#i deleted the first iteration of this post on accodent so

[d00m-d4ys]

Disclaimer: i know this could be better (quality-of-story-wise) but it could also be a whole lot worse, so imo that absolves me of both editing and basic grammatical discipline. Please enjoy the latest instalment of my ‘the subplot of jiang fengmian possibly cheating on his wife was boring; yu ziyuan and cangse sanren should have been besties’ agenda.

Curfew is one of the many rules that chafe, and so she disregards it as often as she can. As undignified as it is to scales the walls of Cloud Recesses, she seethes, it could all be avoided if she was allowed spar with Zidian and teach the second heir of Lan not to look down his nose at her.

This moon is high by the time she returns, and she nearly topples to the ground as a voice calls, “Don’t fall.”

She steadies herself, telling her racing heart to calm itself. She looks to her left and sees the girl: a rogue cultivator, hair diligently unkempt and at odds with her pressed student’s robes.

“Don’t concern yourself with me,” she tells her sternly.

Cangse Sanren sits up, eyes wide. “I wasn’t concerned! Merely speaking aloud. Ignore me, honoured Violet Spider.”

“You mock me?” Zidian crackles in her hands.

“But of course. Jiangs fight best when they’re angry.” She comes to her feet like a puppet tugged along by its strings, lighter than air and undeniably coordinated.

Zidian hisses louder. “I am not Jiang, you insolent—“

Cangse Sanren moves almost too fast to track, and Ziyuan strikes on reflex, Zidian splitting a layer of roofing in half as Cangse dodges back, landing safely out of reach on top of the guard tower. She whistles, long and low. “So this is Zidian. Why do you hide her away?”

She curls her fingers around her ring protectively, unsure of what the girl means to do.

“Is that why? Afraid someone will steal it?” Cangse lights back down on the roof, confident in a way that Ziyuan hates, but not enough to risk using Zidian again. “I’m sorry for insulting you. What are you, if not a Jiang?”

The question catches her off-guard, and she answers before she can think better of it. “This one is Yu Ziyuan.”

“Yu Ziyuan, Yu Ziyuan— I can’t promise I’ll remember, but I’ll do my best.” She bows, again catching her by surprise. “This one is Cangse Sanren.”

She swallows. “I know.”

Cangse straightens up and grins at her, tucking her sword into the crook of her elbow. “I think we’ll be friends. Yes?”

She’s about to answer when the roofing beneath her feet turns slick as ice, sending her plummeting to the ground. Cangse lands mostly on top of her with her many bony appendages, and for a moment all Ziyuan can do is sit there and quietly groan.

It’s probably not a good sign that the clan leader himself had caught them sparring out of grounds and after curfew, but at least she isn’t alone.

-

After that, it was quite obvious that Cangse would continue to be a permanent pest.

“A-Yuan,” she begs, already reaching for Ziyuan’s bowl. “Cangse is so hungry, how can A-Yuan be so cruel?”

“Eat your own damn food,” she snaps, and learns not to regret it. Cangse sighs and returns to her own bowl, identical to hers excepting the absence of bamboo shoots.

Cangse seems to attract trouble: she can see across the room Jiang Fengmian making a beeline for her table, followed shortly after by a disciple whose name escapes her.

The usual niceties are as excruciating as always, and they find themselves seated across the table. Cangse drops her chopsticks and slams her hands down, earning them several dirty looks. “Young Master, I must know your name.”

There is a moment where Ziyuan can see disaster blooming. Both men look delighted at the attention, and both move to answer her question.

She dumps her bamboo shoots in Jiang Fengmian’s bowl, interrupting his train of thought and drawing his attention to her.

It’s a risky gamble: the bamboo shoots are inarguably the best thing in a Lan’s diet, and she doesn’t want to invite implication into her actions, but something so grand and distracting and (hopefully) confusing is enough to render him speechless.

Unfortunately, it also draws Cangse’s ire, though the servant — Wei Changze — is blissfully unaware of her blunders, still basking under Cangse’s attention.

Jiang Fengmian colours a bright pink that she privately thinks is very becoming, and she can only hope that his interest in Cangse is only infatuation. “Thank you, Lady Yu.”

-

The Jin arrive, finally, and so too does her friend from across the river. Hua Yufei is just as ladylike as she remembers, but her immediate taking-to of Cangse Sanren is concerning, to say the least.

“Is it difficult, being a rogue cultivator?”

“Perhaps it is, when comfort is a concern. I have often slept outdoors on nighthunts, when no inn would have me.”

Yufei shudders. “I could never,” she swears, hand daintily resting on her collarbone. “Ziyuan, did you hear the news, or shall I tell you?”

“What news?”

“Sect Leader Jin is in want of a match for his son. I have it on good authority that I am in the running, and that Jin Guangshan favours me.”

Her mother had sent word that her own marriage now had a wedding date, and it filled her with equal parts dread and relief.

Cangse bumps her shoulder, jolting her out of her daydreams. “Congratulate your sworn-sister, A-Yuan, for I have no earthly idea what any of you are talking about.”

Yufei gets far more excited than she should, and hurries to sit next to Cangse. “See that one there? The Jin with peonies on his sleeve? He is Jin Guangshan. If I am to marry him, I’ll be Madame of the second-richest sect in Xianxia.”

Cangse looks critically at him and evidently turns up little to compliment, to Ziyuan’s vindication. “He seems very . . . friendly.”

It’s a very kind way of noting his lecherous staring at the servant pouring his tea. “He will not give up his ways under marriage, Yufei.”

“What do I care if he galavants through every brothel in Lanling? I need only bear a son, and my wifely duties will be complete. I will have Koi Tower, and he shall have his fleeting pleasures. Let others take care of him.”

-

The lectures end, somewhat successfully: Lan Qiren’s facial hair had suffered Cangse’s vengeance, Hua Yufei had secured a tentative proposal from Jin Guangshan, and Jiang Fengmian no longer looked scared of her when she spoke to him.

Yufei hugs her tightly before dashing after the Jin delegation. Cangse stands by her as the Jiang sect prepares to leave, disiciples running about accomplishing what they should have several hours beforehand. “Is Yunmeng your home?”

“For now.” Her betrothal was entering into its vital stages, and it wouldn’t do to return to Meishan just yet. “And yours?”

She lifts one shoulder, staring out over the bustling Jiangs. “Wherever I’m needed.”

Ziyuan spots Wei Changze trying to look as though he’s not watching Cangse Sanren, fiddling with something in his hands. If they’re not careful, the Jiang sect will lose two fine cultivators. “Then you should come with us.”

-

Yu Ziyuan knows that something is wrong. She knows it as well as she knows that her daughter is six, that her son is three, that she has not seen her ill-gotten sworn-sister since before either of them were born.

She leaves without a word, away on her sword and letting her heart guide her.

The last of her steady letters had come from Yiling, paper smelling faintly of sulphur from the Burial Mounds. So west she steers herself, flying hard through the gathering storm and buffeting winds until she hears Cangse calling for her husband. She descends hard and almost falls, Zidian flaring out and cracking against the encroaching fierce corpses. Two fall back, weak enough to be banished, but four more advance in their place, and she seizes her sword for the task of disposing of them.

Cangse does not struggle with fierce corpses. She has a way with them, tames them like dogs under her immortal’s teachings. Ziyuan is almost afraid to turn around, sheathing her sword and searching the gloom and thicket for a trace of teal robes, a beaded jade hairpiece.

“A-Ze!”

Her voice is near. She can hear two sets of footprints, one surer, the other more cautious.

Something was wrong with this forest, if it had separated Cangse and Wei Changze. She feels as though she might crawl out of her skin, the resentful energy mounting with each second she remained. She rushes through thicket and brush, forcing her way through layers of the maze array with sheer force of will, far too angry to be waylaid by such child’s play.

The final layer stretches like rice cake before snapping, and it felt as though a layer of wet cotton had been ripped from her ears, the sounds of the world coming into sharp focus with painful suddenness.

Cangse is there to catch her, though she seems disoriented. “A-Yuan?”

Her voice shakes, and she hates it. “We have to leave.”

Cangse’s mouth sets. “Not without A-Ze.”

The maze array changes even as they speak, and Cangse is too dizzy to do anything but slow them down and ensure they remain trapped. She feels her mouth twist grimly as she wraps her hand around her wrist, dragging her to the edge of the array. “I will find him.”

-

She doesn’t regret finding Cangse first. How could she, for her own sworn-sister? She refuses to regret. She will not regret.

It’s difficult to muster that conviction when she lays Wei Changze’s body down on the ground, overtaken by the hole in his chest where his heart once was.

Cangse wails when she sees him, a keening, heartbroken sound Ziyuan has never heard a person make. The sound is pure pain, and for a moment all she can do is stand there and think about how devestated Jiang Fengmian will be, when he hears the news.

She kneels, wanting to at least close his eyes. Cangse’s wails abruptly peter off and she screams, “Get away from him!”

The suddenness of it startles her away, and Cangse throws herself over his body, protecting him. “Don’t touch him. I won’t let him be sullied by such hands.”

“Such hands?” Already, she is angry. “Say your meaning.”

“You always hated him,” she accuses. “You could have saved him. Why didn’t you save him?” She touched his cheeks, crying over his glossy, dead eyes. “Why didn’t you help him first?”

“And risk the same happening to you?” She doesn’t regret. She doesn’t.

“You should have! He’s the one who should live. It shouldn’t be me.”

She stands, too angry to say anything constructive at the moment. “Wei Ying will be in Yunmeng, while you grieve.”

She’ll never be sure if Cangse Sanren would have heard anything of the living world in that moment, her ear pressed to a dead man’s chest.

-

Jiang Fengmian is in his office, and she lets herself in. “Wei Changze is dead.”

The news is sudden, and horrible, and Fengmian spends a good few minutes unable to speak. “What happened?”

She meets his watery gaze. “A nighthunt. He was overpowered.”

“And Cangse?” He licks his lips. “Is she—“

“You are aware they have a child?” She feels so very angry, and it is easy to blame it on his apparently poor memory, instead of its true source. “You do know that? Or have you only read their letters to trace Cangse’s calligraphy? Are you so eager that you forget your duty?”

He has the decency to look ashamed, but not enough to muster a response.

She scoffed and left the room, making her way to her children’s’ quarters.

-

Cangse Sanren arrives just as Ziyuan’s lies to her son began to wear thin.

She lands softly in the training grounds, leaving stunned and gaping disciples in her wake. She strides to wear Ziyuan stands, supervising Jiang Cheng and Wei Ying as they spar.

“I want my son back.”

Ziyuan lifts her chin, crossing her arms. It hides her anxiety: Cangse is dressed in mourning white, and her eyes are sunken with lack of sleep. She is much paler than she used to be, and much angrier.

Cangse scowls at her, at her silence. “Wei Ying. Come here.”

Wei Ying looks up with a gleeful cry, and rushes to embrace his mother. For a moment, Cangse is her old self again, swinging him into her arms and kissing him on the cheek.

But it soon fades, and Cangse Sanren fixes her with a steely glare and utters perhaps the last words Yu Ziyuan will ever forget:

“Until we meet again, Madame Jiang.”