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robininthelabyrinth · 1 year ago

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The Other Mountain - ao3 - Chapter 27

Pairing: Lan Qiren/Wen Ruohan

Warning Tags on Ao3

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Cangse Sanren and Wei Changze led Wen Ruohan and Lan Qiren into the passageways and made their way deep into the secret parts of Jinlin Tower, heading towards what they claimed was some sort of laboratory that would provide them with the answers they required. They were being unduly mysterious, which was both highly annoying and so in character that it was not worth arguing over.

Behind them, the Wen sect disciples had been left to guard the hole in the wall and keep the Jin sect disciples from either following or leaving – to the extent there were any unfortunate revelations to be had here, the four of them had all agreed that it was better to keep them first to themselves.

The Jin sect would learn in time what they deserved to learn, which probably wasn’t much.

For his part, Lan Qiren spent much of the journey in silent contemplation.

He thought first of Wang Liu, who had – well, if Lan Qiren was being completely honest with himself, probably deserved his fate. His ghost had been honest in the manner of the dead, beyond the use of lies. He’d explained succinctly how he had worked loyally for Jin Guangshan until he had realized that the man planned to betray him in exchange for holding off Wen Ruohan’s rage; he had accordingly shifted his loyalties over to Lan Qiren’s brother, reaching an agreement with him that he believed would allow him to preserve his life. He had then later realized that the man was insane, a realization that had likely though not explicitly occurred upon learning that he’d murdered Jin Guangshan, at which point he had rather unwisely tried to double-cross Lan Qiren’s brother and go back to the Jin sect. Floundering and clueless as the Jin sect appeared to be regarding his death, it was likely that last betrayal which had led to it. Though the ghost hadn’t known how he had been killed, the event having come upon him as a complete surprise, the details made it clear who must have been the perpetrator.

Wen Ruohan hadn’t asked, which meant that he already knew.

Lan Qiren…

Lan Qiren genuinely did not understand what his brother was doing.

He never had, that was true, but this seemed beyond even the furthest reaches of his imagination. Truly his brother must have gone mad, genuinely mad. Why would he ally with Jin Guangshan, only to later kill him? Why kill Wang Liu so recklessly, practically in front of their eyes? What was his goal? What did he even have left to live for, knowing that He Kexin was dead at his own hands and that Lan Qiren would never tolerate letting him escape justice for what he’d done? Did he really want to kill everyone in the world, as Wen Ruohan had suggested?

Lan Qiren wanted to say Surely not and he would never and some of those people are his friends, but he didn’t think his brother had any friends, not anymore. Lao Nie had been his friend once, perhaps, and several others besides, but his brother had ruthlessly accounted for them all in his original plan. He had used his friendship with them in the most awful of ways, using what he knew about them to manipulate them, plotting a course that could and would have led to their deaths or at least their shame and grief and guilt. Still worse, he had done so without any shred of remorse, and even now there seemed to be no sign of regret – or of changing course.

He had to be stopped.

He had – and Lan Qiren really and truly hated to admit it – to be killed.

The fact that only he and a few others knew the truth of what he’d done did not change this fact.

Justice had to be meted out. That was Lan Qiren’s bottom line, the point of no return past which he would not go, the point past which he could not go without losing everything worthwhile about himself. It was a fundamental part of who he was. Lan Qiren knew himself to be a rigid man, someone who would break but not bend, and this was something he could not give in on. Hadn’t he just nearly had a qi deviation just thinking about how those in his sect had perjured morality and closed their eyes to injustice? As Cangse Sanren had pointed out, if all their principles of justice and righteousness were abandoned, then what was the point?

Lan Qiren did not see his efforts at concealing the truth of his brother’s actions from the world as contrary to that steadfast belief. Justice was paramount, morality the priority, learning first – but harmony was also the truest value, and the Lan sect rules had always counseled against excess, whether in joy or grief or self-sacrifice. The rules imposed Do not tell lies instead of Tell the truth, and that, too, was the wisdom of Lan Qiren’s ancestors. Truth was an instrument, to be played when it would help achieve the loftier goals of justice, of harmony, of kindness, of righteousness, and kept silent where it would not.

If the cultivation world found out what Lan Qiren’s brother had done, it would disgrace not only his brother, who thoroughly deserved it, and his sect, which could probably stand to be at least a little disgraced, but also very specifically his nephews. Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji would grow up the sons of an acknowledged murderer, a madman, in a world that did not absolve children of their parents’ sins. They would be shunned by their peers, disdained by women (or men, if their preferences ran that way), blacklisted by all the respectable matchmakers and mocked in their efforts no matter how much they accomplished, no matter how perfect they were in their own conduct. No matter what they did, everyone would always be waiting for them to go mad as well.

Lan Qiren did not want that.

His brother needed to be punished and justice restored; that much was unquestionable. But he was a member of one of the Great Sects, and according to long-standing tradition and written treaties both, that meant the Lan sect had the first say in meting out his punishment. Lan Qiren might have married out, but he had the right surname and the closest blood connection, and he could therefore claim that right of punishment in his sect’s name if they would not – and claim it he would, because having first right only meant the right to be first. If the Lan sect failed to punish one of their own, if they tried to let his brother go free in contravention to all justice and morality, then they gave up that right, and the right and obligation to seek punishment would flow to the next-most victims.

And the Jin sect, having lost both their sect leader and all their face, would pursue that punishment to its utmost bitter end with not one bit of care about what life would be like for Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji in the aftermath.

That was why Wen Ruohan was helping Lan Qiren now, helping him buy the time he needed. Time for them to find his brother and to stop him by whatever means necessary, time for them to keep the punishment inside the confines of the Lan sect where the collateral damage could be minimized. Time enough to convince the Lan sect of the necessity of that punishment – a trial and sentence, if they could take him into custody, and death, if they could not. Time for Lan Qiren to take that first right and try his hardest to make a terrible situation with no good results end better than it might have otherwise.

It was perhaps a little insane to feel warm about the fact that his wife was helping him manipulate a murder investigation.

Lan Qiren thought once more about that painting, obsession, and decided it was fine.

(Or, well, at least that it was mutual.)

Of course, he immediately then began contemplating – worrying, really, if he were being honest with himself, a virtue he often strove for and just as often failed in – whether he was being hypocritical, as his brother had several times accused him of being. To claim that the madness of love he felt was righteous, and that that of another was not, would seem to be the first and easiest fallacy to fall into; “acceptable for me but not for you” was the first step of any hypocrisy. It was necessary to seek to evaluate everything he did from an objective standpoint, without clouding the eyes with undue passion or excuses borne out of love instead of reason.

Still, after some considerable consideration, Lan Qiren genuinely did not think that was the case.

His brother’s madness was not love, as Lan Qiren felt it. He had turned against He Kexin not for any just cause, not for any rational reason that made him feel as if he had no choice in acting against her, but only because she did not love him as he loved her, a fact he had already known when he’d married her. He’d murdered her for disagreeing with him, murdered her out of jealousy, and he hadn’t sought to punish himself for what he’d done, only others. He had blamed others for what he had done – first Lan Qiren, and then the world…never himself.

Their madness, insofar as it had been based on love, was not the same.

Similarly, Lan Qiren’s efforts to cover up his brother’s actions in order to have the chance to bring him to justice with as few negative side-effects as possible were in no way comparable to his sect elders’ complicity in covering up the crimes of the mine, choosing to use He Kexin as a scapegoat and never seeking justice at all. Lan Qiren had been willing to hide He Kexin’s murder from public knowledge for his nephew’s sakes, when he had believed that to be her crime, because he had known that she was being punished for it; he would only be willing to hide his brother’s crimes, if he could, for the same reason.

It was not the same.

Despite what his brother might think, Lan Qiren was not a hypocrite.

She thought you were a hypocrite. Stupid woman.

Lan Qiren paused: that was Wen Ruohan speaking, but it was an unfamiliar memory. From last night, perhaps? Wen Ruohan had asked him to alert him if –

Ah.

There were the rest of yesterday’s memories.

Including the ones where he –

Ah.

Grateful for the relative dimness of the tunnels, which hid how red his face was turning, Lan Qiren retracted the hand he had reached out to Wen Ruohan, intending on alerting him to his recovered memories as he’d requested, and delivered a sharp kick to his shin instead.

Predictably, Wen Ruohan did not stumble, but instead turned and smirked at him, clearly realizing exactly what it was that had motivated his action.

The heat in Lan Qiren’s face got worse. He couldn’t believe that he’d actually – in a public room – and in such a bestial fashion, no less! Even if Wen Ruohan had been egging him on, and he had been, thoroughly, his own behavior really had gone beyond the pale. Particularly the bits that weren’t strictly sex-related, though Wen Ruohan had certainly reacted as if they were, vocally appreciative to great extent. It wasn’t that Lan Qiren didn’t agree with his drunken self that Wen Ruohan desperately needed to be turned over his knee and given a good thrashing, but still, to actually do it…

Though he supposed if Wen Ruohan really had enjoyed it as much as he’d appeared to, perhaps the restrictions he had placed on his behavior were a little more arbitrary than he had hitherto considered. Something to think about.

…not the bit about being in public, though. They were another sect’s guests, bound by etiquette and the rules of hospitality! To behave in such a manner was utterly disgraceful!

“Here we are!” Cangse Sanren announced.

Lan Qiren shook his head to clear it, as now was most eminently not the time and place for such thoughts, and stepped out of the passageway into a broader room. It was a frightful place, by any token: dark and gloomy, with chains and cages and sinister contraptions on the wall, some of which Lan Qiren recognized from Wen Ruohan’s Fire Palace…though the quality was not quite as good.

He couldn’t believe that he knew enough about torture implements to make that judgment.

He kicked Wen Ruohan again for good measure.

(When Wen Ruohan gave him a puzzled look in response, Lan Qiren pointedly looked at a few of the pieces, then mouthed the word inferior at him, which caused Wen Ruohan to let out a bark of laughter that made Cangse Sanren and Wei Changze look at the two of them oddly.

Lan Qiren refused to explain.)

That room, however, turned out to only be the entrance, with the main attraction being centered in the next room they entered: a much larger but more vacant room, with only a few forges and other such things pushed out to the sides, and in the center, a vast and ominous-looking array, glowing with a dull light, already activated and ready to go to work.

It was massive, even as arrays went, and extraordinarily complicated: more circles than Lan Qiren had ever seen, with dizzying geometric designs, all sorts of runes and other complex equations built in. It was filled with spiritual energy, emitting a low-pitched hum that shook the bones. It was exceptionally menacing.

Wen Ruohan went over to examine it at once.

“We figured Sect Leader Wen would be able to handle it,” Wei Changze said with satisfaction and not a little bit of relief. “It took us some doing to even get this far and find it – apparently, the door lock to this particular room only opens for someone with Jin blood. Luckily not limited to the main line, at least!”

“We got it voluntarily,” Cangse Sanren said. “Don’t look so worried, Qiren-gege.”

Lan Qiren, pained, decided not to ask about the details.

“What else have you managed to learn?” he asked. “How did you even find this place?”

“Let’s answer that first question, since you don’t want to hear the answer to the second – ”

Lan Qiren narrowed his eyes.

“– purely because it was very boring and involved a lot of following people around using papermen in a reckless and inadvisable fashion, plus at least one attempted sexcapade – ”

“We started kissing so that someone wouldn’t pay attention to us,” Wei Changze said proudly. He was just as bad as his wife, actually. Lan Qiren was starting in retrospect to worry about what bad lessons his nephews might have picked up while in their care. “It was great.”

“It was,” Cangse Sanren said, nodding. “Very sexy of us.”

Lan Qiren did not throw anything at either of them, but only because there was nothing to hand.

“You said that you could help us in identifying the nature of the curse that killed Wang Liu and Jin Guangshan,” he said patiently. “I assume that’s the array? How did you determine it was related to their deaths rather than being for some other purpose, such as a protective array or something like that?”

“No one would keep their protective array in a creepy laboratory of death,” Wei Changze said.

Lan Qiren thought about the Fire Palace’s record-keeping function and grimaced in disagreement.

“We captured and interrogated one of the Jin sect disciples that were here when we got here,” Cangse Sanren said, more helpfully. “He confirmed all sorts of interesting things, including that this array had only been set up after the events of the mountain at Xixiang, that it was something very secret that only the sect leader and a very select few knew about…and most importantly, after a little encouragement, he told us what it does.”

“Tell me you did not torture him for information,” Lan Qiren said, pinching his brow.

“What, your lover gets to torture people and we don’t? That’s just blatant favoritism, Qiren-gege…”

“We scared him and then knocked him out,” Wei Changze assured him earnestly. “Don’t worry.”

Lan Qiren inclined his head in thanks. Very begrudging thanks. “I am not worried. I am impatient. Will you proceed to the part where you tell me what the array does?”

“That’s the interesting part!”

Lan Qiren assumed that meant he wasn’t going to like it.

“As far as we can figure,” Cangse Sanren said, “the whole thing is actually meant to drain spiritual energy.”

Lan Qiren frowned and reached up to stroke his beard. He’d been right: he didn’t like it.

“Drain spiritual energy?” he asked. “What does that even mean? I have heard of arrays meant to improve the ability of a given area to contain spiritual energy, and inversions to make a place more unlucky or less auspicious, and naturally there are spells to use up what spiritual energy is available, however unwise those may be. But what does it mean to ‘drain’ spiritual energy?”

“I think Qingheng-jun told Sect Leader Jin that he could pull off something like what Sect Leader Wen did at Xixang if only he had enough power,” Wei Changze said. His mirth had faded away, and he looked unusually solemn. “The only difficulty was in gathering that power, which had taken Sect Leader Wen a century or more to accumulate – time they didn’t have. So they decided to go with a shortcut by obtaining it from cultivators directly.”

“What?”

Orthodox cultivation taught that each cultivator had to train themselves in order to generate and use their own spiritual energy: to absorb qi from the world around them, to form a golden core, to further refine and strengthen their golden core through hard work and effort. Draining the spiritual energy of another person, using their efforts as substitute for your own, building cultivation on each other’s corpses rather than their own strength – that was demonic cultivation, surely!

“Technically yes, though demonic cultivation is a larger category of which this sort of ‘drainage’ technique would just be one subgroup,” Wei Changze said when Lan Qiren said as much. “Orthodox cultivation has always categorized almost all usage of resentful energy, particularly when involving resentful energy generated by human beings, as demonic cultivation, regardless of the type, methodology, or purpose involved. This is likely because the side effects of utilizing – or rather, mishandling – resentful energy is similar throughout, with corrosive effects to the temperament and often judgment and morality. While traveling, we’ve actually encountered any number of different legends about – ”

Cangse Sanren tapped him on the shoulder. “Not the time for academia, husband mine. Qiren will be happy to hear about it later.”

“I would be delighted,” Lan Qiren assured him. As someone with his own set of special interests which consumed his mind whenever mentioned, he was always willing to listen to others who were willing to listen to him…even if it was on as unsavory a subject as demonic cultivation. Wei Changze had strange interests. “But I agree with Cangse Sanren, perhaps later.”

“Right, right, of course. Later is fine.” Wei Changze coughed. “Forgive me, I didn’t mean to get distracted. Where were we?”

On second thought, perhaps discussing demonic cultivation was the lesser of the two evils here.

Sadly, they didn’t have much choice in the matter.

“Jin Guangshan’s plans to use cultivators to provide my brother – and himself, presumably – with additional power.” Lan Qiren grimaced in disgust. “What a vile plan. I cannot believe Jin Guangshan would do such a thing to his own people…!”

“Oh, he didn’t,” Cangse Sanren said, and pointed to one of the forges that had been pushed to the side – or at least, which Lan Qiren had previously assumed had merely been pushed to the side. “He planned to use everyone else’s.”

Lan Qiren walked over to the forge, which was not a forge, exactly. He didn’t quite know the word for what it was: a place where one could pour molten metal into molds, casting some figure or item…

He blanched.

“Surely not,” he said, recognizing the symbol on the mold. “Those terrible coins he was handing out?!”

“Cursed coins are a classic,” Cangse Sanren said with a shrug.

“From what you and Sect Leader Wen told us, Sect Leader Jin was handing them out to everyone who participated in the events at Xixiang, claiming that they were a means of commemorating the grand night-hunt that had unified the cultivation world,” Wei Changze said. “Which meant that even if people knew that it was just his attempt to buy good will, they would still accept the coins, whether from pride, not wanting to be left out, or even, like Cangse and me, just because they were made of gold and therefore able to be resold.”

It made a sick sort of sense.

The Jin sect excelled at applying spells to gold and silver – they produced the finest spiritual ornaments in the cultivation world, ranging from jeweled hair pins to elaborate necklaces to belt adornments to ornate golden fans. There was a reason that Jin Guangshan was able to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the other leaders of the Great Sects, beyond merely his wealth and heritage and despite his own mediocre level of cultivation; he was usually dripping with enchanted wealth, spelled for protection and sometimes offense. It was unwise to discount the Jin sect’s ability in this field, just like no one would doubt Qinghe Nie’s skill in producing sabers.

It wouldn’t be hard for Jin Guangshan to find someone to pour the metal and cast the coins, nor for him to arrange one casting of the coins to be with the curse and one without. And then he’d only need to hand the cursed ones to the rest of the cultivation world, reserving the rest for his own sect, and that would mean that they would remain safe when Lan Qiren’s brother eventually activated the array and drained the spiritual energy from everyone for his own selfish use…

“That is truly terrible,” Lan Qiren said vehemently. “Is there really an array that can do such a thing?”

“No,” Wen Ruohan said.

They all turned to look at him.

“Well, I cannot discount the possibility of such a thing existing, people have always been both clever and lazy,” he said. “But that’s certainly not what this array does.”

“Are you sure? The researcher seemed quite sure, and it tallied up with everything else we discovered,” Cangse Sanren said, pouting a little at having her deductions overturned, but then shrugged it off a moment later. “All right then, I guess we were wrong. What does it do?”

“Nothing.”

They all paused, waiting for an explanation.

None appeared forthcoming.

“What do you mean?” Lan Qiren finally asked. “What does ‘nothing’ entail?”

“No, I mean it does nothing.” Wen Ruohan shrugged when they looked at him. “The spiritual energy pathways all tie into each other until they’re knotted. There’s no exit point: you can feed the array qi and it will light up and look impressive, but functionally, that’s it. It’s a dud.”

“…are you joking right now?” Cangse Sanren asked blankly.

“Not in the slightest,” Wen Ruohan said.

“It’s a dud?!”

“A very fancy dud, yes. If it makes you feel better, I’m sure the rest of your deductions were correct, or at least that they matched up to the false bill of goods being sold to Jin Guangshan as a miracle pathway to power,” he said dryly. “Only Qingheng-jun decided not to bother with all the effort involved in finding or inventing an array that could drain spiritual energy from living cultivators, which may or may not be impossible. He just cursed the coins directly.”

“He fooled Jin Guangshan,” Lan Qiren realized. “That was the purpose behind the array: it was to trick Jin Guangshan into helping him create and then spread the cursed coins!”

And if the array for draining energy was fake, then the true purpose of the cursed coins was likely to be the traditional one – namely, the death of anyone who possessed one.

Wen Ruohan had been right. His brother really did want to kill everyone.

Lan Qiren felt sick to his stomach.

“Well, I mean, cursed coins,” Cangse Sanren said. “Like I said, they’re a classic. There’s a reason for that.”

“Indeed there is,” Wen Ruohan said. “When it comes to finding a way to kill a great number of people to whom you do not have immediate access, there is scarcely any better – although removing the array from the equation does mean that this attempt at murder is far less creative than Qingheng-jun’s previous efforts. I suppose he must have put all his energy into devising his first plan, leaving nothing behind for this shoddily crafted fallback.”

“Isn’t that a good thing for us?” Wei Changze asked. “That it’s not creative, I mean?”

“Not necessarily. Creativity often means innovation, and innovation leaves loopholes that can be exploited, whereas using a tried-and-true method has the advantage of reliability. For instance, a curse on coins has a less obvious focal point – moreover, I’m not familiar with an array that generates a curse quite like the one we have observed, or for that matter a curse like that at all, excluding arrays from consideration. Even if the method is crude, the curse itself is quite clever. I like to think that I would have thought of something similar myself, in time…cultivators do so love their swords.” He snorted. “Or their sabers, I suppose. Such a thing would be tremendously effective on someone like Lao Nie, who treats his saber better than his sons.”

Better than his lovers, you mean, Lan Qiren thought, a little spitefully, then felt bad: When others lose to you, do not look down on them.

“I can’t even imagine the look on his face if something like that was used on him,” Wen Ruohan continued, shaking his head. “His expression – to see his precious Jiwei cracking in two right before his eyes – ”

Something about the way Wen Ruohan had phrased it suddenly caused something to flit across Lan Qiren’s mind. It was a memory, very faint, of something he’d read once but not especially cared to remember. Something obscure, given that the subject was curses. But definitely some text, the memory accompanied by the familiar feeling of pages unde his fingertips, the smell of ink, the pleasant exercise of learning something…

Perhaps it was a reading he had come across while searching for ideas for one of his classes? No, that didn’t seem right.

It didn’t seem like something he’d read for sect business, either, and neither did it fall into the memories of the times he had helped others in his sect do the research necessary to solve a tricky issue that had arisen in one of their night-hunts – it felt like something he had read alone.

But why would he have read a treatise on curses? That was hardly something he would read for pleasure…

Lan Qiren abruptly recalled where he’d encountered it.

It wasn’t reading for pleasure, necessarily, or at least not how he’d term it, even though it had not been motivated by any actual requirement.

It had been his brother.

Lan Qiren had once used to read every book his brother had ever requested, cherishing the rare notes that his brother had left behind for the servants that only came to his seclusion in order to clean and leave food and items. At the start, he’d hoped that it would give them something to discuss through his brother’s closed door, though that had never come to pass; his brother had ignored Lan Qiren so completely that his visits had swiftly turned more into recitations than anything else, reading out a report without any expectation of commentary. Even after he realized that he would never find common ground with his brother, he’d never really stopped skimming the books that were sent in for his brother’s reading pleasure. He’d gotten into the habit by then, and since it had served as a good way to find new books to recommend (or not) to He Kexin, he’d carried on in the same fashion he’d started.

This memory had come from one of those books.

“Ah,” he said.

“It appears that I’ve been underestimating the Gusu Lan library,” Wen Ruohan said archly.

“No, it makes sense,” Cangse Sanren said, though she was suppressing a smile. “We all agree that it was Qingheng-jun who was the one planning this, wasn’t he? He knows what his sect knows, so it only stands to reason that Qiren would have a better chance of figuring out what curse he used.”

“How did they both manage to read up on the same obscure curse, though?” Wei Changze said. “Assuming the library in the Cloud Recesses is even bigger than the one in the Lotus Pier, that seems like rather a coincidence. Fengmian and I almost never read the same books, except when we had overlapping interests – oof! What did I say?”

“Nothing of value, husband mine. Consider the value of silence instead.”

“But –”

“Qiren,” Wen Ruohan interrupted. “What can you tell us about this curse?”

“Not much that is relevant,” Lan Qiren said, too busy mentally sorting through his memories to figure out what exactly what they were trying to distract him from – he didn’t have enough mental energy to spare to also figure out social situations. The majority of what he recalled about that particular reading pertained to the way the underlying part of the curse functioned, utilizing certain musical elements to achieve its aims, specifically, the crack of shattering steel rebounding through the body with an echo effect. Hardly the most effective means of accomplishing the goal, though an unusual one…however, he suspected no one would very much care about the technical details at present. “Other than the means of attack, I believe it was fairly standard.”

“Is there a standard for curses?” Wei Changze asked. He looked interested and appreciative of Lan Qiren’s knowledge, which Lan Qiren could appreciate. “Do you know a great deal about curses, Lan Qiren?”

“Leash your dog, Cangse Sanren, or I will do it for you,” Wen Ruohan informed her.

She rolled her eyes back at him, but did in fact reach out and tug her husband’s collar.

“I didn’t mean it in a bad way,” Wei Changze protested to her. “I really do want to know more about it.”

“Later. You can wrap it into the discussion about demonic cultivation.”

Lan Qiren decided to ignore them.

“I do not know more about curses than I know about most things,” he explained, although for whatever reason that made Wen Ruohan smirk as if proud of something, Wei Changze smile, and Cangse Sanren snort in amusement. “I only mean that it is not dissimilar to other curses: it is meant to cause death. There is nothing special about how it operates, other than that it takes a longer route to accomplish the same goal as a regular curse – in fact, I would say that the only thing that makes it different from other curses is its obscurity, and perhaps the dissipation of spiritual energy afterwards.”

“I suspect that that latter one is sufficient reason for its use here,” Wen Ruohan said. “Jin Guangshan would have demanded a demonstration of the curse’s ability to ‘drain’ cultivators of power, and seeing the energy dissipate would have been sufficient for him.”

“That is reasonable. In terms of how the curse is done, that is also typical: it can be cast directly on another individual or, as in this case, indirectly on an object, with the goal of it triggering later. I think what is most interesting here is the use of coins, as curses used on cursed coins are typically monomorphic in nature – ”

“I really need to visit Gusu Lan’s library,” Wei Changze mused.

“I’m going to stop you there, Qiren-gege,” Cangse Sanren interrupted, although she was grinning. “For the same reason that I stopped Changze: now is not the time for academia. Let’s be practical – the array’s a dud, and you know what curse he’s using. How do we stop it? Is there another triggering array hidden somewhere?”

Lan Qiren must have been going too deeply into theory despite himself.

He cleared his throat, a little embarrassed, and tugged at his beard.

“I do not believe there is any array that controls the form of the curse,” he said. “On the contrary, I think that the coins were created and then cursed, just the one time, which would mean that there is only a single predetermined action that is set to function as the trigger, the mechanism that causes the curse to take effect.”

“So what you’re saying is that the curse on the coins is going to lie dormant until someone does the specific thing that sets it off,” Wei Changze observed. “That makes sense and is certainly more traditional, especially for cursed coins, but it makes things trickier for us. Both Jin Guangshan and what’s-his-name Wang must have done the same thing, but since we don’t have eyewitnesses to either death, we have no basis to figure out what the trigger action is.”

“I don’t suppose anyone would be amenable to testing it out with some of the coins we have in stock…?” Wen Ruohan held up his hands when they all glared at him. “So noted. A better question, then: do we care?”

“What do you mean?” Lan Qiren asked, puzzled. Wen Ruohan had been joking the first time, possibly, but his second question appeared to be wholly sincere – yet he could not understand why they would not care. Curses were pernicious, and they did not know how many of the gold coins had been taken by Wen sect disciples. Even putting aside morality, or what morality he was willing to assume for Lan Qiren’s sake, Wen Ruohan would not risk his Wen disciples so callously. So what did he mean?

“He’s right,” Cangse Sanren said, surprising Lan Qiren. “We don’t care. The curse is in the coins. That makes it easy! We don’t actually need to undo the curse. We just need everyone to get rid of the coins before they trigger them.”

That…made sense.

“The coins have all been scattered by now, all the way throughout the cultivation world,” Lan Qiren said. “Yet we have not been hearing about mysterious deaths occurring anywhere but here. The trigger must not be that straightforward an action, nothing that would activate too soon – which makes sense, assuming my brother did not want people to immediately suspect the coins, and therefore the Jin sect, of what he was doing.”

“That gives us some time, at least,” Cangse Sanren said. “Which is good: I desperately need a bath. Do you know that crawling through dusty corners is awful, actually?”

“How are we going to convince people to give the coins up?” Wei Changze asked, even though he was just as dusty as she was. Lan Qiren even thought he saw a spiderweb in the other man’s crown. “I mean…the coins are made of gold. If someone came up to me and asked me to give them up to them, I’d be suspicious that they were out to cheat me.”

“Or rob you of your valor, given that it was meant to act as a prize for participants,” Wen Ruohan said. “Which means that even if we offer them a gold coin of equal value in exchange, they may not wish to accept. Naturally this is not a problem for my sect – no one is going to countermand my order, and if they do, they’d be getting what they deserve.”

“Perhaps that is the answer,” Lan Qiren said, ignoring Cangse Sanren’s snort of help someone else for once. “The leaders of the Great Sects have more authority than most. If each one gives the order to collect the coins, especially paired with remuneration in equal value, they would be able to obtain the majority of the coins from not only their own sects, but their subsidiary sects as well.”

“And the minor sects would catch wind of there being something wrong with the coins and be in a hurry to get rid of them, especially if there’s an equal or better exchange being offered,” Cangse Sanren agreed. “I know your sect doesn’t like gossip, Qiren, but you must admit there’s some value in it.”

“When it has value, it is news, not gossip,” Lan Qiren informed her, making her laugh. “Do we need to worry about the Jin sect itself? If my brother was planning on tricking Jin Guangshan, he might not have refrained from cursing the coins that were meant to go to the Jin sect’s own disciples, or to its own subsidiary sects. They are currently lacking a sect leader, and Madam Jin might not want to issue such an order without adequate explanation…”

She almost certainly wouldn’t, in fact. And even if she did, it was uncertain if the Jin sect would believe that any orders she gave were free of coercion…

“I wasn’t planning on letting her give the order,” Wen Ruohan said mildly. “I do have that army sitting outside. They’re probably getting rather bored with nothing to do – a search for a needle in a haystack, or a bunch of cursed gold coins in the hotbed of gold items that is Jinlin Tower, sounds just right.”

It sounded like the Jin sect was going to be in for a fairly miserable time.

“That sounds reasonable,” Lan Qiren said, conceding the point. It wasn’t the Jin sect’s disciples’ fault that they had as terrible a sect leader as Jin Guangshan, but boats rose and fell with the tide; they were ants on the same branch as him whether they liked it or not. “Provided you ensure that your army does not do anything outrageous in the process.”

“I’ll give orders that strict military discipline will apply,” Wen Ruohan promised, which was good.

(Somewhat less good was the suggestion that military discipline wouldn’t normally apply, but it was the Wen sect, after all. There were limits to the sorts of ethics Lan Qiren could reasonably expect to see before he’d had a chance to make some serious changes and enough time to make sure they would stick.)

“I can go to the Jiang sect,” Wei Changze volunteered. “Cangse shouldn’t, since she’s nominally guarding the kids right now – and I’m better at avoiding answering questions about uncomfortable things like that. Fengmian will listen to me on something like this.”

“He’ll listen, but will he do anything?”

Wei Changze sighed. “I think so. I’ll do my best to get Yu Ziyuan on board as well – she doesn’t like me, but she doesn’t hate me, either.”

“Another good reason not to send me,” Cangse Sanren said, then shrugged. “I guess that leaves me to go tell the Nie sect? That’ll be fun, I don’t think I’ve been to the Unclean Realm in years.”

She paused, then belatedly winced.

“Oh, sorry, Qiren-gege,” she said.

Lan Qiren frowned. “For what?”

“I just assumed you’d be the one going to the Cloud Recesses to tell the Lan sect,” she said. “Wouldn’t that be awkward?”

“Why would it be awkward?” he asked, puzzled. “Even if I married out, I’m still a Lan, and a member of the main family. Naturally I should be the one to go to them. I am the one most likely to be believed.”

He was painfully aware of how slow his sect was to trust in news from the outside. Some of them claimed that it was just obeying the rules against gossip, but Lan Qiren suspected it had more to do with a violation of Do not form a clique to exclude others.

Still: even if his marriage had now rendered him an outsider, he was still a Lan of the main sect line, and more than that, he had been their acting sect leader for ten years. That was not nothing. He knew how to make them listen.

And…the coins were not the only business Lan Qiren had with them.

Lan Zhengquan – the other sect elders –

Lan Qiren’s brother had claimed that they’d all known, to greater or lesser degree, and that they’d all refused to share their knowledge with him, purposefully deceiving him. Lan Qiren needed to know how true that was. He needed to know how far the rot extended. He needed to make them see that they had to excise that rot, destroy the corruption of their values root and branch, if the Lan sect were to hold its head up high in the cultivaiton world once more.

“What about my brother?” he asked, thinking of another problem. “We speculate that he fought with Jin Guangshan, and he certainly must have been here to create the coins, but we do not know where he has gone.”

“I expect he’s still here, hiding somewhere,” Wen Ruohan said. “Jin Guangshan’s death was too recent – my forward scouts were already here, setting up detection arrays. Between the scouts and my spies, they would have noticed if someone tried to escape the city, and now that my army is here and searching the city, there will be no chance left to leave; it is impossible for him to run away even if he wanted to. Do not be concerned – I will find him for you, Qiren. You go to the Cloud Recesses.”

Lan Qiren smiled, thinking once more of the painting: obsession, he’d titled it in his head, but it could also be called merely love, if a very particular form of it.

But perhaps, for Wen Ruohan, the painting would best be termed something even rarer than love: trust.

He was letting Lan Qiren go, and back to the Cloud Recesses of all places. Back to his home, back to where he had supporters and a Great Sect of his own to back him – if Lan Qiren wanted to leave Wen Ruohan, or to turn against him, this would be the best moment for it. Now, when Wen Ruohan was weakened; now, when his forces were committed far away from the Nightless City; now, when he trusted him.

Lan Qiren would not betray that trust.

And neither would he overlook what Wen Ruohan was doing for him – because it was for him that he was doing it. Finding Lan Qiren’s brother was a necessity, of course, as necessary as finding and putting down any mad dog. But sending Lan Qiren away…

I will find him for you, Wen Ruohan had said, but he meant I will kill him for you.

Knowing that they were discussing his brother’s death should have made Lan Qiren feel bad.

It didn’t.

Later, when he had time, he would mourn his brother properly. He would mourn the possibility of his brother, really, rather than the man he’d become in the end, but that would be enough to fulfill his duties, whether to his brother, to his family, or merely to himself as a younger brother. And when he did, he would take the time to properly mourn He Kexin as well, as he should.

For the moment, he would be grateful for what he had, however unexpectedly he’d obtained it.

“We have a plan, then,” Lan Qiren said firmly. “I will set out tomorrow morning, at the earliest opportunity.”

“We can leave tomorrow, too,” Cangse Sanren agreed, then made a face. “Though maybe…not quite as early as whatever you mean…you Lan are all insane…”

Lan Qiren sighed and ignored her.

“How much do you need to do to get started with the search on your end?” he asked Wen Ruohan as they walked out of the hidden laboratory. “Although current events naturally take priority, if there is an opportunity I should very much like to play you the song I wrote for you.”

“In that case, very little time,” Wen Ruohan said with a faint smirk.

Lan Qiren left him to it and returned to their rooms. He didn’t have anything he needed to pack, as he’d arrived at Jinlin Tower with little more than the bare essentials and had never had the opportunity to unpack, but he hadn’t come here for that.

Guqin in hand, he began setting up an extensive set of privacy wards, layering them on several times over, and then over again. It was almost certainly overkill, but they’d been subject to an assassination attempt once before, and Lan Qiren wanted them to be able to sleep without concern.

As well as – other distracting things.

He had promised to be diligent, after all. Diligence is the root.

“Tell me, Qiren,” Wen Ruohan said upon arriving and observing Lan Qiren’s preparations. “Is there something about Lanling that particularly inspires you? Or is this just good luck on my part?”

“Purely the latter,” Lan Qiren said dryly. “I assure you.”

Wen Ruohan chuckled. “Why so many, though? Do you have a particular concern that we will be attacked while sleeping tonight?”

He seemed to be suggesting that Lan Qiren was being unnecessarily paranoid. Ironically enough, Lan Qiren was well aware that if he confirmed that he had such a suspicion, Wen Ruohan’s own paranoia would then ensure he did not sleep at all.

Lan Qiren wouldn’t do that to him, but for a moment he was tempted.

“I do not,” he said. “However, I wanted to ensure that we had some privacy, as I had hoped that we could try dual cultivation this evening.”

Lan Qiren was a little disappointed when Wen Ruohan’s expression of mild approval and teasing did not change in any way at his words. He’d hoped that being unexpectedly blunt with the request would have a greater and more amusing impact.

However, Wen Ruohan also didn’t say anything, so eventually Lan Qiren prompted: “If that would be acceptable to you?”

Wen Ruohan blinked extremely slowly, as if moving through water, and then said, with unusual politeness: “Forgive me, you may need to repeat yourself.”

Lan Qiren felt a sudden urge to laugh, though he suppressed it immediately. It seemed he’d gotten his desired-for impact, only it was even more impactful and more humorous than he’d originally suspected. Truly, Wen Ruohan could be very funny…often when he least expected to be.

“I would like to dual cultivate with you this evening,” he said, and watched as Wen Ruohan seemed to absorb that statement with remarkable slowness. “I also would like to play for you. I do not expect that either will have much effect, but it would please me to know that you have as much power at your command as possible when you go up against my brother.”

“Oh,” Wen Ruohan said, and sat down heavily on the bed, all at once, as if he were a puppet whose strings had just been cut. “Yes, that makes sense.”

Lan Qiren arched his eyebrows. “Do I want to know what you were thinking?”

“Many things, none helpful,” Wen Ruohan said, which meant his thoughts had probably been especially pornographic in nature. “Are you certain about the dual cultivation? It’s not necessary. I am quite confident in defeating him either way.”

“If it is not something you want to do, we do not have to,” Lan Qiren said, tilting his head to the side and wondering at Wen Ruohan’s atypical hesitancy. Most of the time, the other man was goading him on to further acts of debauchery, not acting skittish – he hoped that he had not inadvertently misstepped, somehow. Was there some sort of etiquette he should have followed…? “You had previously expressed an interest in doing it, that was all. I thought now seemed like a good time.”

Would making a joke about carriages be inappropriate? Was this a sensitive subject or something? Something that had happened to Wen Ruohan in the past –

“You’re not – worried?”

Oh. Of course.

Understanding dawned.

It wasn’t that Lan Qiren did not know what risks dual cultivation entailed. They would be merging their qi together, achieving harmony, accessing something deep within each other, and in so doing they would leave themselves vulnerable to the worst sort of theft. It was a little like the fictional array his brother had invented, and no doubt the reason Jin Guangshan was so willing to believe in it: this was the only way Lan Qiren knew of that cultivators could steal each other’s spiritual energy. Once they were dual cultivating, they each of them had the chance to destroy the other, if they wanted, or drain away the other’s cultivation and leave them empty and broken – or, well, Wen Ruohan could drain him dry, while Lan Qiren could at least make a significant dent in Wen Ruohan’s remaining power, leaving him weak and powerless just before his brother attacked him.

And that made all of Wen Ruohan’s hesitations make far more sense. It was exactly what his painting had already told Lan Qiren: the thing that had been most missing in Wen Ruohan’s life until now, that which he lacked most, was not love, nor lust, nor friendship, but trust. Someone he could feel safe in trusting, but also someone who would trust in him: someone who would give him the benefit of the doubt, who would side with him first simply for his own sake, someone to believe in him, with an unshakeable faith.

Luckily for him, Lan Qiren had that in spades.

“No,” he said. “I trust you.”

Wen Ruohan looked as though he’d just been struck by lightning.

Lan Qiren politely averted his eyes for a little while to let him have some privacy as he collected himself.

“I do want to play for you first, however,” he remarked after a few moments had passed, changing the subject. “I know a number of songs that can be used to enhance meditation and improve energy, and of course there is the song I wrote with you in mind – I am not yet certain as to what the purpose it may eventually be put, so playing it for you may be pointless, but as an emotional matter, I would still like to do so.”

“That would be good,” Wen Ruohan said, his voice a little hoarse. “I would very much like to hear it.”

“I will warn you that the same terms apply as to your painting,” Lan Qiren said, moving over to settle by his guqin. “I do not explain my songs. I find that it is impossible to express precisely what I intend using words. They simply do not capture the full extent of my meaning.”

“Mm. ‘If it were possible to simply say what I meant, I wouldn’t have needed to paint it’ – something like that, but with music?”

“Exactly,” Lan Qiren said, and snuck a peek at him: Wen Ruohan looked much better, though his expression was still uncharacteristically soft. It was nice. “Going back to the subject of dual cultivation, as you can imagine, I am thoroughly inexperienced in how it would go. Would you like to take the lead? Or the assertive position, for that matter?”

That seemed to give Wen Ruohan yet another shock: he stared blankly at Lan Qiren for another long moment.

“You go both ways?” he asked, a little incredulous. “Since when?”

“…you do remember that I came to your bed a virgin, correct?” Lan Qiren asked, a little bewildered by the question. “You made fun at my expense over it? Several times? How would I have known if I preferred one to the other? I just went with what felt right at the time.”

Wen Ruohan opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again – then repeated the whole process a few more times, looking increasingly aggravated each time.

In fact, overall, he seemed to be deeply vexed by something, though Lan Qiren couldn’t begin to guess what. Some internal debate or shockingly overturned assumption he’d made, presumably.

“Receiving does not seem that difficult?” Lan Qiren hazarded a guess. “Unless there is something I’ve missed?”

Wen Ruohan snorted, and all of a sudden, he no longer looked annoyed, all the tension leaving his shoulders as he relaxed. “No, nothing like that,” he said. “I think you have a good grasp on the mechanics by now. This is on me: I should stop being surprised at being surprised by you…tell me, do you really not mind? The thought of being the one being taken, I mean?”

Lan Qiren had heard some strange things about sex before, but this one seemed especially bizarre. “I already told you that sex is not an imposition to me, but a duty I am happy to fulfill. Why would the position matter?”

“I’ve often asked myself the same question,” Wen Ruohan remarked. “I have yet to receive an adequate answer. And yet, some people think it does.”

“I enjoy the position I generally take,” Lan Qiren said with a shrug. He was not ‘some people’ and never had been. “I have never especially yearned to try the other way around, but perhaps it would be valuable as a learning experience…?”

Wen Ruohan stifled a laugh in his sleeve. “Let us save that for another time. I would prefer not to distract you right before you go confront your sect elders – I assume you are planning to raise the issue of the mine with them?”

“Of course. How could I not? Justice has already been delayed long enough.”

“I thought you’d say that. I almost regret not being there to see their expressions, but I suspect that if I were there, they wouldn’t make them.”

Lan Qiren inclined his head in agreement.

“As for dual cultivation…” Wen Ruohan paused.

“We do not have to,” Lan Qiren said firmly. “It was only a thought – ”

“I like it.”

Lan Qiren paused, a little frustrated: Wen Ruohan could be so mercurial at times.

Wen Ruohan laughed at him, clearly identifying the expression on his face.

“I would very much enjoy dual cultivating with you,” he said. “In spite of the risks of it – because of the risks of it. I like the idea that you would bare yourself to me and give me everything you can, wanting me to be strong, wanting me to have power, not because you fear me, but because you fear losing me.”

He smirked.

“After all, the one advantage of being in love with a bastard like me is my longevity, is it not?”

Lan Qiren groaned. Wen Ruohan was never going to let him live that one down, ever.

“Well, for my part, I look forward to what it will do to you.”

“To me?” Lan Qiren asked, surprised. “What do you mean?”

“Proper dual cultivation benefits both parties, but the weaker one benefits more,” Wen Ruohan said, confident as ever. “I want to see your face when the power comes to you. I want to send you back to your sect glowing – I want them to see that beautifully pure golden core of yours shining through your eyes, and know what a treasure they gave up when they gave you to me.”

“And you are not worried in return?” Lan Qiren asked, charmed in spite of himself. Despite the offer, he had no intention of letting himself take too much of the power they would be able to generate – the purpose for this evening was to enhance Wen Ruohan’s strength, not his own. “Your paranoia is infamous, and yet your primary thought is of me and my fears, not your own?”

Wen Ruohan laughed and settled down into a meditation pose.

“That much I already promised you,” he said mischievously. “Do you dare doubt my word? Watch yourself, Qiren. I might grow insulted.”

Lan Qiren smiled despite himself, and settled himself at his guqin.

“Now, play me your song,” Wen Ruohan ordered, back to being imperious and demanding. “The one you wrote for me. We’ll start with that one, and then we’ll see about the rest.”

Lan Qiren would have preferred to start with the more definitively useful ones, the ones that encouraged focus and clarity of purpose and strength, but it was no matter – he could play those just as easily later, or even in the morning if need be. And he did want to play Wen Ruohan the song he’d written for him.

He didn’t know if Wen Ruohan knew what it meant for one of Gusu Lan to write their beloved a song. But whether he did or did not, it didn’t really matter. The music was the music, expressing whatever it expressed, the listener just as able to extract meaning as the player, each interpretation equally valid.

All Lan Qiren could do was play it with every last feeling he had in his heart.

He put his fingers to the strings and sank into the music.

When he finally looked up, it was to see Wen Ruohan kneeling in front of him, his eyes glowing – literally glowing, the way he’d said he wanted to do for Lan Qiren (and which Lan Qiren had perhaps mistakenly assumed was merely poetic exaggeration), the red of them bright like rubies.

“Qiren,” he rasped, voice choked with unspeakable emotions, and he reached out to put his hands on Lan Qiren’s face. “The answer is yes.”

Lan Qiren didn’t even know the question, but as Wen Ruohan reeled him in, he found he didn’t care.

#mdzs #wen ruohan #lan qiren #cangse sanren #wei changze #my fic #Megafic

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