faced, cradling a rabbit—oh, mother, I can't take it…”

But the instant he recalled again the scene of the night before, when he had lain sprawled atop Lan Wangji, the laughter died in him.

At that very moment, from the western quarter of Cloud Recesses, came peal upon peal of a bell.

This bell was nothing like the bell that told the hours—it was urgent and violent, as if some madman in the grip of derangement were hammering at it. Lan Jingyi and Lan Sizhui went pale, and with no leisure left for banter they cast him off and ran. Wei Wuxian, knowing something was amiss, hurried after.

The bell was sounding from a corner tower.

This corner tower was called the Spirit-Summoning Chamber; its walls on every side were made of a special material, graven with seal-script incantations, a building dedicated to the Lan's soul-summoning rites. When the bell atop the tower rang out of its own accord, it meant one thing had come to pass: that the one performing the summoning within had met with calamity.

Beyond the tower, more and more Lan sons and disciples crowded round, yet not one dared rashly enter. The door of the Spirit-Summoning Chamber was a slab of lacquer-black wood, locked fast, openable only from within. To break it by force from the outside was not merely difficult but a breach of taboo. A summoning gone awry was a fearsome thing, for no one could know what might be called forth, nor what might happen should one go blundering in. And since the chamber's founding it had almost never seen a summoning fail—which made every heart all the more uneasy.

Seeing that Lan Wangji had not appeared, Wei Wuxian sensed ill. Were Lan Wangji still in Cloud Recesses, he should have come at once upon hearing the alarm bell—unless… Suddenly the black door slammed open and a white-robed disciple came stumbling and reeling out.

Unsteady on his feet, he no sooner burst forth than he tumbled down the steps. The chamber door swung instantly shut behind him, as though hurled back by someone in fury.

The others rushed to help the disciple up with many hands. No sooner raised, he collapsed again, his face streaming uncontrollably with tears and snot, and clutched at them, gasping, “It shouldn't… it shouldn't have been summoned…”

Wei Wuxian seized his hand and said, low and grave, “Whose soul were you summoning? Who else is inside? Where is Hanguang-jun?!”

The disciple seemed to be struggling terribly for breath; he opened his mouth: “Hanguang-jun, told me to flee…”

Before he could finish, crimson blood came surging from his nose and mouth. Wei Wuxian pushed the man into Lan Sizhui's arms—the roughly fashioned bamboo flute still thrust at his waist—took the several steps in two strides, kicked the great door of the Spirit-Summoning Chamber, and barked sharply, “Open!”

The chamber door flew open as though gaping into wild laughter. Wei Wuxian slipped inside in an instant, and the door closed close at his heels. The disciples cried out in alarm and rushed up after him, but try as they might the door would not open. A guest cultivator threw himself against it, both shocked and enraged, and blurted out, “Just now—who in the world was that man?!”

Lan Sizhui, holding up the disciple, said through gritted teeth, “…Help me first. He's bleeding from every orifice!”

The moment Wei Wuxian entered the Spirit-Summoning Chamber, he felt a wave of oppressive black miasma bear down upon his face.

This black miasma seemed a compound of resentment, wrath, and madness, near visible to the naked eye; ringed about by it, a man's chest was pressed until it ached with a dull, smothered pain. The chamber's interior measured better than three zhang in length and breadth, and in its four corners several people lay slumped, sprawled and senseless. Upon the array at the center of the floor stood the object of this summoning.

There was nothing else—only a single arm. The very one brought back from Mo Village!

It stood bolt upright like a staff, its severed end to the ground, four fingers curled into a fist and the forefinger pointing to the heavens, as though in fury it were pointing at someone. The endless black miasma that filled the whole chamber was issuing from it.

Of those who had taken part in the summoning, some had fled and some had fallen; only Lan Wangji, at the eastern head where the presiding seat lay, still sat upright and composed.

A guqin lay across at his side; his hands were not upon the strings, yet the strings shuddered and hummed of their own accord, without ceasing. He had seemed to be deep in thought, or else listening intently for something; sensing an intruder, only then did he raise his head.

Lan Wangji's face was ever unruffled, and Wei Wuxian could read nothing of his mind in it. Lan Qiren, who had been presiding over one quarter, now lay toppled to one side—like the disciple who had escaped the chamber, bleeding from every orifice, his wits wholly fled. Wei Wuxian took up his place, spun to set his foot upon the western position, drew the bamboo flute from his waist, raised it to his lips, and faced Lan Wangji across the distance.

That night at Mo Village, Wei Wuxian had first disturbed the thing with the whistling of his flute, and Lan Wangji had then struck at it from afar with the voice of his qin; the two, unwitting, had joined forces and so suppressed this arm. Lan Wangji met his gaze, understood, and lifted his right hand, a run of string-notes spilling forth; Wei Wuxian answered at once with the voice of his flute.

The piece they played was called Summoning the Soul. Using a corpse, some part of a corpse, or a thing the dead had cherished in life as its medium, it draws the departed Soul to follow the sound and come. Ordinarily a single passage suffices for the form of the Soul to be seen rising within the array. Yet the two of them were nearing the end of a full passage, and still no Soul had been called.

The arm seemed to rage; veins stood out livid over its whole length, and the oppression in the air grew heavier still. Had another held the western quarter at that moment, he could not have escaped Lan Qiren's fate of bleeding from every orifice, but would long since have failed and fallen. Wei Wuxian was secretly alarmed: that he and Lan Wangji together should play Summoning the Soul and still fail to call the Soul was a thing all but impossible. Unless… unless this dead man's Soul had been cleaved apart together with his corpse!

It seemed this fellow had it a touch worse than he had. Back then, though his own corpse had been gnawed to pieces, at least his Soul had remained whole.

Summoning the Soul having failed, Lan Wangji shifted the tune between his fingers and took up another piece.

This melody was wholly unlike the eerie, uncanny, questioning strain of before—it was hushed and at peace, and its name was Rest. Both pieces were widely circulated and famed throughout the cultivation world; that anyone might play or pipe them was no rarity, and so Wei Wuxian followed along as a matter of course.

The Yiling Patriarch's ghost flute was named Chenqing, its dread renown spread far and wide. Now, answering with a bamboo flute, he piped it deliberately full of errors and gaps, his breath wanting, a thing scarcely bearable to hear. Lan Wangji had likely never played in concert with anyone so dreadful; after a stretch, at last unable to carry on as though nothing were amiss, he lifted his eyes to him, expressionless.

Wei Wuxian, thick-skinned, feigned not to see, his tune wandering further and further afield; he turned about and was just about to keep piping when a strange omen came from behind him. He looked back and started at once. There was Lan Qiren, who had lost consciousness, sitting bolt upright, his face bleeding from every orifice and all but smoking with rage, his beard and throat and the hand he leveled at Wei Wuxian all trembling, crying himself hoarse: “Stop playing! Get out! Out, now! I won't have—”

What it was he wouldn't have, he never finished saying; he spat a mouthful of blood and toppled back where he sat, sinking once more into a faint at the edge of his last breath.

Lan Wangji: “…”

Wei Wuxian was struck dumb.

He knew what came after Lan Qiren's “I won't have”: I won't have you playing! I won't have this duet! I won't have you defiling my beloved disciple Wangji's qin!

Their concert of qin and flute had, it seemed, roused Lan Qiren awake by sheer indignation and then knocked him out by sheer indignation again—which told you just how excruciating it had been to hear…

And yet, even so, under the joined suppression of flute and qin the arm slowly sank and toppled. Wei Wuxian thought, without a shred of shame: dreadful or not, so long as it works.

The last string-note died away, and in a breath the great door of the Spirit-Summoning Chamber sprang open and daylight poured across the floor. The alarm bell atop the tower had, it seemed, ceased to ring, and the sons and disciples who had ringed the chamber outside came rushing in, the air at once thick with cries of “Hanguang-jun.”

Lan Wangji pressed his hand to the strings, stilling the lingering hum, and rose to feel for Lan Qiren's pulse. With him to lead, the rest soon steadied; several of the elder seniors laid flat the bodies of those bleeding from every orifice and set to treating them. They worked needles and administered medicine, while another set of disciples carried in a great bronze bell, meaning to cover the arm beneath it. Busy as the scene was, it was orderly, and conducted in soft murmurs, with no one raising any clamor or noise.

Several said in worry, “Hanguang-jun, the elixirs and the needles are both without effect—what is to be done?”

Lan Wangji kept three fingers pressed to Lan Qiren's pulse, brows knit, saying nothing. Of the soul-summoning rites Lan Qiren had presided over there were, if not a thousand, then surely eight hundred, and among them no shortage of Fierce Ghost and Fierce Spirit alike; that even he should be wounded by a backlash of resentment showed how appalling the malice in this severed hand must be—something well-nigh unheard of.

Wei Wuxian thrust the bamboo flute back at his waist, crouched beside the bronze bell, and ran his fingers over the gold script upon it, lost in thought, when he noticed a shadow of dejection cross Lan Sizhui's face. “What is it?” he asked.

Lan Sizhui had long known him to be no ordinary man; after a slight hesitation he said, low, “Only a little guilt, that is all.”

Wei Wuxian said, “Guilt over what?”

Lan Sizhui said, “This ghostly hand—it was coming for us.”

Wei Wuxian said with a smile, “And how do you know that?”

Lan Sizhui said, “Each grade of Spirit-Attraction Flag has its own method of drawing and its own potency. The few Spirit-Attraction Flag we drew back in Mo Village had a range of only five li around. But this severed hand carries a heavy killing aura, and it feeds on human flesh, blood, and breath. Had it been within that range from the start, given how savage it is, Mo Village would long since have run with rivers of blood. Yet it appeared only after we had arrived—which is to say, someone with malice in their heart must have planted it at that place, at that very moment, on purpose.”

Wei Wuxian said, “Your studies are solid. A fine analysis.”

Lan Sizhui bowed his head and said, “If so, then those few lives lost at Mo Village—we are, I fear… answerable for them too… and now we have dragged Master Lan and the others into lying senseless as well…”

After a moment's silence, Wei Wuxian clapped him on the shoulder and said, “The ones who should answer for it aren't you—it's the person who loosed the ghostly hand. There are things in this world that were never within one's own power to control.”

Over there, Lan Wangji withdrew his hand, and the Lan all asked anxiously, “Hanguang-jun, how is it?”

Lan Wangji said, “Trace it to the source.”

Wei Wuxian said, “Just so. Trace it to the source—find this ghostly hand's whole corpse, make plain his identity, and then there will naturally be a way to save them.”

Though Lan Jingyi by now knew for certain the man was no lunatic, he could never quite help addressing him in a reproachful tone, and said, “Easy for you to say. The summoning couldn't draw anything out, and it's ended in this mess—where are we supposed to go and look?”

Lan Wangji said, “The northwest.”

Lan Sizhui asked, puzzled, “The northwest? Hanguang-jun, why the northwest?”

Wei Wuxian said, “Hasn't it already pointed it out for you to see?”

Lan Jingyi was bewildered: “Pointed it out for me? Who? Who pointed? Hanguang-jun didn't point.”

Wei Wuxian said, “It did.”

Only then did the others realize that the one he meant was the ghostly hand!

The arm pointed fixedly in one direction; when someone shifted its position, it stubbornly turned itself back, restoring its former bearing. None of them had ever seen such a thing, and they were struck with astonishment. Lan Jingyi said, “It? It… what is it pointing at?!”

Wei Wuxian said, “What else would it point at? Either some other part of his corpse, or else the killer who made him into this.”

At these words, several youths who happened to be standing in the northwest hastily dodged aside. Lan Wangji glanced at him, rose slowly, and said to the disciples, “Settle my uncle.”

Those few nodded, “Yes! Are you going down the mountain now?”

Lan Wangji inclined his head slightly, and Wei Wuxian had already slunk furtively behind him, declaring aloud to himself, gleeful, “Good, good, good—at last we can go down the mountain and elope!”

The others wore looks too dreadful to behold, the elder disciples especially aghast, while the few youths had, more or less, grown used to it. Only Lan Qiren, lying on the ground, seemed in his senselessness to suffer another spasm across his face, and one and all thought: “Let this man say a few more words, and Master Lan might just be roused awake by sheer indignation all over again…”