"I don\'t feel any changes," Yao Shen says.

"Are you sure you were supposed to drink it?"

Yao Shen nods. "Yes, I\'m positive, Meng Po said so."

He turns the vial around in his hand, inspecting the engravings and its shape. It doesn\'t look any different than all the others he saw in Meng Po\'s house, but maybe there\'s something small he isn\'t noticing.

"Show me Yan Shuyi\'s vial."

Xin Hulei opens his closet doors and takes out a beautiful lacquered box. Inside it are three small drawers. He pulls open the first one, which has only enough space for Yan Shuyi\'s memory vial and a beautiful, white jade waist token.

The waist token catches Yao Shen\'s attention. The white silk tassels hanging from it are wrapped carefully around the jade ornament. Clearly Xin Hulei values it highly.

It sends a sour pang of jealousy through Yao Shen to see such a stark reminder of how much Xin Hulei still treasures his shizun.

Xin Hulei hands him the vial, and Yao Shen inspects it together with his own, side-by-side. "They\'re identical," he concludes, giving Xin Hulei Yan Shuyi\'s memory vial back.

"Could the contents have been altered?" Xin Hulei frowns. "We don\'t know if Yan Shuyi\'s memories are in his vial either."

"Have you found a way to look into them?"

Xin Hulei shakes his head. "There might be something at \'Hell on Earth\' that can help, but I\'m not sure I want to. It feels like a violation of shizun\'s privacy."

Yao Shen understands that, and he knew it was a possibility when he gave Xin Hulei the vial. Mostly, he wanted Xin Hulei to have something of Yan Shuyi\'s. Meng Po has so many memories already, maybe Xin Hulei could keep this one close to his heart.

That bitter tang of jealousy rises in the back of his throat, but Yao Shen swallows it back down. Whatever Xin Hulei can give him, Yao Shen will be happy with. He\'ll do his best to put all thoughts of Yan Shuyi out of his mind.

"I need to go back to Youdu," Yao Shen says with a sigh. "Maybe Meng Po knows something, as to why it isn\'t working."

"Maybe she\'s the one responsible," Xin Hulei suggests.

That seems unlikely to Yao Shen. Nothing about Meng Po struck him as dishonest. If she wanted to give Yao Shen a vial without his memories in it, she could just have given him any random vial and sent him on his way before he ever set eyes on the repository of memories.

"I\'ll go to see Xie Bian and Fan Wujiu first, then" Yao Shen says.

If there\'s something unusual going on, Fan Wujiu will know about it. Xie Bian is too self-absorbed to notice anything except the size of his own ego.

"I\'ll go with you."

Yao Shen smiles a little at the determined look in Xin Hulei\'s eyes. "I don\'t think that\'s a good idea. Not yet."

Xin Hulei opens his mouth to argue, but Yao Shen silences him with a kiss.

"I\'ll come right back if something goes wrong."

After some coaxing, Xin Hulei relents.

They go back to Yao Shen\'s apartment, where he changes into some of his own clothes. He tries to get in touch with either Xie Bian or Fan Wujiu via the two-way mirror, but doesn\'t get an answer from them.

Xin Hulei thinks that\'s a bad sign. "They aren\'t saying anything."

"Maybe they aren\'t close to the mirror? It isn\'t like a mobile phone you know? It\'s not portable."

Xin Hulei gives him an unimpressed look, but doesn\'t argue any further.

Yao Shen opens a doorway directly into Wuji\'s pavilion courtyard through his bathroom door.

He kisses Xin Hulei one last time, promising to return soon, and steps through into Youdu.

---

The courtyard looks no different than the last time he was there. He tries calling for Fan Wujiu and Xie Bian, but gets no answer.

Inside the pavilion everything looks the same too, except there are no signs of the two Impermanences anywhere.

Yao Shen is about to walk out the pavilion\'s main entrance when the doors slam shut, sending him reeling back several feet.

The fall leaves him disoriented. Once he gets back up to his feet he\'s no longer alone in the room.

"Dage, you\'ve made things hard for me again," Si Wang says.

Yao Shen\'s mouth falls open. "Dage? How am I your dage?"

Is that a common form of address between the ghost kings? From what Yao Shen remembers it doesn\'t seem so.

Si Wang looks the same as all the other times he saw him. Clad in simple white robes, looking vaguely aggrieved. He has the look of someone who has just finished an argument and came out on the losing side.

His appearance is hard to pin down, he\'s attractive, but in an oddly pathetic way -- as if he can\'t receive a compliment without putting himself down immediately afterwards.

Si Wang takes out a clear glass vial out of his robe\'s sleeve pocket. "If you had taken the right memories maybe you would have known the answer by now."

Yao Shen reaches for the vial but Si Wang snatches it back effortlessly.

"What the fuck do you want?"

Si Wang\'s slender eyebrows droop down over his clear eyes. "Dage, you never used to swear like that, but then again, you aren\'t really you." His features shift, arranging themselves into an arrogant mask. "I can see into your mind, I can see just how different you are from my dage, despite having his soul."

Yao Shen looks towards the window behind Si Wang, wondering if he can disorient him somehow and make his escape through there.

Anticipating his thoughts, Si Wang twists his fingers and makes all the wooden shutters slam shut with a bang. "Dage, you should know better than to underestimate me."

There\'s something manic about Si Wang\'s sad smile. Yao Shen steps a few paces away from him, trying to keep some distance between them.

"Where are Xie Bian and Fan Wujiu?" Yao Shen asks, raising his voice, in the hope that the two Impermanences can hear him if they are still somewhere in the pavilion.

"I thought the two of us needed privacy for this."

"For what?"

Si Wang raises the glass vial again. "I couldn\'t let you get your memories back, not when there\'s some things I still want to know."

He frowns, and his expression grows grim. "Like why you chose that mongrel over me."

His tone of voice makes all the fine hairs on Yao Shen\'s arms stand on end. He has no idea what Si Wang is talking about, but maybe he should try to diffuse the situation.

"Ah, feelings are complicated, since I don\'t remember you it\'s not like I can love-"

Si Wang cuts him off with a loud growl, like a trapped animal raging against its jailer. "Of course you\'d think that\'s what it all comes down to!" His thin lips curl up in distaste, revealing a row of very straight teeth. "I was your closest confidant, the only one you could trust in the nest of vipers that was the Imperial Palace, and yet, you threw that all away because you fell in love!"

Yao Shen grows more confused the more Si Wang\'s inane raving goes on.

So he\'s not a stalker with a crush?

"I don\'t know what you\'re talking about." He looks towards the windows and doors, trying to gauge the quickest way to make the fastest exit.

Si Wang notices his roving gaze and moves towards a low table in the centre of the room. On top of the table a spinning lantern, the kind that projects images onto walls, is already lit, casting motionless shapes onto the far walls -- too distant for Yao Shen to distinguish the images.

"Why should love trump loyalty? Familial devotion?" Si Wang pulls back his sleeve so that Yao Shen can watch him unstopper the vial containing his memories.

He tilts the small glass vial over the burning lantern.

Yao Shen shouts, reaching towards him. "What are you doing?"

He can\'t let anything happen to his memories. He needs to understand the events that led him to become a ghost king.

"Are you afraid I\'ll get rid of them, Dage?" He shakes his head, a frown of dismay twisting his eyebrows. "I would never do that, I want you to remember just how you let me down, and I want to know what was so great that you thought it was worth throwing years of friendship and devotion away."

Yao Shen lunges towards him trying to grab the vial off his hand, but he isn\'t fast enough.

He can only watch helplessly as Si Wang drops the contents of the vial inside the lantern\'s open flame. A wave of oppressive, fragrant smoke rises through the room, at the same time the lantern starts spinning and the forms on the wall shift shapes.

As the figures\' dark shadows grow, Yao Shen\'s vision dims, until the shadows from the lantern are all he can see.