HOLY FUCK IS THAT A BABY?! The howling anguish of the Burial Mounds goes silent. Wei Wuxian has returned, and he has brought other people with him, and one of those people is, indeed, a baby. The little caravan of weary living people (who have a fucking baby with them) works its way up what might generously be called a path, deeper into the cursed hills, and they have the full attention of many, many ghosts. Resentful energy burns away, boiling into nothing under the utter shock of the situation. Who the fuck brings a baby to the Burial Mounds? Or: People think Wei Wuxian somehow cleansed the resentment of the Burial Mounds for the Wen survivors, but actually, the ghosts did it as babyproofing.

Wei Wuxian is ready, waiting. The front and back doors of the Jingshi wait open, allowing the early summer breeze to pass through the house, bringing with it the scent of the flowers from the back garden. He has rope, crimson and smooth and well-worn, coiled in a neat pile. He has tea, perfectly brewed, the lightly flavored (nearly tasteless) kind that Lan Zhan likes, waiting in a pot with a warming talisman. There’s a comb, fine-toothed of carved white jade. There’s fruit, for later, perfectly ripe. There’s a small knife with a curved blade, still sharp as anything but stained with years of sap. There’s the garden, lovingly tended and fully in bloom in waves of pinks and purples and whites. There’s him, lounging against the frame of the back door, limbs sprawled about in the languid way that looks careless to an outsider but is actually carefully choreographed to put as much of himself on display as possible. He’s technically fully dressed, red inner robe and black outer, but the black outer robe is unbelted, half-hanging off one shoulder, and he’s decidedly not wearing trousers. His bare feet poke out the red folds, pale against the wood of the Jingshi deck. Or: Rope bondage as the deepest expression of affection.