WangXian Forever Book 10

Chapter 27: Talking

Soft kisses covering his face wake Wei Ying pleasantly, his memories vague of what happened yesterday, and clearer still is the feel of cold porcelain at his lips and a deep voice urging him to drink.

He giggles with joy, this unbeatable feeling bursting through his body like a tidal wave of love. Only when Lan Zhan pauses to look at him, does Wei Ying open his eyes.

Lan Zhan looks remarkably well for someone who should be hungover.

"How do you feel?" Wei Ying gazes deeply into his beautiful eyes, a golden storm easily sucking him into its field.

"As well as can be expected. I have been using some of Xiongzhang's ways of burning off the residual alcohol."

"Oh! That's great. Maybe we can drink together soon!" Wei Ying smiles brightly at first, but then he remembers what happened between himself and Jiang Cheng. "How much do you remember about yesterday?"

"It was a difficult conversation," Lan Zhan said after a while. "But it needed to happen."

"Yeah..." Wei Ying plays with a loose thread on the sleeve of Lan Zhan's sleeping robes. "I feel like Jiang Cheng bottles everything up until his insides get full and he can't hold it within anymore, and then everything blasts out without care."

"Mn. Like a volcano."

"Ahuh. I hope that whatever he let go of yesterday was enough to buy him some peace for a while. I don't think he's ever forgiven me for not choosing to stay there by his side." An unconscious sigh leaves his lips.

"It's a moot point because he's here just as much as you." Lan Zhan states the obvious. "But over these past twenty years, he's made the least progress."

"I know. It's been a long time since I've thought of Lotus Pier as my home. For an even longer time, I never had one. And then yesterday...I knew it was wherever you are." He snuggles closer, encouraging himself to say his thoughts out loud. "The thing is, okay, Madam Yu kept telling me that I had a debt to pay the Jiang family, that I owed them. Uncle Fengmian kept telling Jiang Cheng that I would always stay by his side as his subordinate, and Jiang Cheng never thought otherwise."

"But a person is never the property of anyone else. Wei Ying is his own person." Lan Zhan pulls him closer, his heart hurting because his beloved is troubled.

"Well, the thing is, I...when I died, I was relieved." Wei Ying clutches him tighter, fully aware that Lan Zhan hates talking about this. But it needs to be said. He needs to say it out loud so it is true. "I was relieved because that was the end of anything I owed. I paid with my life, really, but that was true peace."

"And so when you came back, there was no need to seek out anyone connected to your past life. Other than finding out who's deaths the curse marks on your arm belonged to, you had no obligation to find either Jiang Cheng or myself." Lan Zhan looks pained at that.

What if Wei Ying had decided to walk away, back then?

Sure, they had the whole mystery of the corpse arm to solve, but what if Wei Ying had chosen to disregard it, thinking that the cultivation world had nothing to do with him anymore? Would they have met?

"Hey..."

Wei Ying's gentle voice, coupled with his warm hands tenderly cupping Lan Zhan's face makes him return to the present.

"I am unshakably firm in my belief that we are meant to be. No matter what had happened, I would have found you again."

Lan Zhan sinks down so that his head rests on Wei Ying's chest. He doesn't want to think about the opposite possibility at all.