The outside is silent.
Mo Xuanyu lets his eyes close for a moment as he breathes in. It’s been a long few months and he feels drained to his pitiful core—the one he’d been so proud of before everything went to shit. Now it sputters in his chest, offering its last attempt in keeping him going against the odds Xuanyu himself has set.
It’s almost time.
Years ago, his mother had been proud of him. Son of the mighty Sect Leader Jin, a promising child, with a knack for theory and cultivation. His mother hadn’t been proud of many things, including but not limited to her own background and the house they lived in, but Xuanyu had brought light to her eyes and a smile on her lips.
Then he’d been sent to Jinlintai, supposedly to impress his mighty Father.
Much good had that done.
Mother had taken her own life after the humiliation came too much to bear, even though it hadn’t even been true. Oh, Xuanyu was a cutsleeve, that part was absolutely correct, but he hadn’t been behaving improperly toward his own half-brother. He might be a bit strange and he might cut his sleeve but he wasn’t incestuous—that was the other brother’s choice.
Yeah.
See, Xuanyu had found it curious just how similar he, Guangyao, and Qin Su looked like. Turned out there was a reason for that. But who was the gentry more inclined to believe—the new Chief Cultivator or a scorned cutsleeve who painted his face? He’d been ruthlessly silenced, beaten, and thrown out of Golden Koi Tower faster than he could process, sent home shamed and spat on.
And all that so the soft-voiced Sect Leader Jin could keep fucking his own sister.
The ritual is meant to take place in the early morning, barely past sunrise. It’s a complicated one, consisting of a multi-layered array and a selection of talismans his benefactor made sure he’d memorize. ”It’ll take most if not all of your blood,” he’d said, tilting his head curiously, as if wondering if Xuanyu would really be up to the task.
The deep gashes in his wrists are still bleeding sluggishly, feeding the main array component. It drinks his life up, greedy and thirsty, draining his strength but not his conviction. He can already feel the fuzziness reaching out for him, the pale grey fingers of death stroking his skin and tugging at his hair, equally eager to grab him for good.
”Mo Ziyuan,” he says, adding a bloody line on the array.
”Uncle Mo.” Another line.
”A-Tong.”
”Aunt Mo,” he hisses with a sneer, and flecks of spittle and blood land on the array.
And finally, ”Jin Guangyao,” he whispers, adding the last line.
Blood dribbles down his cheek as he bares his teeth in a facsimile of a grin, taking a look around the room he’s called home for the past couple of years. Talismans dance in the air around him, fluttering in the nonexistent breeze, their slight shadows playing on the walls covered in bloody sigils.
Xuanyu coughs, spraying blood on his robes and on the array. A good thing that this one cannot be disturbed by a bit of spittle and blood, not when the main lines are already drawn and partially powered up. All the array needs now, is the final push.
Gingerly, he lowers himself at the center of the array and arranges his trembling legs into the lotus position. He draws breath and lowers his head to press a dry kiss on the cover of a tattered journal before tucking it into his robes.
Then he takes the knife and reopens the partially congealed wounds on his wrists before pressing the blade on his throat.
”Yiling Patriarch,” he says in a low, steady voice. ”Wei Wuxian. I hereby summon you.”
With that, he cuts his throat.
The last thing in his mind before darkness claims him is, ”Fuck you. Fuck you all to hell.”