Chapter 14: The Aftermath

4.4K 209 35
                                    

"Who are you? You are a doctor?" Sizhui asks the woman as she bent down to clean Jingyi's wounds with a wet towel.

"Yes, my name is Liang Qing. And you..you are Lan Yuan?" Sizhui blinks.

"Y-yes...how did you know?"

"Wen Ning has told me a lot about you," She finishes cleaning Jingyi's leg and begins observing Jingyi's injuries.

"Hmm, his wounds are quite unusual."

"Unusual? What do you mean?"

"There's...something in it..like some kind of darkness or evil, but I should be able to expel it." Lian Qing says calmly. She closes her eyes in concentration as she hovers her two fingers over her patient's legs, passing glowing blue spiritual energy into them. Sizhui could only watch anxiously.

"A-Yuan, come here. A-Qing will take care of Jingyi. You need some rest too," He felt Wen Ning's hand on his arm. "Come eat something. You'll need your strength." He urges when Sizhui wouldn't move. Finally Sizhui follows Wen Ning, following him to the kitchen where there were already plates of food set up on the table. Another woman stood by the stove, stirring something inside a pot. The smell was achingly familiar to him and as she turned around to smile at him, bringing over a bowl of soup for him. Once Sizhui got a closer look at her, she looked like she was his age. Sizhui nodded in thanks, realizing just how hungry and exhausted he was once he had fully embraced the smell of the food. Zizhen sits down next to him just as he was shoving food into his mouth.

"Whoa, slow down. Don't eat too fast," Zizhen says, laughing lightly. Sizhui slows down, feeling a bit guilty as he remembered that one of the rules at Cloud Recesses was to not eat too quickly. As Zizhen eats, his gaze keeps drifting over to the young woman who has started preparing herbal medicine now, the bitter smell filling the kitchen.

"Zizhen, what are you thinking about?" Sizhui jolts him out of his dreamy gazing.

"N-nothing! Just keep eating your food!" He sputters. Sizhui laughs softly, the bad occurrences that had happened that day slowly drifting from his mind.

~

"I still don't understand why he would tell us so much if he was lying. If he was stalling us to send his men after the kids, we would have heard something for sure." Jiang Cheng leans against the wall. They had checked themselves in at an inn and everyone was sitting in Jiang Cheng's room.

"They are safe. I received a butterfly message while the masked person was still talking to us. I just didn't open it," Lan Wangji replies. Wei WuXian twirls his flute casually, his eyebrows scrunched thoughtfully.

Then suddenly, he drops it back onto the table and stands up, looking at it with a strange expression on his face. Both Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji turn to look at him with a questioned look on their face.

"It...got really hot..the flute...," Wei WuXian rubs the fingers of the hand that had held the flute. Immediately, Lan Wangji takes his hand to inspect it while Jiang Cheng stands up and walks over to the table.

"Don't touch," Lan Xichen warns, holding him back with one arm and pulling out his own flute with the other. The black ghost flute had started shaking violently. Lan Wangji frowns at it, then opens his spiritual pouch to take out his guqin. Jin Ling looks on with a curious expression on his face. Wei WuXian could feel his head aching and spinning and he only felt steady again when he felt someone's arm supporting him from behind. The hand on his shoulder was light, but firm. Jiang Cheng. A rare unspoken message passed between Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng. Jiang Cheng gives him a small nod and leads Wei WuXian out of the room with Jin Ling following. As soon as they left the room, the pain in Wei WuXian's head resided and he felt relaxed again.

Everyday means everyday: Untamed fanfictionWhere stories live. Discover now