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They should have killed him. That was the thing. There were too many of them and they should have been able to kill him. But that was something Wei Wuxian only realized later with the benefit of hindsight. The ambush had taken him by surprise, although it shouldn’t have. Even after all these years, after the trickery and subterfuge and machinations of the Jin and Su Minshan and of all the crimes Xue Yang had come to light, there would always be people who still blamed him for one thing or another. Sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly.
He didn’t even know why they’d attacked. It might have been for something he’d actually been responsible for, either wholly or partially, or one of the many things attributed to him by Jin Guangyao, or maybe he’d just been a convenient person to blame for whatever thing in the past or present that had gone wrong in their lives. In the end it didn’t matter. More than a dozen cultivators had set up what should have been a perfect ambush and he’d fallen right into it.
The site they’d chosen couldn’t have been better: in the forest outside of a small village that was being besieged by spider demons and had requested help. Since the village lay outside of any sect’s sphere of protection, the attacks had been noted but, according to the reports from the recent sect conference, no one had ‘had the resources’ or ‘available manpower’ to send enough people to take care of the problem at the current time. Which Wei Wuxian had to admit wasn’t too unreasonable; spider demons were tricky because to truly clear an infestation you had to not only kill all the demons but clear their entire nest as well, something that was quite tricky using typical cultivation. His kind however…
It was the sort of work the ghostly path was made for. Was it easy? No, of course not. But he wasn’t about to sit back and do nothing while people were being eaten so he’d headed off to help. It had taken the better part of two days, but in the end the spider demons were all dead, their egg sacks eradicated and the nest destroyed.
That was when they chose to attack.
An ambush of that many cultivators, even if the majority were only mid-tier ones at best, was serious enough on its own but timing it so it was right after a long Night Hunt when he was already exhausted? It had been smart planning on their part. He’d been cautious when they first appeared, past experience meant he was always a little on edge when random cultivators unexpectedly crossed his path, but he hadn’t been ready for the viciousness of their attack. Six of them approached him, acting like they’d come due the spider demon attacks and wanting to talk to him about it, when the rest let loose a barrage of arrows from their hiding spots amongst the trees. Within moments he’d been struck by three arrows and then the cultivators closest to him pulled their weapons and attacked.
It wasn’t like he was going to take it easy on them after being ambushed, but there was a world of difference between responding in a way that would make them regret their actions and leaving them so they’d never regret anything ever again. He’d learned his lesson long ago that while it was dangerous to let his opponents live, usually badly injuring their pride rather than their person was usually enough to get them to leave him alone. However, this group had made the bad decision to not back down and after a second barrage of arrows the cultivators attacked him en masse. One of them even managed to stab him through the side and that made his decision for him. If he wanted to live he had to stop holding back and retaliate with equal force. If they were going to try to use deadly force then he was going to respond in kind, if he didn’t they’d only try again and again until they actually succeeded. And he wasn’t going to let that happen; he’d already died once, thanks.
Once he’d decided that, it wasn’t long before he was the last one standing.
They’d outnumbered him, sure, but he had Suibian and Chenqing and with all the resentment in the area leftover from the spider demons and their attacks on the villagers he was easily able to call forth shadows to darken the clearing enough that anyone attempting to fire more arrows at him would be firing completely blind. Pretty soon they were terrified, lashing out wildly and unable to tell friend from foe as ghosts and spirits slipped between them. They died quickly then, some by his hand while a few of the cultivators had accidentally killed one another.
He did his due diligence, and after checking the bodies to see if they had any kind of identification so he could notify next of kin—they didn’t, they’d obviously put some effort into hiding not only who they were but what sects they were associated with—he gave them all a proper burial. Then he played Rest to clear the resentment from the area. Not because he was feeling particularly magnanimous towards his attackers, but because the local villagers didn’t deserve having to deal with wandering corpses or restless dead just because some idiots got it in their heads to try to kill someone far more powerful and experienced than they were.
Doing all that took quite some time, practically the rest of the day, and then spent the next several hours getting as far away from the area as he could. He didn’t think it was likely they’d told anyone what they’d planned or had any cultivators in reserve in case they’d failed, but he figured it was better safe than sorry and risk a second attack. He didn’t stop and set up camp until he was absolutely certain there were no other cultivators anywhere nearby.
It was only then, after warding the area well, that he finally had a chance to do more than a preliminary check on his injuries, expecting to have to do some serious tending to his wounds above and beyond the quick, slapdash first aid he’d applied right after the ambush. He’d found several vials of what appeared to be some kind of antidote on a few of the cultivators so he’d assumed the arrows had been laced with a slow acting poison designed to weaken him but, since he’d hadn’t begun to feel the effects yet, he’d put off spending the time to examine and arrows and wounds carefully and wait to try to counteract the poison until he got to a safe place.
Except, upon further examination, he realized every single wound he’d taken had healed completely.
That… shouldn’t have been possible.
He’d seen that sword go all the way through him and seen the gleeful look on the cultivator’s face when he’d made what he thought was a killing blow. And the arrows! Poisoned or not, the one that he’d taken in the shoulder had lodged itself in his muscle and he’d felt the way it tore everything up as he’d pulled it out. Okay, the one that had struck his thigh hadn’t been too bad but the other? Slapping a bandage on a chest wound should have been no more than a stopgap measure. He had so many not-so-fond memories of the lectures Wen Qing used to give him whenever she caught him doing that and the dangers that could be the result of it that he’d already prepared himself for seeing something terrible when he unwrapped it.
Unblemished skin, however, was in a way even more disturbing.
How had he healed this much, this fast?
It shouldn’t have been possible, not even the most powerful of golden cores should have been able to do that and while he’d built Mo Xuanyu’s up quite a bit, it wasn’t to the kind of level that could do this, he didn’t think anyone’s was save, presumably, an immortal like Baoshan Sanren’s.
Unless….
He partially drew Suibian and ran his finger along its blade, nicking it, and began counting in his head. It completely healed before he got to three. A slice along his palm healed as he reached five.
How did this happen? Was it a result of the fact he practiced the ghostly path? Or, considering his first life, perhaps a result of how he mixed the two kinds of cultivation, the ghostly path and traditional, orthodox cultivation?
Was he now immortal?
Did he want to be?
And was there anything he could do about it if he didn’t?