Reading Time: 107 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

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32. Coordinated Moves

As much as Lan Zhan loved Wei Ying, there were times when he desperately wished that he could slap his hand over Wei Ying’s mouth to keep him from saying one more word.

Really? Wei Ying would just invite the Lan Sect to join Cang Qiong? How could that even work? The Lan couldn’t be properly mapped onto any of the sects of Cang Qiong. The closest they could be would be Qing Jing, which Wei Ying had already claimed as his own. The entire idea was ridiculous!

“That… how could that work?” Xiongzhang asked, accurately echoing Lan Zhan’s thoughts as he eyed Wei Ying as if he had suddenly gone crazy. “I cannot relocate the entire sect. I do not know that I could trust many of the sect members with that kind of knowledge.”

“I’m not saying that you should relocate,” Wei Ying said, still staring entirely too calmly at Xiongzhang. “Not at all. I’m saying that I can designate the Lan Sect as an affiliate or branch of the Cang Qiong if I so choose. That would allow you to send selected scholars to look at our libraries. That would allow you access to our stores. That would allow you to visit your brother when you want.”

Lan Zhan stared at Wei Ying. That was a much more sensible solution than what he’d thought Wei Ying meant. Quite reasonable, actually. Especially the ability to control who saw what, who had access.

The only sound in the moon pavilion was the slapping of water against the pilings underneath them. Lan Zhan was not sure that Xiongzhang breathed. Nie Mingjue’s cheeks were slowly turning red as he very obviously held his breath, eyes darting between Wei Ying and Xiongzhang.

Predictably, Jiang Cheng was the one to break the silence.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Jiang Cheng asked. “No, let me tell you what it sounds like to me. It sounds like you set yourself up as the new Chief Cultivator and we’re all supposed to give you fealty and shit.”

“Ugh, Jiang Cheng,” Wei Ying groaned. “No! Not like that. I just… there has to be a way to bring everyone together without going all Wen Ruohan Is Always Right about it. Come on. The Lan, Nie and Jiang are allied, sort of. Not as closely as they should be, but they are allied. Adding to that with Cang Qiong should be possible. And allies, according to all the old stories, got access to the libraries and stuff, you know?”

Jiang Cheng huffed. “No, I don’t know. You’re the one with the records. It sounds great, sure, but until you give me something more solid to go on, I’m treating this like another of your wild damned ideas.”

Wei Ying’s shoulders slumped dramatically, but the sparkle of laughter was back in his eyes. He smiled wryly at Lan Zhan and then shrugged as if to say “well, what can you do?” at Xiongzhang.

“This is so frustrating,” Wei Ying groaned as he listed sideways to press himself shoulder to hip against Lan Zhan’s side. “I know this can be fixed. I know it can. I just… can’t quite see how to do it.”

“Wei Ying is very smart,” Lan Zhan said, raising his voice to talk over Jiang Cheng’s grumpy huff of disbelief, “but Wei Ying is not the person who handles practical issues.”

“…” Wei Ying opened his mouth and then sighed. “Okay, yeah, that’s true. I’m the wild idea person. But it wouldn’t be safe for Popo Wei to come here.”

Lan Zhan had thought that Wei Ning should come as he was deeply practical and terrifically good at finding the simplest solution to any given problem, but Wei Ying was quite right that Popo Wei was far better at it. He hummed thoughtfully.

“Mirror?” Lan Zhan suggested.

“Not a bad idea,” Wei Ying agreed. “I mean, the entire point of our coming here was to tell you guys to set up mirrors with someone trusted to monitor them. The device back home lets us connect to any reflective surface.”

“Not the river,” Jiang Cheng said with a snort even though he nodded that it could work in a pinch.

“Well, it could but it wouldn’t exactly be discreet,” Wei Ying said. He grinned, waving one hand towards the river outside of the moon pavilion. “The image would be as big as the reflective surface, so, you know, kind of hard to keep quiet.”

Nie Mingjue snorted and then started laughing into his fist. “Oh, that would go over so well. Giant image of the Yiling Patriarch speaking from the river or a lake? Yeah, that’s just what we need to reassure everyone.”

A moment’s silent contemplation passed and then Xiongzhang and Jiang Cheng both started snickering along with Nie Mingjue. Wei Ying didn’t laugh with them. He smiled at them, soft and pleased, which Lan Zhan hummed over.

Wei Ying tilted his head so that he could turn that gently delighted smile Lan Zhan’s way. It was odd, but Lan Zhan just… knew that seeing those he cared about laughing made Wei Ying deeply happy. Appropriate to the situation or not, Wei Ying adored making his favorite people laugh.

I love it when you smile like that, Wei Ying’s voice whispered in the back of Lan Zhan’s mind.

Not like a temporary telepathy spell. Or even like the words had actually been said. It was more that Lan Zhan looked at Wei Ying’s smile, the contented glimmer of red in his pupils, and knew what Wei Ying meant with that smile.

So much joy. So much happiness just to see Lan Zhan. There had never been a time in Lan Zhan’s life when he was so… appreciated… not despite his many flaws but because of them.

Xiongzhang loved Lan Zhan. That was as much a fact as that snow was cold and the sun rose in the east.

Wei Ying looked at Lan Zhan’s unexpressive face, his temper and dislike for virtually every human being on the planet, his perfectionism and refusal to bend and saw… perfection. Beauty. The ideal that all men should strive for.

It was enough to make Lan Zhan’s ears burn. Then his face, too, as Wei Ying whined high in his throat as he realized that the ear blush was an actual blush for Lan Zhan. One as severe as when Wei Ying’s entire face went red right down to his collarbones.

“Oh, gross,” Jiang Cheng complained. “Stop that, both of you. No flirting.”

“They’re adorable,” Xiongzhang protested only to laugh into his sleeve when Jiang Cheng made the most outraged chicken noise of protest that Lan Zhan had ever heard from a human being.

“Nope, you’re the adorable one, Cheng-Cheng,” Wei Ying said with a grin designed to start a fight.

“No fighting now,” Lan Zhan said before Jiang Cheng could do more than puff up with mock outrage while his eyes sparkled at the thought of a battle. “Solving problems and then fighting.”

Jiang Cheng nodded. “Okay, I can live with that. What’s our base problem? I mean besides Jin Guangshan being a corrupt asshole who needs to stop breathing.”

“The Jin are trying to rule the Jianghu,” Nie Mingjue said.

“Too many people are being hunted and their lives destroyed,” Xiongzhang countered.

“You can’t fucking come home because everyone other than us are idiots,” Jiang Cheng declared.

Wei Ying hummed as he stared out the moon-shaped window at the lurking shadow under the water that was Snake-gege. There was a weight to his qi that stopped Lan Zhan from offering his opinion that the deepest issue was that no one respected Wei Ying as a cultivator, a genius and a new, very powerful, sect leader.

Snake-gege lifted his head out of the water just enough for the top of his four sets of eyes to meet Wei Ying’s gaze.

Oddly, Lan Zhan had a… sense… of Snake-gege’s thoughts, too.

Not as clear. Wei Ying was as clear as a bell, perhaps because Lan Zhan loved him and had studied his every gesture and expression for years. Snake-gege’s face showed no real expressions. His eyes showed nothing as well.

Despite that, Lan Zhan could feel that something lay behind those red slit eyes. Snake-gege’s emotions seemed to press close, carrying a weight of “this is not known” along with a certain wariness that seemed odd from a creature so massive and lethal.

Not as clearly as Wei Ying, Snake-gege seemed to say we do not know who is behind all of this and that is a very large problem that need to be addressed before we do anything else.

The air seemed to crackle for a moment as Wei Ying’s breath hissed between his clenched teeth.

Then Snake-gege slid back under the water with a tiny splash no larger than a duck submerging to nibble on water grass along the river’s bed.

“The real problem is that we don’t know who’s behind all this,” Wei Ying said for Snake-gege. “Because Jin Zixun was right. He was abused and tortured long before Meng Yao became Jin Guangyao. That means that Jin Guangyao was bad, yes, but eliminating him won’t solve the problem. It might be Jin Guangshan, but I have a really hard time believing that. I mean, seriously, he’s just so… gross.”

Xiongzhang frowned as his fingers tapped on his thighs as he used to do during difficult exercises when they were very little. “I have to admit that I find it difficult to believe that Jin Guangshan could have organized all of this. The problems have been very widespread and over a very long period of time. Shufu used to talk about Wen Ruohan as if he was the architect of all of our misery, but his death didn’t stop the problems.”

“I mean, Jin Guangshan is a sect leader,” Nie Mingjue said hesitantly. “It could be him. He’s been around and stirring up shit ever since he was a junior disciple. Father used to complain about his nonsense when I was little.”

“Yeah, but Jin Guangshan is a sect leader who lets his wife run the sect, his son handle diplomacy, and who hasn’t done much more than spend the sect’s money in decades,” Jiang Cheng said, frowning. “You know, I can’t figure out who it could be either. Popo Yu complained about it last time she visited. There’s all kinds of stuff going on in the shadows that she can’t figure out.”

Wei Ying nodded as he sat up again so that he could tap the map where the closest prison camp had been. “There were way too few guards.”

“We thought you got them,” Nie Mingjue said, frowning as if he intended to go into battle right there and then.

“No,” Wei Ying said. “Every camp we went to, there were only a handful of guards. In a couple of the camps there were none and all the Wen trapped there were out cold. It was like someone else went through and cleaned the place out before we got there.”

“Every camp had too few guards,” Lan Zhan agreed. “Xiongzhang, did you question the Lan disciples working there?”

Xiongzhang nodded, fingers tap-tap-tapping away at his thighs. “I did. With Speak the Truth. They claimed that Jin Guangyao showed them a message specifically from me authorizing them to follow whatever orders they were given. They were told that given the gravity of the threat the Wen represented, they were to consider all of the Wen enemy soldiers.”

“And enemy soldiers are given no quarter,” Wei Ying murmured as he stared at the map. “Look. The camps are all on one side of the Burial Mounds, close enough that from any single one of them people could run and get in, if and only if they knew how to get through the wards.”

“Yeah, but on the south side, it’s all our land,” Jiang Cheng said, frowning thunderously. “We’ve been having issues with bandits and lots of yao on that border. I mean, beyond our ability to really knock them all down. We get there, kill a few, and they seem to disappear into nothing.”

“Gusu has seen the same issue,” Xiongzhang murmured as he marked several locations on the northern side of the Burial Mounds. “Shufu and I thought it was, well, remnants from Wen Ruohan forbidding us from night hunting.”

“And the war,” Nie Mingjue agreed. “The Nie only have this little sliver here, but yeah, same thing.”

Wei Ying nodded slowly. “Okay, so the deeper issue isn’t Jin Guangshan being his greedy gross self. Someone or something is probing Cang Qiong’s borders to see if they can get in. Identify who that is, either eliminate or ally with them, and then many of the other problems will be easier to solve.”

“Ally?” Nie Mingjue asked, hand clenched around Baxia’s rattling sheathe. “What the fuck, Wei Wuxian?”

Wei Ying breathed a very unamused little laugh. “Chifeng-Jun, the only people who know where to find Cang Qiong are me and the people who used to live there. It could be someone trying to come home.”

#

Off in Jinlintai, Mobei-Jun slowly stalks through a darkened alley, following the whispered messages sent magically to him by Luo Binghe. This area of Jinlintai is seedy, full of desperate people who will not hesitate to stab you in the back to steal your shoes, your cloak or your purse.

Mobei-Jun walks among them like a tiger, despite the spells hiding his blue skin and ice-blue eyes.

LBH: Be careful. That one looks desperate enough to sell your body for cash after slitting your throat.

MBJ: *glares so fiercely at the young man that the young man in question scrambles to his feet and runs away*

LBH: Well, that works, I guess. The scent is… right. Left. Down those stairs, off on the left again. Yeah, down in that cellar.

MBJ: *frowns at the dank stairwell leading to a rough cellar cut under the foundation of a crumbling building*

LBH: No, it’s definitely not safe. But that’s where the scent leads.

MBJ: *sighs as he carefully rests the tips of his fingers against the door*

The energies that LBH had been tracking by “scent” and MBJ had tracked by “taste” come clearer.

LBH: Not demonic. What the fuck? How could those behind all this not be demons?

MBJ: …Immortal humans. Very, very old ones.

LBH and MBJ share a moment of mental cursing (for MBJ) and very loud and frustrated cursing (for LBH) before MBJ steps away from the cellar door, hand gripped firmly about LBH’s arm.

They disappear in a flash of ice crystals.

For a long moment, the dank, depressing alley is silent. Then a gold-clad cultivator with a red dot on his forehead peeks out of the cellar door. There’s something about his eyes that suggests great age, even though he looks no older than twenty-five or thirty.

He looks around and then closes the door once more, leaving the alley as empty and dank as before.

33. Lost General

The nice thing about Lan Zhan’s brother was that once you got him moving, he didn’t hesitate at all.

Give Lan Xichen a firm, morally clear direction, and he would move mountains. Potentially literally. Wei Ying wasn’t entirely certain that Lan Xichen would stay in the Lan Sect if it turned out that they had someone in the sect who’d been undermining peace for the last couple of generations.

It had to be someone who was either nearly immortal or actually immortal. Nothing else made sense. The entire Jianghu had been a mess ever since Xue Chonghai and his version of demonic cultivation with the Yin Iron. Might have been a mess even longer than that given the whole sealed away from the world thing that Cang Qiong had going on.

Either way, Lan Xichen had taken the news that they could have secret hidden immortals manipulating events in Jinlintai about as well as Wei Ying expected.

Poorly.

Nie Mingjue had gone red-faced and furious while Jiang Cheng ranted about the whole thing with a string of pure profanity that would’ve made the sailors on the river stare at him in awe for his language skills. The three of them had dropped the privacy seals and set to work on heading right to Jinlintai, even though Wei Ying had tried to get them to slow down and thing.

So weird being the one telling other people that they were moving too fast and making mistakes. Wei Ying didn’t like it.

Lan Zhan had been way more effective at it, so Wei Ying had let Lan Zhan work on that while he stayed in the moon pavilion with Snake-gege, Zhuzhi-Lang, lurking underneath the floorboards.

“I can still hear them,” Wei Ying observed to Zhuzhi-Lang. “Not exactly, like I was standing there next to them, but I can hear Shijie in the kitchens, Jiang Cheng cursing. Lan Zhan sighing internally as he marshals his words.”

Zhuzhi-Lang sank deeper under the river’s surface. There was a distinct feeling of uncomfortable joy to his presence in Wei Ying’s mind. It wasn’t that Zhuzhi-Lang was trying to hide. He was embarrassed at how happy he was with Wei Ying’s new ability to read minds.

Wei Ying bit his lip.

“Snake-gege,” Wei Ying said to the floorboards of the moon pavilion. “Talk to me, please. I need to understand what’s going on.”

Zhuzhi-Lang sighed in the back of Wei Ying’s mind. I don’t want to hurt you, A-Ying.

His mental voice was a bare whisper, so quiet that Wei Ying almost thought he was imagining things. Wei Ying licked his lips, laughing despite himself. He’d almost convinced himself that he had to be wrong, that it was all his imagination.

Even though the changes were getting really, really obvious.

“You won’t,” Wei Ying replied firmly. “Even when I was a tiny little baby, you never hurt me. The worst I got was bruised knees sliding off your tail.”

Zhuzhi-Lang’s laughter was full of little hisses. The water outside danced a bit with his laughter so it wasn’t just mental. Wei Ying grinned, delighted that he’d gotten his Snake-gege to laugh properly.

Your blood is still blooming, Zhuzhi-Lang explained in a slightly louder voice. Too much would hurt you. I… don’t have the best control given my limitations.

“Limitations?” Wei Ying asked. “What limitations? I mean, lack of thumbs aside.”

Exactly the lack of thumbs, Zhuzhi-Lang said with a wry little emphasis that felt like a shy, self-depreciating smile. My blood doesn’t allow me to shift forms. I’m stuck in this shape without the blood of my uncle or my cousin. Maybe you, someday.

Behind the words, so simply said, where images. Memories. Zhuzhi-Lang in a misshapen form halfway between human and snake with useless limbs and a human-ish face. Being nearly human, just with scales and a green tint to his skin that made people stare at him in fear. And being Snake-gege, which at least was a fully functional form that allowed Zhuzhi-Lang to protect those he cared about.

Like Wei Ying.

And Cang Qiong.

The others faded from Wei Ying’s awareness as he focused fully on Zhuzhi-Lang. This was..

This was no. No one should be trapped that way. It wasn’t right! If it could be fixed partially, for a short period of time, that meant that there was probably a permanent solution. No one had found it yet, but it had to exist.

Honestly, Wei Ying could feel the outlines of the permanent solution just out of reach like his very best ideas. And his very worst, too, so he would talk to Wei Qing about it before he did anything serious.

“Would my blood help right now?” Wei Ying asked. “I mean, would it give you a little more control and comfort?”

A rush of pure love flooded into Wei Ying, making him gasp and clutch at his chest just the same as when Lan Zhan gave Wei Ying his deadly serious compliments.

“Snake-gege!” Wei Ying whined. “You have to warn me!”

Zhuzhi-Lang laughed. That’s your grandfather’s blood talking. All of our bloodline are like that. Love is… so very potent for us.

“Well, at least it’s not just me being silly,” Wei Ying said, unreasonably reassured that his heart feeling like it was going to explode every time someone loved him wasn’t just, you know, his abusive childhood. “Honestly, though, that was… that was a lot, Snake-gege.”

Zhuzhi-Lang laughed some more, making the water outside dance with his giggles. It was so cute. Great, huge, enormous snake giggling like, well, like Wei Ning when someone earnestly praised him. The random thought of Wei Ning made Zhuzhi-Lang’s entire mental landscape go pink and pleased and utterly embarrassed in ways that reminded Wei Ying of Lan Zhan’s everything.

“Oh,” Wei Ying breathed as a delighted smile bloomed on his face and Zhuzhi-Lang sank right down into the muck at the bottom of the river. “Oh! That’s wonderful, Snake-gege. He thinks you’re amazing. And A-Ning absolutely deserves someone sweet and kind and fierce to protect him.”

After everything Wei Ning had gone though, having a giant demonic snake who was also a giggly, shy person as his lover would be perfect.

A-Ying… Zhuzhi-Lang whined. He hasn’t even seen my other forms. There’s nothing there.

“Nope,” Wei Ying declared, determined that yes, this is going to happen. “Not listening. Get your snout up here so I can give you some of my blood. Even if it isn’t enough yet, it’ll let you assess how close I am to whatever it is that makes me different.”

The embarrassed whining as Zhuzhi-Lang slowly poked his top set of eyes up through the surface of the water made Wei Ying laugh. He was so cute. Huge and deadly but so, so, so cute!

From the full body wiggle that Zhuzhi-Lang did, the love through their mental bond hit him just as hard as it had Wei Ying earlier. Still, Zhuzhi-Lang lifted his head to the moon pavilion’s window so that Wei Ying could cut the base of his thumb and let the blood drip down into Zhuzhi-Lang’s mouth.

Not a lot. Oddly, Wei Ying’s thumb started scabbing over almost instantly which it hadn’t done since he lost his golden core. He frowned and focused on the little cut, sort of… willing it… to bleed more.

There was a sudden spurt of blood like he’d hit an artery instead of barely parting his skin. Wei Ying cursed and the blood just as suddenly stopped flowing.

Your blood really is waking up, Zhuzhi-Lang commented as he submerged himself again, mouth firmly shut to keep Wei Ying’s blood inside.

“It’s…” Wei Ying hesitated.

He could feel it, was the thing. Not just his own blood in his own body, which felt like it was almost alive? Squirming a little bit maybe?

He could feel his blood soaking into Zhuzhi-Lang’s tongue like thousands upon thousands of tiny snakes sliding away into the grass, except that it was Zhuzhi-Lang’s massive body. More importantly, there was something in Zhuzhi-Lang’s body that greeted Wei Ying’s blood, that copied what it was doing, that was almost, almost aware…

Shifting. Shifting and moving. Changing things in the deepest parts of Zhuzhi-Lang’s cells so that he could…

…could…

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said from the doorway. He frowned around the room as if trying to figure out who Wei Ying had been talking to.

“Just talking at Snake-gege,” Wei Ying explained with a grin. “He’s got a crush on Wei Ning!”

The water outside vibrated so hard that Zhuzhi-Lang set off a minor tidal wave through the piers. Wei Ying laughed, bouncing on his toes as Lan Zhan’s frown faded into that fondly dismayed look that Wei Ying had so grown to love.

“I had noticed,” Lan Zhan said.

“No,” Wei Ying breathed, eyes wide. He held out a hand to Lan Zhan, unable to be in his presence without touching him at least a little bit. “Really? I just missed it?”

“Mm,” Lan Zhan confirmed. His lips curled as he took Wei Ying’s hand to firmly tug Wei Ying into his arms. “It is mutual.”

The mental wail of pure delighted dismay from Zhuzhi-Lang made Wei Ying laugh with glee. Oh, he was going to figure out the shape shifting thing. He absolutely was. Zhuzhi-Lang, his beloved Snake-gege, needed, needed! And thus he would figure it out.

Eventually. You know, after they dealt with the Jin’s nonsense.

In the very back of Wei Ying’s mind, that part of himself that was increasingly aware that there was something odd going on with his body perked up. Because the oddness inside of him matched very well with the oddness in Zhuzhi-Lang. Not exactly. Zhuzhi-Lang’s oddness was wrapped up in his being A Snake but also Not A Snake. It got all tangled around the part of him that should be able to switch between Snake and Not a Snake, which seemed to be why he needed outside intervention.

His own body couldn’t find the difference between A Snake and Not A Snake. Wei Ying’s oddly squirmy blood wiggled through Zhuzhi-Lang’s body and magic like fingerling fish darting between the lotus in the spring. Fast and uncatchable, but undeniably there.

And, more importantly, his blood / magic zipped through Zhuzhi-Lang helping that tangled bit untangle.

Which meant, yes, that Zhuzhi-Lang would hopefully be able to shift shapes soon, but more importantly it meant that Wei Ning might get Snake-gege hugs with actual arms. Much more important, obviously.

A-Ying, Zhuzhi-Lang whined in the back of Wei Ying’s mind.

“You are well?” Lan Zhan asked, caressing Wei Ying’s cheek with one calloused fingertip as Wei Ying leaned against his chest.

“Mm!” Wei Ying confirmed. “My qi is doing weird things but, well, I seem to be getting better so I’ve officially decided not to worry about it now. I’ll ask Wei Qing about it when we get back. She’ll yell at me and stick me full of needles and figure it out for me. Very good division of labor, I think. Very wise for a sect leader.”

Lan Zhan breathed a little laugh that Zhuzhi-Lang echoed in his mind.

Far away, so far off that it felt like a dream of a ghost sliding across the moon, Wei Ying… thought… that he heard someone else laughing. Approving.

Maybe.

“Back home?” Wei Ying asked Lan Zhan.

He nodded. “Xiongzhang is reluctant to let us go, but we must see what tools we can find. And I believe we need to use the mirror. Something doesn’t make sense.”

Wei Ying scowled. “Yeah. Definitely agree with that. I’d like to question Meng Yao, too. And talk to Jin Zixun. Something’s off about the Jin and I just can’t figure it out. Yet. We’ll get there, though, if we have to tear Koi Tower down to its foundations.”

Lan Zhan looked ready to do exactly that which made Wei Ying kiss him. Made! How could he not kiss Lan Zhan when he looked that strong, determined and ready to do whatever was necessary to keep Wei Ying safe?

Still, it would be good to get home. Wei Ying missed Qing Jing and he really, really, really wanted to get some alone time with his Snake-gege to see if they could figure out how to let him shift forms properly. It could very easily turn the tide of battle.

And Wei Ning hugs really did need to happen.

#

Back in the Demon Realm:

SQQ & SQH glare at their respective husbands, arms crossed over their chests in massive amounts of disapproval.

LBH: But Shizun! We needed to find out who was manipulating things.

MBJ: … *saddest of sad puppy eyes*

SQQ & SQH’s disapproval intensifies.

LBH: @_____@ Shizun….

MBJ: …I think it might be Han Hau.

SQQ, SQH & LBH all stare at him in shock.

*absolute explosions of horror as they all scramble to verify if MBJ might, possibly, be correct*

Off in Lotus Pier:

ZZL: @@______________@@ …and we’re in the human realm where Han Hua can get at us…!

34. Beloved Nephew

Zhuzhi-Lang’s snake form couldn’t sigh with relief. The lungs didn’t work that way. Mentally, though, he definitely sighed happily once A-Ying’s altered rainbow bridge blinked away, leaving the three of them at the landing point on Qing Jing.

Even after all these centuries living in Cang Qiong, Zhuzhi-Lang felt like an imposition when he was on this peak. This wasn’t his place. It never had been and never would be. This was where Luo Binghe and Shen Qingqiu lived. Where they’d met and fallen in love and, for a blissful time, raised their children together.

And where it had all fallen apart, so long ago.

“Finally,” Wei Qing exclaimed, glaring at A-Ying with her hands on her hips. “We’ve been worried sick about the lot of you.”

“Sorry!” Wei Ying said, not bobbing a bow to her as he might have before he understood that he was actually Cang Qiong’s new sect leader. “There was entirely too much talking to be done. Did you keep Jin Guangyao alive? Or are we calling him Meng Yao again?”

Wei Qing huffed and rolled her eyes. “Of course he’s alive. I’m the best surgeon around. He’s unconscious. We’re keeping him that way. Even with everything we could do, he realized that he was being manipulated. You’ll get nothing worthwhile out of him.”

Zhuzhi-Lang hummed thoughtfully to A-Ying because that wasn’t exactly true.

Once A-Ying’s blood fully woke, he would be able to use it in so many ways that would seem impossible right now. He wasn’t far off full awakening, too.

A-Ying’s blood worms not only slithered energetically through Zhuzhi-Lang’s body, they seemed determined to teach Zhuzhi-Lang’s blood worms how to work better than they ever had before. His uncle, Tianglang-Jun, had been able to tell Zhuzhi-Lang’s blood worms what to do, how to let him shift. He had, many times.

The problem was that Tianglang-Jun had no patience, no interest in long-term work.

He’d never set his mind to accomplishing anything as persnickety as reworking Zhuzhi-Lang’s blood worms so that they would let him shift at will instead of blocking his shifting ability.

A-Ying?

He seemed to have already decided that it was second or third on his list of priorities which was just… so very A-Ying. The silly sweet boy always had to take care of everyone around him. He never did seem to take his own needs seriously.

Still, it was simpler to follow A-Ying around Qing Jing as he checked on everyone and got lectures from most everyone including A-Yuan who had truly spectacular sad baby eyes that melted A-Ying’s heart just as much as they did Zhuzhi-Lang’s. Once A-Ying had properly apologized to everyone, he led Zhuzhi-Lang off to the lovely waterfall and pool on the side of the peak.

Without Lan Wangji following them.

Or Wei Qing. Even Wei Ning stayed back with the others and he rarely stayed away from Zhuzhi-Lang when the two of them were in the same place together.

Zhuzhi-Lang appreciated A-Ying’s gentle pressure on their minds to keep them from seeing his first attempt at transforming after so long. It was likely to go very poorly. He’d never been great at it and this time he was going to attempt it with incomplete, not fully awake blood worms. This was, honestly, likely to be a horrible mess.

“Right,” A-Ying said once they were as alone as they were going to get on Qing Jing. “Let’s see if you can change back, Snake-gege.”

Zhuzhi-Lang sighed, but he still let A-Ying put his hands on his massive snout.

The physical contact… helped? Somehow? Tianglang-Jun had never touched Zhuzhi-Lang when he helped, but this… huh.

Zhuzhi-Lang’s body shifted and contracted, the massive form compacting into a worm-like shape with useless arms and legs that abruptly grew into proper arms and legs when A-Ying frowned thunderously. His tail, usually the biggest and most important part of his body, went slender and whip-like as his hips formed and his ribcage shifted to properly contain his altered lungs and heart.

“Oh,” Zhuzhi-Lang breathed as his throat and mouth changed smoothly, allowing him speech for the first time in so very long.

“There,” A-Ying breathed along with Zhuzhi-Lang.

His hands rested on Zhuzhi-Lang’s cheeks, warm and soft against the remaining scales dotting his bipedal form’s skin. After a long moment of their minds comfortably brushing against one another, with Zhuzhi-Lang quietly pushing the awareness of their other relatives far away so as not to overwhelm A-Ying, their eyes opened once more.

Zhuzhi-Lang winced at the disorientation that came from going from four sets of snake eyes to two human-like eyes. The colors were always so different, and the lack of seeing heat…! But the switch took only a couple of fast heartbeats before his brain and body and magic settled into his bipedal shape.

“Oh,” A-Ying breathed as he cupped Zhuzhi-Lang’s cheeks. “Oh, no! You’re so cute, Snake-gege! I’m doomed. Doomed! You’ll make sad eyes at me and Wei Ning will do it right next to you, and I’ll collapse like a pile of wet tissue paper.”

“A-Ying,” Zhuzhi-Lang protested as he carefully, gently, put his hands over A-Ying’s.

So much love. So much delight. Pure glee that A-Ying had helped Zhuzhi-Lang shift forms for the first time in hundreds of years.

“You are such a good boy,” Zhuzhi-Lang whispered only to laugh quietly as A-Ying groaned like he’d just been stabbed. “And so very much like your family. Oh, my little cousin, you’re just like your mother and grandmother and your great-grandfather. And his father, too.”

Bamboo rustled around them, shifting in the breeze which rippled the surface of the waterfall’s pool. A human would have been cold, standing there naked. A-Ying shivered a bit, though Zhuzhi-Lang could feel how much of that was because of his emotions.

His hope. Fear. Desperation to know anything at all about his family.

Their family.

A-Ying’s eyes went wide. “…You knew them.”

Zhuzhi-Lang held A-Ying’s hands between his own, smiling wryly. “I did. I never spent much time with your mother. I swore to stay here to protect Cang Qiong until the proper person could unlock it, but I visited her from time to time. She laughed. Sang. We all… live vividly, A-Ying. It’s part of what we are.”

A-Ying made a noise, desperate and hopeful, high in his throat as he pulled his hands free though only for long enough that he could pull spare robes out of his qiankun sleeve. Green ones, logically, as A-Ying always made sure to carry spare robes for his Lan Wangji. Lan Wangji was the one carrying black and red robes around along with every single thing that might make A-Ying’s life more comfortable.

“We’ll find you something that’s just right later,” A-Ying said as Zhuzhi-Lang dressed carefully.

“This is fine,” Zhuzhi-Lang said. “I like green. You can ask, A-Ying. I’ll tell you whatever I can. I… don’t know it all. I wasn’t there for much of it. But I can tell you about your family easily enough.”

He had to grab A-Ying’s arms to keep him from collapsing in a heap on the ground. Zhuzhi-Lang hissed a little sigh as he scooped A-Ying up in his newly restored arms. That was nice. He always enjoyed having limbs, especially when they worked properly.

The waterfall had a little hideaway behind the curtain of water. Someone, ages ago before Shen Qingqiu had ever come to Qing Jing, had carved benches and put in warming charms so that disciples could come and meditate behind the waterfall.

It did make for a very soothing, isolating experience. Inside the little meditation spot, it felt as though there was no one else in the entire world.

It was also very, very, very hard to overhear when one talked here. The waterfall drowned out any echoes of your voice, which was probably a good idea for the moment.

“I don’t…” A-Ying stopped and breathed through the rush of desperate yearning. “I don’t even know what to ask, Snake-gege. Just… Can you tell me about Mama? My grandmother? I don’t know what her name was. I have grandfathers? And, and, you’re my uncle?”

If it were anyone else, Zhuzhi-Lang would stay silent. Tell little lies that painted a pretty picture if he liked the person, lies that made things ugly and sad if he didn’t like them. That was just… smart. One didn’t share information about one’s family for fear of it being used against both you and your family.

This was A-Ying.

His little baby great-grand-nephew who stared at Zhuzhi-Lang with his heart aching for any scrap of information on his family while his eyes willed with tears. Saying nothing was never going to be an option with A-Ying.

“Distant uncle,” Zhuzhi-Lang said, going to pat A-Ying’s hand and getting his hand seized in a fierce grip that Zhuzhi-Lang returned because it seemed like it helped A-Ying calm down. “We’re Heavenly Demons.”

“I… read about those somewhere,” A-Ying said, frowning as he tried to remember where and when. “Fallen from the Heavens, most powerful demons, but not like demons now?”

“Mm,” Zhuzhi-Lang agreed. “My father and my uncle, Tianglang-Jun, were two of the surviving Heavenly Demons. My father died when I was young. My uncle cared for me. I was half Heavenly Demon, half demon snake from the Demonic realms. It is… a plane? A world occasionally connected to this one and the heavens by temporary rifts.”

A-Ying nodded. “That I know about. Mama said that the rifts still happen, but there’s something that prevents anything from coming through.”

“That’s later in the story,” Zhuzhi-Lang agreed. “Tianglang-Jun loved humans. He thought they were fascinating and very creative. He fell in love with a human from a sect known as Han Hua, Su Xiyuan. The Han Hua palace master was… not pleased about their love. When Su Xiyuan discovered she was pregnant, the Han Hua palace master imprisoned her and tried to make her abort her baby. That didn’t work. She escaped and died giving birth to him. He was your grandfather, Luo Binghe.”

“Oh, wait, I do know this story,” A-Ying breathed as his eyes went wide. “Han Hau attacked Tianglang-Jun and trapped him under a mountain with Cang Qiong’s help, but later, like a lifetime later, he escaped and collapsed the gates between worlds?”

“Close,” Zhuzhi-Lang agreed. “Luo Binghe grew up on Qing Jing. He fell in love with Shen Qingqiu, the peak leader. After many struggles, they married and had a daughter that they loved very much. But Han Hua was still working behind the scenes. They set up a war to try and get at the daughter because the Palace Master believe that he could steal her blood and find a way to become a Heavenly Demon.”

Impossible. One was born a Heavenly Demon. One couldn’t become one. The Palace Master’s greed and madness hadn’t listened to reason.

“And the war was what locked the way between, isn’t it?” A-Ying murmured as he followed the memories cascading through Zhuzhi-Lang’s head. “Is…? Is he still around?”

“…I think so, yes,” Zhuzhi-Lang said as he reached out to Luo Binghe.

The flow from Luo Binghe was bright and strong, full of urgent fear and worry for both this world and the Demon realm. Not terrifically coherent, but then Luo Binghe had never in Zhuzhi-Lang’s experience been coherent.

Actually, neither was Tianglang-Jun.

Oh. Or himself. Or A-Ying. Or Cangse Sanren and her mother, too.

Well, it was obviously a Heavenly Demon thing.

“I can… sort of feel them?” A-Ying said, frowning. “Him? No, them.”

“Mm,” Zhuzhi-Lang agreed. “Your blood is powerful. It links you to each of us and us to you. Until it began to wake, all it could do was open the door to safety. Now, though, you can do much more.”

That made A-Ying suck a sharp breath between his teeth as his eyes went wide. Through their joined magic and joined hands, Zhuzhi-Lang felt the way that A-Ying connected his ability to escape into Cang Qiong as a child. The way he’d survived being thrown in. And now, his ability to feel and subtly influence his family.

“Oh, no, it’s not controlling them,” Zhuzhi-Lang said softly as he clung to A-Ying’s hands so that A-Ying wouldn’t fling himself backwards and away in rejection of what he thought his blood was doing. “You’ll never be strong enough for that, A-Ying. It takes full Heavenly Demonic blood to truly control a person’s mind, body and soul. All you can do is nudge them, call for help. Help them heal. That’s important. Lan Wangji wouldn’t have survived without your blood. Neither would Wei Ning.”

A-Ying settled back to their shared bench so abruptly that it was like the strength went out of his legs. “I… I’m why they survived?”

“Mm,” Zhuzhi-Lang agreed. “I know it’s frightening. But you’ll just never be able to totally control them. It’s okay, little nephew.”

A-Ying’s eyes went wide. Very, very wide.

For a moment, Zhuzhi-Lang wasn’t sure why. Then he realized that he’d said nephew instead of just thinking it. He… he forgot. That. That his words were intelligible now.

Before he could hide his face in his hands or shift forms again, A-Ying flung his arms around Zhuzhi-Lang’s ribs, hugging him so very tightly while crying just like Luo Binghe did when he was overwhelmed by how happy he was.

Zhuzhi-Lang hugged back. Shivering because… because. Emotions were hard. Very big. And right now Zhuzhi-Lang was very small. And getting hugged. Tightly.

“Love you, Uncle,” A-Ying whispered through his tears. “So much.”

Zhuzhi-Lang hissed a pained sigh as he started crying, too.

#

In the Demon Realm:

SQQ: …what do you mean? ZZL told him? Told him what? How? He can’t talk.

LBH: *beams as happy tears creep down his cheeks* Shizun, he figured out how to help ZZL change forms. Maybe properly. For good! And, and, and they’re hugging! They’re so happy!

SQQ: *studies his happily overwhelmed husband and sighs as he let LBH cling to him while sobbing for ZZL and WY getting to hug properly for the first time*

SQH: Right. *shakes his head before turning to MBH* You’re forgiven on a probational basis. Let’s go. We need to see if that actually was that old creep.

MBH: *nods and sighs because yeah, the tears are definitely not stopping for a while*

35. Unknown Agent

Wei Ying hummed as he used the mirror to search through Jinlintai for the odd Jin that Zhuzhi-Lang said might, possibly, be behind this whole entire mess. While doing his best not to grin at how cute Zhuzhi-Lang was cuddled next to Wei Ning.

That’d been adorable, even if Wei Qing had half lost her mind when Wei Ying came back with Zhuzhi-Lang.

“What… what is he?” Wei Qing had demanded, spluttering and horrified by the blend of snake characteristics with something that vaguely resembled human despite being nothing at all like a human.

“Snake-gege!” Wei Ning had gasped as he lit up with joy. “You changed shape! I’m so glad!”

Before Wei Qing could protest, Wei Ning had grabbed Zhuzhi-Lang for a bear hug while twirling him in circles while laughing. The look on Zhuzhi-Lang’s face had just about made Wei Ying burst into tears again. It was like his poor Snake-gege had never once in his entire very long life had someone who was happy to see him.

That Zhuzhi-Lang might not have ever been loved that way made Wei Ying’s breath catch in his chest.

“Wei Ying?” Lan Zhan murmured as he cupped Wei Ying’s shoulder.

“Just Snake-gege,” Wei Ying said. “I just. He’s. Alone for so long and now he’s got Wei Ning and I’m…”

Lan Zhan’s eyes smiled tenderly at him as he nodded understandingly. He glanced at the mirror and then frowned so sharply that Wei Ying whipped around to see what’d upset Lan Zhan.

An older Jin with the proper gold robes and the huadian cinnabar mark on his forehead peered around a corner, a scowl firmly affixed on his face as he watched the peacock attempting to give orders to some of the servants. To… clean something up, maybe? Wei Ying wasn’t sure and frankly didn’t much care about what the peacock was up to.

He wanted to know who this Jin was.

“Do you know him, Lan Zhan?” Wei Ying asked as they watched the older Jin straighten up, put on a genial smile and then saunter out to undermine the peacock in casually disrespectful ways by just taking over the whole interaction and contradicting what the peacock had been telling the staff to do.

“…Maybe,” Lan Zhan said as he frowned. “An older uncle, I think? We should ask.”

Wei Ying groaned because there were precisely two people in Cang Qiong that he could ask and Wei Ying didn’t want to talk to either of them. Jin Zixun was horrible, even though he’d started to calm down. Meng Yao was deadly dangerous, and Wei Ying didn’t know how to handle him.

Maybe.

Wei Ying looked over at Zhuzhi-Lang, the thought of using his blood to control Meng Yao half-formed in his mind.

Zhuzhi-Lang looked into the distance as he considered it. After a moment, he nodded slowly, images of how the blood could be used to influence and to heal drifting to Wei Ying.

The odd thing about the shared conversation, the shared knowledge was how very normal it felt. Nothing about it felt strange when just a few months or years ago, Wei Ying would’ve been panicking at the idea of anyone else knowing what a mess his mind was.

But then, apparently, everyone in Wei Ying’s mother’s family was a mess just like him. It was fine. Or it would be fine eventually.

“Snake-gege taught me something that might help with Meng Yao,” Wei Ying told Lan Zhan who frowned at him as if he was vaguely aware of the silent conversation and unsure what it might be. “Maybe. I’m not sure I can do it right, though. Bring the mirror, Lan Zhan. We need to talk to both of them, even if I hate it.”

Jin Zixun went white as Lan Zhan’s old robes when Wei Ying told him they were going to talk to Meng Yao. “He’s dangerous! You can’t wake him up. He’ll try to kill us all. Or control us. Or control us and then kill us. Or kill us and then control us.”

“I know, I know,” Wei Ying laughed, flapping a hand at Jin Zixun’s spluttering nonsense. “You’re not saying anything I wasn’t aware of. But Snake-gege taught me a trick that might help give him… motivation to be a little more truthful. I mean, I seriously only have one question for him.”

The cell that Meng Yao had been stashed in was on Qing Jing. Not because Wei Ying wanted him so close to everyone. It was just easier to have him close so that the doctors, Wei Qing specifically, could make sure that he didn’t die while asleep.

In stasis, actually. The arrays spread around him were brilliant things that Popo Wei had found in the Great Library by walking in, standing on the great seal, and thinking very hard about ways to keep a traitor from harming everyone. Best part about them was that they allowed people to work on Meng Yao without waking him up at all.

“All right, this should make a difference,” Wei Ying murmured as Jin Zixun awkwardly helped Lan Zhan set up the mirror.

“Why are you guys focusing on Great-Uncle Ruotian?” Jin Zixun asked. “He’s harmless. I mean, harmless by Jin standards. He’ll stab you in the back, yeah, but he won’t rape or murder you for no reason.”

“That’s his name?” Wei Ying asked as he carefully nicked his palm and allowed his blood to seep into Meng Yao’s stomach wound.

It was a deep wound. Even with all the work that Wei Qing had done to heal it up, the hole gaped. The innermost layers had all been stitched and encouraged to heal, but there was a solid inch of the wound that hadn’t yet gotten sealed up.

Plenty of space for Wei Ying’s blood to seep in and coat the wound.

Which then let Wei Ying carefully knit it shut in a very temporary sort of way.

If Wei Ying focused, he could unknit the wound. Then knit it again. He tried it four times and it got easier each time. There was no way he was going to try to control Meng Yao’s behavior. His control over his blood just wasn’t strong enough for that, especially with how fast Meng Yao’s mind moved.

He could control the wound, though.

“What…?” Lan Zhan asked as he stared at Meng Yao’s stomach.

“Told you,” Wei Ying said. “It’s a trick that Snake-gege taught me. I can open and close the wound at will. Help me get the bandages off. I want him to wake up without them.”

“Like that’s not terrifying,” Jin Zixun muttered, off by the mirror and as far away from Meng Yao as he could possibly get.

“That’s the point,” Wei Ying said with his meanest grin.

Meng Yao went from stasis to alert and aware in an instant when Wei Ying canceled the arrays. His body didn’t tense. His breathing settled immediately at a slow sleepy pace, not that any of them believed it.

“Don’t bother,” Wei Ying said. “We know you’re awake, Meng Yao.”

Meng Yao’s eyes opened and glittered with rage for a moment. “Wei Wuxian. I’m surprised you would get this close to me after I’ve been—”

His voice cut off as Wei Ying opened his wound once more. Blood spilled out of it, making Meng Yao gasp and slap his hands over the hole in terror. Wei Ying sealed the wound back up and let Meng Yao’s blood coat the man’s hands and sides.

Let.

Interesting. He could’ve pulled it right back into Meng Yao if he wanted. That could be useful in the future if Lan Zhan got hurt again.

“You’re not healed,” Wei Ying said. “We’ve had you under stasis as the doctors work on you, but I have a single question that I need an answer to, so here we are. Who is that?”

He pointed to the mirror showing Great-Uncle Ruotian. Meng Yao’s eyes snapped to it. For one instant, there was an impression of confusion through the blood sealing Meng Yao’s wound, then Meng Yao’s thoughts went still and perfect while an emotional undercurrent of frustration overwhelmed the stillness.

“Jin Ruotian,” Meng Yao lied.

“Lie,” Wei Ying replied instantly. “That’s the name he uses. It’s not who he is. Who is he?”

Wary worry suffused Meng Yao’s mind while his face creased with perfect puzzlement. That lasted exactly as long as it took for Wei Ying to let the wound open up again.

“My spy!” Meng Yao gasped as he pressed on the wound which kept bleeding because Wei Ying wanted it to. “A spy. He’s… fuck! Stop it! He’s a spy, a spy, damn you!”

Wei Ying sealed the wound back up because that was truth, at least as far as Meng Yao knew it. “Interesting. That was the truth as you know it, but you know he’s not a common spy. Always a little too helpful? Or a little too helpless? Was he the one who suggested going after me?”

Meng Yao’s fingers never stopped pressing on the wound, even though it wasn’t bleeding anymore. “Yes. You and the Wen, both. He…”

Meng Yao paused, alarm flaring inside of him as he realized something. There was a flicker of an image: Jin Ruotian talking oh, so sympathetically, to Jin Zixuan. Then a flicker of Meng Yao’s annoyance as he agreed to come visit Lotus Pier.

“Ah, he was the one who sent you off to court Shijie for the peacock,” Wei Ying observed.

So much horror as Meng Yao realized that Wei Ying could read his thoughts.

“No, it’s not the thoughts themselves,” Wei Ying said, waving to Lan Zhan who had gotten a bit twitchy on the other side of the bed. “It’s your emotions. What I did with the wound made your emotions easier to read than normal. So he’s the architect behind it all. Good to know.”

“…He’s the spy master,” Meng Yao whispered, fingers spasming on his belly. “That…!”

Wei Ying grinned at the impression of vicious swearing rolling off Meng Yao. To think that you led a huge spy network, that the entire Jianghu danced to your tune, only to find out that you were a puppet all along had to be galling.

“I’ll kill him,” Meng Yao choked out finally.

“No, you won’t get the chance,” Wei Ying said breezily enough that Lan Zhan sighed at him. “Josen or the Silk Roads?”

While both Jin Zixun and Lan Zhan were visibly confused by the apparently random question, Meng Yao’s breath hissed as he realized that those were his choices. Dead or exile to one or the other places.

“Josen,” Meng Yao said decisively enough that Wei Ying just nodded before setting the stasis arrays again.

Meng Yao went as still as a statue, blood now frozen in perfect brightness on his pale flesh. Despite the stasis, Wei Ying could feel his blood slowly worming its way into Meng Yao’s body. Not just at the wound but throughout his whole body.

Huh. That must be what Zhuzhi-Lang meant about his blood waking up and being able to do more. Well, it was weird but it was helpful so Wei Ying wasn’t going to fuss about it now.

“Wait, are you going to exile him?” Jin Zixun squeaked. “Seriously? After everything he’s done?”

“Probably,” Wei Ying confirmed. He turned and studied Jin Zixun. “You’ll probably get the same offer, you know.”

“Silk roads!” Jin Zixun promptly yelped. “As far away from him as possible!”

“Understood and done.”

Wei Ying laughed at Jin Zixun’s horrified, relieved cursing before he went to wash his hands off. Well, they had one more bit of information and a better idea of why everything went wrong. All they had to do now was stop Jin Ruotian before he made things even worse than they had already gotten.

#

In the Demon realm:

SQQ: …

LBH: *incandescent with joy*

SQQ: … *frowns harder at the mirror as he watches WWX & LWJ go seek out ZZL*

LBH: …Shizun, what’s wrong?

SQQ: I hope its nothing. I really do. But… Binghe, the echoes you got from that little trumped up spy. Did you get a clear image of the spy master’s face?

LBH: *frowns as he considers it* No. Not really. But neither did Wei Ying.

SQQ: The mirror isn’t… Jin Ruotian’s face. It isn’t perfectly clear. There’s a blurry edge around the jawline and a faint shimmer over his irises.

LBH: *stiffens as he realizes* He’s disguised. All the time. He wears a disguise all the time. Shizun!

SQQ: *Scowls at the mirror before flicking it over to watch Jin Ruotian* Our mirror can barely lock onto him, Binghe. It keeps sliding off of him. Their mirror can follow him perfectly.

LBH: Han Hua. It’s got to be Han Hua!

SQQ: Which means that we might have the long-delayed Collapse anytime now.

36. Stymied Plans

Jin Guangshan snarled at the servants as he stomped through Koi Tower towards his third office, the one that he used for sex, plotting assassinations, and smashing delicate things when his temper got the better of him. Servants scattered as he approached, trembling in justified terror of his stopping and selecting one of them to be the “delicate” thing.

Idiots. He was surrounded by incompetent fools and idiots. All this time. He’d spent all this time working to undermine the other sects, to position the Jin Sect at the pinnacle of Jianghu society. He’d trained and worked and done whatever it took to be absolutely unkillable.

No poison could stop his heart. No knife would ever sever his spine. No sword would, could, lop off his limbs. Jin Guangshan’s entire effort on his cultivation had been focused on the preeminent task of ensuring that he would not die no matter what he faced.

All so that he could learn Demonic Cultivation.

All so that he could be the one to unite the spheres and rule over everything as the one, true emperor.

“Nephew,” Jin Ruotian called just before Jin Guangshan could fling open the door to his office.

Jin Guangshan glared at him as forbiddingly as he possibly could, not that it ever worked on Uncle Ruotian. “Uncle.”

“Ah, I am sorry,” Jin Ruotian said with that dimwitted, genial smile of his that showed just how little went on between his ears. “I was just wondering if you’d seen Jin Guangyao. I had a small thing I needed to talk to him about.”

“He’s off in Lotus Pier instead of doing his duty,” Jin Guangshan snarled as fury flamed through him. “You’ll have to wait until he decides that we’re his sect and family.”

Jin Ruotian sighed and shook his head. “I see. Well, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. He really never has been properly a Jin. Blood isn’t everything, obviously. Pity we didn’t snare him as an infant. He would’ve been… brilliant for certain projects.”

As true as that was, it still made Jin Guangshan grit his teeth.

There had been no possibility, ever, of bringing the whore-son into the Jin. His stupid wife would’ve carved him into a thousand pieces if he’d tried. And leaving him out after they successfully brought down the Wen? Not possible. He couldn’t risk someone else snatching the boy up, not with that brain of his.

Jin Ruotian gently propelled Jin Guangshan into his office, shutting the door which engaged the privacy arrays. No one would hear what either of them said now. Jin Guangshan wouldn’t allow it, not in this office.

It wasn’t as lovely as his proper office, not much gilding and the walls were simple plaster-covered brick. His second office had a much better Kang bed suitable for lounging and drinking tea with people Jin Guangshan trusted that close to him.

This one, though, had the bed with restraints for when Jin Guangshan needed something more forceful on unwilling partners. It had a display cabinet on one wall full of delicate, expensive tea cups, wine cups and glass baubles, all chosen specifically because they were delicate, meaning they smashed beautifully and they were expensive which meant that wantonly throwing them at the wall (or people’s heads) terrorized people beautifully.

“I hesitate to ask,” Jin Ruotian said before biting his lip like a coward, “but you are still determined…?”

“You dare question me?” Jin Guangshan shouted at him. “I am the sect leader! I’ve brought this sect up from mere merchants to the most powerful sect in the entire Jianghu. All of our progress is because of me!”

“I know, I know,” Jin Ruotian said. He made flappy little soothing gestures with his hands as his eyes gleamed in the light of the basket full of night pearls on Jin Guangshan’s desk. “I’m just worried about you, nephew. Those who meddle with demonic cultivation end up—”

He snapped his mouth shut when Jin Guangshan flung a teacup just to the right of his head. Jin Ruotian didn’t flinch into the way. Or out of it. He just froze, staring at Jin Guangshan with eyes that glittered furiously.

“You’d like it if I gave up, wouldn’t you?” Jin Guangshan hissed at him. “If I settled back into being nothing more than the Sect Leader. Then you could run around behind my back, telling tales and setting people against me.”

“I am loyal to the Jin,” Jin Ruotian huffed. “I’ve been loyal to the Jin longer than you’ve been alive. I started this project!”

His face had gone blotchy red while his hands fisted inside his sleeves. The insulted pride was real enough, but Jin Guangshan could see the fear in his uncle’s eyes. All his life. All Jin Guangshan’s life, he’d listened to Jin Ruotian wax rhapsodic about the glories of their ancestors, back when the Jin Sect was called Han Hua.

They were the best sect, the strongest sect. They’d put down a demon king and sealed him under a mountain. Han Hua had the biggest library with the best artifacts until Cang Qiong stole them all and hid them away behind the arrays that sealed their mountains off from the world.

So many grand, amazing stories.

So little action to actually make the Jin live up to their ancient past.

Ha! Jin Guangshan had done what Jin Ruotian only ever dreamed of doing.

“And yet, you never had the balls to follow through, did you?” Jin Guangshan snarled at him.

Jin Ruotian looked away, shoulders shaking.

“Get out,” Jin Guangshan ordered him. “I don’t want to speak to you for at least two days.”

Jin Ruotian sneered at him, but he bowed and left the office without saying a single word of protest. The way his shoulders hunched as he left was… vaguely satisfying… but all Jin Guangshan could think about was his ridiculous claim that he was responsible for the project.

“That…!” Jin Guangshan grabbed a teacup and flung it at the wall as he cursed.

And cursed. And flung delicate, expensive, exquisite cups and glass baubles that Jin Guangyao had spent ages personally choosing for Jin Guangshan.

It wasn’t enough.

His whore-son wasn’t there. Jin Zixun had disappeared out of the dungeons. If he dared to so much as harm a single hair on his son’s head, that bitch he’d married would make him regret working so hard to ensure he couldn’t be assassinated.

Jin Guangshan finally abandoned his third office and stormed down to the dungeons. And then down further into the depths where the project was kept.

“Have you figured it out yet?” Jin Guangshan snapped at Xue Yang as he strode into the secret room that Jin Ruotian had dug during the construction of Koi Tower.

Generations of Jin ruling family had worked on this place. They had built the vault. Lined it with special granite quarried from a specific mountain near Yiling. Captured and enslaved stone carvers with the requisite level of skill to etch the grand array into the stone floor, walls, columns.

Killed the stone carvers to begin the process of activating the project.

The vaulted room stretched across the entire base of Koi Tower, supported by massive stone pillars spaced just as far apart as they possibly could be. There was no need of torches or night pearls. The array inscribed across the entire floor glowed in a red light that made everything look bloody.

“Oh, it’s you,” Xue Yang drawled as he sprawled at the edge of the array, a bag of candied kumquats in his hand.

The boy was barely twelve years old. Mad as a march hare, but Jin Ruotian claimed that he was the best option they had to get the plane collapsing array to work since no one could get Wei Wuxian under control. As a descendant of Xue Chonghai, Xue Yang had the best chance of success.

His blood held the key, apparently.

Jin Guangshan glowered at Xue Yang. “Have you figured it out yet?”

“I told both of you what this is,” Xue Yang said as he sat up and tossed a candied kumquat into the air so that he could catch it with his mouth. “The array is based on blood. If you have the blood, you can open the array and get it to work. If you don’t, you can’t.”

“We already knew that,” Jin Guangshan snarled at the disrespectful brat.

“Then why do you two keep bothering me?” Xue Yang complained around a mouthful of sticky fruit. He had the sheer gall to look offended. “I was promised people to cut up. I mean, that Jin guy was good, but we need more blood if this is going to happen.”

Xue Yang rolled back to his feet, sauntering across the array to flip a disrespectful hand at the central bit of the array that had never, not once, glowed despite all their efforts to bring it to live. Jin Guangshan followed him with rage simmering in his veins.

No one took him seriously. No one believed that he could and would do this. They would get the wards open. They would seize Cang Qiong.

All they needed was this one simple, fucking thing to work!

“Blood,” Jin Guangshan said.

“Yeah,” Xue Yang agreed as he flipped another candied kumquat into the air, catching it in his mouth. “Right here. You can spill all the blood you want everywhere else. It’s gotta be the right blood and it’s gotta go right here.”

Jin Guangshan nodded slowly. “I see.”

He pulled a knife and stabbed at Xue Yang. Right blood, right place. Good enough.

“Oh, finally!” Xue Yang crowed as he dodged away from Jin Guangshan’s blade. “You actually think you can kill me?”

He laughed as he charged straight at Jin Guangshan, knives flicking from his fingertips like hummingbirds in flight. Jin Guangshan didn’t bother dodging. A knife lodged into Jin Guangshan’s stomach, his left lung, his right thigh, his right bicep. He let Xue Yang run right in to stab Jin Guangshan in the throat.

And then smiled.

“Wait, what?” Xue Yang said.

Xue Yang made a punched-out noise when Jin Guangshan shoved his second knife into his gut. When Jin Guangshan shoved the knife down until the edge lodged in his hipbone, Xue Yang wheezed and scrambled at Jin Guangshan’s now bloody robes.

Where Jin Guangshan’s blood barely seeped past the many knives, Xue Yang’s blood spilled over the heart of the array.

“No, no, no, no, fuck you, no,” Xue Yang whimpered as he tried to cut Jin Guangshan’s throat ear to ear with the knife lodged in his windpipe.

He fell over instead.

Jin Guangshan pulled the throat knife out, tossing it to the ground next to Xue Yang who snarled as he struggled to escape the dully glowing array. Another knife, then the rest of them, clattered to the array, spraying it with blood.

“Fuck… you…” Xue Yang gasped up at Jin Guangshan.

“You’re too old for my tastes,” Jin Guangshan said with a smile as he knelt down next to the little gutter rat. “You’ve been worthless before but now I know exactly what to use you for. You’re going to be very helpful now.”

“No,” Xue Yang snarled even though there was no air left for him to speak with.

Ashy shadows bloomed over his chest as he called on the demonic cultivation that was his legacy as a descendant of Xue Chonghai. Ah, and that was the other key, right there.

A fragment of the Yin Iron wiggled free from Xue Yang’s robes. It glittered threateningly as Jin Guangshan snatched it out of the air before it could go spinning away, out of reach. The moment it touched his hands, resentful energy blasted through Jin Guangshan. It felt like being dipped in oil, in filth. Tasted like sour sweat and bitter fury curdling on the tongue.

It sounded like screams of agony, which honestly wasn’t that bad. Jin Guangshan had always rather liked the screams.

“Yes, this is the key I needed,” Jin Guangshan murmured as he stood, wounds already healed perfectly.

Uncle Ruotian would probably flutter about making noises that he should be careful, should hold back and test things first.

Uncle Ruotian was a coward.

Jin Guangshan poured resentful energy into the array, pulling the pain and misery he’d crafted upstairs down into the vault so that it would all, every scrap of it, help open the way to Cang Qiong’s Great Library. Once there, he would find all the secrets that had been hidden away for so long.

No one would ever stop Jin Guangshan again. The ways between realms would open and he would rule everyone everywhere for all time.

37. Inevitable Consequences

Back when Wei Ying was just the First Disciple of the Jiang, he’d thought his days were busy. Thought. The war had completely changed his sense of what “busy” meant, along with redefining “pain”, “misery”, “exhaustion”, “hunger”, and “despair”. Just the nature of war, you know?

Saving the Wen had changed the texture of “busy”. When the people you were busy running around taking care of were actually yours it meant so much more.

So much more.

Yes, he’d been proud of being Jiang. He’d loved the little baby shidis and shimeis. Teaching the juniors and joking with the seniors had been so much fun.

But they weren’t Wei Ying’s. They belonged to Uncle Fengmian. To Madame Yu. To Shijie and Jiang Cheng.

The Wen, now the Wei, were his.

His from their fretting, filling out faces to the blood pulsing inside their veins. Top to bottom, inside, outside; they were his and he wanted them to be safe and happy and loved more than anything else in the world.

“Why do people have to be horrible, Lan Zhan?” Wei Ying complained as they worked with six separate mirrors retrieved from the Chaung Zao peak to keep track of everyone and everything.

Lan Zhan sighed and didn’t answer.

He hardly needed to. Wei Ying could feel his deep exhaustion with how disappointed he was in the Jin. How frustrated he was with the Lan Elders who fought against Lan Xichen instead of helping him as they should. The endless spark of prim disapproval when Lan Zhan heard Jiang Cheng was so very funny. They hated each other so much and yet they couldn’t really truly hate each other because they reluctantly respected each other, too.

His brother and his husband; they were both a mess.

Fitting. Wei Ying was always and forever a mess. It wasn’t surprising that his family were messes, too.

The problem was that Wei Ying’s attention kept getting dragged off of what they needed to do to… something else.

Wei Ying shook his head, waving for Uncle Fourth to take over for him on the mirrors. “I need to check on something else, Lan Zhan. Will you be okay?”

“Mm,” Lan Zhan confirmed even as his little frown asked if everything was all right.

“Remembered something I need to ask Snake-gege,” Wei Ying explained. “I’ll be quick. We’re almost ready for the attack, after all.”

“Mm,” Lan Zhan agreed, this time confidently.

Lan Zhan turned back to the mirrors, letting Wei Ying trot off to find Zhuzhi-Lang who’d taken over making sure that all the littlest sect members had food and a safe place to play and cuddle while the adults worked so hard. Wei Ning was with him, just as he had been since the moment that Wei Ying brought Zhuzhi-Lang back in his bipedal form.

“Ah, Wei-gongzi,” Wei Ning said in an alarmed whisper as soon as Wei Ying showed up in the kids’ play area. “We just got them all down for a nap.”

“Oh, good,” Wei Ying said. He automatically scanned for A-Yuan and smiled to see him snuggled up with the stuffed snake toy that Wei Ning had made for him. “Actually, I needed to steal Snake-gege for a moment. Something’s bugging me and I need to ask him some questions.”

Wei Ning frowned, but he let Wei Ying pull Zhuzhi-Lang away from the kids. Not out of sight. Wei Ning had gotten very protective of his Snake-gege since Zhuzhi-Lang regained the ability to change shapes.

Wei Ying couldn’t really blame Wei Ning. He was just as bad about Lan Zhan.

“I need to know if you have the feeling of something scratching along your spine,” Wei Ying said to Zhuzhi-Lang. “It just started and it’s kind of driving me crazy already.”

Zhuzhi-Lang hissed so like a snake that it made him suddenly look utterly alien. Not scary, at least not to Wei Ying, but very Not Human At All.

“I had thought that I was imagining it,” Zhuzhi-Lang said. “We… we need to contact your great-grandparents.”

“Wait, they’re alive?” Wei Ying gasped.

For one desperate, wild moment, all he could think was that he wanted to see them, hug them, never ever let go. Actual family members of his own would be more precious than all the books in the Great Library. All the artifacts. All of everything.

Then he shoved the aching need far, far down because if he had living relatives who were like him, they would never have left him alone unless the fate of the world was at stake. And, well, that’s kind of what the itch up his spine felt like.

“Later,” Wei Ying said, accepting Zhuzhi-Lang’s sadly knowing smile. “We know it has to be Jinlintai. They’re the ones behind everything. Where in Jinlintai, though?”

Zhuzhi-Lang shut his eyes.

In the link between them, a hissing rose. Then more hissing. Then it sounded like a gale, like a flood, all made of the hisses of thousands upon thousands of snakes. Wei Ying had no idea what the snakes were saying. They weren’t talking to him.

They talked to Zhuzhi-Lang.

“It… would have to be… deep,” Zhuzhi-Lang finally said as Lan Zhan stalked over to Wei Ning’s side, both of them frowning at Wei Ying.

“Dungeons or underneath that,” Wei Ying agreed. “Right. Time for more mirror work and then we’ll get everyone moving.”

Zhuzhi-Lang nodded. “It’s bad. I haven’t felt this since Cang Qiong fell.”

Okay, that was very bad, then. Wei Ying hurried back to the mirrors with all three of them on his heels, though Wei Ning did make sure that someone else stayed to watch over the little kids as they napped.

“So,” Wei Ying explained as he claimed a mirror and began hunting through Jinlintai’s dungeons for a lower level than that, “I had a hunch and I needed to have Snake-gege confirm it for me. This whole thing, from before the war and on to now, feels like something much bigger.”

“Uncle Ruohan always claimed that there were hidden forces trying to overthrow him,” Wei Ning said hesitantly. “I thought it was just his paranoia.”

“Oh, he was absolutely paranoid,” Wei Qing huffed, “but I can’t disagree that something bigger seems to be happening. You think Jin Guangshan is behind it.”

“No,” Wei Ying said. “I don’t. I think there’s someone behind him that’s pulling the strings. And I truly think that it’s either someone who used to be part of Cang Qiong trying to get home or it’s one of Cang Qiong’s enemies trying to get in here.”

Zhuzhi-Lang hissed a sad little sigh. “It cannot be someone from Cang Qiong. They all ascended or moved into other sects. None of them would still be alive. The only immortals left when everything ended were… broken? I think broken is the best term.”

Zhuzhi-Lang ducked his head and then hid behind Wei Ning when everyone other than Wei Ying stared at him. He was just a hair shorter than Wei Ning, though much more slender at the shoulders and chest, so he could hide. It was just kind of cute that he would hide when he was an ancient immortal Heavenly Demon who’d fought entire wars.

But that was in my bi-viper form, Zhuzhi-Lang protested privately. Stare’s aren’t as powerful then.

“Ah-ha!” Wei Ying shouted as he found the hidden sub-sub-sub-dungeon. “Found it, I think!”

“Oh,” Zhuzhi-Lang breathed, peeking out from behind Wei Ning. “That’s bad. That’s the array that was supposed to open the paths between realms and then collapse all the planes into one.”

Wei Ying stared right along with everyone else but come on, justified!

He hadn’t spent time in the Great Library learning about what had ended Cang Qiong. It had never seemed important compared to the immediate concerns of taking care of himself when he was younger, or taking care of his new sect members now. Kinda regretted it now.

“Planes,” Wei Ying said. Asked.

“The Heavenly, Earthly and Demonic realms,” Zhuzhi-Lang explained. “Immortals ascend to the Heavenly realm. Humans live here in the Earthly realm. And the Demonic realm is where demons live.”

“Not demons like we talk about them now,” Wei Ying clarified because Lan Zhan looked like he was about to break out into Lan Qiren lecture mode to correct Zhuzhi-Lang’s “errors”.

“No, like me,” Zhuzhi-Lang said. “Different races of people who come from a world with completely different environments. My Uncle wanted to collapse the realms but that was because he was mad, both insane from… torture, essentially, and angry because he believed that this lover had betrayed him. The one who led to the end of Cang Qiong was a human immortal, though.”

Wei Ying sucked a sharp breath between his teeth.

Human immortal. A man who played at being a spy while manipulating Meng Yao so well that he hadn’t even realized all the ways that he was being used. Wei Ying spun back to the mirror.

Jin Guangshan stood in the middle of the world collapsing array, covered in blood. Someone lay at his feet, bled dry to feed the array that had started the pulse with a light that throbbed in exact time with the scratchy feeling that had had Wei Ying so off balance.

“It can’t be Jin Guangshan,” Wei Ying said. “Would the person who activated the array survive?”

“Um, probably not?” Zhuzhi-Lang said hesitantly. “Jin Guangshan has a better chance than most. But even his golden core won’t be enough to protect him.”

“That means it has to be someone else,” Wei Ying said, sending a second mirror hunting through Jinlintai until he found Jin Ruotian. “And this is the only other person that I think it could be. We need a team to go stop Jin Guangshan from fully activating the array. And we need a second team to keep Jin Ruotian under control for as long as possible.”

For once, Wei Qing didn’t snap at him to explain. Lan Zhan just nodded grimly instead of frowning a question at Wei Ying. Even Jin Zixun just nodded as if that made total sense, not that he stepped out from behind Wei Qing to volunteer to do anything.

Like Wei Ying would even let him. Going to Jinlintai would be dangerous for Wei Ying and the others. It would be lethal for Jin Zixun. As much as Wei Ying didn’t like Jin Zixun, he wasn’t prepared to send the jerk to his death just because he was a jerk. Not after everything that Jin Zixun had gone through.

Still.

It was… nice? Nice that everyone nodded and did what Wei Ying ordered without a single question. It made him feel like a real sect leader of a real sect instead of some cobbled together mess that no one would ever take seriously.

Wei Ying brushed that thought aside.

World ending arrays came first. As much as he wanted to meet his stunningly still living relatives, nothing could be allowed to distract him from stopping Jin Ruotian from destroying all the planes and everyone who lived on them.

#

In the Demon Realm:

SQH: What the fuck? No one should even know about that thing! My King and I destroyed every single copy of it, every record, everything associated with it.

SQQ: *viciously angry but cold about it instead of hot as a bonfire like SQH* Other than the copy that the old palace master memorized.

SQH: *makes a strangled nose of fury* I hate that man. I hate him. I hate him! We need to kill him so hard if we can find him.

SQQ: Oh, don’t worry. Wei Ying has already found him. We need to be ready to act to reinforce the barrier, just in case. If Wei Ying can’t stop this, it will be on us to ensure that the planes don’t collapse.

SQH: *Continues cursing, just with purpose this time, as he strides off to make sure that LBH and MBJ are ready for what’s coming*

SQQ: *Bites his thumbnail as he watches what’s happening in Jinlintai because last time they had all the peak lords of Cang Qiong, not just two broken immortals and two Demon lords*

38. Sect Visit

For the first time, silence echoed around Lan Xichen as he strode up the many stairs into Koi Tower. The town below lay silent with empty streets when normally Jinlintai thronged with merchants and traders, servants running to and fro on their master’s trivial missions. To step into the city was to have every single person in your entourage assailed by highly persistent vendors who simply would not let you go by without selling something. Even Lan robes were not enough to protect you.

Not today.

The city was as empty of people as the Cloud Recesses was of alcohol. Koi Tower itself had less than a skeleton crew greeting Lan Xichen, Nie Mingjue and Jiang Wanyin as they climbed the stairs. Tellingly, no one other than a very junior housemaid who looked like she’d spent the last several hours crying her eyes out was there to direct them to the audience chamber.

As soon as they passed, the housemaid scurried away, already sniffling as tears crept down her cheeks.

No Madame Jin making rude, snippy comments. No Jin Zixuan being awkwardly welcoming while warning them of what his father’s mood was at the moment. No courtiers lurking about in the vain hopes that they might be blessed with a bit of authority, money or power.

That last was the truly strange part. Lan Xichen had never in his life seen the throne room without courtiers. Nor the hallways. They were as ever-present as the trees in the Cloud Recesses, as inevitable as the flow of the river under Lotus Pier.

Their absence said more than any words could that something was urgently, violently wrong in the Jin Sect.

“Sect Leader Lan,” Jin Ruotian said, standing in front of the Peony throne but carefully not allowing even the hem of his robes to brush against it. “Sect Leader Nie. Sect Leader Jiang. I wish that I could welcome you, but I’m sure that cultivators such as yourselves can see that things are… disturbed at the moment.”

“Yes, we can plainly see that,” Lan Xichen agreed. “Unfortunately, we need to discuss a situation with Sect Leader Jin. We have missing family members that your sect hunts. This is unacceptable.”

Jin Ruotian sighed and rubbed a finger down the bridge of his nose while smiling as if he thought that three sect leaders confronting him was mildly amusing at best, a minor problem at worst. The sheer disrespect of that little gesture was nearly enough to make Lan Xichen rage. It made Nie Mingjue snarl while Jiang Wanyin glared as if he wanted to run Jin Ruotian straight through.

“We need to speak to Jin Guangshan,” Lan Xichen said before his companions or their entourages could attack. “Immediately.”

He tried for his uncle’s cold, implacable tone, the one that had made even Wen Ruohan wince on occasion before he went mad. Lan Xichen did not have his uncle’s gravitas, unfortunately, so it came out a bit frustrated, a bit quavering because of the oddness of Koi Tower. Lan Xichen kept his face calm and still, his shoulders firm, as he stared at Jin Ruotian.

Jin Ruotian sighed, shoulders slumping just a bit. “That may be difficult to arrange, Sect Leader Lan. Our sect leader has directed that we are not to interrupt him on the pain of death.”

Lan Xichen did not grit his teeth even though he wanted to. “Then perhaps we can speak to Jin Zixuan as he actually appears to care that his sect is functioning.”

It might also show that Jin Zixuan was still alive. That the boy had not yet shown up to flutter about helplessly was a worry. Lan Xichen couldn’t imagine that Jin Guangshan would attack his own heir, much less that he could successfully get past Madame Jin to do it, a small part of his mind had started to worry that they would find a pile of bodies with Jin Zixuan being the first or second thrown into the stack.

That snide little slight towards Jin Ruotian and the rest of the Jin Sect brought a sudden flare of fury to Jin Ruotian’s eyes, though his polite smile barely shifted at all. Whatever scathingly polite things Jin Ruotian wanted to say while blocking them all from meeting with Jin Guangshan, he didn’t get the chance to.

“You wish to speak to me?” Jin Guangshan said as he sauntered into the audience chamber.

Early in the Sunshot Campaign, when Wei Wuxian had only just returned from his mysterious disappearance, Lan Xichen had encountered Wei Wuxian slowly sauntering from the Jiang camp on some mission of his own. There had been an air of blood and death around Wei Wuxian, like he had become something distinctly other than human. Lan Xichen had fancied that he could hear the screams of people in agony as Wei Wuxian walked by.

The sheer threat hanging around Wei Wuxian in those days was a large part of why Lan Xichen had not backed Wangji when he tried to get the Jianghu to leave Wei Wuxian and the Wen remnants alone. It seemed, having seen Wei Wuxian since then, that that air of destruction had been part and parcel of the war efforts because Wei Wuxian had none of that anymore.

Unlike Jin Guangshan.

Jin Guangshan had that same sense of death and resentment hanging around him as he pushed Jin Ruotian aside so that he could sprawl on the Peony Throne.

There was a strong resemblance between the way Wei Wuxian had sprawled during the Sunshot Campaign and the way Jin Guangshan sat on his throne. It felt as though he had no respect for them. As if they were not worth even the amount of time it would take to sit up and pay attention.

Lan Xichen could have sworn that he heard tortured souls screaming as Jin Guangshan sauntered by. Now that he sat on the Peony throne, it seemed to be lit by a bloody red light even though there had been no shift in the light coming through Koi Tower’s wide windows.

“Sect Leader Jin,” Lan Xichen said with the barest bows of acknowledgment.

“Sect Leader Lan,” Jin Guangshan drawled back at him mockingly. “With your young friends, I see. What can the glorious Jin Sect do for you?”

Yes, the parallels to how Wei Wuxian had acted at the height of his Yiling Laozu phase were… marked. That flip of Jin Guangshan’s fingers towards Jin Ruotian and the rest of the gilded monstrosity of an audience chamber was as insulting towards his own people as it was towards them. So was that cruel smirk curling Jin Guangshan’s lips.

“You can stop hunting my brother,” Jiang Wanyin snapped at him as his sword handle creaked from the ferocity of his grip.

“Fine,” Jin Guangshan said, waving a hand as if their entire purpose there was tedious nonsense. “I don’t need him anymore.”

Jin Ruotian made an annoyed sound only to flinch when Jin Guangshan glared at him.

With red, glowing eyes.

Lan Xichen clamped a hand on Nie Mingjue’s forearm and then grabbed Jiang Wanyin’s shoulder with his other hand. Wei Wuxian had better be watching this through his magical mirrors. He’d also better be prepared to attack any second.

Because Lan Xichen didn’t think that they were going to be as successful as planned in delaying Jin Guangshan and Jin Ruotian’s plans.

Though, standing there in the Peony throne room, Lan Xichen found it hard to believe that Jin Ruotian was behind everything. There was a sort of frightened deference in Jin Ruotian’s eyes that went poorly with the annoyance on the rest of his face. When Jin Ruotian made a furiously quizzical noise, Jin Guangshan openly rolled his eyes.

Jin Guangshan looked like another version of Wen Ruohan… one even more mad and violent than Wen Ruohan at the end of the Sunshot Campaign.

No, they were not going to be successful containing Jin Guangshan and Jin Ruotian, were they?

Nie Mingjue threw off Lan Xichen’s hand at the same time that Jiang Wanyin jerked his shoulder free. Behind them, the Nie, Lan and Jiang disciples drew their weapons as they murmured to each other about evil and ensuring that it didn’t spread.

“You!” Nie Mingjue bellowed as he drew Baxia. “You hunted the Wen and Wei Wuxian when you were doing the exact same thing!”

“Oh, please,” Jin Guangshan scoffed. “That boy is nothing but an amateur scrambling about for scraps. I know exactly what I’m doing and I will succeed where no one else ever has.”

“Sect Leader!” Jin Ruotian snapped with so much disapproval that Lan Xichen winced instinctively. “There are secrets that are not to be shared!”

“You dare try to tell me what to do?” Jin Guangshan snarled at Jin Ruotian.

There was a tense moment as the two Jin glared at each other, one glowing with a level of amber-toned qi that drove the breath right out of Lan Xichen’s lungs. He’d never felt qi that strong before, nor seen someone with qi that color before. Whatever it was that Jin Guangshan radiated, it wasn’t qi as Lan Xichen understood it.

Nightmares. Blood and death. Horrors from beyond the grave, maybe, but not qi. The air around Jin Guangshan roiled with ashy shadows and sparks of blood-red energy the likes of which even Wen Ruohan hadn’t summoned in the final battles of the Sunshot Campaign.

Then… something… hit Lan Xichen.

So hard that one moment he stood before the Peony throne…

…the next, Lan Xichen groaned as he tried to pick himself up off the floor. His head throbbed. His throat ached as if he’d screamed until his throat tore and bled. Every muscle in his body felt like he’d been picked up by a giant, squeezed, and then flung full strength at the ground. Perhaps onto granite. Truly, he’d never hurt like this before.

Other moans and whimpers sounded around him. He recognized some of the voices: Nie Mingjue, Jiang Wanyin, Nie Pengwanli who was even taller than Nie Mingue and broader at the shoulder.

Blood dripped down his cheek as Lan Xichen struggled through the pain and his deeply depleted core to lift his head.

Jin Ruotian was nowhere to be seen.

Neither was Jin Guangshan.

They were not in the throne room anymore.

Shadows wreathed the… vault? It looked like a vault. Stone walls, heavy stone pillars, a stone floor and ceiling. The air felt thick in his aching throat, like walking through smoke from a forest fire with an inadequate face mask that let too much ash in. What little light there was came from a massive array incised into the granite floor.

Somehow, Jin Guangshan had knocked them all out before moving them to wherever this was. He had his sword, his qiankun pouch… and Lan Xichen could barely move enough to stare around the massive vault. Oh, Wangji was going to be so upset about this. Lan Xichen really should have known better. They should have acted the instant that Jin Guangshan sauntered into the throne room!

The place stank. A terrible combination of urine, death and something metallic that Lan Xichen didn’t want to identify. He’d never smelled anything like it before. No, he had, just never this strong, perhaps?

His heart began to pound as he tried to move an arm, a leg, anything at all. They had to get up. They had to be ready. Whatever was happening here was so much worse than Lan Xichen had allowed himself to imagine.

He failed.

“Mingue!” Lan Xichen hissed. “You have to get up.”

“Ngh,” Nie Mingue grunted as he tried.

And failed.

“It’s draining us,” Jiang Wanyin said from his spot sprawled to Lan Xichen’s right. “We’re not gonna get up. Not easily. Maybe if we sealed our cores?”

“Feel free,” Jin Guangshan said from behind them all as he dragged a limp, unconscious Jin servant across the array by their ankle. “It will make things easier for me. All I want is your blood. Your qi is worthless to me.”

Not the same housemaid who’d welcomed them to Koi Tower. A man, perhaps sixty or seventy years old. There were bruises all over his face and exposed forearms. His sleeves had been rolled up but they were damp, as if he’d been busy washing something just before he was struck.

Only bruises, though. Not a single cut marred the servant’s body. Lan Xichen sucked a sharp breath between his clenched teeth.

The stink in the air that had bothered him suddenly made sense.

Blood.

It was the smell of blood. So much blood. Lan Xichen had not grown up with the smell as no killing was allowed in the Cloud Recesses. The first time he’d smelled that sort of blood in quantity had been during a visit to the Nie during a harvest when Lao Nie, Nie Mingjue’s father, had killed and butchered out a whole steer for the feast.

This much blood-stink? It was so much more than one steer. One human. This was dozens of humans. Maybe all the missing Jin Sect members and staff that he’d wondered about when they arrived. All the courtiers, the Elders, the… everyone.

Jin Guangshan was sacrificing humans in a mad effort to gain power. Or to activate the massive array? Lan Xichen wasn’t sure. At least he knew for sure now that it wasn’t Jin Ruotian behind everything. It had to be Jin Guangshan.

“You truly believe you can do this,” Lan Xichen said as he desperately tried again to push himself up.

Jin Guangshan snorted. “I am doing this, you idiot boy. There isn’t a thing that you can do to stop me.”

He casually slit the servant’s throat in the center of the array. The stink of blood barely increased, but the glow of the array brightened markedly. As Jiang Wanyin cursed in a high-pitched furious voice and Nie Mingjue struggled to lift Baxia once more, Lan Xichen watched Jin Guangshan drag the dead servant across the array.

To a pile of bodies that had been tossed on the far side of the room. Dozens of bodies, all adult from what Lan Xichen could see, lay in a pile that would haunt his nightmares for years to come.

Jin Guangshan snorted as he sauntered back over towards them. “Your blood isn’t what I need. If I could get at Wei Wuxian, I’m sure his would be perfect. But it’s fine. Quantity works as well as quality now that the array has begun to wake up. Soon the worlds will combine and I will ascend to the throne as Ruler of All. You should be grateful that you get to be part of the process.”

His smile was nasty as he looked down at them. Lan Xichen stared up at him. No mercy. No compassion. Nothing but his mad lust for power.

“Time to contribute,” Jin Guangshan drawled when none of them offered anything but cursing and silent stares.

#

In the Demon Realm:

SQH: *Bellowing as he charges through the icy hallways of the Northern Demon Palace* My King, we have to move! The array is waking up again!

MBJ: *hisses in anger as he nods*

The two of them disappear in a shower of snowflakes, leaving the rest of Mobei-Jun’s people rushing to follow the plans that have been in place for hundreds of years.

In SQQ and LBH’s little suite, SQQ sit and stares at the mirror while gently rubbing his fingers over LBH’s temples.

LBH: He knows. They both know. They’re moving, Shizun. All we have to do is hold the line. Wei Ying will stop this, I’m sure of it.

SQQ: *silently watches and prays because if Wei Ying doesn’t succeed, they’re doomed–the four of them alone are not enough to keep the ways between realms closed, no matter how hard they try*

39. Abrupt Rescue

Wei Ying flung himself across the bloodstained rainbow bridge that he shoved just as hard as he could right into Koi Tower. It wasn’t supposed to do that. Frankly, the bridge felt a little bit… bruised… by Wei Ying’s insistence that it slam right through the wall next to Jin Guangshan’s throne.

But it worked, letting Wei Ying land right next to Jin Ruotian with Lan Zhan, Wei Qing, Wei Ning and Zhuzhi-Lang on his heels.

“Go save them!” Wei Ying shouted to Lan Zhan, Wei Qing and Wei Ning. “We’ll hold them off here!”

Lan Zhan nodded, though his heart welled with desperate worry for Wei Ying that battled with his furious worry for his big brother.

“Don’t you dare die!” Wei Qing shouted at Wei Ying before she darted out of the throne room with Wei Ning on her heels, needles in her hands.

Wei Ning looked to Zhuzhi-Lang before running out with an arrow on the string. Zhuzhi-Lang quivered for a moment before turning with Wei Ying to Jin Ruotian.

“Zhuzhi-Lang,” Jin Ruotian snarled as he glared at them both. “I should have known that you would slither out of whatever hole you’ve been hiding in.”

“Palace Master,” Zhuzhi-Lang said with a glare of his own as his forked tongue flicked out to scent Jin Ruotian on the air. “So this is where you hid all these centuries. Still trying to steal that which does not belong to you.”

“You know him?” Wei Ying asked.

“The Palace Master, sect leader, of Han Hua Sect,” Zhuzhi-Lang confirmed while keeping his eyes firmly focused on Jin Ruotian. “Hua Jinzhe. He led the battle that destroyed Cang Qiong, that destroyed the old sects, sent the Immortals to the Heavenly realm and exiled the broken Immortals to the Demonic realm.”

A complicated array like something out of a story bloomed in Jin Ruotian’s hands as he sneered at Zhuzhi-Lang. For one moment, Wei Ying studied it only to have the answer appear in his mind along with his… great-grandfather’s urgent warning that it could not hit Zhuzhi-Lang.

Wei Ying flung up a mirrored ward around the two of them, just in time for the array to lance at them like lightning.

It bounced off, ricocheting straight back at Jin Ruotian who dove to the side with an abortive curse. Jin Ruotian rolled and summoned a weapon that looked like a cross between a spear and Zidian, all lightning and sharp edges.

Wei Ying shoved Zhuzhi-Lang backwards as he layered six different wards under the first one, all of them things that he’d invented to deal with Madame Yu and Jiang Cheng’s propensity to use Zidian first and ask questions much, much later.

One to slow, one to bleed power off, one to redirect the physical impact, one to redirect the lightning, one to cause a sharp rebound, and one to be a shield in case the other five failed.

“You!” Jin Ruotian shouted when his lightning spear broke the original ward and then got mired in the other five.

“Me,” Wei Ying agreed cheerfully. “This is fascinating. I’ve never seen such old weapons before. You must take such good care of it to dare to use it in battle. I’d be afraid of breaking it, personally.”

Both Zhuzhi-Lang and his great-grandfather laughed in the back of Wei Ying’s mind, shocked and delighted respectively with his gall.

“I have spent too long manipulating these fools to allow you to block me now that it’s all come to fruition!” Jin Ruotian snapped at him.

“Really, it took you this long?” Wei Ying quipped as he dodged and stayed firmly between Zhuzhi-Lang and Jin Ruotian.

Hopefully, maybe, Jin Ruotian would assume that Zhuzhi-Lang was trapped in his bipedal form. That way when the chance came, Zhuzhi-Lang could shift forms and bite the asshole. Immortal or not, Zhuzhi-Lang’s venom would at the very least slow him down.

It would, Zhuzhi-Lang said as he did something internally that felt like making his venom more and more deadly.

Acidic! Wei Ying’s great-grandfather said enthusiastically. Make it acidic! Hard to heal when your body parts are melting!

That seemed to carry a hint of… personal… experience that Wei Ying firmly ignored in favor of dodging, flinging arrays, and then pulling Chenqing out. Thank goodness there was so much resentful energy built up in Koi Tower right now. Wei Ying had a ton to work with.

He played, drawing the souls of the dead up from the vault so far below so that they could attack Jin Ruotian, the architect of their misery and painful death. Ghost came screaming and wailing through the floors with their faces white, their fingers turned to claws of vengeance. Wei Ying played for them, pouring resentful energy into them so that they could take their own pound of flesh from Jin Ruotian.

“No,” Jin Ruotian snarled as he raised an old, old, incredibly old ward that gleamed like amber all around him. “That won’t work against me, boy. Those ghosts are worthless to you.”

Wei Ying narrowed his eyes, nodding as the ghosts hammered against Jin Ruotian’s shield but didn’t make it through.

It guards against resentful energy, Wei Ying’s great-grandfather explained. But it’s pretty much useless against physical attacks.

Oh, nice! Wei Ying caught the debris from breaking through the wall, splintering it and then tossing it up so that the ghost could grab it. They screamed with glee, plunging straight at Jin Ruotian’s shield like their shattered chunks of wood and metal were war spears.

“Fuck!” Jin Ruotian cursed as he dropped and rolled right out of his ward.

It didn’t follow him which just made Wei Ying want to laugh like a braying donkey. Old techniques. So very limited, really.

Unfortunately, the ward did capture the ghosts who’d plunged into it. They wailed only to pause and sigh as Wei Ying played Release for them. Them in particular. They’d driven Ruotian to move and revealed a weakness. That was so good and so much help. They didn’t need to stay and fight when there were so many more waiting for their turn to help.

“Ha!” Jin Ruotian shouted as he flung more arrays Wei Ying’s way. “You can’t even hold your slaves, can you?”

“They are not slaves,” Zhuzhi-Lang said as he watched and waited for his chance.

Wei Ying poured his soul into the song, asking all the shamed, all the betrayed, all the souls who had fallen to Jin Sect depravity and Jin Ruotian’s scheming to come help stop this horror from being successful. More ghosts soared in from Jinlintai, wailing their betrayals as the air in the throne room went black as night. Only Jin Ruotian was properly visible, still glowing amber as he warded and shielded himself for all he was worth.

One more roll, Zhuzhi-Lang suggested. If we can make him roll again I can be there.

We need to make him drop his guard, Wei Ying agreed as he considered the wards and shields, the skill and power that Jin Ruotian revealed as he continued to fight off everything that Wei Ying could throw at him. He’s so strong. If he thinks I’ve been hurt…

Both Zhuzhi-Lang and Wei Ying’s great-grandfather protested wordlessly at that. There was another mind, though, a cool, calculating one that suddenly pushed… Luo Binghe… aside.

You’ll need to be very careful, Shen Qingqiu warned Wei Ying. Your blood is fully awake now, but there are limits. A through-and-through with the weapon left in the hole is the best choice. Something that makes it look like you’re impaled and unable to escape.

Shizun! Luo Binghe protested but there was a resigned tone to the single word.

Ah, that’s easy then, Wei Ying said as he watched Jin Ruotian pull his lightning spear again. Ha! Perfect opportunity!

Wei Ying faked a stumble. Let Chenqing drop a finger’s width from his lips as he struggled for his footing. The ghosts around them all screamed in horror, as did Zhuzhi-Lang who flung his hands out as if he wanted to grab Wei Ying and haul him away to safety.

No time for that.

Jin Ruotian’s snarl went to a triumphant grin as he stabbed his lightning spear straight through Wei Ying’s stomach.

Not the exact same spot where Jiang Cheng had stabbed him. A couple of fingers’ width to the right, further away from vital organs, which was ridiculous. You’d have thought that a cultivator that old and experienced would have better aim.

The lightning that coursed through Wei Ying’s body blasted along his channels and through his meridians just like Zidian always did. Good bit less malice though, which made managing the pain so much easier.

Wei Ying screamed, of course.

Had to make it look good if Jin Ruotian was to drop his guard fully.

The lightning spear stabbed into the floor, pinning Wei Ying like a bug who wasn’t actually all that disturbed or that trapped, not that Jin Ruotian seemed to see it. He took in Wei Ying’s pained gasp and the way his fingers flinched away from gripping the shaft of the lightning spear as something real instead of acting.

Jin Ruotian dropped his guard as he sneered down at Wei Ying. “Not as much as everyone made you out to be, are you?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Wei Ying said, grinning up at him with bloody teeth as he urged Zhuzhi-Lang to shift. “You’re not all that impressive, either.”

The ghosts dove into to grab Jin Ruotian’s arms and legs, lifting him up and away from the lightning spear’s shaft. Zhuzhi-Lang stood from his place crouched behind Wei Ying. His tongue flicked out once.

Then he shifted in a blink, becoming the massive bi-viper that Wei Ying would always call Snake-gege.

Zhuzhi-Lang opened his mouth, four massive fangs dropped down to drop venom on the floor.

Jin Ruotian drew in a breath to shout… something?

He didn’t get more than a quarter of the lungful before Zhuzhi-Lang’s fangs clamped down on his body. One in the thigh. One in the hip, the gut and then one just at the base of Jin Ruotian’s neck.

“Oh, wow, that’s some strong acid,” Wei Ying said as Jin Ruotian’s body fell to pieces in less than a heartbeat.

Jin Ruotian’s soul wailed up off his body, wildly patting at his chest, hip, thigh, throat only to freeze as he stared down at his head lolling on the palace room floor.

“That’s one problem solved,” Wei Ying said as he gripped the spear’s shaft.

A moment’s effort was all it took to make the spear dematerialize. It formed into a ring on Wei Ying’s finger which… yeah. He would worry about that later. Much, much later.

“Don’t exert yourself, little nephew,” Zhuzhi-Lang said as soon as he shifted back and rushed to Wei Ying’s side to press a hand against the quickly closing hole.

“Ah, this is nothing,” Wei Ying said fondly. “I’ve had way worse than this. Support me for a bit. I’ve got to send everyone onwards.”

Zhuzhi-Lang held Wei Ying as he lifted Chenqing once more. This time, Wei Ying played Release for all the dead of Jinlintai. They’d been through so much, suffered for so long, but it was over. The secret mastermind who’d ensured that they could never be free or happy was dead at last. Jin Guangshan was going to die very shortly. Wei Ying would make sure of it, because he would never allow Lan Zhan, Wei Qing or Wei Ning to be hurt ever again.

The ghosts began to glow white as they winked out one by one by two by twelve by thirty, leaving only Jin Ruotian who struggled against Release as if he could somehow revive his rapidly decomposing body if he just stayed long enough.

Three rounds of Release finally conquered Jin Ruotian, sending him off to be judged in the afterlife.

Wei Ying wished him well with that. Not. Meng Po’s soup was something that needed to be poured right down Jin Ruotian’s throat so that he never, ever remembered what he’d so nearly succeeded in doing.

“Whew,” Wei Ying breathed once the last of the ghosts were gone and the resentful energy banished from Koi Tower. “That’s good. Time to go help Lan Zhan stop that creepy lecher.”

“Little nephew, you’re almost as bad as your great-grandfather,” Zhuzhi-Lang said with so much fond love and dismay that Wei Ying grinned at him.

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Snake-gege!” Wei Ying said, sitting up and wincing as the bruising on his stomach complained. “Ow. Well, can’t expect perfection this fast. Let’s go!”

#

Outside Koi Tower:

SQH: Hurry! Hurry! We’ve got to get these placed before everything gets blown up!

MBJ: *grimly helps SQH set and charge up arrays that should, hopefully, keep the world- ending array from properly activating*

Jin Zixuan comes running up with Nie Huaisang and his mother on their heels, along with a lot of very intent and interested Yu women that he and his mother had gone to get when JGS had gone batshit. JZX has no idea how NHS knew to show up right then and doesn’t care.

JZX: What can we do?

NHS: Oh, I like it. Can we help set them? What do they do?

SQH: *stares at them all* Well, help late is better than never, I guess. These, charge and place on the foundation stones. Array in the dungeons that will collapse all the planes. The more we have up the more likely it is that only the tower will be destroyed, not the entire world.

JZX: *stares at the array shoved into his hands* Right. Okay. Everyone! Grab them, apply them, charge them! Go!

NHS: I have so many questions. So many. I guess they have to wait. *grabs some arrays without even protesting that he’s far too weak and useless to be effective*

SQH: This one, not that one. *shoves a completely different array tailored to NHS’s core and sneaky style into his hands* You’re more like me.

NHS: *stares for a longer moment than JZX had* Yeah. Huh. I’m pinning you down for treats later.

SQH: *grins* For treats, you’re on. Move!

They all move, doing what they can to reinforce everyone inside Koi Tower before the end of the world can happen.

40. Distractions Abound

The knowing that had grown between Lan Zhan and Wei Ying thrummed under his skin as Wei Qing ran ahead of them all with her needles at the ready. It was… not as comforting now as it had been back home on Cang Qiong.

Wei Ying was the distraction.

They were the ones who would end this threat to everything.

Once again, Wei Ying threw himself between those he loved and any threats. All threats. Lan Zhan wanted to lecture him about it, wanted to squeeze him in a hug and never, ever let go, but he could feel how very vital their job was.

Everything depended on them.

Literally everything.

Xiongzhang’s life. The survival of all the sects. The survival of all the planes which was a thing which made his head swim to consider. Planes. Actually real planes of existence with entirely different entities living there like humans did here. So stunning.

“Focus!” Wei Qing snapped at Lan Zhan.

“Apologies,” Lan Zhan replied.

They could sense each other just as Wei Ying could sense them. It was… odd? Odd in how not odd it was.

Which did not matter when there was a battle to be fought.

Wei Qing led them down flight after flight of stairs, many decorated with splatters of blood or dropped platters full of food and drink. No one had come to clean up the mess. No one seemed to breathe in the hallways of Koi Tower.

The deeper they went, the stronger the waves of resentful energy were. If it were not for Wei Ying’s power beating inside of his heart, Lan Zhan knew that he would already have collapsed. His golden core struggled to cope with the hammer blows of resentment pounding down on the three of them with all the regularity of a calm heartbeat.

Koi Tower’s dungeon lay empty, doors flung open and chains hanging empty.

“This is awful,” Wei Ning murmured once they came to a doorway that normally would be hidden in a stone wall.

Steep stairs led downwards past the level that Lan Zhan had thought was the deepest foundations of the tower. A red glow pulsed in time with the resentful energy hammer blows, rising and fading as they carefully, quietly, crept down the stairs towards whatever hell Jin Guangshan had constructed.

“Quiet,” Wei Qing hissed at them, almost more in her mind than vocally.

All three of them went to the ready as they peeked out of the stairwell into… Hell. Perhaps literally.

Jin Guangshan stood over Xiongzhang, Nie Mingjue, Jiang Cheng and an awkwardly piled group of mingled Lan, Nie and Jiang disciples, none of whom seemed able to move. His eyes glowed with the same blood-red light as the array underneath his feet.

The vaulted room stank of blood.

So much blood.

Wei Ning fired an arrow straight at Jin Guangshan’s heart the instant he had a clear line of sight. The arrow struck home, settling so deeply that the thatching quivered a bare finger’s width above Jin Guangshan’s chest.

It was good that Lan Zhan hadn’t expected it to make much of a difference because Jin Guangshan only looked down at the arrow as if it were a minor annoyance. The three of them charged into the vaulted space. Wei Ning fired more arrows, two or three per step, pulling them from a qiankun pouch at his hip that seemed to hold an infinite supply of arrows.

Arrows bloomed all over Jin Guangshan’s body, hitting his torso multiple times, then his shoulders, his elbows, thighs, knees and throat at least four times.

Jin Guangshan snarled at them as he staggered backwards under Wei Ning’s fusillade of arrows. He couldn’t speak, thank goodness, but the arrows did nothing whatsoever to kill the man. Or even to knock him down. Lan Zhan positioned himself between Xiongzhang and Jin Guangshan, incidentally protecting the others as well, including Jiang Cheng who cursed at him for it in a weak, relieved voice.

“No, Wangji!” Xiongzhang gasped as Wei Qing knelt at his side. “Run!”

“No,” Lan Zhan said. “We will not.”

“It’s too late to run,” Wei Ning said as he kept firing despite having already turned Jin Guangshan into a pincushion.

He’ll strike back soon, a different voice murmured into Lan Zhan’s mind. Cool, controlled, strategic in the extreme despite being utterly furious. Sword out. This is the array you need. Channel the array through your sword. It should cut through any of his attacks, but you can’t fight while you hold it. Leave that to the others.

Wei Ning stepped back behind Lan Zhan as he held his sword at the ready. The array was… old. Complicated more than it perhaps needed to be. But doable given the amount of time Lan Zhan had spent following Wei Ying around marveling at his creativity.

He barely got it cast and charge when Jin Guangshan blazed with that bloody red light that felt so very different from Wei Ying’s new cultivation method.

Arrows sprayed away from Jin Guangshan, forcibly ejected from his flesh by the power of his warped qi. They bounced off the new shield, shattering into dust. Even the arrowheads shattered into dust, drifting down to the glowing red floor.

“You fools can’t stop me,” Jin Guangshan snarled though it was less than impressive given that he said it before his throat closed up fully. The words came out bubbly and distorted.

That only lasted for a few rabbit-fast heartbeats. Then Jin Guangshan spit blood on the floor, making it glow just that little bit brighter.

Oh. His blood fed the array. It wasn’t just their blood. Jin Guangshan had tied his own life and qi into the array by feeding it his blood.

Idiot, the cool voice huffed. Doesn’t make this any easier but it should help keep the realms from collapsing on each other before you can stop him.

“I’m immortal, unstoppable,” Jin Guangshan announced with his normal grandiosity. It sat strangely with the bloody holes torn through his robes and the red light lighting his face from beneath. “Though I have to say that I’m grateful to you for bringing more blood for the array. It’s… thirsty.”

His smile exposed bloodstained teeth.

“Idiot,” Lan Zhan said clearly enough and loudly enough that even Jiang Cheng choked in shock. “You will die when we break this.”

Jin Guangshan laughed, head flung back.

Wei Ning fired another arrow into his throat and then shrugged when Lan Zhan raised an eyebrow at him. “I really can’t stand listening to the speeches anymore.”

“Agreed,” Wei Qing said as she moved to stand just behind Lan Zhan on his left side. “We had more than enough of that from Wen Ruohan.”

As Jin Guangshan tore the arrow from his throat, glaring death at Wei Ning, Lan Zhan tentatively reached out to Wei Ying but Wei Ying was far too busy fighting upstairs to help. So he reached for the cool voice in his mind.

How do we delay him? Lan Zhan asked because they, the three of them plus the others, had no capacity to stop Jin Guangshan.

Wei Ying is summoning the dead, the voice said. Be ready and then attack. This array, it appeared in Lan Zhan’s mind but Wei Qing was the one who started and then sucked a sharp breath through her teeth, should help block the effects of the resentful energy enough that the others can help fight. You’ll be helpless as long as you hold it but the others can protect you.

The floor of the vault rumbled as ashy shadows bloomed all across it. Ghosts, old, young, male, female, both Jin and not, rose up from the array. And from the pile of bodies across the room that Lan Zhan had not noticed. They wailed as they charged straight at Jin Guangshan, claws out.

He shouted, rough with the still healing injury to his throat, as he tried to beat the ghosts away with his hands, his qi, his sword.

“Protect Wei Qing!” Lan Zhan shouted over the ghosts’ wailing and Jin Guangshan’s bellows to Xiongzhang and the Lan.

“Fucking how?” Jiang Cheng snarled only to gasp as Wei Qing pushed her qi into creating the array they’d been gifted with.

Abruptly, the waves of resentful energy were… diminished? No, pushed aside. Upwards towards Wei Ying who certainly would be able to make good use of them. Wei Qing’s array rapidly cleared the vault of all the resentful energy, including the ghosts who flew wailing up through the ceiling towards Wei Ying’s battle with Jin Ruotian.

“You are going to die!” Jin Guangshan shouted at them as he swiped blood off his face and arms from the ghosts’ claws.

When he flicked the blood down to the array incised into the floor, the glow barely brightened at all.

Ah, good, the cool voice murmured to Lan Zhan. It needs the resentful energy as well as the blood. I was never sure. Any purification you can do will help. Also any limb removal, of course. Hard to activate the thing if you have no limbs to use.

As Xiongzhang and the others climbed to their feet, Wei Ning returned to firing arrows into Jin Guangshan. They had little effect. Jin Guangshan threw up shields after the next three hit home in his chest, but it was a lovely distraction.

“Xiongzhang, purification,” Lan Zhan ordered. “The array requires resentful energy as well as blood. Do not bleed on it. You life force will be linked to it.”

“Understood,” Xiongzhang said as he pulled Liebing from his qiankun pouch which was a huge relief. Foolish of Jin Guangshan to leave them all their pouches and weapons.

The Lan encircled Wei Qing in a wall of white and blue robes. The Nie moved with Nie Mingjue to form a wall along Wei Ning’s side while the Jiang followed Jiang Cheng in taking Lan Zhan’s left side.

“Plan?” Jiang Cheng asked just as he had during the three months that they hunted for Wei Ying.

“Remove his limbs,” Lan Zhan said. “His head, if you can, but that will be… difficult. Distance is likely better than close combat.”

“Got it,” Jiang Cheng said as Zidian unfurled.

He struck at Jin Guangshan, hitting only shields, no flesh. The strike made a lovely cover for Nie Mingjue to send Baxia flying across the room like an oversized arrow made of pure steel. Baxia lopped off one of Jin Guangshan’s hands in a strike from the rear that made Jin Guangshan bellow in rage.

It did no good.

Jin Guangshan caught the hand and shoved it back against the stump. He glared and then wiggled the fingers, showing that it had already reattached itself.

Behind them, Wei Qing’s array filled the vault with a cool, pure green-tinted light that battled back the red from Jin Guangshan’s array. Xiongzhang and the Lan played purification, six different songs at once, in a harmony that Lan Zhan had read about but never dreamed that he might someday hear.

…I really do have to wonder just what he did to himself to be that unkillable, the cool voice said. Hm. Still a good plan to keep him busy with attacks but he’ll be beyond your combined capacity to take down properly. Hold the line.

A Jiang sword cut Jin Guangshan’s leg straight through at the thigh. He healed just as fast as the sword passed through his flesh, though his robes and pants leg dropped down to tangle at his feet. Another saber cut deep into Jin Guangshan’s side then tore out the left side of his body. The flesh curled inwards and rebuilt his ribcage and internal organs as they watched.

“This isn’t working!” Jiang Cheng shouted as he struck again and again and again at Jin Guangshan. “Do something.”

“Shielding,” Lan Zhan snapped at him.

“Fuck, right,” Jiang Cheng said with a grimace. “Sorry. We can’t win this.”

“No,” Lan Zhan agreed as more weapons broke through Jin Guangshan’s increasingly unsteady defenses. “We cannot. Hold the line.”

Jiang Cheng gasped, eyes going wide at the same time that Nie Mingjue perked up from his scowling fury as he directed Baxia to attack and attack and attack. Nie Mingjue grinned with vicious pleasure as he waved a hand to the others.

“Hammer him down to the ground!” Nie Mingjue bellowed. “Don’t give him a moment to catch his breath!”

Because distractions worked best when your target had no idea that help was coming.

Lan Zhan felt the moment where Wei Ying was impaled. He did not falter.

The pain that Wei Ying refused to experienced still bloomed between Wei Ying and Lan Zhan. It tore at Lan Zhan’s concentration, driving him right down to his knees on the bloodstained array, but Lan Zhan did not let the shield waver. He did not let it fall.

Because Wei Ying laughed upstairs. He laughed and he tricked Jin Ruotian and then Zhuzhi-Lang surged out from behind Wei Ying to kill Jin Ruotian in a single bite.

Koi Tower’s foundations began to tremble.

“No,” Jin Guangshan gasped as he collapsed to hands and knees. “No! I won’t let you win. I won’t!”

They’re coming, a second voice, this one much more excited and somehow darker, told Lan Zhan. Just hold on! We’ll get you all out. You just need to hold on until Wei Ying gets there!

Hush, Binghe, the cool voice said. Make sure that they’re ready outside the Tower.

That sent Binghe, whoever he was, careening out of Lan Zhan’s head which left room for an apologetic little sigh from the cool voice. Then Zhuzhi-Lang slithered down the stairs into the vault with Wei Ying riding on his back.

“What the fuck?” Jiang Cheng shouted. “Where have you been?”

“Jiang Cheng! I brought reinforcements!” Wei Ying shouted to him. “We gotta get out of here!”

“No!” Jin Guangshan shrieked. “You will not defeat me!”

He grabbed a blade passing by and cut his own throat open with it before flinging the blade away from him. Jin Guangshan’s blood spilled out onto the center of the array, lighting it up as it glowed brighter and brighter.

“Wei Ying!” Lan Zhan shouted along with the cool voice in his head. “We must leave! Now!”

#

Outside Koi Tower:

SQH: Thank fuck, that’s all of them. Power ‘em up!

All the arrays placed around the base of Koi Tower suddenly link up, forming a force field that slams down overtop of the Tower. Just that quickly, the aura of resentful energy drops to almost nothing.

JZX: So… that… didn’t fix it, right?

SQH: Nope, just isolated it so that the whole world doesn’t go when the tower goes. Sorry, not sorry, but you’re going to have to rebuild from scratch. Always assuming that your friend Wei Ying saves the day. He should! I mean, probably. He’s got all the tools he needs. It’s just, you know, potentially impossible to stop the reaction once it starts. Maybe.

JZX: *turns to NHS* I had no idea that you had relatives. Wow. Must be on your mother’s side.

NHS: *grins in that “I’m so running with that” way that makes both NMJ and MBJ sigh like they’re deeply exhausted even though NMJ isn’t there to see it* I know! It’s he awesome? I’m having so much fun right now.

SQH: That’s my boy!

They all startle and stumble back as fast as they can as Koi Tower starts to rumble and then throb with blood red energy.

SQH: Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Oh, shit! My King! We gotta get them out of there!

MBJ: … *stares at the shield and then frowns*

SQH: Oh crap. That thing better not have trapped them all inside! What the fuck?

41. Looming Collapse

Riding Snake-gege when he was in a rush was… well. It was always as much of a rush as riding his sword used to be, but to slide through Koi Tower’s hallways with Snake-gege shifting sizes continually underneath him was a tiny bit more of a rush than Wei Ying was prepared for after being impaled.

That’s why you don’t let yourself get impaled, Binghe huffed to Wei Ying. You have to wait until the end of the fight, not allow it in the middle.

No, Zhuzhi-Lang hissed at the both of them, no impalement. None. Ever. At all!

Wei Ying saved his energy for hanging on. Seriously, wildest ride ever. Fast, but yikes, Snake-gege had definitely been taking it easy on him last time.

They slithered into the vault where Lan Zhan and Wei Qing were doing old fashioned shields and Wei Ning was firing endless arrows at a very mangled Jin Guangshan. Who, apparently, had optimized his core so much for survival that having limbs cut off was only a temporary inconvenience, what the hell?

You literally can’t kill him, Binghe said grimly. He’s absolutely going to die on his own as he’s made too much a mess of his cultivation. He’s deviating as we watch.

But he’ll still cause a lot of damage in the meantime, Wei Ying finished, sighing mentally.

Yeah.

They shared a mental moment of exhaustion for people who were blindly stupid about their suicidal tendencies. Wei Ying might have been thinking of himself, but Binghe clearly was thinking of his Shizun, so at least Wei Ying knew where he got it from.

He and Jiang Cheng had barely gotten their normal middle of a battle banter going when Jin Guangshan’s eyes started crying blood while blood poured out of his ears and nose. Resentful energy spiked as the array went as bright as looking at the sun.

“No!” Jin Guangshan shrieked as he cut his own throat on Yeung Kun’s sword. “You will not defeat me!”

“Wei Ying!” Lan Zhan shouted, terror rising in the bond between them. “We must leave! Now!”

“Stairs!” Wei Ying bellowed at everyone.

Thankfully, not even Nie Mingjue questioned his order. They rampaged towards the stairs, flinching from the light and staggering from the waves of resentful energy. One of the Nie, a woman so huge that she made Nie Mingjue look slender, scooped up Wei Qing who didn’t even blink her eyes. Wei Qing just kept up on the array that made it possible for everyone else to run.

“Go!” Wei Ying shouted at Wei Ning. “We’re on your heels.”

“You better be, Wei-gongzi!” Wei Ning shouted right back as he tucked his bow away into his qiankun pouch.

Zhuzhi-Lang shoved his head underneath the two of them, lifting them up on his head as he slithered up the stairs. Then Lan Zhan got scooped up, the Nie with Wei Qing. Then Jiang Cheng and the rest of the Jiang followed by the Lan and the Nie which made for a very crowded ride. Wei Ying ended up at the very back, hanging on only because Binghe mentally showed him a method for sticking himself to a surface that worked on Zhuzhi-Lang’s scales.

Wei Ying, logically, cast it on everyone so that none of them would fall off at an inopportune time.

Nie Mingjue dodged being scooped up. He ran on his own, somehow managing to keep up with Zhuzhi-Lang until he got Baxia under his feet. Then he sped ahead of Zhuzhi-Lang as he flew a breakneck race through Koi Tower’s trembling, cracking, crumbling hallways.

Through the rumble of the collapsing tower, Wei Ying could hear Jin Guangshan bellowing something…

Not purification or some other technique he knew. It sounded like something old. It felt dangerous.

It is, Binghe said grimly. You have to get everyone out of the tower and out of the shield as quickly as you can. He’s opening a rift to the Endless Abyss. If you’re inside, you’ll all be sucked in and, Wei Ying, you’re the only one who could survive more than a few shichen in there. Trust me. I spent a year in there.

The images in Binghe’s mind were things of horror. Blood rivers, lava flowing up into the sky. Monsters like nothing Wei Ying had even dreamed of in his worst nightmares. Plants that ate flesh, dragging their roots across the ground to get closer to you. Threat after threat after threat, to the point that not even solid rock was safe.

“Down the stairs,” Wei Ying bellowed to Nie Mingjue. “The tower is falling. We have to go!”

Nie Mingjue nodded as he dodged some gilded masonry. “Bridge?”

“Can’t!” Wei Ying shouted back because honestly, they couldn’t use it right now. Not with Wei Ying, Wei Qing and Wei Ning all here.

Bad planning on his part but what else could he have done?

Nie Mingjue waved to his people and they reared up on Zhuzhi-Lang’s back to fire blasts of qi at the wall of the tower. They, somehow, hit the exact same spot. Seriously spot-on training, there. Wei Ying whistled while Jiang Cheng cursed and Yeung Kun looked like she was going to grab Nie Mingjue to question him about his training methods once this was all over.

Masonry blew outwards as if someone had set up an explosive talisman. Or, you know, blasted the wall out of existence.

The light that poured in looked like they were under water, rippling and blue in the same way that the sky looked when you dove deep under the surface of the river and then looked back upwards when you were on the river’s bed.

Which, what?

Why was the sky like that?

Zhuzhi-Lang flung himself out the hole with all of them on his back. Nie Mingjue looped through right behind Wei Ying’s left shoulder. They were about three stories above the ground because of course, of course, the base of the Jin Sect compound was collapsing inwards towards a crackling, throbbing mass of resentful energy that sucked at all of them.

Chunks of brick and dirt flew past their heads, pulled inexorably backwards towards the array that Jin Guangshan had created. The air screamed around them even though it wasn’t moving that fast. No. Not the air. The world itself seemed to be screaming like it had been stabbed and was bleeding out.

Wei Ying shuddered at the creepy twists and bends of the ground so far underneath them. This was wrong. So wrong. That array was breaking the world.

He hadn’t thought that Binghe meant that it would literally destroy the world!

“What the hell is that?” Jiang Cheng screamed as Wei Ying released them all from Zhuzhi-Lang’s back so that they could mount their swords.

Everyone succeeded in mounting their swords.

Other than Wei Ying, of course.

Well, also Wei Qing and Wei Ning, but they were all still stuck to Zhuzhi-Lang and he grew so huge that his head touched down while his tail was still three stories in the air. Then he shrank so fast that Wei Ying’s head swam at being sucked to the ground so fast.

“Rift to the Endless Abyss!” Wei Ying shouted to Jiang Cheng as he tumbled off Zhuzhi-Lang and helped Wei Qing down, Wei Ning on her other side.

Wei Qing, the awesome, amazing, incredibly unstoppable person that she was, didn’t let her distortion-calming array flicker at all.

“Not that!” Jiang Cheng shouted as he pointed the other direction. “That!”

Wei Ying looked and then winced.

A whole bunch of Yu stood on the other side of a glowing shield that rippled like water. Jin Zixuan, Madame Jin and a very excited Nie Huaisang stood with them. Everyone shouted at them, waving their arms or visibly cursing, not that the sound got through the shield.

There was also a short, kind of scruffy looking cultivator half-hidden behind Nie Huaisang who kept looking over his shoulder as if he was waiting for something. He felt… familiar? Like Wei Ying should know him. Somehow?

Wei Ying ran for the edge of the shield with the others on his heels. He dared to touch it only to yelp as it sent a nasty shock up his arm to jangle in his molars. Worse than Zidian, better than being thrown off Wen Chao’s sword. Definitely not something he could get through easily.

The ground under Wei Ying’s feet started crumbling and rolling away backwards.

On the other side of the shield, the grass didn’t move at all. Not a single brick shifted or bird fluttered helplessly towards the growing rift.

“We have to get out of here!” Nie Mingjue bellowed. “The whole place is collapsing inwards.”

“If we break the shield, it’ll consume everything,” Wei Ying bellowed back at him. “Let me think!”

“Hurry!” both Nie Mingjue and Jiang Cheng bellowed at Wei Ying.

But only for as long as it took for Wei Ning to place himself at Wei Ying’s side. Lan Zhan stepped between them and Wei Ying, glaring death at them, too. Even Wei Qing had a good stink face going despite her maintenance of the distortion-calming array.

Everyone else crowded close to Wei Qing because Jin Guangshan’s effect was least around her.

Binghe? Wei Ying pleaded. Please tell me you’re still there!

Silence.

A flash of blue light showered snow all around the scruffy cultivator as three people appeared: A literal blue-skinned demon with as sternly blank a face as Lan Zhan. A tall, slender cultivator who was wearing Lan Zhan’s new robes.

And a burly man with unruly black hair just like Wei Ying’s.

We’re here! Binghe shouted as he ran for the barrier with his Shizun and the demon on his heels. Get everyone as close as you can. We’ll only get one shot at this if we want to get everyone out.

“Get close!” Wei Ying bellowed. “As close as you can.”

Binghe shoved a hand against the shield despite the slender cultivator cursing at him. Match me and reach for me, A-Ying!

Wei Ying blew out a breath and then slammed his hand into the shield exactly opposite Binghe’s hand. Reaching was…

…more than qi.

More than will.

More than gritting his teeth through the searing pain of the shield trying to tear him apart.

It was hearing the song of Zhuzhi-Lang and Binghe’s blood thrumming along inside of his own body. Wei Ning put a hand on Wei Ying’s shoulder and the blood-song rose higher. Then Wei Qing touched him. Lan Zhan. Jiang Cheng. Yeung Kun even though she barely had a drop of his blood in her veins. Then the others all reached and willed and pushed.

As Zhuzhi-Lang wrapped around them all in his giant bi-viper form, forming a wall between them and Jin Guangshan’s horror array.

On the other side, Binghe gritted his teeth, displaying fangs even sharper than Wei Ying’s as his eyes glowed red just like Wei Ying’s did. The slender cultivator wrapped his arms around Binghe’s waist, setting his forehead in the middle of Binghe’s shoulder blades. The blue demon put a hand on Binghe’s shoulder with tense determination, not that his face shifted at all.

“Cucumber, get away from there!” the scruffy cultivator shouted as a hole suddenly opened.

“Snake-gege, push!” Wei Ying screamed as the hole widened just enough for a human to slip through.

There was a sudden twist and push that sent Wei Ying sprawling into Binghe’s arms like he’d been shoved off the dock back in Lotus Pier. All the others spilled through with him, though both Binghe and Wei Ying whipped around and grabbed for Zhuzhi-Lang who hadn’t shifted back to his bipedal form.

“No!” Wei Ning screamed as he grabbed Zhuzhi-Lang’s tail and hauled like he was going to be able to move the tons and tons of snake.

Zhuzhi-Lang’s four eyes went wide and then zhwoop!

Wei Ning tumbled backwards with a normal sized bi-viper wrapped around his chest.

The scruffy cultivator slapped another array on one side of the hole. Nie Huaisang got the other side.

Pop!

Wei Ying fell down.

It took him several moments to realize that the sound, the nightmare rumble that had shaken his bones loose, was gone. Silent. No crackle. No aura of resentful energy. He nearly jumped out of his skin when a plover called from one of the carefully trimmed and pruned shrubs that lined the way up to Koi Tower.

“Is it… over?” Lan Xichen asked from the other side of Lan Zhan.

Wei Ying looked to where Koi Tower’s massive platform had stood. There was nothing left. Just a huge perfectly square hole that looked like a giant had used a carving knife to lift the tower and all its foundations out of the ground.

The walls of the pit were perfectly smooth. Sheer. Impossibly shiny like they’d been fused to glass, even though Wei Ying could see water beginning to seep through the sides of the pit already.

But still, there wasn’t anything left. No array. No platform. No tower or debris or any of the gilded buildings that the Jin Sect took such overweening pride in.

Just a hole, slowly filling with water.

“It’s over. Finally,” Binghe’s Shizun said, sighing. “Airplane, you did not share that technique with him, did you?”

“What?” Nie Huaisang and “Airplane” squawked at the exact same time in the exact same tone of utter shock and horror that they’d ever possibly be accused of doing anything wrong, ever.

“Oh, no,” Wei Ying said as he collapsed into Lan Zhan’s side. “There are two of them.”

Binghe snorted. Then grinned. And then started laughing so hard that even his Shizun lost that furious expression.

“Fine,” Binghe’s Shizun huffed. “But this conversation isn’t over yet. Let’s make sure everyone is all right.”

“And maybe explain what just happened,” Jiang Cheng grumbled. Not one of the real grumbles. More one of the shaky ones where he really wanted to sit and shake for a while but didn’t think that he could get away with it.

“Jiang Cheng,” Wei Ying said, gesturing towards Binghe and his Shizun. “Meet my great-grandfathers.”

“Luo Binghe,” Binghe said as he pulled himself back to his feet and then helped Wei Ying and Lan Zhan up with the sort of strength that made Nie Mingjue seem fragile. “This is my husband, Shen Qingqiu. That’s Shang Qinghua and his husband, Mobei-Jun. We’ve… well. We’ve been unable to come to this world for a very long time now.”

Nie Mingjue sighed as he ran a shaking hand over his face. “I’m with Jiang Cheng. Somebody needs to explain what just happened.”

“Tea,” Shen Qingqiu decided. “Tea, food, medical treatment. And then explanations.”

#

Very, very late that night in one of the inns in Jinlintai that’d been converted into temporary headquarters for the much reduced Jin Sect:

NHS: *toasts SQH* I have to admit, that was some prize nonsense you put together out there.

SQH: *grins and toasts back as he leans into MBJ’s side* Ah, thanks. It’s a talent. Though it’s actually all true. Not even much “from a certain point of view”.

NHS: *Frowns* Wait, you mean… the Jin Sect was created to literally, actually, truthfully destroy all the other sects and then the world? That’s the whole point of the Jin Sect’s existence?

SQH: Eh. *wobbles one hand* That’s certainly what Hua Jinzhe, also known as Jin Ruotian, was after. The rest of the sect? Pretty much exactly what Han Hua Palace was always after: All the money, all the contacts, all the special tools and arrays and books. You know, status, money, power.

NHS: Whores?

SQH: Yeah. They were always kind of awful. Seems like your boy Jin Zixuan is going to take them in a different direction, though.

NHS: *starts snickering as he pours them all more wine* Yeah. I had no idea he had that many knives on him. Seriously. I think he took out a good third of the remaining leadership of his sect before they realized he wasn’t just like his dad.

They grin at each other and toast before drinking their wine down. MBJ sighs and waits for them to drink themselves under the table as they probe each other for hidden bits of wisdom and secrets, even though neither of them actually needed to do anything of the sort.

42. Cang Qiong

Wei Ying sighed as he collapsed onto the bench in front of his bamboo hut. Who knew that discussion conferences could be even worse when you were a sect leader than when you were just a standard disciple? He’d never realized that there was quite that much yammering questions without listening to the answers.

Within two shichen of Jin Guangshan sending Koi Tower and himself into the Endless Abyss, other sect leaders had starts to show up with their entourages.

Somehow, Wei Ying really didn’t know how, Sect Leader Yao was one of the very first. He’d arrived already yelping about demonic cultivation this and hunting people down that. None of the explanations offered had shut him up until Mobei-Jun and Zhuzhi-Lang glared him into spluttering silence.

By day two, it had taken Shen Qingqiu being Extremely Well Educated and Very Disappointed in him for Sect Leader Yao to shut up.

Day three? Wei Ying had deployed the devastating threat that was Zhuzhi-Lang and Wei Ning both looking Very Sad, which did let him get a word in edgewise to explain that no, it wasn’t him doing anything. It’d been Jin Guangshan and his uncle Jin Ruotian behind it all. That they had, from all evidence, decided that human sacrifice (mostly of their own people) and truly evil practices had been what they needed to achieve immortality.

Wei Ying was never going to explain that Jin Ruotian had already been immortal. Just no. Explaining all of that wouldn’t help anything.

Shen Qingqiu had done a great job explaining the other realms and then he’d casually explained that yes, demons were actually real people and that no, the lack of visitation from the demonic and heavenly realms weren’t normal. It was all tied into the nonsense that the Jin Sect leaders had been up to.

Jin Zixuan had not been pleased with that. Understandably. He’d been much less pleased to realize that yes, he really was the sect leader. No, he didn’t get to pass it off on his mother. No, Shijie wasn’t ever going to marry him since she was head over heels for Nie Huaisang.

Wei Ying snickered just remembering how much chaos Nie Huaisang had caused once his not fake at all courtship was revealed.

It’d taken almost six days before the impromptu conference ended. Petered out as people realized that they had homes to tend to, laundry to wash as the famous Jin Sect laundry services were no longer available, and that there wasn’t much to be done besides give Jin Zixuan support as he completely rebuilt the Jin Sect.

At least the peacock was only a couple years behind the rest of them. It would’ve been much worse if his sect had been devastated a decade or two in the future after everyone else rebuilt. This way they all got to build back up at the same time, reforming the old alliances in new ways as the world settled back down after the Sunshot Campaign.

With the Wei Sect being the new, much humbled, version of the Wen.

So weird.

“Was it wise to tell them that we were the Wei Sect?” Wei Qing asked as she came to sit next to him with a tired sigh.

“I certainly wasn’t going to tell them that we’re Cang Qiong,” Wei Ying said, shrugging. “I mean, they’re already suspicious of everything that happened. I’m not going to give them a single thing to latch onto if I can help it. Even the fabric that Jiang Cheng is going to sell for us is being pitched as a secret weaver who learned ancient techniques from their grandmother but was afraid of doing anything because of Wen Ruohan.”

“No, that’s definitely the right choice,” Wei Qing agreed with a snort of amusement that wasn’t amused at all. “I just worry that they’ll ask about, you know, you.”

Because of course Wei Qing had figured out that Wei Ying wasn’t actually properly a human.

“I think my grandparents might slaughter them if they do ask,” Wei Ying said slowly.

He looked at the classrooms that they’d turned into workrooms. Lan Zhan was there in his white and green robes, nodding intently as Shen Qingqiu lectured enthusiastically about… guqin construction? Repair? Something like that. From the excited thrumming under Lan Zhan’s breastbone, it was something terrifically important and deeply meaningful to him, so Wei Ying left them to it.

Luo Binghe was off by the bamboo grove, digging up bamboo shoots with A-Yuan, which he was enthusiastically explaining how to properly cook. Not that A-Yuan understood much of it or cared. He just liked digging in the dirt and doing things that were nice for his family.

Popo Wei and Shang Qinghua had gone over to An Ding together to go through about sixty million records that Shang Qinghua had apparently left behind in the rush to seal Cang Qiong. And, well, everyone was just… living.

Doing things. Learning. Growing. Laughing and playing and scowling at bits or bobs that weren’t working correctly.

“I suppose they might,” Wei Qing allowed, watching everyone else, too. “Will you ever tell anyone?”

“Mm, probably not,” Wei Ying said. “I don’t think it would be very safe.”

Wei Qing snorted. “You don’t say? Your blood can completely heal lethal wounds. Your qi works differently from everyone else’s. You can communicate telepathically with people at will.”

“Not everyone,” Wei Ying protested. “Only those I’m, you know, linked to. Like you. Wei Ning. Lan Zhan. My grandparents. Meng Yao, now. I’m not ever going to lose track of him.”

“Fine, you can communicate telepathically with some people,” Wei Qing corrected, rolling her eyes. “Speaking of Meng Yao and that idiot, when are they getting booted?”

“No time like the present, I suppose,” Wei Ying said.

He pushed himself up off the bench and ambled off towards An Ding when Shen Qingqiu pulled out Lan Zhan’s guqin Wangji out of his sleeve. Wei Ying would’ve headed right over to reassure Lan Zhan who took Wangji with shaky hands, but both Lan Zhan and Shen Qingqiu shook their heads at him.

Okay, then.

Luo Binghe casually sent him an image of Shang Qinghua in an enormous warehouse on An Ding that Wei Ying knew he’d never seen, so Wei Ying headed that way instead of asking Luo Binghe for help dealing with the formerly Jin Sect infestation they had on Cang Qiong at the moment.

“Oh, hey,” Shang Qinghua said with a nervous little tick looking behind himself, a quarter shichen of searching later. “Sect Leader Wei. What can I do you for?”

“Well,” Wei Ying said, grinning at the way Popo Wei swatted at Shan Qinghua’s shoulder for being so twitchy and ridiculous, “I’ve got these former Jin Sect people that I’d like to boot out of here. Luo Binghe sent me your way, so I’m assuming that you’ve got a method for removing people to distant locations quickly?”

“Oh, sure,” Shang Qinghua said. He immediately relaxed, making Wei Ying wonder just what he was hiding that he got so weird when he was surprised. “That’s my King. He’s able to teleport anywhere. Give me a sec. I’ll get him to haul those two off.”

“Are you why the guards were gone?” Popo Wei asked. “In the camps, when we rescued everyone, there were far too few guards.”

Shang Qinghua promptly started jittering and waving his hands as he talked very, very fast indeed. “We were just trying to help! I mean, as much as we could. We couldn’t let anyone see us because that would’ve alerted that jerk and the risks were too high of making mistakes. So we did what we could, you know?”

“Take your thanks politely,” Popo Wei said so sternly that Wei Ying had to press his lips together to keep from laughing out loud.

“You’re welcome, Popo,” Shang Qinghua said, bowing repeatedly like she was the immortal and he was a very junior disciple who’d just been spared from some miserable task. “Thank you, Popo.”

Mobei-Jun appeared just then in a spray of ice crystals and a wash of freezing cold air. He frowned at Wei Ying, more with a faint air of concern than with threat despite the stern perfection of his blue face. When he turned to Shang Qinghua, that sternness faded ever so slightly at the way Shang Qinghua brightened and bounced over to tug at his sleeve.

“My King!” Shang Qinghua exclaimed. “Good timing. A-Ying needs to get rid of the Jin rejects. Would you please help him? I mean, it’s not going to be anything really challenging. We’re just going to dump them like we did the others.”

Wei Ying nodded. “I was planning on giving Jin Zixun a purse with some money. He went through a lot. Meng Yao, eh, I guess I can give him a little bit, too.”

“Mm,” Mobei-Jun grunted instead of actually replying.

“Here,” Shang Qinghua said as he pulled robes, purses with money, two bags holding what looked like half his body weight in snacks and jerky, and a pair of very squirrelly looking talismans that vibrated with power in Wei Ying’s hands. “Talisman will prevent them from ever returning here. Just drop them off, smack the thing on them, and then leave. It’ll fall off on its own about a count of four or five afterwards. Ah, and qiankun pouches to hold it all.”

“Thank you!” Wei Ying said as he and Popo Wei got all the goodies separated out into their two pouches. “Okay, let’s go Mobei-Jun. Sooner they’re gone, the sooner everyone can calm down and relax properly.”

Traveling by teleportation with Mobei-Jun was like jumping into the river at Lotus Pier during a deep cold snap when the water’s surface froze over and the deep currents underneath chilled to the point that all the fish went slow and sleepy. Wei Ying wheezed a little when they arrived on Qian Cao, right next to Jin Zixun who was firmly twice Meng Yao’s reach away from Meng Yao.

“What the fuck?” Jin Zixun shouted as he rabbited and bolted away from them.

“Sect Leader Wei,” Meng Yao sighed, though his eyes were bright with vicious amusement at Jin Zixun’s Jin Zixun-ness. “To what do we owe the honor?”

“Time to leave,” Wei Ying said. He passed one pouch to Meng Yao and then waved the other one at Jin Zixun so that he would come out from behind the corner of the building to collect it. “We’ve supplied some money, fresh robes not connected with the Jin Sect, a bit of snacks and a good solid amount of jerky.”

“That’s…” Meng Yao paused as Jin Zixun darted over to grab his pouch and then hide behind Mobei-Jun, as if that was safer somehow. “That’s very generous of you. And the wound?”

Wei Ying studied Meng Yao. “I’ve talismans that will ensure that you can never return to the Jianghu. You will not be able to evade me or Mobei-Jun. Obviously. Teleportation. I trust that Jin Zixun is just going to run as far as he can. You? You’re more likely to try and find some sneaky way to come back in a misguided attempt to return to your plans.”

Meng Yao grimaced. “I can’t say that it’s not a temptation.”

“Apply your plans to the Josen,” Wei Ying ordered. “Because if you ever make an attempt to influence, control, or otherwise meddle with the Jianghu, I will know.”

“And then you’ll kill me,” Meng Yao said with a tired sigh that he actually felt right down to his toes. “I see. Very well. I’m sure the Josen can use a talented administrator.”

Wei Ying snorted. “I’m pretty sure you’ll be the power behind the throne in, like, three or four years. Looking forward to it, actually. You’re stunningly smart and incredibly talented, Meng Yao. If you’d ever had a single chance here, you could have been great. There just… wasn’t a chance. At all. Everything in the Jianghu was arranged against you. That won’t be true in the Josen.”

For a long moment, Meng Yao studied him while thoughts of how Wei Ying was twisting the truth or shaping lies ran through his head. After a moment, though, he nodded slowly. And stood.

Meng Yao tied the qiankun pouch onto his simple natural tan linen belt and tugged his robes down into place. “I’m ready. And thank you.”

“No thanks are necessary,” Wei Ying said, grinning. “All right! Let’s get you two off to your new lives.”

That evening, as Wei Ying listened to Lan Zhan playing songs with Shen Qingqiu on his repaired and restored guqin Wangji, because Lan Zhan hadn’t been willing to admit that he’d broken Wangji trying to get to Wei Ying because he didn’t want Wei Ying to feel bad about Wangji’s destruction, Wei Ying cuddled A-Yuan as he leaned into Luo Binghe’s side. Wei Ning had curled up with Zhuzhi-Lang. Who looked like the most precious gift in the entire world had been given to him when Wei Ning laid his head on Zhuzhi-Lang’s shoulder.

“I’m so happy,” Wei Ying whispered into A-Yuan’s hair.

“Good,” Luo Binghe murmured as he kissed the top of Wei Ying’s head. “That’s all we’ve ever wanted for you.”

Safe. Well fed. Good clothes. A good home with all the books Wei Ying could ever read. Friends. Family.

Love.

It really was everything that Wei Ying had ever wanted. He smiled and snuggled up to Luo Binghe as A-Yuan fell asleep in his arms and the love of his life played beautiful music with Wei Ying’s great-grandfather.

#

In the Endless Abyss, where time and space do not work at all like the normal world:

Jin Guangshan wheezes as he drags himself out from under the last of the rubble of Koi Tower. He stares at the blood river flowing upwards, the lava field surrounding Koi tower’s destruction. Then he laughs, broken and bubbly because really, even his cultivation is having a hard time keeping up with all the things wrong with his body, especially in this environment.

JGS: I… did it? This… This is my world?

He laughs madly as he stumbles to the edge of the lava lake, staring into it with something like terror, something like glee.

JGS: This is all mine! I rule it all. I am supreme!

A set of six glowing eyes as big as JGS’s whole body appear in the lava pool. They slowly rise over the surface of the lava as he laughs and then gestures grandly at the lava dragon-creature. As JGS grins as if the dragon-creature is his personal creation, the dragon-creature opens its mouth to display fangs as long as JGS’s legs.

Then its head darts forward to bite JGS in half. Two chomps, a second bite to get the rest of his body, and the dragon-creature submerges back into the lava lake, properly well fed on its little snack.

#

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