#mfmteamangst

He hurried to the Ghost City, but there, too, Hua Cheng was absent.

The overheard gossip said that some peculiar life-devouring monster encroaching the realms had appeared a while ago and had stirred trouble in Hua Cheng’s territory, even dared to attack the Lord himself, and so the Lord chased after it to teach it a lesson it surely wouldn’t forget.

Just as Xie Lian was becoming more and more worried, the ghosts rejoiced - the City’s Lord had returned!

Hua Cheng strode through the streets towards his manor with a dangerous expression, a fading bite mark on the palm of his hand; without a command, all the ghosts immediately scattered to the sidelines, making way.

Xie Lian breathed a sigh of relief and hurried over, falling into step beside him. He had just parted his lips to ask what had happened, to offer help, when—

“Scram,” Hua Cheng snarled towards him, with only a passing look that froze Xie Lian in his step. There, and then it was gone; Hua Cheng’s pace never even faltered.

It was a single word, a short glance, but in that fleeting moment, Xie Lian understood. The absence, the lonely days, the rejection—

Hua Cheng did not know who Xie Lian was.

The thing about life-devouring monsters was that they fed on the life essence of the living. Ghosts, however, were not alive anymore; the most life they had to offer existed in the source of their most precious memories which most of them had long forgotten, anyway. If such a monster were to attack a ghost, all they would manage to do was sample a feeble memory or two, then perish from hunger if they didn’t look for another prey.

Hua Cheng was not a low-level ghost, however; the most a bite from that monster could do was temporarily lock his memory away.

Hoping that interacting with him would speed up the recovery of Hua Cheng’s memory, Xie Lian decided to show up wherever he got wind of the ghost king’s whereabouts. The mere sight of him seemed to agitate Hua Cheng to the point of reaching for his sabre, though—and for the first time since they had met, Xie Lian tasted the bitterness of being seen as distrustful.

Was it surprising, though? In Hua Cheng’s eyes, Xie Lian was now an unknown cultivator poking his nose where it didn’t belong. He had always been suspicious of anybody who wasn’t Xie Lian; now, he had nobody to trust at all.

With a heavy heart but a resolved mind, Xie Lian returned to the Puqi village and decided to wait.

The bite’s side effects would go away soon.

The first time Xie Lian noticed something about himself was amiss, he was in the middle of sending home a low-level ghost who had escaped into the mortal realm to stir some trouble. The day seemed ordinary and Xie Lian’s borrowed spiritual powers weren’t depleted just yet; however, right as he was reciting the last words of the send-off, a flash of overwhelming, restraining darkness took over his eyes, sudden and long enough to break his concentration.

When he came to, the building was vacant, the ghost had escaped, and he was hunched over on the floor, arms braced against the ground. His heart was racing with exertion.

What… happened?

Did something attack…? Was something hiding, was somebody in there?

When Xie Lian, trembling and covered in cooling sweat, looked around and examined the surroundings with a careful eye, there was nobody there.

Don’t worry.

“I’m not worried, San—”

He broke off his words again and covered it up with a small cough. He patted his wrist. “I’m not worried, Ruoye. You don’t need to worry, either.”

The ghost had still escaped, though.

Ah, what a mess, Xie Lian thought, carefully keeping his words internal as he got back on his still-shaking feet. That’s alright, that’s alright. It can’t be helped. I’ll fix this right away.

But finding the little ghost took no less than three days, and during that time, it wreaked havoc all around the village, spoiling merchants’ produce, turning large patches of soil barren, contaminating the nearby stream… Not only that, but it also sucked some of the locals’ cattle dry of their blood, leaving behind only carcasses and people’s uncertainty about their nearest future.

The people from the village had prayed in his little shrine in the past, asking for favours, small and big alike. Even when Xie Lian could not grant most of them, the people would come back. This time, no struggling local showed up with requests for help even in such dire times.

Had they finally decided I wasn’t dependable? Xie Lian wondered with a sigh on his way back to the Puqi shrine. He hadn’t waited for the villagers to come and ask for his assistance—the ghost’s actions had been his fault in the first place, after all—and he had drained nearly all his remaining spiritual powers to fix the mess until mere crumbs remained. He could not help the spoiled produce, the dead cattle, nor the crops that had already suffered, but he managed to purify the source of the waters and urge unaffected plants to bear fruits much sooner.

It’s just my luck that this happened when San Lang is unavailable, he thought. That ghost wouldn’t have dared bother the villagers if Hua Cheng had been around. His powers wouldn’t be almost gone now, either.

That was fair, however; Xie Lian had gone centuries without an ounce of spiritual power and managed to survive, living the life of a mortal. This time, he could do it, too.

Just as he thought it, one of his legs grew numb and he lost his balance, then stumbled on the even path and fell straight into the thorny sideroad bushes. He tried to get up, but his arms turned weak to the point of numbness. Any struggle on his part made the rough thorns and nimble twigs tangle with his limbs further.

Ruoye loosened around his wrist and brushed against his skin, but as it uncurled, thorns scraped against it and it retreated with a shudder instead, disrupting a lone butterfly perched nearby.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, don’t worry,” Xie Lian murmured, stroking Ruoye’s trembling body with his thumb. “Just my luck, ah, I’m getting up, see?”

He didn’t regain control of his limbs until long after the sun had set.

As he entered the Puqi shrine, there next to the empty offerings table, leaning against the wall, stood—

“San—!”

He immediately clamped his lips shut. Hua Cheng’s appearance was of the red-clad youth he had met a long time ago. Did he remember? One look at his face told Xie Lian everything he needed to know.

On Hua Cheng’s face, there was a strained, fake smile.

“Daozhang,” he said, his voice as pleasant and smooth as ever, “I believe you have something of mine.”

Xie Lian’s heart sank. His face, however, showed no signs of upset.

Amiably, he asked, “Pray tell, what could it be?”

If Hua Cheng remembered even just a bit of him, even just their first meeting, be it on Mount Yujun or on the Zhongyuan Festival, that fateful ox cart ride among the reds of sunset and maple leaves, he would surely use this moment to tease, so free-spirited he was. But Hua Cheng simply pushed himself away from the wall and approached him, slowly—on guard—and paused several long steps away from him.

“That thing on your neck,” he said with a nod. Xie Lian’s hand instinctively flew to the cursed shackle hidden underneath the white bandage, but Hua Cheng’s eyes flicked to something resting lower. “Where would Daozhang come across something as rare as this?”

Cursed shackles could be considered rare, but Xie Lian knew already that it wasn’t what Hua Cheng was asking about. He looked down and let his hand fall to the ring resting underneath his robes. As his fingers brushed against the delicate chain on the way down, Hua Cheng’s mouth tensed.

“Yes,” he said. “This.”

Xie Lian took a small breath and gently pulled out the ring, letting it rest in the palm of his hand. The dying, flickering candlelight reflected in the smooth edges of the diamond. “It was a gift.”

“From whom.”

It wasn’t a question. The voice still held the impression of politeness, but it sounded sharper.

Still, could Xie Lian ever leave any of Hua Cheng’s honest questions unanswered? He lowered his eyes.

“From you.”

Hua Cheng arched his brow. “Whatever reason.”

“I don’t know. I woke up with it around my neck.”

Oh, his luck… Of course, it had to sound this way—wasn’t that just so convenient? ‘I didn’t steal your special steamed bun, I just so happened to have an identical one in my pocket!’, ‘I didn’t shatter this vase, I turned around for just a moment and when I looked back, it was already in pieces!’. Xie Lian wouldn’t have believed his words himself, either.

“That’s a curious thing to just appear out of the blue in Daozhang’s hands,” Hua Cheng said. He titled his head. “In any case, if it was truly given by me, I have a request.”

For a moment, Xie Lian’s heart stopped.

Please, don’t—

“I ask Daozhang to return it to me.”

Despite the wrappings around his neck, Xie Lian’s skin there felt cold without the steady presence of the delicate chain. Only when it was gone did he realise just how comforting the weight of the crystal ring had been when it used to rest against his heart.

Of course, he gave it back—a ghost’s ashes were a precious thing, meant to be kept safe, protected against dangers lest they be harmed. That Hua Cheng no longer believed him secure, as temporarily as it would be (please, be temporary; please remember), was a different weight that grew heavier and heavier on his shoulders the longer he ruminated on it, but—in the end, it made perfect sense. Had he refused to return the ring, it would only have worsened Hua Cheng’s opinion of him. It was best to part with this treasure.

Once Hua Cheng’s memories returned, he would perhaps see the ring again; that, he chose to believe.

….Please, remember soon.

The days slowly passed by. With nothing to do and nobody to talk to, Xie Lian busied himself with strolling the nearby villages and forests, picking up junk that looked perfectly useful for his little shrine, and foraging the morsels growing between the grasses.

The shrine seemed even more abandoned than before he first moved into it. Everything Hua Cheng had not touched broke or fell apart completely within days of their last meeting.

The stove was too damp to light a fire. When he would try to start a fire outside, any embers would die on a sudden gust of wind or trickle of rain. With nobody to be mindful of feeding properly, Xie Lian simply gave up and munched on the mushrooms, roots, and berries raw. In the past, no matter how bad the food poisoning, it was still easier to handle than hunger, and his cultivator body worked through the side effects faster than a mere mortal’s.

This time, though, when it came, he got inexplicably ill.

Hot. Unbearable. Ache. Cold. Empty. Too full. No more. Is that—swords? Sharp, no—

Wet cloth on his forehead.

San Lang? San Lang—

“Sa… La…?” he mumbled deliriously.

No reply. The cloth disappeared. Silence, then a resounding splash!, near-soundless faraway flutter, water droplets falling into a water bin, wet rag dragged on the floor, and silence, and—

Cool, heavy wet fabric dragged against his arm, then shoulder, then cheek, and slumped heavily on his brow.

With difficulty, he opened his blurry eyes.

Ruoye wiggled slightly back and forth on his skin. Through the friction, a cooler part of Ruoye’s fabric briefly brought a shade of relief.

There was no one else in the shrine.

On the day Xie Lian realised his body refused to lift him from the straw mat, he had to admit that something was very wrong. This had never happened unprompted. In the past, being unable to move his body was caused by any number of unpleasant things—being stabbed and stabbed and stabbed, buried and impaled to the bottom of the coffin, trampled by horses and soldiers alike—but never without a reason. Last night, the most exertion he had gone through had been trying to fix the crumbling wooden beam and a broken wall in the shrine, with no great results anyway.

Hua Cheng’s painting of the shrine god had fallen together with the wall. Of course, he had to fix it.

“Ruoye,” Xie Lian breathed, and the band of white silk uncurled from around his wrist, “help me up? I need just a little pull.”

Ruoye did. With one end still wrapped around Xie Lian’s wrist, it flew deeper into the room and tugged, but only Xie Lian’s arm moved; the rest of him stayed lying.

“A bit more.”

Even when Ruoye curled around Xie Lian’s shoulders and pulled him up til his upper body sat propped up, his head rolled lifelessly to the side.

His eyes fell towards the shrine—he was supposed to continue working on the wall today—when he noticed the painting he had put aside last night.

His pupils shrank.

In the body of the painting, there was a large, ragged hole, impaled through a crumbled shard of the rotten-through wooden beam. It must have broken during the night and fallen apart while he was unconscious.

“No…”

No no no…

His ears started ringing,

If Hua Cheng had been there, he’d definitely have soothed him and said that it was just a painting—Gege, I’ll paint you another one, it’s nothing to be upset about. I’ll give you an even better one this time. Look, I’ll do it right away—

But he wasn’t there. He hadn’t been there for over a month now and it wasn’t—it wasn’t getting easier.

“I’ll fix it,” Xie Lian mumbled to nobody in particular, eyes blurring as he kept them fixed on the last keepsake of San Lang he had in this realm. “I’ll fix it.”

Xie Lian was a patient man, the most patient man—had to learn to be patient over the centuries of his life. He didn’t mind time passing. But this—oh, this was truly too cruel.

He didn’t even notice that Ruoye had gently put him back on the straw mat, his eyes unseeing. All he felt was the white band leaving his body and heard it rustle in the air as it chased some kind of fluttering insect around the room.

A feeling of gaping loneliness filled Xie Lian’s heart. He wanted somebody to— he wished that San Lang would—

He swallowed down the tightness in his throat and closed his eyes.

Staying away this time was really too painful.

…But maybe—as long as he didn’t cause trouble and didn’t make himself known…—maybe he didn’t have to stay away…?

The Ghost City was as loud and chaotic as he remembered it. All around him, the red streets were full of shouting ghostly merchants with their stands full of inhuman produce and peculiar trinkets, but Xie Lian didn’t pay them any mind. His sights were on the Gambler’s Den.

With a sturdy stick in hand to help his balance, he walked through the streets. The crowds wouldn’t disperse and only grew thicker the closer he got to the place in the city he remembered. Fatigue crawled up his legs and arms and he stumbled once—twice—thrice, before Ruoye tapped at his wrist, tightened, and pulled in a direction that was less populated.

Alright, alright, Xie Lian thought with resignation, and let the little spirit guide him away to rest. Only for a moment.

Now that he was here, impatience coursed through his veins. Hua Cheng was probably there, lounging behind the red curtains, half-heartedly listening to the gamblers’ bets and offers and finding their miserable attempts at winning amusing. If he was truly there, Xie Lian could just hide in the crowd and simply take a look, just a glance would be enough. He’d make sure he wasn’t noticed—after all, it wasn’t hard to do at all; these days, no one seemed to pay him any mind.

The little side path Ruoye led him into was deserted enough for Xie Lian to sit down and have a rest, but his companion kept tugging on his wrist and leading him further away. Putting most of his weight on the stick in his hand, Xie Lian followed—

—until, all of a sudden, Ruoye jerked in his hold, froze in the air, and started frantically tugging him in the opposite direction.

Xie Lian frowned and finally looked up. “What is it? Ruoye, what did you—”

But the rest of the question died on his tongue.

Before him, was the Qiandeng Temple of the Ghost City, its doors open and the name of the place which used to be engraved into the stones paving the path towards it—destroyed.

The inside of it was deathly dark, but in the dim, smoky red of the Ghost City lights, Xie Lian noticed—and knew immediately it to be true—the building was completely empty.

Where scrolls upon scrolls of practice lines he wrote himself used to cover the jaded bureau, there was nothing.

Where endless offerings and an incense burner used to be laid out on the altar, there was nothing.

Where thousands of lights used to blanket every corner of the building in golden warmth, there was nothing.

The little air that was stuck in Xie Lian’s chest left his lungs as if it were his very last breath.

This was the temple Hua Cheng had built himself and showed him, bashfully, all that time ago. This was the temple which he had sworn would worship Xie Lian, his god— what god, what god ?— no matter how ‘dirty’ and ‘unworthy’ the place of its location was. This was the temple in which Hua Cheng had lit three thousand lanterns in his name and, lovingly, sent them up into the heavens.

Nothing was left. Everything was gone.

Ruoye tugged at his arm more forcefully.

This time, he let it lead him away.

He’ll remember, he whispered to himself in his thoughts as he took step after numb step away from what used to be a miraculous divine shrine. Soon, he will.

…he will.

In the end, when he tried to sneak into the Gambler’s Den, the same ghosts that usually welcomed him as their lord’s cherished guest sensed him from a mile away and raised an alarm for a suspicious cultivator trespassing on Ghost Realm.

With the light of a single curious silver butterfly flickering in and out of the corner of his eye, he fled.

Hua Cheng didn’t show up again. 

Xie Lian had heard in the past stories about gods forgotten. For many centuries, he had believed himself to be one of them.

He’d never wondered back then why he was still around - weren’t forgotten gods supposed to disappear from the world like dispersed ghosts? What kept him there, more or less alive, coming back and coming back and coming back, still strong enough to keep going even at his weakest?

He knew the answer now—now, that his mortal body was clearly giving out, any leftover or borrowed spiritual powers gone as if they had never been there.

It had all been thanks to Hua Cheng.

How could a single person—a single soul, a single ghost—keep a god alive all those years?

San Lang could.

It was true what people said; one really didn’t know what they had until it was gone.

Xie Lian faded out on a cold autumn night, collapsed against a tree on the outskirts of the nearby forest, an almost empty bag of scraps he’d managed to find that day abandoned on the ground next to him. Under his last breaths, he kept whispering soothing nothings to Ruoye; the silk band quivered under his numb fingertips, tightening, uncurling, shifting and wrapping around his whole body, as if to embrace, as if to support.

As if to keep him together.

It’s alright, Xie Lian thought to his only companion when he could no longer speak, it’s alright. I’ve existed long enough.

The world grew quiet, numb, then blurry as Xie Lian’s senses gave out one after the other. As the night lost any remaining colours, his eyes burned with achingly bright blurred-out silver lights rapidly dancing in his dying vision.

How beautiful, was his last thought, unconscious, delirious as the smallest of the lights fluttered close to his face, distraught, almost brushing against his forehead. Thank goodness for San Lang.

If I only could—

Then, it all went dark, and Xie Lian’s soul dimmed until he was no more.

The silver butterfly found no surface to perch on; as a sudden tremble overtook the world, it shattered into a thousand specks of dust.

There once was a god; a kind god, a merciful god, the only god that mattered. A beloved god.

A forgotten god.

A god who was remembered, but remembered too late.

And there was a believer; a powerful ghost, unyielding, devoted, always searching, always waiting.

They had met once, at the beginning of their lives, and then once more, when fate crossed their paths again. Ominous powers, long since destroyed and made an example of, meddled in fate’s plans and forced the god’s and the ghost’s paths apart, parting them forever.

If his god were to disappear, the ghost had always planned to leave the world with him. After all, without the god, there was no purpose, no meaning, no life. 

…But as there was no banquet in the world that didn’t come to an end, there also was no separation that lasted for eternity.

And so, against his deepest wish to disperse into nothingness—in anguish, in penance, in shame—the ghost held onto the hope in his still heart and waited for his god to come back.

He’s still waiting to this day. They say he uses millions of disguises to walk the world in search of his beloved. The disguises have nothing in common. Some are children, some are men, some are women. Some look rich, some poor.

If you want to spot the real face of the ghost, look for a band of white silk wrapped around his wrist. Don’t approach - both the master and the silk are stained with the blood and resentment of those who have wronged the one they’re looking for. Just let them pass, and search, and wait.

And if the god ever comes back—

Why would he come back? Please, come back.