The Path In-Between

Chapter 1: To Save a Radish

A/N: Okay! I saw that my story got ranked and I'm excited. So here's a double update! This chapter a little cringe I think... but the next ones good! Promise! Thank you so much for reading and bringing helping my story be known! ~ worldlesswanderer
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Wei WuXian's ears were full of the sound of the harsh wind currents of the burial mounds as he fell.

He was pushed off the sword. Falling. Falling. Falling. He screamed but heard nothing, not even an echo as the resentment wrapped him up, pulling him into the depths of the mounds. His bones crushed, blood splattered. This was the first time he died.

Unlike the first time, Wei WuXian was welcomed into the mounds' darkness. Wrapped up in it and safely brought to the ground as one would expect a mother to wrap her child in soft blankets and cradle in her bosom. It made the fall no less frightening, however. After dogs, his fear was heights.

Wei WuXian pushed himself up onto his feet, making great efforts to ignore whatever lay on the ground. If he looked down now and saw the remains of his family he would never get out of the grief he had long since succumbed to. He needed to get A'Yuan to safety. A'Yuan was his priority now.

Trudging through dead greenery and brittle bones, Wei WuXian made his way to the dead tree onto which he had tied his ribbon. Drawing a shuddering breath, he ventured to look inside the tree hole. Upon seeing the sleeping face of his son, Wei WuXian almost broke down. His son was alive. His son.

At that moment, Qing-Jie must have been looking down on him from the heavens as he coughed the bad blood up from the wounds acquired from the battlefield above, effectively startling A'Yuan awake.

A'Yuan blinked his eyes owlishly, not yet seeing Wei WuXian as he recalled the events from earlier.

"A'Niang!" he wailed.

"Hush hush, baobei. A'Niang is here." Wei WuXian crooned, gathering A'Yuan into his arms.

"A'Niang! A'Niang! Don't leave. A'Yuan will be good. Please..." the child sobbed onto his shoulder.

"Hush now. A'Niang knows his baobei is the best. My A'Yuan is the best boy, right?"

"Mmn..." he wept.

"Sleep now baobei. You need rest."

"Where are we going A'Niang?" the child mumbled into Wei WuXian's battered shoulder.

Wei WuXian laughed softly to himself. He remembered when A'Yuan had said that it didn't feel right to call his Xian-gege A'Niang like he called Lan Wangji A-die. It seemed A'Niang had stuck now.

"We are... We are going to go where A'Yuan will be safe." he said.

"A'Niang will be safe too? Are we going to A'die?" His son whimpered.

"Hahahaha." Wei WuXian forced a laugh out. And then he paused. Of course! If anyone would take in a child that was the only remaining Wen, it would be the Lans! Surely there had to be some reason as to why they were adorned as the most righteous cultivators! If anyone were to show sympathy towards an innocent boy, even at the cost of his own life, it would be Lan Wangji!

Wei WuXian sighed as he limped out of the burial mounds with the child in his arms, bundled within his outer robes. He walked through Yiling, a sad smile on his face. Yiling had given birth to his earliest memories which would now be his last ones. No matter the harsh circumstances he faced in his childhood, he had grown to love the townspeople within the time he'd spent in the burial mounds with the Wen remnants. The kind people took one look at him and the human-shaped bundle in his arms and decided to provide minor necessities and foodstuffs to him as he walked out of the town.

A week's journey on foot. That was all he could allow to reach the Cloud Recesses.