Live Again, Love Anew

Chapter 24- Escaping Cloud Recesses

Summary

Lan Yue goes into Mama Bear mode and leaves Cloud Recesses

Beginning Note

Lots of Lan Yue's perspective these past few chapters, but I'm growing to like her a lot.

Anyway, enjoy the chapter!

Lan Yue

Lan Yue may not have been a Lan by blood, but she's been confined here long enough to know exactly what that specific toll means.

"Stay here." She tells the boys, because while they may be adults in mind, they are still but children in body, and as a mother, it's her duty to protect them until they can protect themselves.

She sweeps out of the main room and into a side one, grabbing a warded cloak gifted to her by her husband as she goes. She comes to a stop in front of a table pushed into the very corner of the room, and on it sits Wangji. She runs a hand over the strings longingly, but knows she won't be able to use it to its full potential in her lifetime. Living with rogue cultivators meant not many had actually learned how to wield an instrument for anything but entertainment, much less for battle, and as such, as she grew older, her own proficiency with her instrument as a weapon had suffered. She'd used the instrument for maybe a dozen night hunts in her teenage years (not including her final exam with Big Sis, because that had been just guqin strings and not Wangji itself) before using it had become more of a danger than a help. And now the poor instrument had fallen to nothing more than a medium for plucking out tunes for her and her children's entertainment.

She turns her gaze to the stand above Wangji and to Yangguang, her sword. She hesitantly reaches for the sword and cradles it between reverent hands. She hasn't used her sword in years, and now her main worry is that the sword rejected her during its years of neglect. She takes a breath and sends the tiniest tendril of spiritual energy into the sword and almost collapses in relief when it happily thrums back to her, as if not even a day had passed since she last wielded it.

She comes back to the main room with her cloak secure and a sword at her hip and finds the boys nervously fidgeting on the bed, talking quietly to each other. The boys look up when they notice her presence and seem startled to find her ready for battle, or as ready as she can be with limited time and resources.

"Stay here." She repeats to her audience of two. "Ironically enough, this house is probably one of the safest places in Cloud Recesses with how strong the wards are. I'm going to go and take stock of the situation and make sure A-Huan is safe before visiting the Sect Leader." She smiles, a wicked thing fueled by adrenaline and excitement, something she hasn't felt in years. "We'll be taking a nice long vacation with A-Ying's healer friends if I have anything to say about it."

And with that, she sweeps out of the room and into the snowy night. She's on a mission, and no matter who thought it was a good idea to storm Cloud Recesses in the middle of a snowy winter night, no one will be able to stop her.

-----

Even without knowing the exact location, she arrives at the Jingshi quick enough by following the faint prints in the snow the boys had left earlier in the night. The snow had been a minor inconvenience as far as visibility went, but with her cloak, she felt as if she was still sitting in her home drinking warm tea by an open fire.

She enters without so much as knocking and finds the place eerily quiet, the silence only broken by distant shouts and her son's quiet breathing. She rushes over and shakes his shoulder, only a little bit concerned that it takes nearly a minute for him to be fully awake. The cold affects every child differently, after all.