#(all is not well in the state of lanling)

[vermillioncrown]

@hummingbirdstuffsblog replied to your post “what are the most important qualities for you in...”:

"ZYX was the closest thing they had to a friend" was?!!as in no more?!!!bro i have been saving up the updates for a rainy day(lol) but now i am scared🥺 i will come to cry shortly in a while i guess..

​LMAO I only say 'was' because of their current breakup state

Look, look--for those that are afraid (and don't you guys trust me? 🥺)

They will be friends again. It's a difficult time and place for them to live in and be friends and not have clashes given fundamental differences in who they are. We just need a little life-threatening, a bit of war, something something to make people re-prioritize feelings, yeah?

(damn i really want to get into jzx's pov on all of this because hahahahaha)

[scrivenger-grimgar]

Every time I read Yiling Wei sect AUs and they start describing what the sect members and leader wears its like, (direct quote from The Yiling Wei Sect and the Black Robed Lan by IvoryDragon48)

"[Wei Wuxian's hair] was pulled up into a high ponytail by a red ribbon with a gold and silver headpiece ornamenting and helping to direct the flow of his hair. The robes he wore were expensive looking with black being the dominant color and reds as the accents. The inner robe was a red so dark it looked like blood and the outer robe had simple yet elegant designs."

--And like, I get the urge to make them really cool looking and with themes or designs matching the other sects but like??? there's massive wasted potential here!!!

First, the hair. that's all well and good, but there is no way in hell that the Yiling Wei folks (Wen Remnants and others reviled/ostracized by society at large) are going to buy a gold guan OR a silver guan. why the hell would they bother spending precious resources on trying to impress people who already don't like them for something they literally have no control over.

But Wei Wuxian would know that he has to play the game now that he has people to protect, and going to a Con as a Sect Leader and not doing what all the other sect leaders are doing (wearing guan to say "I'M BETTER THAN YOU!!") is essentially outright stating that he holds no respect for any of them except in a way that could get him and his people killed. so instead, he goes "fuck it" and makes a guan out of something incredibly ordinary, like iron or wood, so now if anyone brings it up he can say "Oh, well, I like feeding my kids." or "Actually, I made this myself, all the better for carving protective arrays into!"

--And that's it. Wei Wuxian is a street kid he absolutely knows that rich people don't like to think about poor people and that they prefer to ignore them or hurt them. except you cant just attack someone who's being perfectly reasonably polite in public, especially when you just pointed out that he's 'poor'. Wei Wuxian's strategy is make them so fucking uncomfortable that they leave us alone.

(This would of course be after several years of no contact and no fighting so things have cooled off a bit)

Next, robes. No expensive robes. Let them be very well modified normal robes that have subtle stains and colour bleaching from sunlight and washing. The (shown, non-array-work) embroidery is at best amateur level, and Wei Wuxian will proudly show it off, loudly saying "a-Ning started a while back to help with his fine motor skills, and he's really come such a long way!!" and that "Oh, Xuanyu started practicing only recently but he's already so good at it!"

The Yiling Wei are the exact opposite of Lanling Jin. Wealth is to be used to benefit everyone and everyone is to be loved and appreciated for their work. The refusal to spend money of frivolous things is strong, especially when its something you could make yourself.

Self Ornamentation would not be jade or gold or silver or silks. It would be some nice wood, these feathers from the bird that likes me, hey look at this cool rock I found I'm gonna polish it like a gemstone, I dug these awesome bones out of my grandmama's garden you think I can do anything with 'em?

Yiling Wei folks are death druids.

[poorlittleyaoyao]

one of my very least favorite "jokes" is people making fin of qin su for "not knowing her husband is gay" or the array of fics where he's zero eprcent interested in her from the jump. Like way to take out all the tragedy in service of biphobia

GODDDDDD, I saw that in the same set of post notes that set me off yesterday--"durr hurr, poor girl got tricked into marrying this gay guy." Like, HOW? The Jin clan are by far the wealthiest and most powerful sect, and the Qin clan is one of their bannermen, and QCY and JGS are buddies. If JGY were a mustache-twirling villain trying to boost his status with an advantageous marriage and/or a gay man desperate for a beard, he has better options than a clan of middling wealth and significance that is already under Lanling's sphere of influence.

And they both had to fight for this marriage to happen! "QS was tricked into marrying him" is wild to me, because IIRC it says RIGHT THERE that she took the initiative in this relationship! A relationship that neither her father nor his was super enthused about! JGY was out here bothering JGS for this! JGY, the guy who famously does atrocities if daddy says jump, worked with QS to make sure this marriage happened! After all, while QS has the most to lose if the pregnancy plan goes south, JGY's not totally off the hook either; JGS could've very well punished him to appease QCY. Why the hell would he go through ANY of that if he didn't love her?

Like... you could maybe make a case for him not being attracted to her in CQL, where it's implied that he didn't sleep with her until their wedding night and he hates every second of it a choice that haunts me every day because what the fuck what the FUCK. But even there, he states that he pushed for the marriage, and feared to call it off in part because he'd "spent so much effort, went through such lengths to ask Qin Cangye for permission to marry his daughter... I had finally satisfied both Qin Cangye and Jin Guangshan." So even here he'd worked for it! Potentially antagonizing two noblemen, one of whom is his father the Chief Cultivator, is not worth the potential material benefits here! Even here, the only explanation that makes sense is that he loves her!

Which, you know, he says himself that he does. He says that he loves her to Lan Xichen's face, even, so like... pretty weird lie for a gay guy to tell his boyfriend. And if JGY were lying about everything... wouldn't he think of something better? He could throw QS under the bus and say she forced him. He could say the marriage was his father's idea and JGS directly ordered him to marry her. Both of these options are more readily understandable (and paint him as truly without recourse) than "I felt trapped by the potential ramifications of defying social expectations."

Now, people can write what they want when it comes to fic; if you're writing a canon divergence fix-it, then yeah, an easy way to avoid the incest is to have him simply not into women at all. You can even make a compelling case for comphet that he doesn't recognize for what it is until it's too late if you try hard enough. But in terms of broader trends rather than individual fic, and given the fandom trends of erasing WWX's attraction to women across all canons, or ignoring WQ's whole situation with JC in CQL canon to make her a Mean Lesbian(TM)... are you sure there's not biphobia at play? Are you really sure?

[mdzs-fanon-exposed]

MDZS Fanon VS Canon: 7/?

Mo Xuanyu and Xue Yang were Jin disciples at the same time

Rating: FANON – SUPPORTED

There's a not insignificant amount of fanworks that depict Xue Yang and Mo Xuanyu interacting during their time as guest disciples of the Lanling Jin sect. While we do not have any concrete evidence that the two characters ever met, it is (mostly) possible to discern whether they were guest disciples at the same time.

The timeline of Mo Dao Zu Shi is often hard to follow because specific years and dates are rarely given in the books, but using context clues, I can piece together a rough estimate of when both characters were present at Golden Carp Tower and use that to identify any points they may have overlapped.

Xue Yang:

Xue Yang's time as a guest disciple is easier to define, so I'll start with him. The earliest time we see him, chronologically, is during the flower-viewing banquet that Lanling Jin held directly following the end of the Sunshot Campaign:

Xue Yang was extremely young at this point in time. Although his face still had a boyish cast to it, he was already very tall. He also wore a Sparks Amidst Snow robe, the very picture of carefree youth as he stood beside Jin Guangyao, like a spring breeze caressing the willow. (Seven Seas Ch. 10, Part 2)

He is already a disciple of the Jin sect, although he hasn't been one for long, according to Nie Mingjue's reaction:

Nie Mingjue frowned. “Xue Yang from Kui Prefecture?” Jin Guangyao nodded. Xue Yang was already infamous at a young age. Wei Wuxian could clearly sense Nie Mingjue’s frown deepening. (Seven Seas Ch. 10, Part 2)

Note that at this point, both Wei Wuxian and Jin Zixuan are alive (and attending the flower-viewing banquet as well). We can assume that this happens approximately 1-2 years before Wei Wuxian's death, due to factors such as time skips and a reference to the Sunshot Campaign from when Xiao Xingchen leaves the mountain, which we know is about a year after the Siege:

At the time, it had only been a few years since the end of the Sunshot Campaign, and the Siege of the Yiling Burial Mounds had just concluded. (Seven Seas Ch. 7)

and

Twelve years ago happened to be the year right after the Siege of the Yiling Burial Mounds, so they had just missed each other. (Seven Seas Ch. 7)

We can also approximate when Xue Yang's time as a disciple ended. He had to have been a guest disciple of the Lanling Jin until between one and two years after Wei Wuxian's death. We know it was at least one year afterwards, because he meets Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan while still associated with the Sect:

Xiao Xingchen smiled, seemingly well aware that it was in Jin Guangyao’s nature to speak in an ingratiating way. “Lianfang-zun speaks too highly of me.” His gaze then turned to Xue Yang. “He may be young, but since he ranks among the guest cultivators, he must still exercise self-discipline and restraint. The Jin Clan of Lanling is distinguished, after all, and should strive to set an example in many aspects.” (Seven Seas Extra 3)

And it must have been up to two years or less because Xue Yang was both imprisoned and exonerated for the crime of the Chang Clan massacre (and therefore no longer a disciple) while Jin Guangshan was still alive:

“I’m not shielding him,” Jin Guangyao defended himself. “The incident with the Chang Clan of Yueyang shocked me greatly as well. How could I have anticipated Xue Yang would slaughter a family of over fifty people? But my father insists on keeping him…” (Seven Seas Ch. 10)

and

Jin Guangshan began thinking of ways to pull Xue Yang out of jail ... until finally, the Jin Clan of Lanling successfully persuaded Chang Ping to change his story. He withdrew all the grievances he had stated before and announced publicly that the clan extermination case had nothing to do with Xue Yang. (Seven Seas Ch. 7)

And we know Jin Guangshan died eleven years before Wei Wuxian was resurrected, from Sisi's story.

“I’ll go first, then!” She casually curtsied to the crowd. “What I’m about to tell you is an incident that happened roughly eleven years ago.” ... And the half-dead man on the bed must have been Jin Guangshan! (Seven Seas Ch. 19)

Therefore, Xue Yang's time as a guest disciple lasted anywhere from two to four years in total, beginning at the end of the Sunshot Campaign and ending approximately a year (give or take) before Jin Guangshan dies.

Mo Xuanyu:

Mo Xuanyu's timeline is harder to define, because we never actually see him while he's a disciple, and have to rely on rumors and circumstantial evidence. The only reliable information we have, date-wise, is that he was fourteen when he was called to Golden Carp Tower by his father:

And sure enough, when Mo Xuanyu turned fourteen, that clan leader sent over a grand party to officially take him back. (Seven Seas Ch. 2)

Although knowing he's fourteen isn't particularly helpful, we do know that Jin Guangshan was still alive at the time. As for the exact time frame in which Mo Xuanyu could have been accepted as a disciple, Jin Guangyao says this:

“Did you think that I would rise in position with Jin Zixuan’s death? Jin Guangshan would rather bring back another illegitimate son than have me succeed him!” (Seven Seas Ch. 10)

This implies that Mo Xuanyu was accepted into Lanling Jin after Jin Zixuan's death so that Jin Guangyao would be further down the line of succession. This sentence is said when Nie Mingjue confronts Jin Guangyao about sheltering Xue Yang from the consequences of the Chang Clan massacre. Therefore, Mo Xuanyu could have (theoretically) entered the Jin sect at any point between Jin Zixuan's death and Nie Mingjue's confrontation, the latter of which took place after Xue Yang's imprisonment.

However, I believe it is more likely that Mo Xuanyu was brought in during the aftermath of Jin Zixuan's death, for the sheer reason that it would shunt Jin Guangyao out of the line of succession quicker.

We do know that Mo Xuanyu was present at Golden Carp Tower after Wei Wuxian's death, because Jin Guangyao gave him access to Wei Wuxian's manuscripts on possession:

He had written plenty of these manuscripts back then, all penned on a whim and tossed aside just as easily, scattered all around the cave where he slept in the Yiling Burial Mounds. ... He’d wondered where Mo Xuanyu had learned such forbidden magic. Now he knew. Never in a million years would Jin Guangyao have allowed unimportant people to glimpse the remains of a manuscript on forbidden magic. (Seven Seas Ch. 10)

And although we don't know exactly when Mo Xuanyu was kicked out of Golden Carp Tower, we can infer that it happened before Jin Guangshan's murder. During the events in the Sword Hall of Lotus Pier, after Sisi and Bicao's testimonies, one unnamed cultivator says this:

"He spent the last few years before Jin Guangshan’s death busily clearing the land of his father’s illegitimate sons, for fear that someone would suddenly pop out of nowhere and challenge him for the position. Mo Xuanyu was probably one of the lucky ones. Had he not gone crazy and been booted back home, he would likely have ended up disappearing like the others." (Seven Seas Ch. 19)

This implies that Mo Xuanyu's expulsion from the sect happened at some point before Jin Guangshan's murder. Theoretically, this was done because he would be a potential threat to Jin Guangyao's legitimacy (and have gotten killed) otherwise. As Mo Xuanyu was not legitimized, though, it's unlikely that he would have posed a genuine threat to Jin Guangyao's succession. Regardless of the reasoning, the quote here indicates that Mo Xuanyu was kicked out before Jin Guangshan's death.

To be clear, however, this cannot exactly be taken as reliable evidence. As Wei Wuxian says about this exchange,

If they’re just rumors, why so quick to believe them? If they’re secrets, how would you even know of them? This was not the first time these rumors had spread. While Jin Guangyao was in power, they had been suppressed so well that no one took them seriously. But tonight, the rumors all seemed to have become hard facts with irrefutable evidence. They became a solid foundation for Jin Guangyao’s multitude of crimes, proving just how unscrupulous he was. (Seven Seas Ch. 19)

So while it's possible that the timeline here is correct, we know that (as established earlier in the books – see Chapter 1) rumors in the world of Mo Dao Zu Shi are unreliable at best and often contradictory. For the purposes of this post, though, I am choosing to assume that this is at least partially true.

So taking the assumptions I've made into account, we know that Mo Xuanyu's time as a Jin disciple could have lasted up to approximately three years, anywhere between directly following Jin Zixuan's death to just before Jin Guangshan's death.

The timeline:

Now that I have a rough estimate of when both characters were present at Golden Carp Tower, I can try to find places where they overlap. Unfortunately, even with all this sleuthing, I cannot say for sure if they were present at the same time. The chance that they just barely missed each other, though, is unlikely.

Given the most generous interpretation of their respective timelines, Xue Yang and Mo Xuanyu could have been Jin disciples together for almost three years at maximum. This assumes:

Mo Xuanyu was accepted into the Jin sect almost immediately following Jin Zixuan's death.

Both Xue Yang and Mo Xuanyu's expulsions happened soon after one another, within the same year as Jin Guangshan's death.

This means Mo Xuanyu would have been a disciple since before Wei Wuxian died, and that Xue Yang's imprisonment and exoneration happened on a very tight timeline right before Jin Guangshan's death. This is the interpretation that gives both characters as much time to interact as possible.

Given the least generous interpretation, however, Xue Yang and Mo Xuanyu just missed each other. This assumes:

The massacre of the Chang Clan happened very soon after Xiao Xingchen descended from the mountain.

Mo Xuanyu's acceptance into the sect happened just before Nie Mingjue confronted Jin Guangyao.

This means that Mo Xuanyu's call to join the sect would have happened in between Xiao Xingchen apprehending Xue Yang and Nie Mingjue confronting Jin Guangyao about it, which is presumably a very short amount of time. This is also the least likely interpretation, as it wouldn't make much sense for Mo Xuanyu to have been accepted so late and during such a controversial period for the sect.

The most likely interpretation is somewhere in the middle: that Mo Xuanyu and Xue Yang were, in fact, Lanling Jin disciples at the same time, but that they did not have much overlap. I believe it is probable that Mo Xuanyu would have been accepted into the sect within a year or so of Jin Zixuan's death, and that the Chang Clan massacre happened at least half a year after Xiao Xingchen descended, meaning the two would have had around a year of overlap between them.

In conclusion, I can say with relative confidence that Xue Yang and Mo Xuanyu would have been Jin disciples at the same time. However, I cannot confirm this as canon, as there is not enough evidence available in the books. Therefore, this must be rated as SUPPORTED FANON: the text does not directly state this is true, but it is a distinct and likely possibility.

[mdzs-is-rotting-my-brain]

Jin Guangyao and Nie Mingjue

In this post, I want to discuss what I find to be one of the most misunderstood scenes in the entire novel: the altercation between Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangyao near the end of the empathy session during which Nie Mingjue kicks Jin Guangyao down the stairs and threatens to kill him. In particular, it is commonly believed that Nie Mingjue was expecting Jin Guangyao to condemn Xue Yang to death (even though Jin Guangshan was the only one with that power) and that the reason he approached Jin Guangyao in the first place was because he blamed him for Jin Guangshan's failure to condemn Xue Yang to death (even though Jin Guangyao had no way of preventing this). As the argument usually proceeds, Nie Mingjue's threat to kill Jin Guangyao made >!Jin Guangyao's subsequent murder of him!< justifiable self-defense.

Both of these claims are false. When Nie Mingjue confronted Jin Guangyao at the stairs of Jinlintai, he knew perfectly well that the latter did not have the authority to change Xue Yang's verdict. Instead, what he expected Jin Guangyao to do was to kill Xue Yang on his own, and this was something that was very much within Jin Guangyao's power. If Jin Guangyao could get away with >!the murder of the most powerful man in the Jianghu!<, he would certainly be capable of killing a prisoner without being caught—and even if he were, he would have two clan leaders for sworn brothers who would be willing to protect him. What he stood to lose, as he explicitly tells Nie Mingjue, was not his life but his position in the Lanling Jin Clan, and his insistence on prioritizing his ambitions over morality was precisely the problem.

Likewise, Nie Mingjue did not blame Jin Guangyao for the fact that Jin Guangshan had commuted Xue Yang's verdict to life imprisonment. He knew that Jin Guangyao had no say in that decision, though he did blame Jin Guangyao for complying with his father's orders to imprison Xue Yang. However, the main reason that he confronted Jin Guangyao was because he believed him to be complicit in the Chang Clan massacre and Xue Yang's many other atrocities, and because he believed that he should take responsibility for his actions and remove the scourge that he himself had brought into the world—and rightly so.

To understand why this was, we must begin, years prior, with Xue Yang's initial enlistment by the Lanling Jin Clan. As we know, Jin Guangyao was the one who recruited Xue Yang, who recommended him to his father, and who entrusted him with the reconstruction of the Yin Tiger Tally. Nie Mingjue knows this too, and states so explicitly during the staircase incident. All this was entirely Jin Guangyao's initiative, and he cannot blame his father, as he is wont to do. Yes, Jin Guangshan was searching for demonic cultivators at the time, but nothing other than his uncontrollable ambitions forced Jin Guangyao to intentionally recruit a dangerous criminal and hand him a weapon of mass destruction.

And Jin Guangyao was certainly aware, even back then, of who exactly Xue Yang was. In Chapter 30, Lan Wangji describes him as follows: "Ever since the age of fifteen, he had been a delinquent in the area of Kuizhou, known far and wide for his radiant smile, inhumane means, and merciless personality. Everyone's expressions changed whenever he was brought up in a conversation." This description refers to Xue Yang when he lived in Kuizhou, before Jin Guangyao recruited him and he was taken to Lanling. Even more telling is the following exchange from Chapter 49, which occurs immediately after Xue Yang becomes a guest cultivator of the Jin Clan:

Jin Guangyao walked over and spoke with a tone of respect, "Brother."

Nie Mingjue, "Who was that?"

After a moment of hesitation, Jin Guangyao answered carefully, "Xue Yang."

Nie Mingjue frowned, "Xue Yang of Kuizhou?"

Jin Guangyao nodded. Xue Yang had been infamous ever since he was young. Wei Wuxian clearly felt Nie Mingjue's brows knit even tighter. He spoke, "Why are you wasting your time with such a person."

Jin Guangyao, "The Lanling Jin Sect recruited him.

He didn't dare to protest any further. Excuse being that he needed to care for the guests, he scurried to the other side.

Qinghe, where Nie Mingjue resides, is over fifteen hundred kilometers from Kuizhou. The fact that Xue Yang's infamy has spread across China to the point that Nie Mingjue can recognize him by name indicates that he is not a mere petty criminal, but something much worse. While Jin Guangyao may never have heard the saying "When Xue Yang attacks, he leaves behind not even the chicken or the dog," I am confident that this was common currency in Kuizhou. Giving such a man any sort of official position, not to mention providing him with a dangerous weapon, is at best gross negligence and at worst outright murder.

Next, we must consider the atrocities that Xue Yang committed under Jin Guangyao's supervision. As an example, we can take the slaughter of the Tingshan He Clan, which occurs in the "Villainous Friends" extra. As I see it, Jin Guangyao's guilt in the massacre is indisputable (though I am sure that certain Jin Guangyao enthusiasts will disagree); the question is how much Nie Mingjue knew about it. Needless to say, an entire clan could not have disappeared without anyone noticing. Everyone knew that their was a massacre, and they knew that the Lanling Jin Clan had done it. Even if no one saw the Jin cultivators arriving in Tingshan and dragging the members of the He Clan out of their homes, who else would have the motive besides the man whom He Su had just compared to Wen Ruohan?

This is of course why Jin Guangshan goes through the charade of accusing He Su of murdering a Jin Clan member, trying him in a kangaroo court, and convicting his entire clan on trumped-up charges of treason. He knows that there is no way of keeping the massacre a secret, so he instead goes for the next-best option of persuading everyone that it was justified. This is the reason that Nie Mingjue does not confront Jin Guangshan or Jin Guangyao about the massacre of the He Clan: he has no way of proving that the charges were false, even if he suspects this to be the case (and I think he knows the Jins too well to be entirely swayed by their claims).

It is also important to recognize that the massacre of the He Clan was by no means a unique occurrence. MXTX's summary for the "Villainous Friends" extra reads, "The daily lives of the evil duo, committing crimes and wiping evidence." Given that these summaries can be found in the web version of MDZS along with the main text, they can be considered part of the novel canon. While this is not meant to imply that Jin Guangyao and Xue Yang literally massacred another clan every day, it is equally clear that the He Su and his family were not their first victims. Just before He Su arrives, we see Xue Yang experimenting on a sizeable crowd of corpses in his impromptu laboratory, corpses that must have come from somewhere (and, being a practitioner of modao, he would not simply take them from the nearest graveyard as is Wei Wuxian's usual practice).

In any case, we now come to the massacre of the Yueyang Chang Clan. Unlike with the He Clan massacre, we are not privy to the perspectives of Jin Guangyao and Jin Guangshan, so we cannot say for certain that they ordered the massacre. However, we know that this was the first test of the newly reconstructed Yin Tiger Tally, and that the Lanling Jin Clan had never hesitated to slaughter entire clans for Xue Yang's human experiments, so there is good reason to think that the circumstances of the Chang Clan massacre were quite similar to those of the He Clan Massacre. Wei Wuxian's suspicions, as usual, seem to be quite on point

Chapter 30:

Perhaps, Xue Yang destroying the Chang Clan wasn't entirely to avenge what they did to him when he was young. He might have been testing on this clan of live humans what exactly was the extent of the restored Stygian Tiger Seal's powers!

The particular choice of the Chang Clan was of course due to Xue Yang's personal grudge against Chang Ci'an, and one could imagine that Jin Guangyao had granted Xue Yang the privilege of choosing the next clan that would be eliminated as a reward for his success—but, at any rate, none of this excludes the Jin Clan's full approval of and participation in the massacre.

How exactly the Jins were planning to justify the massacre to the other clans is unclear. Possibly, they were hoping to have Xue Yang finish off the entire clan at once and leave no witnesses. They may have intended to come up with yet another false charge to levy against the Chang Clan *post facto*, as they did with the He Clan. Whatever the case, their plans were foiled by Xiao Xingchen, who managed to catch Xue Yang immediately after the massacre and made his crimes public before the Jins could come up with any excuses. At this point, Nie Mingjue finally has solid evidence that Jin Guangyao allowed his subordinate to slaughter an entire innocent clan, and it would hardly be a stretch to conclude that the other clans massacred on Jin Guangyao's orders were no more guilty of the crimes of which they had been accused. It is no surprise, then, that Nie Mingjue immediately storms into Jinlintai to confront Jin Guang … shan.

I cannot count the number of times I have seen the claim that Nie Mingjue should have taken up his grievance with Jin Guangshan rather than Jin Guangyao; as the argument usually proceeds, Nie Mingjue was too afraid to confront a fellow clan leader, so he instead went after the much less powerful Jin Guangyao. If this were really the case, Nie Mingjue would never have dared to confront Jin Guangshan in the first place, nor would he have so strenuously opposed his efforts to establish the position of Xiandu, nor, back before the Sunshot Campaign, would he have been so outspoken against Wen Ruohan's tyranny. Nie Mingjue can be called many things, but he was never a coward, and his decision to confront Jin Guangyao was in no way motivated by fear.

When Nie Mingjue arrives and threatens to execute Xue Yang on the spot, even Jin Guangshan does not dare to protest, having been cowed into silence by Nie Mingjue's rebuke. The only member of the Lanling Jin Clan who attempts to stop Nie Mingjue and save Xue Yang's life is none other than Jin Guangyao. Until this point, I think, Nie Mingjue was willing to ignore Jin Guangyao's role in the massacre and focus on Jin Guangshan (who, after all, was the clan leader), but he could no longer do so when Jin Guangyao went out of his way to obstruct justice and get his subordinate out of trouble.

What is more, unlike before when Jin Guangyao could have excused himself by insisting that he was simply following his father's orders, this claim is not tenable here—there was no way that Jin Guangshan would have expected him to defend Xue Yang when he did not do so himself. The only reason that Jin Guangyao defended Xue Yang was because he knew that finding a demonic cultivator who could reconstruct the Yin Tiger Tally was the surest way of winning his father's favor, and keeping Xue Yang alive would ensure that he stayed in his good graces. Not for the first time and not for the last, Jin Guangyao showed himself willing to sacrifice justice for power, and this was precisely what Nie Mingjue could never tolerate.

While Jin Guangyao did not succeed in persuading Nie Mingjue to relent, the Lanling Jin Clan was nevertheless able to worm their way out of the situation by promising Nie Mingjue that Xue Yang would be executed. It seems, from Nie Mingjue's words during the staircase incident, that Jin Guangyao himself was the one who made this promise \[Chapter 49\]:

Jin Guangyao, "He's already been locked inside the dungeon, imprisoned for life..."

Nie Mingjue, "What did you say to me back then?"

Jin Guangyao was silent. Nie Mingjue continued, "I wanted him to pay blood with blood, yet you have him imprisoned for life?"

Nie Mingjue was presumably given this assurance by someone in the Lanling Jin Clan whom he could reasonably trust, which would obviously not include Jin Guangshan, so it is not such a stretch to think that Jin Guangyao had promised Nie Mingjue that Xue Yang would not be executed. And note that after the Jin Clan goes back on their promise and imprisons Xue Yang after executing him, Jin Guangyao does not even attempt to deny that he intentionally lied; his silence at that juncture, coming from the silver-tongued Lianfang-zun, is quite telling.

Thus, by the time of the staircase incident, Nie Mingjue knew that Jin Guangyao had intentionally recruited a mass murderer, given him a prominent position in the Jin Clan, provided him with a weapon of mass destruction and instructions for how to repair it, sent him on a killing spree with that weapon, and then attempted to protect him when Nie Mingjue demanded justice. Both in universe and out of universe, Nie Mingjue is characterized a man who sees violence as his first option and does not think twice before drawing his saber, but as we see so often in MDZS, this perception is not a true estimation of his character. We see him again and again restraining himself against his better judgement, keeping silent and not voicing his (well-founded) suspicions, and only confronting the Jin Clan when the evidence is so clear that ignoring it would be a crime in itself. If, at this point, he refused to take up the issue with Jin Guangyao because of his personal debts, he would be placing himself firmly on the side of injustice.

I have given my arguments on why I believe that Nie Mingjue was right to confront Jin Guangyao over the Chang Clan massacre; now, I wish to address Nie Mingjue's behavior during the confrontation itself. As usual, Jin Guangyao begins with excuses. He claims that giving Xue Yang a life sentence is tantamount to executing him, as though Nie Mingjue had not yet figured out that Jin Guangshan was planning to let him out of prison as soon as he turned his back. Jin Guangyao denies having known about the massacre in advance and claims to have been "shocked." One might imagine that he was just as shocked at what Xue Yang did to the He Clan.

Finally, Jin Guangyao attempts to push all the blame onto his father. To be sure, Jin Guangshan was guilty of the Chang Clan massacre and of protecting Xue Yang after the fact, and he richly deserved to be kicked down the stairs by Nie Mingjue, but that does not absolve Jin Guangyao of his own role. He chose to work for his father. He chose not to leave the Jin Clan even after he found out what sorts of things were expected of him. He chose to hire Xue Yang. He chose to help Xue Yang slaughter so many innocent clans. He chose to protect Xue Yang after the Chang Clan massacre. Jin Guangyao likes to say, "I had no choice," but he always had choices, and he always chose what would serve his ambitions over what was right.

At this point, we have a very interesting exchange:

Jin Guangyao still wanted to speak, but Nie Mingjue had already lost all patience. "Meng Yao, don't speak such pretentious words in front of me. Your whole thing stopped working on me since a long time ago!"

Within seconds, a few degrees of unease flashed over Jin Guangyao's face, as though someone with an unmentionable illness was suddenly exposed in public. There was nowhere for him to hide.

Why, immediately afterwards, does Jin Guangyao drop the servile, conciliatory façade that he always wears in front of others and adopt a much more aggressive tone towards Nie Mingjue? Lan Xichen believes this to be a consequence of Jin Guangyao's frustration over the watchtowers, but MXTX rather unsubtly tells us the truth: Jin Guangyao is insecure because Nie Mingjue has seen him for exactly what he is: a man who is willing to do anything for the sake of power, a man in whose eyes the lives of others are worthless. He responds to these insecurities by becoming angry and lashing out at Nie Mingjue—but he knows perfectly well that they are the truth, something that many readers still do not.

Jin Guangyao then goes on a long rant about how Nie Mingjue, speaking from his privileged position, could never understand his situation and has no right to criticize him. Of course, it is true that Nie Mingjue is a clan leader with powerful cultivation, neither of which traits Jin Guangyao possesses, but he has never hesitated to help those less fortunate than him (unless they happen to be Wens). I would dare say it is the foundation of his sense of justice. During the Sunshot Campaign, when the Nie forces were already stretched thin, Nie Mingjue further depleted his manpower by assigning some of his cultivators to evacuate civilians from the battlefields. And during those same battles, let us recall who was it who took pity on a young soldier who was being bullied by his comrades, appointed him as his second-in-command, and gave him the best possible recommendation to a fellow clan leader. Even Lan Xichen seems to have treated Jin Guangyao so well only because he was repaying a life debt, but Nie Mingjue helped him purely out of kindness.

And what of Jin Guangyao? Does he, in consideration of his (formerly) lowly position, show kindness to those who are now below him? I think that the answer can be found quite clearly in the "Villainous Friends" extra. Jin Guangyao takes sadistic pleasure in taunting He Su over his fate and the fate of his clan, reveling in the power, or rather the illusion of power, granted to him by his father. Shortly afterwards, he burns down the brothel in which he grew up, and later on >!forces more than twenty prostitutes to rape his father. Does he care that these women are in precisely the same situation that his mother was, and that he is treating them even worse than Jin Guangshan treated Meng Shi? The irony of what Jin Guangyao does to the woman who protected his mother for years is quite intentional on MXTX's part.!<

In any case, what Jin Guangyao wants from Nie Mingjue is not sympathy for his situation, and certainly not help. He wants Nie Mingjue to condone his crimes and allow a mass murderer to go free, and that is something Nie Mingjue would never be willing to do—nor should he be. Even if Jin Guangyao would have to put himself in genuine personal danger to go against his father's wishes, he would still be in the wrong. There are certain crimes that cannot be excused by any extenuating circumstances, and what Jin Guangyao and Xue Yang did was among them. In any case, Jin Guangyao is quite clear about why he felt that he had "no choice":

Do you think that I'm in a steady position, here at the Lanling Jin Sect? Do you think I can rise into power the moment Jin Zixuan dies? Jin Guangshan would rather bring another illegitimate child back than want me to succeed him! You think that I should be afraid of nothing? Well, I'm afraid of everything, even other people!

The meaning is clear: Jin Guangyao is refusing to kill Xue Yang because he wants to succeed his father as the Jin clan leader, and he knows that disobeying him will considerably reduce his chances of doing so. And it is interesting that Jin Guangyao happens to bring up the death of Jin Zixuan, which, as we know (though Nie Mingjue does not) >!was arranged by Jin Guangyao when he lured him to the ambush at Qiongqi Path. It is rather galling of him to justify murder by citing yet another murder that he committed.!<

Jin Guangyao then abruptly switches tack and begins to complain about Nie Mingjue persecuting him over his murder of the Nie cultivators during the Sunshot Campaign. Why exactly is unclear, since this has nothing to do with the situation at hand, though I suspect that he recognized that he was losing the argument and simply began trying to antagonize Nie Mingjue at this point. In any case, he claims to have been justified in killing them, because it was the necessary price of serving as a spy inside the Nightless City, which saved many lives by shortening the war. Nie Mingjue points out the obvious hypocrisy in Jin Guangyao's willingness to sacrifice others' lives for the greater good while refusing to compromise on his own ambitions to do what is right.

Jin Guangyao's response is "Of course we are different!" For the reader, this statement lays bare Jin Guangyao's psychopathic mode of thought and the complete apathy with which he regards the lives of others. For Nie Mingjue, however, it is something more. The incident that their conversation is now referencing was the single worst moment of Nie Mingjue's life. He was beaten, tortured, and humiliated, made to kowtow to the man who killed his father. He was forced to watch as his family and comrades and arms were murdered by a man he once trusted, a man he might even have called a friend. And now, Jin Guangyao is telling him that the reason he killed Nie Mingjue's comrades was not because he "had no choice," but simply because he did not care. Is it any surprise, then, that Nie Mingjue's response is to replicate Jin Guangyao's worst memory, when he was kicked down the stairs of Jinlintai on his father's orders?

Nie Mingjue then draws his saber on Jin Guangyao. Whether he would have actually gone through with his threat and attempted to kill Jin Guangyao is its own question. Personally, I think that he would most likely not have done so, judging from Jin Guangyao's reaction. The two times that Nie Mingjue genuinely tried to kill Jin Guangyao—after Wen Ruohan's assassination, and just before his death��Jin Guangyao was completely terrified and running for his life. His reaction here is rather more low-key:

Jin Guangyao only landed after rolling down more than fifty steps. He didn't even stay on the ground for long before crawling up. With a wave of his hand, he sent away the servants and disciples who surrounded him. Dusting off his robes, he slowly raised his head to look at Nie Mingjue. His eyes were quite calm, almost indifferent. Just as Nie Mingjue unsheathed his saber, Lan Xichen happened to leave the palace to see what was going on, concerned after having waited for long. Seeing the situation before him, he unsheathed Shuoyue as well, "What happened, this time?"

Jin Guangyao, "Nothing. Brother, thank you for your advice."

Clearly, Jin Guangyao does not think he is in any real danger. Even if he were, however—even if Nie Mingjue truly intended to kill him—he would not be wrong to do so. Let us recall that when the San Zun took their oath of sworn brotherhood after the Sunshot Campaign, one component of the oath was that, if any party should "think otherwise," his punishment would be to "face a thousand accusing fingers, be torn from limb to limb." In other words, Jin Guangyao agreed that if he violated the terms of the oath—which presumably excluded abetting mass murder—Nie Mingjue would have the right, or rather the obligation, to execute him.

Unfortunately, Lan Xichen intervenes to remind Nie Mingjue that Jin Guangyao has "constantly been rushing to and fro between Lanling and Qinghe" to play the Cleansing music that helps mitigate the effects of the saber spirit. The irony that the reader can only appreciate later is that, according to Wei Wuxian's explicit statement, >!Jin Guangyao has been playing a corrupted version of the music designed to make Nie Mingjue gradually lose his mind and qi deviate for at least a month prior (see [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/MoDaoZuShi/comments/1fhmt4f/spirit_turmoil_music/) for an elaboration).!<

Nie Mingjue, unfortunately, is unaware of this, and it is for this reason that he relents and eventually makes the fatal mistake of trusting Jin Guangyao one last time.

A few days later, when Jin Guangyao returns to Qinghe to murder Nie Mingjue, he is not doing because his life is in any danger. If that were the case, he would never have dared set foot in the Impure Realm. The reason that he murders Nie Mingjue is because he knows that Nie Mingjue has finally seen through him and will not tolerate any more of his evil deeds. He knows that if he wants to continue to rise in the ranks, and eventually to succeed his father as the leader of the Lanling Jin Clan, he must continue to execute his father's murderous schemes. It is thus that Nie Mingjue becomes yet another victim of Jin Guangyao's ambitions, and it is fitting that he should be the one to rise from the dead and serve justice upon his murderer, and the murderer of so many others.

(Not my Meta. Shamelessly stolen(?) From reddit. I put a link back to the source.)

[robininthelabyrinth]

The Other Mountain - ao3 - Chapter 26

Pairing: Lan Qiren/Wen Ruohan

Warning Tags on Ao3

———————————————————————-

Wen Ruohan was bored.

Incredibly bored.

He was so bored that he wanted to kill someone.

Such a pity that Jin Guangshan was already dead.

He sighed to himself – not out loud, of course – and picked up his bowl of wine, taking another sip, though not enough of one that the obsequious Jin Guangshi, sitting next to him, would have a chance to refill it. Prior to this evening, Wen Ruohan had all but forgotten that Jin Guangshan even had a brother, which was likely intentional on Jin Guangshan’s part and whole-heartedly agreed upon and cooperated with by the sickly Jin Guangshi, who was probably exceptionally eager to ensure that he didn’t meet the same fate as Jin Guangshan’s other potential rivals for the position of sect leader. The man was a useless playboy, even in comparison to Jin Guangshan himself – and that was saying something.

Jin Guangshi’s sole virtue, if it could be called that, was that despite his playboy reputation, he hadn’t fathered a whole passel of bastards the way Jin Guangshan had. This had led to rumors that Jin Guangshan had ensured that Jin Guangshi would never challenge his succession by rendering him sterile, which in turn gave rise to rumors that Jin Guangshi’s son and only child, Jin Zixun, was actually yet another unacknowledged bastard instead.

Such a thing was certainly possible, knowing Jin Guangshan’s character, but personally Wen Ruohan thought the rumors were likely all overblown nonsense. It seemed more likely to him that Jin Guangshi’s lack of bastard children had more to do with his general sickliness, his awareness that his brother wouldn’t tolerate such a thing from a relative so close to the line of leadership, and perhaps some vague desire to not suffer from his wife what Jin Guangshan regularly suffered from his. Anything else would have required imagination, and there was nothing more lacking in Lanling Jin.

Take Wen Ruohan’s current plight, for instance.

There had presumably been a collective decision by the shattered leadership of Lanling Jin to butter him up while they tried to figure out what to do next. Being immensely boring people, they’d decided to do this by inviting him inside Jinlin Tower, separating him from Lan Qiren, and were even now plying him with fine wine, fine food, and twice the usual number of dancing girls. All actually prostitutes in disguise, naturally, though calling them ‘disguised’ was doing a disservice to the term.

Wen Ruohan could understand the logic. It only made sense that they would want to please him! The Jin sect was currently surrounded by his Wen sect’s army, which they weren’t in any state to contend with – their hired mercenaries had all disappeared into the ether the moment Jin Guangshan died, if not sooner – and with Jin Guangshan dead, any plan he’d presumably had in place to deal with the approaching threat was gone as well. The people now in charge of the Jin sect desperately needed to buy time just to think, much less start making plans for the future….and, of course, they needed to figure out what exactly had happened to Jin Guangshan.

Because, apparently, they didn’t know.

That was the most ridiculous part of the whole thing. It’d be one thing if Jin Guangshan’s death had been part of a deliberate powerplay, killing him as an offering to assuage Wen Ruohan’s desire for vengeance; no one would have questioned that outcome, not even Wen Ruohan or Lan Qiren.

Unfortunately, no one who might have done that appeared to have actually done it.

Certainly no one had admitted to it, though it was patently obvious that several of them suspected each other. At any rate, what it certainly meant was that the remaining people in charge needed to figure out what, or who, had killed him in such a convenient manner before they could actually put the ‘offer up the death as a fait accompli to appease Wen Ruohan’s anger at Jin Guangshan’s actions’ plan into play, and that meant…that they were stalling.

And so the wine, and so the girls, and so the food, and so the simpering Jin Guangshi.

Wen Ruohan sighed. Out loud, this time.

He was so bored.

He had nothing against pretty dancing girls, of course. He had very happily partaken of the multitude of varied female delights that Lanling City had to offer at any number of discussion conferences in the past, often egged on by his colleagues – Lao Nie, for instance, whose sexual appetite was even more voracious than Wen Ruohan’s, or even Jin Guangshan himself, in a pinch, since sex seemed to be the one subject on which he was genuinely enthusiastic. But that wasn’t the point right now.

The point was that while Wen Ruohan liked getting off as much as the next man (excluding oddities like Lan Qiren), and prostitutes were generally very good at that, he had never once in his entire life prioritized sex over power. And right now was a pivotal moment – a moment for power, and politics. Accordingly, Wen Ruohan was completely disinterested in having sex.

Well. With prostitutes, anyway.

They weren’t going to fuck him over the table while helping him strategize plans to conquer the world, now were they?

(This was not necessarily true of all prostitutes. In fact, if Wen Ruohan recalled correctly, Jin Guangshan had once kept a particularly intelligent whore from somewhere in Yunmeng as his mistress, favoring her for an unusual length of time given his usual flightiness. She’d been good at dance and at music; she had been literate, clever, thoughtful and strategic, with an excellent mind for both planning and execution – her pillow-talk had improved Jin Guangshan’s schemes at least ten times over. Unfortunately for her, she lacked only the good sense to understand that there was a difference between what people actually wanted and what they seemed to want: she’d made her only misstep when she’d tried to obtain the security of becoming an official concubine by bearing Jin Guangshan a child, which had instead caused him to leave her at once; he had been unwilling to deal with the headache that was his wife for the sake of some whore. A deplorable waste of a useful woman, in Wen Ruohan’s view, but that was the way the world worked sometimes.)

At any rate, these particular girls had clearly been chosen first for their bodies, then their faces, with dancing skills and intelligence both clearly far lower in the priority list. Even if Wen Ruohan could be coaxed into sharing his bed with someone who wasn’t Lan Qiren, it certainly wasn’t going to be by this lot.

The girls and their shoddy dancing aside, the rest of it wasn’t anything good either. The food wasn’t anywhere as delicious as what Wen Ruohan could get back at the Nightless City, which had chefs that were intimately familiar with his palate, and after a certain degree of expensive, the wine one could get in Lanling was more or less the same as what he could get in Qishan.

And they hadn’t even left him Lan Qiren to entertain himself with!

That was the most obnoxious and least expected part of it. The rest had all been within his calculations: when Wen Ruohan briefly discussed strategy with Lan Qiren before accepting the Jin sect’s invitation to come discuss the resolution of their current situation, he had already more or less resigned himself to being hideously bored – such was the fate of a sect leader, tragically enough. Since obviously he wasn’t going to sit around and wait for the Jin sect to figure out what had happened to Jin Guanghshan in order to better lie to him about it, he’d ordered his disciples to collect any information they could, whether through his spies or their own investigation. For them to do that, however, they needed someone to draw away the Jin sect’s attention.

Someone that could make them focus on something, or someone, else.

As sect leader and current scariest person in the cultivation world, Wen Ruohan was unfortunately the perfect candidate for being that someone.

So while his disciples and Cangse Sanren, who had been discussing something intriguing about paperman puppets with her husband, got to go do all the fun stuff, Wen Ruohan had to sit here and be bored out of his skull while also stalling for time, matching the Jin sect’s interests with his own. Every moment he could hold out against his own boredom was an extra moment his disciples could use, valuable time they needed to get the information he would need to have in order to most effectively counter the Jin sect’s next play.

It made sense. He was well aware it made sense.

But he didn’t have to like it.

(It was at times like this that he missed Wen Ruoyu more than most. His lost brother’s memory had been too painful to touch for many years, a relentless agony that he could only deal with by keeping all thoughts of him remote and distant and never to be revisited, but for some reason it had gotten easier to think of him recently. At moments like this it even felt particularly suitable – he would have enjoyed this whole debacle, ridiculous person that he’d been. Wen Ruoyu had been not unlike a chattering magpie, sociable and open-minded to the point where thoughts sometimes seemed to spill out rather than stay in, and whenever he ran out of patience, he’d had no hesitation about pulling out his spear to make that clear. Perhaps that had been why he’d picked the spear as his primary weapon, going against the grain when so many others had picked the more gentlemanly sword: he hadn’t ever cared about manners, only efficiency, and nothing could empty a room faster than a madman with a spear.)

Still, it would have been more tolerable if they’d left him Lan Qiren.

Sure, he understood why they’d swept him away the first moment they could, given their plan to distract and tempt Wen Ruohan with prostitutes. Given Madam Jin’s temperament, she would never believe that anyone would be willing to see their spouse do such a thing, least of all someone with a reputation as upright as Lan Qiren, and so she’d intervened personally, pulling Lan Qiren away with the excuse that they needed to talk.

The whole thing was a ridiculous farce. With Jin Guangshan dead, Madam Jin was the acting leader of Lanling Jin, while Wen Ruohan was sect leader of Qishan Wen. By all rights they ought to just talk directly, open negotiations between the two sects…but no, they couldn’t do that, apparently. Because it would be inappropriate, apparently, for wives to intervene in political matters. And presumably because Madam Jin, like the rest of the world, refused to believe that Wen Ruohan actually meant his decree regarding the roles of husband and wife.

Or maybe she just wanted the opportunity to tempt them both separately.

Wen Ruohan really, really hoped Lan Qiren had also been offered prostitutes.

Jin Guangshan had felt obligated to make the offer every time he’d offered it to the others; he was too canny to ever snub another Great Sect by leaving them out, or at least canny enough to avoid doing it openly, and never mind if they wanted what he was offering. Even before Wen Ruohan had grown interested in Lan Qiren himself, Lan Qiren’s offended refusals had been one of the highlights of the obligatory post-dinner entertainment for the Great Sect leaders that took place every time there was a discussion conference held at Lanling City.

…of course, with them separated, even if Lan Qiren was getting that offer, Wen Ruohan wasn’t going to see it. Which was no fun at all.

��– do you think about that, Sect Leader Wen?”

“I have no notion what I think about whatever you were saying. I was ignoring you,” Wen Ruohan said, taking another sip, thinking to himself that at least they’d picked the right sort of wine, and that that was no consolation at all. And then, suddenly, he decided he’d had enough. “Tell me instead: what do you know about your brother’s death?”

He’d endured this dreck for nearly two shichen. Someone had better have already found something by now.

Jin Guangshi looked spooked, as anyone might imagine. “I – I don’t – ”

“Is this delay really because you don’t know what killed him?” Wen Ruohan asked with a nasty smirk. He summoned a little of his power and spread it out, doing with deliberate effort what he usually did naturally; the sudden pressure caused the dancing girls to shriek and scatter like frightened birds, and Jin Guangshi looked as if he’d rather like to join them. “Or perhaps it is more intentional than that? Perhaps you just wanted the time to finish squabbling over who will take over now that Jin Guangshan is gone…”

“Please don’t make me take over,” Jin Guangshi blurted out.

Wen Ruohan didn’t choke in surprise, but only because he’d already settled his face into his usual public mask of indolent disdain. What sort of request was that?!

“She’ll have me killed,” Jin Guangshi said, voice low but hurried, his face pale, his eyes practically bulging out of his face, white all around the edges. “You don’t understand. I know she will. The only reason she let me come here to talk to you is because she thinks that I’m unlikeable and stupid enough that it would sink my chances at becoming regent anyway. If you support me in any way, she’ll get rid of me. Please.”

He was talking about Madam Jin, Wen Ruohan presumed. Judging from what he knew of her character, Jin Guangshi was right to be concerned.

Any woman that could keep Jin Guangshan from bringing home concubines was a fearsome woman indeed.

“Did she have Jin Guangshan murdered?” he asked, wondering if Jin Guangshi would try to lie to make Madam Jin seem worse in an attempt to better improve his position. Wen Ruohan was already quite certain that she hadn’t, if only because she wouldn’t have been so stupid to let things get so out of control if she had, so this would be a good test to see if this was some sort of twisted manipulation on Jin Guangshi’s part. Lanling Jin was notoriously full of insidious vipers, so Wen Ruohan wouldn’t put some sort of double-cross past Jin Guangshi – his brother had certainly tried something similar a few times.

“I don’t think so,” Jin Guangshi said, which was a mark in favor of him actually being in earnest. “Her position was always stronger with him than without him. That’s why he’s lived so long already given all the – uh – ”

“Everyone knows about the bastards,” Wen Ruohan reminded him. “Who found the body?”

“She did, actually,” Jin Guangshi confessed. “That’s another reason I don’t think she did it. If you know what I mean? There was supposed to be a meeting of all the sect elders so that we could discuss strategy and he didn’t show up on time – not even late, like he normally arrives – and she started getting angry, so she went off to get him. And then there was shouting – not her normal type of shouting – so I followed after her…”

“Madam Jin found him?” Wen Ruohan arched his eyebrows a little. The sequence of events wasn’t a surprise, but the fact that Madam Jin had managed to be the first to trip over the body was. It meant that he’d been killed somewhere she could find him. “Where was he at the time?”

“In his bed,” Jin Guangshi said.

Wen Ruohan’s eyebrows went up even higher. “You mean – he was…?”

“Uh, no, actually.” Jin Guangshi looked embarrassed. “He was alone. It’s true, but no one believes it.”

Wen Ruohan could imagine. He had no reason to question the veracity of the story he was hearing, and yet he scarcely believed it himself. Add to that Lanling Jin’s tendency towards gossip, and passing off that gossip as fact…as soon as the city wasn’t locked down, the entire cultivation world was going to know and believe that Jin Guangshan had died underneath a prostitute. Possibly underneath multiple prostitutes, depending on how disliked he was – actually, never mind, the story would definitely involve multiple prostitutes.

At least no actual prostitutes had been involved.

“I see,” Wen Ruohan said, shaking his head with a mental farewell to whatever had been left of Jin Guangshan’s reputation. Truly there were times when people got exactly what they deserved. “Can you tell me how he was killed?”

“We don’t know.”

“What do you mean? Didn’t you see the body?”

“That’s the thing, Sect Leader Wen! I did! I even went and tried to feel his pulse to make sure – that is, to check to see if there was any hope, but there wasn’t. He was dead, I’m sure of it! He was dead, absolutely dead, but there wasn’t a mark on him anywhere. No stab wounds, no strangulation marks, no signs of poison…we even checked his head to see if someone had hammered in a nail, but there was nothing.”

Now that was interesting. “A curse, then?”

“We’re not sure. You know how hard they can be to see when they’re not active. That’s why we needed the time, that was what the disciples were trying to check…”

Well, that wasn’t going to get anywhere, not with what Wen Ruohan knew about Lanling Jin’s internal politics. Even if someone did figure out what had happened, they wouldn’t tell anyone until they could figure out some way by which they could try to obtain some benefit out of it. He was going to have to hope that his spies were doing a better job of figuring out what exactly had happened to Jin Guangshan, and just as importantly, who had caused it.

It would be one thing if the murderer was Qingheng-jun, who they were already targeting, and another thing entirely if it was someone else. Wen Ruohan didn’t like the idea of someone willing and able to kill a Great Sect leader in his own bedroom being out there undetected. Even if it was merely someone else trying to do the job for him, wanting to please him, it was terribly presumptuous of them. Wen Ruohan hadn’t even decided for himself if he thought that the present war would require Jin Guangshan’s head as a resolution, and if someone had already gone ahead and made the decision for him – no, that wasn’t acceptable at all.

“Do you have some sense of what his plans were?” Wen Ruohan asked, but was unsurprised when Jin Guangshi shook his head. He would have been more surprised if Jin Guangshan really had taken his hapless brother into his confidence. “Give me something more, and I’ll not only refuse to consider you as potential regent, I’ll insist on taking you and your family back to the Nightless City as hostages.”

Jin Guangshi’s eyes went wide once more, but in a hopeful rather than panicked manner. “Oh, would you…? That would be wonderful – even just for a year – just to get out of the way until things settle down – ”

“The offer was conditional.”

“But I really don’t know any more! My brother never told me anything. He had some sort of plan, I know that much, but other than that, all I know is that he was getting angry about it, or at least impatient. Someone involved was dragging their feet, and it was something that had to be done now or not at all.”

Presumably during Wen Ruohan’s period of temporary weakness.

The involvement of another person – that tallied with Lan Qiren’s theory that Jin Guangshan had been counting on Qingheng-jun to do something to pull out some miracle that was going to save his sect. Since Qingheng-jun was currently ‘missing’ from the cultivation world, he would have to be somewhere hidden away, and quite a number of sects had hidden passages tucked away where the sect leader could easily reach. It wasn’t unthinkable that one of those passages led to Jin Guangshan’s bedroom, and that Qingheng-jun had gone there to meet with him.

Yes, Wen Ruohan could see it: Qingheng-jun arriving, irritated at being summoned like some servant, arrogant and proud and not inclined to be treated dismissively by Jin Guangshan; Jin Guanghsan impatient at the delay and afraid for his sect, for his own life, and starting to get short-tempered with the delay. Their tempers began clashing, they began quarreling, the quarrel escalated, and then Qingheng-jun…

Hmm, no, that didn’t quite work.

In Wen Ruohan’s mental re-telling, under such circumstances, Qingheng-jun would merely draw his sword and cut Jin Guangshan down. Their power was in no way comparable; for all of Jin Guangshan’s defensive items, he wouldn’t have been able to save his life if someone of Qingheng-jun’s caliber had wanted it. But Jin Guangshan had been found without a sword mark anywhere on him. So he hadn’t been struck down with a sword…which didn’t necessarily mean that the sequence he’d thought of was wrong, of course. It might only mean that if the murderer was Qingheng-jun, he must have found another method of killing Jin Guangshan.

But what?

Wen Ruohan still firmly believed that he was right about Qingheng-jun’s current motivations, thinking that he likely wanted to kill a large number of people to cover up his perceived disgrace. The man was mad, there could be no doubt about that, and Wen Ruohan was far more familiar with madness, with cruelty, than the others. What they saw as an extreme reaction, he saw as reasonable, even likely. Only a true bloodbath could distract the cultivation world from what had happened. Only with enough blood being shed could his crimes be wiped clean – or at least overridden and forgotten, which was generally speaking just about the same thing.

Unfortunately, that just made everything more complicated. Assuming his suspicions were right and Qingheng-jun really was Jin Guangshan’s murderer…then they had a problem. If Qingheng-jun had figured out some new way of killing people, Wen Ruohan very much wanted to know about it.

“I do know about a present my brother was going to give you,” Jin Guangshi said, having apparently wracked his not-very-large brains to try to produce some additional information in exchange for his life.

“The saber? I already received and rejected that.”

“No, it wasn’t a saber. It was a person. A spy, I think.”

A spy…?

Inspiration hit abruptly: Wen Ruohan knew what, or rather who, Jin Guangshan’s proposed present was going to be. “A spy at the Nightless City, perhaps? Wang Liu?”

“Yes, that’s right, that’s right, that sounds familiar! He was going to have him handed over to you, to do with as you wished.”

Wen Ruohan could think of quite a few things he would want to do to Wang Liu, but he could also think of a fair number of times that Lan Qiren had very uncharacteristically expressed a desire to do violence to the same man on Wen Ruohan’s behalf. Maybe they could do something together, as a bonding experience.

“Good,” he said, pleased with the prospect. “I will accept that gift, although not with any restrictions or requirements in advance. You’re not really in any position to make any demands.”

“Of course not, of course not…”

“And I’ve had enough of this nonsense,” Wen Ruohan said, nodding towards the cowering dancing girls. “Send them away at once. And find out for me where Madam Jin took Lan Qiren. Now!”

Jin Guangshi jumped to his feet at once, practically tripping over himself to rush around and accomplish Wen Ruohan’s request. In the end, however, it turned out that he didn’t have a chance: he’d only just opened the door to usher all the girls out when there was a very loud crash from the hallway, followed shortly by the sound of a familiar voice.

“Hello!” Lan Qiren said, sounding…oddly cheerful, actually. And notably louder than usual. “Have you seen my wife? I am looking for him. Wen Ruohan. He should be around here somewhere.”

Wen Ruohan stared at the door, unable to see past the crowd of people. Was…was that some ventriloquist doing a poor imitation, perhaps?

It sounded just like Lan Qiren, yes, but Wen Ruohan had never heard him sounding so…peppy.

“No…? No, no problem. I will ask someone else – oh, hello! Do you know where my wife is? I need to find him – ”

“I think he’s in here, Senior Lan,” Jin Guangshi said, glancing over his shoulder at Wen Ruohan with an extremely wary and yet extremely confused expression on his face. “Uh, why don’t you come inside…? Ah, wait, no, not that way, that’s the wrong way – this way – you, there, maid, help escort Senior Lan inside – ”

Wen Ruohan felt his eyebrows going up to his hairline. What in the world…?

A moment later, contrary to all doubts, Lan Qiren himself appeared, clutching the arm of a maidservant in Jin yellow, who was leading him. He appeared to need the assistance, since he kept stumbling, and for whatever reason his cheeks were red, but not in a blush. He was smiling.

What in the world…?!

“There you are!” he said in what was more-or-less Wen Ruohan’s general direction. His voice, still largely monotone, was so energetic that it could almost be described as chirping. “I was looking for you! And now I found you!”

“You’re drunk,” Wen Ruohan marveled, belated understanding dawning on him. “They got you drunk? How?”

Even he hadn’t managed that. Lan Qiren had always strictly refused even the slightest serving of wine or liquor, no matter how fine or precious – Wen Ruohan had only ever heard about Lan Qiren being drunk second-hand from Lao Nie, who’d apparently once gotten Lan Qiren thoroughly drunk, only to have to suffer for an entire shichen listening to him rant about the Lan sect rules. It had sounded pretty funny to Wen Ruohan, though at the time he’d been more interested in Lao Nie’s suffering, but when after their wedding he had proposed repeating the experiment, this time out of genuine curiosity, Lan Qiren had been inflexible in refusing.

The maidservant supporting Lan Qiren cleared her throat. “Sect Leader Wen, I believe Senior Lan was served liquor in a teacup,” she said delicately, casting her eyes down in embarrassment. “And he drank some before realizing what it was.”

“Everyone out,” Wen Ruohan announced. “Except you. You stay and tell me more.”

Jin Guangshi, who had been lingering with a pained expression on his face that suggested he didn’t want to be here but didn’t think he could gracefully manage to leave, looked relieved by the reprieve. He scurried out as quickly as he could manage, leaving behind the one lone remaining servant without so much as a backwards glance.

As soon as he was gone, Wen Ruohan snapped a privacy array into existence around the room.

(It ached to do it so quickly. Was this how normal people felt? How terrible. He couldn’t wait to recover his true power and never have to feel this way ever again.)

“I expect a full report,” he told the servant, who was of course one of his spies. They all knew his priorities, and protecting Lan Qiren was first and foremost; if they had let anyone else be the one to support him, he would have slaughtered them himself. “What happened?”

“It is good to see you,” Lan Qiren said enthusiastically, apparently not bothered by Wen Ruohan not paying attention to him. He left the servant behind and tottered carefully over to him; when Wen Ruohan rose up to greet him – and to try to steady him – he eeled his way to his side and wrapped his arms around Wen Ruohan’s waist. “I was looking for you. No one knew where you were.”

“Well?” Wen Ruohan asked, temporarily ignoring Lan Qiren’s unusually handsy behavior in favor of answers.

The maidservant saluted. “Reporting to the Sect Leader: Madam Jin ordered us to take him into a room with a great number of women – some dancing girls, some harlots, some maids, and some well-born girls that aren’t too well-protected by their parents. She wanted to make sure we had whatever his preference was. She said that men were all the same, all wanting the same thing, and that the best way to create a problem between the two of you was to make you jealous of each other.”

That sounded like something Madam Jin would think. But…“She thought she’d have more luck with him?”

“The Sect Leader is known to have indulged alongside Sect Leader Jin, and was likely to be jaded by the selection of offerings as we would be able to produce on short notice. While Senior Lan, during his time as sect leader, was from a sect that required him to resist such things…”

“She thought you were a hypocrite,” Wen Ruohan told Lan Qiren, who’d laid his head on his shoulder and was humming something to himself. “Stupid woman. If you really wanted to debauch yourself and public perception was the only thing holding you back, you could have found a way…I take it he refused, of course?”

“Any time Madam Jin directly implied anything, yes. He was very uncomfortable the entire time.” The maidservant-spy was smiling. “That’s when she decided to slip him some liquor to loosen him up.”

Wen Ruohan smirked. “Did he start explaining the Lan set rules?”

“Yes, Sect Leader. For nearly a shichen. He asked the prostitutes to help.”

Wen Ruohan choked on his own glee. “Lan Qiren asked who for help?”

“Those nice young ladies in the room,” Lan Qiren said, proving that he was at least in part listening to what they were saying. His voice was delightfully still monotone. “They were very clever. They were able to give some very good examples when I asked for input, and they did not mind playacting some of the situations that demonstrate the applicability of the rules. That’s a recommended pedagogical approach, you know, particularly when you are dealing with people who do not have sufficient skills in literacy.”

Wen Ruohan had already laughed fit to break a rib back at the Nightless City, where it was safe. He was not going to do it again now, here, where it was not.

Even if he really wanted to.

“I see,” he said, aware that his voice sounded strangled from the sheer effort he was expending in not laughing. “Very wise, Qiren. Though I must say that I’m surprised they stayed in the room long enough to participate…particularly Madam Jin.”

“Senior Lan was standing in front of the door,” the maidservant volunteered. “It was the only way out. No one was able to move him long enough to get past.”

That was even funnier.

“People have already started asking why Madam Jin was locked in a room with so many prostitutes for so long. Certain unsavory implications have already been made – ”

“I think that’s enough,” Wen Ruohan said. His shoulders were starting to quiver with the strain of staying silent. It was starting to hurt. “Is there anything else worth reporting?”

“No, Sect Leader. The investigation into Sect Leader Jin’s death is still ongoing, and no fresh evidence of what might have happened has been obtained. Everyone is very confused. Though I heard from one of the others that Senior Wei said that he and his wife were onto something…”

“Fine. Then you’re dismissed as well. Carry on with the search.”

The moment the servant left, Wen Ruohan turned to look at Lan Qiren, who had at some point somehow managed to maneuver himself such that Wen Ruohan’s arms were wrapped around him in return.

“Well, then,” he said, unable to resist smirking at him. “What do you have to say for yourself, Qiren? Did you have a good time explaining the rules to all those…ah…nice ladies?”

“I had a very good time,” Lan Qiren agreed, completely serious. “But then I realized I had to find you. But then I realized I did not know where you were. So I went out and asked.”

Wen Ruohan could imagine. And it was a great mental image, too: Lan Qiren wandering drunkenly through the hallways asking everyone he met, and possibly even some inanimate objects that just looked a little like people, where he could find his wife. He could imagine it, perfectly and clearly, but he wasn’t going to, because if he did he would laugh until he cried.

“I see,” he said instead. “Tell me, did you really only have one sip from a teacup?”

Lan Qiren looked tragically wronged. “The rules correctly say Act in moderation. But the room was filled with perfume, and I was thirsty; the tea was the first thing they had offered me to drink. I took too large a sip. Nearly a third or even half of the teacup.”

“Oh, well, then, no one can blame you for being intoxicated.” Wen Ruohan was grinning wildly. Lao Nie had not mentioned how much alcohol had been involved in his experiment of getting Lan Qiren drunk, and Wen Ruohan’s initial assumption of what had been required had clearly been far, far too high. “A whole half a teacup of liquor. Who could stand that?”

“It was very rude of them to give it to me without asking,” Lan Qiren said, nodding agreeably. He didn’t seem angry, though, which was good because Wen Ruohan was definitely pulling the same trick on him in the future. “It was also rude of me to interrupt the lecture, but I realized that I needed to find you, so I did not have a choice.”

“And why did you need to find me so badly?” Wen Ruohan smiled again. “Did you miss me?”

Lan Qiren scowled at him as if he were the one being silly. “I remembered that I owed you.”

“Owed me? What do you owe me?”

“I promised! The night we got back to the Nightless City, after the Lotus Pier. I was tired and you were not. I wanted to go to sleep. You went to go paint. But before you did, you said that I owed you. So I owe you!”

Wen Ruohan abruptly remembered: Lan Qiren had offered to perform his marital duties, which included ensuring that his wife was appropriately satisfied, and Wen Ruohan had excused him, knowing he was too tired to enjoy it. And in the process, he’d said, quite casually, You can make it up to me with interest tomorrow.

He’d forgotten it entirely. Apparently, Lan Qiren had not.

Wen Ruohan had thought that his grin was already as wide as it could be, but now it was starting to hurt his face.

“Qiren,” he said, drawing out the name. “Are you saying that you came here to fuck me?”

“I promised,” Lan Qiren said solemnly. “Also, there were too many women there, and they continuously tried to touch me, which I did not like. Do not give your wife reason to doubt your fidelity.”

“I never doubted you for a moment,” Wen Ruohan promised him. “Now, while I certainly don’t object to your proposition, I think – ”

“Good,” Lan Qiren said, and pushed Wen Ruohan back onto the bench he’d been sitting on. Luckily it was a cushioned one, and very much designed with the idea in mind that he might take a fancy to one of the available prostitutes, but they were still in a fairly public room, privacy array or no. Wen Ruohan hadn’t been expecting Lan Qiren to be quite so enthusiastic.

“Should I feel bad about taking advantage of your impaired stare?” he wondered, then yelped when Lan Qiren got tired of trying unsuccessfully to maneuver his fingers through the delicate act of opening his clothes and opted instead to rip them apart. “Never mind – I liked that outfit. Carry on. Assuming you even can, given how drunk you are.”

“I like being able to bully you,” Lan Qiren said nonsensically. “That is easily the best part. You react in such funny ways.”

“I’m expressing mild irritation about an outfit. I would hardly say that you are bullying – ”

That was about when Lan Qiren stopped playing games, shoved Wen Ruohan’s head down, and demonstrated, at significant length, that he was both in fact perfectly capable of carrying on and also that he really did enjoy what he apparently called bullying and what Wen Ruohan personally preferred to call sadism.

Very, very enjoyable sadism, or at least it was by the time Lan Qiren finally let him finish.

Wen Ruohan ended up having to set the remnants of the bench on fire to avoid leaving evidence of their activities behind. Lan Qiren had managed to break the bench relatively early on in the proceedings, but he hadn’t stopped in the slightest…

Really, there was no one out there as brilliant as Wen Ruohan. Surely no one else would be able to train up such a talented and considerate lover as he’d managed with Lan Qiren.

(Be attentive to your wife’s needs and diligently perform your duties as husband was definitely and without question Wen Ruohan’s favorite rule. By far. No contest.)

Once that was done and no evidence was left to be found, face preserved all around, he found a servant (one of his own, thankfully) and demanded they find him a bedroom.

“Any updates on the investigation?” he asked, carrying the now fast asleep Lan Qiren in his arms. “Have they figured out what killed Jin Guangshan?”

“Not yet, Sect Leader,” the disciple in question said with a remarkably straight face, his eyes firmly locked on the ceiling above Wen Ruohan’s head. Presumably to avoid seeing any of the bite marks on his sect leader’s neck or the way he was ever-so-slightly limping, or possibly just the fact that his clothing was being held together on his body more through spiritual energy rather than by connected cloth. “We are increasingly certain that it must have been Qingheng-jun behind it, given the lack of evidence pointing to anyone else. You see, there was a secret tunnel – ”

“I had already deduced that much. Has the Jin sect figured it out?”

“No, Sect Leader.”

“Good. Ensure that they don’t.”

Lan Qiren wouldn’t want anyone to know about his brother’s involvement in this murder if they could help it. In an ideal world, he would want his nephews to grow up as the sons of a reputed if tragic hero, but unfortunately Qingheng-jun’s stubbornness had cut them off from that option. Ultimately, it might not be possible to preserve Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji’s reputation in regard to their father, but until then, Wen Ruohan would do everything in his power to carry out Lan Qiren’s wishes.

He barely had time to arrange Lan Qiren in bed and change out of his ravaged outfit into a new one before there was a snort from the bed and the audible sound of Lan Qiren yawning.

“Are you waking up?” Wen Ruohan asked, slightly disbelievingly.

“It’s mao shi,” Lan Qiren said, rubbing his eyes and sitting up in the same way he always did. He showed absolutely no sign of any sort of hangover. “Isn’t it?”

Wen Ruohan checked the window: it was indeed. The Lan truly were better than any clock.

“For that matter, why are you awake so early? You normally do not rise before me.”

Wen Ruohan glanced over at Lan Qiren, who had already risen from the bed and started puttering about in what looked like his normal morning routine. “...are you joking right now?”

“I am not,” Lan Qiren said, frowning. “Also, why am I so sore? What was I even doing last night?”

Wen Ruohan felt a smile insuppressibly forcing its way onto his face. “How much do you remember?”

“I remember entering Jinlin Tower, and Madam Jin wanting to speak with me privately – although she took me to a room filled with women instead, which was not exactly conducive to a private conversation. I believe she was trying to encourage me to sleep with one of them, though naturally I refused, and then…”

He paused, clearly hitting a blank.

“And then she slipped you a teacup full of liquor,” Wen Ruohan added helpfully, and enjoyed the dawning expression of horror on Lan Qiren’s face. “At which point, you lectured a room full of prostitutes about the Lan sect rules for an entire shichen at least, then spent at least another half shichen wandering the halls asking everyone you could find whether they knew where your wife was. And then you found me and screwed me so thoroughly that I had to set the bench we used on fire – ”

Lan Qiren groaned and put his face into his hands.

Wen Ruohan gave in and finally started laughing as hard as he’d wanted to all this time.

“Stop that,” Lan Qiren grumbled. “It is not funny.”

It was extremely funny.

“I’m given to understand that the prostitutes you lectured were ‘very nice,’” Wen Ruohan wheezed. “I’m certain that they will tell everyone that you gave them a most memorable night…”

“I most certainly hope they do no such thing.”

After a while, Wen Ruohan finally managed to piece himself back together. By this time, Lan Qiren was doing his sword exercises – indoors, since the room they’d been given was quite so enormous. Or possibly just because he was pretending to stab Wen Ruohan’s head every time he lunged.

“Do you really not remember any of it?” Wen Ruohan asked once he had regained his self-possession. “At all?”

“From my limited experience, the memory will return eventually,” Lan Qiren said grimly. “Usually at an inconvenient time.”

Wen Ruohan could just imagine.

“Tell me when it happens,” he instructed happily. “I would like to see your face.”

Lan Qiren scowled at him.

“Don’t look so offended. Next time I’ll supervise and make sure you don’t do anything strange.”

“I would appreciate the offer,” Lan Qiren said, “except for the fact that it starts with next time…”

Wen Ruohan laughed again.

“Turning to more serious matters, have there been any new developments regarding Jin Guangshan’s death?” Lan Qiren asked. “Do we know anything more?”

Wen Ruohan explained what he’d learned, between the reports his spies had given him and what he’d heard from Jin Guangshi.

“I completely forgot that man even existed,” Lan Qiren said, frowning. “It is a good thing he has no intention of claiming power – I made no provisions for him whatsoever in the initial conversations I had on the subject with Madam Jin.”

“Were you negotiating a treaty without me already?” Wen Ruohan asked, amused. “For shame, Qiren, I’m out of commission for a few days and you’re letting the power go to your head?”

Lan Qiren narrowed his eyes at him. “You are not actually upset about this.”

“Not in the slightest, no. What did you discuss?”

Lan Qiren rolled his eyes. “A few broad strokes, nothing more. I wished to feel her out on the subject of her proposed solution for the war her husband started while retaining the option for you to revoke anything I might have promised. I will lay out the details for you in a written report – even with privacy arrays, the walls may have ears and eyes, so there is no harm in being especially cautious.”

Wen Ruohan nodded, and decided not to mention where exactly most of the previous day’s activities had taken place. It would be far funnier to see Lan Qiren remembering it in real time if he didn’t know.

Also…

“There was one other thing that Jin Guangshi mentioned,” he said, and Lan Qiren looked at him in silent question. “Jin Guangshan was intending to make an overture of peace with us by offering up Wang Liu.”

“Wang Liu…” Lan Qiren’s eyes narrowed, although he did not stop his exercise. “The spy? The one he and my brother used to set up the situation in Xixiang?”

“That’s the one.” Wen Ruohan watched Lan Qiren do a particularly nice sweep with his sword that he could imagine decapitating someone. “What do you want to do with him?”

“What do you mean? Naturally he must be given a trial and sentenced to a fair punishment.”

Now it was Wen Ruohan who rolled his eyes. “You do understand that we don’t actually need to do that, right? His own sect leader has decided to hand him over to us. We can punish him as we see fit.”

“And the correct punishment is that he be given a fair trial and a fair sentence.”

“Qiren, be serious.”

Lan Qiren brought his sword down into the final pose, then stood up with a sigh. “I am serious,” he said. “I am extremely serious. Yes, I have previously expressed, both in my thoughts and out loud to you, a desire to cause harm to the person who deceived you into throwing me into the Fire Palace. However, that was before he was taken into custody. It is different.”

“But why?”

“Because before he was an enemy, and now he is a prisoner.” Lan Qiren shook his head. “And I, at least, do not mistreat prisoners.”

Unlike my sect elders, he meant. Unlike my brother.

Wen Ruohan grunted. There were some matters even a sadist knew were better not to touch. “Have it your way,” he said dismissively. “You’re the one who wanted to hurt him. I just want him dead.”

Lan Qiren snorted. “You are aware, I hope, that the reason I bear a grudge against him is he chose to carry out his orders against you in a manner that was especially harmful to you.”

Wen Ruohan had not been aware. “He’s a spy, Qiren. He was doing his job.”

“And his job was to harm you and the sect, which means that after his trial, he will more than likely be executed as justice requires. It is only my personal vengeance that must be set aside. The rules say – ”

“I wonder where Cangse Sanren and Wei Changze got to with that lead they were following,” Wen Ruohan interrupted. He wasn’t in the mood for a discussion of the rules, especially on the present subject, which sounded like nothing more than ‘I don’t get to get what I want for no reason’ again. “One of the reports I got earlier on said they had something, but there were no updates after that.”

“Unusual,” Lan Qiren said with a faint frown, effectively distracted. “We must hope that they are making progress, even if no one else is. Can you ask for an update?”

Wen Ruohan shrugged in agreement and walked over to the door to their quarters, intending on summoning one of his disciples to go run the errand for him. He pulled open the door.

A small child in yellow looked up at him, hand frozen as if he had been planning to knock.

“Hm,” Wen Ruohan said. “Qiren, I think this one’s for you.”

Inside the room, Lan Qiren rose up, and Wen Ruohan stepped to the side, indicating with his head that the child should enter. When the child didn’t move, staring up at Wen Ruohan with an expression not unlike a mouse fixated by the gaze of a snake, he reached out to put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, walked him in, and then closed the door behind him as he himself stepped out of the room.

Child wrangling effectively delegated, Wen Ruohan swept off in search of his spies. Surely one of them knew where Cangse Sanren and Wei Changze had ended up.

He turned out to be mistaken about that: it appeared that the two of them had completely vanished.

“That suggests the existence of additional secret places,” Wen Ruohan said, not overly concerned. He’d noticed before that Cangse Sanren sometimes got mixed up and reported the future instead of the present – for instance, in Xixiang, she’d told him about the search party for Lan Qiren, which his subordinates had confirmed to him had come together just as she’d said. Only, in their telling, the actual event took place a shichen or two after she had explained it to him. And so, since Cangse Sanren had mentioned that her ultimate doom involved a large beast of the sort that was not exactly native to the urban environment of Jinlin Tower, she was no doubt fine. “Are you telling me that a pair of rogue cultivators is beating you to valuable information? Do better.”

When he returned to the rooms they had been assigned, he found that Lan Qiren had finished managing the child situation as well.

“Jin Zixuan,” Lan Qiren said to the boy, who was sitting on a bench trying his best to mimic Lan Qiren’s perfect posture. “Stand and greet Sect Leader Wen.”

The boy jumped up and did a passable salute. “Hello, Sect Leader Wen.”

Wen Ruohan arched his eyebrows a little – he’d been doing that a lot in the past day or so, but he felt rather entitled; there had been rather a lot of surprises. Jin Zixuan was Jin Guangshan’s heir, and, pending either the appointment of a regent or a coup by one of the branch families, the next sect leader. What was he doing trying to talk to a foreign sect leader without supervision?

He inclined his head, polite as he was only to his peers…even if they happened to be six. “Well met.”

“I will discuss with Sect Leader Wen what you have shared with me,” Lan Qiren told the boy. “We will resolve the issue. In the meantime, you should return to your rooms before people notice your absence.”

Wen Ruohan waited until the boy had left the room and disappeared into the overly gaudy hallways of Jinlin Tower before turning an expectant look on Lan Qiren, who cleared his throat awkwardly.

“I took you at your word when you said that I could make decisions on behalf of the sect,” he said.

Wen Ruohan smirked.

“I am aware you already said that I could,” Lan Qiren said grumpily, scowling at him, but Wen Ruohan could see the way his shoulders relaxed a little once he’d received the reassurance. “At any rate, you mentioned that you would be taking Jin Guangshi and his family to the Nightless City as hostages – ”

“I said that I offered to, in exchange for him giving me information of value. It is debatable if he has.”

“Irrelevant. You can play on Jin Guangshi’s stupidity to extract additional favors if you so desire – ” That was in fact what Wen Ruohan was doing. “– but we will be taking them with us as hostages. We will also be taking Jin Zixuan along with them.”

Were they now.

“You say that so definitively, as if you think I might have an objection to taking custody of the presumptive next sect leader of another Great Sect,” Wen Ruohan remarked, settling down next to Lan Qiren. “I don’t, of course. The power that such a situation would give me and my sect would be immense…which suggests a more practical issue. How do you intend to sell that idea to Madam Jin?”

Lan Qiren snorted. “I was planning to refer her to your army if she had any complaints.”

Wen Ruohan grinned and pressed a kiss to the sensitive spot on Lan Qiren’s neck.

Lan Qiren elbowed him in the gut, which was probably about what he deserved.

“I was merely expressing my appreciation,” Wen Ruohan pretended to complain. “You cannot hold it against me that I like it when you’re arrogant and ruthless.”

“The rules say Do not bully the weak and Do not look down at those who lose to you. Neither is applicable to Lanling Jin, which remains extremely powerful despite their current weakness.”

“Yes, and anyway we started looking down at them long beforehand…”

“Do not treat others with contempt.”

“Not even deserved contempt?”

Lan Qiren refused to answer, which was practically an admission.

“Why are we taking the boy, anyway?” Wen Ruohan asked idly. He didn’t really care: Lan Qiren was simply too distractingly attractive when he schemed. “Given that he’s her sole source of legitimate power, I can’t imagine this is one of his mother’s schemes.”

“Far from it. He is concerned that she will smother him – and based on what he has shared of her past behavior in regard to him, I am inclined to agree.”

Wen Ruohan shrugged. Getting Jin Zixuan out of Jinlin Tower wasn’t going to be as easy as Lan Qiren pretended and they both knew it. Lanling Jin was still a Great Sect, Madam Jin was far more formidable an opponent than Jin Guangshan was, and the cultivation world did not look kindly on the notion of child hostages; it would be difficult to justify such an action. They were going to have to pull off something extraordinarily clever or else find the Jin sect red-handed in the midst of something incredibly damning if they were going to find something to use as leverage to convince Madam Jin to agree to let Jin Zixuan go to the Nightless City.

But if they could pull it off…well, like he had said, Wen Ruohan was hardly going to object.

Lan Qiren had started off their marriage by giving him four sects to conquer – and now, not even a year in, he’d gotten Wen Ruohan access to, if not outright custody of, the Lan heirs, the Jiang heirs, and the Jin heir. Wen Ruohan wondered what his plans were for their anniversary.

Though, in the short term –

“I think we still have some time left before the day properly begins,” he said. “You don’t remember what we did last night, right?”

Lan Qiren gave him a narrow, distrustful look.

He was right to do so.

“I just think that it’s important that I help you remember what you missed,” Wen Ruohan said earnestly, and knew that Lan Qiren had understood his barely veiled meaning when he started rolling his eyes hard enough to hurt. “I can demonstrate some of the highlights – ”

There was a loud sound from the hallway outside, followed shortly by yelling.

“I think the day has already begun,” Lan Qiren said dryly. “Your insatiable libido will have to wait.”

Wen Ruohan scowled.

“Of course, if you feel you require additional service to be satisfied, we can make some time – ”

“Perhaps later,” Wen Ruohan said. There was an edge to Lan Qiren’s tone that gave him a distinct sense of danger, though his primary reaction to such a feeling was to be filled with a delicious sense of anticipation. “We should first attend to politics.”

The life of a sect leader was truly full of sacrifice.

Wen Ruohan dramatically slammed open the door to their rooms, startling the group of disciples outside. Once he was sure he had their attention, he asked flatly: “What is the meaning of this?”

The Wen sect disciples present heard his tone of voice and immediately dropped into deep salutes, leaving the Jin sect disciples standing there awkwardly.

“Sect Leader, a situation has developed,” one of the Wen sect disciples said. “These Jin sect disciples claim that they were transporting a prisoner nearby when the prisoner escaped.”

“Why would they be transporting a prisoner near to where guests are being housed?” Lan Qiren asked from where he stood at Wen Ruohan’s shoulder, his voice cold. “That seems to be the height of irresponsibility.”

There was an obvious answer to that, of course, and both Wen Ruohan and Lan Qiren knew it. But at the same time, the Jin sect’s incompetence deserved a sharp reprimand.

“The prisoner, Wang Liu, was going to be delivered to your sect for safekeeping,” the chief Jin sect disciple was forced to admit. “We did not anticipate that he would break free – ”

Wang Liu was an accomplished spy that had been of sufficient quality to get sent to the Nightless City, and from there to actually achieve his goals. Naturally he was top tier. There were only a dozen or so Jin sect disciples here, not anywhere near the number that would ben needed to guard someone of Wang Liu’s caliber…sending only this many to escort him was ridiculous. Either the disorder following Jin Guangshan’s death was rendering people here even more incompetent than usual or else this supposed ‘prisoner escape’ taking place so close to where his Wen sect was being housed was an intentional, if ham-handed, move.

Wen Ruohan suspected the latter. After all, if he was busy hunting Wang Liu down, he wouldn’t have time for other things, such as negotiating Lanling Jin’s submission to his authority.

Too bad he didn’t care.

Or, well, that his anticipatory rage against Wang Liu had been thoroughly extinguished by Lan Qiren’s bloodless insistence on all the trappings of a trial. Wen Ruohan was willing to concede the point, yes, and even to give the spy the trial he apparently deserved. But if it wasn’t going to be any fun, he wasn’t going to spend resources he didn’t want to spend just to get the man to do it.

“That seems like a problem for the Jin sect,” he said firmly. “We were promised that prisoner, and we expect you to deliver that prisoner. Good luck finding him.”

The Jin sect disciple looked taken aback. Clearly he had expected Wen Ruohan to offer assistance in finding him, or even to demand that his people take over looking, and wasn’t sure what to do now that he hadn’t. “Uh…Sect Leader Wen, it will take us additional time to find more people to help with the search. If you would be willing to lend us your disciples – ”

“I’m not. Go find him yourself.”

“Sect Leader Wen – ”

“I do not repeat myself,” Wen Ruohan said, and started to reach for his power, intending to teach these idiots a lesson, only to stop when Lan Qiren put his hand on his arm – a silent reminder that he lacked the power he usually did, and that fools like this were not worth straining himself.

He glanced at Lan Qiren, wondering suddenly if they were going to play-act a scene for the benefit of the Jin sect. Something along the lines of the imperious and vicious sect leader with his more conscientious spouse, who was, perhaps, willing to beg for mercy even on behalf of those who did not deserve it. The idea was positively mouth-watering.

What Lan Qiren actually said, however, was “Do you hear that sound?”

Wen Ruohan frowned, and tore his attention away from the Jin sect in front of him to listen –

“There is someone in the walls,” he said, identifying the source at once.

Not just standing there, either. They might not have heard that, or paid any attention to it; there were plenty of servant’s passages in a place as large as Jinlin Tower, and they were often filled with footsteps. But this person sounded almost as if they were choking on something.

Perhaps poison.

“Sect Leader?” his disciple asked.

“Open the wall at once,” Lan Qiren instructed, and Wen Ruohan nodded in agreement.

“The wall?” The Jin sect disciple looked horrified, even as the Wen sect disciples leapt into action. “Sect Leader Wen, you can’t do that! You are only a guest – ”

“You may refer your complaints to the army I have standing outside your gate,” Wen Ruohan said, borrowing Lan Qiren’s earlier phrase with a considerable amount of relish. It worked very well: the Jin sect disciple shut his mouth with an audible click.

“Sect Leader!” one of the Wen disciples shouted. “Sect Leader, we’re through the wall, we found him – look – look – ”

“It’s the prisoner!” one of the Jin disciples exclaimed. “What’s wrong with him? He’s dying!”

“Let me through,” Wen Ruohan said firmly, and swept forward.

When he got to the front, he determined quickly that it was wrong to describe Wang Liu as dying.

In actual fact, the man was already dead.

Rather unequivocally dead.

He had no breath, no heartbeat, and even his spiritual energy was gone – which was strange, since spiritual energy tended to linger around a cultivator’s grave for a long time, seeping out slowly, often resulting in the development of spiritual grasses or animals in the vicinity.

If Wen Ruohan hadn’t literally heard the man choking to death moments ago himself, he would have thought that this corpse was at least a few days old.

Also, there wasn’t a single mark on him.

“It appears that we’ve left behind the realm of medicine,” he remarked. “Qiren, would you like to take a look?”

Lan Qiren didn’t condescend to reply. He just pulled out his guqin and directly started to play Inquiry.

“We should be in charge of this investigation,” the chief Jin sect disciple said, taking advantage of the moment to try to argue his way into some level of control over the situation. “We have our own methods for contacting the spirits of the dead – ”

Before Wen Ruohan could threaten him again, the man’s mouth abruptly sealed shut.

The Lan sect silencing spell.

“Do not interrupt,” Lan Qiren intoned with the ponderousness of a man reciting a rule, even though Wen Ruohan knew that it wasn’t. The closest the Lan had to something like that was in their exhortations to respect etiquette. “Hmm.”

That did not seem to be a promising ‘hmm.’

“Is his spirit not present?” Wen Ruohan asked. It seemed unlikely, given how recent the death was – absent some particularly pernicious method of killing that would result in the spirit disintegrating, he couldn’t think of any reason the spirit wouldn’t be there.

If Qingheng-jun had gotten hold of a method that did that, they were in more trouble than he’d thought.

“No, he’s present,” Lan Qiren said, which at least assuaged that particular burst of paranoia. “Unfortunately, he may not be as helpful as we might have hoped. His death came as a surprise.”

Now that was interesting.

“A surprise,” Wen Ruohan mused, stepping back and looking over the crowd. The Jin disciples looked just as surprised by the news as anyone else, which meant that this development wasn’t part of the power play someone (probably Madam Jin) had been attempting to pull off. He hadn’t really thought it would be; Wang Liu was simply not important enough to Lanling Jin for them to bother with his death. Once they’d decided he was of no further use to them as a spy, he’d been useful only as a distraction.

It was tremendously wasteful, actually.

Wen Ruohan blamed Madam Jin for not knowing what she was doing. His spies all knew that if they were found out, provided that the discovery wasn’t the fault of their own negligence, they would be guaranteed a new identity and a place to lie low for as long as it took for the storm to blow over, or even a full retirement and a new career if that turned out to be necessary. Wen Ruohan’s ambitions to grow his sect’s power meant that he’d given more thought than most to the subject of recruiting, but this wasn’t just a matter of attracting new talent. Rather, it was about retaining it: Wen Ruohan knew, and other sects that used spies also knew, that loyalty was only truly given where it was adequately paid for, whether financially or through other means. One Wang Liu didn’t matter in the larger scheme of things, but all of Jin Guangshan’s other spies would see Madam Jin’s betrayal of her husband’s spies as a bad sign of things to come – a sign that she would throw them away just as easily.

Hmm. Perhaps Wen Ruohan should encourage his spies to pass around rumors that he’d be willing to grant an amnesty to any existing spies from other sects, provided they were willing to declare loyalty. This could be a good moment to fish in troubled waters, to catch some of them to make his own. After all, hadn’t Wang Liu demonstrated how effective a spy could be when someone else believed them to be their own?

The music from Lan Qiren’s guqin stopped.

Wen Ruohan was already turning to look at him when Lan Qiren started playing again, this time a song of liberation, rather than questioning.

He was banishing the spirit. Was Lan Qiren concerned that the now-deceased Wang Liu would reveal something he didn’t want revealed, or was he simply being efficient? The quicker a spirit could be put to rest, the less resentful energy it generated.

“Nothing more to be gained?” Wen Ruohan asked, trying to make clear in his dismissive tone that he was not questioning Lan Qiren’s judgment but rather agreeing with it.

“Nothing more,” Lan Qiren agreed, untroubled. “His spirit was not inclined to linger – his death was a shock, and he had no time to form significant resentment. He was quite cool-headed throughout, truly an ideal ghost.”

“He was a good spy,” Wen Ruohan said, nodding in agreement. It was only a pity that he had been on the wrong side. “What did you manage to get from him? Any sense of how he died?”

He didn’t bother asking for the name of the murderer. With the ghost’s death a surprise, it was likely not the most reliable witness – and anyway, Wen Ruohan could tell from the faint scowl on Lan Qiren’s face that he likely suspected that his brother to be the perpetrator.

After all, they had agreed with Wen Ruohan’s deduction regarding Jin Guangshan’s death, and the two deaths were suspiciously similar, both involving someone dying unexpectedly while leaving no obvious sign of how they had been murdered. If Qingheng-jun had done one murder, he had likely done the other – and there was no reason to share that information with anyone.

“I believe I can shed some light on how he died,” Lan Qiren said, surprising Wen Ruohan all over again. “Can someone fetch me his sword?”

Wang Liu’s sword?

One of the Wen disciples went for the sword – in fact, one of the Jin disciples also started to move, but all the remaining Wen disciples put their hands on their own swords and glared, and they pulled back.

“I’ve got it, Senior Lan,” the disciple reported, picking it up. “It’s – oh!”

She drew the sword, revealing to the rest of them what it was that had caused her exclamation.

“It’s broken,” Wen Ruohan said, frowning. “Surely he would not have been carrying a broken sword on purpose…someone broke it, then? How did someone break a spiritual sword? And anyway, what does a broken sword have to do with Wang Liu’s death?”

“I’m not sure,” Lan Qiren admitted. “But the sword was broken with a curse.”

Wen Ruohan raised his eyebrows. He’d suggested it earlier, but it was good to have confirmation. Curses were often very nasty and hard to spot, especially the lesser-known ones – and he didn’t know of anything that operated like this.

“Wang Liu’s description of his death suggested that the curse used his sword as a means of accessing his spiritual energy,” Lan Qiren explained. “He was using his qi to connect with the sword, trying to draw it so that he could fly, at the moment the curse activated. The impact of the curse shattered both the steel and all his meridians.”

Exceptionally nasty.

No wonder there was no spiritual energy left in the body. The curse had used Wang Liu’s own qi to kill him!

“Was Jin Guangshan’s sword also broken?” he asked, then answered his own question: “No one would have checked, as he almost never wielded it.”

“Precisely.” Lan Qiren shook his head. “His defensive talismans would not have protected him from a blow if it was not aimed at him, but rather at his sword. And if his sword broke while still in its scabbard, no one would have noticed – no one would have drawn it.”

Clever. Very, very clever.

“But Wang Liu was found alone,” Wen Ruohan said, thinking it through. “There wasn’t enough time for his killer to get away from him, not without us noticing, not with how quickly we found the body. Yet if his killer was not present, he could not have known when Wang Liu was using his qi with his sword in time to activate the curse at that exact moment.”

“That is correct,” Lan Qiren said solemnly. “Which means the curse was set in advance, and triggered later.”

Truly, whoever had come up with this curse was extraordinarily clever. Well done all around! Using a curse like poison, as a means of killing someone in advance when you were safely away…it was brilliant, really.

Wen Ruohan was a little aggravated to have no choice once again but to applaud Qingheng-jun for his creativity. In another life the man would have made a superlative assassin, assuming this really was all him the way they assumed it was.

“But what I do not know is how,” Lan Qiren continued. He was stroking his beard. “How was it done? What curse was it? What exactly killed him, and why?”

“Actually,” a very familiar female voice said, and they all looked up abruptly to see Cangse Sanren, leaning out of the giant hole in the wall with dust all over her nose, cheeks and forehead, as well as the world’s most tremendous grin. “I think I might be able to help with that.”

[hami-gua]

If it Means to Remain by Your Side

From the list I posted yesterday, I'm gonna start with the Dan Heng x Reader MDZS inpsired fic first.

Characters and plot won’t be as accurate to the inspired plot. Especially for this story which involves a lot of adults and teens an not much children.  So many characters are left out simply due to the fact that a lot of npcs either didn’t fit the role, or were far too young for my standards.

I also ended up having to lean more onto the live action version than the novel/manhua version. Not all characters casted are exactly accurate too, as there are more traumatized than non-traumatized.

Cast

Dan Heng  - Lan zhan/Lan Wangji

Reader - Wei Ying/Wei Wuxian

Jing Yuan - Lan Xichen

Blade/Yingxing - Song Lan

March - Lan Jingyi

Yukong - Jian Yanli

Tingyun - Jin Guangyao

Jingliu - Xue Yang

Baiheng - Xiao Xingchen

Yanqing - Jin Ling

Ruan Mei _ Baoshan Sanren

Luocha - Jin Zixuan (Ik Yukong and him aren’t a ship, but it'll have to do as Honkai doesn’t really have a F and M implied relations. I mean the only ones that do are in a love triangle.)

Xueyi - Wen Ning

Hanya - Wen Qing

Qingque - Nie Huaisang

Diting - Fairy

Fu Xuan - Jiang Cheng

Guinaifen - Lan Sizhui/Lan Yuan (Again, not a ship as Yanqing is too fight frenzy of a kid to actually have a crush. I just think these two would pair well as friends)

Sushang - A-Qing

Setting/Sects

Luofu -- Gusu Lan

Dan Heng

Jing Yuan

March

Guinaifen (later half)

Yaoqing -- Qinghe Nie

Qingque

Zhuming -- Qishan Wen

Hanya

Xueyi

Guinaifen (first half

Yuque -- Lanling Jin

Yanqing & Fairy

Luocha

Tingyun

Fanghu -- Yunmeng Jiang

Reader

Fuxuan

Yukong

Misc.

Blade/Yingxing

Jingliu

Baiheng

Sushang

Huohuo

Ruan Mei

Xuling -- Burial Mounds

Reader (Mid-way)

Hanya (Mid-way)

Xueyi (Mid-way)

Guinafen (Mid-way)

I literally looked up all the different alliance of Xianzhou just to see which would be Wen sect. So here’s the reasoning.

Luofu: They don’t really have a specialty. Their main goal is to take out abundance cult.

Yaoqing: Much like Luofu, don’t really have a specialty. Aggressive and good at martial arts.

Zhuming: Their main export specialty is porcelain. According to Fandom wiki, the people here love playing with fire.

Yuque: They export jade abaci, thus making me think they’ll be wealthy due to it and technologically advanced/smart.

Fanghu: Exports a lot of marine things. Though it would make since to have Dan Heng come from here, but it would not make sense for other characters like March and Jing Yuan to have been born here. And it’s the closest in description to Yunmeng.

Xuling: Not much is really stated about this place on Fandom Wiki, but it looks like a place of law. But piggybacking off of the fact that not much is written about this area, Imma just gonna liken this area to Burial Mounds.

Idk why I stressed so much trying to make it 100% accurate 💀

My main source for these infos are from MDZS and Star Rail fandom wiki, so if inaccuracies occur, I apologize in advance for it.

[eleanorfenyxwrites]

The Love You Give To Me Will Free Me

The Waves Are Rising and Rising extra scene #4

Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen have a very important conversation while Jin Guangyao sleeps off the shock of committing patricide (somewhere around chapters 15 and 16).

--//--

Jinlintai barely feels like less of a threat with Jin Guangshan gone. His death is… certainly a relief, Nie Mingjue is honest enough with himself to admit that, and that it had been so even before Jin Guangyao had told him about the man’s machinations against him. But it’s not like every problem in Lanling suddenly disappeared in a puff of smoke when Jin Guangshan crumpled at the foot of the tower. He may have ordered the hit on Nie Mingjue, but as Jin Guangyao has made abundantly clear it’s not like he gets his own hands dirty. There’s still someone — probably many someones — in Jinlintai with the capacity and the motivation to kill him even with Jin Guangshan out of the picture.

He very nearly turns back. Maybe he shouldn’t leave Jin Guangyao alone, not when he’s in such a state, and not when he’s been wanting to get him out of Jinlintai anyway since that awful night he’d shown up in Qinghe beaten black and blue. Lan Xichen’s waiting for him though, anxious to hear news about Jin Guangyao without being able to go back himself lest someone decide to look too closely at how many times he steals into Jin Guangyao’s room, so with a huff he continues on his way. Quick, purposeful strides carry him through the public gardens and into the guest complex, his eyes darting around almost subconsciously to hunt every shadow for someone looking to catch him while weakened and with his guard down, Baxia still in Lan Xichen’s quarters on the sword rack next to Shuoyue.

“How is he?”

Lan Xichen is on him the moment he steps over the threshold, hovering anxiously with a hand curled into the trail of Nie Mingjue’s sleeve. Nie Mingjue pointedly slides the door shut again with his free hand and activates the privacy talismans plastered on every wall, and only then does he feel like he can relax (as much as one can relax after the events of the last 48 hours, i.e. barely at all).

“Still in shock I think, but we… talked.”

“You talked?” Lan Xichen presses. “About what?”

Nie Mingjue takes a deep breath and exhales slowly; where to fucking start?

“Mingjue-”

“I’m organising my thoughts!” He can’t help but attempt to defend himself, but the tension is rolling off Lan Xichen in waves and he seems nearly as close to snapping as Jin Guangyao had. Considering he’s not especially interested in having both of his lovers sobbing in his arms in the same night, he forces himself to marshall some sort of response that will assuage Lan Xichen’s fears long enough to come up with a more thorough explanation.

“He talked about what happened and then I told him I love him.”

Well. Lan Xichen at least doesn’t look like he’s about to vibrate out of his skin anymore. Instead, he goes deathly still, hand still clutched in Nie Mingjue’s sleeve, and only moves to blink once.

Twice.

“Hm. Apologies ge, I seem to have lost my train of thought. What did you say?”

Nie Mingjue squints at Lan Xichen for a long moment and then repeats, exactly as he’d said it the first time, “He talked about what happened and then I told him I love him.”

“Oh. Yes. Yes you did… actually say that. I see.”

Nie Mingjue squints at him a little harder and raises his free hand to press the back of his palm against his forehead, above his ribbon. He doesn’t feel clammy but his face has gone pale and Nie Mingjue presses his hand against his cheek next, starting to worry less about him bursting into tears and more about him collapsing in a dead faint, though he can’t possibly imagine why he’s reacting so strongly all of a sudden.

The touch at least seems to bring Lan Xichen back to himself and he sucks in a sharp gasp, eyes wide though he at least doesn’t try to step away and stand under his own power just yet. “You told him you love him?!”

“Yes, what’s the problem?!”

“What’s the– what’s the problem?!” Lan Xichen repeats, though with quite a bit more incredulity than Nie Mingjue had used. He finally lets go of his sleeve to step back and begin pacing, an anxious gesture he’s not sure he’s ever seen Lan Xichen unbend enough to allow himself, and especially not at such a brisk clip. “What’s the problem, he says, honestly,” he mutters to himself and Nie Mingjue gets the sense that somehow, somewhere, he might have maybe fucked up a little.

“A-Huan?”

“What did A-Yao say after you confessed to him?” Lan Xichen nearly demands, still pacing but meeting Nie Mingjue’s eyes each time his circuits put them face to face. “What did he do?”

“He-”

“No! Wait– Sorry, ge, I… start at the beginning. What exactly happened? He wasn’t speaking when I left, he barely seemed aware that I was present, how did you manage to escalate things so quickly?!”

Nie Mingjue grinds his teeth together and tells himself that Lan Xichen is just stressed out about Jin Guangyao (that much is painfully obvious) and that his own irritation is really the metal-on-metal screeching of Baxia in the back of his head returning with her proximity, not actually anger with Lan Xichen (that much is painfully true).

He sits down on the edge of the bed and rubs a thumb in firm circles between his brows to try to clear his mind enough to put the shocking revelations in order, one after the other, so he can give Lan Xichen the accurate account he wants.

“I went to his room,” he starts, eyes tracking Lan Xichen’s progress back and forth across the middle of the guest quarters (more spacious than Jin Guangyao’s single room, but he isn’t going to think about that too deeply at the moment), “and I think I scared him a bit by coming in but I got him calmed down. He sort of panicked afterwards though, I think? I asked how he was and he looked like he does when he’s afraid, and then he sort of… blurted.”

Lan Xichen pauses long enough in his pacing to pinch the bridge of his nose. “What did he say, Mingjue?”

I think Er-ge is lying about fuqin for me.

Nie Mingjue watches Lan Xichen carefully as he says, “He told me he killed Guangshan.”

Lan Xichen’s hand drops to his side but he doesn’t open his eyes, he stands there taking careful breaths for a few long moments and Nie Mingjue is pretty sure he hears a softly sighed, “Oh A-Yao,” before Lan Xichen resumes his pacing again with a wordless gesture for him to continue.

Which… answers that question, anyway. Lan Xichen hardly seems surprised, and it’s clear that he feels no need to discuss that any further. Nie Mingjue would feel a little bit better about this if that bothered him like it should, but… the rest of Jin Guangyao’s sobbed confession is still painfully fresh in the front of his mind and he just can’t bring himself to feel sorry that Jin Guangshan is gone, or that it was Jin Guangyao, of all of Jin Guangshan’s victims over the years, who managed to get his revenge.

He moves on without complaint. “Xichen, the things Guangshan said to him-”

Lan Xichen makes a pained noise in the back of his throat in the empty space where Nie Mingjue tries to find a succinct way to describe the creeping, gut-wrenching horror of it all.

“I believe you. A-Yao would never… not without reason-”

This is skirting a little too close to some of their old arguments for comfort.

“Right, well, anyway… He told me what it was Jin Guangshan said to him to… push him so far, both about him and his mother-” another vaguely pained noise from Lan Xichen; he still hasn’t stopped pacing “-and then I told him that I know it’s not the same as having ever earned his father’s approval but that I love him, and hopefully that counts for something.”

It has to count for something, doesn’t it? He knows Jin Guangyao feels something for him besides fear or contempt, and it feels like it could be love, so long as he looks at it with a healthy dose of wishful thinking. Besides, isn’t it for the best that they all know what’s going on? He’d said it to Jin Guangyao and he’d meant it — he thinks that the change in their relationship, even if it’s only his perception of it, is information that it’s important for Jin Guangyao to have no matter the circumstances. Sure these current circumstances are less than ideal, but if the previous two days have taught them anything it’s that even without an active war holding them all hostage life can be terrifyingly fleeting. He doesn’t want to wait for the perfect time because there’s probably going to be no such thing. They’re always going to have to worry about his health or the heavy duties that they all shoulder for their Sects, there’s probably never going to be enough time for them to truly get to enjoy any sort of… romantic bliss together in which he could find the most poetic moment to take Jin Guangyao’s face in his hands and hold him carefully in place, in his arms right where he belongs, to tell him that he loves him.

This way, at least, they can all move forward with the same information and work together on figuring out what to do about it, no different than when he’d presented his partners with the potential benefits of pursuing dual cultivation together. This is something that involves all of them, therefore Jin Guangyao deserves to have all the facts. It has to be better that way, without any secrets between them, doesn’t it?

Lan Xichen buries his face in both hands, finally standing still again, and the feeling that he might have, possibly, maybe fucked up a little bit threatens to intensify.

“A-Huan?”

“Oh dear gods and heavens above,” Lan Xichen says into his palms and if Nie Mingjue didn’t know any better he’d say it comes dangerously close to a whine. “Alright, now what did A-Yao say? What did he do?”

They’re back to where they started anyway, though he can’t quite figure out why Lan Xichen is reacting like he is. He’s never really seen him so visibly distraught, not even in the middle of a damn war and that was by far more stressful on the whole than this, wasn’t it?

“He didn’t really say anything about it,” Nie Mingjue shrugs; better to just press on. “I mean I didn’t expect him to, and I told him that so there’s really nothing to worry about. I just figured it was something he deserved to know. You do too, for that matter, so I guess this is me telling you. I love him, and although I think it’s been pretty damn obvious for most of our lives I’m in love with you, too.”

Nie Mingjue stays still but watches warily as Lan Xichen drops his hands from his face, steels himself with a deep breath in, and practically marches across the room to take his face in both hands.

Lan Xichen enunciates very calmly, very clearly, “Nie Mingjue. You have the worst timing in the entire world.”

Okay rude.

“Listen I know it wasn’t exactly ideal, but I think it’s a little harsh to call it the worst-”

“No! It is quite actually the worst, most ill-timed love confession I could possibly fathom!”

“Alright stop shaking me,” Nie Mingjue growls and bats Lan Xichen’s hands away from his face. Undeterred, Lan Xichen drops his hands to his shoulders to rattle him again, ignoring Nie Mingjue’s glare to try to get him to cut it out.

“How could you put this sort of burden on him now, Mingjue?!” Lan Xichen cries, and oh god is he on the verge of tears again? Nie Mingjue can’t stand to be the reason Lan Xichen is upset and here he’s apparently done it again so soon after everything else. “He’s… he needs our support, not the burden of our- our- feelings-”

Slightly baffled and feeling like he’s missed a few leaps in logic, Nie Mingjue asks, “Is loving him not supporting him?”

Lan Xichen straightens up so quickly it’s like he’s been struck with a discipline rod, his hands tight enough on Nie Mingjue’s shoulders to ache a little. He looks… stricken, and Nie Mingjue hurries to reach up and curl a hand around his wrist, rubbing circles into the thin skin over his thundering pulse with his thumb.

“A-Huan, I love you… is that a burden to you?”

“No!” God he really fucking hates making Lan Xichen cry, but it’s apparently unavoidable; his expression is so cracked open and raw it’s almost unbearable, but Nie Mingjue soldiers on.

“Do you think A-Yao wouldn’t… welcome it? What did he say to you when you told him?”

Lan Xichen blinks at him, uncomprehending.

“When I told him..?”

“That you love him. You don’t have to… spare my feelings or anything, I figured it out a long time ago, I know you’re in love with him.” In a sudden burst of horrible insight, Nie Mingjue sits a little straighter and demands, “Did he tell you this, that you’re a burden?”

Lan Xichen looks so viscerally offended Nie Mingjue nearly laughs. Nearly. “He would never!”

“Right, of course. Well so did he return the sentiment or no? Did you expect him to?”

“I have never… that is, some things are better left understood and not… stated.”

Nie Mingjue stares at Lan Xichen for a long moment, the two of them blinking as, he can only imagine, they both attempt to comprehend such entirely different approaches to the exact same issue. It’s sort of a novelty, actually; they’re usually so in-tune that now it’s a little jarring to realise there’s something so incredibly vital that they seem to fundamentally disagree on and he’d had no idea before now.

“You’ve never told A-Yao you love him.” It doesn’t come out like a question.

Lan Xichen shakes his head slowly and finally releases his death grip on Nie Mingjue’s shoulders. “I have nearly lost control of myself a few times, particularly in recent months, but no. Never.”

Nie Mingjue exhales slowly and rubs his thumb into his forehead again. Baxia’s muttering angrily in the back of his mind in words he can’t quite make out without listening harder, but his meridians all still feel more than a little raw for him to want to try to deepen his connection with her now of all times.

How in the hell has Lan Xichen never confessed his feelings to Jin Guangyao? Their behavior borders on indecent in public, what with their multitude of excuses to touch each other’s hands or arms, their soft diminutives for each other, the way they look at each other across crowded rooms and important negotiating tables… how could they not have done this bit already? How did they not do this years ago?!

Well shit.

“So… of the two of us…”

Lan Xichen covers his eyes with one trembling hand and Nie Mingjue can concede he sort of… maybe… deserves the despair that is so clearly on his behalf.

“You are the first to tell him your feelings, and you chose to do so on the eve of his act of patricide after an entire lifetime of wanting nothing more than to please his mother by honouring his father. Yes. As I have said — you have terrible timing.”

“Hm.” Nie Mingjue squints into the middle distance somewhere around the vicinity of Lan Xichen’s slender waist for a few moments, doing his best to see things from Lan Xichen’s perspective; Lan Xichen’s perspective that such confessions aren’t allowed, no matter how true they are.

“Hey-” Lan Xichen spreads his middle fingers to glare balefully at him from between them “-your feelings aren’t a burden, A-Huan. Not on me or anyone else.”

“That is… irrelevant to the conversation at hand. How was A-Yao when you left?”

Nie Mingjue grits his teeth against the urge to argue. He can see it in the set of Lan Xichen’s jaw that he’s going to dig his heels in and refuse to address the massive fucking elephant in the room that Nie Mingjue can guess at the cause of, and quite frankly he just doesn’t have the energy in him to argue the point. He swallows it down like he did the rage at learning Jin Guangyao had been meant to assassinate him (and the vindication he’d felt for years of paranoia being proven perfectly justified), and focuses on the topic Lan Xichen so desperately wants to discuss.

“I held him, kissed him a few times, and told him to get some rest. I put him back in bed myself, he should be asleep by now.”

Lan Xichen nods with a tired, “Mn,” as he rubs at his eyes with the tip of his forefinger and thumb, not quite pinching the bridge of his nose again but nearly there.

“I thought it would help him.”

Lan Xichen sighs and leans down, finally, to kiss his forehead. “I know. You are a wonderfully straightforward man, Mingjue. Would that we could all be so fortunate to have such freedom.”

“You could, nothing’s stopping you,” Nie Mingjue points out, perhaps slightly petulantly. He would certainly like it if everyone got very Nie about certain things, anyway, and he has a feeling it would take care of a lot of tension amongst the sects if everyone would just say what they mean and spar about things they don’t agree on. The winner walks away with their point made, the loser accepts defeat with grace, everybody moves on with a fresh slate.

(Alright, so it’s not nearly so easy as that, even within the Qinghe Nie, but it could be. Maybe. If, say, one day they succeed in rooting out evil wherever it appears and restoring justice to everyone equally-

(But there’s no such thing as equal justice in a system that devalues others simply because of how or when or where they were born and he sees that, he does, but it would just be so much easier if things were clear cut for everyone and they could rise or fall strictly on merit-)

“A-Jue,” Lan Xichen calls, and it sounds like it’s not the first time. Nie Mingjue glances up at him to find a tiny smile on his lips, though it’s far too sad for his liking. “We can’t. It doesn’t work that way, and you know that.”

“…Yes. I know.”

“Mn. I should… I think I should go check on A-Yao myself.”

Nie Mingjue grabs Lan Xichen’s wrist as he turns to go, stopping him with a firm grip that Lan Xichen, thankfully, doesn’t attempt to break.

“Don’t. The whole point of me going in the first place was to avoid suspicion. You were with him on the stairs, you took him back to his room, you did damage control for him all afternoon. If you go back now people might question your story, the depth of your relationship with him, or both. I could go because I haven’t seen him all day, but now we both have, and it’s not like Jinlintai is suddenly safe just because Jin Guangshan is dead.”

That was the wrong thing to say, he can see it immediately. Lan Xichen’s eyes widen and he darts a frantic glance at the door, though he still doesn’t pull out of Nie Mingjue’s grip.

“Did you lock his door?”

“What- from the outside? How would I even do that without just trapping him in?”

“Mingjue you are a cultivator,” Lan Xichen snaps, apparently reaching the ends of his seemingly boundless patience. Nie Mingjue doesn’t blame him; it’s been a rough couple of days for both of them. “I have to go check on him, he’s unprotected and there are still some people — powerful people — who don’t believe that he had nothing to do with Jin Guangshan’s fall-”

“Xichen-”

“I won’t trap him,” Lan Xichen says and when Nie Mingjue gets a glimpse of his eyes they’re strangely glassy, his gaze far away. His hand hangs limp in Nie Mingjue’s grip that he loosens guiltily, afraid of hurting him. “I can set a ward on the door; it will still open for him. It will open for him and no one else. I- It’s not the same, is it? It’s just to protect him, he can leave the moment he’s ready but no one can hurt him, or disturb him, but it’s just protection, it’s not the same-”

It would seem that Nie Mingjue is going to hold both of his crying partners in the same night whether he wants to or not. (Of course it’s not the holding them that’s the problem, it’s the tears that he doesn’t know how to stop, but, well. At least he can try.) He gets to his feet and loops his arms around Lan Xichen who doesn’t resist him at all, instead falling against his chest and hiding his face like a frightened child.

“It’s not the same as what?” he feels compelled to ask, unable to help but feel like he’s just barely missing some important clue about what all of this is about. He can’t treat the wound if he doesn’t know the source, but Lan Xichen is always the type to seem perfectly fine until he’s very abruptly not. Even Nie Minjgue has only seen him truly unwell a couple of times and both instances are from their childhood, so many years ago now.

And both instances were because of–

“He won’t be like her,” Lan Xichen whispers, and he sounds so miserable that Nie Mingjue’s eyes smart in immediate sympathy, even before the weight of what Lan Xichen is actually saying hits him square in the chest. “I won’t lock him away, I won’t force him to- to take responsibility for my actions, I won’t make him suffer for the sake of my feelings, A-Jue-”

Nie Mingjue presses a hand to the nape of Lan Xichen’s neck, careful to slide it under the curtain of his hair without touching the dangling tails of his ribbon with the ease of years of practice. Lan Xichen tucks closer and clings to either side of his waist with his hands curled into tight fists in Nie Mingjue’s outer robe, rucking it up over the top edge of his belt a bit to get a firm grip.

“Loving him does not make you your father. And you’re right — it’s not the same at all,” he tells him, the pieces finally slotting into place as he’s forcefully reminded of what the former Lan-zongzhu did to the one he loved, and how much it hurt Lan Xichen as a boy to see his own mother waste away and die in her seclusion — a horribly long death sentence that was, in many ways, crueler than what fate could have been hers without Qingheng-Jun’s intervention. Lan Xichen shudders but doesn’t protest, which he’ll take for a good sign.

“I only want to protect him, da-ge.”

“I know.”

Nie Mingjue takes a deep breath in and tries to think carefully about what he can possibly say that would comfort; he doesn’t have a great track record anyway, but tonight definitely doesn’t seem to be anywhere near his best attempts at fixing things. It would be so much handier if swinging his saber at every problem was actually an effective solution, but that’s sort of what got them here in the first place.

“Look — in an ideal world-” Nie Mingjue cuts himself off with a huff as far too many ‘ideal’ scenarios unfold to describe quickly. “A-Yao probably doesn’t even-” he cuts himself off again with an irritated snarl in the back of his throat. Why is this so fucking hard? And why is it so damn worth it?

He leans back enough to cup Lan Xichen’s face in both palms just as the other had done to him, and he forces Lan Xichen to really look at him, studying him closely until he sees some clarity return to his gaze.

“You are not your father. You do not love like him. How long have you spent loving me? Loving A-Yao? And alright so you haven’t said it to him but do you think he doesn’t know? Do you think it means any less to us to have your heart just because you do it quietly? You can’t hurt him by telling him what he already knows. Besides, he’s a hell of a lot stronger than I think you’re giving him credit for. He deserves to hear you say it.”

Lan Xichen studies him in silence for a few heartbeats before his shoulders slump ever so slightly, which might as well be the Lan equivalent of collapsing. His eyes drift shut and Nie Mingjue, on a whim, leans in to kiss just beneath both his brows, careful not to irritate the tender skin with his mustache. When he pulls away again Lan Xichen is smiling ever so slightly, the tiniest tilts at the corners of his mouth.

“So many years of careful misdirections between he and I and of course you smash through them all in a single evening,” he sighs, sounding far from angry. “A-Yao is strong, I know. He has survived so many things that would kill lesser men. But the fact remains that he isn’t at his best right now, and his physical safety is more important than an emotional discussion. There are dangerous people here who won’t hesitate to take advantage now that he no longer has Jin Guangshan’s protection, tenuous and unsatisfactory though it was. It only takes one lucky shot and we’ve lost him forever. I can’t… we promised we would be there for him, da-ge. We have to do something.”

Nie Mingjue takes a deep breath in, holds it, and brushes his thumbs idly against Lan Xichen’s cheekbones as he thinks it through. Jinlintai is currently abuzz with a quietly frantic sort of activity; there are funeral arrangements to be made, rituals to be performed, duties to exchange from father to son, guests to tend to, panic to keep from spreading — on his way to Jin Guangyao’s room he’d seen plenty of servants and messengers moving just slowly enough to avoid being accused of running on their way through the halls and gardens. Jinlintai never really sleeps but tonight it’s likely that the only ones who will be getting any meaningful sleep are the visiting sects.

It’s possible no one will notice either of them in the general vicinity of Jin Guangyao’s rooms again; it’s also possible that with so many people around they’re that much more likely to be noticed and questioned.

Baxia’s muttering in the back of his mind turns to snarling, angry at having to worry about appearances and having to bow and scrape to these other sect leaders and whatever unsavory things that they might have to say about the two of them protecting the man they’ve sworn an oath to, and quite frankly he can’t really find it in himself to disagree with her. If anyone wants to say anything they’re welcome to it, but if he’s so worried about gossip that he allows someone to hurt Jin Guangyao when he could’ve prevented it he’ll never forgive himself.

“Alright fuck this,” he growls and watches Lan Xichen’s eyes widen with surprise in the moment before Nie Mingjue releases him, grabs Baxia off the stand next to the bed, and sweeps towards the door all in the moments it takes Lan Xichen to gather his wits.

“Wait- A-Jue–”

“I’m going to go set the array and come back. You stay here.”

“But da-ge, your core, you shouldn’t–”

“Get out your guqin then and play Cleansing when I get back!” he snaps and yanks the door open, breaking the seal of the privacy talismans to stalk his way back through the gardens, Baxia practically purring on his back. He tunes out her bloodlust with slightly more ease than he does her idle rage as he retraces his steps through Jinlintai.

As expected, he passes plenty of servants scurrying around the place despite the hour, and more than once he’s certain he feels eyes trailing him as he makes his way through the complex; he never turns to see who it is. Let no one say that Nie Mingjue was spotted skulking through Jinlintai the night after Jin Guangshan’s murder. If anyone wishes to accuse him or call his actions into question then they can do it to his face, and he can face them knowing he held his head high and didn’t flinch from the idea of their petty gossip.

No one stops him. He passes through the courtyard nearest to Jin Guangyao’s room and the guards jogging through it on patrol must only be pretending to look busy as they don’t so much as pause as they pass him; that, or else they’ve been given orders not to care about who may be lurking near Jin Guangyao’s rooms, or to question after their purpose for being in the family complex in the middle of the night.

USELESS

Nie Mingjue doesn’t wince at the volume nor the vehemence of Baxia’s anger, but it’s a near thing considering she scrapes like a fistful of preserving salt along the raw edges of his meridians.

INCOM-

He throws up what he can only think of as a mental wall between himself and her formless presence, blunting his sense of the spiritual energy around him for the sake of preserving his hardwon sanity. It hardly matters; the garden is quiet around him after the guards leave the way he’d entered, and even with his spiritual senses dulled he’s confident that he would be able to hear the telltale signs of someone lying in wait. There’s only his breathing to be heard amongst the soft rustling of the plants in the breeze, only the crunch of the gravel path as he rounds the corner to find himself standing in front of Jin Guangyao’s room again. He lingers for a long moment or two, listening for any last potential for pursuit as well as steeling himself against the expectation of pain.

The array Lan Xichen had proposed is simple enough (he’s got the same one on his bath for heaven’s sake), and though he won’t admit it he does feel a little foolish for not having thought of it before. (In his defense, there’s a lot going on that’s clamoring for his limited attention and patience, and he’s really not supposed to be using his qi for anything anyway.) His palm glows red as he sketches the necessary characters in front of himself and, with a bracing inhale, shoves the finished array outwards to collide with the wooden door — and he promptly doubles over with a sharp exhale, his breath punched out of him by the force of his and Baxia’s combined energy scraping him raw from the inside out.

Well… perhaps if he gives Lan Xichen another reason to scold him he won’t work himself up into a miserable panic again.

It takes longer than he’d like to admit to be able to straighten up again, double check that the array will do what he wants it to do (and if he makes sure it has enough energy to glow faintly and warn off anyone who thinks of trying to break it, that’s his business), and turn on his heel to head back to Lan Xichen’s guest quarters. He moves slower this time, but his commitment to gathering as much information as possible about the state of Jinlintai is only rewarded once; as he passes from the private areas of the tower back towards the public, he pauses on the path to let Jin Zixuan through, flanked on either side by a small flock of handwringing elders. The new Jin-zongzhu looks exhausted already, his robes mussed and his face grim and unusually pale as he listens to whatever the nearest elder is muttering to him, hushed but visibly frantic. Their eyes meet for a heartbeat of a moment, just long enough for Nie Mingjue to offer him a nod and receive one in return before Jin Zixuan and his entourage disappear around the corner of the nearest building. He considers going after them, curious as to what all the entrenched snakes are whispering in the ear of their new, naïve leader, but he’s still fighting the urge to double over around his core so he leaves it for now in favour of delivering himself to Lan Xichen for a scolding and, hopefully, the soothing cool wash of his qi helping heal the damage of the poison and his cultivation.

“Mingjue!” Lan Xichen hisses and yanks him into his quarters when he arrives, putting some of that Lan arm strength to use. “Sit down and meditate.”

Even if it would get him anywhere to argue with Lan Xichen when he’s in this mood, he’s not exactly in a position to. He shuts the door behind himself, returns Baxia to the stand with Shuoyue, and settles in on the bed, legs crossed and his hands resting lightly on his knees.

“Be angry with me all you’d like, A-Huan, but at least A-Yao is safe.”

“You know very well that I won’t be content until you’re both safe. You should have let me go, particularly considering our conversation last night about how I feel about you actively worsening your health like this.”

“I know,” he murmurs as Lan Xichen begins plucking the familiar opening notes of Cleansing. “I’m sorry,” is easier to say than an explanation about hating the thought of his own weakness forcing Lan Xichen into doing something so painful to him as locking Jin Guangyao away, even if only temporarily.

“Yes, well… It is quite fortunate for you that I love you.”

Nie Mingjue cracks one eye open and smiles, slow like a sunrise, to see Lan Xichen focused far too intently on his guqin, the tips of his ears red enough that he can see it from halfway across the room.

“Oh?” Lan Xichen clears his throat and pointedly doesn’t look at him, save for a teasing, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it glance through his lashes before he looks down at his hands again. “That is extremely good fortune, I agree.”

Nie Mingjue settles in to concentrate on the music, letting it wash through him and soothe the raw aching of his abused core.

In the lull between the first round of Cleansing and the next, he rouses himself enough to murmur, a little drowsily, “It’ll all work out, A-Huan, I promise. It’s better for us to know each other’s hearts and minds than not.”

“I hope you’re right, ge. Meditate.”

Nie Mingjue settles and lets Lan Xichen continue playing for him through the night. Lan Xichen finishes the last round somewhere around mid-morning and gets up to resume his pacing; he���s only made a few circuits of the room when the door bursts open and Jin Guangyao blurts out a frantic, “I love you!”

See? He’d said it would be fine!

[add1ctedt0you]

Today is jiang yanli' birthday and I really wanted to do something for her! But I've no time, so this part of one of my whip will do.

As soon as she had awakened, Jiang Yanli had cried out, "A-Xian! A-Cheng!" But she had been on a bed in Meishan, not on a battlefield with a sword piercing her throat.

"Maiden Jiang," one of the Yu servants had stepped in, looking worried. "It was just a dream," the woman had said.

Jiang Yanli had looked at her, unable to stop sobbing. Then she had stood up and headed for Grandmother Yu.

The woman, in the throne room, seeing her in such a state, crying and dressed in her night robes, had frowned, "Yanli! What's going on? This behavior is not befitting a maiden!"

"Grandmother, Grandmother!!! Please listen to me! Please... Lotus Pier..."

"What are you babbling about? Speak plainly!"

Jiang Yanli had swallowed, wiping away her tears, trying to gather her thoughts, and as was about to open her mouth again, a messenger with blood-soaked clothes had entered, "Sect Leader Yu!"

"What bad news now?" Grandmother Yu had barked.

The messenger had revealed a letter and said, "This is for Maiden Jiang.”

Jiang Yanli hadn’t recognized the man, but his clothes were Jiang's. And they were stained with blood. Fearing the worst, Jiang Yanli had reached out and grabbed the letter with trembling hands.

The message, written in her brother's familiar handwriting, was short and to the point: ‘We are under attack. The former leaders are dead. Sister, I ask for your assistance!’

Crying, one hand covering her mouth, Jiang Yanli had shown the letter to Grandmother Yu.

"Grandmother! Please! Please, help my brother!" Jiang Yanli had begged in a quivering voice.

Grandmother's eyes had widened, her hand gripping the letter tightly, "Ziyuan!” She had muttered, her eyes shining.

Immediately, the woman had regained her composure and cleared her throat. "You, get ready! We are leaving for Lotus Pier!" She had barked, and everyone had carried out the order.

"You, Yanli, stay here, safely. I'll be back soon," and so, the woman had marched out of the room.

Jiang Yanli had watched her go, clutching the letter to her heart; then she had run back to her room, her heart beating wildly. She had no idea what the matter was, or why she had been there.

She had wondered: ‘Am I the only one?’

She had looked at the letter, then gone over to the window and lifted it up. As Jiang Yanli had looked at it in the light of the counter, she had noticed some words. Her heart had skipped a beat: this was the way she and her brother had communicated when she lived in Lanling, and Jiang Cheng wanted to tell her something confidential...

‘A-jie, then you also remember,’ the letter began. Jiang Yanli had stifled a sob.

She had gone through the letter several times, unable to make out the words due to the tears, as well as the inability to believe the information it contained.

Her brother had told her about everything that had happened since the day she had died: A-Xian’s death, A-Ling, the golden core’s transfer, Jin Guangyao, and so on.

‘A-jie, forgive me. In the end, it was all my fault,' the letter concluded.

Jiang Yanli had cried in despair, clutching the letter to her heart. "No, it was all my fault," she had sobbed into the empty room.

In the end, wiping away her tears, Jiang Yanli had gotten up, taken what she needed, and persuaded one of the Yu cultivators to take her to Lotus Pier.

[ibijau]

A song for the broken-heart pt 7 (end) / On AO3

The blankets were too light for this to be Qinghe, the bed too soft for Gusu. It took unusual effort for Nie Huaisang to conclude he was probably in Lanling, the only other place where he sometimes fell asleep. His eyelids felt immensely heavy, making it hard to lift them and check where he was, but after a long struggle Nie Huaisang’s eyes finally opened to the sight of a room decorated with luxury rather than taste. Definitely Koi Tower then, although at first he couldn’t figure out how he’d ended up there.

Thinking was so hard for some reason.

Staring at the ceiling long enough, Nie Huaisang started remembering something about Lan Xichen, about music. He’d been so scared, and he’d pushed himself so hard, and Jin Guangyao had…

In spite of how exhausted he was, Nie Huaisang sat up, seized by panic.

Jin Guangyao had tried to kill them.

He’d almost succeeded in killing them.

“None of that,” a voice said, while strong but gentle hands grabbed him by the shoulders. “You are in no state to be moving yet.”

Out of sheer contradiction, Nie Huaisang thought of resisting. Then his brain caught up to what he’d heard, and recognised Lan Xichen’s voice. He let himself fall back on the too soft bed and turned his head to the side to see the other man.

That he had missed Lan Xichen sitting so close to his bed was a testament to his exhaustion. The other man looked tired as well, though the bags under his eyes spoke of a few poor nights rather than the complete hollowness that made Nie Huaisang’s thoughts so sluggish.

“San-ge?” he managed to ask.

Lan Xichen smiled sadly and, apparently satisfied that Nie Huaisang wasn’t trying to move anymore, removed his hands from the other man’s shoulder. The absence of his touch was a torture, albeit a short-lived one, as Lan Xichen moved to gently push away some loose hair from Nie Huaisang’s face.

“He will not harm you again,” Lan Xichen said. “Nor anyone else. He was deposed as soon as he confessed his crimes to the world, and he's been dealt with. I wanted to wait until you woke up, but others feared he might find a way to escape if we gave him time, so he has already been executed.”

Nie Huaisang blinked a few times, surprised that others had felt in such a hurry. It had been night when he’d passed out, but the current light seemed to indicate either late morning or early afternoon. Couldn’t they have waited a little more, so he’d get the satisfaction of witnessing the death of his enemy?

His surprise must have shown more than he thought, because Lan Xichen frowned.

“Huaisang, it has been over a week now,” he explained, his hands trembling as they continued putting order to Nie Huaisang's hair. “And until yesterday, we all worried you might never wake up. We did not even dare to move you away from Lanling, for fear it would kill you.”

Nie Huaisang blinked again. That answered a question he hadn’t even managed to ask himself. He'd been ready to die that night, if that was what it took to make Jin Guangyao fall, but thinking yourself ready for death and actually feeling it pass by were not the same.

“You?” Nie Huaisang asked. “Hurt?”

“Not in any significant way,” Lan Xichen said, and even in his current Nie Huaisang knew that wasn’t a ‘no’. “Don’t worry about me. Do you think you can drink something?”

Nie Huaisang managed to nod, more to make Lan Xichen happy than out of any real thirst. He barely felt the taste of the tepid broth he was offered, and couldn’t swallow more than a few sips before he felt nauseous and had to stop. Lan Xichen still praised him for drinking that much, promising there would be more for him later, that he was safe, that he could rest, that everything would be fine now. He never stopped his reassurances until Nie Huaisang fell asleep again, and perhaps even went on a while after.

When he woke up next, Nie Huaisang was no longer in Lanling. In fact, he was actively moving away from the city, having been laid down in a carriage, the movements of which had caused him to wake up. It was disorienting at first, until Nie Huaisang noticed that Lan Xichen was sitting next to him again. One of his hand was casually resting on Nie Huaisang's shoulders, either to keep in place the blanket that had been placed there, or because he too needed the comfort of touch after everything that had happened.

Feeling safe for the first time in half a lifetime, Nie Huaisang closed his eyes to catch some more rest.

It took them a while to reach Qinghe, longer than it would have if they’d flown there, but apparently every doctor who had seen Nie Huaisang had insisted that if he was to be moved at all, it needed to be done with great attention to his comfort. Some days, when the road was particularly bad, Nie Huaisang thought that it would have been more comfortable to be carried on someone’s sword. On other days, when he was well enough to sit for a while and chat with Lan Xichen, he found that taking things slow wasn’t so bad after all. And as they approached their destination, Nie Huaisang found himself wishing that the trip would never end, so he could have an easy excuse to keep Lan Xichen at his side, entertaining him and spoiling him just as he used to do when they were young.

The thought was so present in his mind that he blurted it without thinking, on the morning of the day they were supposed to reach the Unclean Realm. It was one of Nie Huaisang's good day, and he was sitting next to Lan Xichen, a little closer than friends would have. Of course he had to ruin that comfortable moment by saying something that was embarrassing thing to speak, and worse to hear.

Lan Xichen merely laughed.

He’d been laughing more easily lately, and more frequently as well, as if he were trying to make up for all the years he'd been so gloomy. Nie Huaisang had forgotten how much he loved the sound and sight of that laugh.

“I don’t intend to simply drop you in the Unclean Realm and head home,” Lan Xichen said. “I have already warned shufu that I plan on staying in Qinghe until you are better.”

“Didn’t you say it might take months for my health to return to normal?” Nie Huaisang asked. “How come your uncle didn't protest against you being gone so long?”

“I must have forgotten to bring up that detail,” Lan Xichen said with a mischievous smile. “He’ll figure it out in time.” His smile wavered. “Unless… of course, if it turns out you do not truly wish to be burdened with my company…”

It was odd to see Lan Xichen so uncertain, and on such a topic too.

They had not spoken again of the things they had confessed while Jin Guangyao held them hostage. At first Nie Huaisang had been too unwell to think of these things, and then later on he hadn’t dared to bring it up, waiting for Lan Xichen to breach that topic. As the offended party in their breakup, it seemed natural that Lan Xichen had the right to decide how they should discuss this. And if Lan Xichen did not wish to discuss it at all, then that was his right as well, painful as it was.

It had not occurred to Nie Huaisang until that moment that perhaps Lan Xichen had been instead waiting for him to initiate that conversation, and had been just as disappointed as him when it never happened.

What a pair of fools they made.

“Xichen-ge, I… I cannot say there has never been a day in my life I didn’t want to see you,” Nie Huaisang said, “because there have been time when I was angry that you always favoured San-ge, even while knowing it was my own fault that you’d turned to him. But those days have been few, and they are in the past. I am happy to have you here with me, I really am, and I’ll be happy as long as I can keep you. I… I truly meant everything I said that night.”

Hearing this, Lan Xichen’s face illuminated. He tried to speak, but Nie Huaisang stopped him.

“You know, for all the wrong he’s done, maybe Sang-ge wasn’t wrong about me,” he said. “I’m not sure I would have made a very good husband back then, I can see that now. I don’t think I could have been the person you needed at your side, not until I was forced to finally grow up.”

He’d been so spoiled as a youth. He hadn’t understood it at the time, because it was all that he’d ever known, because the smallest contrariety felt like a tragedy, because his brother had sheltered him as much as he could. Certainly the Sunshot Campaign had already changed him, but it wasn’t until he’d lost first the man he loved and then his brother that Nie Huaisang had truly understood how the world worked.

“The person I needed at my side was you,” Lan Xichen softly countered as he took Nie Huaisang's hands. “I knew what you were like when we were young, and I had not offered marriage lightly. I will repeat that offer now, knowing what you are now, the ways you’ve changed, the ways I’ve changed as well. I would not have regretted marrying you when we were young, nothing can convince me otherwise. And I will not regret marrying you now, if you will have me.”

“Of course I'll have you! But some husband I’ll be,” Nie Huaisang muttered, and yet when the carriage went over a bump on the road, he took it as an excuse to shuffle a little closer to Lan Xichen.

“The only one I’ve ever wanted,” Lan Xichen retorted, radiant with happiness as he let go of Nie Huaisang’s hands to instead take him in his arms and press a kiss on his lips. “And this time, I won’t let anyone convince you otherwise.”

[remma3760]

Consequences

Chapter 32: Epilogue

Summary:

Wen Ruohan is dead. The sects adjust to the new normal

The Dafan Wen were the first to declare independence. They stated their intention of forming a Healer Clan and claimed Dafan Mountain as their own. With the full backing of both the Lan and the Nie, who could argue?

The Lan Sect gave them full access to their library even allowing them to take copies of rare medical texts and in return the Dafan Wen donated much of their own work. They built a school to pass on their knowledge that soon became a famed centre for medical excellence. If people thought that the Lan or Nie funded the school, let them believe what they would. Let them forget that two members of the Dafan Wen had been in Nightless City with full access to the treasury when Wen Ruohan launched his disastrous attack on Cloud Recesses. 

While the Dafan Wen were the first, they were far from the last. Gradually, all the branch families took over their own territories and before long the mighty Wen Sect was instead a collection of small, loosely allied clans, most with close ties to the Lan, the Nie or both. None achieved the renown of the Dafan branch, but they took care of their people and were considerably better off than they had been under Wen Ruohan, so all was well. 

***

Jin Guangshan tried to take advantage of a perceived power vacuum following Wen Ruohan's death. He attempted to claim lands to which he had no right. He failed. Disgruntled, he called a discussion conference in Lanling. Both the Lan and Nie sent their regrets but they would be unable to attend as they had more pressing concerns at home. 

Most smaller sects followed suit and in the end the only attendees were Sect Leaders Yao and Ouyang. Even Jin Guangshan's good friend Sect Leader Qin didn't show as he was too busy organising his daughter's wedding to Lan Xichen.

Jin Guangshan sat on his raised throne, oozing discontent at the rows of empty tables. He wanted to be Chief Cultivator. He even tried declaring himself as such but no-one acknowledged him or gave him the respect he craved. He sulked in his room, alone.

It was left to Madam Jin to organise her son's wedding to Jiang Yanli. The Jiang's did not contribute, although Jiang Fengmian and Jiang Cheng did at least attend. Yu Ziyuan did not.

Madam Jin made sure it was an event to remember. She was the one to send out the invitations and it was to her the sects sent their acceptance. Everyone came. After all, Jin Zixuan was good friends with both Lan Xichen and Nie Mingjue. Madam Jin, too, had become close to Madam Nie. Sad at the need to cut contact with Yu Ziyuan, her only friend, Jin Lihua had turned to Nie Min for comfort. The two found they shared a sly sense of humour and soon became confidants.

Jin Guangshan who had no involvement with wedding arrangement naturally tried to take all the credit for the event. Clan leaders would nod politely to him then give their congratulations to Madam Jin and the happy couple. 

Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli gave Jin Guangshan the filial respect he was due but no more. He was never included in their lives. His wife, on the other hand, was loved by both Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan. When their son Jin Ling was born it was Madam Jin who got to hold him first. While Jin Guangshan was never deliberately kept from the child there always seemed to somewhere else Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli needed to be when he called for them. On the rare occasions he did get to hold the baby, Jin Ling screamed and kicked until he was given back. Jin Guangshan felt himself ignored.

He chose to bring his bastard son, Meng Yao to Koi Tower. He conveniently forgot that he had thrown the boy down the stairs when he had come to him before. Since then, Meng Yao had made a name for himself with the Nie, so Jin Guangshan decided he might be worth something after all. He even gave him a better name - Jin Guangyao.

As Jin Guangyao settled into his new home he soon came to realise that this was not the dream his mother had hoped for him. Jin Guangshan kept him close but never really accepted him. Jin Guangshan would complain to Jin Guangyao constantly of his woes. It was Jin Guangyao who was blamed for every rebuff, every discourtesy. It was Jin Guangyao who bore the brunt of Jin Guangshan's dissatisfaction. He would look at his father and wonder what his mother had been thinking.

And so it might have continued had not Jin Guangyao come accross a crying Jiang Yanli walking the halls with a wailing Jin Ling. Concerned, he rushed to her to see if either was injured. They were not. Jin Ling was teething and would not calm. Jiang Yanli did not want to give over the care of her son to a servant but she was so tired. Jin Guangyao offered to take the baby so she could rest for a moment and she agreed. He looked down at the little red face and Jin Ling looked back. Probably exhausted from crying, Jin Ling quieted, then blew a spit bubble at Jin Guangyao. Jin Guangyao fell in love. 

Jiang Yanli looked on in wonder, then smiled beautifically and declared that Jin Ling must really love his uncle and begged Jin Guangyao to visit with them more often. Jin Guangyao found that he wanted that very much. He was easily welcomed by his brother and his brother's wife. Madam Jin was less happy at his inclusion, but soon decided that he was an asset, his organisational skills much superior to her current assistant. There was also the not inconsiderable pleasure of stealing Jin Guangyao from her husband. Jin Guangshan, naturally, sulked. Alone.

One day, Jin Guangyao found himself called to Madam Jin's rooms. Nervous, he went. It turned out, Madam Jin wanted to set up Jin orphanages as she had seen the Lan do. It was something she had thought of for a while but Jin Guangshan had been against the idea. Now she intended to go ahead regardless of her husband's wishes. She asked for Jin Guangyao's assistance. He was more than willing to help and threw himelf into the endeavour happily. 

A whole network of homes were set up accross Lanling. When it was time for the first to open, Madam Jin again called Jin Guangyao to her. She suggested to him a suitable name for the orphanages - The Meng Shi Childrens' Shelters. Jin Guangyao cried. Madam Jin patted his hand and continued detailing her plans until he was once again in control of himself. 

Jin Guangyao took a deep breath as he looked at Madam Jin. His mother had been both right and wrong. So so wrong about his father, but right that he should come to Koi Tower. This was his home now. By coming here had had found something he had craved for a long time. He had found a family.

***

Madam Yu was insane. Everyone knew it though no-one talked about it. Not in front of Jiang Cheng, anyway. She had never recovered from the disastrous trip to Cloud Recesses. The loss of her arm followed by a public punishment had changed her. 

She never left her room. The windows had been shuttered to keep out the light. She rarely bathed or changed her clothes. Often she would call for Jinzhu and Yinzhu, getting angry when they did not come. Often, it seemed like she forgot what had happened, then she would see the empty sleeve where her arm once was and scream with fury. 

She would refuse food, throwing it at whichever poor servant had brought it to her. Then later, she would get hungry and scrape it from the floor and walls to eat it. 

She raged at the world. Her walls were covered in papers. Yu Ziyuan kept records of every imagined slight, charted every sign of disrespect ever shown her and pasted them all up. In the centre, written on the walls was Wei Wuxian's name. She found a way to link every disappointment of her life back to him. 

The Meishan Yu came to visit. The Yu Sect Leader, his grandmother, spent a long moment watching her then shook her head and left. After that, money started arriving from Meishan, but no-one ever came again. Jiang Cheng would force himself to go into her room but often she didn't even know him. 

So Yu Ziuan was insane and everyone knew it. What they didn't know was that Jiang Fengmian was also insane. A more gentle madness than his wife, but mad nonetheless. He spent all his days sitting at his desk and staring into space. Jiang Cheng had no idea what he was looking at, what he was seeing. A happier time, perhaps? Who knew? Certainly not Jiang Cheng.

No-one but Jiang Cheng was allowed to enter. As far as the rest of Lotus Pier knew, Jiang Fengmian still ran the sect. They didn't know that Jiang Cheng managed everything, only putting documents in front of Jiang Fengmian and directing him to sign. Which Jiang Fengmian would do without looking or with any sign of awareness. Jiang Cheng had no idea how long this pretence could continue or what would happen when people realised the truth. 

Jiang Cheng hated his disciples. They were loud, crude, unruly and all older than him. No parent sent their child for training to Lotus Pier anymore. Had not since the incident with Wei Wuxian all those years ago. They had to take what they could get, which usually meant the men no-one else wanted. Jiang Cheng strongly suspected that many of the newer disciples were former Wen who had nowhere else to go after their humiliation at the hands of the Lan and so had ended up here. 

He looked down at the blank sheet of paper in front of him. It didn't have to be like this. He didn't have to be so alone. His sister loved him. He knew she did. He need only write and she would invite him to visit. He could spend time with her. Could meet his baby nephew. But what would he say?

He knew what she wanted to hear. That he was sorry. That he was wrong. Deep deep down, he knew that was true. Knew that it was absurd to still be blaming Wei Wuxian for anything that happened in Lotus Pier. But if he stopped, if Wei Wuxian was innocent, what did that mean for him? If Wei Wuxian was not to blame then he would have to take responsibility. He would have to accept that had he not punched Jin Zixuan then none of this would have happened. His mother would not have been in Cloud Recesses. She would not have attacked Wei Wuxian. She would not have lost her arm or Zidian or her precious maids. And he couldn't. He couldn't admit that, not even to himself.

So what was there left to say to his sister? I miss you? I need you? I hate my life and I have nothing? Please come home? No, he couldn't say any of that. He still had his pride, even if he had nothing else. 

He screwed up the paper and threw it away. He couldn't write. Not today. But maybe, just maybe, he would be ready tomorrow.

***

Six months after Wen Ruohan died Wen Qing married Nie Mingjue. Nie Huaisang was ecstatic, bringing out a staggeringly big book of fabric swatches, wedding designs,menu cards and a list of the best birds to release at the ceromony. Nie Mingjue and Wen Qing looked at it in horror, then at each other and promptly eloped.

Nie Huaisang was by turns inconsolable and foot stampingly angry. Nie Mingjue gave him a colourful parrot to appease him. Nie Huaisang taught his parrot to insult Nie Mingjue every time it saw him. That helped his mood enormously. 

Things were starting to settle nicely when Wen Qing found out about the Nie Saber Curse. She raged at Nie Jiahao and Nie Mingjue, refusing to let such a thing stand; not on her watch. Nie Min and Nie Huaisang fumed by her side, equally angry since neither of them had been in on the secret. 

Once Wen Qing felt that both men were sufficiently cowed she sent for Wei Wuxian and Baoshen Sanren and they got to work on a cure. 

Nie Huaisang was again inconsolable, this time joined by Nie Min. It was only when Nie Jiahao promised them that they could completely redecorate the Unclean Realm were they mollified.

As for the unbreakable saber curse, well, it stood little chance against the concerted efforts of the greatest doctor of her generation, the best inventor ever known and an immortal. Within a month it was eradicated. Nie Jiahao, Nie Mingjue and all future Nie Sect Leaders were forever safe from qi deviation and would live long and contented lives. Nie Jiahao cried, blessing the day his son had brought home such a bride.

The following year when Wen Qing gave birth to twins - a fierce little girl and happy little boy, there was great rejoicing across Qinge. No parents could have been prouder or happier.

Nie Huaisang vied with Wen Ning for the position of favourite uncle. Wen Ning complained that Nie Huaisang had the advantage since he lived permanently in the Unclean Realm. While Wen Ning visited often, he was frequently away. He had completed his medical training and was an accomplished healer, travelling around the villages helping wherever he was needed. His arrival was always eagerly anticipated, a small room being set aside for him to see patients. 

One day Wen Ning found himself in a sticky situation involving an angry goose. He was saved by a travelling rogue cultivator. He thanked her then left to go on his way. He was surprised when she introduced herself as Chen Xiu and started walking with him. Nothing was said but they soon spent all their time together. After a few months and one or two more close calls, Chen Xiu turned to Wen Ning exasperated and informed him that he really wasn't safe to be allowed out alone and she had no idea how he had managed without her for so long. She said that they had better get married before he fell into a ditch and broke his neck. Wen Ning happily agreed. 

Nie Huasiang had no interest in marriage. He had his fans, his birds, his books and his art. He loved spending time with his niece and nephew but had no desire for children of his own. He was content to laze around doing nothing at all. When rumours started to circulate about Jin Guangshan (That he was impotent. That he was plagued with bloating gas that constantly escaped at both ends of his body and that was the reason he never entertained anymore. That he had developed a glandular problem that meant he always stank of rotting fish) Nie Huaisang's family looked at him in suspicion. He looked innocently back. 

Then the plays began appearing, becoming wildly popular. Riotous tales of Wen Ruohan's downfall. Heroic tales featuring the beautiful Wen doctor who defied her despotic uncle; of her handsome Nie love who flew to her side as soon as he was free to do so. Again his family looked to him, but he shrugged and said he knew nothing, nothing at all. Nobody believed him.

***

Lan Xichen's marriage to Qin Su was even more lavish than that of his brother and cousin. Baoshen Sanren had again inserted herself into proceedings. This time, she was aided and abetted by Nie Huaisang. Having been thwarted in his plans for his own brother's wedding he begged to be allowed to assist with that of his brother's best friend. Baoshen Sanren took one look at his wedding book and gleefully accepted. 

The two conspired together over every aspect of the celebrations. Lan Qiren tried to object that it was becoming ridiculous, but was overruled on every point. Eventually, he gave up and carried his grandson off to play with the bunnies.

The hard work paid off. Both bride and goom were beautiful, smiling radiantly at everyone and everything. Lan Yuan was brought in to jump on the marriage bed to bring fertility to the happy couple. Qin Su covered her face and giggled at the custom while Lan Xichen cleared his throat and blushed. 

When, only nine months later little Lan Song entered the world, Lan Yuan took full credit. When Lan Xichen reached his twenty-first year Lan Qiren handed over leadership to him with relief. As expected Lan Xichen was an exemplary sect leader, showing wisdom and compassion to all those who came to the Lan for help. He had his uncle by his side and Lan Yi just a letter away should he need advice. He rarely did, soon finding his feet. Lan Xichen was the first of his contemporaries to take this position, leading the way into a new era. 

Lan Qiren had never wanted to raise children or be sect leader. Both situations had been thrust upon him. He found himself infinitely glad for the first, and happy to be rid of the second. He now had time. Time to read. Time to write. Time to play with his growing number of great nephews and nieces. Still, his favourite was and would always remain his grandson, A-Yuan. 

He resumed teaching. He genuinely enjoyed imparting knowledge and seeing the eagerness to learn in the little faces turned up to him was a delight.

Baoshen Sanren and Lan Yi had begun spending many months each year at Cloud Recesses. Lan Qiren enjoyed their visits immensely, arguing semantics with Baoshen Sanren and playing music with Lan Yi. That was a special pleasure for him, to rediscover his joy in music. 

Every morning Lan Qiren would wake up happy for the day ahead. His life more full than he could ever have hoped for when he was a young man. He was content every day of his life. 

As for Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian, they continued to do what they loved most. They became known for always going where the chaos was. If called to they would go, no matter who called or what problem needed solving. 

They bought a donkey - a particular wish of Wei Wuxian. She was a cantankerous beast named Little Apple since she had a particular love of apples. A-Yuan would perch on her back as they went on their travels. Wei Wuxian had been nervous of taking A-Yuan with them, scared that if something should happen to them he would be left alone. Lan Wangji reassured him that that would not happen to their son. They made sure that each time they took on a night hunt clear and precise instructions were left that the Lan Sect was to be instantly contacted in the even of a calamity. 

They took A-Yuan often to meet his family in Dafan Mountain.The Wens had been informed as soon as possible that he had survived and were overjoyed to get to know him. Lan Yuan, in turn loved the time he spent with them and would leave Dafan Mountain laden down with gifts. 

Wei Wuxian continued to create astonishing advancements in cultivation. The Spirit Lure Flag, Numbing Talisman and Compass of Evil were hugely popular and brought in a great deal of revenue for the Lan Sect. Then there was Binding. A talisman that would attach two people to each other while still allowing them to move freely. Wei Wuxian had developed that one after a terrifying incident in a market when A-Yuan had wandered away and been lost for almost ten minutes. With Binding, Lan Yuan was free to explore safely. This particular talisman soon became the favourite of parents everywhere.

As much as Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji enjoyed travelling, they  never stayed away from Cloud Recesses for too long. It was their home; the place their family lived. No, they could never stray too far or too long from the people they loved the most. 

In fact, one might even say:

THEY ALL LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER.

[headshaker]

ESTABLISHING A POSTAL SYSTEM.

This post takes a look at one of Huaisang's greatest projects / long-term goals. It establishes the basics of his information network. It also addresses the future of what watchtowers post-canon.

WHEN MINGJUE DIED, HUAISANG LOST interest in nearly everything he’d cherished before. He stopped painting. He stopped playing the sheng. He destroyed much of his collection in early fits of grief. He maintains the persona of an idle fop, and he does enjoy moving in artistic circles, but it no longer brings him joy to pursue such activities himself. His love of pigeons was one of the few interests to survive the cull, likely due to his close relationship with him. They are living, breathing creatures he has raised since they hatched, making them nearly as dear as family. Fortunately, it is also an interest that suits his persona as keeping birds is a hobby generally associated with the ideal elite.

What people do not understand, however, is just how valuable such a “hobby” can be in clever hands. His work during the Sunshot Campaign taught him how crucial it is to control lines of communication as well as how much people carelessly let slip. After the war, he began formulating a plan for a postal system / courier service. The reality is that there would be no public postal system during this time. There is no unified government, and the powers that be (the sects) don’t require even a closed postal system for official communication. The wealthy can afford to employ someone as a messenger / send a servant. But, what of less wealthy cultivators who need to communicate with people in other areas? And, what of everyday people who have messages to send, too?

Huaisang made no move to answer these questions while Mingjue lived, but they became crucial to his efforts afterward. Working through layers of anonymity and intermediaries, he established a series of inns throughout Hedong, Qinghe, and surrounding areas. These inns were not for regular travelers but instead offered carrier pigeon services as well as provided respite to couriers in their employ. For a bit of coin, anyone at all could send a message or package through this system. Although Huaisang was careful to keep his involvement hidden, he contrived circumstances that would force visitors to use this system, thus helping it spread to other areas (Lanling, Gusu, etc.).

Although a lucrative business, he receives little, if any, monetary gain from it. Some untraceable income is necessary, but it’s ultimately more to his benefit to keep those who run this network wealthy and thus firmly in his pocket. The further the network spreads and the more people use it, the more information he has access to; mail is never truly secure. Furthermore, he can use these inns as fronts for spies, discreet drop-offs, and so on. In that way, it’s not unlike spy cells. The leadership and staff thus essentially has two layers: the public layer comprised of people involved in the legitimate aspects of this business and the private layer comprised of people involved in the shady aspects. The truth is it provides him with a high volume of intel, much of it personal, but very little of that intel is valuable on its own. The real trick is accumulating it over time, like drops of water in an ocean that may one day drown his opposition.

This remains his primary information network after he becomes Chief Cultivator, especially as he is inclined toward utilizing soft power and really working the rumor mill. The closest he ever gets to having an information network others can identify lays in how he uses the watchtowers JGY built. This is not something he approaches until he is firmly entrenched as Chief Cultivator years down the line; there was enough paranoia surrounding these towers being used for surveillance that he doesn’t want to spook anyone. Essentially, he allows them to enter a state of decline. It’s always been incumbent on local sects to staff them, but many don’t want to; he simply doesn’t address the matter, allowing said sects to abandon them. Then he arranges for a series of incidents that scare people enough to want them back. To prove just how seriously he takes the matter, he offers to not only repair the towers but assign Nie disciples to alleviate the burden of local sects. Many are all too happy to take him up on the offer, not perceiving what a threat he is and thinking this will save them trouble. He has only ever needed a foot in the door. While he doesn’t watch these sects closely enough to garner suspicion, information on their movements and their lands is valuable enough. Not to mention the control it gives him over how quickly news of emergencies spreads and in what direction. No one makes a mountain out of a molehill better than him.

[poorlittleyaoyao]

Well technically the postcanon Jin ARE amenable to reforming the succession! By way of probably murdering Jin Ling in a violent coup. Jin Ling didn't even automatically inherit, Jiang Cheng had to go over with zidian in hand to threaten A-Ling's various scheming cousins into backing him before he was officially appointed sect leader. Like because all the current sects we hear about were founded AS bloodline sects the parent to child inheritance presumably IS in the sect laws. Not that it's impossible to change the sect laws but thats probably easier to do in the event of no blood relation to inherit. The Jin are chock full of blood relations who could challenge Jin Ling and that's the whole problem.

ohhhh I am sitting here vibrating because medieval England as told via inaccurate Elizabethan plays is one of the historical settings I enjoy and Jin Ling shades of Edward III, Richard II, and Elizabeth of York going on at different points in his life!

But to zero in on the Richard II part (because Richard ALSO inherited at a young age because his father predeceased his grandfather): That's why I mentioned safety as a factor for Jiang Cheng pushing for the Jin having a meritocracy. Richard spent his early life being micromanaged and run roughshod over by his uncles by turns, and his position was precarious even as an adult. Some of this was self-inflicted, to be fair, but a lot of it was that he had SO MANY uncles who felt that they (or their sons) had at least a good a claim as Richard, especially since Richard had no heir of his own. Richard would, ultimately, be deposed and replaced with his cousin Henry IV, after which he was imprisoned and died under Highly Suspicious Circumstances.

That's the environment I envision Jin Ling stuck in following canon, and the issue I see Jiang Cheng facing is whether Jin Ling is safer if he steps down from his place as leader of Lanling Jin, or whether he needs to maintain power at all costs because Lanling Jin is such a nest of vipers that his relatives will harm him even if he willingly steps down because his existence itself is seen as a threat. And I don't know the answer to that one! I wish I did. I would read the shit out of that novel.

(TANGENT: The danger in which Jin Ling finds himself must have existed in equal measure for Jin Guangyao, because while Jin Guangyao has the advantage of being adult, he has the disadvantage of being a belatedly-legitimized bastard whose name punts him out of the order of succession. While English law stated that the kingship belonged to Richard, there was debate over whether they ought to instead grant it to his eldest living uncle, John of Gaunt, but support went to Richard because John of Gaunt was an asshole. I wonder if the reverse that happened with Jin Guangyao, with his sparkling reputation overriding his birth thanks to the alternatives being small children or total shitheads.)

Any changes in laws WOULD take time, though, especially given the rancid vibes in Jinlintai, so there is no easy way out of this for poor Jin Ling. The Edward III path of being a hardass seems like it probably would be safest for him, and that makes me sad.

[tragcdysewn]

was that meng ziyi? oh no no, that was just wen qing, a canon character from the untamed. they are twenty five years old, use she/they, and are aware that they are not actually from washington dc. too bad they can’t stray from this city for long.

how long has your character been here:

a little over two years now, their physical age is about twenty seven

what is your character’s job:

she's a med student, and interning at george washington university

where has your character been pulled from in their fandom:

after her death at lanling

has any magic affected your character:

she is very much alive as she deserves thank you

and any other information you might find useful for us and the other members to know:

wen qing was born in a small village called dafan that housed an offset of the wen clan. their clan was made up almost entirely of healers, and wen qing took to healing from a young age as well

unfortunately, when she was very young, wen qing's parents were killed by an attack that also left her brother, wen ning, missing a part of his spiritual cognition. she and her brother were taken in by their mother's cousin, the clan leader of the wens, wen ruohan

wen ruohan raised the two of them, and was kind to them, which wen qing was grateful for. grateful enough that when wen ruohan's experiments took a dark turn that required their skills to keep him alive, she didn't question it, and did all she could for quite some time

she became his personal healer, and when she did hesitate, wen ruohan made it clear that if she betrayed him, their brother would suffer for it, so they became his most loyal servant, on call at every hour of the day in case the clan leader became ill or injured

she and her brother were sent to the cloud recesses guest lectures to keep an eye on things, and that was where she met wei wuxian, as well as jiang cheng. they remained cold and aloof, because becoming sympathetic to the people the clan leader intended to take over would doom both herself and their brother. though she did, unfortunately, develop some sympathies for the people around them when they traveled together for a time

when war broke out, she ended up assisting wei wuxian and jiang cheng in hiding from the wens after the fall of lotus pier, and, at wei wuxian's behest, she performed the first ever golden core transfer, removing his core to give to his brother, before rushing her brother away in an attempt to find them both safety

they failed, and they were captured and locked away from her brother for the majority of the war ,until she was released by jiang forces, and given a comb from jiang cheng, now the clan leader. she began searching for wen ning to no avail, until months after the end of the war, when she managed to track him down with wei wuxian's help, only to find him already gone and the rest of her clan locked in a labor camp

wei wuxian took them all to the burial mounds to hide, and worked to bring wen ning back from his near dead state. he succeeded, with wen ning becoming a fierce corpse who eventually lost control and murdered the heir to the jin clan

the jins, who had already hated then and called for their death, were now ready to declare war on the wen remnants, unless wen qing and wen ning surrendered themselves. she managed to knock wei wuxian out, and they and wen ning went to lanling, where she was burned alive for her perceived crimes against the clans

in dc, she's torn between anger at their circumstances and a desire to let go and live this new chance at life in the most exciting ways she can, and they do mostly lean into the second, though sometimes that anger does rear its head and make a scene

[denimbex1986]

'A world-renowned science, technology and research laboratory, tasty red and green chile, and beautiful terrain called Carlos and Miguel Chacon back to their home state of New Mexico this summer.

The brothers, both senior engineering (robotics) majors in Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University’s Polytechnic campus, recently completed summer internships at the famed Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico.

LANL, located 35 miles from the town of Los Alamos, has been the subject of renewed interest with the recent release of the blockbuster film “Oppenheimer,” about J. Robert Oppenheimer, an American theoretical physicist and director of the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos laboratory during World War II.

The Chacon brothers are very familiar with LANL and its surroundings. They graduated from Los Alamos High School and did coursework in robotics at The University of New Mexico Los Alamos.

“I was very excited and honored when I received the news that I was accepted as a summer intern for LANL. Being at one of the country’s top scientific and national security laboratories with experts spanning a wide variety of fields, this internship has been an excellent opportunity to learn, develop my (professional) network and gain valuable experience,” Carlos said.

Carlos worked on developing procedures and conducting experiments on how water molecules behave in a vacuum environment similar to that commonly found in the chambers and glove boxes used to handle plutonium at LANL. The overall aim was to identify methods and techniques to effectively remove moisture in production environments.

“LANL has a very well-organized mentoring program for undergraduate student interns, and I am thankful for my two mentors who have supported me in every step I have taken to grow as an engineer and who let me know that my work is helping make a difference,” Carlos said.

Like his brother, Miguel said he feels fortunate and grateful to have had the opportunity to work at LANL.

“I have learned so much throughout this experience, and it has opened my eyes to the wide range of important scientific work that is carried out by LANL. I am also amazed at all the connections I have made at the lab so far, and have gotten the chance to meet some amazing people who are working on exciting projects,” he said...

What do they want their fellow students to know about LANL?

“It is a place like no other in terms of the wide range of interesting work being done in the name of national security. As an intern, it is a great place to make connections and hone in on your interests. As an employee, it is a great place to start off your career and work on meaningful projects that make a difference,” Miguel said...'

[qiu-yan]

cannot believe that you're making me, a jiang cheng stan blog, say this, but i think you're being a bit unfair to lan wangji here....

like we both agree that jiang cheng could not politically afford to protect the wen remnants or to remain publicly tied to wei wuxian after wei wuxian attacked lanling jin's labor camp. could jiang cheng have encouraged wei wuxian to try and fix his shitty reputation himself? could jiang cheng have tried to visit more often in secret? maybe, maybe not. but the fact is that the postwar yunmeng jiang was still in the beginning stages of rebuilding from a near-complete annihilation, that it was the one great sect not included in the venerated triad's sworn brotherhood and therefore stood relatively alone, and that lanling jin by contrast was the strongest and richest sect in in the postwar period. standing by wei wuxian and in the process alienating lanling jin was not something yunmeng jiang could afford.

but now let's consider gusu lan's situation. while gusu lan did not suffer the same scale of near-complete massacre that yunmeng jiang suffered, the cloud recesses were still burned and a good portion of its priceless library lost. thus, we can conclude that postwar gusu lan also sorely needed funds, both to rebuild destroyed infrastructure and to try and replace/rewrite the books lost when the library burned. as your meme states, these funds most likely came primarily from lanling jin - due in no small part to the sworn brotherhood between gusu lan's sect leader, zewu-jun, and lianfang-zun of lanling jin. in fact, i think it's reasonable to conclude that lianfang-zun specifically played a major role in bankrolling the rebuilding of the cloud recesses.

now, how reliable is this financial support? can this financial support weather scandals - such as gusu lan's hanguang-jun publicly siding with someone who lanling jin considers to be an enemy? i don't know. on one hand, if jin guangshan is smart, he should know that having another one of the great sects owe lanling jin a tremendous and publicly known debt of gratitude is a tremendous political advantage and would help him seize the dominance over the jianghu he clearly wants. on the other hand, an ally who owes you yet will slap you in the face like this might not be worth spending that much money to support. furthermore, jin guangshan clearly thinks nothing of lianfang-zun: lianfang-zun's obvious personal investment in helping his sworn brother, then, might actually push jin guangshan away from supporting gusu lan, just to be a dick to his beloathed bastard son.

from this, i think we can conclude that gusu lan's leadership, at least, has a vested interest in keeping lanling jin happy. and keep in mind that this is not merely a "morally cowardly" position for them to take, no matter what the text of MDZS itself insists: after all, sects are not shiny baubles kept around for the enjoyment of their leaders, but rather organizations comprised of flesh-and-blood human beings who are capable of suffering and dying. gusu lan getting cut off from lanling jin's funds translates into gusu lan's infrastructure not being rebuilt, its disciples potentially not having enough housing to live in, enough clothing to wear, enough equipment to stay safe during night-hunts, or even enough food to eat. the first and foremost duty of gusu lan's leadership is towards ensuring the safety and happiness of its own people.

so where does lan wangji fall into all of this?

well, first let us consider what lan wangji is capable of doing for wei wuxian. lan wangji is not the sect leader of gusu lan; therefore, he has less power to enact change than a sect leader does. lan wangji cannot command the entire sect to take a certain course of action; he cannot directly command the funds, manpower, and other resources of gusu lan in the same way that lan xichen can. thus, if he stands with wei wuxian, it will be just him and not all of gusu lan.

but this does not rule out all possible actions lan wangji could have taken to help wei wuxian. for example, as he himself notes later on in the story, he could have chosen to stand with wei wuxian in the burial mounds. so let's consider why he did not do this.

it must be said here that lan wangji not being a sect leader means he also has more freedom to act, which is why it is more possible for him than it is for characters like lan xichen or jiang cheng to have joined wei wuxian in the burial mounds. a sect leader represents the will and intention of their sect. if someone like lan xichen takes a certain major course of action, the rest of the political world understands this to mean that said action was not just lan xichen's own will, but gusu lan's will as a whole. meanwhile, because lan wangji is not the sect leader of gusu lan, his actions do not represent the will of his sect in the same way lan xichen's actions do. lan wangji choosing a course of action entails him made a choice for himself only, not that he made a choice on the behalf of everyone in his sect. therefore, lan wangji does not have to worry as much about his actions dragging his entire sect down with him.

however, lan wangji at this point already has work he's obligated to do for his own sect. since gusu lan is actively rebuilding at this point, lan wangji has certainly been assigned a decent amount of important work essential to gusu lan's recovery. all of the work ranging from training new disciples and teaching classes to night-hunting so that gusu lan has enough of an income is necessary for gusu lan to rebuild; since lan wangji is a prominent and capable member of gusu lan, he (along with characters like lan xichen and lan qiren) is certainly responsible for a decent chunk of that work.

if lan wangji leaves gusu lan to stand in the burial mounds with wei wuxian, then he will no longer be available to do the work gusu lan has assigned him to do. this isn't even getting into the fact that if lan wangji actually did this, gusu lan would either try and force him to come home or cut him out of the sect eventually to avoid political backlash; the simple fact is that lan wangji cannot also do work for gusu lan if he is physically in the burial mounds. therefore, lan wangji going to stand with wei wuxian in the burial mounds entails lan wangji becoming unavailable to help gusu lan rebuild. and, given the fact that gusu lan raised, fed, clothed, trained, and still financially supports him, lan wangji abandoning his duties to gusu lan like this would in fact be a dereliction of duty.

therefore, lan wangji also has reasonable concerns explaining why he did not straight up leave gusu lan to go stand with wei wuxian in the burial mounds: he can't abandon his duties to his own sect.

however, these concerns do not preclude other courses of action lan wangji still could have undertaken to help wei wuxian. namely, lan wangji could have leveraged his own sterling reputation to speak for wei wuxian and help clear wei wuxian's name.

this one is honestly the hardest for me to be an apologist for....after all, lan wangji knows that wei wuxian is not raising a wen army in the burial mounds. he knows that the wen remnants are harmless, that wei wuxian does not want to hurt anyone, that wei wuxian only wants to live peacefully with the people he's protecting. lan wangji, therefore, knows that almost everything the public is saying about wei wuxian is wrong.

and lan wangji is actually someone people listen to. first of all, he's the highborn, highly capable, and quite famous member of one of the great cultivation sects. second, at this point in the story, people already hold lan wangji's honesty and moral character in high regard. the entire gusu lan sect is already viewed by the rest of the jianghu as a sect deeply concerned with righteousness and proper behavior; lan wangji specifically is respected as the honorable hanguang-jun even in comparison to the rest of gusu lan. all this goes to say that lan wangji should logically be someone whose words and opinions have weight. when he says something, especially something pertaining to morality, people should logically stop and listen in a way they would not do for many of the other characters.

since the majority of the publicly-voiced complaints against wei wuxian center around his perceived-to-be unethical behavior and his violation of social norms, if someone as heavily associated by the public with righteousness and honor as lan wangji were to speak for wei wuxian, then it is decently probably that his words might have some non-zero impact. that is not to say that wei wuxian's shitty reputation would reverse itself overnight, but it is still possible that people's thinking might change, even if only temporarily, as they struggle to understand why hanguang-jun is publicly defending the yiling patriarch. at the very least, people would talk about it.

and lan wangji doesn't have to leave gusu lan in order to do this. all he has to do is write a speech and then deliver it at the next public-enough social event; this does not entail cutting ties with gusu lan.

(i would go as far as to say that, after wei wuxian's expulsion from yunmeng jiang, lan wangji publicly defending wei wuxian would be more effective than jiang cheng publicly defending wei wuxian. for one, jiang cheng isn't held in high regard as a beacon of righteousness as lan wangji is; the fact that lan wangji gets a "-jun" title and jiang cheng doesn't already speaks volumes about how they're perceived by the public. for two, people just don't respect jiang cheng in general, while they still have some modicum of respect for lan wangji because lan wangji has gusu lan behind him. that's why lan wangji was present at the jin party wei wuxian crashed, while jiang cheng was not. for three, people are more likely to dismiss jiang cheng's hypothetical defense of wei wuxian as being unreliably biased, since jiang cheng is wei wuxian's (former) sect leader and therefore may personally benefit from defending wei wuxian; meanwhile, the fact that lan wangji is unaffiliated with wei wuxian would, in the eyes of the public, lend his defense a level of credibility born of its perceived objectivity.)

of course, none of this is guaranteed. it's entirely possible lan wangji writes a passionate op-ed in the jianghu newspaper defending wei wuxian's moral character, and everyone just assumes he's gone insane. but even if success isn't guaranteed, one might still expect someone with lan wangji's personality to try.

however, if lan wangji did in fact try to publicly speak for wei wuxian, or at the very least correct some of the misconceptions surrounding wei wuxian, we.....do not see it. in fact, if i'm recalling correctly, the only time we see lan wangji verbally defend wei wuxian in wei wuxian's first life is during that one meeting in which everyone grills jiang cheng about wei wuxian's attack on the qiongqi pass labor camp. when jin guangshan says that wei wuxian publicly disrespected jiang cheng, lan wangji spoke up to say that didn't happen; after that, lan wangji doesn't say anything else in the discussion. luo qingyang says more on wei wuxian's behalf.

(of course, it's possible that lan wangji did try to publicly speak for wei wuxian after his visit to yiling, and it all just happens offscreen because wei wuxian isn't around to see it....but i find that rather hard to believe.)

so lan wangji does not really publicly defend wei wuxian from criticism. nor do we really see him try to correct the misinformation surrounding wei wuxian, especially after he visited yiling. lan wangji has the righteous reputation but he doesn't really use it. but - is it fully reasonable to say that his silence was unambiguously wrong? should we not also consider that lan wangji probably also had decent reasons for his silence?

first, there's the fact that lan wangji is not good at public speaking. he already barely talks, which means he has next to no social skills; he also has zero experience in the political arena. he certainly does not strike me as someone with a lot of experience debating others, refuting the arguments of opponents, swaying people to his side with his words, and stopping people from turning his words against him.

therefore, it would be decently reasonable of lan wangji to fear that any potential defense of wei wuxian's character he mounts not only be ineffective, but also be turned against him.

second - and more importantly - i think that lan wangji has to consider how any potential words or actions reflect upon his entire sect. i said earlier that, because lan wangji is not the sect leader, he does not have to worry about directly dragging everyone in gusu lan down with him when he makes a decision. however, this is very much NOT to say that lan wangji doesn't have to worry about how his actions reflect upon his sect at all. though he isn't the sect leader, lan wangji is still THE hanguang-jun of gusu lan, one of gusu lan's treasured and very famous twin jades. he is also a direct member of gusu lan's main ruling line; in fact, if we go by typical male primogeniture rules, then until lan xichen marries and has a legitimate son, lan wangji is just straight-up the gusu lan sect heir.

which is all to say that, if lan wangji pulls something and the rest of the jianghu gets upset with him - if he gives an incendiary enough speech in wei wuxian's defense, for example - then there will be consequences for not just him but potentially all of gusu lan as well. as stated earlier, gusu lan on this point is dependent on financial support from lanling jin in order to rebuild. if lan wangji speaks too stridently in wei wuxian's defense and thus offends lanling jin, what will happen to that financial support? if lan wangji pisses off jin guangshan enough, lanling jin will at the very least demand that lan xichen punish lan wangji - what should lan wangji have his brother do then? and what if lanling jin instead levies more drastic consequences, such as lessening or fully cutting off their financial aid to gusu lan? what is gusu lan supposed to do then?

this is not to say that lanling jin will cut off all financial support the moment lan wangji dares say that wei wuxian doesn't eat children for dinner or something. however, lan wangji himself is someone with basically no political experience, who does not know what sorts of comments might fly and what sort of comments might not. fearing that his words might have negative consequences for his sect, therefore, is a reasonable concern for someone in his position to have. this does not necessarily justify his silence and inaction; however, it does provide an understandable reason for his choices.

thus, lan wangji also has political consequences for his entire sect to consider. though he is not the sect leader, he is still a high-profile direct-family-line member of his sect, so his words and actions still do reflect on his sect to a certain extent. and it is not "chicken" to be afraid of how one's actions or words might impact one's entire family and sect. rather, lan wangji - as someone gusu lan has raised from birth, fed, clothed, trained, and fully financially supports - has a moral obligation to consider how his actions might impact his sect.

moreover, regarding not just lan wangji's silence but also his actions in general, one must also consider the issue of filial piety. filial piety - the obligation to respect and care for one's elders, especially the people who raised you - is centrally important in chinese culture. it would be especially important in a sect as confucian as the gusu lan sect. therefore, we can expect that lan wangji was raised to hold filial piety as a key virtue to guide his behavior.

as stated above, gusu lan's leadership should logically have a vested interest in not alienating lanling jin; therefore, the elders of gusu lan, as well as lan xichen and lan qiren themselves, probably all do not want lan wangji to endanger the entire sect by publicly defending wei wuxian. if lan wangji brought up his concerns about the minsinformation surrounding wei wuxian and the wen remnants after his visit to yiling, it's highly likely that some of these leaders told him to keep his head down and mouth shut in order to avoid potentially alienating lanling jin.

therefore, it is highly plausible that lan wangji then weighed his opposing moral obligations - his duty to correct this misinformation about an innocent wei wuxian, versus his filial duty to mind the wishes of his elders and to heed their words - and decided that the latter was more important. and no matter how we as the audience feel about this choice, the fact that filial piety is something that exists and has moral weight cannot be ignored.

of course, we all know that lan wangji eventually did in fact epically yeet his filial obligations towards his elders, when he injured 33 of them after they tried to (and succeeded in) stop him from saving wei wuxian. evidently, by the time the situation had gotten that drastic, lan wangji had decided that his filial obligations were less important than saving wei wuxian. though how much of this was a moral decision versus how much of it was instead motivated by his own love for wei wuxian is debatable.

that lan wangji only acted after shit got really bad then leads me into my last point. moving away from the apologism, i also think that lan wangji......just did not expect the situation to get this bad? lan wangji is rather lacking in political sense in favor of idealism, so perhaps, when and after he visited wei wuxian in yiling, he legitimately thought that wei wuxian could just keep peacefully living in the burial mounds with the wen remnants until the jianghu forgot about them.

to explain what i mean, i think the lan wangji immediately after the sunshot campaign ended still believed in some version of the just world fallacy. sure, bad things happen to good people - the wen burned down his home and killed his father, for one - but those injustices are ultimately corrected. qishan wen attacked so many other sects and caused so much suffering, but then in return the other sects banded together and defeated the evil. now all the remaining sects are united through the wartime alliance, and there is hope for a better future.

romantic attraction towards wei wuxian aside, lan wangi probably could not initially fully condone wei wuxian's actions. wei wuxian's usage of heretical cultivation, abandonment of the proper path, and increasingly aggressive and belligerent behavior (ie. threatening to murder everyone at that one jin banquet he crashed) meant that lan wangji could not justify to himself fully supporting wei wuxian. however, when lan wangji visited wei wuxian in yiling, lan wangji then saw that wei wuxian was genuinely good: he wasn't raising an army but rather defending the innocent and downtrodden, and he relied so much on heretical cultivation because he needed it to protect the innocents depending on him. the rest of the world was wrong about wei wuxian.

but lan wangji at this point still had faith in the world. lan wangji at this point still had faith in his society. the public might make mistakes, but they're still by and large reasonable and kind; they wouldn't be led so far astray by false rumors as to actually tear apart someone only seeking to do the right thing. injustices may happen and good people may suffer, but the universe still tends towards justice: so long as one is good, one will not continue to suffer. the universe will not allow someone with purely heroic intentions to suffer and die. wei wuxian is good. society is fundamentally good. the universe is fundamentally good - therefore, lan wangji simply could not imagine that wei wuxian might actually be destroyed.

of course, he was wrong.

i think what died that day was not just lan wangji's love or his happiness, but also his fundamental faith in a just and fair universe.

anyways. this is all to say that, from my point of view, lan wangji also had decently defendable reasons as to why he did not do more to support wei wuxian the first time around, and it isn't entirely fair to criticize him for his failure. both jiang cheng and lan wangji had political concerns that the could not ignore - concerns involving other people to whom they bore a duty - and those concerns necessarily constrained their actions. there is no need to pit two bad bitches against each other.

note that all of the above is not directly stated in the text, but rather the conclusions i drew myself from the facts given in the text. of course, some people who really hate lan wangji might accuse me of "making up my own version of the story" and "ignoring canon." i, however, think that reading a work of fiction entails not just blindly accepting only the facts the author spoon-feeds you, but rather drawing your own conclusions from what the story tells you. i do not need there to be a direct quote from the book saying verbatim "lan wangji was concerned about his obligations to his sect and family" to come to those conclusions myself. in fact, if the book instead tried to tell me that "lan wangji had no political or filial concerns and simply didn't help wei wuxian because he didn't like wei wuxian's demonic cultivation," then i would reject that claim wholesale as illogical.

also, lan wangji himself clearly spent 13 years beating himself up over his choices, so let's cut the poor guy a break.

"why didn't lan wangji help wei wuxian during wei wuxian's first life? why didn't lan wangji use his own righteous reputation to help clear wei wuxian's name? why didn't lan wangji try to tell the world that wei wuxian wasn't raising a wen army?"

well.....