Here For You - Lan Xichen x OC

5. Meng Yao, Lan Xichen, and Her Friends

Disclaimer: Mo Dao Zu Shi and The Untamed do not belong to me. The settings, characters, and plot belong, respectively, to Mo Xiang Tong Xiu and the screenwriters of The Untamed. Here, only the plot of this fanfiction and my four OCs, Huang Minghui / Lan Minghui, Lan Biyun, Li Xingsi / Wei Xingsi, and Bai Yilian / Nie Yilian, are my creations. And an important reminder that this ISN'T REAL; please value your lives and do not try to get hit by a car to get this sort of adventure.

Song for this chapter: Adele - When We Were Young

Nie Yilian, surprised, quickly bowed to greet Lan Xichen respectfully. "Zewu-Jun."

"Nie-guniang," he replied, his smile adorning his face like always. "I'm sorry to have seen Meng Yao looked down upon for his birth. Is it like this for him all the time?"

She nodded, confirming his assumptions. "Unfortunately so," she replied. "Meng Yao is a talented cultivator who has done lots for our sect, but most simply cannot look past his low birth."

Despite having lived in this world for ten years, Nie Yilian hadn't let go of her 21st-century morals, refusing to judge people by their backgrounds rather than their personalities.

Suddenly remembering that she'd promised to meet her friends at the back hill, she quickly said, "Zewu-Jun, I just remembered that someone's waiting for me. Please excuse me!"

As Nie Yilian hurried away as quickly as she could without running, Lan Xichen froze. Loosening his (previously tight?) grip on Shuoyue and frowning in confusion, he wondered, Who? Who is it that you have to go see that you'd have to leave me for?

***************

Nie Yilian found Lan Biyun and Lan Minghui waiting for her at the back hill when she arrived. Jumping up to Lan Biyun and hugging her, the other girl awkwardly returned it. Nie Yilian felt a tiny jab of disappointment seeing that Lan Biyun was still unused to being hugged. At least she has a better family now...

At that moment, Wei Xingsi also arrived. "Sorry to keep you guys waiting! A-Ying and Jiang Cheng are messing around again."

I wonder, how many brain cells has she lost by living with those two? "It wasn't for long; don't worry," Nie Yilian reassured. "So... What have you been up to the past three years?"

"Oldest first," Wei Xingsi insisted, nodding at Nie Yilian.

"Okay then... So, as you know, I'm Nie Mingjue's younger half-sister, Huaisang's twin sister. I focus on medicine rather than cultivation, but I've also been cultivating diligently. My saber is called Rensheng."

Proudly displaying the heavy, dark silver weapon strapped to her back, Nie Yilian continued. "I get along nicely with my martial siblings, and I always have my brothers, too. The biggest bump in this life so far is probably... A-Die's death."

Lan Minghui, sensing her discomfort, quickly jumped in. "Yilian, if you don't want to talk about it, you don't need to."

Nie Yilian shook her head in objection. She wanted her friends to know. "No, I'll tell you guys. I don't mind. As you already know, A-Die passed away a few months after a night hunt when I was ten. Wen Ruohan messed with his saber, and the beast that A-Die was fighting with injured him heavily. The healers and I tried our best to save him, but he still died from a qi deviation. I blamed myself so hard for it afterwards, and Da-ge and Huaisang were affected heavily by his death, too. He wasn't very close to us and spent more time running the sect, but he still cared about us..."

Wei Xingsi engulfed her in a warm embrace as Nie Yilian stopped again, breathing in to steady her shaky voice. "I eventually pulled myself together and helped Da-ge and A-Sang cope with their sadness," Nie Yilian finished. "Things calmed down after that. Biyun, Minghui, you two are next."

"How are you feeling right now, though?" Lan Biyun asked.

Nie Yilian took a second to think. How exactly did she feel about her father's death? She hadn't shared a close relationship with him, but the news of his death had still slammed into her like boulders from a collapsing cliff. But Nie Yilian knew that people would enter and leave her life; however, they'd always be with her as long as she remembered them.

Choosing her words carefully, she answered, "It's hard to think about, but A-Die is dead, and there's no way to bring him back. As long as we remember him, he'll always be with us." Deciding to move on with the discussion, she said, "It's time to tell us about what happened in your lives."

Nie Yilian was interested to hear about Lan Minghui and Lan Biyun's lives. Many rumors about their heritage had been flying around, often surrounding the assumption that they were not related to the Gusu Lan Clan by blood. She could find out now.

"You've heard many rumors about our parentage, right? We'll clear them up for you; our mother was the second niece of the predecessor of Qin Cangye, the current leader of the Laoling Qin Clan. Meanwhile, our father was a direct disciple of the Yunmeng Jiang Sect; his father was a guest disciple, and his mother was a direct disciple," Lan Minghui began.

What? Nie Yilian felt like that was too much information to take in all at once.

Wei Xingsi seemed to be thinking the same. "I- That's so... Complicated..." she stammered.

Lan Biyun nodded. "It probably sounds that way. To put it simply, it was a badly-received relationship, and our parents left their sects and became rogue cultivators. When we were six, they passed away during a night hunt, and Lan Qiren, a friend of our parents', took us in and raised us as well as Xiongzhang and Wangji as their sisters."

"How do you manage to live with so many rules?" Nie Yilian wondered.

Lan Minghui smiled faintly. "You get used to it. Anyway, one evening five years ago, Xiongzhang told us that he was going on a night hunt! We went with him to Kuizhou. There, I found Xue Yang on the street and brought him back here as a guest disciple."

"It was so jarring to see him dressed in Lan clothing," Lan Biyun added. "Minghui here practically raised him!"

Wei Xingsi, always curious about the tea, asked, "Ooh, did anything happen between the two of you?"

However, she flinched a little in guilt as she saw the change in Lan Minghui's expression. From a happier, brighter expression, it turned into an empty, sad one.

"Two years ago, he left the Gusu Lan Sect. When A-Yang came to tell me, he told me that it was because he felt like there were too many rules here. But a while later, A-Yang sent me a letter saying that he'd joined the Qishan Wen Sect and that there was a reason for him doing so, in addition to him leaving this sect," Lan Minghui explained. "Yesterday, I got another letter. A-Yang told me that he was being sent on a task that would require quite a bit of time. I'm positive that Wen Ruohan sent him to go find the Yin Iron."

What are we going to do about this? Nie Yilian wondered helplessly. Her friends seemed to be deep in thought of the same thing, too.

"Skip over the events of my life. There wasn't anything super big, and I'll catch you guys up on memories at Lotus Pier later. Let's start planning how to save everyone," Wei Xingsi decided.

However, before anyone could say a thing, the sounds of loud voices and incautious footsteps jolted their senses.