@cerbykerby: today's thought is archaeologi...

today's thought is archaeologist lwj excavating an ancient tomb that has a shit-ton of protection, warning, and containment seals on it. his colleagues say it's cursed, but he disregards them.

until he lifts the sarcophagus lid and finds red-glowing eyes staring back at him.

lwj:

yllz:

lwj: *closes the sarcophagus lid*

it's nowhere near bedtime, but lwj decides to just go to sleep early. he's certain that whatever he saw was a hallucination and he's overtired.

until he goes back the next day, lifts the sarcophagus lid again, and the man inside says, "I'm still here, kid."

lwj is, unfortunately, not hallucinating.

he doesn't scream, but he does make some sort of sound. his partner, nhs—who agreed to be his partner because lwj lets him sit around and do nothing—pokes his head into the tomb to check on him.

nhs *does* scream.

it takes a while to wake nhs up from his dead-faint, and by that time, the yllz has already turned his head to watch them.

nhs takes one look at him and promptly bursts into tears, wailing, "WANGJI-XIONG AAAAA PUT THAT THING BACK. PUT IT BAAACK."

lwj isn't sure he can just put the man back in the sarcophagus—he already tried that yesterday, and it didn't change the fact that there is a living person inside a centuries-old coffin.

in fact, he isn't sure what he can do, except make sure the man is okay.

it's awkward, since he was the one who closed the sarcophagus lid back yesterday. lwj approaches the coffin.

"Hello," he greets. "I am Lan Wangji."

at his name, the man arches an eyebrow. "Of course you would be," he replies.

lwj rethinks nhs's suggestion to rebury him.

of course, lwj doesn't do that.

he doesn't know what else to do, so he... just... brings the man back to the dorm at the local university he has been staying in for the excavation.

lwj's roommates: so, uh... whatcha got there?

lwj:

meanwhile, the yllz is… not entirely sure what is going on.

he'd spent an eternity simply lying in the dark, bound in chains and buried away. if the lans knew that one of their descendants would find him again and free him, they would have perhaps thrown him in the ocean.

as it were, the yllz is… definitely not at the bottom of the ocean.

instead he's in a… house? room? he knows it's a building, but it is filled with odd noises as different items and tools whirl and work.

he's led into a room, where the lan boy fills out a basin attached to the floor.

ah, so that's how this is—the lan boy plans to drown him.

of course, the yllz hardly intends to let him do as he pleases—not after the yllz has finally been let out after centuries of nothing but darkness and silence. he attacks the lan boy.

but he is still weak from such a long confinement. the fight goes… poorly.

lwj's housemate, on the phone with 911, after passing by the bathroom and seeing what looks like lwj wrestling a corpse:

this reply was too good to ignore 😭

the police show up, and after an initial evaluation of the situation, strongly recommend that lwj take the man to either an unhoused shelter or a hospital to get checked out.

lwj wears gloves for the rest of the day.

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the hospital visit is lengthy and expensive. the man, despite clearly able to understand what he is told, is incredibly uncooperative. he refuses to give his name, birthday, or any explanation as to why he was in the ground.

after the man has been cleared (for now—nobody knows when rabies will rear its head), the hospital staff asks lwj if he would like them to take over things from here.

as tempting as it is, lwj politely declines. he is responsible for digging up the stranger.

and while the man has been nothing but trouble so far, lwj can't help but be immensely curious about the life the man had lived. the tomb itself is from centuries ago, and lwj would be a fool to pass up this opportunity to learn more from someone from that era.

of course, he will need to give his housemates a proper explanation and get their permission for the man to stay—which is a bit hard to do when the man is a complete stranger and won't give lwj his name.

lwj will have to make up a story.

housemate: so, uh, wangji. this guest of yours. he is...?

lwj: this is, uh, mo xuanyu. he has nowhere else to go, so he'll be staying with me until he gets back on his feet.

housemate: okay, and your relationship with him is...

lwj: he's my, uh

lwj:

lwj: cousin

meanwhile, the yllz is just watching this whole thing with mild amusement and disbelief. surely lwj knows who he is? the gusu lan sect took part in the yllz's imprisonment and interment. it wouldn't make sense for them not to educate their descendants on who he is.

but lwj doesn't know. when they pass by a musical instrument shop and the yllz picks up a dizi, lwj doesn't yell at him or order him to drop it. instead, he simply holds his phone near a small machine at the front of the store and tells the yllz to keep the dizi.

nonetheless, the yllz doesn't trust him not to immediately betray him once lwj finds out who he really is—and if lwj keeps on insisting on inspecting the tomb that he found the yllz in, it is inevitable that he'll put the pieces together and discover the yllz's identity.

so the yllz doesn't bother to even try and be cooperative.

lwj often takes him to the tomb, where he asks questions on what certain characters or symbols or markings mean. the yllz either doesn't answer or answers as incorrectly as possible.

lwj: this seal was around your coffin. what does it say?

the yllz, barely glancing at the seal: it grants me a hundred virgin maidens for me to ravish in the afterlife 🙄🙄🙄

lwj looks at him, then back at the seal. "A lot of trouble was put into burying you," he observes. "I don't think your still being alive would have escaped notice, so I doubt these are offerings."

"A little detective, aren't we?" the yllz sneers.

lwj supposes he's a type of detective, so the comment isn't inaccurate. "Why were you confined?" he asks.

the yllz rolls his eyes. "Because I wouldn't stop killing babies and stealing away wives and daughters."

lwj is beginning to sense a pattern here.

eventually, though, lwj ends up deciphering enough pieces to realize that the tomb is more of a prison. yes, it is meant to bury someone, but in a way that is more of a containment. the messages and seals around the tomb serve to either bind the one within or warn others away.

lwj doesn't ask the yllz about it. in fact, he barely even mentions the subject outside of observation at the tomb itself.

it makes the yllz very uneasy. he's certain that, once lwj realizes how much of a threat he is, lwj will try to re-imprison him again.

the thing is, lwj already sort of has an idea of how much of a threat the yllz could be.

the modern world is unfamiliar to the yllz. more than once, lwj has caught him taking things apart or using tendrils of resentful energy to manipulate a person or object.

nhs, watching the yllz: AAAAAA WANGJI-XIONG HE'S MANIPULATING RESENTFUL ENERGY

lwj: this is a tomb site. of course there is going to be resentful energy 🙄

in between terrorizing nhs and giving wrong answers only to lwj's questions, the yllz is more and more surprised that nothing seems to faze lwj.

lwj is very intelligent, and the yllz assumes he is sane. and yet he doesn't react to the yllz's manipulation of resentful energy.

eventually, lwj does manage to decipher enough of the tomb to conclude that the yllz was trapped there, on purpose, by the ancestors of today's cultivation sects.

he feels the yllz's eyes on him the entire way back to the dorms.

he doesn't say anything; he just goes about his usual routine, cooking dinner for both of them and then going to bed at 9.

he wakes up in the middle of the night to rustling. before he can move or say anything, a hand clamps down over his mouth.

he struggles—of course he struggles. cold tendrils wrap around his wrists and ankles and pulls him back down onto the bed.

oddly enough, this is gets him to stop. he knows only one person who can control resentful energy at will.

"Scream, and I'll kill you," the yllz says.

lwj does not scream. he has no reason to; he knows the yllz won't harm him.

the yllz removes his hand slowly. he leans over lwj, his long hair brushing lwj's face. his eyes glow faintly red.

"You know who I am," he says.

"I do not," lwj replies.

"You lie," the yllz hisses.

"I am not. I know what you were called," lwj clarifies. "'The Yiling Patriarch'. My ancestors deemed you as such."

"And those same ancestors were responsible for my imprisonment." the yllz leans closer. "And you are their descendant."

"Indeed I am," lwj agrees.

"Don't you fear death?" the yllz rests his hand around lwj's throat. "Is it not natural to assume I would want to take revenge for my centuries of suffering?"

lwj can feel his pulse against the yllz's fingers. "You knew who I was from the start," he says.

"Yes." the yllz tightens his grip a little on lwj's throat.

lwj doesn't react. "So you could have killed me from the start."

the yllz hums. "It wouldn't have given me much satisfaction if you didn't know why you were dying."

lwj doesn't believe that. "You do not seem the type to seek needless revenge."

"Oh?"

"If you did, you could have wiped out the Nie, Lan, Jin, and Jiang sects already," lwj points out. "Instead, you stay here, demand nothing, and jump when toast pops out of the toaster."

the yllz's lower eyelid twitches. "Why, you—!"

"You could have harmed me at any time," lwj continues calmly, "and yet you haven't. And I don't think you will. You have given me no reason to suspect that you are a danger to me."

the yllz looks him up and down incredulously. "... You damned Lans and your righteousness," he scoffs. "You always manage to look good no matter what you do."

lwj blinks. "You think I look good."

"What?" the yllz stares at him. "No! That's not what I meant—"

"I heard you clearly," lwj points out.

"I meant look *morally* good," the yllz hisses, "which—evidently—you are not."

lwj hums. "If you wish to think that way, you may."

the yllz stares at him incredulously. "You are insane," he declares.

"I assure you I am not," lwj says.

"And I assure you that you are!" the yllz grabs lwj by both of his shoulders and begins to shake him. "Are you touched in the head or something? Is this a trap? Do you not trust your ancestors to have had a good reason to lock me up?"

lwj places a hand on the yllz's waist. "It is past bedtime. You should go back to sleep."

"Do you even *listen* to yourself?!" the yllz shakes him harder. "Perhaps I *should* take your miserable life, since you so clearly value it so little—"

there's a muffled, "Wangji?" right before lwj's bedroom door swings open. "What's going on? Usually you're asleep..."

lwj's housemate's voice drifts off as soon as they catch sight of the yllz and lwj both on lwj's bed.

"I am perfectly fine," lwj replies calmly.

the housemate, looking at what appears to be lwj's cousin pinning lwj down on his own bed and straddling him: