It hit Wei Ying like a brick to the face, and he had the unfortunate experience of knowing how that felt. He sat up, his eyes wild, as his black dizi floated over to him on a wave of black smoke.

He leaned over and switched on the light, his eyes darting around their bedroom looking for the source of the disturbance, that cold tendril of power that had followed him through the centuries. The one thing as the world changed that never left him.

Demonic Cultivation.

It always called to Wei Ying like a siren song, but now instead of a whisper in his ears that he had learned to ignore, it was now shouting to him of a new dark power.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan’s deep voice called, breaking him out of his thoughts. A comforting hand landed on his shoulder, and he melted into his husband’s touch.

“What’s wrong?”

“Something has changed,” said Wei Ying. “I can feel it, but I don’t understand how or why.”

“Hmm,” Lan Zhan replied, but Wei Ying could pick up the worry in his voice. There was a long beat of silence and then softer. “Dangerous?”

Wei Ying grabbed his dizi and blew a few notes to try to figure out what was going on. He saw black smoke rise around him; his eyes were probably glowing red as he tried to hear what the resentful spirits had to say. However, he only got whispers of a “new master.”

“A new master,” Wei Ying hummed, tapping his dizi against his chin thoughtfully.

“A new master of demonic cultivation?” Lan Zhan asked, confused.

“I don’t know,” Wei Ying finally said with a frown. “Something has changed for the first time in centuries, but what I do know is that it has something to do with death.”

Lan Zhan was silent, but Wei Ying had known his husband long enough to be able to translate his long silences. Lan Zhan didn’t know what to think. Lan Zhan and Wei Ying have been together for thousands of years, long before even the creation of the United States.

In America they had new lives. Lan Zhan with his veterinary practice and Wei Ying chaotically influencing young lives as a kindergarten teacher. For centuries, except for a few disturbances, their life had largely become mundane.

The time for cultivation had largely passed; the five kingdoms, or what the West refers to as China, still had a few cultivation sects operating in secret. With the rise of Christianity and subsequent witch hunts, most magical people from around the world were forced to hide in order to survive.

Lan Zhan, Wei Ying, Jiang Yanli, Jiang Cheng, Wen Ning, Nie Huaisang, Wei Qing, Jin Ling, Lan Xichen, Lan Jingyi, and Lan Sizhui had all achieved immortality. No one understood why or how because it didn’t make sense even with cultivation. But they had survived even when cultivation techniques had disappeared from public life.

The last demonic cultivator Wei Ying had battled had been in 1392 in Gansu but now there was a rise of something that reminded him all too uncomfortably of demonic cultivation.

“We will wait and observe,” Lan finally said.

Wei Ying banished his dizi back to its holding case and laid back down. Lan Zhan pulled him into his arms and eventually fell back to sleep. But Wei Ying could only lay there and wonder at what changes this would bring.