Phoenix

Chapter 2 *Revised*

        Trying to think of how to get closer to his soulmate Wei Wuxian remembered the Emperor's smile bottles sitting at his side. "How about I give you a jar and we forget the trouble I have caused?" This was the wrong thing to say since the boy pulled out his sword to strike him down. Wei Wuxian quickly dodged while laughing to mask his confusion. His soulmate attacking him hurt yet he also felt the thrill of needing to tap into his golden core to be able to dodge. His soulmate was fast, his strikes graceful and powerful. It made his heart speed up as their match continued. One of the jars shattered on the ground when the boy cut the string that tied them together. 

          Not wanting to lose the other Wei Wuxian put more power into his legs and managed to lose the boy between the buildings. He excitedly headed off to where he felt his brother was to get some sleep. It was only after he was almost asleep that he remembered humans didn't have a way to recognize their soulmates. It hurt but he was also relieved maybe he could pass his affection off as a fling allowing his destined to find another love. Wei Wuxian would never move on but that didn't mean he wished to resign the beautiful man to a life of loneliness.

          Lectures the next day were torture on his mind; too boring. The lectures that day were only about the 3000 rules that they would be forced to follow. Worse, since his body was half Vampire and half phoenix it made waking up at 5 am for classes almost impossible. So the inevitable happened as he fell asleep in class next to his stuck-up soulmate. The man had refused to offer him more than a glare no matter what he had tried to get his attention. 

          Wei Wuxian was roughly woken up by a yelling grandmaster Lan Qiren. In his half-asleep daze, he answered every question the man threw at him till it became obvious that no matter how well he answered the man would continue until Wei Wuxian was humiliated. So Wei Wuxian let go of his inhibitions and mentioned the use of resentful energy as the answer to one of the questions. He was amused to see the man's face go red with rage and dodged a scroll the man threw at him while telling him to leave. So he left quite happy to be able to take a nap.

          It was funny to think that this answer was so terrible to cultivators. Vampires used resentful energy as their base instead of the golden core's holy light. This he knew from his mother's teachings as a child. So to others, he might sound like a heretic for just thinking about it, but to Wei Wuxian, it was as normal as breathing. He ran to the forest for a nap. His unique heritage made it so he needed to sleep half the night and half the day.

           In Yummeng he could pass off the weird schedule by telling others that he partied too much at night. It also helped that since the Jiang leaders knew of this they made all his head disciple duties start later, around 9 am. Jiang Cheng would get mad at him for always fooling around during the day, despite the truth being that he trained himself to exhaustion late into the night. These next few months would be hard since he wouldn't be able to train at night without getting in trouble for breaking curfew. His body needed to train to work off the excess energies and balance said energies his body used to sustain itself. It was hard having two clashing energies in his body at all times.

            On the plus side, his mate was in the same class as him. His name was Lan Zhan curtesy Wangji and he was Cloud Recesses head disciplinarian. It seemed the only way for Wei Wuxian to get closer to him was to get in trouble since the boy would ignore him otherwise. He needed to make eye contact with his mate for his heart to beat again. The feeling of his blood moving inside him for the first time was intoxicating. After a good nap and with a semi-cohesive plan in mind, he headed for the guest room he shared with his brother.

            Jiang Cheng was not happy with seeing him at all. He even punched Wei Wuxian in the stomach for humiliating the Jiang sect at the lectures that morning. Being the great friend he is Nie Huasang who had come by to chat put a stop to the fighting. Wei Wuxian could tell his friend was worried about him but couldn't play his cards in front of Jiang Cheng or he wouldn't be allowed around. So with a slight nod, Nie Huasang pulled Jiang Cheng out of the room to let Wei Wuxian rest. He knew they would catch up later without his brother to make things difficult.