Fluffy WangXian Oneshots Book Two

The Favour Of Heaven Part 5

The dark velvet cloth was hiding a cage.

The bars are close together as if the person inside could slip through the gaps in a bid for his freedom. Inside the four-foot squared space is a very angry looking Wen Ruohan. His clothes, the white robes with red swirls along the edges, are tattered as if he has willingly walked into a hedge full of thistles and come out on the losing side. His guan is missing, and his hair hangs limp and tangled, the matted strands clumpy and unmanageable. He's hissing even while slumped on the bottom of the cage, a space too small to accommodate his height.

But the second his dark eyes adjust to the light and he sees Lan Zhan, his body bursts into action. Like a feral beast, he grabs the bars, preventing his escape and starts spewing nonsense.

"I WAS HERE FIRST! YOU WILL NOT STEAL MY DUE! THE IMMORTAL WILL GRANT ME MY-"

The Yiling Laozu waves a hand, and his lips are sealed.

"Be quiet," Lan Zhan tells Wen Ruohan. "The adults are talking."

A laugh sputters out from the Laozu's mouth before he smirks. "True. Besides, the level of entitlement this one possesses is through the roof."

"What are you going to do with him?" Lan Zhan turns all of his focus onto the masked man in front of him. He exudes such a quiet power that Lan Zhan feels a buzzing in his veins, a thrum of excitement that recognises like for like.

"'With' him?" The Yiling Laozu replies, enunciating the first word. He shakes his head. "'To' him would be more apt. I don't think he realises his predicament yet."

With a snap of his fingers, everyone in the room disappears. Now it is just the cage and Lan Zhan, with Xiaogui, in the room with the Yiling Laozu. Even the appearance of the room changes. Gone are the ostentatious decorations, the over-the-top mirrors and chandeliers, the glamour and glitz, even the red carpet underneath Lan Zhan's feet. The sky stays the same, though.

"Is everything an illusion to you? What is real?" Lan Zhan demands, fists clenched with frustration. He's staring at the smooth black stone walls around them, shining with diamond dust.

"Do you know what happens to a person when they become immortal?" The masked man jumps down from the dais and begins pacing slowly in front of Lan Zhan, who shakes his head.

The magnetism of this man is something Lan Zhan never expected. He's drawn to every quirk, every action be it a wave of his hand or flick of his wrist. There's something familiar about him, but Lan Zhan is tense because of the third person out of the four in the room. He's too aware of Wen Ruohan watching them as they talk but still, he won't look at him directly.

"I didn't even know it happened to me. Would you believe it?" The Yiling Laozu laughs softly. "The immortality."

Lan Zhan is curious. "How did it happen?"

"My parents died here. I was five years old, and the Beast of Yiling killed them right in front of me. Baoshan Sanren appeared and she took me away before it could kill me too. She offered me training on her mountain where if you left, you could never go back. I took it, telling her that I was always going to leave because I had to avenge my parents. She told me that revenge was a poison that would slowly consume me if I continued down that path...but I didn't believe her. My mother had already started the development of my golden core and seeing my potential, my master decided to accelerate the process. But she also kept reminding me that once I left, I could never return to her mountain sanctuary. At the time, I didn't care. I was twenty two years old when I left, and still the need to kill that damn creature was what kept me alive.

"All beasts, all demons, yao, gui, all of them have a singular weakness. All you have to do is find it. With the Beast of Yiling, we fought for so long, I can't even remember how many days passed by. My spiritual energy was depleted but I could sense that I was so close to defeating it. My sword, Suibian, flew towards its neck in a final blow when I noticed the paw of that great creature. A long narrow thorn from a cursed tree had pierced the soft underside of its foot causing intolerable pain. I looked into its eyes and saw resignation for its own fate; it knew it was about to die, and my heart... I fought against myself. What was I doing, making the death of this creature the epitome, the meaning of my life? Yes, it had killed my parents, but what if that had been their fate all along? In that second, I realised I had the chance to stop this embitterment. So I pulled Suibian back and risking my own life, I dived under its fangs and pulled the splinter out.