Chapter Text
Fuck Wei Wuxian.
Seriously. Fuck him with a rusty fucking spade and a goddamn radish for talking Jiang Cheng into this stupid fucking idea in the first place. “Oh, it’ll be a gesture of goodwill, Jiang Cheng!” “The people of Yiling deserve it, Jiang Cheng!” Jiang Cheeeeeeng, please, do this one little thing for your son and heir?” Not that Wei Wuxian is his fucking son, that’s not how the fucking adoption worked, but of course he’s as fucking shameless as ever. Not that Jiang Cheng would have it any fucking other way—he can’t imagine how fucking awful it would be not to have Wei Wuxian around saying dumb shit all the time; how would he know what the not-dumb fucking options available to him were if Wei Wuxian wasn’t yelling about the fucking dumb ones?—but still. It was fucking annoying then and it’s fucking annoying now. Doubly fucking annoying now that they’re actually here, working on cleansing the last vestiges of resentful energy from the Burial Mounds so that fucking Wei Wuxian can establish a fucking farming and teaching community for fucking rogue cultivators.
Officially, it’s his own fucking idea, as chief cultivator: a haven for the unwanted and the fucking unfortunate, a solution to the question of what the fuck to do with those groups that weren’t quite large enough to become petty sects like the Moling Su (who put a new fucking meaning on the word petty every time their goddamn stupid sect leader opened his fucking mouth), but were still part of the cultivation world, and so needed fucking training. Not that anyone is going to be fucking forced into the Burial Mounds like a fucking prison or anything. It’s more that Wei Wuxian convinced Jiang Cheng (fuck his fucking stupid, soft heart that apparently his fucking brother knows about despite all his goddamn effort) that these rogue cultivators needed fucking options, even if they didn’t fucking opt into those fucking options, and so here they fucking are. Everyone will be fucking welcome in the Yiling Burial Mounds, and his brother and fucking brother-in-law will serve as coordinators and organizers; the grandmaster and patriarch of the enterprise, he fucking supposes, and snorts, not for the first time, at the idea of anyone addressing Wei fucking Wuxian the way Lan Qiren insists on being spoken to. Lan Wangji he can see dressed up in formal robes and lecturing a class of young cultivators—hell, he’s pretty sure that was his damn future in the fucking Cloud Recesses anyway—but Wei Wuxian wouldn’t be so fucking boring as to actually lecture. No, he’ll probably do a practicum of some kind, bring everyone out in the fucking open land, and find some excuse for them to all fucking practice whatever he wanted to teach right out in the open.
Kind of like he fucking did already, when he convinced Jiang Cheng to put the resources of the cultivation world behind restoring the fucking place. It is still a good idea, Jiang Cheng reminds himself. A fucking good idea. A symbolic fucking replacement of the evil of the fucking past, and particularly the cruelty and inhumanity that led to mass fucking graves (and to dropping fucking cultivators on top of mass fucking graves—seriously, if Wen Chao weren’t dead and gone he’d fucking kill him another few fucking times) with something new, and hopeful, and fucking positive. And so Jiang Cheng had been convinced, and Wei Wuxian had used the opportunity to teach everyone else about the fucking Burial Mounds.
Not just about the Mounds, though—about the fucking people buried there along the way. It had been Lan Wangji, he thinks, who originally thought of it (or maybe Wen Qing? It can be hard to tell who in their fucking family came up with a given idea, since everyone fucking piles on to improve it as soon as its fucking aired, and family dinners are sometimes more like exercises in fucking competitive brilliance than actual fucking dinners. Even Lan Wangji has given up on his fucking Lan insistence on not talking at meals after Wen Ning, of all people, beat him to an idea that Lan Wangji had apparently been fucking sitting on all meal in proper silence, and he was fucking pissed about it, as shown by the slightest fucking dilation of his eyes), but by now they’re all on board with the new plan for how to cleanse the fucking place and set it to rest at fucking last. All previous attempts to purify the Burial Mounds had relied on sheer force; because of the volume of fucking resentful energy present, and the intensity with which it pushed on even the greatest, mightiest fucking cultivators, they had simply felt the need to shove back hard against the tide of the fucking dark. Even Wei Wuxian’s decontamination efforts had been based on a similar idea, only using demonic cultivation to twist the resentful energy back against itself and fuck with it, then pinning it in place with his immense display of fucking talismans and one careful control array in his bedroom cave, the so-called Demon Subdue Palace. It worked better than anything else anyone had fucking tried, and it had been brilliant and amazing for one person to do on their own (not that he would have had to fucking do it on his own if he hadn’t fucking tried to abandon his goddamn sect, as Jiang Cheng likes to remind him from time to time when his head gets too big for his fucking shoulders). But even that would have been hard to do on the scale of the entire actual fucking mountain, because it riled up all the other lost souls and resentful energy every time you pushed against it, like how you concentrated salt in water by boiling it.
So instead, Lan Wangji (or again, Wen Qing, or maybe it was even Jiang Cheng himself one of those time he’d gotten fucking annoyed at Wei Wuxian telling the fucking story about how he’d suggested to Lan Qiren that they should use and manipulate resentful energy and gotten a book thrown at him again) had suggested that they go about it the other way, the simpler but longer way that everyone had ignored before this because it was too fucking difficult: find out what all the fucking resentful spirits in the fucking Burial Mounds wanted, and fulfill their dying fucking wishes.
This had seemed just as fucking insurmountable as anything else when it had been suggested, but then Wei Wuxian had pointed out that not only could the Lans find out the answers to these questions through Inquiry, but he himself could fucking talk to the voices in the Burial Mounds. As he put it, distressingly cheerfully (seriously, it made Jiang Cheng’s fucking jaw clench every time he mentioned it, but he always acted like it was no big fucking deal because he was fucking Wei Wuxian and he had a fucking death wish sometimes) “they’re always telling me that they can help me achieve whatever I want, but I never bother to ask what they want. It’s really rude of me, if you think about it. I’ll just have to go back and be a better guest.”
Well, hearing that shit Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng had thrust him bodily back into his seat and made him promise on jiejie’s pork rib and lotus soup that he wouldn’t rush off and try that shit alone. But it had actually turned out to be a pretty good idea. Apparently dead resentful souls really aren’t used to someone bright and cheerful showing up, waving at the empty air above their mass grave, and asking “now, what can I do for you today? Comfort a loved one? Sing a favorite song? Grind an enemy’s bones to dust? Just stop me when I get close, I have a list.” The first few spirits had been reticent, concerned that this was some new deviltry intended to fuck with them (and to be fair, if the tables were reversed Jiang Cheng is pretty fucking sure his goddamn spirit would have tried to find a way to break Wei Wuxian’s fucking legs). But soon word spread through whatever eldritch fucking pathways existed among the dead, and ever since the Lan contingent arrived with their cacophony of fucking Inquiries the dead have been metaphorically tripping over each other to get their wishes sorted out first. Those that can be, are. Many of them, sadly, are fucking impossible: the Burial Mounds has been fucking full of corpses for longer than Jiang Cheng could fucking tell you, longer than anyone he’s ever known is fucking been aware of, and so some of their wishes involve people, places, or even goddamn cities that no longer fucking exist.
For them, Wei Wuxian is always called over, even if they are in contact through one of the Lans, and he takes very fucking seriously (as seriously as Jiang Cheng has ever fucking seen him take anything) the duty of informing them that their wishes cannot be granted.
For some of those, apparently, their true wish is actually to be finally heard; to have the need they have had pent up for all those long and painful years of death acknowledged and considered. Those spirits dispel themselves even after Wei Wuxian has quietly explained that he cannot help. They are often apologetic for the harm they have caused, and Wei Wuxian salutes them as they go.
The rest are not so easily fucking pleased.
It is for them that Jiang Cheng, Nie Mingjue, and their disciples stand at the ready. He has whipped and struck and just plain fucking fought more in the past few months than he even did during the Sunshot Campaign, and he was already justly proud of his reputation from that fucking war. Many of these spirits have grown warped and strong off the fear and pain of those who have had the bad fucking fortune to wander into the Burial Mounds, or who have made the terrible fucking choice to go there of their own free will, or (worst of all, because it fucking includes Wei Wuxian and he can’t not fucking think about it) were fucking left here by others. Their accumulation of resentful power has made them reckless, and they attack the disciples with fucking abandon. Zidian has been fucking invaluable here, but not as much as Wen Qing has—her healing tents, filled with every sect’s healers and supplies bought lavishly with Jin gold, have meant that they have not lost a single fucking cultivator since the project started. He is so goddamn proud of her he could fucking burst.
But it may be that this fucking streak is going to end at the fucking death, so to speak, because this last spirit, the final one that Wei Wuxian was not able to talk down and whose wish was not able to be fucking satisfied, is the deep dark heart of the mountain. Fuck Wei Wuxian for suggesting this, thinks Jiang Cheng as he slumps over from exhaustion while speeding on Sandu towards where he can see the spirit (which is now occupying a form that would be fucking eerily human if it weren’t three fucking people tall and composed of the bones and skin of its earlier fucking victims) tossing junior cultivators aside like so much fucking litter. Wei Wuxian himself had fucking blanched when he’d heard the spirits’ demand—apparently its dying wish was for the entire rest of the fucking world to die in the same fucking disgusting way it had, which, yes, is an objectively metal fucking stance to take but also, calm the fuck down, asshole, you aren’t that fucking special—and then it had broken the fucking bonds and just fucking gone for it, attacking a group of fucking juniors who had been called up to deal with the much more minor spirits that were only the result of much more recent (yet still un-fucking-reconciliable) incidents and had not had the time to grow so fucking awful.
And now it was his job to fucking stop it. Zidian lashes out and tangles with a gigantic limb—and Jiang Cheng blesses the fucking weapon as it does its business and ejects the possessor from the possessed body. Apparently only the single fucking core body in the heart of the fucking assemblage of flesh is the spirit’s own; the rest coalesced around it as it fled, and are not properly its property, thus allowing Zidian to fucking evict it from its claim of squatters rights. He strikes again and again until the hulk is reduced to a single rotted form, no longer fucking human or even recognizably any fucking thing.
He is pretty sure this is the point at which Wei Wuxian, who the juniors are starting to call the Yiling Patriarch because of this project, would give a fucking epic monologue—or maybe just a fucking sweet, badass one-liner—before lifting his flute to his lips, or Hanguang-Jun would merely fucking grunt and it would look so goddamn fucking terrifyingly awesome while swinging Bichen into frame that Nie Huiasang would immediately depict it on a fucking fan for all posterity. It’s the moment when Zewu-Jun would try one last hurrah at fucking convincing the thing to stand down, while Chifeng-Zun would already have cleaved it half with fucking Baxia or died trying.
Jiang Cheng is not those fucking people. He is fucking Sandu Shengshou, and he does things fucking differently.
Jiang Cheng is quite capable of killing a fucking demon, thank you very fucking much, but he also knows that getting fucking close to the thing with his fucking sword when he doesn’t fucking have to is the smart fucking option. He’s also quite capable of taking it on single-handedly, but again, fuck that. He doesn’t fucking have to. This thing doesn’t get to set the fucking terms of engagement. He’s the fucking chief cultivator, and it’s just a fucking monster.
He whips it into fucking submission with Zidian from a distance, ties it up howling, and drags it back to fucking base, leaving a fucking furrow in the earth.
“Wei Wuxian, come get your fucking shit!” he yells as he approaches, the posse of junior cultivators nipping at his heels but still giving a wide berth to the fucking monster. “Come on out! I brought you a fucking present, the least you can do is show your fucking face.”
His idiot brother pops out of a tent and fucking grins when he sees the monster. “Jiang Cheng! You shouldn’t have!”
“You’re goddamn right I shouldn’t. Where do you want it? I don’t have all fucking day.”
“Oh, right there should be fine.” Wei Wuxian points at an area marked with an array and lined with talismans, and of fucking course he’s prepared for this—no one but jiejie and his wife knows Jiang Cheng as well as Wei Wuxian does, and no one but fucking no one likes preparing like Wei Wuxian does. Sure, he’s a master fucking improviser, but give him a definite idea of what’s coming and enough fucking paper and ink and he will write talismans until his fucking arm falls off. It’s what the Jins and Wens (well, the evil fucking Wens, not the in-laws) never understood about him: Wei Wuxian is a fucking chaos gremlin extraordinaire, but he fucking knows this about himself, and so his life is one of constant preparation for the same fucking chaos he creates.
Jiang Cheng slings the monster into the trap and recalls Zidian, and the talismans flare up as if the release of Zidian’s bonds were a fucking signal. Knowing Wei Wuxian, it probably fucking was. Wei Wuxian trundles over to him like a fucking pangolin, hands bouncing as he scurries, and throws his arm around Jiang Cheng’s shoulders. “A-Cheng!”
“Don’t fucking call me that.” But he doesn’t push Wei Wuxian’s arm off, because if he can’t indulge a little and enjoy his brother’s open affection when he’s just single-handedly captured the last fucking resentful spirit in the fucking Burial Mounds, when the fuck can he?
“All right, little brother.” Wei Wuxian grins and draws a talisman in the air. “Shall I, or do you want to?”
“Oh, go on, you know you fucking want to. Be my fucking guest.” He rolls his eyes and elbows Wei Wuxian, whose eyes crinkle into little fucking new moons of joy as he pushes the talisman forward. A blue arc explodes over the spirit, which stops struggling (did Jiang Cheng forget to mention it was struggling? He hadn’t been too fucking concerned, it hadn’t been anywhere near breaking through any of his brother’s fucking wards) and stands stock still, its arms splayed.
“One last chance!” Wei Wuxian’s voice is suddenly louder and deeper, and Jiang Cheng notices the little projection talisman stuck to his fucking throat. Leave it to his brother to have adopted the Lan’s rules about giving things fucking chances, but still be his own grandstanding fucking self. “Will you leave us and these people alone?”
A horrible fucking growl is the only response, but Wei Wuxian looks over at Lan Wangji, whom Jiang Cheng has just noticed standing a few feet away and clearly playing Inquiry on the guqin. At his husband’s shake of the head, Wei Wuxian sighs and draws another fucking talisman. This one glows red and baleful and Jiang Cheng is very fucking glad its pointed away from him right now. “Oh well. I tried.” With a shrug Wei Wuxian pushes the talisman forward. As it impacts the monster, Jiang Cheng is poised for something fucking huge to happen, like an explosion or a melting or a fucking scream but instead the monster just fucking disappears.
Wei Wuxian looks happy, though, and fucking Lan Wangji is nodding, so apparently that was what it was fucking supposed to do.
He realizes his brother’s arm is still around him and takes the opportunity to give Wei Wuxian a quick hug, squeezing and releasing before his brother can notice it fucking happened. Not quickly enough, apparently.
“A-Cheng!” Wei Wuxian throws his arms around him and holds him tight. “I knew you cared!”
“Shut up you fucking idiot. I’ll break your legs,” Jiang Cheng mutters into his shoulder, and then, because he can and because no one will ever fucking believe Wei Wuxian if he tells him what he said, he adds “I love you and I’m so fucking proud of you.”
Wei Wuxian’s dropped jaw and silence are the fucking reward he was hoping for as he turns towards the healing tents. By some miracle or other he’s not actually fucking injured, but his wife is there, and he wants to fucking see her. He gets about halfway there before Wei Wuxian’s brain and body catch up with his fucking ears and so he’s being actively tackled by his fucking idiot brother as they step into the tent and he looks for Wen Qing. She’s chatting with Yanli, who is visibly pregnant with the child Wei Wuxian has pestered her into agreeing to name Jin Rulan (as if it weren’t enough to for him to fucking marry into the fucking Lan clan, he needs to spread the Lan-ness around) and the two of them turn to face him and Wei Wuxian as they tumble in. He can see the moment when Wen Qing goes from assessing the situation for injuries to rolling her fucking eyes at them, and he waits for her to look back at him and smiles.
He knows Wei Wuxian is going to make too much of a fucking deal out of what he said to him, and he knows Wen Qing and Yanli are going to make it ten fucking times worse, Wen Qing by laughing at him and Yanli by being sweet about it, but it’s fucking worth it. Because he’s here, in the Burial Mounds again (he supposes that’s still an appropriate name, given how many bodies they’ve simply reinterred with fucking proper burial rites in order to quiet their spirits), and this time no one is telling him to fucking destroy his own goddamn family, or implying that he can’t fucking help them, or acting like he doesn’t have the fucking honor he was fucking born with. He can take whatever crap his siblings and wife are about to dish out, because he’s fucking here, he’s fucking alive, and he’s his fucking family. They all are. And no one, especially not anyone in his fucking family, is going to try to take them from him ever a-fucking-gain.