Thread by @undeadbiscuit

having thoughts about a fucked up sleeping beauty #sangyao timeline where nhs got caught and jgy sealed him away in an inedia coma so he couldn't keep interfering.

then hundreds of years later, exhibits assistant guo yao goes to start cleaning an ancient bronze mirror for

display and is very surprised when he falls right through it and finds himself in front of a tiny, strangely designed house in the middle of a forest.

(god please actually post this time)

So in this setting, cultivation as a practice sort of died out once there were less monsters to hunt and battlefield technology started advancing. But artifacts and texts are still highly prized by museums and collectors, so Guo Yao

immediately knows he's walked into Magical Shit That's Above His Paygrade, especially once he peeks through a window of the little house and sees a young man in ancient clothing lying on a bed that's just *bristling* with glowing magical talismans.

Curious but not *stupid*, he

immediately turns right back around through the mirror portal to go find one of the researchers he works for.

Only it quickly becomes apparent through some routine investigation that *he* is the only one the mirror works for.

Well... shit.

This obviously means either bloodline

stuff, which he doubts because his family is pretty solidly middle-class nobodies, or reincarnation stuff, which...

...Look, he's had some bad experiences when it came to spirits and assorted weird shit as a kid, he doesn't wanna mess with this.

But he agrees to let a medium

check him out and report the findings back to his boss.

The testing leaves him disoriented and nauseous with a taste like charbroiled lemons in the back of his mouth.

Oh and the knowledge that one of his past lives was the one who sealed the stranger in that array, to keep from

having the murder of the man's older brother exposed.

Not weird and creepy and awkward at all.
+

He doesn't tell his supervisor *exactly* who the young man is or why his predecessor sealed him, just that a big sticky mire of cultivational politics was involved.

Judging by the look his supervisor gives him, he can tell the man suspects the situation is much deeper than that,

but he really, really doesn't want to get into details.

Especially when another member of the department brings up the possibility of *waking* their unusual find.

The suggestion is met with enthusiasm that in any other circumstance, he might have shared.

Sure, their researchers have occasionally -oksy, very *rarely*- been lucky enough to run across a ghost or fierce corpse that managed to avoid being suppressed over the centuries, but those aren't exactly wellsprings of useful information.

*This* is a living, breathing piece

of ancient history!

Who... is probably gonna try to kill him on sight.

Great.

+

To be fair to his supervisor and the other researchers, they aren't *completely* reckless. The checklist of precautions and supplies is actually rather impressive, and one of their number who has experience in nullifying volatile artifacts is coming along to make sure the

stranger won't be able to blast him into a wall or anything of that nature.

But he'll still have to be the one to deactivate the array carved in the floor under the bed and all the talismans channeling it's power, and no amount of jovial reassurance that he'll be *fine* keeps

him from thinking he was a dumbass to have ever touched that mirror at all.

The process is simple enough; a knife and some well-placed scratches through the design to disrupt the qi flowing in a constant loop from floor to bed and back.

He tries not to pay attention to how

*familiar* it feels, tingling up his arm and through his body like it's trying to go home.

Instead, he jerks back, stumbling into the steadying hold of one of the researchers.

When the floor stops moving, his eyes lock with the now open ones of Huai- the stranger on the bed. +

Cold rage flashes through the other man's gaze, but the researchers intercept him before he can lunge, allowing Guo Yao to quickly retreat to a hopefully-safe distance on the other side of the house's single room.

From there, he watches as the researchers eagerly chatter to

their test subject, trying to both coax his time period out of him as well as catch him up on what the *current* time period is.

He watches as Huaisa- *the stranger* instead grows quieter and quieter, a little more color draining from his face with each new revelation.

---

Nie Huaisang is having, without exaggeration, the second worst day of his life.

He'd *thought* the day Jin Guangyao had caught on to him and the resulting confrontation that had ended with him being forcibly poisoned was the second-worst, but that it would at least be over

with once he was dead.

Instead, he has just been informed by people in strange clothing with a bunch of twittering, blinking objects they called 'recorders' that he has been bound in a sleep spell for a currently-unknown number of centuries.

He glances sidelong at the man with

a traitors face and the strangers' unusual clothing.

He doesn't have the aura of an immortal... reincarnation, then.

That knowledge only makes him feel more nauseous.

He has no idea what has happened to Da-ge. For all he knows, his brother's fierce corpse and what was left

of the soul bound to it were destroyed ages ago.

While Da-ge's murderer has lived multiple lifetimes.

Truly, he is the most worthless failure of a brother there has ever been.

+

---

Their guest/patient/test subject is practically catatonic by the time they move back through the mirror to the museum, presumably from being overwhelmed by all the talking and documentation equipment.

(There are a few embarrassed mutters about too much enthusiasm amongst

the researchers.)

With him not talking, it falls -unfortunately- to Guo Yao to provide identification.

He doesn't want to. Giving up the name only lends more authenticity to the memories.

To what his predecessor did.

But he eventually caves.

The name Nie Huaisang doesn't

garner much more than confusion at first, until one of the researchers pulls up an obscure text about the last generation of Nies to have descended from the original founder.

Guo Yao confirms that this is the unnamed brother of Chifeng-zun, forced into his role after his

untimely death-

-"Murdered. Dismembered," his mind whispers-

-only to go mad and vanish-

-"Stolen. Locked away,"-

-six years later.

There isn't even an official portrait in the book, unlike the image of Nie Mingjue that scowls up at him from the page-

-"Just like his head

scowled at you from a shelf."

The identification garners a surprising amount of interest, but on second thought, he supposes it makes sense. The years of and just after the Sunshot Campaign have the most muddled records of all the cultivational periods. Even someone marked as

a footnote, a bystander, could be a veritable wellspring of new information or corrections.

But only if he will talk, which Nie Huaisang doesn't seem inclined to do any time soon.

+

The guest/project/a number of other terms he's given up on keeping track of has been moved from the museum to the actual research facility it's attached to by the time Guo Yao clocks out.

He restrains himself from going to look, focusing instead on the offer his supervisor

has given him.

The researchers want him to go back and see the medium again.

To access more of those memories, see if he can find something that can draw Nie Huaisang out of the state he's fallen into.

He has to admit, the extra pay they're offering is *quite* attractive.

(He doubts they'll offer him anything else once they know the whole story.)

He has said he'll come back with an answer after sleeping on it, and they've accepted that.

His dreams that night are-

-are-

This isn't how it's supposed to work. He's only supposed to be able to

reach Jin Guangyao's memories with the help of the medium's talismans, or the medium himself.

And yet the images that flash behind his eyelids as he sleeps can't be anything else.

A bright, laughing teenager greeting and embracing him with joyful affection.
A broken young man

in mourning, clinging to him as if he's a life preserver in the sea.

That last day.

All the hateful accusations and despairing misery that fell from Nie Huaisang's mouth and the tears of frustration that trickled down his face as he slowly succumbed to the sedatives he'd been

slipped.

From a distance, like watching a first-person videogame, he watches his own hands reach down and so very gently brush the unconscious man's hair out of his face.

Then he jolts awake, back in his own skin and his own apartment and his own time.

What the fuck...?

+

It's hours before his alarm, but he doesn't feel he'll be getting any more sleep, so he rolls out of bed and heads for the kitchen.

Once he's hunkered down with a mug of the overly-sweetened milk tea he only keeps around for shitty nights like this, he starts trying to sort

himself out.

Those memories... That was the kind of stuff he would have expected of... hell, a widower or a divorcee or something, not a guy who was getting rid of a witness.

Though thinking about it more, that weird little house had been awfully nice. And the mirror would have

been useful for more than just checking to make sure the wards hadn't failed.

Ugh.

Dammit.

He shouldn't be getting invested in this! That life is dead and *long* gone! He should tell his supervisor he doesn't want to go digging up any more memories and be done with it all!

And yet when it starts getting light out, he finds himself barely taking the time to shower and get dressed before he's out the door and headed to the medium's place.

He absolutely *refuses* to go through the experience from before, but getting some of those talismans the guy

had told him about should be enough.

He just hopes he's not about to royally fuck himself up by turning this particular rock over.

---

So.

That was... a lot.

Like, a *lot* a lot.

He ends up having to call in to work for the day, though he does manage to let his supervisor

know he'll be taking on that extra job.

And then he curls up in a ball under his blanket and spends a good two hours staring at the little calming lamp he's had since college.

Wow, he could have lived a long, happy life without knowing some of that.

He can -*extremely grudgingly*- understand *some* of the... less than savory decisions made.

But others... haha, no. No thanks. No more thinking about that.

At least now he understand the full length and fucking depth of the messed up relationship between his predecessor and

Nie Huaisang.

And now he has an idea of what he should do next.
+

---
The room they've put Nie Huaisang in is much like a hospital observation room, only there's no medical equipment about-

-"Don't want to risk putting him in an even worse state at this point," Guo Yao's supervisor explained when he asked. "Once he's recovered a bit, we'll see

about starting testing."-

-just the bed, a table arm, and a couple of soft chairs.

Nie Huaisang sits on the bed, hair loose and wearing a set of very simple old-style sleeping robes, expression blank and empty as he stares out the window at the botanical gardens and the tall

buildings they don't manage to hide.

There's a meal tray on the table arm, untouched and probably cold.

"I know this is probably a big request, but could you turn off the recorders?" Guo Yao asks, indicating the monitoring equipment on the researchers' side of the observation

window. "He might be more willing to discuss the proposal if he can voice his emotions freely."

"Hm. I suppose we can turn off sound, but for safety's sake it would be best to keep an eye on you both."

Fair. Even if they don't know the whole story, he'd admitted enough for

them to be aware of potential animosity.

With a deep breath to steel his nerves, Guo Yao shoulders the small bag of cultivational tools he'd managed to convince them to loan him and nods to his supervisor to let him into the room.
+

He carefully scoots one of the chairs over between Nie Huaisang and the window to the gardens, and though it isn't immediately obvious from the lack of expression change, he can tell that Huaisang's attention is immediately on him.

"Come to gloat?" Huaisang finally asks as

he takes a seat.

Guo Yao represses a shiver at how lifeless Nie Huaisang's voice sounds compared to the vivid emotions he'd seen in those memories.

"I'm not him," he automatically replies.

There is still no outward change of expression, but he gets the feeling that

Nie Huaisang is mentally calling him twenty varieties of liar.

Which... understandable.

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the bracelet of cinnabar beads and charms that the medium had given him. "I can't even access his memories without a whole lot of help," he says

as he holds it up. "There at least twelve different spells bound into this thing."

Nie Huaisang tilts his head, staring at it for what seems like ages, then closes his eyes and sighs. "What do you want, then?"

"On behalf of the Institute, I'm here to offer a... deal, I guess."+

(no update tonight because I have been a mess all day but this has gotten long enough I should probably link back to the beginning.)

"There have been cases of fierce corpses... surviving, for lack of a better word, until recent years. Most of them either managed to stay in hiding until the sects faded away, or ended up in research facilities like this one or the collections of rich people with too much

interest in the macabre."

"In the what?"

"They thought the corpses were entertaining because they were creepy," Guo Yao clarifies, then pulls a small round device out of the bag. "Anyway, the possibility that your brother wound up in such collections is high, since *all* of his

pieces would have had to be found in order to... um..."

"Destroy him?"

Guo Yao winces and quickly moves on. "So the Institute is willing to loan you some tools and me as a guide to search for him."

He holds out the divice and, after some hesitation, Nie Huaisang takes it.

Then he frowns. "This... Why does this feel like Wei-xiong's design?"

"It's based on the one originally created by him, with some rather heavy modifications over the centuries. These days, we can even connect it to the int- er, to our more modern equipment for keeping a record

of what it senses."

Nie Huaisang turns the little lit up compass back and forth in his hands. "And what would I be paying for such magnanimity?"

"You're the first living cultivator anyone's met in a hundred and seventy-six years, and you come from a time period of the jianghu

there aren't many surviving records of. The Institute wants to run a battery of medical tests for scientific purposes, and while we travel, they'll occasionally send us sets of questions for you."

Nie Huaisang presses his mouth into a thin line. "What are *you* getting out of

this?"

"Well, I'll technically be on paid leave, and I've always wanted to see more places." Judging by the glare, the half-hearted joke isn't appreciated. He sighs. "Look... I told you I'm not him. This seems like a good way to prove it, don't you think?"

"...It's something he

would be incredibly unlikely to do," Nie Huaisang begrudgingly agrees.

"Any other questions?"

"Even if it takes effort, you can still access his memories whenever necessary, correct?"

Guo Yao has a bad feeling about this. But he knows he has to be honest or else this might

all fall apart. "Yeah. I can?"

"Tell me how he died."

+