Chapter Text
Jin Guangyao woke up.
This came as something of a surprise to him, seeing as how the last thing he remembered, he’d lost an arm, Lan Xichen had stabbed him (thanks, er-ge, that was just what his day had needed), Nie Mingjue had broken his neck and dragged him into a coffin, and then – and then! As if all of that wasn’t enough…the temple he’d built for his mother collapsed on top of them.
It was safe to say that if Jin Guangyao had harboured any expectations about waking up after the darkness had finally risen up like a tide to claim him, he’d expected to wake up in the coffin with Nie Mingjue.
He was not in the coffin with Nie Mingjue.
He didn’t seem to be…anywhere, actually. Things were on the grey and formless side, and Jin Guangyao did not approve. Grey formless nothingness might be good for a bit of a rest break, but he couldn’t see himself spending the rest of eternity there. Or rather, he could, in that he could picture it perfectly and it sounded like torture. Which was about right for how his day had been, honestly.
Clink
So that was…a sound…
Jin Guangyao turned quickly, but the formless grey nothing behind him was identical to the formless grey nothing in front of him. When he turned around again, however, there was a man.
Tall – taller than Jin Guangyao, as if that meant anything, but Jin Guangyao suspected that the man was even taller than Da-ge. He was gaunt with it though, with eyes black from edge to edge, his hair trailing down over his shoulders like a drowned man’s, his face pale as a corpse’s.
Jin Guangyao bowed to him, because his mother hadn’t raised a fool – and besides, he could feel this man’s power, vast and cold and dark as the depths of the ocean. Jin Guangyao had not lived as long as he had by failing to bow to powerful men.
“That’s not necessary,” the man said. His voice was cold as his power, but somehow rich as well, and Jin Guangyao found himself tilting his head to hear better – his left ear had never been quite the same after his second trip down the steps of Jinlintai. “I’ve come to offer you a choice.”
Jin Guangyao raised an eyebrow. He’d rather thought he was out of choices, to be honest – that was what dying was, wasn’t it? The end of all choices and chances?
“May this humble one have the lord’s name?” he asked quietly.
“You may call me Black Water,” the man said. “You won’t have heard of me. I don’t exist in your world, and in mine, you do not exist. After this we will never meet again. Now, would you like to hear the choices?”
“If it would please Lord Black Water to tell me,” Jin Guangyao said, and watched the man’s pale lips curve into a smirk.
“It would. Imagine, if you will, that you are standing in front of two doors.”
As Black Water spoke, the doors appeared – one on either side. One was painted a rich crimson, the other gleamed gold. Neither was open.
“If you go through the red door,” Black Water said, “You will enter the cycle of reincarnation with all sins wiped clean. You will go to your next life unburdened by any of your griefs and debts – but you will not be burdened with your loves either. The red door will sever the red strings of fate that may have brought you and your beloved together in the next life.”
Jin Guangyao raised an eyebrow. That wasn’t a very attractive option, if he was being honest – and Jin Guangyao always at least tried to be honest with himself. For twenty years, he and Lan Xichen had both held to that silent, unspoken promise, made on the day he’d become engaged to Qin Su. In the next life had been Jin Guangyao’s mantra, when Lan Xichen’s beauty had been too great to bear, when Lan Xichen’s kindness had threatened to undo him. Giving up the promise of that…no. Not unless the alternative was truly heinous.
“I thought not,” Black Water said, a smug smile curling the corners of his well-formed mouth, his dark eyes crinkling in amusement. “Would you like to hear the other option?”
“I would,” Jin Guangyao said, inclining his head.
“If you go through the golden door, you will be returned to the last day on which you could have changed your fate. You will have four hours before you merge with the Jin Guangyao of that time. He will have a sudden increase in power, but you, the Jin Guangyao standing in front of me now…you will cease to be. You will never have existed at all.”
Jin Guangyao took a step backward, away from both doors. The red suddenly looked so much more tempting but the gold…
“What power will I have?” he asked.
“You will be invisible to the eye, although you may be heard if you wish it so. You will not have a physical form.”
“So I can only talk?” Jin Guangyao asked. He’d done more with less, but it was not exactly ideal…
“You will be able to possess one mortal. Simply touch their head and you will be in their body – but you will not be able to leave until your host dies or your time runs out, and you will not be able to possess another.”
Jin Guanyao studied the doors.
Oh, it was so tempting to walk through the red door. To know he was going to his next reincarnation clean and unburdened.
But…
“The Jin Guanyao of that time – you said he will gain an increase in power, but what of after?” Jin Guangyao asked. “When he dies…”
“When he dies, he will enter the afterlife in whatever way he would have if you had not interfered. His choices from the moment of the merge will be his own, and the consequences likewise.”
Jin Guangyao had never been prone to dithering. He tended to make decisions quickly, and acted upon them as quickly.
He inclined his head to Black Water and then strode past, his hands behind his ramrod-straight back, and looked at the red door. He touched it once, taking a moment to regret the possibility of a life free of the burden of being his father’s son.
Then he turned and rolled the dice on the greatest gamble of all his days.
“I choose the golden door,” he announced, and heard Black Water laugh raucously behind him as he stepped through…
Into the Fire Palace of Nightless City, during the victory banquet.