As Wei Wuxian gradually came to the next morning, he felt stiff. There was a mild ache that seemed to encompass his whole body, in addition to his back and shoulder feeling particularly sore. The reason for his discomfort became obvious as he woke and realized what an awful position he was in, curled up on his side on cold, uneven stone that most certainly wasn't his bed, his body pressed back against something hard... He was disoriented for a moment as tried to comprehend the unusual circumstances in which he was waking.
Nearly every morning since the age of nine, he'd woken up in his bedroom in Lotus Pier; it was something he'd become accustomed to, and this certainly wasn't that. His thoughts were groggy and slow to get moving as he tried to take in the unfamiliar smell in his nostrils, his eyes cracking open to see sunlight shining down over the greenery-covered courtyard and...
The events of the previous day came rushing back to him. Leaving his sister safely behind in the woods, exploring the courtyard, and then finally his... experience the previous evening with the Prince. He felt his face flushing as his hand patted over the front of his pants, finding nothing out of the ordinary beside a slight crust of his own come inside the fabric, which was more than enough proof for him that last night had been no dream and that... that he'd survived.
He was alive.
A flood of relief washed over him--he didn't fully understand why he was alive when no maiden had ever returned from this place and everyone seemed absolutely certain their lives were forfeited when they were sent here, but... somehow, he was , and he couldn't help but feel grateful for it.
When he tried to move though... it wasn't just that he felt stiff; he felt exhausted. He'd fallen asleep not long after sunset and judging by the sliver of shadows cast by the stone relics in the courtyard, it was nearly midday, but... despite the fact that he slept far longer than he was used to sleeping, his body felt heavy and sluggish. When he tried to push himself upright, his arms gave out on him, and he quickly crumpled back down to the stone, feeling almost winded by the slight exertion.
When he closed his eyes and focused inwards... he could feel the imbalance of his qi, could feel how depleted it was, like he'd spent the last two days on non-stop night hunts, and... well, he supposed that explained it. There was, at least, some truth to the stories then, to the notion that the Prince fed on qi, because Wei Wuxian had no other explanation for what might have drained his qi so terribly besides his exchange with the Prince the previous night.
Wei Wuxian huffed out a breath and carefully adjusted himself into a more comfortable position. He spent the rest of the morning and a good chunk of the early afternoon meditating on and off (it wasn't his favorite thing to do and he found it hard to focus on it for long stretches of time), letting himself recover little by little, until the exhaustion was mostly gone.
At that point, he pushed himself upright, stretching his arms over his head and his legs out in front of him as he wondered what he should do next. He shouldn't... well, he shouldn't just go home, should he? Part of him felt like maybe the fact that he was alive meant his job here wasn't done, while another part worried that if he went back before he was sure he was done here, it'd reveal what he'd done to save his sister, and that she'd be dragged from the safety of her fiancé's home so that she could be sacrificed properly...
No, it was definitely best to stay at the palace, at least for now.
It didn't take long for him to realize how hungry he was after how little he'd eaten the day before, and he was quickly left bemoaning the fact that he hadn't packed himself anything else to eat (to be fair he hadn't expected he'd need more than a days worth of food), and since there didn't seem to be anything blatantly edible within the walls of the palace...
His only choice seemed to be to venture into the forest.
After he'd worked most of the stiffness from his body, he pushed himself to his feet, turning back to look at the vine-covered door behind him with a slight frown before asking, "Am I allowed to leave?"
He... felt a bit ridiculous, asking for permission, but it also seemed like a reasonable thing to do, since he had technically come to forfeit himself to the Prince--but even after waiting for a long moment, nothing answered him.
"What, are you not gonna talk to me now?" he tried, a little louder than before, as if volume was the only thing stopping the Prince from responding to him. "You didn't seem to have a problem with it last night."
Still, there was no reply, and he had no way of knowing if it was because his question hadn't been heard, or if it just couldn't be answered. Well... either way, maybe he was better off asking for forgiveness, instead of permission. He shrugged lightly to himself and crossed the courtyard, heading back out through the gate and into the forest beyond to explore.
At a time like this, Wei Wuxian found himself almost grateful for his background. For the first few years of his life, his parents had lived as rogue cultivators. They had all together travelled from city to town to village to city, and some of that life had involved setting up shelter in the woods, hunting or fishing or foraging for whatever was edible, occasionally gathering extra to sell off in the next town they happened upon. After his parents had died, he'd then spent a few years on his own, putting those skills to the test; once he'd been taken to Lotus Pier by Jiang Fengmian, foraging and hunting wasn't something he'd needed to survive anymore, but... he'd never quite been able to give up his adventures into the forest, and so his survival skills had been kept more or less sharp.
It didn't take long for him to uncover a trove of safely edible mushrooms, and he spent a few minutes collecting them, eating some as he went to minimize his hunger and saving a pile for later, before moving on through the brush, taking in his surroundings, familiarizing himself with the stretch of woods he found himself in.
After a bit, he decided to follow the sounds of running water to the edge of a stream, and as he walked along the water's edge against the current, he soon found himself approaching the outer walls of the palace once more, though it was obvious this was the rear side of the palace. It didn't take very long to trace the water to its apparent source: a nearly crystal clear cold spring that Wei Wuxian quickly used to parch his straining thirst.
At the back of the palace walls was another elaborate gate, probably used in the Prince's time to access the spring, though it had met the fate of the many of the buildings inside, the roof completely collapsed in and the resulting wreckage overgrown with foliage far too thick for Wei Wuxian to hope to make his way through.
Before he could waste any more light, Wei Wuxian returned to one of the deeper areas of the stream and took a bit of time to carefully snatch a small carp from the water. He used the last couple hours of daylight to collect a bit of firewood, soon after returning to the palace, announcing to the empty courtyard, as if there was someone to hear it, "I'm back!"
By the time the sun was setting, Wei Wuxian had made a small fire in the middle of the courtyard. With the small knife he'd had strapped to his boot, he cleaned and cooked the fish he'd caught, finding it far from the worst dinner he'd managed to put together.
He sighed to himself as he ate, eyes dragging up towards the sliver of silver moonlight in the sky above as he let his thoughts wander through the strangeness of his circumstances. There was much about the situation that he didn't understand, that didn't fit in with the picture that had always been painted of this place, but the mystery that eluded him the most was....
For all the time he'd spent exploring the grounds of the palace the day before, he hadn't sensed the Prince. Wei Wuxian was nothing if not confident in his spiritual abilities, and he'd never had any trouble sensing these sorts of creatures before, but... even now, with the distinct knowledge that the Prince existed and was somewhere nearby, Wei Wuxian could feel... something, some miniscule amount of low level energy that seemed to cover all of the palace grounds, but he couldn't detect any notable increase or spike that might have been Prince's energy at all, which... was baffling to him. The Prince was supposed to be centuries old, his power should be immense, not... not completely undetectable. Wei Wuxian really didn't know what to make of it.
He finished his meal in relative silence, and though he probably could have eaten three more fish if he had them, he figured that was fine for now. Assuming he lived to another day, he'd have more time to catch fish, and maybe tomorrow he could even set up a trap for rabbits (he'd noticed tracks in the woods during his exploration earlier) and forage for berries. If it turned out he'd have to survive out here for a while, that would be the least of Wei Wuxian's concerns.
Not sure what else to do with himself once he'd finished eating, he strolled back up towards the large vine-covered door at the front of the long building, giving them a long, discerning look.
"So what now?" he asked aloud. "Do you need to feed again? How long am I supposed to stay here?"
Nope, still nothing, it seemed. Wei Wuxian frowned a bit, wondering if he'd ever get answers to all the questions he had about this, or if the answers even existed. The legend had been circulating for hundreds of years after all, and who was to say if there was any truth to it beyond the Prince feeding off of others' life force? There was a chance that the story told now was so wildly different from what had happened all that time ago that nothing Wei Wuxian had learned was accurate.
Wei Wuxian pressed his hand up against the door, trying to give it another nudge to see if he could get it moving, and he was just about to pull away when... when he noticed the movement of a small vine inching itself towards his hand. He froze, let it wrap around his wrist like it had the day before, and just a second later, he felt the Prince's intentions nudging up against his mind again, a nudge that seemed to answer at least one of his questions as the Prince confirmed something to the effect that he was hungry.
Strangely enough, the sentiment came off more like a question than a statement. The Prince wasn't just saying that he wanted to feed, but asking if Wei Wuxian was willing.
After last night, Wei Wuxian didn't see any reason to turn him down. He'd survived (which he still didn't understand), and he'd be lying to say he hadn't enjoyed it at all, in spite of how strange and slightly terrifying it had been. Besides, his purpose here was to feed the Prince, so even if he hadn't enjoyed it, he had a duty to fill.
"Yeah, that's fine," he agreed easily, feeling a little wave of approval in his head before the vine was tugging him down to the ground again.
Though something occurred to him as he was sitting down, settling back against the door and getting comfortable, and he asked, "Oh, do you need to be touching me to talk to me?"
Now and last night, both times one of the Prince's vines had been pressed up against his skin, and they were the only times the Prince had communicated with him.
The reply he felt told him he was right and Wei Wuxian smiled a little bit to himself as he watched the same leafy plant from the night before swing in and brush the oil from its leaf along his jaw once more--he wasn't fully sure he needed it as he didn't feel nearly so tense as he had the previous night, but... the warm feeling washed over him again, and he couldn't find a reason to protest it; it really did feel like sinking down into a nice hot bath or waking up wrapped in a heavy blanket on a cold morning, the epitome of comfort.
He closed his eyes, letting out a breath as he felt the vine creeping across his lap just like the night before, rubbing up against his cock until it started to harden, until it eventually slipped inside his robes to stroke him just as carefully. With some of the shock gone, Wei Wuxian felt like it was easier to focus on the pleasure, easier to relax and let the Prince lead him down this path at whatever pace he wanted...
Eventually, the pleasure began its plateau, his breath started to catch as the vine stroked him quicker and--he hummed out an eager moan as he came in the Prince's grasp.
The exhaustion didn't slam into him nearly as quickly this time. He was awake long enough to feel the vine unwinding itself from around him, and long enough to slide down onto his side in a more comfortable position before he finally passed out.
~~~
When he woke up the next morning, he felt that same stiffness, that same exhaustion... but it took hardly half the meditation time before he felt recovered, and by midday, he was up and about, gathering bits of wood to burn later or carve for traps that he took into the woods to find some heavy enough rocks and the best places to set them. Afterwards, he headed back toward the spring to drink some water, and washed the mess out of his pants a bit further downstream before taking some time to wrangle himself another, bigger fish for dinner.
By that third night, after approaching the door and being asked again by the Prince for sustenance, he couldn't help but ask, "I'm not doing something wrong, am I?"
It was a fear that had just occurred to him earlier that day. Did the Prince's prey need to die to feed him and save all the villages around the forest? If Wei Wuxian wasn't dying, was there some reason for it? Was his cultivation too high, was he doing something subconscious to keep the Prince from taking all of his qi? And if that was the case, would the officials in charge of keeping track of how the crops were growing figure out something was wrong and investigate? The last thing he wanted was for his plot (and his sister) to be discovered, so he figured it was worth asking. "Is this supposed to be killing me?"
The immediate response he got through the connection was once of indignancy, like the Prince was actually offended to be asked that, or maybe more so, he was offended that Wei Wuxian would think he was trying to kill him.
"Sorry, sorry," he apologized quickly, not having meant to cause offense. "It's just that... none of the girls that have been sent here seem to come back, so... everyone just thinks that they were killed here."
The ideas he felt through their link were... jumbled at best and impossible to decipher completely. Wei Wuxian could pick out something like confusion, like the Prince couldn't understand where that thought had come from, but anything more than that was far too complicated without any language to clear it up.
After that night, Wei Wuxian dropped the notion that he was going to die here, or at least that he would die because of the Prince, and focused instead on how best to make his life here in the palace comfortable, at least for a while.
Wei Wuxian didn't have a hard timeline on how long he would stay. He didn't know when it might be safe to return to Lotus Pier, if ever. He wasn't naïve enough to think what he'd done would never be discovered, but... if his contributions were keeping the Prince fed, and keeping hidden the secret of Jiang Yanli's escape, then he was accomplishing everything he set out to do here, and it seemed that staying for at least a month or two would be his best bet.
~~~
As the days passed, he found himself a bit disappointed not to have his sword (so that he might be able to keep up with practice), but... his time spent in and around the palace was hardly boring. Everyday, he'd make the rounds through the woods to check his traps for prey, he'd find some more mushrooms or wild onions or berries to gather and supplement his main meals of fish or rabbit or pheasant. He spent one day carving a spear to make fishing a bit easier; he spent another hauling a couple of the intact clay pots to the spring to clean and fill with fresh water to keep in the courtyard in case it was needed.
And at the end of each day, he would approach the closed door and invite the Prince to feed on him.
Over the first few days, Wei Wuxian felt a gradual decrease in his exhaustion the following morning, until he only felt a bit more tired than usual when he woke up. By the end of the first week, he felt comfortable enough with being touched that he brushed away that vine with the relaxing oil the Prince had been using on him, not really feeling like he needed to be drugged to be comfortable with the Prince touching him anymore.
By the end of the second week, as the day's warmth dragged later into the evening, he was more willingly opening up his robes, pushing his pants down to give his skin open air to cool off, and... finding the sight of the vine stroking him to be breathtakingly erotic. Just feeling it work had given him some plausible deniability in thinking about what was happening but... there was a sort of breathless arousal in watching the vine curl around him, watching the coils tighten and loosen as they rubbed up and down the shaft, watched the delicate movements of it tightening around the head and rubbing against the tip of his cock--he was so transfixed by the oddity and wonder of it that he came far quicker than he expected, only for the Prince to keep touching him until he'd gotten hard and eventually had to come all over again.
After he'd been there for just over a month and had settled into a pretty comfortable routine, he was offering himself up to the Prince on an evening just like any other. He'd gotten overheated rather quickly, so the top of his robes were already sprawled open, his pants pushed down to his thighs. The more time that had gone on, the more the Prince had started to experiment--and in the last few days, he'd started using more vines at once. Currently, one was wrapped around his cock, stroking him as skillfully as it ever did, another had wound itself into a neat cradle around his balls and was gently squeezing them on and off, while yet a third tiny vine had brushed across his chest to wrap tightly around his nipple.
It was the first time the Prince had touched him in all three places at once, and Wei Wuxian was seeing stars. He was gasping for air, his head spinning as his low moans echoed out across the open courtyard. He hadn't even realized how sensitive his nipples were until the Prince had starting touching them a few days earlier, and now he was in a stupor over how each little tug or twist just added to the heat building beneath his skin. His fingers were buried deep in the twisting vines surrounding him, his hips rocking because he couldn't keep them still, and the Prince kept dragging him along, touching him in that purposeful, deliberate way until Wei Wuxian was left feeling almost entirely strung out, his thoughts so clouded over with the approaching orgasm that it was hard to even remember the oddness of the fact that he was being groped by a plant spirit.
His toes started to curl in his boots as the vine around his cock stroked him quicker, harder, touching him a bit more roughly because he'd surely realized by now that Wei Wuxian liked being touched like that. Wei Wuxian gasped his way through a few sharp breaths before the orgasm slammed into him, and he released with sharp keen.
He was left panting heavily, wondering vaguely if that was the best orgasm he'd ever managed to have, when--
"Wei Ying."
Wei Wuxian jumped, his eyes snapping open in spite of the swelling exhaustion that always followed one of these sessions. His eyes swept the courtyard, but of course, there was no one around, no one that he could see, "What..." he gasped, using all of his strength to try to fight back the need to pass out for a moment longer, "What was that?"
The voice, gentle and low and surprisingly piercing, repeated, "Wei Ying."
Before Wei Wuxian could even attempt to ask another question, his mind forfeited itself to sleep.