I forgot about my silly universe swap au too smh (sj moves to mdzs, wwx moves to pidw/svsss)

"Oh hey, it's you." The demonic cultivator stands among the destruction of corpses, staring over at Luo Binghe curiously. His dark hair is an artistic mess, whipping around him. He has a flute loose in his hands and a curious tilt to his lips as he stares at the demon emperor.

Luo Binghe considers the man, wary. He straightens his posture and folds his hands behind his back. He lets his qi roll out of him in a wave as he casually begins to walk in a predatory circle around the cultivator.

"How interesting," the demonic cultivator says, and Luo Binghe doesn't know if it is mostly to himself or to him. "Paired cultivation techniques of demonic and spiritual qi. You use them interchangeably." There was a brilliance in his eyes that prevented Luo Binghe from simply launching across the battlefield and ending this man's life.

That brilliance made him far more cautious than when he initially came across a hoard of wandering corpses.

The first couple days, the boy remains huddled in a corner of the cave. He’s attempted to wash himself with the water she brings but a full bath will have to wait. Because the glowing seal on his forehead is far more concerning. It’s clearly demonic in origin, but what it was meant to seal remains a mystery.

Just in the last day he’s started to ask questions and Wen Qing is uncertain how much she’s allowed to share. It is not for her to decide what information to give, but the one who is happens to be suspiciously absent for nearly the whole time.

On the fifth day she finally gives Luo Binghe a clean bill of health. She can tell he craves human interaction by the way he talks with her until she has to bluntly tell him she has to leave. And then she is haunted by the hurt in his large eyes all the way to the watery afternoon light of the outside.

He’s an earnest young man and Wen Qing feels that, in any other circumstances, she might actually like him. But there are too many lives here who have already suffered, and she refuses to gamble with them.

“How is our guest?”

Wei Wuxian appears beside her, silent as smoke. She gives him a wary sideeye. He’s grown quieter these last few years, more withdrawn with less idle chatter than when he’d been a younger man. And she’s not sure what scares her more: his uncharacteristic contemplative silence, or the stillness with which he holds himself. He doesn’t feel fully human anymore. “You can check yourself.”

He waves off her question with a hand and a laugh crafted to disarm. But she’s known him from when those responses used to be genuine, and not brittle masks. She finds it difficult to look at him. “I thought to give him time to adjust to a few of us at a time,” Wei Wuxian muses. “He has no family? No one from his… sect?”

Wen Qing shakes her head, thinks of the shattered look in the young man’s eyes, the glitter of tears that never quite fall. “No one, though he mentioned his Shizun, who he said was present when the seal appeared.”

“Interesting. He could very well have been from some minor demonic sect.” Wei Wuxian’s lightless eyes are on the cave entrance, his mind almost visibly chewing over the puzzle pieces their newest addition has presented him with. “…And the seal on his forehead?” It’s said almost like an afterthought, but the sharpness of his expression makes Wen Qing pause. For good or for ill, the boy’s sudden alarming presence has stirred the interest of the Yiling-Laozu.

“You want to know if he’s a danger to the people here.” She stares at him and Wei Wuxian stares back. But Wen Qing is made of sterner stuff. With an exhausted huff, she throws the last of her equipment into her case and closes it. She finally looks up and gives him a look that conveys her disappointment. “I won’t do anymore of your dirty work in regards to the boy. Ask him yourself.”

oh yea lov wangxian! *draws obscure crossover pairing as my first shippy wwx post*

listen, "death comes first" by Janusoverlord (on ao3) is living in my brain rent free. if the author has a tumblr let me know to @ them

He sees Shizun’s face twist in something complicated and horrible, even as it grows smaller and finally disappears.

But he doesn’t ever hit the ground. Instead, warm water closes over his head and the force of his fall drives him deep. The water seems too thick around him and eventually even his cultivator’s lungs need a reprieve. And when he involuntarily opens his mouth all he tastes is blood.

Luo Binghe panics, gasping for air that is not there and searching blindly for the surface. And somehow he finds it, clawing his way out of the blood like some half-dead thing. There is blood in his eyes, he’s completely coated in it. He probably looks like a monster.

Somewhere to his side there’s the sound of people jumping to their feet, cries of shock and fear.

“Jiejie! Get Wei-gongzi! Now!”

Wen Qing flies into view, face twisted into a rictus of fear. “Something came out of the blood pool!”

Something… His eyes go to the tally, swiftly hiding it back in his robes. And then he is gone, leaving Wen Qing to follow in his wake. Wen Ning is barring the opening of the Demon Slaughtering Cave.

The first thing Wei Wuxian sees is the pool, the blood roiling and steaming in the chill autumn air. And then the smears on the ground from where the creature dragged its way out. And now it just…lays on the ground. Not moving.

But the energy radiating from the creature reeks of resentment and the talismans plastered to the walls of the cave are rippling uneasily as if in a breeze. Alive or undead, whatever this thing is, it’s powerful. “Ready transport talismans,” he orders hoarsely. “And be prepared to get everyone out of Yiling.” He can’t endanger the Wens more than he already has. Even against such an unknown enemy.

Wei Wuxian crouches before it, a handful of talismans at the ready. Blood has pooled around it, dripping from what look like pointed ears, tangled hair. A hitch of its shoulders—breath. Alive. And then it starts to sob.

It’s no monster. It’s a man.

And this simple fact makes Wei Wuxian deeply unsettled.