Dimensions Apart (Wangxian)

Talismans

“Mama, what are you reading?!” Wei Qing whispered looking at her mama who was busy reading an ancient, peculiarly mysterious book of talismans, fixedly, while both of her left and right hands continued to copy the Lan Clan rules with utmost precision and gracefulness of a Lan, on two different sheets of paper, all at the same time, alongside her Mingxing jiejie and Yun gege, in the Library Pavilion.

“Just… looking for something to fulfil my promise to someone, baby.” Wei Ying replied in a lost and somewhat troubled voice, without lifting his gaze from the weird book he was reading for the past five hours!

“Promise? What promise, mama? I don’t remember you making a promise to someone that will take away all our precious time of playing together and doing something fun. AQing misses you, mama.” Little devil said in her sweet childish voice while looking at Wei Ying with her golden doe-like eyes, poutedly

Wei Ying finally removed his interested gaze from the book and looked at his Little devil, raising his brow, “Playing together and doing something fun? Wasn’t that the only thing you three have been doing, without including me, for the last whole week? Hmm? Now, you remember me?! When you all are supposed to be spending the whole month in the Library Pavilion, copying those thousands of rules?”

“It won’t take us a month, mama! Look! We are almost done completing our punishment of copying the rules. In the next three hours, our punishment of copying all four thousand and five hundred rules, thrice, will be over!

And for the rest of the month, we can have fun, together! I can teleport us all to Lotus Pier, Koi Tower, and Unclean Realm to visit all those street children we have been teaching secretly! It’s been over a week since we last met them, mama!” Little devil exclaimed exasperatedly throwing her hands in the air…

“Hold On, children! You are saying that each one of you has almost done copying all four thousand and five hundred Lan Clan rules not once but three times in less than a day?!!! Are you kidding me? How is that even possible?” Wei Ying asked, looking at all three of his children, surprised and baffled

“We were helped, mama.” Lan Yun muttered stoically, as his soft squishy cheeks blushed the lightest shade of red.

“What kind of help, AYun? And who helped you, my sweet little rabbit?” Wei Ying asked his adopted but an exact tiny copy of his Lan Zhan’s silent and a bit aloof personality, gently

“Four years ago, when you and AQing saved our lives from those bad people and brought AYun and me in Cloud Recesses from the streets of Yiling, although we saw you as our saviour, believed in you and already felt attached to you, we were still scared of being rejected by your family members and your Lan Zhan and getting separated from you, scared of disappointing everyone and especially you, because in all our years of living on the streets, we never learned to read and write, much less know anything about cultivation.

But AYun and my fears and worries evaporated when baba and Yuan ge accepted us and welcomed us into our family wholeheartedly. I knew then, they loved you, adored you and respected you way too much to make you sad, in any manner. It was written all over their faces, those fond smiles and even in their minute gestures when they looked at you while you and baba performed the adoption ceremony…

From then onwards, AYun and I started trying our best to learn everything that children of our age are expected to know in Cloud Recesses, not only to make you proud of us but also because were scared that one day, you might regret bringing us here, in a sect known for its knowledge, lectures, and best cultivation techniques.

Once again, you proved to be our saviour. During our first few months in Cloud Recesses, when we started feeling overwhelmed and burdened with everyone’s expectation of Hanguang Jun’s children here, you somehow seemed to know just what we were feeling and needed then, and came to help us, without even asking!