The morning was in full swing by the time Wei Wuxian could see the outer walls of the palace in the distance. The sunlight was golden as it crested over the tops of the trees, taking away the chill of the morning air and melting the frost from the foliage. The trees had begun to thin out, the path growing wider, the grass growing in a little thicker around his feet as he approached the large open area in front of the gate.
Despite its current state of deterioration, Wei Wuxian could tell even from the outside walls how marvelous this place must have been. The walls, once clearly white but now streaked with dark stains and moss and draped in tangled vines, were crumbled in a few places, but otherwise stood tall, over twice his height. The gate itself, though much of the wood holding up the patchy dark blue roof seemed rotted, was clearly once an extraordinary thing, and Wei Wuxian found himself pausing outside of it for a few minutes, his curious gaze taking in the ruins of the centuries-old entrance.
He didn't know what would happen once he walked inside. He'd been trying to keep the thoughts at bay while he walked, trying not to think about how the end of his journey was likely truly the end of his journey, but now that he was just steps away from finding out what fate awaited him inside... his feet felt rooted to the ground, his heart beating uncomfortably fast as he tried to take in as much of what was beyond the gate as he could.
Wei Wuxian... wasn't afraid of death, or at least, he didn't think he was. He didn't want to die, but that felt distinctly different from being afraid to. After all the research he'd attempted to do in the last few days, there were no solid written accounts one way or the other about the fate of the women who were left here--and maybe if he'd had something more than simple speculation, if he'd found any absolute proof that death was assured, he'd have been more able to resign himself to what awaited him inside...
As it was, he had some small, and perhaps ridiculous, spark of hope, that entering here didn't mean death, and that, more than anything, was what made him hesitate.
After many long minutes passed, he gathered his nerve, took a deep breath, and walked through the gate.
Inside the palace walls, Wei Wuxian was greeted by a long, sprawling courtyard, in much the same state of decay as the outside walls of the palace. He could tell how beautiful it must have been, from the stone remnants of great fountains and elaborately carved benches lining the main stone pathway... but it seemed the forest had done hearty work in reclaiming the land, the stones beneath his feet broken and shifted by the plants growing up from the soil beneath, moss encroaching on most of the once white stone, and hundreds of those same tangled vines overlaying nearly every surface around him. On either side of the courtyard were a dozen or so buildings, most of which had collapsing walls and rooves with gaping holes in them.
Beyond the distant chitter of insects, among the other natural sounds of the forest, the palace itself was quiet and still, which... was far from what Wei Wuxian expected. Other than the vague indication of the Prince's new form in the legend, accounts of whatever shape he took were just as stingy as accounts of the women sent here, and Wei Wuxian had spent more mental energy than he cared to admit imagining what sort of horrible, otherworldly thing he might encounter here. He'd imagined gaping maws or deadly talons, things with far too many eyes or limbs; he'd imagined the oppressive flow of resentful energy left here by all the maidens who'd been sacrificed, or the ever-present background howl of something being consumed... and yet he felt none of it. His instincts for such things had always been sharp, and yet there wasn't a drop of resentment tainting the area. Beyond his internalized anxiety over simply knowing where he was, there wasn't even a sense of imminent danger in the place.
No, the ruins of the palace seemed like just that; an ancient palace now reclaimed by the forest that surrounded it. Wei Wuxian briefly wondered if he was even in the right place... but he wasn't entirely sure there was more then one centuries-old manor in the forest for him to stumble upon, and there was... something, some low buzz of spiritual energy not strong enough to even indicate its source.
Once Wei Wuxian made it to the center of the yard, he paused and... stood there for several long minutes, waiting for something to happen. His eyes combed over the buildings surrounding him, the larger one ahead of him, he let himself absorb as much of the area as he possibly could, letting his years of training on night hunts take over as he tried to find some trace of whatever he was supposed to be sacrificing himself to...
And finding nothing.
Wei Wuxian frowned a little to himself, feeling strangely put out by the anticlimactic outcome. Even if he hadn't wanted to be... devoured, or whatever was supposed to happen, having spent the last few days beating back his anxiety only for nothing to be here was... more disappointing than he'd expected.
Still, he was here, and this turn of events left him more invested in the answer to this mystery than he'd been before; he wasn't going to just leave without at least looking for some answers.
He spent most of the afternoon exploring the ruins of the building scattered across the courtyards one by one, finding little more than rotten bits of old fabric or rope, clay pots once used for storage of some sort, old furniture in varying states of decay... The longer he searched to no avail, the more at ease he felt, until eventually his stomach had settled enough to eat the small portion of bread and dried meat he'd brought along as provisions.
Every so often, he thought he caught a bit of movement in his periphery, the twitch of a leaf, a slight current of motion in the foliage... but each time he could just as easily write it off as the wind, or perhaps some small animal causing the flora to shift as it moved through the brush.
The sky overhead was starting to take on a golden hue once more as he finished searching the various buildings and instead approached the more intimidating outline of the first hall. As his eyes continued to sweep back and forth across the area, he stepped carefully up the uneven stone steps and headed towards the vine-covered doors to see if he would have any success, but after spending a minute pushing and pulling at the heavy doors, he seemed to make no headway whatsoever, and yet another wave of confused disappointment washed over him.
Wei Wuxian let out a sigh as he considered what his next step should even be. Had he really come all this way to sacrifice himself to a creature that... didn't even seem to be around? There weren't any stories of the Prince being able to leave the palace, so it wasn't as if Wei Wuxian could have missed him, and if these doors wouldn't open, Wei Wuxian couldn't exactly look around inside, either.
He wondered briefly if... if maybe the creature only bothered to show itself for its intended prey, and because Wei Wuxian wasn't the maiden it expected, it had chosen to stay dormant.
Well, he certainly hadn't made this journey just to give up after one day, and he didn't think it was in anyone's best interest for him to go home and explain that he'd tried to sacrifice himself and that the monster just didn't seem to be home! It'd probably be best to make camp here for the night, and try to explore again tomorrow in the hopes he'd find something. If he gave it a few days and there was still no sign of life, then maybe he'd consider leaving, but until then, he'd return to one of the more solid buildings he'd explored to take shelter for the evening.
But as he turned to head back down the stone stairs, he nearly stumbled forward as he tried and failed to lift his foot up to take a step.
His heart skipped a beat and he immediately tried to catch himself from falling forward, throwing his arms back so hard that he overcompensated, falling back against the heavy doors just behind him and blissfully managing to keep himself upright. He took a steadying breath as he braced himself against the door and tried not to feel too stupid for almost tripping, and for having a momentary panic just because he'd almost tripped.
When he tried to lift his foot again though, he met the same resistance as before. Was he... was he caught on something?
He reached forward with a hand, lifting the bottom of his robes up enough to discover that one of the many thin vines covering most of the grounds was wrapped neatly around his ankle.
Wei Wuxian's brow furrowed, finding that particularly strange, but just as he was about to kneel down and try to loosen the vine from around his foot, he felt something curl and tighten suddenly around his wrist, directly against the skin--his eyes darted down, just barely registering another vine that had grabbed onto him when--
A question seemed to spill into his his mind. He felt... strangely breathless at the unfamiliar sensation of impression, at the way he could almost feel the echo of words that hadn't been spoken inside of his head, and at the inexplicable sense of familiarity he was left with. He didn't actually hear anything, there weren't even really words, so much as just sensation... but he somehow knew what he was being asked all the same.
It... this... whatever it was that reaching out to him... wanted to know who he was.
"Wei Ying," he gasped out, his words stumbling slightly as he tried to cope with the intimacy of having something pressing a thought directly into his head like this, before realizing what he'd said. "Ah... Wei Wuxian. I came from Lotus Pier. Are you... are you the Prince?"
He... he had to be, didn't he? Or if the legends were wrong, this was at least whatever entity that everyone called the Prince. It felt like a bit too much of a coincidence to expect one spiritual being at a certain location and run into a completely different one instead.
There was a hesitation, something almost unsure, before Wei Wuxian felt the flicker of affirmation in his head.
"Well, I... know you're used to something a little different, but... I'm your offering this time," Wei Wuxian continued explaining, because he knew this thing wanted him to. His heart was already racing again, the fears that had settled in the lull since his arrival immediately reviving, his thoughts spinning as he was immediately left confronting his mortality once more. "Is that... is that acceptable? Will I work for that?"
Wei Wuxian almost felt himself holding his breath as he waited for the response, waited to find out if his plan to replace his sister had been viable in the first place...
The thing was slow to answer again, but... there was more certainty this time as Wei Wuxian felt his approval, as if the Prince had no doubts about Wei Wuxian being an acceptable substitute for the standard maiden.
Whether he should be relieved or terrified, Wei Wuxian didn't know, but he forced himself to breathe, swallowed hard to suppress the terror trying to climb up his throat, and nodded faintly. "Okay," he huffed quietly. "Okay, so... how does this work?"
The vine wrapped around his wrist tugged down slightly, and Wei Wuxian got the immediate impression that he was being told to... sit? He couldn't say he understood the reason for the instruction, but at this point, his harried breathing was already making him feel so lightheaded that sitting would be a welcome relief anyway. He quickly gave in, let himself sink down to the stone as his back leaned up against the door; his eyes closed for a moment and he doubled down on his efforts to focus on the air moving in and out of his lungs instead of his imminent death, though he couldn't claim he was having much success.
When something wet brushed his face a second later, he instinctively jerked away from it as his eyes snapped open--to see another thin, leafy vine stretching out from the door behind him. Almost as if in response to his surprise, the vine stilled, and he felt another message pressing into his mind, something like a request for him to stay calm. Wei Wuxian didn't possibly know how he was supposed to stay calm under the circumstances, but... after a moment the vine swung in close to his face again, gently rubbing something wet and slightly oily off of one of the leaves and onto his cheek before twisting out of his line of sight.
Nothing happened for a moment. The Prince didn't move, and despite Wei Wuxian being fully sure he wasn't going to overcome the fear trying to take over his thoughts... after just a bit, his heart rate started to even out and his thoughts slowed down. He felt his body gradually relaxing, a warm haze settling over him--not like the haze of inebriation so much as just an enveloping sensation of comfort. It was something like coming inside after a long, cold day and having someone drape him in a thick blanket and hand him a bowl of hot soup, a sense of warmth and home that made it impossible not to relax.
Some part of him realized, of course, what had happened. There was something on the leaf that had touched him, something that had been smeared onto his skin to make him feel like this, but... After the tension that had been working his stomach into knots all day, even this brand of forced relaxation was welcome.
If whatever was going to happen was inevitable (a conclusion Wei Wuxian was committed to by now), he'd rather face it feeling like this than letting the terror consume him.
He relished in taking a few slow breaths now, letting his eyelids fall to half-mast as he let his weight lean heavily against the door. In his mind, he felt a reaction that was something almost like satisfaction, as if the Prince was pleased to see that he'd calmed down.
Wei Wuxian took comfort in the feeling while he could, vaguely aware of the slowly dissipating light as the sun sunk lower in the sky, dipping little by little behind the line of trees as most of his focus was in tune with the foliage around him now that he had a better idea of what to pay attention to--as soon as he spotted a vine, this one a bit thicker than the others, nearly as thick as his little finger, creeping its way up over his knee, he couldn't help but shudder faintly.
"Will it hurt?" he found himself asking softly. He wasn't sure he meant to ask such a question in the first place, wasn't sure he wanted the answer. He supposed if it would hurt that he'd just feel even more grateful that he'd save Jiang Yanli from this fate, but it wasn't like knowing would change things for him either way.
The reaction in his head was... one of hesitant confusion, before it was supplemented by a rejection of the notion, something Wei Wuxian interpreted as a somewhat certain no. Whether or not Wei Wuxian trusted the answer was another matter entirely, but there was nothing to do now but wait to see what would happen.
His eyes tracked the vine as it moved across his leg and up his thigh. It traced lightly across the fabric, disturbing the skin beneath it in a way that almost tickled, a faint smile twitching involuntarily at the corner of Wei Wuxian's mouth as it made slow progress, until...
It brushed across Wei Wuxian's groin and Wei Wuxian shivered a bit, shifting slightly beneath the touch while assuming it was just an accident... but the vine didn't continue on its path up his body. It paused just a second before sliding itself rather purposefully against the front of his pants.
The touch made Wei Wuxian suck in a sharp breath, and he immediately tried to skitter his hips away from it despite there being nowhere for them to go. "What are you-" The question was cut short as the vine seemed to have found what it was looking for and rubbed itself pointedly along the shape of Wei Wuxian's soft cock beneath the fabric.
Pleasure shivered up his spine, but Wei Wuxian was so surprised that he couldn't help but try to jerk away as he spat, "Stop!"
Immediately, the vine did--not only did it stop, but it actually lifted away from him, the end of it curling in on itself in a restrained sort of way, clearly obeying the order Wei Wuxian had given.
Wei Wuxian was stunned into a moment of silence. He... hadn't really expected the Prince to stop, and he was at a loss for what to do next as he stared down the vine that couldn't possibly be staring back at him as it seemed to wait obediently for him to speak.
Unsure of what else to say, he retreated to the question he'd tried to ask just seconds before, this time with more success. "What are you doing?"
Maybe it was... foolish to ask a question that required a more complicated answer than yes or no - even those answers were a bit ambiguous - but the question was out there now and he couldn't take it back. He waited a few seconds, waited to see if or how the Prince would answer him when...
The feeling that brushed up against his mind in reply was... complicated, and Wei Wuxian wasn't entirely unsure how to pick it apart, which meant he was left mostly to deal with the prevailing sensation that... this sort of contact was just how this was done.
And once the response had settled, he found the dots a bit easier to connect. After all, despite there being no specific mention of it in any of the texts he'd read... he'd been privy to the rumors murmured in the streets among those who didn't consider themselves too proper to talk about such things. Even without any solid evidence, people had their suspicions about just why the texts requested a maiden, instead of a woman of any age or experience. There may be a dozen reasons why someone's chastity might be valued by a spirit or a demon, but... the answer most people went out of their way to avoid mentioning involved the creature having a very particular way of extracting qi from its victim.
This sort of thing was far from unheard of - the same huli jing that were said to have cursed the Prince in the first place were sometimes known to use such means - but Wei Wuxian had been hesitant to consider such a thing before now.
He took another breath, and his brief desire to panic was quickly muted, feeling strangely resolved now that he better understood what was happening. It didn't hurt that he could still feel that comfortable warmth at the back of his mind--not trying to force itself on him, but... ready to welcome him back in with open arms as soon as he'd let it.
Which seemed much the same attitude of the vine that had been groping him just a minute ago. It was still, upright, curled in on itself just like before, and Wei Wuxian had the distinct impression that it was waiting for his permission before touching him again, which...
Well, for a spirit that had supposedly spent centuries devouring young women, seemed awfully polite.
It only took a moment more for him to come to terms with it. He'd already resigned himself to his fate today, and... however that fate was executed shouldn't really matter much, should it? He'd expected to be eaten whole or piece by piece, or to have his life force drained out of him until he was just an empty husk... this was hardly a worse fate than anything else he'd imagined.
"Okay," he said, huffing out a breath as his eyes slipped shut. He let go, let himself sink back down into the warm feeling that the Prince had so kindly provided him, and relaxed himself against the door behind him. "It's fine, go ahead."
He didn't bother to open his eyes... but a few seconds later, he felt the vine moving again, felt it as it slid across the front of his pants once more, pressing itself up against him and immediately starting to writhe pointedly up against his cock.
Wei Wuxian drew in another breath, his body squirming a bit beneath the contact; the spark of pleasure came on surprisingly quickly, and it took barely a minute before he could feel himself getting aroused, could feel his cock stiffening beneath the wriggling touch of the vine rubbing against it.
Though maybe it was silly to be surprised. It wasn't like Wei Wuxian hadn't more or less trained himself to respond to touch, after all. Over the last few years, he'd touched himself... well, nearly every day. Even at times when he wasn't necessarily turned on, when he was tired or sore or in a foul mood for some reason, he'd still climb into bed at night and start to rub himself through his pants, let himself get slowly worked up by the heat of his hand, until he'd either come just like that, or he'd reach inside to wrap his hand around his erection and stroke it properly. It had become something of a ritual for him, and he often found that he slept far better after an orgasm than without it.
So the idea that just being physically stroked by something could take him from scared and soft to aroused in just a couple of minutes wasn't so much of a stretch. Sure, it was by... something very unlike a hand, something that Wei Wuxian had never expected to be touched by, but... it was a physical stimulation all the same, and it didn't take long before he was hard, panting softly to himself as he let the haze of arousal join in with the warm fog already in his head. The combined feeling was pleasantly intoxicating, and Wei Wuxian was all too happy to drift in it as he tried not to think too much about what was touching him.
Despite plenty of self-indulgence and the fantasies that went along with that sort of thing, Wei Wuxian had never actually been touched by another person before. He had no perspective on... how it was supposed to feel, if it should take so little effort before he was almost achingly hard, before he couldn't help but shift his hips into the touch. He didn't know if this was all normal or if his heart was racing more than it should because of the otherworldly circumstances in which he found himself.
The more the arousal built, the less he could bring himself to care. If he had to die no matter what, he couldn't help but think that this wasn't such a terrible way to go.
He was only taken out of his haze briefly, as he felt the vine suddenly slithering away from his arousal, further up his body... but it only took a moment to realize what was happening as he felt the thing twisting as it dug up under his robes before sliding back down along the skin beneath the fabric now.
And then the vine wasn't just rubbing against him, but wrapping itself around his cock, and Wei Wuxian sucked in a sharp breath. He could feel... something slick against the skin as the curled vine began to stroke him, sliding up and down the length of him in an achingly slow way as an unexpected sound spilled from Wei Wuxian's throat.
Wei Wuxian lost track of himself over the next few moments as the vine carefully stroked him. All of its movements seemed so precise, so deliberate; the way it slid along the shaft from the base to just beneath the head, the way its coils seemed to tighten and squeeze, the way it would stop stroking him entirely as the end of the vine would take care to rub across the head of his cock. Twice, even, Wei Wuxian felt the peak of his arousal, his breaths huffing harder, the soft whimpers he'd been unable to stop since the vine had slipped beneath his clothing spiking a bit louder... only for the vine to stop moving completely, letting Wei Wuxian ride the crest of almost coming until the tension had dissipated and the vine could start moving, gradually working him up all over again.
Finally, Wei Wuxian felt it again, felt the arousal pooling at the base of his spine, heard his whimpers slowly turning into full fledged moans--but the vine didn't stop this time. It tightened its grip on him, it started to stroke him faster, as it began to squeeze him rhythmically in a way that left Wei Wuxian shuddering, his hands gripping at the tangle of vines beneath him, his hips rocking more pointedly into the contact as the heat built up all the more until--
He let out a clipped moan as he came hard, the orgasm washing over him in two quick waves before his body went immediately lax, his chest heaving with his labored breathing.
But more than that, more than normal, as the orgasm passed, a wave of exhaustion slammed into him at full force, and before another thought could cross his mind, the world around him went dark.