Ten years. Fuck. Mingjue swears under his breath and squeezes the stuffing out of his brother, because that's long enough that he feels bad about it, that Huaisang had to suffer sect-leadership without him. No matter that he knows his death is approaching, already forewarned as he was even before hearing of the reality of it from people apparently from the future.

"A Xichen ten years earlier than you, from the sound of it," he tells Huaisang. "Which is—whatever deities run this place brought me right from the early days of Sunshot. You were barely sixteen. To see you like this—"

He lets out his breath. "You did good." Because that's all he'd have wanted his father to say if he'd ever had the chance to see him again. "With the sect, you did good. I never wanted to leave you alone with it."