Reading Time: 98 Minutes

Title: Lord of the Yiling Peak
Author: MeyariMcFarland
Fandom: MDZS/The Untamed
Genre: Crossover, Drama, Fantasy, Hurt/Comfort, Paranormal/Supernatural, Romance, Suspense
Relationship(s): Lan Zhan / Wei Ying
Content Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Rape/Non-con/Dub-con, Torture, Violence-Graphic, child sexual abuse (discussion of), canon war and aftermath, human sacrifice, murder
Author Note: While this story is a crossover between MDZS and SVSS, the body of the story is focused on MDZS. Four key characters show up in end notes on each chapter, sort of like the chorus in Greek plays. I changed Wei Wuxian / Wei Ying quite a bit too, which will become clear in the story as he comes into his heritage. Other than that, most of the really horrible things happen off-screen and in the past, though some truly terrible things are discussed. Mind the warnings, please, and take care of yourself.
Word Count: 103,065
Summary: It could have started as the rain poured down on them all, washing away blood and stirring up mud as Lan Zhan stood their sad and noble in the darkness of the night. It didn’t. It started when Wei Ying was a kid on the streets of Yiling. It started when Madame Yu beat him with Zidian and left him bleeding through his torn clothes. It started when Wen Chao threw him off his sword and down into the swirling wails of torment that was the Burial Mounds. Qiongqi Path was just the point where Wei Ying finally followed the path he’d been offered years before.
Artist: Spennig Aisling

---

---

12. Lavender Gauze

Six days.

Not a really long time, when you looked at the big picture. Not long at all. Six days was nothing. Barely even a blink.

Jiang Cheng kept his expression normal, just his ordinary scowl as he strode through Jinlintai at his normal “get out of my way” stomping speed, heading for the rooms the Jiang had been assigned just like a normal, ordinary average day.

Six days after Lan Wangji completely and totally disappeared.

Six days after the last time anyone, Lan or otherwise, had seen the Jianghu’s most rigid, uncompromising asshole who was as steady as the mountain he’d grown up on, and as stubborn as granite blocks.

Jiang Cheng forced his hands to unclench. Refused to let Zidian spark. Stomped his way to A-Jie’s quarters and then scowled just like he always did so that her Jin-assigned maids all went pale and scurried out, just as they always did.

Jiang Qishi, A-Jie’s Jiang maid, straightened up and glared right back at Jiang Cheng which only showed how much superior she was to everyone Jin.

“A-Cheng?” A-Jie asked because of course she saw straight through him. She always did. “What’s wrong?”

“Just how much do you want to marry the peacock, A-Jie?” Jiang Cheng asked before flopping on the cushion next to her.

He waved off the silent offer of tea and then nodded when Jiang Qishi made a tentative motion towards sitting on A-Jie’s other side. Both of them studied him silently. Eventually, about ten thousand hammering heartbeats later, A-Jie bit her bottom lip.

“Why?” A-Jie asked so softly that even sitting right next to her Jiang Cheng barely heard her.

“Just came from talking to Lan Xichen,” Jiang Cheng said just as quietly. “He’s panicking. No one has seen or heard from Lan Wangji in six days. No sightings. No stories. He visited Yiling, talked to Elder Entai. You know, bent double, fierce, almost cut off Wen Ruohan’s cock when she was young?”

A-Jie grinned. “How could one not remember Elder Entai?”

Even with the worry building into a fierce need to kill his way out of Koi Tower with A-Jie and all of the Jiang on his heels, Jiang Cheng grinned back at A-Jie. The Jianghu might claim that Yiling was Jiang territory, but the Jiang all knew different.

Yiling belonged to Elder Entai, and she was happy to stab or to beat up anyone who dared to disagree.

“She saw him,” Jiang Cheng said, going serious again. “Lan Wangji talked to her, then went with one of the Cho boys to see where Wei Wuxian’s blood trail disappeared when he was little. They saw him patrolling the outer edges of the Burial Mounds. Then he was gone. No one, anywhere, has seen him since.”

A-Jie stilled. She nodded, a sharp little jerk of her head as she smoothed her lavender gauze robes down over her thighs with shaking fingers. Then she stared into space completely blank-faced before her shoulders dropped a finger’s width.

“I’ve… been reconsidering,” A-Jie admitted.

Jiang Cheng blinked at her. So did Jiang Qishi who put a tentative hand on A-Jie’s forearm. A-Jie patted her hand, automatic smile appearing and then disappearing as A-Jie continued to stare at nothing.

No, not at nothing. She was staring at the chest full of gifts from Madame Jin. Not from Jin Zixuan. His gifts were always awkward and terribly made because the idiot kept trying to do it all himself in some fit of misguided enthusiasm. It was almost endearing.

Almost.

The gifts from Madame Jin were all perfectly appropriate courting gifts that’d been coated in gold or made of the most expensive and tasteless shit possible. Not one of them was anything more than throwing money around to prove to A-Jie that she’d be mistress of Koi Tower and thus in control of a very large budget.

While dodging Jin Guangshan’s lewd comments and groping. And dealing with Jin Zixun’s idiocy.

“We can go home,” Jiang Cheng suggested. “Just pack our shit up and leave. We should. We’ve already been here way longer than we intended what with the bullshit Wei Wuxian pulled.”

“Mm,” A-Jie said, distant and blank until she wasn’t.

She nodded again, this time a sharp, decisive nod, and clapped her hands. “Qishi, get everyone packed. A-Cheng, if you would bring that chest for me, I would appreciate it.”

“Of course, A-Jie,” Jiang Cheng said. “What are you going to do?”

“Return them,” A-Jie said with a wry little smile that didn’t hide her shaking fingers or her pale cheeks. “I can’t, A-Cheng. I can’t stay here. I can’t become a Jin when they talk about our brother that way. I thought… well. It doesn’t matter. Jin Zixuan is trying but it will be decades before he changes the Jin Sect enough for it to be safe here.”

There wasn’t much he could say to that, so Jiang Cheng walked silently behind A-Jie with the chest full of gaudy courting gifts. Jin Guangshan looked appalled when they marched in with all the Jiang on their heels. His uncle, Jin Ruotian, kept a grip on Jin Guangshan’s shoulder that was firm enough to keep him on his throne instead of charging over to bully A-Jie into staying.

Madame Jin looked bleakly unsurprised.

“J-Jiang Yanli?” Jin Zixuan said, heart in his eyes and pale as a ghost.

“I am afraid that I must return these to you, Jin Zixuan,” Jiang Yanli said so gently that Jin Zixuan just shut his eyes as his shoulders slumped.

“…Of course,” Jin Zixuan said. “Thank you for considering my suite for as long as you did.”

“You–!” Jin Guangshan spluttered only to start at the sharp glare from Jin Zixuan.

“Don’t,” Jin Zixuan said.

The staring match between father and son held everyone in the room silent. Breathless because no one dared to so much as breathe until Jin Guangshan scowled and turned to glare at his wife who had a knife in her hand that she tested against her fingertips while glaring right back at him.

“I hope that you have good weather for your trip home,” Jin Zixuan said.

“Thank you,” A-Jie replied.

At her nod, Jiang Cheng gave the chest of gaudy crap back to Jin Zixuan who took it like it was his own coffin and he was ready to climb right into it. Off on the left, Nie Mingjue had his “not sure what you think you’re up to” scowl on even though Nie Huaisang stood at his side with a serious expression and his fan folded in his hand.

Next to them, Lan Xichen didn’t show much of his worry, but there was a faintly flustered air about him as if he couldn’t figure out why anyone would be doing anything but looking for Lan Wangji.

“Thank you for your hospitality, Sect Leader Jin,” Jiang Cheng said.

He aimed for properly bland, but he ended up at “fuck you, I’m so glad to be leaving this crappy place.”

Jin Guangshan just grunted and flipped a hand in their direction. It was, literally, the most insulting way he could have dismissed a fellow sect leader. Only A-Jie’s hand on his arm kept Zidian from flaring bright and “reminding” Jin Guangshan that he wasn’t the only sect leader there. And, fine, Jin Zixuan’s quiet dismay at his father’s behavior helped, too.

Jiang Cheng nodded back and then turned on his heel to walk out with A-Jie holding her head high by his side. Thank fuck. His people marched in amazingly good formation behind him. It wasn’t something they’d ever practiced so the close formation they achieved was pretty darn good.

Intimidating, if the expressions on the other sect leaders’ faces was anything to judge by.

Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen followed them out and down the stupid stairs.

“We need you here,” Nie Mingjue rumbled as if lowering a bellow to a rumble made it a whisper.

Jiang Cheng stared at him until his mustache twitched and then raised an eyebrow. “No, you fucking don’t. My brother is missing. His brother is missing. Sitting here in this shitty gold-plated snake pit is doing nothing for finding either of them. Stay and play Jin Guangshan’s game if you want, but we’re going home. I have a sect to run.”

From the wrinkle that appeared between Nie Mingjue’s eyebrows, that wasn’t the response that he expected. Lan Xichen breathed a shaky laugh as he bobbed his head to Jiang Cheng in agreement.

“We can’t keep them under control if we’re not here,” Nie Mingjue replied.

“We can’t keep them under control, period,” Jiang Cheng countered. “Put the old asshole on trial. Lop his head off. Do something besides let him talk and buy time for his plots and schemes. I still have a sect to run. I still have a brother to find. If you get something solid, call me and I’ll come back. Until then, we’re going home.”

Nie Mingjue rubbed his forehead like Jiang Cheng had just given him a massive headache.

“If you find…” Lan Xichen started and then trailed off as if he couldn’t even say his brother’s name.

“I’ll call,” Jiang Cheng promised. He sighed and rolled his eyes. “They’re probably together. Those two have been joined at the hip since the lectures, gross as that is. If you hear anything, let us know.”

“I will,” Lan Xichen promised a great deal more firmly than Jiang Cheng expected. “And… well. You’re not wrong. I’ve left running of the Lan to Uncle for far too long.”

“We’re just going to let him get away with this?” Nie Mingjue demanded. Surprisingly, he didn’t look incensed. He just looked tired and frustrated.

“Get away with what?” Jiang Cheng drawled. “The Wen are gone. The guards the Jin had in place have been either disappeared, killed, or arrested. Every single sect leader in the Jianghu is aware that Jin Guangshan is setting himself up to be Chief Cultivator without a vote. His own family is turning against him as we speak. You can’t tell me that Madame Jin isn’t in there ripping strips off his hide for scaring A-Jie away.”

A-Jie laughed, drawing all their attention her direction. Her lips smiled even though her eyes were very cold.

“Sect Leader Nie,” A-Jie said in her softest, kindest, most implacably commanding voice, “I think that it is time for all of us to return home. After all, here we are under Jin Guangshan’s roof and on his territory. It is appropriate to return to our places of strength.”

The way she emphasized “strength” had Lan Xichen straightening a little bit more and Nie Mingjue sucking a breath between his teeth. Jiang Cheng smiled at her proudly. That was A-Jie. Always finding a way to get things through to people, no matter how little they wanted to listen.

Nie Mingjue sighed. “Fine. You’re right. I just hate the idea of letting him scheme without someone here to watch.”

“Well,” A-Jie said, dimples appearing as her smile went very, very real, “Jin Zixuan is in need of a wife again. Perhaps you can… suggest certain female disciples come and see if he’s interested. With appropriate chaperones, of course.”

Lan Xichen’s wrist came up so fast to hide his startled laughter that it was like he hadn’t moved at all. Next to him, Nie Mingjue blinked and then he bellowed a laugh.

“A very good suggestion, young Mistress Jiang,” Nie Mingjue said, grinning at her. “Safe travels. I’ll contact you if we learn anything, Sect Leader Jiang.”

They went through the motions of proper departures and then they were all in the air, A-Jie riding on Jiang Cheng’s sword because he would be damned if this trip took one instant longer than it had to. They were going home.

And then he was going to do everything in his power to find Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, no matter how long it took.

If the back of his mind was filled with Father’s stories of searching endlessly and fruitlessly for Wei Wuxian for three long years, well, that was only logical. Hopefully it wouldn’t take years before Wei Wuxian appeared again.

Hopefully.

#

In the Demon Realm, in Shen Qingqiu’s workshop:

SQQ: Seriously, why did he bring me this? It’s shattered. Shattered! There’s no way to fix it.

LBH: It really is a mess, Shizun. Why did Shang Qinghua even bring this to you? You have dozens of guqin that are of much higher quality.

SQQ: …true. But this is Lan Wangji’s guqin.

LBH: …was. Was his guqin. Shizun, I know you’re amazingly gifted, but the tonal quality will be horrible. It’s not just that the top and bottom pieces were separated. The slabs are splintered. There’s a crack right through the sound board and the tightening pins were chewed on.

SQQ, staring at the guqin while absentmindedly gnawing on a thumbnail: True. But… Do we still have some of that Bloodberry vine? What about the ox demon glue? If I splice in some of the vine and glue it carefully, it might work. Worth a try.

LBH, staring at SQQ with loving dismay in his eyes: I’ll go see what we have in stock, Shizun. Write up a plan while I check. Whatever you need, I’ll make sure you get it.

SQQ: Of course, of course *already deep into planning mode to save LWJ’s precious guqin, just because LWJ is in love with WWX*

13. Hidden Sect

Twenty days after he arrived, Wei Ying finally got to escort Lan Zhan back to Qing Jin peak. It’d only taken eight days before Wei Qing declared Lan Zhan healed enough to move around relatively freely. Lan Zhan had sighed with relief and then drifted along after Wei Ying like a bamboo fairy.

He’d helped Wei Ying catalog all the types of potatoes they had to eat. He’d smiled sadly and quietly played a borrowed guqin for the children in the evenings without every saying what happened to his guqin Wangji. He’d tried every food that Popo thrust at him and nodded approval for quite a few of them despite Popo loving spice nearly as much as Wei Ying did.

They’d not gotten back to Qing Jing.

Whatever peak they ended up on after night fell was where they slept. Wei Ying hadn’t explored this much since he was a little kid. It was way more fun with Lan Zhan by his side.

Though they did have Snake-gege slithering along at their heels like an especially large chaperone.

“You know you don’t have to escort us all the way back, Snake-gege,” Wei Ying tried for the eighteenth time since they’d started heading to Qing Jing. “It’s perfectly safe. We can make the trip without problems.”

Snake-gege managed to look both amused and disappointed in Wei Ying at the same time. All without his face moving at all. It was something about the way the slits of his eyes narrowed and the flick of his tongue.

He did, obviously, continue to follow them across the rainbow bridge. Just sadly judgmental about it instead of quietly insistent.

“Fine,” Wei Ying sighed like he was younger than A-Yuan. “Be that way. Don’t let Lan Zhan and I have a single moment alone.”

“Wei Ying.” Lan Zhan’s eyes wrinkled at the corners in one of this tiny little smiles that didn’t show unless you paid very close attention.

“Ah, let me pout, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying said, grinning at the way Snake-gege flicked his tongue out to tickle Wei Ying’s neck and the way Lan Zhan’s eyes smiled even harder.

As if he could actually pout when faced with Lan Zhan’s tiny smiles and Snake-gege tickling his neck every time Wei Ying turned around. Though, really, there wasn’t a point to trying to get Lan Zhan alone. You know, since everyone Wei Ying loved (other than Jiang Cheng and Shijie) were right here. Adding another person he loved to the group was nothing.

Except that Lan Zhan was going to have to leave soon.

He was.

Lan Zhan was all healed up. The bites had been eased away between the strength of Lan Zhan’s core and Wei Qing’s expert treatment. His nightmares were pretty much gone too, due to Popo’s Heart’s Ease tea every night and a lot of meditation.

So yeah, Lan Zhan had to go home soon, and Wei Ying would miss him, but it was what it was. It just would’ve been nice to have a little time alone with Lan Zhan even if all they did was sit silently together and watch the clouds drifting between the peaks.

“All right,” Wei Ying said once the rainbow bridge deposited them on Qing Jing. “This is home! It’s the first peak I ever visited and my favorite of all of them. So peaceful. It’s lovely. Completely different from the Cloud Recesses but still really, really nice. My house is that one over there behind the bamboo. A-Yuan and Granny live with me. We’ve got people living in the dormitories over there.”

He pointed and Lan Zhan obligingly studied the different buildings with polite interest. Lan Zhan kept one hand lightly clenched behind his back. The other arm stayed partially bent because the sleeves on his borrowed white-and-green robes were, like, stupidly long. Half again as long as Lan Zhan’s arms though folding them up properly made for some really graceful sweeping sleeves every time Lan Zhan so much as breathed.

“Those buildings are all classrooms,” Wei Ying continued despite Popo marching up and shoving a bowl full of hearty fruit-topped congee in each of their hands. “There’s a workshop that’s apparently used to making and repairing instruments down that path, and then there’s a workshop for pottery down that one. The book manufacture and repair workshop is over that way, which is where the Great Library is.”

Lan Zhan promptly perked up. “Library?”

“It is so cool, Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying exclaimed around a too-big bite of congee. “I’ve had like no time to check it out and when I was younger, I didn’t understand enough characters to really read anything. Now that everyone’s settled, I’m hoping to spend oh, at least a year, if not more. You know, just exploring and reading everything I can get my hands on.”

“Hm,” Lan Zhan devoured his congee so fast that Wei Ying started snickering. The rule about not talking while eating hung in the air between them.

Wei Ying was super-hungry anyway, so he did the same, much to Popo’s eye-rolling amusement. Then they marched off to the library, leaving Snake-gege to play with the kids who all adored Snake-gege just as much as Wei Ying ever had.

The Great Library didn’t impress Lan Zhan. Unsurprising. The building it sat in appeared to be smaller than Wei Ying’s bamboo cottage, just two or three small rooms that a tall man could stride across in six or so paces. With Lan Zhan’s long legs and that “I’m Not Running” stride all Lans did when they needed to get somewhere in a hurry, it would probably take about five paces.

“This?” Lan Zhan asked as Wei Ying laid his hands on the elaborately carved double doors.

Birds and flowers twined with dragons and sweeping sprays of water underneath clouds shot through with beams of carved sun and moonlight. There wasn’t a single character carved into the heavy oak doors, but pretty much everything that had ever existed was carved somewhere on them.

“Yeah, this,” Wei Ying said as he pushed the doors open…

…to reveal an interior a hundred times larger and more complicated than the outside might have suggested.

A huge array had been inlaid into the marble floor at the entrance. Looking at it now, Wei Ying could see bits about folding space and time. He could see preservation spells and dust removal and some really amazingly strong humidity controls. There were hundreds more bits to the array that he’d never had a chance to explore or research.

Beyond it, grand curving staircases led up to higher floors and down into the mountain’s bedrock. There were meeting rooms to the left and right, a place off on the left with a desk that must once have held librarians who helped patrons find books. And who indubitably reshelved them once patrons were done with the books.

A huge wall hanging fluttered on the far right wall, going from the ceiling four stories up right down to the floor. It was a list. One that showed every single subject in the Great Library with a glyph next to it.

“That’s the index of what’s in the library,” Wei Ying said, pointing to the wall hanging. “Each glyph has at least a room full of books. Some of them have full wings. The library itself seems to shift around so that the things you’re looking for are closer than you’d think, unless you don’t have access to them. Then you can’t quite reach the proper rooms, or you’re redirected to a related room that you do have access to. Very annoying when I was younger, but it was probably a good thing.”

“It’s huge,” Lan Zhan whispered. His fingers trembled as he stared first at the array, then at the index, then at the stairs and all the many, many rooms that spread out behind them.

“Mm,” Wei Ying agreed. “Most of the stuff I’ve done that people don’t understand came from here. I mean, I get that everyone wants to call me a genius, but I didn’t invent most of it. I just, you know, learned it. And then couldn’t tell anyone.”

Lan Zhan huffed a little laugh. “Wei Ying is a genius. He would have to be to learn so much when he’d been taught so little.”

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying whined, partially because his cheeks burned with the force of his blush and partially because he enjoyed making Lan Zhan smile at him that way.

The array at the entrance shimmered as they walked across it. It seemed to assess them both and then, stunningly, it gave Wei Ying full access to the library. Wei Ying stumbled, clutching Lan Zhan’s arm as the sheer extent of knowledge now available to him echoed in his mind.

So much stuff. So much! He’d had no idea just how deep the library’s layers went. It connected… to so many places. To all libraries, maybe? At the very least, Wei Ying thought he could deliver Lan Zhan to the Cloud Recesses’ library just by walking him through the deeper, darker stacks for a while. The Nie library was there, too, as was the Jin, though it didn’t feel as useful as the Nie one.

Plus other libraries far away in time and space that Wei Ying decided out of sheer self-preservation to ignore until he had to deal with it.

One problem at a time. That was safer.

Lan Zhan glowed along with Wei Ying, but Wei Ying could feel that the deeper layers, the connections to other libraries, wasn’t granted to him. Most of the Great Library was open to him, though, so that was good.

“How…?” Lan Zhan asked, clinging to Wei Ying just as Wei Ying clung to him.

“I don’t know,” Wei Ying admitted ruefully. “It’s old. Ancient, even. And, well, libraries are just like that, you know?”

Lan Zhan laughed and nodded. “I do. This… This will take more than a lifetime to study, Wei Ying.”

“I know,” Wei Ying groaned. “I don’t know how I’ll ever get a handle on this. If you can stay a little longer and help me make a plan of what to study, that’d be amazing, Lan Zhan. I mean, I know you need to get back to Gusu soon, but another day or two would be nice.”

Lan Zhan frowned as Wei Ying pulled Lan Zhan over the array and into the first room off the stairs which had always been concerned with the things that Wei Ying most needed to know. Today it held stuff on wards, protective arrays and communication devices that could be used to communicate across great distances.

“Leave?” Lan Zhan asked, his frown going from confused to thunderous to ever so slightly hurt. “Wei Ying. Do you want me to leave?”

“What?” Wei Ying asked. “No! Of course not, Lan Zhan. I always love having you around. But you have your duty to the Lan and your brother must be worried sick about you.”

Lan Zhan briefly looking guilty but he still delicately, carefully, oh-so-gently took Wei Ying’s hands. “I said before. When you gave me these robes. I will stay here. With you, my zhiji.”

There was so much more in Lan Zhan’s eyes, whole worlds of promises and meaning that Wei Ying couldn’t allow himself to believe, especially with the Great Library shifting rooms around so that the next room held information on Lan courtship and marriage rituals as well as Heavenly Demon courtship and marriage for some unknown reason.

He couldn’t… mean that. Right?

“You… really want to stay here with me?” Wei Ying asked in the tiny voice he always tried not to let out because it revealed way too much about how he was really feeling. “With us?”

“Mm,” Lan Zhan confirmed. “Always want to stay with Wei Ying. Especially when worried about Wei Ying.”

Wei Ying groaned and then laughed because Lan Zhan’s lips quirked up in a mean little smile that Wei Ying probably totally deserved for all the fighting they did during the Sunshot Campaign. Not that he was going to admit it.

And not that he was going to show Lan Zhan the room full of courtship rituals next door, either.

“Well, if that’s what you want then I guess you’re staying,” Wei Ying said even though it came out in the too-soft, too-quiet voice. “We should try and figure out a way to send a message to your brother, so he knows you’re all right. I don’t want him fretting himself to pieces. You know he would.”

“…Mm,” Lan Zhan hummed with something like guilt in his eyes.

They set to work together going through the books that the Library had chosen for them. There were more books on arrays than Wei Ying had ever seen before, total. In his whole life. More books on communication devices, too, by several orders of magnitude. There was just… so much to learn but hey, he had Lan Zhan at his side, and it was safe.

It would work out. Hopefully. Somehow.

#

In the Demon Realm, in Shen Qingqiu’s workshop:

Shang Qinghua stares in fascination as Shen Qingqiu works on a smashed-and-patched-together guqin. Their respective husbands hover in the background, both of them half a second away from snatching the two of them away from each other.

SQQ hums as he puts the finishing touches on LWJ’s guqin Wangji: And that’s the last. We’ll let the glue and paint cure overnight under the stabilization array and then it will be done.

SQH: So it worked? Man, I’m shocked. I totally thought that it was toast.

SQQ, with a death glare that bounces right off SQH’s entire attitude: Must you?

SQH, with a tiny little grin of triumph that disappeared behind wide-eyed confusion so obviously fake as to be insulting: What? Must I what?

SQQ: *put-upon sigh* Never mind. We should be able to return it to him tomorrow. Maybe in another few days at the latest. I’ll want to verify that the vine is working well with the original portions of the guqin before we send it back.

SQH: *Puffs up in fake put-upon outrage* What’s this we? You’re not going to do anything. That’s all going to be me and my king.

LBH, muttering to MBJ: Not going to be either of them. None of us can set foot back on Qing Jing if we want the wards to stay secure.

MBJ, sighs and nods as the pointless little squabble escalates into accusations and threats to dismember each other, as if SQQ and SQH hadn’t become actual friends over the last few hundred years: …

LBH: I know. Wait until they get especially loud and then just haul him away. I’ll take care of Shizun.

MBJ: … (in a happier sort of silence that includes an almost smile of agreement)

14. Trembling Fingers

The Cloud Recesses always had a sense of calm about it, even when people rushed about trying to calm down visiting sect leaders like Madame Yu and Wen fucking Ruohan. Mingjue had always, even when he was young and visiting for the lectures, found it a bit… deceptive.

No one was as calm as the Lan tried to pretend they were. You didn’t create and follow literally three thousand rules if you were peaceful, calm and law-abiding. The Lan, every man, woman and child, were seething cauldrons of emotion that they’d been guilt-tripped into not showing. Not a one of them followed their rules because of a strong moral center. They did it because they didn’t want to get punished and not for any other reason.

Well. Maybe not Lan Zhan. But that kid had so strongly internalized that rules that Mingjue suspected that he recited them in his sleep. Xichen, as much as he tried to claim he worshipped the rules, only paid half-hearted, wistful attention to them and only when he was trying to find a way to argue people into doing what he wanted.

Made Xichen fabulously fun to take along on night hunts. Also made him deeply guilt-ridden when he couldn’t contort the rules enough to allow him to do whatever he wanted.

So it didn’t surprise him when Xichen’s hands shook ever so slightly during the proper and formal greeting of one sect leader visiting another.

Once the servants poured them a nice stout tea and left some deeply bland snacks for the two of them, Xichen’s hands shook like aspen leaves in a typhoon.

“Xichen,” Mingjue said as he gripped Xichen’s hands and tried to soothe him. “Calm down. Everything will be all right.”

“You really believe that?” Xichen said, voice shaking as hard as his hands couldn’t anymore. “It’s been twenty-nine days, Mingjue. Twenty-nine days since Wangji disappeared. There’s been no sign of him at all.”

Mingjue sighed as he set to work getting tea and snacks into Xichen’s belly. The man had no common sense sometimes. Not that Nie Mingjue was going to say that out loud, but really, if something had happened to Wangji, there would be a bloody trail for them to follow. That there was nothing at all meant that something weirder had happened.

Just like what always seemed to happen when Wei Wuxian got involved with anything. Weird things had happened when he was a kid. Weird things happened again when Jiang Fengmian found him. Weird things continued in how he healed up from Madame Yu’s abuse. Weird went right up into the clouds with the Burial Mounds, the Sunshot Campaign, the Wen during and after the war, and then there was now.

Weird all around; that was Wei Wuxian.

At least it wasn’t Mingjue’s brother who’d fallen head over heels in love with the man. Mingjue was pretty sure that he would’ve been handling it a thousand times worse if Huaisang was the one who’d gone off traipsing along after Wei Wuxian and all his insanity.

Once the tea had been drunk and the snacks were gone, Xichen’s shaking had subsided to faintly trembling fingers. Said more about his emotional upset than almost anything else could have that Xichen couldn’t completely control his physical reactions.

“All right, now that you’re not half-starved and dehydrated,” Mingjue said, completely ignoring Xichen’s reproachful look, “what’s gotten you so upset? Wangji has been gone on much longer night hunts than a mere thirty days. He fought an entire war without you right there at his shoulder.”

“But that was before the remaining Wen banded together to create a new sect,” Xichen protested as he started wringing his hands. “I’ve heard the news, Mingjue. They’re a danger to us all and my little brother is missing out there. He could have been captured, and I would have no idea of it.”

“Wait, what?” Mingjue spluttered. “New sect? What news? I’ve not heard a single thing about that.”

Xichen glowered at him. “Well, if you paid attention to what was going on outside of Qinghe you’d know what was happening.”

“…Where are you getting your information from?” Mingjue asked again, just this time warily instead of in flustered confusion.

Xichen didn’t answer, which meant that he was getting his information from Meng Yao, Jin Guangyao. Mingjue sighed and settled back on his heels to stare at Xichen in disappointment. Great. Looked like they finally had to have that conversation, no matter how hard Xichen had dodged it all this time.

“If your information is coming from Jin Guangyao, then you have to consider it as coming straight from Jin Guangshan who is not reliable,” Mingjue said. “I know you like him. I understand. I honestly do. He’s a very likeable person but you do not rank first with him, Xichen. You never, ever will.”

“You never give him a fair chance,” Xichen complained, hands still shaking but at least he had some color in his cheeks from the annoyance. “He’s our sworn brother!”

“Yeah, and brothers always rank below fathers in Jin Guangyao’s honor,” Mingjue said. He rolled his eyes at the way Xichen huffed and made to stand up. “No. Sit down right now. You’ve put off this discussion for entirely too long. We’re having it even if I have to get Lan Qiren in here to glare you into behaving.”

“What discussion?” Xichen snapped.

He was always so handsome when he finally allowed his temper free rein. It happened almost never. Mingjue could only remember one other time it’d happened and that had been when Wangji was running around biting people and throwing tantrums after their mother died. The Elders had decided that Wangji needed to be severely beaten, despite being all of six years old, and Xichen had all but lost his mind at them.

Even Lan Qiren had been surprised at the lecture Xichen read them.

“All right, let me explain my issue with Jin Guangyao,” Mingjue said. “Don’t assume you know. I know that you don’t. I just haven’t been willing to put up with the pissy-faced pouting and snarky comments until now.”

“I… I do not!” Xichen spluttered as his whole face went red. He went even redder when Mingjue just stared flatly at him. “Fine. I suppose I do pout a little bit. Sometimes. But only with justification.”

“Right,” Mingjue drawled. “Just listen. Meng Yao, back when he was Meng Yao, made it perfectly clear that filial piety was his highest virtue. He told us so when he joined the Nie. He repeated it many, many times. I asked him once which of his parents he valued more, and it took him almost a shichen to answer.”

“His mother,” Xichen said, frowning at Mingjue. His knuckles were white, no surprise given that his hands were clenched into shaking fists on his thighs.

“No,” Mingjue said with a sigh. “Meng Shi always insisted, from the time he was a baby, that his piety had to go first to his father. Yes, he honors her from the very bottom of his heart. I honestly wasn’t too surprised that he killed my captain during the war. The man was talking trash about Meng Shi behind my back and abusing Meng Yao, not that I found out about it until after I threw Meng Yao out.”

“His… father?” Xichen said, hands slowly relaxing.

“Yeah,” Mingjue sighed as he ran a finger over his mustache and then shook his head. “Jin Guangshan. Everything Meng Yao did among the Nie, everything he did during the war, everything he’s done after that has been to earn his father’s respect and love. It is the one and only thing that Jin Guangyao cares about. You know how he’s treated, Xichen. He willingly puts up with it, simply for the chance of pleasing that piece of shit.”

Xichen sat, still and silent, staring at Mingjue as if he couldn’t quite understand what Mingjue had said. Which, frankly, he might not. As smart as Xichen always was, he was terrible at fitting new bits of information into his world view when they contradicted his established understanding of the world.

Frankly, Mingjue expected that he was going to have to have this discussion about a dozen more times before Xichen allowed Jin Guangyao’s reverence for Jin Guangshan actually sink in.

“That doesn’t… mean that my information is false,” Xichen tried. He bit his lip. “I don’t think that A-Yao would lie to me.”

“Of course he would.” Mingjue snorted at the way Xichen reared back in horror. “Granted, he’s very good at “from a certain point of view”. The man’s brilliant and he can twist news around into knots when he wants to. All he has to do is imply and hint and bite his lip in that pretty little way he has that always makes you lose what little sense you have.”

“Mingjue!” Xichen squawked, swatting at Mingjue’s shoulder.

Mingjue grinned and ducked away from Xichen’s hand because Lan upper body strength was no joke. “Don’t even try to pretend you don’t fall all over yourself when he does it. I’ve teased you a thousand times about that.”

“I do not,” Xichen grumbled as he smoothed his robes over his thighs and blushed like they were teenagers again. “You’re exaggerating.”

“Sure I am,” Mingjue drawled and then laughed as he scooted well out of swatting range. “But really, Xichen. You cannot trust what Jin Guangyao tells you. Every single thing he says is calculated to make Jin Guangshan look good, to bring him power and to shore up his own position among the Jin. We’re his brothers, yes.”

“But Jin Guangshan is his father,” Xichen murmured.

He drooped like a wilting flower, which on Xichen meant that his shoulders dropped by a finger’s width and his eyes locked on the floor in front of his knees. It was like looking at a proud, well-trained hunting dog who knew that he’d let the prey escape.

“Exactly,” Mingjue agreed. “I know. You want to believe the best of Jin Guangyao. I do understand. But you have to remember that you’re second or third on his list. Jin Guangshan will always come first.”

“And we cannot ever trust Jin Guangshan.” Xichen sighed. “That… just how much of what I’ve been told is true?”

“Given the way you were talking, practically nothing,” Mingjue said. He shrugged off Xichen’s glare. “There’s no news at all of the Wen. No sightings of Wei Wuxian or Wangji. Every single sect in the Jianghu is looking. No one has found anything. They’ve disappeared without a trace. Maybe Wei Wuxian has created a new sect. I doubt it.”

“Why?” Xichen asked as he rubbed his hands together endlessly, stroking his thumbs as if they ached from performing for too long.

“Because Wei Wuxian would be the sect leader,” Mingjue drawled. “Can you imagine that? He’s brilliant but how is he going to handle all the paperwork, the negotiation, the tedious bits?”

For a moment, Xichen stared at Mingjue as if he was picturing it. Then he dissolved into shaky laughter that too soon turned into frustrated and worried tears. Mingjue held him through the storm, wishing that there was something he could do to help Xichen calm down.

Without a sign of life from Wangji, Xichen would go on fretting. Every day that passed gave Jin Guangyao more power in Xichen’s heart, simply because any news was better than no news, even if Xichen knew down deep that it was fake.

#

In the Demon Realm, by the mirror:

Luo Binghe: …Uh-oh.

SQQ: What? What? What’s wrong?

He comes in at a scrambling run only to freeze at LBH’s side as he realizes that Yiling is overrun by cultivators from the various sects.

SQQ: They can’t get in, right?

LBH, with a disgusted snort: Absolutely not. But they’re likely to set off the ward warnings again when they try to forge into the Burial Mounds. That will lure WWX and LWJ out.

SQQ, glaring at the mirror: No. Contact Zhuzhi-Lang. Let him know that he needs to get his snakes working to chase those idiots out of Yiling. Oh, and contact the Southern Demon clan, the mushroom one? The need to get the mushroom defenses active again. I won’t have them disturbing our boy, not when he’s barely gotten into the Library. He has far too much to learn.

LBH, with a bright, besotted smile: Of course, Shizun. Leave it to me. They won’t be there much longer.

LBH marches off as if the entire thing won’t make the Jianghu convinced that Wei Wuxian, the dread Yiling Patriarch, has stirred demonic monsters against them.

15. Ancient Mirrors

“So, this peak is Chuang Zao,” Wei Ying said as he and Lan Zhan strolled through the heavy stone buildings. “I never spent a lot of time here before. It always felt kind of… well, kind of like it was warning me away.”

Lan Zhan nodded as he studied the buildings. They were all big heavy buildings with stone walls a good five chi thick. Wei Ying had measured the walls, and they were thicker than he was tall. The insides of the buildings were separated by heavy iron-banded oak doors about as thick as Wei Ying’s forearm was long. The hinges were marvels. Even with such heavy doors, it only took light pressure to open or close the doors.

“Workshops here,” Wei Ying said, pointing towards the buildings that looked like they’d had generations worth of explosions going off around, in and over them. “Living quarters are off that way on the far side of the waterfall. I did see the waterwheel last time I was here. It’s enormous! About three zhang tall.”

“…How could they build something that tall?” Lan Zhan asked.

“No idea,” Wei Ying said, shrugging. “But it still works. It’s turning and everything. There’s a bunch of gears that aren’t engaged at the moment. I really want to get someone good with engineering in here to see what they do and if they’re still functional, but for now it’s free-spinning.”

They poked around the waterwheel for a while. Three and a half times taller than either of them, it was a marvel. Wei Ying didn’t know what they would’ve used it for but someday he was going to figure it out. Somehow. Maybe.

“Now this,” Wei Ying said once they were done poking at the waterwheel and getting wet from the waterfall’s spray, “is what I thought we should explore today. It’s a storehouse of some sort. Snake-gege never let me explore it before, but since he’s off doing whatever, we’re free to delve into it now.”

“Mm,” Lan Zhan agreed in that hopeful sort of way that meant he was really very curious to see what they might find.

And honestly, so was Wei Ying. Chuang Zao was supposed to be the artifact refining peak. They had to have all the cool stuff hidden away. Some of it might even work!

Having created a few things of his own, Wei Ying was well aware of the propensity of new artifacts and talismans to explode in interesting and terrifying ways. They took their time as they opened up the warehouse. It had a series of arrays that would direct you by way of glowing lines on the floor to the section that held what you wanted.

“Communication devices or cooking devices?” Wei Ying asked Lan Zhan.

“Communication,” Lan Zhan declared.

His ears went red when Wei Ying peered at him, but there was a hopeful feeling to his flat-faced stare that Wei Ying could only smile fondly at. Of course they should start with communication devices. Lan Zhan had to be worried about his brother, and Lan Xichen must be going half out of his mind worrying about Lan Zhan.

And Wei Ying did want to make sure that Jiang Cheng and Shijie were all right. So yeah. Communication devices it was.

The line led them around the edge of the massive shelving units. Just like the building, the cultivators of Chuang Zao had built their shelves of stone. Each device had its own little cubby that had arrays carved into the walls, the floor and ceiling. There was another array at the opening of the cubby that kept everything out, including Wei Ying’s poking fingers.

He didn’t poke too many times. Lan Zhan’s sadly-disappointed-in-you face rivaled both Wen Ning and A-Yuan’s.

In the far back of the warehouse, tucked into cubbies built into the wall of the building, there were mirrors. Silver and brass and what looked like gold for one of them; they were about the size of Wei Ying’s head for the most part, though there was one cubby that was as tall as Wei Ying and the mirror in that one was only a finger’s width shorter than he was.

“Communication mirrors?” Wei Ying asked as he puzzled out the very tiny, very terrible handwriting that decorated the front of the mirrors’ cubbies.

“I think… yes,” Lan Zhan murmured. “Though this character is an ancient one. It can mean “surveillance” instead.”

“Huh.” Wei Ying grunted as he puzzled over the scribbly old characters. “Well, I’ll take your word for that. I can’t make it out. Think we should pull one out and see what we can do with it?”

“Mm.”

They chose one of the silver mirrors since it had such beautifully clear reflections that it promised to give them equally clear views of whatever they managed to see. Disengaging the security array was easy enough. Unlike some of the others that Wei Ying had poked on the way in, this one gave way without a struggle when Wei Ying tried to cancel the array.

They carried it outside, of course.

No reason to risk interactions and explosions. One of the nearby buildings had a good sturdy workroom that showed only a few signs of damage. It even had a good worktable that they could set the mirror up on.

“Now how does this work?”

Between the two of them, it wasn’t too hard to figure out. A bit… frustrating, yes, but eventually Lan Zhan noticed that there were carefully engraved instructions on the back which explained exactly how to activate the mirror, how to let it link to other active mirrors, and how to use it to spy on the surrounding area.

One point to Lan Zhan for going slowly and methodically, and one point against Wei Ying for poking and hoping for the best.

“Who first?” Wei Ying asked once they’d gotten the mirror warmed up and gleaming with qi.

“…Yiling?” Lan Zhan suggested after frowning at the mirror for a long moment.

“Huh, close, somewhere we’ve both been recently, okay,” Wei Ying agreed.

Yiling, as it turned out, had an infestation of twisted-fang bi-vipers going on. They also had rapidly diminishing infestation of painfully obvious spies that Elder Entai cursed at as they watched. Wei Ying hummed thoughtfully, arms crossed over his chest.

“Do you think that if I confronted Snake-gege about this, he’d look guilty?” Wei Ying asked.

Lan Zhan snorted. “Yes.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Wei Ying said. “He’s always been overprotective of me. All right, let’s try your brother. Then we’ll check on Shijie and Jiang Cheng.”

Lan Xichen, once the mirror focused in on him, had a particularly fixed smile that didn’t come close to reaching his eyes as he glided calmly across the Cloud Recesses. There weren’t any mirrors close to him. Actually…

“Do the Lan have mirrors?” Wei Ying asked Lan Zhan who looked like he was about to vibrate out of his clothing in his worry for Lan Xichen.

“No,” Lan Zhan said. He pouted at Wei Ying. “Very few. We use spells to do our hair and clothes. Mirrors promote vanity.”

“Well, that’s a problem,” Wei Ying complained. “No mirror means we can’t link in and tell him that you’re all right. Or that I’m all right. Let’s check on Shijie and Jiang Cheng. Shijie has a mirror, but she usually keeps it in a box so that the humidity doesn’t tarnish it. I’m not sure Jiang Cheng has ever even looked at a mirror.”

Lan Zhan’s snort this time was at least a little bit amused. He still looked nervous, worried, but not as bad as he had been.

Shijie was in the kitchen at Lotus Pier, whacking up great chunks of meat with a cleaver as big as her entire forearm. Wei Ying winced. When he switched to Jiang Cheng, it wasn’t better because Jiang Cheng was off on a night hunt being angry and purple and violent at a water ghoul who looked like it regretted all it’s unlife’s choices.

“Yeah, they’re no better,” Wei Ying said with a sigh. “Right. We’re breaking out the big spears now, Lan Zhan. The one person I know will absolutely have mirrors around is Nie Huaisang.”

Lan Zhan turned to stare at Wei Ying. His face didn’t change much. There was a slight widening of his eyes, and his jaw dropped a tiny bit. But for Lan Zhan it was as shocked as Jiang Cheng bellowing and scrambling backwards while cursing up a storm.

“Who, other than the peacock, is reliably going to have a mirror around him?” Wei Ying asked. “We’ll spy on him first and then, if he’s alone, we’ll ask him what’s going on.”

Sure, Wei Ying would’ve preferred to ask Shijie or Jiang Cheng. Lan Xichen would’ve been a great choice. Yes, he would’ve cried and asked a thousand desperate questions, but he still would’ve calmed down relatively quickly.

There was no way that Nie Huaisang was going to take this calmly.

But he still was guaranteed to have mirrors around him.

Lan Zhan pouted at Wei Ying as he oh-so-grudgingly nodded.

“I know,” Wei Ying agreed. “He’s a lot. But we’re limited to people who have mirrors and that’s just not common, Lan Zhan.”

“Jin,” Lan Zhan grumbled.

“Yeah,” Wei Ying agreed as he rolled his eyes, “but I don’t want to talk to any of them. Spy on them, yes. Talk to them, no.”

Nie Huaisang, to Wei Ying’s surprise, was in a map room with bare stone walls. The massive table in the center of the room had dozens of slender drawers that allowed the Nie to store their maps flat. He’d never seen Nie Huaisang look that serious before. You’d almost believe that he was a warrior to equal his brother given how intent he was as he plotted things on the map and then compared the map to various reports that people brought in to him.

“Any luck?” Nie Mingjue asked from the doorway, startling Wei Ying because the doorway was behind where he’d maneuvered the mirror.

“Nothing,” Nie Huaisang huffed as he straightened up and rubbed his back. “There’s no sign of any of them, Da-ge. The missing Jin guards are totally gone. I’ve got some messages heading out on the silk roads, but we won’t get answers on that for months at best.”

Nie Mingjue scowled at the maps. “Right. Well, it’s almost dinner time. You’ve got ink smudges all over your face, Didi.”

Nie Huaisang squawked, pulling a tiny bronze mirror out of his sleeve to check. “Gah! I do. Wonderful. I’m going to go wash up. I’ll be down to dinner shortly. Should I arrive late?”

“Mm,” Nie Mingjue nodded, dark eyes amused. “Do that flustered thing, you know with the fans and complaining? We’ve got another set of Jin disciples here “for trade”. They sent Jin Ruotian, so I have to pretend to take it all seriously. Do what you can to disrupt all that, okay?”

Both of them looked so skeptical of the Jin’s reason for being there that Wei Ying raised an eyebrow at Lan Zhan. He hummed and nodded for Wei Ying to manipulate the mirror so that it followed Nie Huaisang back to his rooms where Nie Huaisang efficiently washed his face and hands off.

“Talk to him?” Wei Ying asked Lan Zhan.

Lan Zhan sighed and nodded.

“Huaisang!” Wei Ying said once he connected their mirror to the biggest mirror in Nie Huaisang’s room.

Nie Huaisang yelped and whirled, fan at the ready as if it was a saber. His jaw dropped when he saw Wei Ying and Lan Zhan in the mirror. Wei Ying grinned and waved.

“Wei Wuxian?” Nie Huaisang whispered. “Am I going mad?”

“Nope,” Wei Ying said with an even bigger grin. “I can’t tell you where we are or how to get here. It wouldn’t be safe for you or anyone else to try to get here. I mean, seriously. Lan Zhan almost died. I barely saved him. But there’s this really amazing old mirror that will connect to other mirrors and, well, you always have mirrors around so…”

Nie Huaisang squeaked as he came over to brush his fingers over the surface of the mirror. It looked like he could reach right through, though of course he couldn’t.

“This is so amazing,” Nie Huaisang breathed. “How does it work?”

Wei Ying grimaced. “I… don’t know. I mean, I want to poke at it and find out but there’s kind of a chance of making it blow up and Lan Zhan won’t let me do things that might blow my head off.”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said so disapprovingly that Wei Ying waved a hand towards the scorch marks on the wall. He hummed and then nodded. “Well. Yes. But still.”

“What can you tell me?” Nie Huaisang interrupted. He was very, very intent as he stared at the two of them.

“Well,” Wei Ying said, thinking it over, “the Wen remnants, Lan Zhan and I are safe. We have food and shelter and some… interesting artifacts. Also some very large, very large twisted-fang bi-vipers. Yiling’s kind of a mess with them right now, too. Um. The Wen I rescued from the first camp were all civilians. Wen Qing was the only cultivator among them. The age range is two years old to about eleven, then Wen Qing and Wen Ning who we just barely managed to save. He was almost killed. Then everyone is over sixty. One woman in her late thirties who was pregnant. That’s all.”

Nie Huaisang stared at him. “And the other camps?”

“Weird things,” Wei Ying said with a shake of his head. “There weren’t enough guards. It was like someone went through before we got there. But the other camps were much the same. Little kids, a few pregnant women who were being… badly abused. And old people who were being worked to death for no good reason. I couldn’t… I had to help.”

“Yeah, no, I understand,” Nie Huaisang sighed. “All right. What did you need?”

“Can you tell Lan Xichen and Shijie to put a mirror up, a good sized one, somewhere in their quarters?” Wei Ying asked, making his very best begging eyes at Nie Huaisang. “Please? Neither of them really keep mirrors around. It’s you and the peacock, and seriously? Not asking him for help.”

“That’s fair,” Nie Huaisang said with a snicker.

His snicker was only half-hearted. Ah. Didn’t believe that this was real, then. Fair. Wei Ying could barely believe that it was, too. Still…

“I know you have to doubt this,” Wei Ying said. “Jin Guangyao was a friend of yours. He was Nie for a while. But, well, he knew about the camps. He knew what was going on, that they were killing innocent civilians for no reason. He knew about the torture and the rape and kids being slaughtered. It was him and Jin Zixun in charge. The peacock was kept away from it all. Everyone agrees on that. But it was Jin Guangshan building power, building an army, trying to figure out how to do demonic cultivation so that he could make himself the new Wen Ruohan, with Jin Zixun as his attack dog and Jin Guangyao as his seneschal.”

Nie Huaisang frowned. “I’ll need to investigate that.”

“Of course,” Wei Ying agreed. “But be very, very careful, okay? Jin Guangyao isn’t going to let old times get in the way of earning a place at his father’s side. Don’t go anywhere without bodyguards and don’t let on that you know he was involved.”

“I’ll be careful,” Nie Huaisang promised.

Maybe sincerely. Maybe.

Well, there was only so much that they could do when they were stuck in here and everyone was out there. Nie Mingjue certainly wouldn’t let his beloved little brother get himself killed asking questions.

Wei Ying just hoped that Nie Huaisang actually did pass the mirror message on to Lan Xichen and Shijie. Otherwise reassuring them was going to be a challenge.

#

In the Yiling:

Shang Qinghua frowns as he watches a pack of two meter long twisted-fang bi-vipers chase after a Jin sect cultivator: Is he just stupid or what?

Mobei-Jun: …*sighs*

SQH: Yeah, he’s just stupid. Why doesn’t he fly away? He’s got his sword. They’re not chasing him that… Okay, yeah, maybe they are chasing him that fast. Huh. Oh, well. One less Jin cultivator to worry about.

MBJ: *frowns at the bi-vipers as they nudge the body and then start trying to pull the sword off*

SQH: Hey, if they’re hungry enough to eat him, I’m fine with it. I wouldn’t, personally. Who knows where he’s been or what he’s gotten up to, you know?

MBJ: *frowns harder, this time at SQH*

SQH: Ugh, fine! *stomps off to chase the bi-vipers away from the body, flapping his sleeves at them and making shooing noises like they aren’t viciously, horrifically venomous*

The bi-vipers look past him to MBJ who has a smug sort of look about him as he watches SQH.

If snakes could roll their eyes, the bi-vipers absolutely would. They slither off, leaving the body behind as SQH stomps back over to MBJ, totally unaware of MBJ’s smugness at his mate’s courage.

16. Fluttering Fan

“Stay close, no matter what,” Huaisang told his guards as they mounted the last few steps into Koi Tower. “Da-ge will lose his mind if anyone here hurts me.”

“You’re not going to take a piss by yourself,” Nie Pengwanli informed Huaisang.

“Gross,” Huaisang complained even as he nodded that yes, he understood that.

It was fair. After everything that had happened in Koi Tower, it was completely justified. Huaisang didn’t expect that he’d be allowed back to see San-ge until after Jin Guangshan was dead.

And if the vision he’d gotten in the mirror was right, it might not happen until after Jin Guangyao was dead.

He didn’t have time for more black thoughts because San-ge came striding out to meet them, a fixed-but-friendly smile on his face as Huaisang immediately went into Flutter About Uselessly mode. San-ge always responded beautifully to Huaisang being helpless so of course Huaisang had to deliver.

“San-ge!” Huaisang exclaimed as he all but flung himself into Jin Guangyao’s arms. “You have to help!”

“Huaisang,” Jin Guangyao said in that smooth, wonderful voice of his, “calm down. What’s gone wrong this time?”

The corners of his eyes wrinkled in as real of a smile as Jin Guangyao ever got. Score! Huaisang huffed at him, fluttering the first fan that Jin Guangyao had ever given him. It wasn’t expensive or especially pretty but the sight of it in Huaisang’s hand relaxed Jin Guangyao’s shoulders and made his hand go gentle on Huaisang’s elbow.

“Da-ge is all worried about Er-ge,” Huaisang said because it was absolutely true. “He’s not sleeping and he’s fretting all the time and apparently, he burst in to tears just a couple of days ago over someone playing the guqin. It’s horrible!”

Jin Guangyao blinked and shook his head sharply. “Da-ge burst into tears?”

“No!” Huaisang huffed. “Er-ge did! Really, keep up, San-ge! Lan Wangji is still missing and Er-ge’s about to fall apart. We have to do something, San-ge. I heard that Lan Wangji got eaten by an absolutely monstrously huge twisted-fang bi-viper in Yiling. The whole town is about to be eaten, and no one is doing anything!”

“Ah… why don’t you come in and have some tea, Huaisang,” Jin Guangyao said.

With a distinct stiffening when Huaisang mentioned the rumors about people getting eaten by huge bi-vipers. Interesting. Huaisang hadn’t credited that rumor. Of course, Jin Guangyao had also been actually and truly alarmed to realize that Er-ge was that much of a mess, so it wasn’t as though Jin Guangyao was only angling for power.

Huaisang knew that he was. The entire time that Huaisang had known Jin Guangyao, back when he was just plain old Meng Yao, it had been obvious that gaining his father’s approval was the most important thing to him.

Several Jin eyed them as they passed, including Jin Ruotian who grandly and casually interrupted their progress to give Jin Guangyao a whole series of blatantly insulting “requests” that were far under his apparent station. Jin Guangyao accepted the “requests” with a tight smile, so yeah, whatever rank Jin Guangyao had thought he’d get, it hadn’t panned out for him.

They ended up in Jin Guangyao’s little office with its stacks of paperwork to do and too-small desk. As Jin Guangyao called for tea, Huaisang poked at the piles of paperwork. Bills, invoices, ledgers, discipline reports that logically should’ve been going to Jin Zixuan, discipline reports about Jin Zixun who apparently caused endless trouble for everyone if the size of the stack was anything to judge by.

“Huaisang,” Jin Guangyao scolded gently as he brought the tea tray, with a pot of ice-cold water, to the tiny table next to Huaisang. “Leave that alone. I’ve barely gotten it organized.”

“I was just trying to estimate how many are because of Jin Zixun,” Huaisang said, batting his eyes and fluttering his fan innocently. Mock-innocently, of course, because it always made Jin Guangyao’s dimples come out.

They didn’t come out this time. Jin Guangyao huffed at his desk, mouth turning down at the corners and eyes going as hard and cold as anything Huaisang had ever seen from him. For that moment, Huaisang could really see that Jin Guangyao had been Wen Ruohan’s chief torturer. The cold fury and distant calculation was quite… obvious.

“All of it is,” Jin Guangyao said. He charged up a talisman and set the pot of water to heating as he measured out a lovely white tea for them to share.

“Wait,” Huaisang said. “Wait… Really? All of it? Even I don’t get in that much trouble!”

This time the dimples came out full force as Jin Guangyao snickered, head bowed and shoulders shaking.

“San-ge!” Huaisang wailed at him, pretending to hit him with the fan. “It’s not that funny! Stop laughing!”

It was a rare, special thing for Jin Guangyao to honestly, truthfully laugh. Huaisang remember one laugh, just one, that happened only a few days after they first met. He’d happened to go down a servant’s hallway, purely to escape Da-ge’s attempts to make him practice with his saber, and he’d come on Meng Yao with a kitten. It had batted at Meng Yao’s fingers with clumsy little paws and Meng Yao had laughed.

Where no one could hear him or see him, and he had every expectation that he wouldn’t be observed.

That laugh sounded nothing like this one. This laugh had a studied perfection to it, amused and annoyed at the same time, just a bit breathless and full of wrinkles at the corners of Jin Guangyao’s eyes and a smile that showed his teeth.

“My apologies,” Jin Guangyao said through his excellent performance of laughter and fond amusement. “Of course you get into even more trouble than Jin Zixun.”

Nie Pengwanli peeked in from the doorway, amusement written all over her. She didn’t see it. No one ever seemed to see just how fake Jin Guangyao’s emotions, his words, his everything was.

Which just meant that Huaisang had to be careful to be just as fake as possible as he probed to find out what was going on in Koi Tower.

Huaisang huffed at Jin Guangyao. “I don’t care about Jin Zixun. He’s awful. I care about poor Er-ge. Da-ge was seriously worried about him. I mean, actually worried, not “you need to practice” worried the way he always gets. He bit his lip, San-ge. Where people could see him!”

“That is… unusual,” Jin Guangyao said, eyes flaring a bit wider when Huaisang claimed not to care about Jin Zixun at all. The mock surprise turned into actual worry as Huaisang fretted over Lan Xichen. “What exactly did he say about Er-ge?”

Huaisang let his true worries out, fussing with the folds of his fan without looking at Jin Guangyao. He didn’t say anything for a long moment, long enough for Jin Guangyao’s shoulders to tighten as he raised one hand as if to reach out before carefully placing it back on his thigh in the exact same spot as before.

“Da-ge… he said Er-ge wasn’t very clear,” Huaisang murmured low enough that Nie Pengwanli wouldn’t be able to hear. “He was too rattled. Shaking. On the verge of tears. His hair wasn’t combed. He isn’t getting his work done. It’s… The Lan are hiding it as best they can, but Er-ge is falling apart, San-ge. We have to do something!”

The very last thing that Huaisang expected to see in Jin Guangyao’s eyes was satisfaction. Worry, fear, upset, maybe that cold reptilian look.

Not satisfaction.

But that was what Huaisang saw for the blink of an eye. Then it was wiped away and replaced with a very appropriate mask of fretful worry that mirrored Huaisang’s emotions quite nicely.

How had Huaisang missed that Jin Guangyao just never showed his own emotions? It was painfully clear now that he knew to pay attention. Wei Wuxian was right. There was something very wrong here, which meant that Huaisang had to get out of here as quickly as possible.

Or, maybe, he needed to string Jin Guangyao along and see how he reacted to other “rumors”.

Yeah.

That was a much better plan.

“I will, of course, visit if you think that will help,” Jin Guangyao offered in that gently dubious tone that was always so discouraging. So very good at sculpting Huaisang into giving up on whatever idea he’d just thrown out.

Huaisang groaned. “Da-ge already said that there was no point, San-ge. He won’t even let me go visit. I offered to go spend some time in the Cloud Recesses. You know, to comfort Er-ge and help him.”

The dimples appeared again. “Purely out of the goodness of your heart and your worries for Er-ge, I’m sure.”

“San-ge!” Huaisang complained as he pressed the fan to his chest and pouted theatrically. “I can be comforting. And helpful! Especially when it gets me away from practicing with my saber. But no, I’m not allowed to go bother Er-ge. Which is of course why I came directly here. You see, you could go visit and help Er-ge! He likes you so much, Er-ge. I’m sure you could take his mind off all the silly rumors about Wei Wuxian finding a thousand-year-old twisted-fang bi-viper.”

Actual shock shattered Jin Guangyao’s perpetual smile for a moment. “A what?”

“Oh, it’s silly,” Huaisang said, waving his fan as if to blow the so-called rumors away. “People in Yiling claim that the bi-vipers are eating people. That there’s a “general” of the bi-vipers directing them. But it’s not true, San-ge. It’s the mushrooms eating people.”

Jin Guangyao froze, face as static as if he’d been hit with a stasis array. Then he shook his head and peered at Huaisang before blinking three times.

“You’re serious,” Jin Guangyao said.

“Yeah,” Huaisang said, shrugging. “Everyone knows about the haunted mushrooms. Yiling is famous for them. All the people sneaking around there are stirring things up. Honestly, I’m pretty sure that some of your missing Jin disciples snuck around the wrong back alleys and were eaten by the mushrooms.”

“You… know about that?” Jin Guangyao asked. There was the faintest tremor in his left hand, the one that he’d broken so badly during his first training sessions after he joined the Nie.

Huaisang stared at Jin Guangyao. “Well, of course. They’re terrible spies, San-ge. Most of them barely remember to change their clothes and none of them can look like anything other than cultivators. Da-ge’s spies keep sending back sadly disparaging reports that Da-ge makes me sort and then file. It’s so mean. I hate filing. You know how much I hate filing, San-ge, but he keeps on shoving stacks at me and telling me to make myself useful since I won’t practice. So rude.”

“Huaisang,” Jin Guangyao said, interrupting the flow of rapidly crafted nonsense.

“Sorry, San-ge,” Huaisang said, smoothing his fingers over the fan again so that he wouldn’t glare at Jin Guangyao for being all brotherly when he clearly didn’t actually care all that much about Huaisang or Da-ge. “It’s okay. I know they’re not your spies. You’ve always made sure to have actually effective spies. Da-ge and I both know that they’re Jin Zixun’s. He’s so incompetent. I hope you haven’t had to rely on him for anything.”

Jin Guangyao shut his eyes for a moment though not fast enough to hide the flare of rage that wrinkled the corners of his eyes and thinned his lips so badly that they almost disappeared.

“Unfortunately, I can’t say that,” Jin Guangyao said.

He gestured towards the desk and then finally poured their tea. It was desperately over-steeped, bitter and astringent. Jin Guangyao winced as he sipped. Huaisang just threw it back like it was wine and sighed as he stared at Jin Guangyao’s desk.

“Well, at least we know who’s behind all the nonsense rumors about Wei Wuxian raising a demonic army of snakes and mushrooms,” Huaisang said because he did know exactly who was behind it: he was. “Truly, couldn’t you make a short visit to Er-ge? Maybe a day or two? It would him so much good and you know he always feels better when he has someone to take care of.”

“Huaisang…” Jin Guangyao sighed when Huaisang made his very best sad puppy eyes. “I can’t. I simply can’t. Father expects too much from me. With Jin Zixun… out of favor… I have to do his work as well as my own.”

“Oh, ouch,” Huaisang said with an honest grimace. “But. San-ge? Does he actually do any work? I mean, real work? I thought he just strutted around and made problems while bragging even though he has nothing to brag about.”

Jin Guangyao ducked his head to “hide” his laugh. That left hand tremor happened again so Huaisang had definitely landed a hit. It would sting that Jin Guangyao was worked to the bone while Jin Zixun, who wasn’t even in the line of descent, was given free rein to strut around like a peacock.

“Yes,” Jin Guangyao said through his breathy artistic laughter, “he does actually have some real duties. I am sorry. I wish I could help, but I can’t get away.”

Huaisang huffed and pouted, slouching down in his chair to glare across Jin Guangyao’s office. “Fine. Can you write a letter for me to take back telling Da-ge that you simply cannot get away right now? I can use it to bully him into letting me visit instead.”

“A short note,” Jin Guangyao agreed. “But then I have to get back to work. Will you be staying for the night?”

“Of course!” Huaisang said. He bounced in his seat. “There’s a new erotic opera that came out. I hear it’s quite the rage. Da-ge won’t let me go see it but it’s being performed in Jinlintai so obviously I have to stay the night. And maybe do some shopping at the book sellers before I leave tomorrow.”

Jin Guangyao sighed, eyes fluttering as he tried to hide his exhausted disgust at Huaisang’s fondness for erotica of all varieties. Chattering about the play got his note written incredibly quickly. Huaisang let himself be shooed out of the room afterwards, totally ignoring Nie Pengwanli’s stern look.

There was a bit more poking about to do, but it looked very much like Wei Wuxian was right. The Jin were behind all of it. Someone, obviously not Huaisang, was going to have to make them stop.

#

In the Demon Realm:

Shen Qingqiu stands staring into the mirror even though it’s not showing anything at all.

Luo Binghe comes in and sighs before wrapping his arms around Shen Qingqiu from behind: We can still look, Shizun.

SQQ: No, they might connect to our mirror.

LBH: Eventually, perhaps. As it stands, neither of them understand how to link to active mirrors. They don’t know that any other mirrors are active.

SQQ: *winces*

LBH: Shizun, we couldn’t have done anything for him. You know that.

SQQ: There should have been something. Something more than him accidentally finding his way home. He’s… we’ve never even hugged him, Binghe. He doesn’t even know we exist.

They stare at the mirror in silence together, neither one willing to speak.

17. Dark Rooms

“Well,” Wei Ying said with his brightest smile, the one that everyone found disturbing, “that was revealing.”

Instead of frowning or pulling Wei Ying into his arms, Lan Zhan frowned and nodded. The mirror stood still and passively reflective between them. It looked like nothing more than a normal, ordinary mirror.

Nie Huaisang made a terrifyingly efficient spy. He’d spent three days in Koi Tower and then gone back home. His report to Nie Mingjue was, apparently, a thing of froth and nonsense, full of commentary on the sad lack of good porn and worries about his poor San-ge who was visibly, obviously, and seriously abused by Madame Jin and Jin Guangshan both.

His report later to Wei Ying and Lan Zhan was scathing, blunt to the point of insulting, and outright vicious about Jin Guangyao’s carefully orchestrated suffering.

“I used to believe in him, you know?” Nie Huaisang had said, casually fanning himself with a white-knuckled grip on his fan which was not, apparently, a fan that Jin Guangyao had given him. “He’s so nice, so supportive. Always just the right thing to say to help you get what you want. And if it’s what most benefits San-ge, well, what of it?”

His fan had creaked alarmingly.

“So what about Jin Zixuan?” Wei Ying had asked, mostly to distract Nie Huaisang before he destroyed a fan worth a year’s profits from the dyers back at Lotus Pier. “For that matter, how was Jin Zixun? Still totally annoying all the time? I can’t imagine that he would have changed.”

Nie Huaisang had snorted a laugh. “Jin Zixuan is himself. He asked me how one tells a girl that you’ve changed your mind and that you think she’s lovely. Didn’t like it when I told him to just say that.”

“He did not,” Wei Ying had gasped, utterly horrified that the Peacock might be trying to get Shijie back even with all the nonsense and the rejection.

“He did,” Nie Huaisang had confirmed, grinning at the way Wei Ying grumbled about it. “As for Jin Zixun, I didn’t see him. Not once. No one has seen him since you disappeared. San-ge took him away from the party you interrupted, and he’s not been seen or heard from since.”

Given everything that had happened to the Wen, that was a terrifying thing to learn. The very last person that Wei Ying wanted to worry about was Jin Zixun. Every single time he’d interacted with Jin Zixun, it’d been embarrassing, difficult and ridiculous. Mostly for Jin Zixun, not for Wei Ying.

That didn’t mean that he wanted anyone to be abused.

It really seemed like Jin Zixun might be tucked away somewhere getting scolded, maybe beaten. Hopefully not worse than that.

Lan Zhan hummed thoughtfully as he touched the mirror with one strong fingertip. “It will… show us anywhere?”

“I… huh,” Wei Ying started to say only to pause as he realized that he didn’t know. “Well. To communicate we need another mirror, but we already know that it’ll let us see whatever we want. I mean, nothing much will be visible if the place is dark, but we can try and find Jin Zixun. You know, just to see what he’s gotten up to since we left.”

The mirror flared to life and there was A-Yuan laughing as Popo smiled at him and encouraged him to play with the other kids. Wei Qing was there, fixing a tear in a robe while Wei Ning worked patiently at grinding something to a paste in one of the biggest mortars. Wei Ying blushed as he shifted the mirror away from his new little family.

It was hard! He hadn’t had a true family in so long that not being around them, or not watching them in the mirror when he couldn’t be with the, was a challenge. Shifting to Koi Tower was kind of like the emotional equivalent to intending to dive into the river and instead plunging into a cess pit.

The servants scurried through the halls with haunted expressions. Every single woman there, even Madame Jin, walked like they expected to be attacked at any moment. The serving girls went everywhere in packs while the younger Jin disciples tried to look confident but only succeeded in looking covertly frightened.

The older disciples, the Elders and Jin Guangshan’s cronies strutted about like the peacocks that Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng had always accused Jin Zixuan of being. Even the older Jin relatives, like Jin Ruotian, walked through Koi Tower’s hallways like they expected to be stabbed at any moment.

Well, Jin Ruotian also prowled through Koi Tower like he owned it. Like he was a predator and they were all prey, but there was a wariness to his expression that suggested he thought he was being observed.

Jin Zixuan, when Wei Ying found him, sat in an opulent office talking with one of the minor sect leaders. It looked and sounded like a negotiation which was absolutely something that Jin Guangshan should handle. When Wei Ying shifted over to Jin Guangyao, he was doing paperwork that should more properly be done by Jin Guangshan. Complete with signing off on things that should only be the sect leader’s province.

“Well, that says a lot,” Wei Ying said, huffing as he shook his head. “Makes me wonder just what Jin Guangshan actually does if he’s got the peacock leading the sect and Jin Guangyao doing all the administration. But where’s Jin Zixun?”

The mirror shifted to a dungeon.

A very dark, very damp and dismal dungeon.

Jin Guangshan stood in the torchlight, robes gleaming gold and perfect as he sneered down at the prisoner in his cell. He had not one single hair out of place. There was a cup of wine in his hand and a servant stood trembling at his back with the jar so that the cup could be refilled whenever Jin Guangshan wanted.

The prisoner had some ragged maybe-gold rags wrapped around his hips and so many bruises, cuts and whip marks that Wei Ying winced in sympathy.

“I don’t know where I went wrong with you,” Jin Guangshan said in a cuttingly sad voice that was anything but real. “I brought you to my court. I favored you over my own son. I gave you everything; training, education, money, power, all the whores a man could ever want. Your father was so brilliant before he died. Your mother was a beautiful, graceful woman. And yet, here you are. A useless piece of shit that does nothing but tarnish the robes you failed to properly earn.”

“U-Uncle…!” the prisoner croaked.

No.

Not “prisoner”. Jin Zixun croaked the plea while staring blindly with eyes swollen shut from the beating he’d gotten up at his uncle with the sort of desperation Wei Ying knew all too well from that moment before Wen Chao flung him off his sword down into the Burial Mounds.

His lips were chapped and split.

There were bruises on his exposed thighs.

Hand prints.

Jin Guangshan curled his lip. “You’re no blood of mine. I thought you could be useful, even though your father was only adopted into the family. Pity that his genius wasn’t transferrable. I gave you such simple tasks and every single time you failed. The Wen are still alive and free. Wei Wuxian has disappeared entirely despite you being sent to track him down. The other sect leaders left with suspicion in their minds instead of declaring me Chief Cultivator. You even ensured that my son couldn’t marry that little Jiang chit.”

“It wasn’t…” Jin Zixun tried to say only to choke and sob as one of the guards kicked him in the stomach. “…my fault! Wasn’t my fault!”

“Idiot,” Jin Guangshan huffed. “Beat him some more. You can entertain yourself on him if you wish. He’s certainly had enough training for it. Don’t let him die. I’m not done making him suffer for failing me yet.”

Wei Ying staggered backwards as Jin Guangshan left the dungeon with his guards and his trembling wine servant. The mirror stayed on Jin Zixun, who was beaten mercilessly even as he sobbed and begged and pleaded.

They didn’t rape him. This time. Someone had, very obviously, but they didn’t while Wei Ying was watching.

It was a good thing that they didn’t because otherwise Wei Ying would’ve gone straight through the mirror, would have summoned the rainbow bridge and wiped Koi Tower right off the face of the earth.

Lan Zhan held him. Comforted him even though Lan Zhan vibrated with furious outrage just like Wei Ying.

“We have to save him,” Wei Ying whispered once the guards left Jin Zixun trembling in his cell. “I don’t want to, but we have to save him. We can’t… I can’t let that continue, not even to him, Lan Zhan.”

“No, we cannot,” Lan Zhan agreed. “We must talk to the others. They need to know. Be prepared.”

“Right,” Wei Ying agreed.

He sucked a breath between his teeth and forced himself to let Lan Zhan go. Another rescue mission, this time of his least favorite Jin in the whole world, other than Jin Guangshan. Great. Just what he wanted to do tonight.

#

In the Demon Realm:

SQH: What do you mean you turn the mirror off? How are we supposed to know what they’re up to?

SQQ: They could accidentally link to our mirror. It’s the only active one.

SQH: Ugh, you are so stubborn! Mobei-Jun and I can’t do all the reconnaissance. We’ll be seen. You have to use the mirror. Surely there’s controls and stuff to keep people from linking accidentally!

SQQ: *shifty expression swiftly hidden behind his fan*

SQH: Are you kidding me? There’s no way to block the other–! No. You know what, no. No. No, no, no. Just N.O. We are fixing this. We are fixing this right now. I’m calling people back from the heavenly court specifically to fix this. I am not running around with my King because you’re afraid of opening a damn mirror and accidentally talking to your own great-grandson.

*continuous ranting as SQH sets to work fixing the mirror without anyone’s help at all*

SQQ: *silently watches and does his level best to keep the rage going because SQH is always, always, always at his most powerful when he’s outraged by something*

18. Broken Shadows

The horrible part of it all was that Zixun had always known that Uncle would sacrifice him. Even as a little kid, he’d seen just how calculating Uncle was about every single thing he did. Other people could claim that Uncle was a lush and a lecher who couldn’t keep his dick in his pants, but Zixun knew perfectly well that all those sloppy drunken speeches and not quite hidden gropes were deliberate, calculated acts.

After all, what he did to Zixun was always kept rigidly secret.

Because doing that to a child could get your head chopped off with no chance of talking your way out of it.

Still, he’d thought that if he just played things right he might manage to keep himself safe enough that Uncle wouldn’t hurt him, pass him on to his friends, humiliate him in private and public. Great-Uncle Ruotian was always the worst of the lot. Oh, so mocking as he gently, implacably, took Zixun to pieces. Emotionally and physically.

Never had worked.

And now he was going to die. Zixun sighed, broken fingers of his right hand resting over the white-hot knot of agony that was his ruptured spleen. The guards had gone a little too far with the last beating. They’d hit too hard, landed on the wrong spots, not given Zixun enough time to heal up before they started up again.

And maybe, possibly, Zixun was tired of it all, so he’d not focused his core on healing the way Uncle had always insisted that he had to learn.

Couldn’t have your favorite toy broken all the time, after all. Zixun snorted a little laugh and then whined at how much it hurt to laugh even that much.

He was dying.

Finally dying.

Thank fuck.

He had spent a little of his golden core on healing his eyes. Not being able to see what was coming his way was so horrifying that Zixun had fixed them the instant that the guards left. There wasn’t much to see in his cramped, stinking little cell. If he could have stood up, it would’ve taken three steps to go from one side to the other. No bed, just a hole in the ground for when he needed to piss blood, nicely illuminated by the torchlight that came through the bars on his cell door.

No other lights. Nothing but his blood. Well, that lump in the far corner might be the decayed skull of the previous occupant of the cell, but Zixun wouldn’t know. He didn’t want to know, even if he could get up and go check.

It must be the middle of the night. Maybe he’d be dead by dawn. That would be nice.

No more of… any of this.. and a sunrise to go with it.

A thud echoed outside of his cell.

Zixun frowned at the door. There wasn’t anyone else on this level of the dungeon. Uncle had made it perfectly clear that only Zixun had displeased him this badly, thus he was utterly and completely alone whenever the guards retreated back up to Koi Tower proper.

The light from the torch abruptly went blood-red. Zixun hissed as he tried to sit up only to collapse back to the slimy floor with a groan. Which meant that he missed the moment when the door opened on account of his head spinning so badly that he couldn’t see straight from the pain.

“Stay still,” a woman whispered.

“What the fuck?” Zixun whispered back as he blinked rapidly to try and focus on her face, whoever she was.

He managed to clear his eyes just enough to see a silver needle headed straight for his neck. The moment it hit, the pain went away. Then a heartbeat or three after that the rest of the world went away, too.

The next time Zixun woke up, he was in a standard white hospital room with the smell of healing herbs and antiseptic filling his nose. They, whoever they were, had put him on a surprisingly comfortable bed and covered him with a light but warm blanket. Beyond the hospital smells, there was the cool wet scent of rain. His cheeks felt chilly enough that it might be night.

Zixun eased one eye open only to start when he realized that there was someone sitting next to him, reading a book that she braced against her thigh with the stump of her right hand. She had only three fingers on her left hand.

“Ah, good,” the woman said. “We were expecting you to wake up anytime now. How’s the pain?”

“Um, good?” Zixun said as his heart tried to leap up his throat and run away. “Way better, I guess?”

He recognized her. Well, not her, exactly. But he definitely recognized the lopped off hand and missing fingers. Zixun had been there when it happened. He’d laughed and encouraged the torturer to take another finger before she’d passed out.

“Excellent,” the woman said with no shred of anger or hate that Zixun could see. “I’ve got a tea for you to drink, then you’ll want to go back to sleep. Well. You’ll definitely go back to sleep one way or the other. It’ll make sure of that, but you should be able to sit up on your own when you wake up. Wouldn’t recommend walking or anything. That’ll be a few more days given what Sect Leader Jin put you through, Jin Zixun.”

It felt like his heart stopped entirely for a moment. Zixun stared at her as she carefully set her book aside and then used the stump of her arm and those three remaining fingers to bring over a cup that she held up to Zixun’s lips. There was a little hollow silver tube that she encouraged Zixun to suck on.

The tea was medicinal tea, just cold instead of hot as he was used to. It tasted like crap mixed with too much mint, as if the mint ever managed to keep medicine from tasting awful.

He still drank it. What choice did he have?

“You know me,” Zixun murmured when she came back with her book and sat next to him on her stool.

She stared right into his eyes, calm and serious and somehow sad for him instead of because of him.

“Of course I do,” she said, shrugging. “Hard to forget the man who ordered my fingers cut off.”

“Then why…?” Zixun could feel the tea working. His body felt heavier. So did his eyelids. Sleep really was inevitable, wasn’t it?

She brushed those three fingers over Zixun’s forehead while smiling sadly. “No one deserves to go through what you did. Not ever. Our sect leader found out just how long it’s been going on. You were a child tortured and twisted into a monster, Jin Zixun. Doesn’t change what you did. I’ll never trust you. But I’m doctor enough to put that aside. You were tortured and raped. You need care. You’re going to get it. Now sleep.”

He flinched at having Uncle’s actions spoken so bluntly but the medicine was too strong for him to do more than make a strangled little noise before he fell asleep.

That set the pattern for the next few wake-ups. Zixun thought that he slept for days. Maybe five or six days? He got to stay awake for longer each time. Two times someone else was sitting by his bed. The rest of the time it was the Wen woman that he’d crippled.

She never said her name. Zixun didn’t dare ask. She’d probably stab him if he did, even though she’d have to work pretty hard to do it given the way he’d lopped her fingers and hand off.

Eventually, he was given some simple green and white robes, a new pair of boots in an ancient style that were rather comfortable, all things considered. Zixun managed to dress himself. Barely. His watcher smiled ruefully when he fumbled tying his new robes shut because his fingers shook so badly.

Not much she could do to help him, after all.

But she did let Zixun hang onto her elbow when she walked him out of his little white hospital room and out into the wider building. Which, what the fuck? Was as fancy as anything an emperor might have, though someone must have decided that carpets on the floor was a risk when you were dealing with people who might bleed or vomit or whatever because the floors were bare.

Gleaming, but bare.

Outside, once they got there, the sun stood high overhead. Clear skies, birds singing and flitting around; just a bright, peaceful afternoon. Zixun breathed in the crisp mountain air as his legs shook underneath him.

“Come sit down,” his watcher said with a crooked little smile. “Snake-gege’s on the way over so you’ll want to be seated. We don’t want to risk you tearing something loose inside.”

“…Snake-gege?” Zixun asked as he let her ease him down onto a bench right next to the door as if the builders of the hospital expected people to make it to the door and then fall down because they’d exhausted themselves.

Accurate, not that Zixun was willing to admit that.

She didn’t have a chance to explain. Snake-gege slithered up a path that Zixun hadn’t noticed in his focus on the sky and the birds and his shaking legs. It was a fucking twisted fang bi-viper that stood easily twice as tall as Zixun. He wheezed and pressed back against the wall because Snake-gege could have eaten him with one gulp and he would’ve just been a snack.

“What the fuck?” Zixun wheezed as Snake-gege studied him for a long moment.

Snake-gege’s tongue flicked out, brushing over Zixun’s face, his chest, his groin and then his face again, maybe because Zixun broke into a fear sweat so strong that it ran down his cheeks. Maybe along with tears, not that Zixun would admit to it if anyone asked him.

Then Snake-gege pulled back and slithered away without making a single sound.

“Okay, you’re good,” his watcher said, patting Zixun’s thigh with her stump. “He’s gone now. You can breathe. It’s over. Breathing. In and out. In and out. It’s okay. You’re safe now.”

Zixun wanted to snap at her but his heart beat too hard and his lungs had fucking decided to stop working, so he really didn’t have the breath to do so. When she urged him to lean forward, Zixun did it. Shaking.

Stupid panic response. Hadn’t even hurt him. No reason for him to react this strongly.

“Oh, did Snake-gege come check him out?” Wei fucking Wuxian asked.

“Yep,” his watcher said. “Good all-over sniff. He’s having a panic attack over it.”

“That is so valid,” Wei Wuxian said entirely too sympathetically. “Snake-gege can be a lot until you get to know him.”

“True.”

Zixun shoved himself upright to shout at them both for being patronizing jerks, but Wei Wuxian only had a wryly sympathetic smile on his face. His water was dead-serious as she met Zixun’s eyes.

“He’s allowed to sit and enjoy the sun for a half shichen or so,” his watcher told Wei Wuxian. “Then he needs to go back to bed. I’ll get some of the guys. We’ll bring one of the sedan chair over.”

“Thank you!” Wei Wuxian sing-songed at her. He waited until she was off down the trail before he came and sat next to Zixun. “Ah, she’s the best. Well, the best after Lan Zhan and A-Yuan and Shijie, of course. Wen Lingli insisted that she had to be the one to take care of you.”

Zixun wanted to groan about the never-ending praise of Lan fucking Wangji. He wanted to protest that she hadn’t even told him her name. Or that he wasn’t about to betray the Jin’s secrets to a monstrous demonic cultivator like Wei Wuxian.

He didn’t.

“Why?” Zixun asked instead of any of the other normal, obnoxious, things he might say.

“Why save you?” Wei Wuxian asked, side-eyeing Zixun and then grinning when Zixun glowered at him. “Ah, good to see that you haven’t changed. I mean, good in that you’re strong enough to survive. Not so good in the you’re so annoying way.”

“Fuck you,” Zixun snarled at him. “Why? Why save me? Uncle is just going to use anything I tell him—”

“He ordered you raped to death,” Wei Wuxian interrupted before Zixun could get up a good threatening rant. “We have an ancient mirror that lets us spy anywhere. We were already planning to get you out, but he gave the order not just to kill you but to use rape to do it. So, we grabbed you and healed you up.”

Zixun opened his mouth. Nothing came out so he closed it again.

That…

That put things in perspective.

“Right,” Zixun said, turning to stare at the nearby mountains and then up at the birds overhead. “Okay. So now what?”

“Now you heal up,” Wei Wuxian said. “You decide what you want to do, who you want to be now that you’re not trapped among the Jin. If you can’t stay with us, we’ll figure out a way to get you away from the Jianghu, somewhere far enough off that Jin Guangshan can’t ever catch you. If you can, well, it’ll take a while before everyone trusts you but Snake-gege has evaluated you. Everyone will give you time.”

Zixun huffed at the sheer improbability of that ever happening.

“And your sect leader? What’ll he say about that plan?” Zixun asked scornfully.

Lan Wangji drifted up the path in a froth of light green and white silk. Even with the color scheme off, he still looked like himself. Ice-cold and glaring the instant he saw Zixun. Four sturdy middle-aged men walked behind him with a fancy green and silver painted sedan chair that looked easily five hundred years old. Just in good condition, instead of a wreck.

Wei Wuxian laughed, smiling that wild, terrifying smile of his. “I am the sect leader. Welcome to Cang Qiong, Jin Zixun.

He laughed as Zixun stared and then started cursing up a storm. What the fuck?

#

In the Demon Realm, in their secret room, Luo Binghe glares at the mirror that Shang Qinghua fixed so that it couldn’t be linked to accidentally. Mobei-Jun stands just behind him, staring at the mirror with a fixed expression that promises immanent death and destruction for someone.

LBH: …

MBH: …

LBH: If he hurts one single hair on Wei Ying’s head, you’re going to go and kill him.

MBH: *Frowns as he slowly nods*

LBH: No, no. You’re right. You can’t go personally. We’ll tell Zhuzhi-lang and he can kill Jin Zixun.

MBH: *doubtful stare at LBH*

LBH: *fidgets and then groans* Fine! Zhuzhi-lang wouldn’t kill him. But he needs to die somehow if he tries to hurt Wei Ying.

MBH: … *nods and turns to leave*

LBH: *calls after MBH* Don’t let Shizun hear you asking Shang Qinghua for ideas!

MBH: … *waves and leaves in a flash of blue light and a shower of ice crystals*

19. Making Plans

Wei Ying sighed as he flopped on the bench in front of his bamboo cottage. Having Jin Zixun around was so entirely stressful. Just ridiculously bad. He was snappish and skittish and endlessly defiant about everyone knowing that Jin Guangshan had groomed and abused him since he was a tiny little kid.

So gross. Jin Guangshan was, officially as far as everyone was concerned, the worst. Wen Ruohan had been mad and violent and terrifying, but he hadn’t been a rapist and a child molester. Which was only relevant to the future once Wei Wuxian returned to the world.

If he ever did.

No, he would be. Wei Ying could already see the need growing. Between Lan Zhan’s very quiet fretting over his brother, Lan Xichen’s very anxious fretting about Lan Zhan, Nie Mingjue storming about the Unclean Realm, and Shijie getting sadder and sadder every time Wei Ying spied on Lotus Pier, he was going to have to go outside.

Soon. Very soon. Maybe in a day or two at most.

Off beyond the bamboo stand that screened Wei Ying’s cottage off from the other buildings, voices echoed. Mostly adult voices, though occasionally an especially discordant musical note sounded from the building where they’d found all the practice instruments.

That had been a good find. Lan Zhan had been utterly delighted, which on him translated to slightly wider eyes and a tiny intake of breath. He had promptly set to work checking and tuning all of the instruments, though he left the guqin to last for some reason.

Saving the best, maybe?

Except that Lan Zhan hadn’t answered a single one of Wei Ying’s questions about where his guqin Wangji was. Something had happened there. Wei Ying knew it. He just hadn’t figured out how to get Lan Zhan to tell him what it was. Yet.

Snake-gege poked Wei Ying with his tongue.

“Sorry, Snake-gege,” Wei Ying said, patting his massive nose and smiling at the way Snake-gege’s innermost eyes crossed to watch his hand. “I’m just fretting.”

“That you are,” Wei Qing agreed as she casually pushed one of Snake-gege’s coils out of the way so that she and Wei Ning could come and sit with Wei Ying on the porch. “We could hear the sighing half the peak away.”

“Where’s Lan Wangji?” Wei Ning asked, looking around expectantly.

“He and A-Yuan are having music time,” Wei Ying said and then grinned brightly. “Lan Zhan is taking it very seriously, even though A-Yuan just kind of bashes at the practice guqin we found for him. The other kids are with him, too.”

“Oh, good,” Wei Ning said as he sat on the porch instead of on the bench.

It put him in exactly the right position to scratch that spot behind Snake-gege’s jaw that made Snake-gege settle down with a happy sigh, eyes shut and tongue casually flicking out every few seconds in utter bliss.

So weird to see eyelids on a snake but then twisted-fang bi-vipers were already weird. Eyelids were just another odd thing about them.

On the other hand, it was delightful to watch Snake-gege relax that way. He was so watchful all the time. Honestly, Wei Ying hadn’t seen Snake-gege truly let himself flop like that until Wei Ning found that spot on his jaw.

“What’s got you sighing up a storm?” Wei Qing asked, smiling fondly at Wei Ning and Snake-gege.

The two of them had really hit it off once Wei Ning healed enough to get back to his regular activities. If Snake-gege wasn’t at Wei Ying’s side, he was pretty reliably by Wei Ning’s side. Wei Ying thought that if Snake-gege thought he could get away with it, he’d stay with Wei Ning all the time, which was just cute, even though Snake-gege was a huge demonic snake.

“Jin Guangshan,” Wei Ying admitted with a grimace. “Also Lan Zhan and his brother, my family, Nie Mingjue, and a dozen other things outside. I haven’t talked to Lan Zhan about it, but I think I’m going to have to go outside soon. We need to tell the others that we’re okay, Lan Zhan and I. And I really need to get a handle on all the Jin plotting. Somehow. Haven’t figured that bit out yet, though.”

If Madame Yu had been there, she would have started screaming at Wei Ying for sharing so much with people who weren’t in the direct line. Jiang Cheng would’ve probably scowled. He scowled about everything, but that scowl would’ve been the one that said “how dare you share things with people who aren’t me?”

Even Shijie would more than likely pursed her lips.

Which was ridiculous. Every sect leader needed advisors and who better than Wei Qing and Wei Ning?

Because Wei Qing and Wei Ning were both family now. They were the next in line for the Wei Sect. Granted, Wei Ying had yet to come up with any rules for what the Wei Sect actually was, other than a place to keep people who were cast off, endangered or otherwise not wanted by the rest of the Jianghu.

And granted, Lan Zhan was always someone that Wei Ying would listen to. His advice was almost always really good.

Unless it was something related to Lan Zhan himself. Then he deflected any inquiries about what would make him happier. He was almost as bad as Wei Ying.

Wei Qing hummed thoughtfully instead of scowling or scolding or even giving him an arch look like she would have before she took the Wei name.

“Well, I don’t know how you’re going to stop the Jin,” Wei Qing said finally. “But yes, you definitely do need to get back out there. You need to take Lan Wangji with you. Jin Zixun must stay here.”

“Oh, yes,” Wei Ning agreed, still scratching Snake-gege and smiling at how content Snake-gege was. “He needs to stay. He’s afraid of staying, but he’s much more afraid of leaving.”

“Completely fair,” Wei Ying said. “We could probably sneak out. Lan Zhan can fly us to Lotus Pier or the Cloud Recesses.”

Snake-gege’s head came up so fast that he knocked Wei Ning backwards. All four of Snake-gege’s eyes focused on Wei Ying in such a reproachful stare that Wei Ying went bright red. He hadn’t gotten that particular stare for a very long time, but it was still absolutely devastating.

“Snake-gege,” Wei Ying complained. “We need to be careful. Sneaking out is the best choice.”

Snake-gege hissed, long and low and utterly frustrated.

“No, it’s not,” Wei Qing said, swatting Wei Ying’s shoulder. “The best way to get wherever you want is to use the stupid rainbow bridge, you idiot. A-Ning and I can watch on the mirror. If you need to be rescued, we can put the bridge down and get you out again.”

“That would be much better,” Wen Ning said as he sat back up and stared at Wei Ying with his saddest eyes. “But I think you need to take Snake-gege with you.”

Wei Ying spluttered as he waved his hands at the sheer size of Snake-gege.

“Exactly,” Wei Ning said. His little smile was anything but nice. “The other sects want to kill you, Wei-gongzi. If you go with just Lan Zhan, they’ll attack as soon as they can. If Snake-gege goes along, they’ll be terrified, yes, but they won’t attack.”

“A-Ning,” Wei Ying said, horrified. “They’ll attack Snake-gege! He’s big but I don’t think he could take an entire army.”

Snake-gege started hissing little laughs while looking smug.

Wei Ying frowned at him. “You did not.”

If Snake-gege had had eyebrows, he would have waggled them. As it was, he did a little full-body wiggle that was almost like being next to a living earthquake.

Though…

…actually, Wei Ying could see it. As fast as Snake-gege was, as deadly as his venom was, he probably could take on an entire army. Maybe not by himself, but it wouldn’t take much support for Snake-gege to wipe out hundreds. Thousands, even.

“All right, fine, you might, might have fought in a war,” Wei Ying allowed grudgingly. “But that had to be a very long time ago! There’s no guarantee that you could still—”

Snake-gege whipped the tip of his tail around so that he could flop it in Wei Ying’s lap. Wei Ying wheezed and tried to shove the tail off, but Snake-gege was just too big and too heavy. Instead of helping, Wei Ning started giggling while Wei Qing shook her head at the two of them.

Unfair! So unfair. Not surprising, but still totally unfair.

“I give!” Wei Ying squeaked when Snake-gege shifted his tail a little higher, pressing Wei Ying against the wall so gently that the bench and the wall didn’t even creak. “Fine! You win: you were a great and powerful general who totally destroyed all your enemies!”

That set Wei Qing to laughing, too, but Snake-gege let him go with a proud nod of his head.

And… well. That was revealing. Maybe more revealing than Snake-gege intended.

“Ugh,” Wei Ying groaned. “I am going to the library to learn important things. Very important! Maybe even explosive things.”

“We’ll tell Lan Wangji where you are when he’s done with the kids,” Wei Qing promised, still snickering at his expense.

Snake-gege slithered along next to Wei Ying, though he did leave Wei Ying at the door to the library. Wei Ying watched him go before he went into the library to do some research. Historical research this time.

The thing was, Wei Ying sometimes just knew things. Not generally useful things? Generally. Occasionally he’d get that hunch that said no, it wasn’t water ghouls. It was a waterborne abyss. Or no, those ghosts are not ghosts, they’re something else.

Most of the time, when he just knew something, it was “if Madame Yu sees me right now, she absolute will kill me for real this time” or “Jiang Cheng is trying to find a way to die because he cannot bear to go on as he is.” Threats to Wei Ying or to the people he cares most about.

Snake-gege was one of those people.

Not in the same way, of course. He was a giant twisted-fang bi-viper, not a cute and cuddly boy about Wei Ying’s age. Still, Wei Ying had always known, from the very first moment that he saw Snake-gege, that Snake-gege was not a threat.

To him. Specifically. Other people were on their own.

In that moment when Snake-gege straightened up to loom over them, Wei Ying almost heard a voice in his head saying “I will not let them hurt you, little cousin.”

Not “little cousin” exactly. It was more like “very small and very soft-bodied” mixed with “distant relative that I am very, very fond of”. So basically “little cousin”. And that was…

…odd.

Because it felt right. Not just right but like it was a truth that Wei Ying should have known for a very long time and just hadn’t been paying attention well enough to remember it. Thus, off to the library and into the historical section to research very large demon snakes who might have fought in wars before.

Wei Ying made a point before he started pulling books down to ask the library to let Lan Zhan come find him without any trouble. No reason to miss dinner, after all.

He had to go back hundreds of years, to before the Jianghu was formed. Back to the earliest records of the earliest sects that were all based on merit and politics, not blood relation. There weren’t a lot of books that referenced that section. Wei Ying got the feeling that he didn’t have access to some of them yet. Maybe a lot of them.

What he did get access to were the books on the Heavenly Demons who were supposed to be entirely wiped out. The records only had anything substantive on three Heavenly Demons: Tianglang-Jun who had been the ruler of the so-called Southern Demon Realm, his half-blooded son Luo Binghe, and Tianglang-Jun’s nephew and general of his armies Zhuzhi-Lang.

Who had a half-human looking shape with many snake features that were described as “horrific”. And whose other shape was of a titanic demonic snake. The sketch of Zhuzhi-Lang looked so much like Snake-gege. So much!

Only two eyes and different colors to the scales, but still, that had to be who Snake-gege was. The pattern was the same even if the artist had given Zhuzhi-Lang black and red scales instead of his normal lovely mottled green.

And Snake-gege thought Wei Ying was a cousin.

“I don’t know what to make of that,” Wei Ying mused, hands behind his head as he rocked side to side to loosen up his tense back.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said from the doorway.

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying exclaimed, beaming at him. “You came to find me.”

“Mm,” Lan Zhan agreed. He came over and looked down at the drawings and history books, raising an eyebrow at Wei Ying.

“I think I found Snake-gege’s ancestor,” Wei Ying said with a huge grin. “Isn’t he impressive? That’s Zhuzhi-Lang, the first demonic snake. Snake-gege’s much more pretty, of course, but still, quite an impressive ancestor to have.”

Lan Zhan’s eyes wrinkled at the edges and his lips twitched with amusement as Wei Ying admired the painting of Zhuzhi-Lang. He kept not-smiling at Wei Ying as Wei Ying put the books away and then chattered about all the ancient history he’d found out about Heavenly Demons from way, way, way back when.

And if Lan Zhan clearly realized that Wei Ying had something more going on with his historical research, well, Lan Zhan didn’t challenge Wei Ying on it. He just let Wei Ying talk and tease and play with A-Yuan before bedtime.

Later, after Wei Ying had gone to bed, two shichen after Lan Zhan had went off to his room to sleep, Wei Ying stared at the bamboo ceiling of his bedroom.

Snake-gege was not a descendant of Zhuzhi-Lang. He just wasn’t. Snake-gege was Zhuzhi-lang himself, which brought up so many questions that Wei Ying couldn’t form them in his own mind, much less out loud.

Except for one.

If Wei Ying was Zhuzhi-Lang’s distant cousin, was he descended from Tianglang-Jun directly or was Luo Binghe his ancestor?

Because Luo Binghe had married Shen Qingqiu who was the last Peak Lord of Qing Jing.

The very same peak that Wei Ying was most comfortable on.

That was… something that he was going to have to ponder for quite a while. Later. After they went and talked to their families about everything that was going on out in the wider world.

#

In the Unclean Realm:

Shang Qinghua frowns as he watches Nie Huaisang flittering about the market, chattering like a little bird as he shopped for fripperies.

MBJ: …

SQH: Yeah, no, he totally knows we’re watching him. He keeps glancing our way.

MBJ: *turns and frowns at SQH*

SQH: I’m not doing anything bad! I’m just looking. Looking! It’s totally a normal thing to watch when a sect heir acts like a brainless idiot.

MBJ: *sighs and somehow manages to look both exhausted and ready to fight the world at the same time*

SQH: *beams up at him* Awwww, thank you! *goes up on tip-toes to kiss MBJ’s cheek* But I don’t think you’ll need to fight anyone for me. I’m just surprised to find someone else who uses chatter as effectively as I do.

MBJ: *Blushes faintly and inclines his head towards the snack merchant*

SQH: *immediately perks up* Oh! That’s the best idea ever. They’ve got some amazing jerky here. I think you’ll like it. All spicy and sweet and just so good.

He drags MBJ off to the snack merchant, chattering away happily about all the amazing snacks that he’s had in the Unclean Realm, totally pretending to not notice the way Nie Huaisang watches him from behind his fan.

NHS to his guard: I had no idea anyone else did that.

His guard sighs and puts on that same totally exhausted but ready to fight face that MBJ had.

NHS groans and heads off to the tailor, complaining the whole way about NMJ being too overprotective and never getting to have any fun.

Both NHS and SQH make mental notes to keep eyes on each other because they are obviously Up To Something.

20. Building Stress

The door to Huaisang’s rooms banged open just as he set brush to paper. He kept painting. Once the brush was down, one kept going. It was a rule. Da-ge might not understand that it was a rule, but it absolutely was.

“We have got to figure out what’s going on with the Jin,” Da-ge snarled as he paced behind Huaisang.

“What happened now?” Huaisang asked, keeping his eyes on the paintbrush and the mountains forming underneath them.

A peak here, a lighter, rougher one behind it as the brush dried and lost ink. Then a very faint one behind that. Ah. Good base to start from. He’d need to add plants and a few dramatically trailing cherry trees at the peak of each mountain. And some birds.

Every painting needed birds.

“You’re not even listening,” Da-ge complained.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I’m listening. I can’t stop until I’m done with this phase, or the painting will be ruined, Da-ge,” Huaisang said.

He reloaded the brush with blank ink and set to work adding some quick strokes for the river at the base of the mountains and then some carefully dry-brushed sweeps to indicate fog. A few quick flicks of his smaller brush set the shoreline below the mountains. Then he sketched in the vegetation on the mountains, being very careful about how dark the ink was on the more distant mountains.

Huaisang leaned back and nodded. “All right. Thank you for waiting, Da-ge. This needs to dry before I do anything else. What’s happened with the Jin?”

As always, watching Huaisang paint had calmed Da-ge down. Not a lot. His jaw still worked as he stared at the painting and his arms crossed over his chest were so tense that his muscles bulged enough to threaten the structural integrity of his sleeves. But his eyes were calmer, and his breathing had slowed so it would have to be good enough.

“Our spies—”

“You mean our cousins who’ve gone to flirt with Jin Zixuan in hopes of becoming Jin Furen?” Huaisang interrupted with a grin.

Da-ge rolled his eyes. “Fine. Our cousins sent a message. Jin Zixun has disappeared from his rooms. No one knows where he’s gone, but he’s sure to stir up more trouble when he resurfaces.”

Huaisang raised an eyebrow as he rinsed and cleaned his brushes. “Interesting.”

“You’re not surprised,” Da-ge said just as flatly as Huaisang had.

“Da-ge, when I visited, Jin Guangyao told me that he’d been instructed to tuck Jin Zixun away somewhere so that he wouldn’t cause any more problems. If our cousins report that he’s missing from his rooms, that’s no kind of a surprise. He wasn’t in his rooms. At all.”

Outside, shouts echoed as the juniors drilled in forward strikes. Huaisang heard a dull thud that meant that someone had missed their shot and smacked their practice sword into the ground. He winced in sympathy for the endless drills that whoever it was would have to do now. Da-ge wasn’t the only one who believed in pounding techniques into muscle memory so deeply that you reacted without thought when in danger.

Huaisang could understand their point of view. He could. He just didn’t want to be in combat, ever, so he didn’t see the point of training at that level.

A knife in the ribs and crying all over everyone was so much more effective. Also much less sweaty.

Da-ge sat on the stool Huaisang kept for him. “The cousins seemed very surprised.”

“Are you sure that it came from them?” Huaisang asked. He rolled his eyes at the way Da-ge bristled. “Da-ge, seriously. Jin Guangyao knows how to send our messages. He’s probably better at it that both of us put together. He certainly sent more of them during his time in the Nie than you, me, Chen Da and the healers combined.”

“That…” Da-ge huffed like he wanted to shout only to grimace as he deflated on the stool. “That’s a good point. Damn it all. He wouldn’t even need to tell them. They wouldn’t know at all.”

Huaisang nodded. “Send them a message, one of the private ones with all the new codes. Find out what they have to say about Jin Zixun. And have them reply in code back to us. An evolving code would be best.”

“I really wanted to be done with wars,” Da-ge complained as he marched off to do just that.

Huaisang went back to his painting. If it turned out as he wanted, it would make a very good present to give to Jin Guangyao. Until Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji were ready to act, it was going to be necessary for Huaisang to play the fritter-brained reluctant young heir at Jin Guangyao. Not his favorite thing to do, but Huaisang wasn’t going to let the Jin threaten the peace.

Da-ge had slept through the night twice in the last week. That was much better than the last several months. The Song of Cleansing that Er-ge had taught Huaisang was, probably, helping Da-ge. It just needed more time, both for the song to take effect and for Huaisang to properly master it.

The Jin kicking the Jianghu into a full war was not acceptable. At least Huaisang understood being sneaky and learning things without punching people in the face. He could do this. No one else in the Nie could.

He’d put the final touches of pink onto the draping cherry trees and a little hint of red on the boatman slowly poling up the river when Da-ge returned a shichen later.

“You’re not done?” Da-ge asked.

“Da-ge, if you put too much ink on the paper, it dissolves,” Huaisang griped at him. “You have to stop and let it dry. And no, using drying talismans produces wrinkled paper and a weird crackled effect on the ink.”

“…Does it now?” Da-ge asked in such a strained voice that Huaisang whipped around to stare at him.

There was a message in Da-ge’s hands. Just a small scrap of paper that wouldn’t fill Huaisang’s palm, much less Da-ge’s. The edges of the paper had that almost-burnt look to them that said they’d been sent through the quick message technique.

“What.”

Da-ge passed the message over to Huaisang.

Ostensibly, it was a little note complaining about Madame Jin blocking Nie Lin from spending time with Jin Zixuan. The code, which had been nicely evolved from the current version used widely among the Nie, changed that message into one that said that yes, the previous message had come from Nie Lin and yes, the Jin were discreetly searching for Jin Zixun.

The ink on the message had the crackled effect that Huaisang always got when he used drying talismans’ on messages.

Not everywhere. Most of the message was just fine. It was the last bit about Jin Zixun that looked crackled and odd. The paper underneath those words was warped and bubbled just as Huaisang would’ve expected.

“Ah,” Huaisang breathed, staring at the message. “That’s not good. They’ve found a way to intercept our messages.”

“Thought we were good until you said that about the drying talismans,” Da-ge admitted. He licked his lips and then shook his head. “We have to go visiting, Huaisang. Xichen and the Jiang need to know about this. None of our messages can be trusted anymore.”

“Not unless the Jiang or the Lan have a secret method that they’ve not told us,” Huaisang agreed. “Well. Let me deal with this painting, Da-ge. It’ll give us a lovely excuse to go visiting if I say I’m bringing it as a random present for, oh, Jiang Yanli or Er-ge.”

“Make it Jiang Yanli,” Da-ge said as he rubbed his thumbnail over his bottom lip. “She still needs a husband, you know. I won’t marry her, but you could.”

“Da-ge!” Huaisang squawked. “I don’t want to get married!”

Da-ge waved his objection off as if it was unimportant as he strode back out of Huaisang’s rooms. “That doesn’t matter. It’s just an excuse to get us there.”

“It matters if she takes it seriously!” Huaisang yelled at his back.

The words bounced off Da-ge with no effect. Darn him. People were going to take it seriously. If Jiang Yanli didn’t take it seriously, Jiang Cheng absolutely would.

Huaisang huffed before setting to work mounting the now-dry painting over to a proper scroll for display. Thankfully, he had a dozen or so display scrolls on hand for various projects. It was easy to find one that would suit: a delicate lavender and green backing fabric with a short, sturdy length of paper that Huaisang could glue his very delicate artwork to.

If he’d had time, he would have replicated the painting on the actual scroll. No chance of that given that the servants arrived to pack Huaisang’s things halfway through the mounting process.

The next morning, they were off. Flying instead of riding in a proper carriage which Huaisang fully intended to complain loudly about. Da-ge did make a point of having one of the senior disciples carry Huaisang on her sword.

Nie Pengwanli was used to it. She got picked for that duty all the time. Huaisang made sure to ride in the front and keep his hands firmly to himself so that she wouldn’t object to doing it in the future.

So ridiculous that they hadn’t taken carriages.

At any rate, they arrived in Lotus Pier mid-afternoon. The new Jiang First Disciple, Yeung Kun, greeted them properly and saw them to the audience chamber. By the time they were escorted in, Jiang Cheng was on the lotus throne with Jiang Yanli smiling wanly at them.

Jiang Cheng looked even angrier than he normally did. “Welcome to Lotus Pier, Sect Leader Nie. We weren’t expecting a visit.”

“I know,” Da-ge said with a little nod that made Huaisang sigh and roll his eyes. “There were several things that I wanted to discuss with you. And Huaisang had a present for Jiang Yanli.”

Jiang Yanli blinked rapidly several times before smiling a bit more than she had before. “For me? Goodness, I can’t imagine what I would have done to deserve it.”

“You’re lovely and sweet and kind to everyone,” Huaisang declared because really, she was. “You don’t need to earn nice things. They should just be given to you.”

That was, of course, the right thing to say. Jiang Cheng cheered up immediately because he thought Jiang Yanli deserved all the nice things in the universe. The Jiang sect members promptly decided that Huaisang was a good person for being nice to Jiang Yanli.

Jiang Yanli blushed and narrowed her eyes at Huaisang, though her smile didn’t stiffen at all. Such skills. Huaisang needed to study how she did that. He’d never managed that sort of thing unless he was wailing and acting like a fool.

“It’s really not much,” Huaisang said as he passed the properly wrapped painting over to Yeung Kun who carried it over to Jiang Cheng who took it, studied the wrapping, and then passed it over to Jiang Yanli with a nod of official approval. “It reminded me of you and of Lotus Pier.”

Jiang Yanli dimpled as she bowed over the present. “Thank you so much. Perhaps we could go talk in the Moon Pavilion?”

“Good idea,” Jiang Cheng agreed. He waggled a finger at Da-ge. “I had some trade issues I wanted to talk to you about anyway. These two can talk while we work on that.”

“Agreed,” Da-ge said, abandoning Huaisang entirely.

Well, not entirely. Nie Pengwali trailed along behind them. Jiang Yanli’s maids followed them. And several servants arranged tea and some love treats before they even got to the Moon Pavilion out over the river.

Once they settled down and did the obligatory greetings and small talk, Huaisang nodded towards the painting.

“It’s a painting,” Huaisang said. “Yes, it kind of reminds me of Lotus Pier, but Da-ge used it as an excuse. He’s going to be telling everyone that I’m courting you. I am not courting you unless you actually want to leave Lotus Pier.”

Jiang Yanli blinked at first and then started smirking at him. “Well, that’s a relief. I’ve no interest in leaving at this time, but having you officially courting me would let me push of Sect Leader Yao’s sons.”

“Oh, no,” Huaisang said, aghast. “They’re not!”

“Sadly,” Jiang Yanli sighed and nodded, “they are. I hadn’t realized that they’re nearly as bad as their father.”

“They’re almost as bad as Jin Zixun,” Huaisang complained. “All right. We’ll make this convincing. It’ll make Da-ge happy. It’ll keep the Yao away. And it should make the Jin twitch, which I find quite appropriate right now. If we go full strength on this, we might even get Jin Guangshan and his ridiculous uncle Ruotian involved with giving the peacock “advice”.”

Jiang Yanli’s smile went positively evil as she smiled and poured them both a lovely white tea. “I quite agree with that. I have some ideas of how we could go about it.”

“Do tell,” Huaisang said with his best, brightest, most mischievous smile.

When she laughed, loud and free, Jiang Yanli was quite lovely. This might be fun after all. As long as they could use it to block the Jin, it was worth it.

#

In the Demon Realm:

SQQ: You idiot! He knows that you’re up to something!

SQH, dodging SQQ’s fan: No way! My king would’ve told me!

SQQ: Ugh, now we have to be careful about sending you anywhere near the Nie. That’s going to make things harder. And look! The Nie are making an alliance with the Jiang, which means they’ll be looking for you, too. And with the Lan on the way, they’ll start looking for you, too.

SQH: …I… don’t think it’ll be that bad? Maybe?

SQQ: I’ll work on new disguise talismans for both of you. Idiots. I’m working with idiots.

SQQ grumbles as he stomps into the other room to start work, leaving SQH to frown at the Nie meeting with the Jiang: Okay, maybe they suspect something. Maybe. But I still say it’s not that bad.

He shuffles off to whine at SQQ as he works.

21. Carrying Word

“No~!” A-Yuan wailed. “You can’t go, Baba! You can’t!”

He clung to Wei Ying’s leg while sobbing and carrying on like Wei Ying was going to die the moment he left A-Yuan’s side. The horrible part was that A-Yuan clung so hard that Wei Ying couldn’t peel him off and hug him. Poor baby needed all the hugs and Wei Ying could only rub A-Yuan’s head and pat his back while trying to calm him down.

Worse, Lan Zhan looked like his heart had just been torn out. Every single tear running down A-Yuan’s cheeks had Lan Zhan’s bottom lip trembling and his eyes filling with sympathetic tears.

That wasn’t even including Popo who looked tragic and stricken or Wei Ning who muttered as he checked his bow like he was going along. The whole entire sect, such as it was, looked like they were going to collapse in a heap if Wei Ying went anywhere at all.

Not helpful. Not helpful at all.

Wei Ying gave up and sat on the ground even though A-Yuan refused to let go of his leg. It did startle A-Yuan enough that he hiccuped and looked at Wei Ying instead of continuing without hearing at thing Wei Ying said.

“Hug?” Wei Ying offered with his arms open wide.

“Don’t go,” A-Yuan pleaded as he lunged into Wei Ying’s arms. “No going. Going away is bad. If you go, no coming back.”

“Ah, but that’s different,” Wei Ying said as he held A-Yuan and rocked him side to side while feathering kisses all over the top of his head. “The people who went away before weren’t Very Important People. I’m a Sect Leader. They’re never, ever, ever allowed to go anywhere by themselves. They have to have attendants and guards and clerks and all kinds of people, even for a secret visit.”

A-Yuan frowned at Wei Ying. “You said you were going with just Rich-gege and Snake-gege.”

“I am,” Wei Ying confirmed. “Lan Zhan counts as both an attendant and a clerk because he’s so very smart and talented.”

When A-Yuan looked at Lan Zhan, his frown was dubious enough that Lan Zhan’s ears went bright red. Off behind Lan Zhan, Popo covered her mouth as she started laughing quietly. A-Yuan hummed and turned his frown back on Wei Ying.

“Still need guards,” A-Yuan said.

His pout could be a deadly weapon. Combined with those tragically sad eyes, it was nearly enough to make Wei Ying call the whole thing off. As if he could.

“Snake-gege counts as a whole troop of guards. A whole army, even,” Wei Ying said. “He’s fought in wars. Real ones! He told me so when I said that he couldn’t possibly have. He was very stern at me about it, too. He could fight and beat up anyone who comes at us while we’re gone. More than ten times as many people as we have here, easy!”

A-Yuan’s eyes went wide as he stared at both hands with the fingers spread wide so that he could count. He whirled to look at Snake-gege who lifted his head up and then nodded very sternly indeed that Wei Ying wasn’t lying. It wasn’t just A-Yuan who gaped at him. Wei Ning did, too, while Wei Qing narrowed her eyes like she wanted to interrogate Snake-gege.

If, you know, they spoke the same language.

“Wow,” A-Yuan breathed. He tugged at Wei Ying’s robes. “Still don’t want you to go, Baba. Not safe.”

“Yeah, I know,” Wei Ying said, hugging him again. “But my sister is sad, A-Yuan. My brother is sad and grumpy about it. Lan Zhan’s brother is crying all the time.”

“Oh,” A-Yuan said. His little bottom lip pouted out as he considered that. “Should make them happy again. I guess.”

Wei Ying grinned at him. “I’m going to. But to do that I have to go give them hugs. I can’t do that from here.”

A-Yuan groaned and flopped against Wei Ying’s chest. “Don’t go. Please?”

Wei Ying groaned just like A-Yuan had. “But I have to! My sister is getting courted. Courted! I have to go make sure that he treats her right.”

“Wait, what?” Wei Qing asked sharply enough that A-Yuan started and clung to Wei Ying’s robes again. “When did this happen?”

“Yesterday afternoon,” Wei Ying said, waving at Lan Zhan who nodded seriously. “Lan Zhan took notes on the whole thing. They’re in the bamboo cottage.”

That was utterly boring to A-Yuan, of course, so he tugged harder on Wei Ying’s robes. This time his little frown was determined enough that Wei Ying raised both eyebrows at him.

“Is he nice?” A-Yuan asked. “Will he be good to her?”

“That’s what we have to go find out,” Wei Ying said with a firm enough nod that A-Yuan nodded back.

He also finally let Wei Ying go, running over to Popo to ask when the wedding would be and if he could make something for his Baba’s sister’s wedding to the strange man. Popo laughed and led A-Yuan off to plan his great masterpiece of a present for the wedding that more than likely wasn’t ever going to happen.

At least the kids went with her and A-Yuan. Made it easier to explain what was actually happening to Wei Qing and Wei Ning.

“Seriously?” Wei Qing demanded. “Who?”

“Nie Huaisang,” Wei Ying reported. “From what we saw, it’s not going to be a real courtship. Shijie’s getting a lot of pressure from Sect Leader Yao’s sons so Nie Huaisang’s going to run interference. It also keeps Nie Huaisang away from the Unclean Realm which reduces the amount of saber practice he has to do, so yeah. It’s a whole… thing… between the two of them right now.”

Wei Qing shuddered. “All right, I suppose you actually do need to go make sure that she’s all right.”

“They’re awful,” Wei Ning agreed woefully. “But you should have more people with you, Wei-gongzi. It’s not safe for you to go with so few.”

Not this again. Wei Ying sighed as he faced Wen Ning fully. “Lan Zhan and I worked out a whole plan so that it’ll be safe for us to visit. Snake-gege coming along will make sure that no one causes problems for us. He’s very nice, but remember how scary he was at first? Other people will only see the scary, not how nice he is. And then to make sure that we can’t be trapped, I absolutely need you and Wei Qing here. The two of you together with Popo can trigger the rainbow bridge to go outside.”

They’d tested that one over the last few weeks. The rainbow bridge was perfectly happy to go to any of the other peaks. It would form for the adults. For the kids. For Snake-gege and some but not all of the beasts on Ling You.

It absolutely would not go outside of Cang Qiong for anyone but Wei Ying.

He’d thought that he had to be the one holding the bridge open if it went outside of Cang Qiong, but some testing with Wei Ning and Wei Qing showed that the could open the bridge to Wei Ying, especially if Popo helped stabilize it once it formed up.

No one else could get the bridge to do it, which was why both Wei Qing and Wei Ning looked like he’d stabbed them in the gut.

“No, stop that,” Wei Ying huffed at them as Uncle Fourth hid his grin behind his grape juice stained sleeve. “You guys have to stay. Have to! If everything goes wrong, you’ll see it. You can use the mirror and watch every single moment of what happens. Then, if someone is truly an idiot and attacks in a way that Lan Zhan and Snake-gege can’t happen or I can’t deflect, you can drop the rainbow bridge and get us out of there.”

Wei Qing sucked a sharp breath between her teeth as her hands fisted. “I hate this plan. I understand that it’s necessary, but I hate it.”

“Snake-gege really fought in wars?” Wei Ning asked but he looked up at Snake-gege who lowered his head down and gently nudged Wei Ning. “Really?”

Snake-gege hissed sadly and nodded.

Just a tiny little nod as his incongruous eyelids blinked. Another thing that suggested very strongly that Snake-gege wasn’t any kind of a bi-viper at all. He was just shaped like one.

For a moment, Wei Ying could’ve sworn that something inside of him squirmed with awareness of… another shape? Maybe? Something different that Snake-gege could be, if he just had something.

Wei Ying didn’t know what that something was, but he was… rather uncomfortably aware that the squirmy feeling he’d gotten over the years was not something that other people had. Maybe. Maybe?

Distantly, he could’ve sworn that someone else agreed that yes, it was unique to them, but that had to be his imagination.

“I’m sorry you went through that,” Wei Ning said as he rubbed that spot behind Snake-gege’s ear. “War is awful. No one should have to endure it.”

Snake-gege’s eyes drifted shut. His little breathy hiss was as like a snakey-purr as it could be. Wei Ying grinned.

“My point,” Wei Ying said, interrupting Wei Ning and Snake-gege’s bonding time, “is that Snake-gege is actually quite powerful and fierce. If anyone attacks, he’ll be able to protect Lan Zhan and I. And, since I’ll be outside and you’ll be here, you can drop the rainbow bridge exactly at our feet. Then Snake-gege can fling us through back onto Qing Jing before darting after us. The bridge goes up and poof, no more danger and no way for anyone to track us.”

Wei Qing groaned as she rolled her eyes towards the heavens. “And the only way that works is if we stay here.”

“Exactly,” Wei Ying agreed. “I know you want to send more. I know you want to go, too. But it’s just not possible. If this is going to happen safely, it needs to be as few people outside with me as we can arrange. Lan Zhan has to go to talk to his brother. I have to go to talk to the other sect leaders. And Snake-gege has to go because no one anywhere is faster, stronger or more dangerous than he is.”

It took a bit more convincing before Wei Qing and Wei Ying would accept the plan, but they really couldn’t come up with a counter-plan that was any better than what Lan Zhan and Wei Ying had come up with already.

Then it was Uncle Forth who wanted to know if they needed to bring presents for the various sect leaders because he’d found some still perfect wine that would be a one-of-a-kind gift. Cousin Nine agreed, suggesting that they take some healing herbs. Popo, having set the kids to scouring the peaks for pretty flowers to press with some of the cousins riding herd, strongly suggested that they take some of the seeds for Heart’s Ease, as in her opinion the entire Jianghu could do with regular doses of it.

She wasn’t wrong. None of them were wrong. That led to Lan Zhan working on making qiankun pouches to carry all the… stuff… that Wei Ying apparently had to travel with now.

“I’m… not going then?” Jin Zixun asked once Wei Ying had a moment with no one around.

Wei Ying blinked at him. Jin Zixun still couldn’t walk more than about twenty paces before he had to stop for a break. His core had been almost entirely depleted keeping him alive through the torture and rape. He was still too pale, too weak, and definitely too prone to jumping at shadows to go anywhere but back to bed.

“No,” Wei Ying said, escorting Jin Zixun to the closest bench. “You’re not. You’re still a prisoner, you know that, right?”

“Don’t feel like a prisoner,” Jin Zixun grumbled as he slumped on the bench and glared at the very nice green and white robes he’d been given.

“Eh, it’s not as though you could leave, you know,” Wei Ying said. “I’m the only one who knows how to get through the fierce corpses and the arrays that keep Cang Qiong hidden. If you ran, you’d run straight into a horde of fierce corpses who’d eat you. No sword, so you can’t fly over them. And no one here has a sword that you could use.”

Jin Zixun huffed, a red spot appearing on his cheeks as if his body wanted to blush but just didn’t have enough blood to do so. Given how much blood he’d lost, yeah, that tracked.

“I could go over to Wan Jian,” Jin Zixun grumbled.

Wei Ying laughed. He couldn’t help it. “Well, I mean, if you want to die that earnestly, sure. The warding over those swords is… I have no idea how it works. I mean, I know it’s warding. But it’s so far beyond me that I just haven’t a clue how to handle it. Pretty sure that anyone who tried to take a sword would be killed by all the other swords, so sure, you could go to Wan Jian. Have fun with that.”

“…yeah, no,” Jin Zixun said. He shuddered. “But really, this doesn’t feel like a prison.”

“That’s because it’s not,” Wei Ying said wryly. “I mean, sort of yes, but mostly no. It’s safe. No one can get in without my permission. No one can even find this place. Lan Zhan didn’t get close before he was nearly killed. I mean, if he can’t do it…”

“No one else has a chance,” Jin Zixun agreed, much more cheerfully. “Right. Well. I’m going to head back. Wei Lingli is going to be mad at me for slipping away.”

“Yep,” Wei Ying agreed. He grinned at Jin Zixun’s heatless glare. “Come on. Let’s get you back home.”

Wei Ying decided to ignore Jin Zixun’s legs wobbling dramatically. If anyone asked, he was going to claim that it was just exhaustion instead of reacting to the thought of somewhere other than Koi Tower being home.

#

In the Demon Realm:

LBH: *Stares into the distance with a faint frown as if he heard something*

SQQ: …What?

LBH: I think our great-grandson is getting stronger. I caught a hint of him, of his power. The instinctive knowledge thing.

SQQ: *sits up very straight as he stares at LBH* Are you sure? I thought that his blood was too diluted for him to experience that.

LBH: Shizun, it’s not diluted. I think it’s more like I was before my seal broke. I think his Heavenly Demon blood is waking, not that it’s weaker somehow. I can’t… I can’t be sure of it, but that’s the only thing that makes sense of what I just felt.

They exchange long looks before LBH goes to watch the mirror while SQQ starts researching obsessively to see if there’s anything that they can to do help even though they are “trapped” in the Demon Realm.

 

---