#jiang yanli had a golden core but lost it due to complicated medical reasons

[drwcn]

yunmeng trio short fic: { and then there was one }

三毒 sandu | 四谛 sidi | 五蕴 wuyun

Sandu was never supposed to be alone. 

Once, there had been three of them. Forged together by the same careful, weathered hands of a seasoned blacksmith, they took form in the cooling womb of Yunmeng’s water. 

Wuyun emerged first, his sister whose spirit was gentle, but whose core was steel. Sidi went next, pulled from the water gleaming and sharp and ready to be wielded. Sandu settled a little slower, but he was curious and excited for the world that awaited him. 

Nothing about life was what he expected.

Wuyun’s service had been bright and short, and ended before it even began. In her last days, his sister withdrew into the cocoon of her sheath, her spirit dampened and left untethered by the sudden exhaustion of her mistress’s golden core. There she remained for almost twenty years. Yet back then, even in her sheath, she would still respond to pulses from him and Sidi - rebelliously renamed Suibian soon after he’d been claimed - but now...now his sister has gone forever silent and rests along side her mistress, buried deep in Lanling’s catacombs. Spirit swords do not die unless broken, and they certainly do not fade; but Wuyun is lost to him, and Sandu is confronted by her silence every time his master goes to pay respect to her mistress.

He wonders if she blames him, though he’s not quite sure what for... 

Then there is Sidi - Suibian - who went missing for sixteen years. 

When he returned, Sandu did not recognize him. Suibian was changed, confused, untethered like Wuyun had been untethered but different, because Suibian obeyed Sandu’s master and no one else. Others were befuddled, but Sandu understood. 

The first time Suibian’s master’s golden core reached out to him, Sandu had known. He’d felt the tearing pain of separation from his master’s core, a pain entirely unattenuated by time and distance. He wondered if this was what Wuyun felt before she was sheathed for eternity. The kind of bond between a spirit sword such as themselves and their first golden core, spurring to life inside the innocent heart of a child...they could never forget. 

So of course, Sandu knew, but for his Master’s sake, Sandu yielded and accepted this new core that so desperately called out to him. Sandu was not his brother; he knew when a fight shouldn’t be picked, he knew when a cause was lost. Suibian may have been been a free-spirit, but he was a damn stubborn one. It shouldn’t make sense, and yet it did. Perfectly. 

These days Suibian lay in his own sheath, propped up and resting on an altar in a room at Lotus Pier no one goes into anymore. The room is not locked, though it had been for many years when its occupant had been a single black flute. 

Chenqing, his name was. And boy, was he a character.  

Suibian speaks very little nowadays, no matter how many times Sandu coaxes and prods. His brother, like his sister, has gone somewhere far away, leaving him in their wake. Maybe Suibian is waiting, waiting for the day when he’d be picked up again. His master has a new core now, weak and dim but it’s a core nonetheless. Maybe someday, the brother Sandu knew will return.

Until then, Sandu serves, and he serves alone.