1300 Years Later

Chapter 1: West

San Francisco, California. A port city where the cool ocean breeze keeps the population from heating up. Known for their cool summers, being close in a peninsula. Steep hills. Cable cars. The Golden Gate Bridge. Home to multiple business headquarters like Twitter, Reddit, Yelp, and Uber.
This was where the followers of demonic cultivation went. After immigrating to Chinatown, they opened a few businesses where the families worked for years. Authentic Chinese restaurant, gift shops, boba tea shops, and a few liquor stores. Behind doors everyone practiced dark magic. All the children learned the history of the founder of Demonic Cultivation since childhood. The history of Wei Wuxian was as important as their own family history.
In the sect's library, a group of young students were cramming away on a Thursday afternoon. It was finals week, the most stressful time at the end of the school year. Especially if their parents were strict with education. Their sect was about being free spirited and respecting everyone, especially parents.
However parents could be strict.
While the teenagers were busy with their math packets, an older man rushed into the library wearing long black robes. Cheeks were flushed and black hair was sticking to his sweaty forehead. "Head disciplines Song, Yuen, Chen, and Ruan please come to the main chambers."
All the teenagers stopped doing their tasks and ran towards their destination. They all didn't care that they all had a test worth twenty-five percent of their grade the next morning, they knew that they had to go to the main chambers.
Grades could wait, they all thought. They headed to a building that anyone passing by would think it's a library. That was a cover up for the main chambers. The chambers was where the grandmasters meet up and research on cultivation with a few chosen head disciples. Every document about the sect, the founder, and demonic cultivation was stored in the main chamber. At least the ones that were retrieved over two hundred years ago from mainland China. Some of the documents were over a thousand years old. Everything in there was valuable.
The teens barged inside the building. They walked down the hall into the main room where an old man was waiting for his disciples.
"Grandmaster Xiaolian Liao!" The teens all bowed at the waist.
Xiaolian Liao was one of the oldest grandmasters that runs the demonic sect. There are usually seven grandmasters that oversee the entire sect, but they were one short after the death of one the following year. So there were six at the time.
Xiaolian cleared his throat before speaking to a group. "Today while some of the disciples were cleaning out the back room, we've found an old box in the ancient volts. Engraved in it was a date to be opened. Inside was an invitation to study at the GusuLan Sect back in the last millennium. It specifically listed all of your names on the paper."
"What?"
"The era of the Yiling Patriarch!" Exclaimed one of the head disciples, Maddie Yuen.
"Over a decade after his death." Xiaolian corrected.
"So we're using the time traveling ritual Ying Wei created not too long ago," said Aaron Chen, he was at an average height with a delicate face.
"The time traveling ritual was just invented last month. Is it stable enough to travel to China in the last millennium?" Adam Ruan, a seventeen-year-old disciple, asked the grandmaster with skepticism.
"There's nothing to worry about," Ying walked into the main chamber with a girl by his side. "I've all looked through the ritual and the amount of energy needed to open a decent portal." Ying reassured his friends. "We can guarantee a safe trip to ancient Gusu."
A cultivating genius since he could walk, Ying excelled at everything. It could be in part that his late mother and grandfather were grandmasters in their own right, or that he was brought up by scholars and grandmasters, or he was named after the founder of demonic cultivation.
"So Ying will go with us?" Asked one of the girls.
Xiaolian shook his head. "Ying won't be coming along. The time ritual was created thanks to him. With his other accomplishments, the grandmasters and I, will be promoting Ying from Head Disciple to Grandmaster."
Ying gasped like a child given a new toy. "I'm going to be a grandmaster!"
"Isn't it obvious! You surpassed your mother by three decades," Another grandmistress walked in. Her hair was still black that was held in a bun. Her face started to show wrinkles but she was far older than what she appeared.
"Grandmistress Daiyu Li," The teens bowed at the arrival of another important figure.
"Like your mother, you've made many contributions to the dark arts. In only living for seventeen years, you did more than the rest of us that has lived over a century."
"I'm honored to become the next Grandmaster. Quick question! What will be my courtesy name? Will it still be Ying since it's a Chinese name? Or do I get to choose my own. I'll need at least a week to decide on a name. Maybe a month!"
Li Daiyu ended Ying's rambling with a simple name. "Wuxian."
Ying gasped at the name. A name that every cultivator knew since childhood. "After the founder! The Yiling Patriarch! Wei Wuxian!"
Daiyu scoffed at the young man's disbelief. "It's fitting for you. I can tell that you'll be great as the Founder of Demonic Cultivation. Your mother wanted your name to be Wei Ying. Now that you've become a Grandmaster, she would've wanted you to have the same courtesy name as he."
Ying's silver eyes saddened at the mention of his mother. He never met his mother, who was a grandmistress before she died due to complications during childbirth. Leaving her son to live without his mother. Ying's father died in a car accident a few days before he was born.
"Since that's true," Ying bowed in front of Grandmistress Daiyu. "I'll honor the name Wei Wuxian for our founder and my mother."
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"I can't believe Ying will become a Grandmaster," said Kylie Song, a tall girl with long black hair that was braided into two braids.
"I can't believe the other Grandmasters and Elders won't allow him to go to the ancient GusuLan Aect for cultivation training," complained Adam Ruan.
"We've finally got to the age where we could spend the summer in China! And we all can't go!"
"Do you think the Lan Sect heir will be there?" Asked Maddie Yuen.
"Lan Hai!" Kylie gasped. "The Lans are rumored to be very good looking. They're known as the flower boys of the cultivation world with their perfect faces, pale skin, and soft black hair."
"The Lans can't be that good looking," Adam reasoned with the girls as they all walked back to the library to study.
"Jealous much," Aaron raised an eyebrow at his best friend.
"What?" Adam glared at his friends that we're giving him smug looks.
"Confess to Ying you pining dummy!" Maddie punched Adam's shoulder. "Or else he will find someone else!"
"Maddie is right," Aaron agreed with his straightforward friend, "If you take too long Ying will be married off to some cultivator with blood ties to one of the cultivation sects in mainland China."
Adam scoffed at Aaron. "Not gonna happen. Ying is a free spirit that doesn't want to be tied down to a single person. All he wants to do is roll around the grass and goof around."
"Things can change. What if he finds someone that takes his breath away? Someone that he sees himself spending the rest of his life with. Then what? You'll still be too stubborn to admit your obvious feelings for Ying Wei."
"You're making it sound like it will happen within a month. Maddie, we are high schoolers. We all got plenty of time to think about the future." Adam said with confidence.
"We're talking about the guy that disappeared at the end of seventh grade and didn't come back for an entire year," Aaron reminded everyone. "You took it the hardest. I still remember how you waited for Ying to return from wherever he was sent to."
"Don't forget how you interrogated Zack because he and Lukas were gone at the same time as Ying," Maddie brought up Adam's enemy.
"I have every reason to suspect Zack Liu. He was involved with Ying's disappearance."
"Zack works for the military!" Maddie slapped Adam's head. "He's gone a lot!"
"We don't know what's gonna happen. Senior year is around the corner. We all are going on different paths. Ying already filled out the paperwork for early graduation and is preparing to travel the world, while the rest of us can't graduate at the same time as him. We all got our acceptance letters for different schools. So Adam my man, you need to have the balls to ask Ying out before he's gone!" Aaron was dead serious with his friend.
"Adam, he's turning eighteen on Halloween. Then two months later he'll be free from hell-I mean school." Kylie explained the reality to her stubborn friend. "You've liked Ying since kindergarten. Make a move before it's too late."
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After finishing their duties in the main chambers, Ying and his best friend Nina were hanging out in Ying's room. Doing things that normal teenagers would do. Braid each other's hair, extreme pillow fights, zombie makeovers, and horror movie night.
"Anymore dreams?" Nina, courtesy name Xingjuan, Ruan asked while brushing her friend's untamed hair. Ying grew out his hair so it could reach his shoulders. Nina was the twin sister of Adam Ruan. Nina was very tall, she had an athletic build, chocolate eyes that were sharp, and always kept her medium length hair in a side braid.
"Last night was a peaceful dream with that man again." Ying blushed when he thought of the alluring man that was in his dreams. Almost every dream was a nightmare that left Ying's heart racing when he woke up. But the dreams with the stoic man in white Lan Sect robes left Ying yearning for another night with him. He would never admit it out loud, that the man in his dreams was his first love. A man that he recalled calling Lan Zhan.
"The man in heavenly clothing," Nina raised an eyebrow at the head disciple. "He is all you paint of."
Ying looked at the canvases in his massive room. When he is not studying, practicing the dark arts, or at Mandarin lessons, he would be practicing the fine arts. His grandfather urged him to play a few instruments and draw. In the corner of the red room, there was a grand piano that Wei Ying could play. Next to the piano was a flute case with an expensive flute with silver lining. Around the room were paintings and drawings, finished and unfinished, scattered around the room. All the artworks have a certain person as the focal point. Sometimes he's faintly in a landscape or in a full blown portrait.
The latest portrait Wei Ying was painting was of the man in white and blue robes that was facing another man wearing contrasting colors. A man whose facial features haven't been painted yet since Wei Ying haven't found any good reference photos of a Chinese man in ancient Chinese period clothing. In his gut, he didn't want to put another person with the man in his dreams and portraits.
"A man wearing our sect's colors next to the man of your dreams," Nina smirked at her hopeless romantic friend. Ying's face was red as his room's walls. "I think this faceless man that this Lan Zhan is staring at you. As if you're the only one that he has eyes on."
"Ruan!" Ying raised his voice at his friend. "He is not real. He is only a fragment of my imagination. What I pictured to be a handsome man from those costume dramas on TV. With the beautiful men with long silky hair and elegant attire."
"I think you should paint yourself as the man fantasy-boy is staring at," Nina suggested.
"Paint myself with him!" Ying gasped at the extravagant suggestion. "Nonsense, that would be like me putting him into my own fantasy."
"Art is a form of expression," Nina sounded less like a teenager and more like a wise lady, "You clearly see this man as your ideal man. So why don't you paint out these dreams that revolve around you and this man. Besides I see your infamous messy ponytail."
"These dreams I have. Their either violent and gruesome or lighthearted and wonderful. In these dreams I hear things about Yiling, diabolism, and the Stygian Tiger Seal. I see people that were alive a millenia ago. Important historical figures. I must have these dreams because of grandpa and his bedtime stories of the Yiling Patriarch," Ying concluded to his best friend. "Why do I have to be named after the Yiling Patriarch? Even my courtesy name is the same as his." Ying face planted himself on his silk bed. Causing his long ink black hair to spread around the grey and black sheets.
Nina lightly giggled at her friend's whining. "I think it's an honor to share a name with the founder of diabolism. It must be a sign that the elders believe that you will be great as him."
"Not everyone thinks he's great. The major sects in mainland China still believe that the Yiling Patriarch was the epitome of evil. It's sad that our sect knows the truth about Wei Wuxian. Who was kind, selfless, courageous, and a genius."
"But the GusuLan Sect is different. They trust us and even invited you to their home." Nina reminded her friend. The Lan Clan were open to the Western Sect's ways of practicing diabolism demonic magic. The main family were on good speaking terms with Ying and a few of the grandmasters. Ying was good friends with the eldest son and daughter, Lan Hai and Yun.
"I wish I could go to ancient Gusu. It must have looked like paradise a thousand years ago. And the guys must have been really handsome."
"Wei Ying!" Nina scolded in Chinese.