Chapter Text
Something, once shattered, could never be put together quite the same way as before; it was a truism as applicable to the soul and the heart as it was to objects. And when his brother was killed over a matter of politics, a stupid disagreement between sect leaders over a question of principle, Nie Mingjue’s heart shattered – and his convictions with it.
Wei Wuxian had once heard it said that one should fear most of all the patient man, a gentleman waiting ten years for vengeance; whoever had said that, he thought, had never met Nie Mingjue after he’d blackened. The man wasn’t patient in the slightest.
It hadn’t seemed so bad in the beginning. The man had brought his brother’s body to the Burial Mounds, the corpse curled in his arms like a child, and he had knelt before Wei Wuxian could stop him.
“You revived Wen Ning, even though he was a child of a Sect,” he said, and his eyes were like black coals, the fierce light that had once shined within them utterly extinguished. “Can you revive him, too?”
Wei Wuxian hesitated.
“I will not hold it against you if you can’t,” Nie Mingjue said. He should have been angry, Wei Wuxian would later remember thinking; Nie Mingjue was known for his anger, his rage – why wasn’t he angry? Why wasn’t he raging? It was only later that he realized that Nie Mingjue’s grief was so complete, so all-consuming, that it had pushed him somewhere beyond rage. “But I would ask that you try. In return, I will help you defend those you protect, now and going forward.”
That was a tempting offer. Wei Wuxian had been forced to split from the Jiang sect because they could not protect him; the Nie, on the other hand, were more established, stronger. If they survived this loss, they would be very good protection.
Still, Wei Wuxian wouldn’t sell a false bid of goods.
“He won’t come back to life,” Wei Wuxian said, coming forward to put a hand on Nie Huaisang’s chest. There was resentment there, not as much as Wen Ning, who had suffered so much and kept it all to himself, no, but enough. Whoever had killed him had been someone he had trusted, and he had died angry and betrayed – and no one did anger better than the Nie. It would probably be enough. “He’d still only be a corpse. You know that, right? Your sect above all others abhors the existence of evil –”
“I don’t care,” Nie Mingjue said. “It was my righteousness that failed him; I will not let it stop me again.”
“He wouldn’t be evil,” Wei Wuxian tried to explain. “Wen Ning isn’t evil. But he’d still be a corpse.”
“Even if he is evil, it doesn’t matter,” Nie Mingjue said. “I won’t be able to stop until I see him again.”
Wei Wuxian didn’t know what Nie Mingjue meant, and he was so uncomfortable with having the unbending, unyielding sect leader kneeling before him, begging him the way Wen Ruohan could have only dreamed of, that he doesn’t ask any more questions, merely agreed to give it his best effort.
He should have asked.
He should have –
He didn’t know what he should have done. At any rate, he would later learn that Nie Mingjue spoke the truth: he would not stop. He couldn’t stop.
He left his brother in Wei Wuxian’s care, and he returned to the Unclean Realm, and from there he set for to Lanling, to Koi Tower, where the people who had killed his brother lived. Wei Wuxian wasn’t sure what happened there, isolated from gossip as he was; by the time one of the Wens dared go down to the village and heard about it, everyone had universally started to refuse to talk about the entire event, naming it taboo.
Still, they heard enough.
Perhaps Jin Guangshan had hoped that his younger brother’s death would drive Nie Mingjue into a qi deviation, or perhaps he’d thought that Nie Mingjue would be so bound up in his belief in justice, his respect for etiquette and law, that he would not be able to respond in force. Perhaps he simply didn’t think it through at all.
He certainly didn’t think that Nie Mingjue would come to Lanling in the middle of the night, without warning nor declaration of war, and raze Koi Tower to the ground before half the cultivators of the Jin even knew what was happened. Who knew what salt was used to sow the fields, what monsters were willingly unleashed, but the entire city died almost overnight, the ground turned to ash, flames hot enough to melt gold rising up to the heavens with a roar like a dragon, the people was put to the sword – some people believed the children had been spared, others denied it. Nobody knew anything for sure.
They said Nie Mingjue was like a martial god, eyes indifferent even as he reaped life after life – Wen Ruohan had carefully cultivated his inner sect disciples from the most powerful he could find, and they almost all fell before Nie Mingjue’s blade; Jin Guangshan’s cultivators, who were selected on the basis of other considerations, didn’t stand a chance. There was no mercy, no humanity left; Nie Mingjue had left that all behind along with his righteousness, disregarded as useless and unimportant because it couldn’t even keep his brother safe – and Wei Wuxian thought of Jiang Cheng, thought of Jiang Yanli, and couldn’t say that he’d do it any differently.
Some people even said Nie Mingjue wielded demonic cultivation in his anger.
Wei Wuxian didn’t know if that was true.
He didn’t know how he’d feel if it was.
He didn’t know what to feel, when Jiang Cheng came to him – they’d broken all ties, not so long before, and so it was a surprise to see him.
“Did anyone see you –” he began.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Jiang Cheng said. His clothing was disorderly, his face unclean; he did not seem to be well. “Nothing does – the Jin sect is gone.”
Wei Wuxian felt fear for the first time. “But – shijie?”
“She’s safe,” Jiang Cheng said. “Jiang Ling, too; they’re at the Lotus Pier.”
“Jiang Ling?” Wei Wuxian echoed, eyebrows arching.
Jiang Cheng shrugged. “A surname is a small price to pay for life,” he said shortly, and that really said it all, didn’t it? “I don’t know what happened to the peacock, but I’m not holding my breath; rescuing shijie was already more than I expected…I’ve agreed not to interfere, in the future.”
“The future?” Wei Wuxian echoed. “What – what more is there? I thought the scheme was Jin Guangshan’s –”
“It was, but he wasn’t the only one who would benefit from it,” Jiang Cheng said. He ran his hands over his face. “The Jin were second only to the Wen when it came to the number of allied clans – anyone who had anything to do with it, even under suspicion, is considered guilty…I’ve all but given up our Jiang sect’s independence. If Nie Mingjue wants to wipe out one of the sects that answers to us, I won’t be able to stop him. My ancestors will be ashamed of me.”
“You did it for shijie.”
“I did it for all of us,” Jiang Cheng said. “I heard during the Sunshot Campaign that Wen Ruohan once sought an alliance with Nie Mingjue to dominate the rest of the world, which was rejected on account of what happened to the former Sect Leader – I believe it. I never thought it was true back then, but I believe it now. The masterless sabers –”
He shook his head, sealing his lips, and no matter what Wei Wuxian did, he couldn’t get another word out of him, just that ominous final phrase – the masterless sabers – how could a saber not have a master? A sword was only a spiritual weapon, guided by the cultivator that wielded it – even the Stygian Tiger Seal was only a tool.
“Why are you here, then?” Wei Wuxian finally asked.
Jiang Cheng looked at him as if he were stupid. “If I die, the Jiang Sect dies with me – where else would I be?” He saw that Wei Wuxian didn’t understand and snorted, shaking his head. “Didn’t Nie Mingjue promise you that those you protected would be kept safe? Well, here I am.”
Wei Wuxian licked suddenly dry lips. “Why would he kill you?”
“Because I would benefit,” Jiang Cheng said simply. “Whether or not I support what happened, I would benefit, a fellow sect leader…out of recognition for our former relationship, he told me that if I were here, I would live. The Lotus Pier won’t be touched. Besides, I’m here for another reason, on behalf of the cultivation world.”
“Oh? For what?”
“To get you to hurry up and bring Nie Huaisang back, of course. I don’t think anything short of that will make Nie Mingjue stop.”
I won’t be able to stop until I see him again.
“The process takes time,” Wei Wuxian protested. “Even though I have an idea of what to do, it’s not easy, it’s tricky –”
“I brought you help,” Jiang Cheng said shortly. He nodded down the mountain, where he’d left –
“That’s a small child,” Wei Wuxian said blankly.
“Somewhat undernourished,” Jiang Cheng conceded. “His name is Xue Yang; he’s a delinquent from Kuizhou, rather famous – well, infamous – for being pretty handy with demonic cultivation –”
“Jiang Cheng. That is a small child.”
“The Jin Sect took him in as a guest disciple –”
“Small! Child! How old is he, eight?”
“Twelve.”
“Jiang Cheng!”
“He’s pretty annoying, but he’ll shut up if you give him candy,” Jiang Cheng said. “I brought a bag. Now get back to fucking work before more people die.”
At first meeting, Xue Yang was a nasty little gremlin, full of spite and not a little bit of brilliance; it was extremely annoying how much it felt like looking into a slightly off-kilter mirror. He’d lost a finger, somewhere along the way, and while there was a sword buckled onto his belt he never used it – it took a while before Wei Wuxian noticed it, given that he himself didn’t use a sword and he’d assumed Xue Yang was following his example, but in fact the boy was terrified of swords.
More specifically, of sabers.
Even Nie Huaisang’s, which was – to be frank – the daintiest, frilliest saber Wei Wuxian had ever seen.
“You were a guest disciple of the Jin sect before,” Wei Wuxian said. “You saw what happened? The masterless sabers?”
Xue Yang averted his eyes and didn’t answer, which meant yes; he would otherwise have had a snappy answer of some sort.
“Was it that bad?”
“It was worse,” Xue Yang said, uncharacteristically solemn. “The masterless sabers - they hate evil. Who told them that people were evil?”
“I did,” a low voice said from behind him, and Xue Yang froze, the whites of his eyes showing; he resembled a small rabbit that had tried to demonstrate its toughness being suddenly faced with the teeth of a tiger.
“Sect Leader Nie,” Wei Wuxian said, much more respectfully than he might have otherwise, before the rumors. Nie Mingjue looked much the same as he had the first time: back straight, wearing his clan’s colors, his eyes dead inside. Even Baxia looked the same.
But he felt – wrong.
Maybe he really was using demonic cultivation, but if he was, it wasn’t anything like what Wei Wuxian had invented.
“How is my brother?” Nie Mingjue asked.
“The process is going very well so far,” Wei Wuxian hedged. “I should have a result for you within a week.”
Nie Mingjue nodded and turned to go.
“What are you going to do when he wakes?” Wei Wuxian asked, and Nie Mingjue stopped. “You said you couldn’t stop until he was back – what does it mean, that you’ll stop? Stop the killing? What will happen next?”
“Bring my brother back,” Nie Mingjue said. He didn’t turn back. “And we’ll see.”
That wasn’t reassuring. “Where are you going next?”
“The Cloud Recesses.”
Wei Wuxian’s eyes widened. “You can’t possibly believe that the Gusu Lan sect had anything to do with it – that’s your sworn brother’s home!”
“We made an oath together,” Nie Mingjue said. “I will uphold my end of it.”
Wei Wuxian didn’t understand; he simply stood there, helpless, watching the other man leave.
There was a tug on his sleeve.
He looked down at Xue Yang.
“The one who killed his brother, on behalf of the Jin sect,” Xue Yang whispered. “It was Jin Guangyao.”
Wei Wuxian thought about what he’d heard about the contents of the oath that the three war heroes had sworn and cursed, torn between chasing Nie Mingjue and stopping him and realizing that that would be futile. Even if he could raise an army of corpses to stop him, a man with an army that could defeat the Jin sect wouldn’t be afraid of him – and he didn’t dare use the Tiger Seal now.
“Let’s do what we can,” he told Xue Yang, who nodded furiously, all reluctance and moodiness gone. “If we can get Nie Huaisang back before Nie Mingjue reaches the Cloud Recesses, that’ll – that’d be good.”
“I don’t know if it’ll help.”
Neither did Wei Wuxian.