#yezun | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

circumference-pie · 2 years ago

Note

for the pining prompts: mei changsu/xiao jingyan, 6 | wei wuxian/jiang cheng, 5 | yezun/shen wei, 8 (but like. if yezun had killed shen wei himself??? for your consideration)

romantic or platonic are both fine, where's the line anyways!!

reciprocated for all of them, please :)

Yessss! I took such a long-ass time with this one (2 months QAQ), thank you for waiting.

8 is

Jumping universes to find living version of dead love

(I interpreted the word "jumping" very loosely, lol.)

Relationship: Shen Wei & Yezun Rating: T for some violence Tags: violence, drama-typical logic, OOC Shen Wei but for good reasons

Summary: “Human, Yashou, Dixingren…all full of trickery, betrayal, forsaking…This world is filthy! So I’ll remake it, from the highest of the high to the lowest of the low.”

Yezun gets his wish.

Wordcount: 1700 Thanks to Karios (ao3: Karios) for the beta-read.

= = = = =

Alive…he’s alive. Shen Wei’s trick…

The floor of the Dixing palace swims into his vision, tiled stone. Someone is moaning softly in the distance. Yezun makes an effort, and the crumpled form of Zhao Yunlan comes into blurry focus, limp on the ground from their last fight.

“Shen Wei…”

At first Yezun thinks it’s himself, breathing out his brother’s name. Then he realizes the voice is not his, and it’s whispering a name he’s never used.

“Shen Wei…”

He forgets his wounds, forgets he’s almost dead, forgets everything in sheer blank rage. He forgets there are holes in him, leaking pitch and smoke, as he struggles to his feet.

Zhao Yunlan is the first to go, in a miasma of black mist. His cronies next, the throne room itself, then the palace and everything around it. Yezun’s power balloons with every being he absorbs; Dixing can no longer contain him.

Above, Longcheng is crumbling, buckling inward, and Yezun takes special pleasure in swallowing 4 Guangming Street before sucking in the entire disintegrating city, then the continent, then the planet.

He floats in the emptiness, himself, in the stark light of the nearest star. He is all-powerful, burning from within with potential. Some poor Dixingren must have had the power to fabricate matter from nothing, and now Yezun makes sparks and globules trail from his fingertips. Experimentally, he sketches a sphere, a miniature of the planet he just devoured.

Unbidden, Zhao Yunlan’s voice surfaces in his memory. You only know how to destroy out of hatred, not to nurture new things in hope. History will never look kindly on the likes of you.

Yezun’s smile spasms. “You’re wrong, Zhao Yunlan!”

He sweeps his arm toward the planet, and it grows, filling his vision. It suddenly teems with oceans and mountains, lakes and deserts, cities, humans, Yashou. Below the surface, the caverns of Dixing are also there, and crawling with Dixingren.

This is a world where orphans are never abandoned, brothers never separate, and betrayal is impossible.

It’s his world. A perfect one.

Yezun looks around. One more thing…

The man at his side stares straight ahead.

They are twins, after all, identical except for the color of their hair, down to the bones of their little toes. He hadn’t needed a body to recreate Shen Wei.

He holds out a hand. “Big brother. Come.”

Shen Wei takes it obediently.

Yezun takes them to Dixing. Except in this Dixing, there is light. Denizens go about their business under a glow as full as the sun’s, the clatter of carts and babble of a market all clamoring under a bright ceiling.

In front of the palace, in the warping heat from the rivers of molten rock, Yezun waves a hand upward. “Dixing. All in the light, like you wanted when we were children. See? I did this for you.”

Shen Wei turns his head to look at Yezun. His lips tilt up briefly into a smile, before his face returns to a flat, expressionless plane.

The earth around them trembles once. The light above dims briefly.

“What do you think?” Yezun asks, softly, dangerously.

“I think…” says the recreated Shen Wei. “I think…” He smiles again at Yezun. “I think…”

“WHAT?” Yezun nearly screams at him.

Shen Wei only keeps smiling, unaware that Dixing is shaking, the molten rivers are heaving, people are screaming, that his own body is cracking apart.

This time Dixing is as dark as new-moon nights aboveground. There is no indeterminate gloaming, no dim twilight to navigate by. The only visibility comes from smoky lamps and hearthfires flickering in windows, and the only sounds are the forlorn footsteps of the city watch.

“It’s beautiful,” says Shen Wei. He’s dressed this time in his human costume, crisp shirt and mint jacket, his hair cropped short.

“Is it,” says Yezun flatly, standing next to him in his own white suit.

By the flickering light of a nearby lantern, the look Shen Wei gives Yezun through his long lashes is happy and tender, something Yezun once saw directed at Zhao Yunlan, before.

Bile rises in his throat, sharp and bitter. Malice curls fingers over his heart. “Let’s go,” he says, taking Shen Wei by the arm.

Surprise glints in the depths of his brother’s eyes. “Where?”

“The surface.”

It’s night in Longcheng, the city sleeping under stars and between electric streetlamps. The bright coin of the moon is out. They stroll down cobbled avenues and past darkened storefronts, their steps clicking into the silence. When they come to what should have been Guangming Street, there is nothing. No shops, no fruit sellers, no boxy brick building. Just a curb where there should have been an intersection, and an empty lot beyond.

“Oh,” says Yezun softly. “My mistake. Your friends don’t exist, none of them. They never have and never will.”

Shen Wei inclines his head. “Little brother is very wise.”

Yezun whirls on him. “Wise? Yes! More than all of you, more than Ma Gui, more than Zhao Yunlan, more than you!”

Shen Wei blinks at him uncertainly.

“WHY?” Yezun roars, seizing his collar. His spittle lands on Shen Wei's cheek. “Why did you give so much to THEM?”

“I…don’t know. Who?”

Yezun thrusts his hand out, and Shen Wei dissolves into black smoke as the ball of dark energy hits him.

This world is Dixing, only Dixing. Yezun has only created the palace this time. Shen Wei lies in the center of the throne room, his torso bare, bound by his wrists and ankles to heavy chains that stretch to the corners of the room. The only other people are a man dressed from head to toe in black, and Yezun in his white robes.

“I’ll kill you all,” Shen Wei spits, jerking viciously on his chains, the chamber echoing with the sound of metal. “Let me go! I’ll show you!”

Yezun nods, gratified. Crying and raging. Yes. This is what he wants.

“I’ll kill you!” Shen Wei bellows at Yezun.

Hatred sears immediately through Yezun, as if his words have struck a switch. He raises his hand.

“START!” he shouts, and the man in black raises the chain-whip in his hand, brings it down on the prisoner’s back.

Shen Wei’s screams are very satisfying.

A new universe, another one, another, another!

It’s not working, he can’t do it, it keeps going wrong!

At last, there is nothing. Yezun floats in a void. His eyelashes are rimed with frost, his body stiff and frozen. His mind will evaporate soon, too.

Brother…

His brother will never stand by his side again. They will never get the childhood they deserved, the future they wanted.

Here.

Yezun opens his eyes to find himself in a bubble of air and warmth. “Little brother,” Shen Wei’s voice says, and then he’s there too, in the embroidered black robes Yezun last saw him in ten thousand years ago, raven braids drifting behind him.

“You left me.” Yezun’s voice is a thin, accusing whine. “That day.”

Shen Wei — the facsimile, simulacrum, figment — smiles sadly. “So that’s why you hate me so.”

“Shouldn’t I?”

“Watch.”

Suddenly the cold of space is gone, and Yezun is surrounded by the parching heat of a Haixing summer, the sun beating overhead. He’d forgotten. He’d forgotten how the insects buzzed in the dry grass that day, how the dust made him cough, how the sky seemed to be so white that it scorched.

He watches two boys, one in white and one in black, struggle on in the wide wasteland. He watches a bandit approach them and the boy in white faint. He can’t contain a cry of indignation when the bandit hurls the boy in black, kicking and struggling, off the ridge. He sees Shen Wei survive, sees himself being carried away.

He watches Shen Wei search for years and years, until he joins the war.

When the vision fades, Yezun is weeping, his tears separating from the corners of his eyes in floating silver droplets. “You didn’t abandon me,” he whispers. “You wanted me with you all along.”

Shen Wei reaches out to clasp Yezun’s shoulder. His hand is solid. Real. “How could I abandon you? You were the one person I loved.”

Yezun sniffs. “It’s too late. It can’t go back to the way it was.”

“Silly.” Shen Wei points at Yezun’s belly. “Everything’s still in there, isn’t it? Let them out.”

He’s right. Yezun can feel them in him, all the people and buildings and animals and oceans, eager to go back to their rightful places.

But there’s one more thing. “You’ll be there, too?” he asks pettily, jealously, already dreading the answer.

“I…I’ve already left the world. It’s not right for me to go back.”

“Then I’m not doing it.”

“But…” Shen Wei’s voice grows quiet and fills with longing. “I want to.”

Yezun understands, and scoffs with all the strength of his wounded spite. “And who is he to you?”

Shen Wei takes both of Yezun’s hands in his, warm and calloused from millennia of wielding the glaive, reassuring. “You will always be my brother, no matter what. Don’t be afraid. I'm not going to leave you.”

Yezun’s eyes narrow. Can’t he erase just one person?

“I promise.”

Yezun closes his eyes for a moment before breathing out, long and sustained.

Everything the same as it was.

Zhao Yunlan is even more annoying than Yezun thought he’d be. Always hanging around Shen Wei, always demanding his attention, both arrogant and childish. Yezun didn’t realize he could hate another person with as much concentrated ire as he does now.

Which is why, when Shen Wei extracts himself from Zhao Yunlan’s lanky, clinging limbs to join Yezun at the doorstep of the Special Investigation Division, Yezun smirks triumphantly at the SID chief sprawled on the couch.

“I promised we’d go to the zoo today,” Shen Wei says over his shoulder, to Zhao Yunlan’s last whining protest.

“Then bring me back a—”

Yezun slams the big doors closed.

“So?” he says brightly to Shen Wei, whose face is full of consternation. “Shall we get going?”

#guardian #shen wei #yezun #circ makes words #镇魂 #zhen hun #will go up on ao3 as soon as i think of a title haha

4 notes · View notes