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Zhou Zishu wakes to the inside of a swaying carriage. Normally, this wasn’t out of the ordinary…if that was the way he fell asleep. Which it wasn't.
Instead, Zhou Zishu remembers he was with Wen Kexing, reading a letter from Jing Beiyuan, who requested that he investigate the attached artifact, a roughly carved figurine of a single mandarin duck. And then he remembers touching the artifact—only for everything to turn black.
Zhou Zishu blinks a few times to will away the throbbing in his head. When that doesn't work, he sits up instead, slowly extricating himself from his position of lying across someone’s lap. There’s a rustle from somewhere within his robes, and a sable pops its head from within his sleeve, seeming annoyed at the disturbance. Zhou Zishu’s eyebrows raise. He looks up, and his eyes meet those of the carriage’s only other occupant.
The man in front of him isn't Wen Kexing.
In front of him is the Great Shaman of Nanjiang, who Zhou Zishu hasn’t seen in years.
“Beiyuan?” the man asks softly.
Zhou Zishu doesn't answer, his mind awhirl with questions. How is the Great Shaman here? They planned to meet, but as far as he remembered, his friends hadn’t arrive yet. And what happened to Wen Kexing? Zhou Zishu lowers his eyes, half in contemplation, half to better hide the turmoil in his mind. That's when he sees his hands—thin and pale, with none of the calluses gained from sword work or martial arts. A perfunctory sweep over his attire also shows that his clothes are of much finer quality than he ordinarily wears as A-Xu. Not to mention, they're not the clothes he put on this morning.
He looks up again, unsurprised to find the Great Shaman still regarding him with those dark, fathomless eyes. All previous traces of tenderness are now gone, leaving behind a face as emotionless as stone. “You are not Beiyuan,” the Great Shaman states. He doesn’t need to voice his second question.
Zhou Zishu stares back, his mind racing. In his mind, puzzle pieces snapped into place—his clothes, the Great Shaman, the way he woke up in the Shaman’s lap. The strange letter from Beiyuan, explaining that the artifact attached was rumored to have magical qualities. He scoots further from the Great Shaman, to make some space, and cups a hand over his fist in a makeshift bow. “It’s Zhou Zishu,” he says.
Jing Beiyuan wakes in an inn. Which is odd, because he certainly didn’t fall asleep in a cave. Nor does he remember this overwhelming, burning pain. He slowly sits up, grunting the entire way, hand to his chest. Something about it feels…wrong. His bones feel too prominent, and breathing hurts. Before he can take a look at himself though, he hears the rustle of clothing, and someone settles next to him.
“A-Xu. How do you feel?”
Jing Qi’s mind blanks. A-Xu? Who is that? And who is this? Why does “A-Xu” sound familiar? He grits his teeth against a pang of pain and lifts up his hand. Yellow-green skin, thin fingers, gnarled knuckles. This hand isn’t his. What in the world…?
Abruptly, Jing Qi remembers he was asked a question. He looks up, pastes a smile on his face, and murmurs, “I’m fine, thank you.”
The man in front of him pauses. He’s a strange man, Jing Qi muses. Wild, unbound hair, and eyes as dark and fathomless as a deep lake. Beautiful, but unnerving. He looks like trouble, and the way he looks at Jing Qi feels trouble.
The man smiles back at him, eyes creasing into dark crescents. “I’m glad my wife feels better.”
…Wife?
Jing Qi blinks. Strange. He chuckles awkwardly. Perhaps this man also prefers the company of men. But since when was he a wife? Jing Qi lowers his eyes coyly. “Ah…husband, what happened?”
The smile on the man’s face drops immediately.
Suddenly, Jing Qi remembers where he’s heard the name “A-Xu” before. Zhou Zishu. It's one of Zhou Zishu’s aliases. For moment, Jing Qi closes his eyes and thanks the heavens for Zishu’s lack of creativity in names, before he feels himself start to sweat.
There's no way he can convincingly pretend to be Zishu.
In fact, it looks like he's failed already, because the man in front of him fixes him with a lifeless stare that bores into his soul. His face is entirely void of emotion in a way that leaves Jing Qi’s hair standing on end. “Who are you?” the man asks.
“It was an artifact,” Zishu starts. “The one Beiyuan sent through a messenger, with the letter.”
Wu Xi knows exactly what artifact he’s talking about. He personally watched his husband pack it up and hand it off to the courier. Of course, when he asked Beiyuan what it was, the man merely smiled at him and said it was “a little matter with which he had to bother Zishu-xiong.” At the time, Wu Xi merely shook his head at his husband’s shenanigans and let it go. Never did he think it to be an artifact which enables the users to swap bodies.
Zishu finishes explaining how he received the package and was in the middle of examining it when he woke up here. “I’m still not sure how I triggered it,” he finishes, brow furrowing slightly.
Wu Xi shook his head. “No matter. Beiyuan may have intended it this way.” He looks at the front of the carriage. “We are already almost at your inn.”
Zishu looks at him, as if contemplating whether to ask how Jing Beiyuan even found him, but he seems to think better of it. Instead, the man nods, looks out the carriage window, and falls into silence.
Wu Xi shifts in his seat. He hopes Zishu wasn’t doing anything particularly dangerous at the time that the two swapped bodies. He’s not sure what, exactly, Zishu was doing since he disappeared from the jianghu, but he hopes against hope that the man wasn’t in the middle of some sort of rogue mission. There’s nothing Wu Xi can really do from this distance, except…
He knocks on the wall of the carriage and waits until Nuahar brings his horse close. “Tell everyone to make haste,” he orders.
Meanwhile, Jing Qi is doing his best to keep his head attached to his neck. He smiles again, placatingly. The strange, gaunt man holds a knife to his neck, his dark eyes alight with something wild and manic.
Jing Qi slowly reaches up, making sure to telegraph his every move, before delicately nudging away the blade. Miraculously, the strange man allows him to do so.
Inwardly, Jing Qi sighs. He's not sure how he got here, but he has an idea. “Excuse me,” he says politely. While still telegraphing his moves, Jing Qi slowly grabs the blade of the knife and angles it toward him, twisting it this way and that to try and see the entirety of his reflection. Somehow, he doesn’t get his fingers sliced off for the attempt.
Sure enough, familiar eyes stare back at him from the flat of the knife. Dark, flat eyes, sunken into a gnarled, unfamiliar face. If Jing Qi concentrates, he can feel a strange, crinkling sensation as he furrows his brows.
The wrist and knife are snatched out of his grasp, and a hand slams him back against the wall he sits against. Jing Qi looks up. The look in this strange man’s eyes is complicated—part anger, part bewilderment, and part…worry? Jing Qi blinks. He weighs his options for a moment.
“Who are you?” the man asks again.
Instead of answering, Jing Qi defiantly tilts his chin up and replies with a question of his own. “Who is Zhou Xu to you?”
The man draws back.
There’s a commotion, and a boy bounds into the room. “Wen-qianbei,” the boy says, before stopping short. The youth’s eyes dart between the way “Wen-qianbei” looms over Jing Qi, and the knife between them, before stammering out, “Ah, I can come back another time.”
Silence follows in his wake.
The two of them look at each other.
This Mister Wen’s poker face truly is good, Jing Qi muses. He would make a very good statue, if it weren’t for those dark, dark eyes full of quiet, manic energy. He fixes the man with an insincere smile. “I’m sure Zhou-xiong will return very soon.”
Wen Kexing thinks he’s finally going crazy. The man—spirit?—who possessed Zhou Xu…is infuriating.
He’s not entirely sure what happened, or what caused this change. All he knows is Zhou Xu slipped out earlier, only to come back and promptly slump over the table of their inn room. Wen Kexing managed to drag him to one of the beds, lamenting the whole time about how light Zhou Xu felt in his arms.
At first, he thought it was a fractured consciousness—that Zhou Xu somehow managed to hide a whole other self from him this entire time. Being the Ghost Valley Master, it wasn’t the first time he saw or heard of such a thing. But the spirit keeps insisting that isn’t the case.
He calls himself Lord Seventh, and insists the Wen Kexing call him by that name too. To which Wen Kexing thinks, what kind of a name is that? What kind of man doesn’t introduce himself by name? Definitely an unsavory character. Or a wily spirit.
“You never did answer my question,” the spirit says. “Are you friends with Zhou-xiong? …Lovers?”
Wen Kexing gives the creature a tight smile. “How do you know…Zhou-xiong?”
“Oh, we’re old friends.”
Well, how is Wen Kexing supposed to believe that? He smiles politely at the man in front of him. “Oh?”
Lord Seventh merely grins at him. The expression is uncanny on Zhou Xu’s normally stoic face. He sighs, looking into the distance like a yearning maiden. “We grew up together. The two of us spent countless spring days sharing wine, chatting under tender blossoms….”
Wen Kexing thinks he’s developing a twitch in his eye. “Is that so?” He pours himself another cup of tea, neglecting to offer any to Lord Seventh. “When did you say he would be back?”
“Oh, soon.” He waves a hand carelessly. “We were almost here at this town when I woke up here.”
What a strange reply. Wen Kexing sips his tea and says nothing.
Lord Seventh leans forward conspiratorially. “So is that youth your illegitimate son, or…?”
When Wen Kexing opens the inn room door, two men stand on the other side—one dressed all in black, with a somber air. The other, dressed in plain robes that nevertheless draped like expensive cloth, looks at him in a familiar manner.
From behind him, he hears rustling, followed by an enthusiastic cry of, “Little Venom!”
The man in black looks behind him, his stone-statue face softening before he returns that stoic gaze to Wen Kexing. “Excuse me,” he says. Wen Kexing obligingly steps aside.
He does his best to ignore the sound of A-Xu’s voice exclaiming things like, “You’ve come to rescue me!” with more feeling than he’s ever heard from that voice. Lord Seventh and “Little Venom” rush towards each other, with the man in black clutching Lord Seventh’s arms and staring at his face worriedly. For a moment, jealousy flashes through Wen Kexing at the sight of Zhou Xu’s body in another man’s arms. His face must show some sign of it, because he hears an unfamiliar chuckle.
Wen Kexing focuses on the other man who arrived, currently watching him the entire time with a dark, ink-black gaze and a small, charming smile. “A-Xu?” he questions.
Zhou Xu stares at him a moment longer before saying with a small smirk, “Are you jealous, Lao Wen?”
Irritation flares within Wen Kexing—irritation, and relief. When Lord Seventh said Zhou Xu would be back very soon, this wasn’t what he expected. Truth be told, he still half-expected possession or a fractured psyche. Not this strange young master. Now Wen Kexing gapes at him a little, reeling at the casual use of his name. The man pointedly looks past Wen Kexing. “Let me in.”
Wen Kexing obediently steps aside, and the man enters the room. He folds one hand over the other in a bow. “Lord Seventh. Great Shaman.”
Wen Kexing’s eyes dart to the man in black. The mysterious Great Shaman of Nanjiang? Never would he guess A-Xu had a connection to such a man. Nor did Wen Kexing know the Great Shaman to travel often. More importantly, did the Great Shaman know of Lord Seventh and A-Xu’s past? Looking at the way the man remained calm at A-Xu’s approach, Wen Kexing guesses, with a hint of bitterness, that the Great Shaman has no issue with it. Seems he is the only jealous one here.
Lord Seventh disengages from his companion. “…Zhou Xu.”
A-Xu straightens. For a moment, the two looked at each other, before Lord Seventh grins. “Interesting artifact, isn’t it?”
At that, A-Xu sighs. “Just…how does one reverse it?”
Lord Seventh looks around the room. “Did you find any information about it? Where is it?”
“Not much,” A-Xu replies dryly. “This one was…busy.” He steps closer and starts roughly patting down Lord Seventh.
“Zi—Zhou-xiong! I am a married man!” Lord Seventh cries.
At the exact same time, Wen Kexing says, “Touching another man so intimately in front of me, A-Xu!”
For a moment, silence reigns. The Great Shaman has his eyebrows raised and a faint look of amusement in his eyes. A-Xu, on the other hand, closes his eyes and visibly grits his teeth. “This one had it hidden on my person,” he says slowly.
“Ah!” Lord Seventh rummages in the folds of his peasant’s robes before raising his hand. In his palm sits a small, rough figurine of a mandarin duck.
“What is it?” Wen Kexing asks.
“A mystical artifact originally created for separated lovers.” Everyone in the room turned to look at A-Xu as he spoke. “Though why my Lord needs such a thing is beyond the mind of this servant.” He stares pointedly at Lord Seventh, who smiles back innocently and puts a hand to his heart.
“Why, I missed my Xu-xiong. Isn’t that obvious? You never write, and I had to find out about your disappearance through secondhand sources.”
Once more, the room is silent. Wen Kexing is stunned by the sheer brazenness, and a glance at A-Xu tells Wen Kexing that he also feels the same. Even the stoic Great Shaman stares at Lord Seventh with a furrow in his brow and a faint air of disappointment.
Lord Seventh takes in their expressions and shrugs. “Anyway, one dispells the enchantment by holding hands, looking into each other’s eyes, and thinking of each other.”
There’s another stunned silence, before Wen Kexing sidles up to A-Xu’s side. “A-Xu….”
“What do you want?”
“Lord Seventh told me the two of you ‘spent countless spring days sharing wine, chatting under tender blossoms’…A-Xu, is it true?”
“He what?”
This time, Wen Kexing definitely spies the Great Shaman shooting a disapproving look at Lord Seventh and has a moment of vindictive satisfaction. He turns back to A-Xu with a wheedling expression. “Do you truly only think of this one, or does A-Xu still think of his first love?”
“My first—” A-Xu blinks up at him, mouth slack. He snaps his head around to glare at Lord Seventh. “He and I are not lovers. This artifact is just an unfortunate coincidence.”
Wen Kexing also looks at Lord Seventh.
“But Zhou-xiong, we did grow up together, sharing countless jars of wine.”
“You—!” A-Xu closes his eyes briefly before marching across the room, grabbing Lord Seventh’s hands, and staring aggressively into his eyes. For a second, nothing happens, then the two of them go limp, forcing the other two in the room to race to catch their bodies.
Wen Kexing and the Great Shaman lay them out on the beds in the room before sitting down at the table to wait.
The man who Zhou Zishu travels with is…interesting. Wen Kexing looks at Wu Xi with respect, politely offering him more tea as they wait for results. At a glance, Wu Xi can tell this man is dangerous, but at the same time, he doesn’t seem malicious. What’s more, he seems to care for Zhou Zishu, frequently glancing at the man’s unconscious body.
At some point, someone knocks at the door, and a youth enters the room. Wen Kexing introduces the boy as Zhang Chengling. Wu Xi nods in return. Together, the three of them sit in silence and stare at the figures on the beds.
After what feels like an eternity, the two men stir, slowly sitting up and patting themselves down. Jing Beiyuan turns to Zhou Zishu, grinning. “It worked!”
Zishu grimaces back. “And what would Lord Seventh have done if it didn’t?”
“Well, we don’t have to worry about that now, do we?” Jing Beiyuan says cheerfully.
Zishu frowns at him, but Wu Xi doesn’t wait to hear what more he has to say. He kneels by the bed that Jing Beiyuan lies on and takes his husband’s face into his hands. He checks for pallor, for breathing, takes Jing Beiyuan’s wrist in his hands to check his pulse. Beiyuan complains the whole time about how he’s fine, just a bit dizzy, but he lets Wu Xi poke and prod at him. The tips of his ears are ever so slightly pink, and Wu Xi has to smother a smile.
He turns to look at the other room occupants. Zhang Chengling and Wen Kexing are gathered around Zhou Zishu, both loudly exclaiming their worry and relief. Zishu himself looks like he deeply regrets this entire affair as well as the resulting fuss. Wu Xi once again has to suppress his smile as he turns back to Beiyuan. “I’m glad you’re alright,” he murmurs.