The Quiet Room

by nirejseki

Summary:

There was a room in the Cloud Recesses.

They called it the quiet room.

They said it was meant for healing, a safe space where you could be untroubled by the world, but Nie Mingjue suspected it had actually been designed as a torture chamber and that the Lan sect, having exposed their children to it from an early age, had simply become inured to its evils.

Chapter 1

There was a room in the Cloud Recesses.

They called it the quiet room.

They said it was meant for healing, a safe space where you could be untroubled by the world, but Nie Mingjue suspected it had actually been designed as a torture chamber and that the Lan sect, having exposed their children to it from an early age, had simply become inured to its evils.

Lan Xichen had asked him to try it, once, when he was younger, and Nie Mingjue had asked for the night to consider. Once the Cloud Recesses had gone to sleep, he had snuck over to the room and went inside, using Baxia to keep the door ajar, and if he hadn’t he thought he might very well have gone mad.

He had told Lan Xichen the next morning that he wouldn’t try it.

Now, years later, Lan Xichen’s requests for him to at least give it a shot had become more fervent, especially as his health had worsened, but he’d continued to refuse.

“It will not help me,” he’d told his insistent lover, who he knew only wanted the best for him – who had only gotten more worried after he’d decided to tell Jin Guangyao that he no longer wanted him to play the Song of Clarity for him. “It will not help me.”

“You have to do something,” Lan Xichen had said, his eyes pleading. “I can’t bear the thought of losing you, and you don’t know that it won’t help…”

“I know,” Nie Mingjue had said firmly. “Trust me, Xichen. I know.”

He had said something similar when Lan Xichen had begged him to allow Jin Guangyao to resume their sessions – he himself was too busy with rebuilding to come as often to Qinghe as would be necessary to make the treatment effective, and Jin Guangyao had said that leaving Koi Tower was a respite; Lan Xichen had thought it was a perfect solution for the both of them, and would improve their relationship in the bargain. Nie Mingjue had allowed it at first, and more often once his condition began to get worse, but after a while he’d decided to stop.

There hadn’t been a reason for the decision, not really. It wasn’t that he still didn’t trust Jin Guangyao, as Lan Xichen had all but stated; nor was it that he had given up hope of getting better, as Lan Xichen had heavily implied. He hadn’t given up hope, but he’d come to terms with the possibility that he might die soon – and the type of preparations he needed to do to allow Nie Huaisang to inherit the sect weren’t the sort of things that allowed him to spend a shichen or two every week, or even more often, listening to music that didn’t seem to be helping all that much.

He’d always intended on resuming it later, though he didn’t say as much – perhaps he should have.

Perhaps he should have explained more of his reasoning, perhaps he shouldn’t have been so firm in his decision, perhaps – perhaps he could have changed something, done something, and then Lan Xichen, full of concern that Jin Guangyao encouraged, wouldn’t have locked him in this room.

There’s nothing in the quiet room. All sound was muffled through a mixture of careful construction and padding and arrays built into the walls, arrays that not only deadened any sound but also sealed his lips in the time-honored Lan sect manner so that he couldn’t even make noise himself.

He tried. He beat his hands bloody against the door, trying to get out; he tried so hard to scream through the silencing spell that he tore his throat and spat out blood. His already unsettled qi became increasingly disordered the longer he stayed in the room: he had started hearing things he knew weren’t there, his mind making up sounds to fill the horrible quiet and opting for the worst of his memories.

He could hear Wen Ruohan laughing at him (Jin Guangyao mocking him); he could hear the screams of the battlefield, the roar of the dead; he could even hear his father’s voice, which he hadn’t heard in so long –

He could hear Baxia, stronger than he’d ever heard her before, and she was frantic, too. They are trying to break you, she screamed in his mind, don’t let them break you! and he remembered that she’d also been there when his father’s saber had snapped into a thousand pieces.

He didn’t understand why his lover would do this to him.

(Jin Guangyao had suggested it, he thought, and there was some hint of an answer just outside his grasp, just eluding him, and maybe if he could get out of the fucking quiet so that he could think he might be able to seize onto the answer, but he wasn’t, he was trapped, he was breaking -)

The door opened.

“Xichen,” Nie Mingjue mouthed from where he was kneeling on the floor, no longer able to move, praying that his lover had seen sense, had decided for the first time in years to trust him instead of Jin Guangyao –

Lan Wangji, still covered in bandages, stared at him in horror.

Notes:

this is entry no. 24 of the whumptober prompts which I have reposted separately here because it is being continued

Chapter 2

Lan Wangji liked the quiet.

Or – perhaps it was only accurate that he had liked the quiet, back when quiet meant good things. When it meant thoughtful contemplation, not having to deal with people he didn’t understand, and mama.

She’d called her home the jingshi, the quiet room, after the real one that was built back against the mountain, the one even Lan Wangji, who loved the quiet, had to be slowly acclimated to, the one that served as a means to strengthen cultivation and discipline the mind. He’d asked her once why she called it that, since it wasn’t a proper jingshi at all – it only had the basic arrays for privacy set at the windows, plus a few others he didn’t understand set into the floor, but those never seemed to be working when he was there.

She’d laughed weirdly (unhappily) and said that the sect’s quiet room was meant to discipline the mind and her quiet room was meant to discipline her. He didn’t understand, which he didn’t like – he usually understood mama, not the way he sometimes had trouble with other people – but she didn’t say anything more.

(That was the only time he’d ever seen the floor arrays active, the whole time he’d known her.)

He took to calling his home the jingshi, too, long after she’d left it. After all, the Lan sect rules demanded ‘Maintain your own discipline’, and quiet was discipline, and Lan Wangji always tried to do his best to follow the rules because following the rules made you happy. Right?

His older brother hadn’t liked that he called it that, but the name stuck – it’d been called it for so long, after all – and in the end he used it too. And so Lan Wangji lived in the quiet, even when it isolated him from the other boys his age, and he liked it that way.

And then, of course, he met Wei Wuxian, Wei Ying, who was the very opposite of quiet.

A bit like mama had been, actually, and for the first time it occurred to Lan Wangji that it wasn’t the quiet that he had liked so much.

When Wei Wuxian was gone, and he was hurt as much by his absence as he was by the whip marks that tore open his back – a punishment so dire he had scarcely believed it would actually be implemented until it was, and where before he might have accepted it as being his proper due he wasn’t so sure now – Lan Wangji turned to the quiet again, seeking the strength he gained from cultivation. Seeking comfort.

He found none.

He found –

Nie Mingjue was a heavy weight in arms that had begun to atrophy from disuse no matter how much Lan Wangji tried to train them, trapped as he was by his injuries, but Lan Wangji ignored the pain as he helped him back to his own quarters, his own jingshi, away from the other one.

(He ignored the way he took the lesser-used pathways to do it, making sure no one saw them.)

There was a lot of blood on Nie Mingjue, his hands nearly battered to bits, his throat abused by the silence spell, his face and ears covered in scratches caused by his own nails, and his eyes and ears had begun bleeding in the tell-tale sign of disorder qi wreaking havoc on his body from the inside as well.

It was not that Lan Wangji did not know of Nie Mingjue’s familial affliction. The man was his brother’s lover, after all, and they had all known each other since they were young. It was true that Lan Xichen no longer turned to Lan Wangji to confide in him his fears about Nie Mingjue, not after everything that happened over Wei Wuxian – it wasn’t necessary since he now had Jin Guangyao, some cruel part of Lan Wangji whispered, feeling jealous that his brother should have two great loves in his life while Lan Wangji had none – but it didn’t mean that he didn’t know.

“Why did you go to the quiet room?” he asked. He had always thought Nie Mingjue had hated the idea of it – it had always made sense to him, even if it didn’t to Lan Xichen. Nie Mingjue was a man of movement and noise, always loud in presence even when he did not speak; what succor would he find in the quiet, he who had never known it? “What happened?”

Nie Mingjue was weeping into his bloodied hands, salt tears mixing in with the tear tracks of blood on his face. Lan Wangji suspected it was the sound of Lan Wangji’s voice that affected him so – the voices of others always seemed to ring loudly after some time spent cultivating in the quiet room, almost deafening, and yet every time the din acted like a balm on his tender nerves.

And that was him. Lan Wangji couldn’t even imagine – for someone like Nie Mingjue, who didn’t have Lan training nor practice Lan techniques, who was notorious for lacking any skill in music and who couldn’t even protect himself by playing melodies in his head –

“What happened?” he asked again, more determined this time – there was a sick feeling in his stomach, a feeling not unlike the sick he had felt at the Nightless City, seeing his beloved do so much wrong. “Tell me.”

He got the story out of Nie Mingjue in bits and drabs, confused in sequence and time and not – not well – and –

Lan Wangji threw up into the small basin by the bed that he kept just for this purpose. It happened moderately often after he overexerted himself, whether in cultivation or movement or otherwise, and sometimes just after a particularly bad nightmare – and this felt like that.

A nightmare.

His brother – his brother – who always meant well, who tried so hard to do the right thing, who was kind and gentle and approachable the way Lan Wangji wasn’t – who was dutiful, who followed the rules, who had two loves in his life, each of them appropriate and approved of by the clan elders –

“He didn’t mean to hurt me,” Nie Mingjue lisped, his tongue still swollen from having been nearly bitten through, his voice hoarse and torn from his silent screams. His eyes and ears were still seeping blood. “He just wanted me to get better…he thought I wasn’t listening to him…being irrational…”

He nearly killed you, Lan Wangji wanted to scream. He didn’t trust you.

Just like he didn’t trust me.

“You need to go,” Lan Wangji said, seized with a sudden urgency. “Before –”

He didn’t know how to verbalize it. He didn’t want to verbalize it: he didn’t want to say that his brother’s lover should leave and never return, never trust himself again into the hands of the man (his brother) who did this to him, who put him in a room of nightmares and left him there unsupervised, who was probably at home having tea with his other lover while his childhood sweetheart died by inches in torment.

(Did Nie Mingjue even know about Jin Guangyao? Lan Wangji wondered for the first time. He’d thought they were a triad – Lan Xichen certainly spoke as if they were, confident that his sworn brothers’ troubles with each other were temporary, because love would eventually conquer all; he’d said that Jin Guangyao had told them that they were once lovers, attracted despite themselves, that it was a lover’s tiff that was sure to pass – but Nie Mingjue didn’t speak like that at all, distant and wary and even a little hateful towards the man he only reluctantly called his brother. He spoke of Lan Xichen as his lover, his beloved, and Jin Guangyao as someone who had betrayed him and who he was trying to force himself to get to know again, to tolerate, all on Lan Xichen’s say-so, and that was wrong, that wasn’t the relationship Lan Xichen seemed to think they had, and if Lan Xichen was so horribly wrong about that, then what else was he wrong about?)

“What happened to you?” Nie Mingjue asked instead of leaving at once, his hand raised and pointing as best as he could with broken fingers at Lan Wangji’s back. “Why…?”

Lan Wangji wet his lips. He knew, of course, that the Lan sect had not disclosed to outsiders what had happened to him – his betrayal of the sect, his punishment – but he had assumed Lan Xichen would at least tell Nie Mingjue.

“He said you were punished, and that you went into seclusion after,” Nie Mingjue said, before turning and spitting out some blood into the basin Lan Wangji had just cleaned. “But not – details. Why? What could merit that punishment?”

“I aided Wei Wuxian in escaping the Nightless City before he could be executed,” Lan Wangji said, because while he wanted to help Nie Mingjue he didn’t know if Nie Mingjue wanted his help – he didn’t know if he would turn away from him the way everyone else in his family had turned away from him. After all, there had been plenty of Nie sect cultivators who had been wounded or worse by what had happened there – and Nie Mingjue had been one of the ones who’d heeded the call to go to the Burial Mounds to lay siege.

But Nie Mingjue just nodded. “Should’ve had a trial,” he muttered through bloody lips. “Should’ve had a chance to explain what happened. Might’ve died anyway, but not – like that.”

Those were the kindest words on the subject that Lan Wangji had heard since it had all happened. They were probably true, too; Wei Wuxian should have had the chance to explain, to meet justice on his own terms, even given what the outcome would likely have been…Lan Wangji might not have even been able to tolerate that much. Like his father before him, he couldn’t bear to see his beloved executed for their crimes, though at least he’d kept himself from imprisoning him against his will until he lost all will to live.

(Not like Lan Xichen, who put his lover inside the jingshi just as their mother had been put inside a jingshi and left him there alone –)

“You need to go,” Lan Wangji said again. “It’s not – safe. Here.”

He hated to say it. He hated to think it.

Nie Mingjue looked at him, the same shared sorrow in his eyes. “Is it for you?”

That night, Lan Wangji went to children’s quarters and collected a very sleepy A-Yuan, who had been reluctantly named Lan Yuan by elders who didn’t accept him and sometimes resented him and who would not live well here without Lan Wangji to protect him –

Collected an equally sleepy Lan Jingyi, a little orphan who hadn’t yet been assigned a guardian, who liked noise and play a bit too much for the elders’ liking and who screamed for days after even the smallest introduction to the quiet room and no one seemed to care because surely he’d get used to it eventually –

Collected Bichen and Wangji and all the things he thought he might miss, which turned out to be far less than he’d thought –

He ignored the pain on his back, mounting on Bichen with Baxia under Nie Mingjue’s feet as well for all that the man was still bleeding and couldn’t stand without leaning on him, though he held Lan Jingyi securely in his arms like a man who knew his way around children –

He left.

Lan Wangji did not think he would return.

Chapter 3

Nie Huaisang’s day began, as always, with noise.

The Unclean Realm was like that – there wasn’t a single shichen of the day when there wasn’t at least some racket going on in the background, whether the sound of sabers whistling through the air and the grunting of men at the thrice-daily trainings on the fields, the din of hammering rising up from the forges alongside the smoke, the squeals and squawks of the various types of animals being harried to and fro, the shouting and haggling and people sounds that filled the bustling markets (both day and night) that had sprung up within the Unclean Realm’s fortress as a wartime tradition some generations back and which had never gone out of fashion.

Guests sometimes complained about it, saying that people walked through the halls at night (what did they think halls were for) or that there were too many birds outside (that didn’t sound like a problem) or the cats were yowling again (okay, the feral cat thing was a bit of a problem but at least they didn’t have a rat problem) or about all the loud noises of living people. Those who were born and raised there scarcely noticed it, and those that stayed acclimated eventually.

Those who really couldn’t handle it built themselves thicker walls.

Nie Huaisang was woken up that day with an especially loud bang that he suspected was something important tipping over somewhere, never a fortuitous start, but the day itself went pleasantly enough after that. He lazed around in the morning, snuck in a belated breakfast from an indulgent kitchen, begged out of saber training in the middle of the day with an excuse so transparent that Nie Zonghui looked like he was considering constructing a window with it, and finally settled quite happily on the balcony with a few of his favorite birds to paint.

It was not, strictly speaking, his balcony – it connected to the sect leader’s suite of rooms, not his own, and his brother used it fairly often when he was flying in and out of the Unclean Realm on business.

Nie Mingjue was currently away at the Cloud Recesses, not on business. Visiting his handsome lover again, and Nie Huaisang found it amusing all over again that his misanthrope of a brother, of all people, had somehow managed to snag the most eligible young master of their generation – that he had what everyone else wanted and couldn’t get.

His brother. Good for him!

Still, his brother being gone meant that the balcony was free, and it was one of Nie Huaisang’s favorite places to lurk: he had an excellent view of so many parts of the Unclean Realm, wonderful light, and no one would dare to intrude on his brother’s domain just to bother him.

It was a good day, bright and noisy in the best of ways, right up until it wasn’t.

Nie Huaisang felt more than saw Baxia approaching, the thrum of his own saber – casually propping up his easel – immediately recognizable, and he couldn’t help but smile in delight at the thought of seeing his brother even if it meant he was probably not getting out of saber practice today.

It was only odd, he thought, that the smear on the horizon that would be his brother approaching seemed larger than usual –

And then, all of a sudden, it was very much not a good day.

His brother was covered in blood, clearly his own, and his eyes were vacant and dull – shock, perhaps? – and he was leaning on Lan Wangji, who looked equally awful. There was fresh blood staining the back of his neck and creeping up his shoulders, ugly shadows on white robes, and his face was stricken, savaged by pain that was not merely external.

Nie Huaisang was frozen for a moment, watching them come, unable to believe it, and yet –

“Doctor!” he screamed, his voice dropping into a register he’d never used before, loud and bellowing and straight from the belly. A battlefield voice, like his brother’s, and he could see out of the corner of his eye all the disciples in the training field jumping, startled, as if they’d been shocked by lightning. “Someone get a doctor!”

The next bit was chaos, of course: the thunder of dozens of feet on stone, servants running to get anyone with medical skill, running to get water and bandages and acupuncture needles, anything that would help, and everyone talking all at the same time even as a dozen hands reached out to pluck the two tired cultivators down from the sky.

Not two, Nie Huaisang corrected himself as he took the small child out of his brother’s arms – said child was yawning and frowning, clearly displeased at being taken away from Nie Mingjue’s arms, and Nie Huaisang couldn’t blame him one bit; it was undoubtedly the best place in the world to be. There was another child in Lan Wangji’s trembling hands as well.

“Any more you’ve got hidden away?” he asked Lan Wangji, drawing him away from the disciples who had eyes only for their sect leader. “Under your clothing, maybe?”

Nie Huaisang would rather be there, with them, with his brother, but he’d studied medicine with about as much fervor as he’d studied any other serious subject – which was to say, none at all – and he knew he wouldn’t be able to do anything to help. For the first time he bitterly regretted his laziness.

Not even during the war had his brother ended up – like this.

“No,” Lan Wangji said. His voice was small and sad, and he was shaking. “Just…just them.”

“Good to know,” Nie Huaisang said. “How badly are you injured? You’re still standing, but I don’t like your color…”

“I want to report,” Lan Wangji said. His lips were pressed tightly together, and he was looking at something in the distance; it was as if he’d lost his soul.

“You’re hurt,” Nie Huaisang said patiently. “Is it anything that can’t wait…?”

“I want to report,” Lan Wangji said again, more insistently, and – well, he was Lan sect. They thrived on rules; it was their baseline, the foundation of their mental world, and whatever had happened to the two of them, Lan Wangji was clearly fragile right now.

“You can report to me,” Nie Huaisang said, a snap decision. “I’m the heir; in my brother’s absence, I have authority to take whatever actions are necessary once I understand the situation.”

And his brother was absent, or as good as: he’d collapsed the second they’d landed, eyes rolling up into his skull – he’d clearly been clinging to consciousness by the barest thread of willpower by the end of it.

“Before anything else, though, is there anything we need to know about my brother’s condition?” he asked. “Anything that will help, or hurt –”

Is it a qi deviation, he wanted to ask but didn’t, couldn’t. It couldn’t be that, it couldn’t, not his brother – not his father, not again –

(His brother’s fingers were bloody, nails broken, as if he’d been tearing at something with them, and Nie Huaisang didn’t like the way they matched up in size to some of the marks on his brother’s face.)

“He needs sound,” Lan Wangji said. “He can’t be left alone…he was in the jingshi.”

“The – wait, the quiet room?” Nie Huaisang gaped at Lan Wangji. “That horrible, awful pit of hell that you crazy people threw into your décor – that jingshi?”

He paused, grimaced. “Uh, no offense –”

“You’re right,” Lan Wangji said, and buried his face into his hands. “You’re right.”

Nie Huaisang did a quick calculation, handed the children off to some servants, and then dragged the other man out of the room and towards his brother’s study.

“Sit,” he commanded, and seated himself in the sect leader’s place unconsciously. “Don’t worry about quiet; after he showed up like that, there’s no way anyone will leave him alone – he’ll be begging for some peace soon enough. Now report.”

Lan Wangji straightened his back – with a wince, Nie Huaisang noted, and that meant whatever injury he had was on his back – and reported.

Nie Huaisang took notes at the beginning, but then stopped after he broke the brush between his fingers, something that had never happened to him before.

“Keep going,” he said when Lan Wangji paused. “Don’t stop.”

Lan Wangji continued his recitation, his voice dull and monotone, but the words…

“Thank you for telling me,” Nie Huaisang squeezed out, feeling strangely light-headed. He stood up and went to the door, catching the first servant he saw. “I want the defensive arrays closed to all visiting cultivators, and all visitor tokens revoked until I say otherwise – especially any from the Jin or Lan sects. Go tell whoever needs to be told to accomplish that.”

The servant stared at him. “Second Young Master –”

“That was not,” Nie Huaisang said, “a request.”

The servant saluted.

“You’re bleeding,” Lan Wangji said.

Nie Huaisang turned his head and frowned at him. “I think you’ll find that you’re the one that’s bleeding.”

“No, you –” He touched his nose.

Nie Huaisang didn’t understand until he echoed the action on his own face and realized his nose was bleeding. A bit strange; he hadn’t suffered from nosebleeds since the time his father died.

He pressed a handkerchief to his face and went back to his brother’s desk. “All right,” he said. “That will get us a bit more time, I think, though they’ll probably waste forever going to get Zonghui’s sign-off on the orders –”

But no, he was wrong – wrong again – because he could see the distant shimmer that was the Unclean Realm’s shielding array flickering into existence in the distance, could hear the sound of drums alerting the common people that they should withdraw back to their homes to avoid the possibility of interfering with a battle.

Perhaps alone of the Great Sects, Qinghe still held regular drills on what to do in the event of an invasion, and even through the thick walls of the study he could hear the casual grumbles of all the people forced to cut their day short – not too much grumbling, of course, since they knew that the Nie sect would send money to each household to compensate them for their trouble as long as they cleared the way fast enough. Doing something like that meant that they would always move, and quickly, too; it was ridiculously expensive, of course, but it meant that the streets would be clear and that no spy or troublemaker would be able to make their way into the Unclean Realm by blending in with the crowd.

It meant that they would be able to see their enemies coming.

“Was that necessary?” Lan Wangji asked. “They will not invade.”

“No?” Nie Huaisang said, and laughed. It hurt his throat. “You’re surer of that than I am. After all, you just told me that my er-ge and san-ge just conspired to murder my da-ge.”

Lan Wangji flinched. “I do not think it was…”

“It might not have been intentional on your brother’s part,” Nie Huaisang conceded. “Meng Yao, though? He was my brother’s deputy; there is no way he didn’t know what my brother thinks about that place. Piece of shit.”

They’d grown distant, Nie Huaisang remembered; his brother, who never abandoned anyone and guarded his people closer than gold, had turned his back on Meng Yao, and had needed to be coaxed back into accepting him. He’d assumed his brother was being petty over something or another, but that was petty of him, short-sighted, thinking only of himself and how much he’d missed his friend.

He resolved to find out exactly what had happened between them as soon as his brother was capable of telling him. He thought that it might be important.

“Your brother, though,” he added. “I always thought he was sincere towards my brother. That he really loved him.”

“He does. I’m sure of it.”

“Well, sincerity doesn’t mean shit,” Nie Huaisang said. “If he didn’t intend on murder, he did something that would have ended up that way. Even accidental killings call for justice, and this is – this isn’t okay, Lan-xiong.”

“I agree.” Lan Wangji closed his eyes. “I have asked Chifeng-zun for permission to stay.”

At first Nie Huaisang was confused – why would Lan Wangji need permission to hang out in the Unclean Realm? – and then he realized Lan Wangji meant for good.

The first thing he thought was oh, wow, that’s going to have some serious political implications and the next thing, somewhat more reasonably, was, I’m really angry about this and so is he.

“You are correct. Even if my brother’s feelings are sincere, it is no excuse,” Lan Wangji said. “In his desire to help your brother, in his refusal to listen to him and trust him, he nearly killed him. He is sect leader; no matter the reason, in the end, all things that happen within the Cloud Recesses are his decision.”

Just like what happend to me.

“We’ll deal with it,” Nie Huaisang promised. Even if his brother might be inclined to forgive after a while, overly generous as he always was with those he loved, he himself would not; Lan Wangji nodded, looking relieved. “Now can we please get you some medical assistance? Thirty-three hits with the discipline whip – I’d be dead. If I were you, I’d be dead. I can’t believe your brother agreed to it.”

Mine never would.

Nie Huaisang had never gotten along with Lan Wangji before, their personalities too distant, but their eyes met and there was a moment of perfect understanding.

He helped Lan Wangji up and let him lean on him as they went towards to the medical room.

When they were most of the way there, Lan Wangji spoke again. “Nie-gongzi…”

“Huaisang, please. Nie Huaisang if you must. If you’re going to be staying here, we can’t be formal with each other. Unclean Realm rule!”

“…Nie Huaisang.”

“Yes?”

“Your brother…”

Nie Huaisang stopped and looked at Lan Wangji, who was struggling for words more than he struggled to step forward. “What about him?”

“He was…once lovers with Lianfeng-zun?”

“What?” Nie Huaisang asked, surprised into a laugh. “No, of course not. He’d never betray er-ge like that; he’s been mad for him ever since they were children. Even if he was the sort of person who would do something like that, which he’s most assuredly not, he’s also not the sort of person who would ever enter into a relationship with a subordinate, and Meng Yao was his subordinate for most of the time they knew each other. They were friends at best.”

He paused, then, the laughter fading quickly. “Why do you ask?”

“Lianfeng-zun told my brother they were.” Lan Wangji was staring dully ahead again, and swallowed hard. “That they’d been lovers before.”

“And what, that their fight was some lover’s tiff?” Lan Wangji’s silence was eloquent. “That’s ridiculous. Why in the world would he concoct such an absurd and pointless lie, so easily disproven? What does it even get him?”

Lan Wangji averted his eyes.

A moment of thought later, and Nie Huaisang had his answer, his spine growing cold.

“Your brother wanted to have them both,” he said, and felt his nails drive into the center of his palms. “He wanted it so much that he didn’t bother questioning it when Meng Yao told him that he was also lovers with my brother, because if my brother was with him, then it wouldn’t be a betrayal for him to be with him, too. He thought…what? That they were some happy triad?”

Lan Wangji nodded.

“My brother doesn’t know.”

Lan Wangji hesitated, but shook his head. “I do not think so.”

“Fuck.”

Nie Huaisang did not want to have to break his brother’s heart all over again.

“Okay,” he said, and closed his eyes tightly for a moment before opening them again. “Okay. Fine. This is – terrible, yes, absolutely but at least it tells us that whatever your brother’s motives, Meng Yao, at minimum, must be malicious.”

Lan Wangji frowned, then followed his thought and nodded. “He deliberately utilized a falsehood to convince my brother to enter into a relationship with him. He may have used others to convince him to trap your brother in the jingshi.”

“Assuming your brother isn’t in on the plan to kill da-ge, and I’m sorry, we really do have to keep that option open. Even Meng Yao…it’s a surprise, you know? He was my brother’s deputy, they got on really well – even though they had their differences, that big fight, it seemed like they were getting over it. They swore brotherhood, and you know how seriously my brother takes that sort of thing.”

Lan Wangji nodded again.

“Also, it’s just – mystifying,” Nie Huaisang continued, slipping easily into the tone of complaint as he shouldered Lan Wangji’s weight again and continued on their way to the doctors’ wing. “Meng Yao’s so smart! Even if he wanted to kill my brother to get your brother all to himself, which he very well might, he’s also been breaking his back to come here on a weekly basis to help my brother, playing him that Clarity song that your brother found –”

“I thought he had stopped that?”

“Well, yes, temporarily, but that’s just because da-ge was getting worried about how bad things were getting and wanted to get things in order…” Nie Huaisang came to a sudden halt once again. “Lan-xiong, I’ve been assuming – we’ve all been assuming – all the while that my brother’s deteriorating health is because of the war, and that the songs er-ge and san-ge were playing for him were helping slow it down. But what if…”

He didn’t want to say it.

“If there was one murder attempt, there may be another,” Lan Wangji said, his voice heavy. “Musical cultivation can harm as well as heal – it is possible.”

Nie Huaisang scrubbed his face with his sleeve. “But…doesn’t that mean your brother has to be part of it? He’s the one who came up with the idea in the first place.”

“He may have originated it, and Lianfeng-zun alterted it without his knowing. Your brother…might not have noticed such a substitution.”

“He’s very nearly tone-deaf,” Nie Huaisang agreed, not without fondness. “It’s amazing he understands human speech, really. It’s possible, I guess.”

“Brother’s involvement is…also possible,” Lan Wangji said, and closed his eyes. “I do not wish to believe it, but – if there truly have been two attempts, and he has not only failed to notice, but is in each one a key part…”

“We’ll work it out,” Nie Huaisang said. “Now come along. We need to get you back into something resembling mobility and health and fast.”

Lan Wangji hesitated, and Nie Huaisang knew why: do you need me better in order to fight against my brother?

“We have disciples for that,” he reminded him. “No, it’s just, you see, I’m terrible with children, and someone is going to need to chase after the two you brought with you – they’ll be laughing and screaming and crying and snotting all over the place before you know it, mark my words, and there goes any chance of getting a decent night’s sleep for the next few years. I’m telling you, Lan-xiong, you have no idea about how children are – they’re going to make so much noise!”

Lan Wangji smiled.

It was such an unusual sight that Nie Huaisang almost forgot to take his next step.

“Yes,” he said, and his words had the feeling of a vow. “They will.”

Chapter 4

The ceiling of the hanshi looked strange when Lan Xichen woke up.

His mind was fuzzy, his mouth dry and disgusting in taste, and it took a few moments before he realized that the strangeness was the position of the light: he had overslept for the first time in years, and the sunlight on the ceiling was that of mid-morning or later, not pre-dawn. How strange – he almost never slept so late, he thought vaguely, and wondered almost idly what had caused him to be so tired.

It took another few moments before he realized why sleeping late, or even at all, was such a problem.

He sat up with a gasp, hand flying to his throat in horror, and Jin Guangyao, seated not far away and awake already, looked up at him, already starting to smile in greeting.

“Why did I sleep?” Lan Xichen demanded, but he already knew the answer – his tongue had a greasy feel on it, herbaceous, that suggested that he had been drugged, and anyway he only remembered having a single cup of tea with Jin Guangyao’s coaxing, then nothing. “A-Yao, why…?”

“You were panicking,” Jin Guangyao said, smiling fading a little, his lovely soft eyes turning melancholy at the perceived blame in the question – Jin Guangyao was so sensitive about the merest suggestion that he wasn’t wholly trusted. It was trauma remaining from his upbringing, Lan Xichen knew, and never blamed him for it; he took every effort to remind him that he was loved and appreciated now, that he respect him, even honored and treasured him, and one day he was certain his efforts would be enough. “I thought it would be good for you to sleep, so that you would be calm again. Er-ge…”

“I was supposed to be monitoring da-ge!” Lan Xichen exclaimed, struggling to get out of bed, his limbs still unwieldly and unresponsive. “He shouldn’t – I only meant to put him in there for – for half a shichen at most –”

Jin Guangyao hurried over to him at once, his facile face upset. “But you said that he needed more time,” he pointed out, confused, and oh, it was Lan Xichen’s fault, wasn’t it? He should have been clearer. With Jin Guangyao’s too-perfect memory, both benefit and curse, for him to make a mistake like this meant that it must have been a misunderstanding between them. “You said that the benefit of the room was only very small to start – I thought you said he needed stronger medicine than what he was taking? We discussed it, I’m sure of it. A sharp shock to the system to restart it properly – when you said yesterday that you only planned to leave him for a short time, I honestly thought you were just talking yourself of out of what you needed to do…”

It was not unreasonable, but of course Jin Guangyao was never unreasonable.

His words now were echoed the ones he’d raised when Lan Xichen had been dithering – uncertainty and irresoluteness were his worst faults and he knew it – over whether he should even take the current approach, even knowing how much Nie Mingjue didn’t like the idea of the quiet room.

Not that he’d ever even given it a proper try.

Jin Guangyao had pointed out that Nie Mingjue was declining, and it was true, visible, painful. It was one thing to know that your beloved was likely to have a short life and another to see him begin to lose himself when he’d barely had any time to live. Nie Mingjue had spent his whole life on avenging his father, had finally succeeded, was finally unfettered and free from the burdens of his parents the way Lan Xichen had always so desperately wanted for him, and now, now he was dying? Succumbing to his inevitable fate, fading into a creature composed of nothing but rage the way his father had, the way he’d always feared more than anything?

It wasn’t fair.

Jin Guangyao had helped Lan Xichen see that it wasn’t fair to him, too – to either of them, really. They both loved Nie Mingjue so much! He was their lifeblood, their backbone, the foundation of the earth beneath their feet. The thought of him dying panicked Lan Xichen beyond all reason, and the thought of him dying when it could be prevented, when they could have done something, when he could have done something if only he wasn’t so unreasonably stubborn…it was simply intolerable.

Jin Guangyao was right, of course, that Lan Xichen would ultimately hate himself if he stood by and did nothing. He’d been so passive all his life, his father his mother his uncle his sect, but this was his lover – and the Lan sect was always so unreasonable about lovers. That was something Nie Mingjue well knew, so surely some strong measures could be forgiven, could be understood.

Nie Mingjue would understand.

It wasn’t like Lan Xichen’s father’s situation at all, Jin Guangyao had assured him when he had raised the concern. It wasn’t as though Lan Xichen was imprisoning Nie Mingjue for his own selfish reasons, claiming to protect him when in fact all he wanted was not to lose him.

He was trying to help him.

Help him when he wouldn’t help himself.

That was what hurt the most, really. That was what Jin Guangyao had so passionately argued was unfair: that Nie Mingjue had stopped trying. He’d stopped letting Jin Guangyao play Clarity for him, the technique Lan Xichen had worked so hard to find and develop for him; he’d stopped trying even his own sect’s techniques for calming and healing qi. He was no longer looking for solutions. No, he’d turned instead to start arranging his affairs: to make plans and provisions for what might happen, to prepare his sect for Nie Huaisang to take charge, to ease the transition that would happen after he – after he –

It’s not his fault, Jin Guangyao had said gently when Lan Xichen had driven himself into a frenzy of panic, heart beating wildly and lungs burning even as he breathed too quickly. Jin Guangyao had held him in his arms, counted his breaths with him, calmed him; he was so good, good to Lan Xichen, always thinking about what he could do to help him, and he’d been so good to Nie Mingjue, too, even if they were fighting right now, even if Nie Mingjue was holding him at arms’ length.

Jin Guangyao had remembered what Lan Xichen had not. He’d reminded Lan Xichen that even if it was unfair, even if it hurt him, even if he resented Nie Mingjue for having given up on life, on them, so easily, that him doing that when he’d always sworn he wouldn’t? That was wrong, too.

And that meant that it wasn’t Nie Mingjue’s fault, not really.

It was the qi deviation.

After all, as Jin Guangyao had recalled to Lan Xichen’s attention, wasn’t it a known symptom of qi deviations that they affected the person subtly as well as strongly? Death by qi deviation wasn’t just the single killing blow with the sword, but the insidious destruction of poison, tearing apart the person from the inside out until they weren’t even themselves any more.

If he had had a small qi deviation, it would make Nie Mingjue more stubborn, more rigid, more angry, less flexible, less forgiving, less willing to listen to reason. It would take Nie Mingjue away from Lan Xichen, take Nie Mingjue away from himself, and make him an accomplice in his own deterioration – as Jin Guangyao pointed out, why else would Nie Mingjue suddenly refuse to be helped? Why else would he grow so distant from Jin Guangyao, who he loved?

It must be the qi deviation speaking, not him. Not his Mingjue.

With Jin Guangyao’s words, Lan Xichen had felt the sudden and overwhelming relief of understanding – of knowing that it wasn’t anything he’d done or failed to do, of knowing that there was still hope. If they only took stronger steps to get rid of the vile thing affecting Nie Mingjue, he would return to the way he was, return to them both, and they would stand shoulder-to-shoulder in this fight against the invisible enemy the way they had against the more corporeal enemies they’d faced in the Sunshot Campaign.

Nie Mingjue hadn’t minded aggressive moves back then, after all. He’d put his life on the line time and time again to win the smallest advantages – win a battle here, rescue a village there…he’d been willing to consider the wildest stratagems, accept help from strange sources (Wei Wuxian’s demonic cultivation came to mind), if it meant they could free the cultivation world from Wen Ruohan’s cancerous tyranny.

It really wasn’t asking so much for him to try just as hard to fight his own doom, was it?

No, Jin Guangyao was right. It really wasn’t.

And if it was only the qi deviation that made Nie Mingjue refuse their help, then maybe Jin Guangyao was right about the rest of it, too. He’d made an apt comparison: if Nie Mingjue had put blinders on himself and was stumbling around in the dark, heading the wrong way, then surely it was their duty to help him see the light, even if he initially refused their assistance in his artificially induced stubbornness. 

He would see the benefit of what they’d done when he was better. He would thank them.

He’d see that it wasn’t that they were being malicious, overriding his stated wishes like that, but rather that they loved him – loved him too much to let him stand aside and let him hurt himself like that.

He’d forgive them.

After all, hadn’t Lan Xichen forgiven him?

When Jin Guangyao had first confessed his past with Nie Mingjue to him, he’d been heartbroken, of course. Nie Mingjue was his lover – how could he take another man to his bed? Even if that man was as charming and beautiful as their A-Yao, as competent and righteous, as kind and generous…

Lan Xichen had liked Jin Guangyao from the very start, back when they’d had nothing to do with each other and not even friendship to bind themselves together, when he had exerted himself to help when Lan Xichen had had nothing with which to repay him.

He’d admired him so much for having come through everything that he’d suffered all the stronger, that he’d still remained noble and good despite all the humiliations and embarrassments. He’d been flattered when Jin Guangyao – then Meng Yao – had flirted with him, lingering touches and sly innuendo and the sparkling tension of will-he-won’t-he-what-will-he-do-next. Nie Mingjue had never engaged in any of that with him, not really; his beloved was too straightforward in his affections to take a circuitous route in expressing them (they’d been barely more than children when Nie Mingjue had blurted out a love confession, much to Lan Xichen’s delight), and he’d been too familiar with the burdens of being the sect heir or sect leader to play around with implications that could harm their position.

Lan Xichen appreciated that consideration, really, but flirting with Jin Guangyao had been…nice.

Fun. Meaningless, of course, because Jin Guangyao was strictly off-limits – everyone was off-limits, he already had a lover! – but the banter was flattering. It made him feel the joy of being desired by someone he liked, that feeling of excitement and newness and discovery that had long ago faded out of the comfortable and happy relationship he had with Nie Mingjue.

It’d been a passing crush, nothing more. And with Jin Guangyao as Nie Mingjue’s deputy, he could still be friends with him – they could both be friends with him. The conversations between the three of them had flowed smooth and easy back then, all of them casual and as relaxed as they could be given the circumstances; he had been so happy then. They had all been happy.

The war had taken that from them.

Lan Xichen still didn’t know exactly what it was that had divided Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangyao so bitterly – Nie Mingjue had both wanted to tell him and hadn’t, knowing how close they were – and he had known that he’d only made it worse by honoring Jin Guangyao’s desperate request to hide the fact that he was the source of the information that had helped them. But in the end Nie Mingjue had agreed to swear to brotherhood between them despite all that, so it couldn’t be that bad, surely?

He’d expected that one day Nie Mingjue would finally be able to swallow the hurt and pain in his throat and speak clearly to him about what his grievances were, and that once they were out in the open, he would see that they were all misunderstandings the way Jin Guangyao swore they were. Once it was in the open, they could work through them and return to the way they’d been.

Lan Xichen hadn’t expected Jin Guangyao to confess first – and to being Nie MIngjue’s lover during the war.

Lan Xichen hadn’t believed it at first, thinking that Nie Mingjue would never, would never, but Jin Guangyao’s confession had been so detailed: the way Nie Mingjue liked to stroke his hand along his arm as if petting a large cat, the expression of stunned pleasure on his face, the little things he did only in private, even the secret things like how his hips stuttered in the moments before he reached completion…it was almost as if Jin Guangyao were reciting back one of Lan Xichen’s own hidden encounters with Nie Mingjue back at him, the same in every respect.

And while Lan Xichen was absorbing that, Jin Guangyao had apologetically explained that he had never meant to trespass – that Nie Mingjue had said that forgiveness was better than permission in affairs of the heart, that Lan Xichen liked Jin Guangyao so much that he wouldn’t mind, that he would clear things up the very first instant he had a chance to.

It was wrong of him to have agreed to have done that to him, his good friend, Jin Guangyao said, his face full of sorrow and guilt. But he had been in love – surely Lan Xichen understood how love could blind you and dizzy you? How it could drive you to do things you’d once thought were crazy?

He only spoken up now, he’d explained, because it seemed as though Nie Mingjue had not told Lan Xichen the truth – he hadn’t – and it seemed, moreover, that he wasn’t planning to tell him, ever. That he’d planned to just forget it had ever happened, to pretend that they had really just been sect leader and deputy, been only friends.

That had seemed to him, Jin Guangyao had gently explained, to be rather unfair to Lan Xichen. And so, even though it might cost him everything, he had chosen to explain it to him now.

Lan Xichen had been heartbroken, of course. He’d been so angry at the betrayal – but also secretly a little thrilled.

After all, if Nie Mingjue could do it, Lan Xichen could do the same, couldn’t he? And he’d always liked Jin Guangyao so very much...

Jin Guangyao, it seemed, felt the same way.

Sometimes Lan Xichen felt bad about it, knowing that even if Nie Mingjue had once been lovers with Jin Guangyao he certainly wasn’t now. But Jin Guangyao was so reassuring in his certainty that Nie Mingjue would understand – that he’d even fantasized about the two of them together many a time, that it was his own words that had said that forgiveness and not permission was the right way to go about these things. This way, Lan Xichen could work out his little anger at being betrayed, get his own little version of revenge: just a kiss, at first, he’d only planned on it being just a kiss, but then one thing had led to another and then there was more that he would have to explain, more that he’d have to get forgiveness for, and after a while it was just easier to remind himself that this was something Nie Mingjue wanted, that when it was revealed to him that he would be happy, that it would all work out perfectly with everyone getting everything they wanted, than it was to try to think of having to explain.

Jin Guangyao had even volunteered to be the one to talk to Nie Mingjue on the subject when the time was right, relieving Lan Xichen of the anxiety-inducing burden of serious emotional conversation, which he hated.

(It was his job to smile and be happy, comforting, supportive; the sect elders had always made that very clear. Lan Wangji could get away with a scowl firmly on his face only because he was younger, a spoiled little brother and not the future face of their sect – Lan Xichen’s uncle might have run the sect on his behalf, but everyone knew that Lan Xichen was as good as sect leader from a young age, and he’d had to act like it. It was easier for him to smile and nod and simply not bring up unpleasant subjects, just the way he always had, than to torment himself with having to break through his long-established façade.)

Besides, as Jin Guangyao had worriedly remarked, Nie Mingjue’s worsening condition made it difficult to talk to him openly about such things. According to Jin Guangyao, Nie Mingjue had suffered a qi deviation in the fight at the Fire Palace, and it had made him untrusting and paranoid, reluctant to trust or forgive in a way that wasn’t like him. If they brought it up to him too early, before they’d solve the underlying problem of the qi deviation, Nie Mingjue might lash out and ruin the wonderful thing that all three of them wanted so much.

Lan Xichen had wept when Jin Guangyao had told him that Nie Mingjue had admitted, in a moment of weakness, that he wanted to make sure that Lan Xichen would still be loved after he was gone – that he wanted to leave his lover in good hands, hands he trusted, in Jin Guangyao’s hands.

That had been before they’d fought, of course.

And anyway, there really wasn’t anything to worry about, not really. Nie Mingjue loved Lan Xichen, and he’d loved Jin Guanyao, and he always forgave those he loved – one need only look at how spoiled Nie Huaisang had become over the years to know that.

Even if he might get annoyed that they didn’t tell him at once, he’d understand why they delayed.

Just like he’d understand why they had to help him.

Lan Xichen rubbed at his face tiredly. “A-Yao, I know your intentions were good, but there’s strong medicine and then there’s strong medicine. We need to go check in on him at once.”

“Da-ge’s strong,” Jin Guangyao said, loyal and loving as always. “And anyway, didn’t you say you spent your first full night in the jingshi before the age of fourteen? And he’s a man full grown, as powerful a cultivator as I’ve ever seen. I’m sure he’s fine.”

When the arrived at the jingshi, though –

Lan Xichen’s stomach, still churning from the drug, abruptly dropped, his whole body stiffening in sudden freezing terror.

The inside of the jingshi was a mess, the walls battered, blood smeared all over, scratches on the wall –

“What happened?” he gasped, horrified. This couldn’t be – the jingshi didn’t do this to people – it was just quiet – “What – where’s da-ge? Mingjue! Mingjue!”

“He may have been too close to the edge,” Jin Guangyao said, his own face creased with genuine concern as he examined the scene. “A severe qi deviation – he could be unstable. Out of control, paranoid, and with that saber of his, with the spirit goading him on…he could do anything. He might attack someone. Some innocent – me, or even you.”

Lan Xichen opened his mouth to deny it, because Nie Mingjue would never hurt him, but the words couldn’t make their way out of his mouth. He remembered what Nie Mingjue had said about what had happened after his father’s saber had broken, the whispered confessions in the dark as his tears had dripped onto his shoulder – terrible things, unconscionable things, things old Sect Leader Nie would never have done if he had been in his right mind.

It was, as much as he hated to admit it, possible.

“It’s my fault,” Jin Guangyao said suddenly, distracting Lan Xichen from his horrible thoughts, horrible thoughts that made his pulse race and his heart beat too fast and the panic start to rise up to choke him. “It’s all my fault, er-ge – I’m the one who thought you needed to rest, I’m the one who misjudged how much da-ge could take without breaking. It’s my fault!”

“No, no,” Lan Xichen said at once, instinctively. He was the one who gave comfort, not the one who was comforted; it was easier than anything to fall back into his usual role. “You meant well –”

“I never meant any harm,” Jin Guangyao agreed, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. “I only wanted to help, I only thought you were anxious – I didn’t realize you would fall asleep, and when you did, I thought there wasn’t any harm in you getting some rest…if da-ge does something terrible, he’ll never forgive himself, and neither will I.”

“No, A-Yao, it’s not your fault, don’t blame yourself –”

“Sect Leader Lan!” someone shouted, and Lan Xichen turned at once.

“What happened?” he asked urgently. If Nie Mingjue hadn’t gotten far, or if what he’d done could be hidden, they could join hands to hide what had happened – no one would ever need to know. Just like with Lan Wangji, they could preserve his reputation and allow him freedom in the future.

It would be fine, they could handle it, they could find a way –

“Reporting to Sect Leader: the Unclean Realm has put up its defensive barrier,” the disciple said, saluting with a deep bow.

Lan Xichen stared at him, not understanding. The only person who could order the protective shield raised was an acknowledged master of the Nie clan, and that meant Nie Mingjue himself; he was the only one who would, since Nie Huaisang, the only other candidate, never cared for such things. But hadn’t he just been here, in the Cloud Recesses? It would take half the night and all morning, flying without end, to get to Qinghe so quickly…

“Are you sure?” Jin Guangyao interjected, a frown forming on his normally placid face. “From whom did you receive word? Are they reliable?”

“We’re certain of it. The responsive beacon lit in the guard-house,” the disciple said.

“We exchanged beacons after what happened with the Cloud Recesses and the Lotus Pier, it will activate reflexively in response to the barrier being raised, there can be no doubt,” Lan Xichen said numbly. Nie Mingjue had pressed it into his hand personally, murmuring promises that Lan Xichen would never need to fear a repeat of that terrible night: the Wen sect breaking the Cloud Recesses’ barrier before they could call for help, the flames that flooded his home, that terrible escape with his sect’s most treasured books clutched in his hands as he fled in a state of terror – he’d thought that Nie Mingjue had given the beacons out to all the sect leaders, he knew he’d traded ones with the Lotus Pier, but maybe he’d left Lanling Jin out for some reason.  Or maybe Jin Guangshan simply hadn’t informed his least-loved son about it, for whatever petty reason. “But – why? Are they under attack?”

Who would be attacking the Unclean Realm now? Who would dare try something against the domain of Chifeng-zun – but no, Nie Mingjue was incapacitated now, surely unable to fight to defend his sect…but who would know that? Who could predict that he would have a qi deviation now?

“It could be da-ge himself that did it,” Jin Guangyao said, and Lan Xichen looked at him, surprised. “If he escaped and returned home, he could be suffering under paranoid delusions and believe himself under attack, even if there is none…should we get people and go to help?”

“Yes,” Lan Xichen said, grateful to seize on something constructive to do. “We should go at once. But we cannot take too many people – we’re not a threat to him, and we should be clear about that.”

“Naturally,” Jin Guangyao said. “But er-ge, I worry – what if da-ge has truly lost all sense and thinks of us as enemies, as if we were Wen? Let me send word back to Jinlin Tower, which will send people to meet us there. That way, if things go badly, da-ge will blame only me.”

“He won’t blame either of us,” Lan Xichen said, because he had to believe that his lover hadn’t descended to such madness. “But if it makes you feel better, send word. Only remember – not too many people. We cannot give the impression of being an invading force, even if it is by accident.”

The Unclean Realm did not raise its protective shield often – indeed, even during the Sunshot Campaign itself, it was only raised thrice as anything other than drill, and of those three times, one was a false alarm and the other two resulted in the Wen retreating voluntarily. The last time Lan Xichen could remember it being raised to deal with an actual imminent invasion was when Nie Mingjue’s father had died. At Nie Mingjue’s order, the Unclean Realm had sealed itself away as thoroughly as a powerful spiritual owner refusing to admit any but its owner, a snapping turtle within its shell and just as dangerous, and Wen Ruohan had been unable to seize the prize he had schemed to obtain.

To a certain degree, once the shield was raised, it did not matter the reason for which it had been raised, whether Nie Mingjue had done it out of true anger or mere paranoia, actual reason or a mere supposition. The people of Qinghe, cultivators and common people alike, were trained to expect war: they would react to strangers as if to vipers, and Nie Mingjue’s ancestors had made their land rich in obstacles to trap and destroy an unwary army. Even if Nie Mingjue belatedly realized his folly, an overly large group arriving at his door might end up dead at the hands of his people before he had time to correct the error.

No, Lan Xichen had to go himself. He had to find out what happened.

He had to rescue his beloved, his lover, from himself yet again.

He only hoped they were not too late.

Chapter 5

Nie Mingjue took three tries to wake up.

In all truth, he wasn’t that badly injured – if it hadn’t been for how tangled his spiritual energy already was, steeped in resentment from his wayward cultivation and burned by trying to keep a saber’s pace from within a human body, a night’s rest and some tonics would probably have been enough to put him right. But it was, and he was, and so the concern of his doctors was all the more pronounced.

The first time he woke, it was to Nie Xiaoxuan, a cantankerous old doctor who’d lost all patience with her patients years before Nie Mingjue had been conceived, looking down at him with a scowl, saying, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Go back to sleep!”

A needle had descended, leaving him not much choice about the matter – it was a good thing he was used to such rough treatment, or else he might’ve worried. Instead he found some comfort in how some things were always the same, and his Nie sect’s objectively awful bedside manner was one of them.

He slept.

He woke a second time to arguing outside his door in the middle of the night, whispers and hisses that were so loud as to be unworthy of being called lowered voices –

“– the Sect Leader deserves to know!”

“Nie-er-gongzi gave the order, and it was obeyed. There isn’t any need to disturb the Sect Leader’s recuperation over nonsense.”

“Nonsense?! Do you know what the implications will be? Nie-er-gongzi is still young, he doesn’t understand –”

“Sect Leader was once younger still. There is still sect discipline, or are you making an official challenge to his judgment? If so, you should be bothering Nie-er-gongzi, as the one who gave the order, and a council of peers that would be assembled to determine if his judgment was flawed.”

“I  - no. I won’t.”

“If there’s no challenge to the quality of Nie-er-gongzi’s judgment, then there’s no reason to talk to the Sect Leader.”

Nie Mingjue smiled, proud of his sect and of his brother – even if he didn’t know exactly what it was that Nie Huaisang had ordered that had caused such a stir – and went back to sleep.

He woke up the third time to the sounds of a guqin.

He’d always been slow to wake from an induced sleep, and this time was no different – his body was heavy, confining, and it was a long time before he managed to open his eyes. A half-shichen at least, and yet the guqin continued steadfastly onwards.

So by the time he did manage to open his eyes, the first words out of Nie Mingjue’s mouth were, “Wangji, please stop making a racket.”

The sound of the guqin paused.

Nie Mingjue turned his head to look at him. Lan Wangji looked better than he had the last time he’d seen him, in that horrible mixture of nightmare and reality that had been their flight from the Cloud Recesses and the terrible strain of flying all the way to Qinghe in a single night.  If either of them had been lesser cultivators, they wouldn’t have been able to manage it; even at their level, it was considered highly unwise, and they had known that they were spending life energy rather than spiritual qi to buy them the strength they needed.

At least it had been late enough that both children, initially excited by all the rushing around involved in their escape, had quickly lapsed back into sleep instead of descending to tears.

Still, better was a low bar. By the end of their flight, Lan Wangji had had blood soaking through his white robes, his eye locked on the horizon and unable to focus on anything nearer, his entire body wracked with occasional shudders – if he’d been anyone else, he would have been screaming.

He still look pale and bloodless, his eyes hunted and guilty and tired, stark white bandages visible beneath the pale (but not white) robes that looked like something Nie Huaisang had once owned, but he didn’t look about to expire, so Nie Mingjue would take that as a victory.

“I would have thought,” Lan Wangji said carefully, laying his hands on the guqin chords to stop the sound, “that you would prefer that it not be silent.”

“There’s silence and then there’s silence,” Nie Mingjue said, trying to shrug and abruptly realizing that that was a bad idea. His shoulders and neck and back all hurt – possibly he’d dislocated something in trying to get out of that horrible room. Probably, even. “Not wanting to be locked in a room designed to be as close to nothingness as possible doesn’t necessarily mean that I don’t want some peace and quiet once in a while…I shouldn’t have called your playing a racket. It’s very good. There was just a lot of it.”

Lan Wangji blinked, then shook his head. “I do not take offense,” he said, simply enough that Nie Mingjue believed him. “It is a surprise that you think the way you do about silence, even now. I myself have been…struggling, with the concept.”

“It’s very loud here,” Nie Mingjue said knowingly, and Lan Wangji averted his eyes. “It’s all right if you don’t like it that much, you know. Has Huaisang talked with you about the options for soundproofing?”

“He has,” Lan Wangji said. “I have not yet accepted.”

“Why not?”

“It feels –” he hesitated. “Like a step backwards. My Lan sect has always valued silence, quiet – not just valued, but imposed, even on those for whom it is not appropriate.”

Like you, he meant, or maybe he was thinking about little Lan Jingyi, the orphan he’d stolen away from his own sect – truly stolen, since unlike little Lan Sizhui Lan Wangji had no guardianship rights over him to justify taking him away.

Nie Mingjue hadn’t objected to it, figuring that it didn’t make much difference to the amount of scandal he would undoubtedly causse whether he had taken away one child or two when he convinced the Second Jade of Lan to abandon his ‘seclusion’ in favor of refuge at the Unclean Realm. Anyway, if Lan Wangji had concluded that it would be better for the child to leave, then it probably was – Nie Mingjue trusted his judgment.

Just like you trusted Lan Xichen’s?

“Each sect has a different cultivation style,” he said, deciding not to think about that right now. “With both strengths and weaknesses. My Nie sect has a martial style, aggressive and overpowering; your Lan sect, although it still follows the orthodoxy of sword cultivation, focuses on contemplation, thoughtfulness, and, yes, quiet. Who is to say which is better than the other? They’re just different.”

Lan Wangji was frowning.

“Sometimes I think Wen Mao made a mistake when he abandoned sects based on preference and style in favor of raising up his clan,” Nie Mingjue confessed. “And your ancestors and mine, too, in following his lead. Look at Huaisang – to cultivate a saber is his heritage, his birthright and his duty to our bloodline, and so he must do so despite being clearly unsuited for it.” He paused, then sighed. “Not that he’s all that suitable for anything else, either.”

Lan Wangji shot him a quelling look, disapproving, but in the sort of way that Lans had when they were amused by you.

“Still, we’re all cultivators, each of us fighting against fate,” Nie Mingjue continued. “While we must be guided by our traditions, we must also each find the path that suits us best. You’ve always enjoyed the quiet, Wangji; you welcome peace, prefer order, thrive within the confines of your sect’s rules. Finding the point at which you and your traditions part ways does not mean that you are morally obligated to give up everything about them.”

“Not even when those traditions have caused so much harm?”

“Even so,” Nie Mingjue said firmly. “We’re all on a path, and in choosing to take a new turn, you are not disregarding the past, but adding your wisdom to that of those who came before you. I made changes to my Nie sect’s cultivation style once I became sect leader, just as my father did before me; my brother will make still more when he takes the position after I go. Each of my Nie sect disciples practices the Nie sect style, but each one takes it and makes it their own. Keep what helps, discard what hurts.”

“But in this case, is it not the very same thing?” Lan Wangji asked. His brow was still furrowed, the matter clearly one of great concern to him. “I have always turned to the quiet for comfort and strength, sought seclusion to temper myself and test myself, and yet – in the absence of all noise– I found myself slowly going mad, locked away and alone. You yourself nearly died from it. What lesson can I take from this, if not that the quiet is evil?”

“You can take the lesson that too much quiet can be an evil, in the same way too much medicine can be a poison,” Nie Mingjue said. “I might hate your jingshi, since it doesn’t suit me, but I’m given to understand that it often helps, too. It brings peace to cultivators who are tormented by a mind full of thoughts they cannot quiet and helps them fight the demons in their hearts, it allows those who are too connected to the world to tear themselves away. It was built for a purpose.”

“It was,” Lan Wangji said. “A purpose it has now betrayed.”

Nie Mingjue didn’t have anything to say about that. He’d once told Lan Xichen that he thought his sect’s practice of introducing children to that place until they learned quiet whether they liked it or not was inhumane and cruel, and Lan Xichen – in a rare moment of sarcasm – had asked him if teaching them to cultivate a saber spirit that would eventually consume their minds with rage was somehow meant to be morally superior.  

To each their own faults, he supposed. Perhaps the next generation would do better.

(He found himself thinking things like that a great deal, these days. He was only in his twenties, and yet his thoughts resembled an old man’s – the feeling of death stalking his footsteps, the day nearly done, his legacy a book that seemed to be nearly completed.

That had been what had driven him to stop his sessions of Clarity with Jin Guangyao, in fact. He’d been reviewing a plan for renovating the western courtyards of the Unclean Realm as part of a long-term plan to get more air and light in there and he’d found himself thinking I probably won’t be here to see this completed, and that had been when he’d realized that it was time to start seriously planning for succession.)

“Perhaps it is the conflation of different things,” Lan Wangji mused, more to himself than anyone else. “The quiet, being alone, loneliness…and yet you can have quiet without being alone, you can be alone without being lonely, you can be lonely without quiet. A balance between disconnecting from the world and connecting with other people.”

That sounded like poetry, and Nie Mingjue could see Lan Wangji’s fingers twitch towards the guqin – he’d probably been inspired.

Nie Mingjue sighed and put his hand over his eyes. His father had told him that being an elder brother meant a life of sacrifice, and he’d been right. “All right,” he said. “Go ahead and play something. I know you want to.”

Lan Wangji was silent for a few long moments, and then his fingers began to move, the too-familiar sound of the Song of Clarity rising up to fill Nie Mingjue’s ears.

“I didn’t mean for me,” Nie Mingjue clarified, rolling his eyes while his hand was still hiding them. The Lan were always so earnest. “I’m not even meditating right now, Wangji. Don’t waste your effort.”

Lan Wangji’s fingers stilled briefly, then continued.

“Chifeng-zun –”

Nie Mingjue pulled his hand away long enough to give Lan Wangji a stern look – he’d already told him several times to refer to him more casually, and however long or short his stay at the Unclean Realm was, if they were going to endure a scandal together, he was simply going to have to adjust to their ways.

Lan Wangji looked long-suffering.

“Mingjue-xiong,” he conceded, and Nie Mingjue nodded, pleased. “Please pay close attention to my playing. Identify if there are any differences between my rendition and –”

“Wangji,” Nie Mingjue interrupted, feeling pained at the very thought. “I can’t.”

Lan Wangji frowned at him, his eyes showing distress.

Nie Mingjue felt guilty at once, and exhaled a sigh. “Wangji, you know I don’t cultivate with music,” he said. “It’s all just interminable plucking to me.”

Lan Wangji’s eyebrows shot up. “Plucking?” he echoed, and Nie Mingjue winced – he’d probably shocked poor Lan Wangji’s conscience. “Mingjue-xiong…you really don’t like music, do you?”

“Not in the slightest,” Nie Mingjue confessed. “I can more or less follow a beat or rhythm, and military calls are fine no matter what instrument is involved, but the rest is all a mess of pointless noise. I can’t tell if the notes are high or low, which ones go before the others, and apparently there are different tones in music as there are in speech? Except in music, certain of them apparently sporadically considered bad, in a variety of different and exciting ways, sometimes but not others, none of which make the slightest difference – ”

He stopped talking on account of Lan Wangji having started to make an unusual hiccupping sound.

Nie Mingjue squinted. Was Lan Wangji…laughing?

If so, he was sorely out of practice. Though now that he thought it, that seemed to make some sense.

“Forgive me,” Lan Wangji said, shoulders shaking – he’d stopped making audible noise, but he was evidently still suffering from an attack of hilarity. “You speak so well, Mingjue-xiong; I had not realized that you suffered from amusia.” He saw Nie Mingjue’s frown of confusion and clarified, “Tone-deafness.”

“I say so all the time!”

“I had incorrectly assumed, as I suspect many have, that you were using the term colloquially,” Lan Wangji said. “How do you fight alongside my brother? I have seen you do so flawlessly, without any impediment, even when he wields Liebing.”

“I can follow along with what he’s doing with his qi,” Nie Mingjue said. “We have been close for so many years, and his spiritual energy is as familiar to me as my own –”

Lan Wangji flinched.

Nie Mingjue stopped talking.

His heart was heavy in his chest, weighed down with feeling, all those things he’d been so carefully not thinking about suddenly stifling him. Lan Xichen, his childhood friend, his lover, his beloved…

He’d hurt him.

Nie Mingjue couldn’t bring himself to believe that the act had been intentional or malicious, not even when Lan Wangji’s arrival made painfully clear that Lan Xichen hadn’t even bothered to supervise him. It simply wasn’t in Lan Xichen’s nature to do such an underhanded thing –

(You once thought Meng Yao wouldn’t do that sort of thing, either. Do you make a habit of blindness?)

He had known Lan Xichen for such a long time, though. If he didn’t know him, both virtues and faults, what person existed that he could say he understood?

No, Lan Xichen must have been trying to help him, not hurt him. And yet – regardless of his intent – he had.

He had hurt him very badly.

Lan Xichen hadn’t listened to him, had ignored him, disregarded him – Nie Mingjue had been as clear as he could be about how he felt about the quiet room. Perhaps he hadn’t told Lan Xichen about his youthful attempt to see if he could handle it, at first out of simply not wanting to appear weak in front of his lover, but later out of (admittedly petty) principle: shouldn’t his ‘no’ be enough? Shouldn’t Lan Xichen have trusted him?

He hadn’t.

He’d trusted Jin Guangyao instead.

Jin Guangyao with his smiles and slippery manner, with his so-believable excuses and always-present rationalizations, always the victim in every exchange they had – Lan Xichen always went to comfort him first after they had another one of their arguments, Nie Mingjue recalled abruptly. He’d called him on it once, in his anger, but Lan Xichen had explained that he knew how strong Nie Mingjue was, how resilient, and that his “A-Yao” needed his sympathy more.

Nie Mingjue hadn’t thought much of it at the time. He was resilient, and anyway he knew how frightening his rages could be; he’d thought perhaps that Lan Xichen simply wanted the excuse to be elsewhere until he’d had a chance to calm down.

He’d rationalized a lot of things. Maybe too many. But this?

This was too much.

“Mingjue-xiong,” Lan Wangji said hesitantly. “About – about my brother…”

Nie Mingjue grimaced, and Lan Wangji felt silent once more.

Nie Mingjue’s heart cried out for his lover, the kind and gentle man who might be a little too reluctant to express himself, a little prone to going with the will of the majority to avoid confrontation, a little inclined to panic at the thought of disappointing people, but whose faults only made him the more human, the more loveable.

But Nie Mingjue had slept, and slept well, and even if his heart was still tangled, his mind was now clear.

“I have long thought,” he said carefully, painfully cognizant of the fact that Lan Wangji was Lan Xichen’s younger brother, “that fate had arranged for your brother and I to meet, and that we would live the rest of our lives intertwined, our hears and minds filled with thoughts of one another. But it seems to me now that that was perhaps – not our destiny.”

“My brother has wronged you,” Lan Wangji said solemnly.

“I still believe his intent was good,” Nie Mingjue assured him earnestly. “Your brother has – more reason than most, I think, to resent my intransigence on matters of my health, and to suspect – to suspect –”

He stopped, swallowed. He had long been (politely) termed to be a straightforward man; it was not in his character to stutter over his speech, to be unable to say the unvarnished truth no matter how painful. Even if it was his lover who was causing him such pain.

“Wangji,” he said instead, and Lan Wangji looked at him. “You know that my family – does not live long lives.”

Lan Wangji nodded.

“It is not uncommon,” he said carefully, “for those in my family to begin to show signs of decline before the end. A certain rigidity of thought –”

“You are not so far down that path that your thinking has become impaired,” Lan Wangji said abruptly, his voice unexpectedly fierce. “Moreover, your refusal was not new, but consistent with your prior thoughts, your opinion expressed repeatedly and consistently. Do not make excuses for him.”

Nie Mingjue was a little surprised, having expected Lan Wangji to defend his brother, but then he recalled the matter of those thirty-three marks marring Lan Wangji’s back. Even if Lan Wangji’s conduct had been wrong, it had been motivated by love, and at any rate the others in the Lan sect had not died – no one had died, except for Wei Wuxian, and Lan Wangji had only been able to offer his beloved the succor of his presence for a short time before he returned to submit himself to punishment.

Impulsive, hot-headed, passionate – it might not be the actions of a Lan, but, as a Nie, Nie Mingjue found his sympathies lay with Lan Wangji in this matter. Yes, he had defended a murderer from being torn apart by the hands of his victims, and Nie Mingjue would not say that he did not think it was necessary for Wei Wuxian to die, but even those that had been duly tried and sentenced to the worst capital punishment might still be allowed the mercy of a good meal and the touch of their lover’s hand before they were executed, and a bit of disobedience against one’s elders was to be expected in any love affair.  

Was fending off a few old men to buy a few shichen of love before its premature end really worth a punishment that would have crippled anyone weaker?

“Actions matter more than intent,” he agreed, wondering how he could convey his thoughts on the subject without being offensive to the Lan sect, “but that doesn’t make intent meaningless. To act from love and affection is still better than for – other reasons.”

He wasn’t sure Lan Wangji had understood his meaning: the other man only lowered his eyes.

Nie Mingjue’s mind reluctantly returned to his own troubles.

“I’ll speak with Xichen,” he decided, even though he knew it was probably a bad idea. Lan Xichen’s conduct, however it was meant, could be understood as having brought him to the very precipice of death – enough justification to start a war, given that Nie Mingjue was a sect leader. Their respective positions meant that a disagreement between them could never be simply personal, but was also political; if Nie Mingjue allowed his soft heart to convince him to forgive Lan Xichen, he would be setting a poor standard for the future. “He can explain what he was thinking. If I find his explanation unsatisfactory, I will – tell him what I told you.”

Nie Mingjue was blunt and direct, sparing no one – not even himself – but he was not so cold as to be able to cut off a relationship that already spanned the majority of his life sign unseen. He would give Lan Xichen one chance to salvage things between them, to be shocked into sobriety by the extent of how things had gotten out of hand, to genuinely apologize –

“I think,” Lan Wangji said, very slowly, eyes still locked on the floor as if there was something fascinating there, “that brother’s explanation may omit that he was distracted by his other lover.”

Nie Mingjue’s heart froze in his chest.

“Other – lover?” he said dumbly. Lan Wangji refused to look at him. “Wangji – are you saying – Xichen has..?”

Lan Xichen wouldn’t. Surely he wouldn’t.

“Lianfeng-zun has told him lies, and Brother accepted them without verification,” Lan Wangji said, and his voice was bitter. “I believe that he feared confronting you on the subject of a man he knew you disliked, and also saw an opportunity to obtain his heart’s desire – to not give up anything and yet gain something he wanted. And Lianfeng-zun is known to be skilled in anticipating people’s desires.”

Nie Mingjue stared at the ceiling in a daze, his mind whirling.

So many little things suddenly made a belated sort of sense.

The way Lan Xichen seemed so certain that all the troubles between them were only temporary, the way that he entreated Nie Mingjue to think kindly of Jin Guangyao as if there was a stronger bond between them than a lost former friendship and a new sworn brotherhood. The way Jin Guangyao acted more intimately with Nie Mingjue whenever Lan Xichen was present, only to return to a more professional remove once they were alone – he’d assumed that was because Jin Guangyao knew that Lan Xichen would protect him if Nie Mingjue got annoyed with him for such familiarities and that Nie Mingjue would not want to upset his beloved by scolding over something so minor.

But if, for instance, Jin Guangyao had told Lan Xichen that they had been lovers once, those public intimacies, and Lan Xichen’s joy in them, all suddenly took on a new flavor –

Surely Lan Xichen knew that Nie Mingjue would never have done that to him?

Skilled in anticipating people’s desires.

Nie Mingjue had noticed Lan Xichen’s fondness for Jin Guangyao from the first, back when Jin Guangyao had been only Meng Yao, and he’d known that Meng Yao had respected and even revered the beautiful, powerful, and chivalrous Zewu-jun. He’d been pleased when they’d become friends, hadn’t minded the occasional light flirtation – he’d been so certain that nothing would come of it, trusted in Lan Xichen’s morality and their love. He himself was not skilled in wordplay the way they were, nor as sensitive to the subtle changes in a conversation, preferring to stay silent rather than risk mis-stepping, a habit formed of too much responsibility and exposure to politics at too early an age. Why shouldn’t Lan Xichen get to enjoy the cut and thrust of charming, clever conversation with an expert at the art?

They had all been friends back then. Nie Mingjue had been so proud of his prized deputy, and pleased beyond measure that Lan Xichen liked him as well; Nie Mingjue had so few friends that the addition of another one was something he treasured. Even if Lan Xichen’s good sense had surely told him that such betrayal was impossible, given Nie Mingjue’s character, he might still in his reckless desires allow himself to be intoxicated by his affections and believe it for just a little while – just long enough to taste Jin Guangyao’s lips, perhaps.

That’d be enough.

Nie Mingjue knew Lan Xichen well; he knew his lover’s faults as well as he knew his virtues. If Lan Xichen had allowed himself to act foolishly for a moment, he would have panicked at the thought of coming to terms with it, and Jin Guangyao was so good at soothing his panic. Too good: where Nie Mingjue, in his harshness, had always advised revisiting mistakes and learning from them, no matter how difficult the process, Jin Guangyao would always recommend being kind to oneself, taking care of oneself, avoiding the pain that came with tackling one’s flaws and erroneous self-conceptions head-on.

Too much care for the self would eventually mean not enough care for others, Nie Mingjue had always thought, rolling his eyes whenever Jin Guangyao earnestly held forth on his views. But Lan Xichen had liked it – and why wouldn’t he? It was easier to put yourself first, to refuse to admit mistakes were mistakes, to rationalize events until you were always the victim and everyone else wrong. It meant you didn’t have to confront your own capacity for cruelty and selfishness, could conceive of yourself as always virtuous and always good and always right.

Right, rather than righteous.

Justified, rather than just.

The way Jin Guangyao always did.

Yes, Lan Xichen might allow himself to kiss Jin Guangyao, or more if Jin Guangyao pushed his advantage – which he would, Nie Mingjue had no doubt of that – and then, after the fog of lust had cleared, Lan Xichen would realize that he’d have to confess the entire thing to Nie Mingjue.

An emotional confrontation of the sort he hated most.

And then, of course, just as Lan Xichen was most upset and vulnerable, Jin Guangyao would offer him a way out – a way for Lan Xichen to continue to see himself as a good person who had done no wrong, who didn’t need confront anything – a way to get a new love alongside the old, to have Jin Guangyao’s clever speech and gentle care while not losing Nie Mingjue’s steadfast affection and support.

It was not uncommon in their times for a man to have more than one wife and entirely possible for him to love them both equally; the idea of a triad was not so strange. But Lan Xichen should have asked.

He didn’t.

He didn’t ask because some part of him knew that the answer would be no, and, just as he had with the quiet room, that was not an answer he wished to accept.

And that…that was not something that could be blamed on Jin Guangyao, as much as Nie Mingjue would prefer to do so.

That was all Lan Xichen.

Lan Xichen...how could you do this to me?

Nie Mingjue closed his eyes in pain. It felt as if all the air had been knocked out of him, like a really good punch might do - he felt hollow, weightless, disconnected, as if he had been struck by a blow that had shattered his bones and he was drifting in that blank space in the moment after the blow landed but before the pain reached his brain.

The full weight of the revelation would hit, eventually. He would feel it all, eventually.

“I see,” he said, and he did. Lan Wangji was upset over it in a way that suggested that he had only recently learned the truth. Given the speed of their travel, that meant he must have discovered it while conversing with Nie Huaisang – and that was another problem, because Nie Huaisang was their father’s son just as Nie Mingjue was, and nothing sparked their rage more than an offense against a loved one. “Thank you for telling me.”

“It is what I should do.”

Nie Mingjue nodded, his throat tight, his chest dull as if there was a knot where his heart had been - yes, he would need some time to deal with this. 

“Huaisang is managing well?” he asked, not quite able to bring himself to actually ask for a little more time before he had to return to being the stern and untouchable sect leader, before he had to once again take on the mantle of power and make all the decisions – to force himself to react as a politician rather than a betrayed lover. It would be disgraceful to give into such weakness.

“He is,” Lan Wangji said. “He has given orders that you may not leave your room until the end of the week at the earliest, so as to remind the disciples of the benefit of rest following an injury.”

Nie Mingjue loved his brother.

“Very well,” he said, and decided not to ask about what Nie Huaisang might or might not have gotten into over the last day or so that had led some disciples to think they needed to disturb his rest in order to tell him. It didn’t really matter. They needed to adjust to taking Nie Huaisang’s orders as if he was sect leader in truth – especially if Nie Mingjue’s health continued to deteriorate…

He didn’t have time to think too much on that before Lan Wangji spoke again, saying, “Even if you do not understand music, you can follow the emanations of qi from an instrument, correct?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Nie Mingjue said, a little puzzled by the sudden shift in conversation but deeply relieved to have something to think about - anything, really, as long as it wasn’t the brutal feeling of his heart being torn to shreds within his chest.

“So if I were to utilize musical cultivation, you might be able to determine if I were using the same patterns as you had heard others use?”

“I suppose so,” Nie Mingjue said. It would be extremely irritating to have to pay attention to such small ebbs and flows, especially when he was also trying to meditate and draw the qi into himself for the fullest effect, but he was familiar enough with Clarity by now that he probably could if he really had to. “But why?”

“A suspicion,” Lan Wangji said. “Nie Huaisang has pointed out that Lianfeng-zun’s actions in connection to my brother are suggestive of malice against you, his actions in convincing my brother to lock you into the jingshi doubly so, and yet he comes to visit you regularly, purportedly to improve your health.”

Purportedly.

Nie Mingjue grimaced again, but this time it was with anger at himself – because the suggestion did not shock him the way the information about Lan Xichen had. Meng Yao, Meng Yao, he thought, I wish I didn’t believe this of you. I extended my trust to you twice over, and each time you have disappointed me…it’s my own fault, I suppose, for being arrogant enough to think I could change you.

“Thank you, Wangji,” he said, suddenly tired. “I understand your implication, and we will of course need to examine whether it is correct. But not today.”

“Of course,” Lan Wangji said, and stood up. “I will take my leave and go tell Nie Huaisang to move me into one of the soundproofed rooms. I require time to contemplate the subject of quiet.”

That made Nie Mingjue want to smile, though he couldn’t quite manage it, still twisted by all the revelations that had relentlessly pounded against him since he had awoken. “Good,” he said instead, turning to nod at Lan Wangji in approval. “I hope your meditation on the subject is fruitful.”

“Mm,” Lan Wangji agreed. “As you said, I must find my own path, be guided by tradition but not unduly restricted by it. But there is one point in what you said that was incorrect.”

“Oh?”

“You said that I should not, without consideration, throw out my sect’s traditions,” Lan Wangji said, and he was standing stiffly, at attention, with his face as serious as it ever got. “But at the moment, it is not my sect. You have given me permission to stay here, and I intend to do so.”

Nie Mingjue’s first thought was oh that’s going to have some serious political implications, followed immediately by I guess I did do that didn’t I and someone is going to wring my throat over this, probably Huaisang, but very shortly thereafter with if this is what he needs then so be it.

Still, he could do nothing but watch, stunned, as Lan Wangji lifted his hands to his forehead and very deliberately removed the forehead ribbon that marked him as a member of the Lan sect – the symbol of his family, the symbol of his restraint, which he would normally have never allowed another person outside his family to see him without – and, just as deliberately, wrapped it around Nie Mingjue’s wrist.

“I would ask that you keep this for me, Mingjue-xiong,” Lan Wangji said, and his tone when he said Nie Mingjue’s name was the same as when he called Lan Xichen brother. “Until such time as I decide to reclaim it as my own, or discard it forever.”

“Of course,” Nie Mingjue said, his voice a little faint from shock. “Whatever you need, Wangji.”

Lan Wangji looked at him, grateful, and saluted deeply before leaving.

Nie Mingjue lay back down on the bed and stared at his wrist for a long moment.

This is going to have some serious political implications, he thought a second time. And Lan Xichen won’t ever forgive me for stealing away his little brother.

A moment later, he shook his head at his own foolishness. Lan Xichen had made his choices.

Now he would have to pay for them.

Chapter 6

The Lan sect’s rules said Learning comes first, and that was because learning was the root of all things.

Humans were changeable and ever-changing, molded by their heritage and their environment; it was through careful education that they learned to comprehend goodness – it was only through constant learning that they could keep themselves walking on the path of righteousness.

Learning from books, learning from others, learning from one’s own mistakes; it didn’t matter.

What was important was that you couldn’t stop learning.

You had to keep moving forward.

Lan Wangji had for some time entertained the thought that his life had stopped when Wei Wuxian’s had. It had felt as though it had: it felt as if his heart had been irrevocably shattered, like a priceless vase that had once contained all his tender feelings – all those feelings that, lacking their container, would now slip through his fingers forever, leaving him as empty as a soulless puppet. He’d thought he was doomed never to love again, never to learn again, all his mind consumed with nothing by memories.

He’d been wrong, of course.

Even with Wei Wuxian gone, he was still learning.

There were his recent meditations on the subject of silence and noise, for one.

There were his wards, for another.

Lan Sizhui was a polite and thoughtful child, inquisitive but a little shy and hesitant, a little fearful to assert himself – a little too quiet, in a way that Lan Wangji was starting to be able to recognize as being not good, a silence and reticence born of concern and anxiety rather than genuine introversion. Luckily, there was also Lan Jingyi, who was and had always been the liveliest and most spirited of children, and yet he, too, was just a little bit too loud in a way that reflected his own method of displaying anxiety, another startling realization that was brand new.

Lan Wangji had always associated quiet with reserve and self-control, noise with carelessness and recklessness, but being in the controlled chaos of Qinghe and really sincerely listening to it, accepting it, came with its own set of revelations. He found that there were people who were naturally loud and those that made themselves be loud, just as there were those who were quiet and those who were forced into quietude. Lan Jingyi worried just as much as the next person, but he displaced those feelings through distraction rather than through the force of his willpower, taking on the role of clown or hero as suited each moment, unafraid to cast himself in the role of aggressor if it would allow Lan Sizhui the chance to play the mediator. The subconscious division of roles allowed Lan Sizhui to feel useful and in control, reducing his anxiety, while Lan Jingyi got to feel taken care of, which reduced his own – it was good, in a way, but after some consideration Lan Wangji carefully took them both in hand and told them that they would need to be more thoughtful about it.

Lan Sizhui could not, should not, always have to be the peacemaker, always yielding and kind and gentle and quiet: he deserved to be loud, too. He deserved to be assertive, to be heard, to feel entitled to take up space regardless of his utility to those around him. He should never feel like he had to pay in service for the right to exist.

And by the same token, Lan Jingyi shouldn’t feel burdened to always have to be the one to take the first step, always acting as the driving force, the loud and opinionated one. He should have the opportunity, and the obligation, to think through what he was doing or saying, to be thoughtful and careful, to sometimes yield if he wished; he should be granted space of his own to make sure that his actions were what he wished them to be rather than some impulse.

Lan Wangji only wished he’d had the wisdom to tell Wei Wuxian the same thing while he’d been alive.

He’d been so short-sighted when he was younger, at first unable to recognize how he felt about the man and then unable to figure out how to speak with him – he’d been unable to break his own habitual silence, and equally unable to see the depths concealed in Wei Wuxian’s brash arrogance, especially towards the end. Like Lan Jingyi, Wei Wuxian’s reckless courage was genuine, especially in the happy days of their youth; like Lan Jingyi, when things got bad, Wei Wuxian had taken refuge in more of the same, building himself walls made of noise that were designed to keep everyone out.

Wei Wuxian might have been noisy and loud, right to the very end, but in his own way he’d been just as alone as Lan Wangji in his excess of quiet.  

The next generation, Lan Wangji thought fiercely, would do better.

He felt comforted by that thought.

The children were chewing over Lan Wangji’s words as they walked along the outmost ramparts of the Unclean Realm, already inured to the glittering barrier that hung in their sky, full of arrays and inscriptions – they were accompanying Lan Wangji on his daily walk.

The Nie sect’s doctors had a very different regimen for curing illnesses than the Lan sect’s, he’d found. Thirty-three strikes of the discipline whip: in both places he’d gotten stitched back up, but while the Lan sect doctors had allowed him to retreat into seclusion, prescribing medicine and rest and self-reflection, the Nie sect doctors insisted on coupling medicine and meditation with exercise. Intermittent and gradual exercise, meant to increase flexibility and reduce muscle atrophy – it wasn’t really that different from what Lan Wangji had been left to do on his own back at home, but he found that it was easier to struggle against his stubborn body when he had company to encourage him to take that extra step beyond his limits, their voices pushing him when his own willpower was insufficient. Even the silent presence of the two children, walking beside him, helped him find the reason to keep going.

Truly, there was much to consider on the subject of quiet and noise, of loud and soft, of loneliness and isolation and how no amount of either introversion nor extroversion could alone save you from them.

Lan Wangji was still thinking it over when he heard a new noise.

It was also an old noise, painfully familiar from all those days of war – before he even consciously identified what the sound was, his back had straightened, his legs sinking into a prepared pose, his mind already summoning his spiritual energy to the forefront in case he needed to defend himself.

Cultivators, flying on swords at speed.

Lan Wangji looked up and saw them: men and women both, a small group – a forward scouting troop, small enough to be subtle and sneak ahead to see what was happening but large enough to ensure someone would be able to return to the main force and warn them if they did find something.

They were dressed in the colors of Yunmeng Jiang, and it was Jiang Cheng leading them.

Lan Wangji’s back stiffened.

He had not seen Jiang Cheng since the massacre at the Nightless City, although he’d heard the stories of how he had turned against his own shixiong and led the greatest of the forces that besieged the Burial Mounds. He’d decided then that he’d never wanted to see Jiang Cheng ever again – he hadn’t been able to comprehend how Jiang Cheng could do a thing like that to Wei Wuxian, who he’d loved.

He still didn’t understand, but he thought, perhaps, that he ought to be a little less hasty in judging others by his own standards.

He’d done enough of that.

“Hanguang-jun!” Jiang Cheng called, seeing him, and pulled ahead of all the other Jiang sect cultivators, leaving them hanging back warily. Lan Wangji turned to face him, conscious of the two young children still clinging to his hands and now half-hiding behind his robes – conscious, too, of the shimmering but translucent barrier that divided them from Jiang Cheng, the barrier that had been raised to protect the Unclean Realm from Lan Wangji’s own brother and all the mistakes he had made, well-meaning as they were. “Hanguang-jun, good, you can tell me, what is the meaning of…”

Jiang Cheng trailed off, his eyes suddenly wide and almost bulging from the force of how hard he was staring at Lan Wangji.

“Jiang Wanyin,” Lan Wangji said politely in greeting – or, well, politely enough.

“Lan Wangji,” Jiang Cheng said in return, his voice sounding strangled. “What…happened?”

Far too much to explain, so Lan Wangji didn’t, just waited for Jiang Cheng to continue with a more specific question.

“I mean, uh. The beacon went off,” Jiang Cheng said. He was still gawking, looking as though he were about to fall off his sword any second. “The – you know the one, the one that shows when a sect’s barrier defenses have been activated. I thought...”

He’d assumed there was an invasion, Lan Wangji realized, and had rushed over at once to try to help forestall it. It was a reasonable assumption, and a noble response: having once lost everything without being able to rely on the help of others, Jiang Cheng now sought to be the help that he had not had.

It was the sort of thing a righteous person would do, and in line with what Lan Wangji thought he’d known of Jiang Cheng’s character.

And yet…Jiang Cheng had still turned his back on Wei Wuxian.

Time and time again, he’d turned away fro him.

“I came to find out what happened, why they put up the shield,” Jiang Cheng continued. “I brought people with me to help, though I left them back a ways so it wouldn’t be an insult. And now I’m here and – and you’re here – and you’re…just…it’s…Lan Wangji, what happened to your forehead ribbon?”

Lan Wangji arched his eyebrows. “Is that your primary concern?”

Jiang Cheng waved his hands around, almost flailing, and Lan Wangji couldn’t quite help but feel a sudden stab of amusement – and then of sorrow, because the flailing was almost painfully familiar. He had seen Wei Wuxian do much the same when he encountered something unexpected, whether some threat or some new maneuver by the Wen sect or, in one notable instance, the unanticipated appearance of a fish in a place where one would not normally expect fish to be.

“I have taken a leave of absence from the Lan sect,” Lan Wangji finally explained, deciding to be magnanimous and take pity on his former comrade in arms. “The Nie sect has permitted me to remain with them while I determine my next course of action. As for the shield, there is no imminent invasion. The situation is – complicated.”

Jiang Cheng huffed. “You don’t say!”

Still, the explanation seemed to help steady him, somewhat, and Lan Wangji observed that Jiang Cheng did not look his best: tired, with circles under his eyes and an unhealthy skin tone. Too much work, too little rest, and probably nightmares…because of what had happened to Wei Wuxian, perhaps? But if so, why had he done it in the first place?

“I cannot let you in,” Lan Wangji added, even though technically he had one of the only remaining guest tokens that still functioned. Jiang Cheng nodded, seemingly having expected that. “I can escort you to the sect leader’s quarters to have your request for admission approved.”

That the person approving the request would probably be Nie Huaisang, Lan Wangji did not say – not so much out of caution, which would probably be justified, but rather out of a completely inexplicable urge to see Jiang Cheng start flailing once again upon finding out.

Was this how Wei Wuxian felt all the time?

Interesting.

He began to walk again, the children at his sides slowly coming out, and Jiang Cheng did him the courtesy of not mentioning how slow and stiff he was, although Lan Wangji thought he remembered enough of Jiang Cheng’s mannerisms to interpret the twisted grimace on his face as he glanced over time and time again as a look of concern.

After a little while in which Lan Wangji walked and Jiang Cheng floated alongside him on his sword, the Jiang sect cultivators lagging behind by a respectable distance, the children getting over their fear to start looking around again, Jiang Cheng finally cleared his throat.

“There’s a medicinal blend of herbs that can counteract the anti-clotting effects of the discipline whip,” he said. Lan Wangji glanced at him: Jiang Cheng was staring forward, not looking at him at all any more. “It makes it heal faster. I can pass the prescription along to the Nie sect’s pharmacists, if you like.”

Jiang Cheng had also been struck by the discipline whip, Lan Wangji suddenly remembered. It had been a matter of deep embarrassment for him during the war, making him reluctant to remove clothing even when they were rancid with blood and poisonous fumes.

“Thank you,” he said, and for some reason the children took that as their cue that Jiang Cheng was actually all right and burst out in a flood of questions.

Lan Jingyi wanted to know how Jiang Cheng’s clothing had gotten to be such a vivid shade of purple, while Lan Sizhui was more curious about his sword and how shiny it was – the concerns of children, unburdened by the memories or concerns of adults. Their questions made Jiang Cheng smile, and Lan Wangji thought briefly of the orphaned Jin Ling, who had been temporarily given to Jiang Cheng’s custody to pick up some of the traditions of his maternal sect. A fancy way of saying that the Jin sect wanted him out of the way for a few years until he was worth teaching their own ways to, but Lan Wangji suspected Jiang Cheng would have taken any excuse at all to remain close to his kin.

“What, now children aren’t too noisy for you?” Jiang Cheng asked Lan Wangji, and for the first time it occurred to Lan Wangji that the tossed out words, broken off and abrupt, might be meant as a friendly tease.

“I am reevaluating my relationship with silence,” he said, and Jiang Cheng smirked, amused.

“I bet you are,” he said. “Nie Huaisang alone would drive a man to distraction…”

Lan Jingyi laughed and clapped and that, and, inspired, Lan Sizhui followed suit.

And then, suddenly, Jiang Cheng frowned.

“A-Yuan,” he said, and Lan Wangji was suddenly cold from head to toe, the chattering of the children suddenly too loud in his ears: he had forgotten that Jiang Cheng had also visited the Burial Mounds. “That’s – that’s A-Yuan, isn’t it?”

“Jiang Wanyin…” Lan Wangji started, his voice sticking in his throat, then trailed off. He did not know what he could say that would work to convince Jiang Cheng that he was wrong when he was right, but neither could he admit to the truth. Even if Nie Mingjue had been kind enough to allow Lan Wangji to come to the Nie sect to stay, and to bring the two children with him, that had been under the premise that they were Lan sect children. If he ever found out that Lan Sizhui had been born surnamed Wen…

Nie Mingjue would not hurt a child, he was too righteous for that. But he might not be inclined to let that child grow up in his sect, either.

Jiang Cheng’s face was twisted in a strange sort of way, as if he couldn’t decide to be angry or relieved. “I thought he’d died,” he murmured, more to himself. “I thought…what is that?”

Lan Wangji was momentarily confused by the question, focused as he was by the terrifying implications of Jiang Cheng’s discovery, but then he saw that Jiang Cheng’s gaze went further into the distance.

He turned to look, then felt twist of unpleasantness deep in his belly: there was his brother in the sky, flying to the main gate on Shuoyue, and beside him was Jin Guangyao.

Why did you have to bring him? Lan Wangji thought, unhappy, but he already knew the answer to that. His brother trusted Jin Guangyao. Why wouldn’t he bring him?

If only he would trust the rest of them as much as he trusted that liar.

“We can discuss Lan Sizhui later,” Lan Wangji said, careful to emphasize both the surname and the courtesy name he’d given him – painfully obvious now that he thought about it, though at the time it had seemed only appropriate, the only name he could bestow that fit – and quickened his steps. “Now that my brother has arrived, things will become difficult.”

He wondered, a little bitterly, if his brother had even noticed that he was gone, or if he had been so thoroughly forgotten in his enforced ‘seclusion’ that it hadn’t even been thought of as a possibility.

“Lan Wangji!”

Lan Wangji came to a stop at Jiang Cheng’s shout. Suddenly full of anger, he turned his head back – surely Jiang Cheng didn’t hate Wei Wuxian so much that he wouldn’t let the matter of a small child go, even in the midst of a crisis?

Jiang Cheng was pointing into the distance. Strangely enough, it was not in the direction of the main gate, where Lan Xichen and Jin Guangyao were even now landing, but somewhere even further beyond.

“Do you see it?” Jiang Cheng demanded, and his eyes were suddenly wild, his breathing disordered; he seemed far more disturbed than he had when he’d recognized A-Yuan. “Lan Wangji, tell me that you see it!”

Utterly lost, Lan Wangji focused his gaze on the far horizon. It was the same scenery as he’d seen there the past few days, the interspersed richness of the low valleys that quickly arced up into the mountains that surrounded the Unclean Realm. There was nothing there that was unusual…

Lan Wangji spotted a very faint glimmer.

Sun, he thought, the reflection of sun – sun off steel.

All of a sudden, he wasn’t on the ramparts of the Unclean Realm but standing beside Jiang Cheng on a rough-hewn fortress barely worthy of the name, watching the horizon grimly as the damned Wen scout’s flare did its work and the amassed forces of Wen Chao’s troops began to move inexorably in their direction. They would come, he had known, and they would kill them all if they could; it would take everything they had to stop them, and to survive long enough just to retreat once again.

For some of them to survive.

“Invasion,” he heard someone say, their voice hoarse, and only a moment later realized it was himself who had spoken. “Invasion…it’s an army!”

“It’s the Jin sect,” Jiang Cheng said, staring blankly as if he couldn’t believe what his eyes were telling him. For once, Lan Wangji understood him completely; he was similarly shocked. “They’re wearing gold, you can see it from here…the Jin sect has sent their armies here? How could they even think to dare? Chifeng-zun will annihilate them!”

Lan Wangji’s throat worked, and for a moment he felt drowned in the quiet once more, his voice not wanting to cooperate with him, his entire being willing or even wanting to return to the solace of seclusion if it would only mean that he wouldn’t have to hear the horrible din of war once more. But he was not a coward, and would do what he must – even speak of things that felt impossible to be spoken.

“That complicated situation I mentioned,” he said, and Jiang Cheng turned to look at him. “My brother has either conspired with or was duped into assisting Lianfang-zun in an attempt on Chifeng-zun’s life through destabilizing his qi and inducing a qi deviation.”

Jiang Cheng’s jaw dropped. “They did what?!”

“Chifeng-zuns remains alive, but is confined to his bed,” Lan Wangji continued, ignoring the interjection. “Nie Huaisang was the one who ordered the shield raised, saying that there might be an attack – I thought he was overreacting, but apparently not.”

“If Jin Guangshan can take over the Unclean Realm while Nie Mingjue is incapacitated, he can say that the incapacitation is worse than it really is,” Jiang Cheng said, abruptly getting it. Lan Wangji had forgotten how much he enjoyed working alongside those from Yunmeng Jiang, Wei Wuxian most of all but also in his absence Jiang Cheng, who was smart and did not require too many words to understand. “Everyone knows Nie Huaisang’s a good-for-nothing – it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for the Jin sect to claim that they came here at the invitation of the Nie sect to ‘rescue’ them, and remained in order to manage the sect on their behalf. Better that than have Chifeng-zun recover and come after you in vengeance!”

Lan Wangji nodded.

“But surely they didn’t think they’d be able to get away with it? Even if they could manage it for a while, as soon as the confusion cleared up, all the other sects would throw a fit…”

“Jin Ling,” Lan Wangji said, and Jiang Cheng blanched, seeming to realize the problem at once. His beloved nephew legally belonged to the Jin sect; if he dared to protest their actions, wouldn’t they be sure to take him away? As for the Lan sect, Lan Xichen would have been implicated through his actions – they could hold his participation over his head, forcing him to pick between supporting them and losing face for the whole sect, which would in turn weaken it. And that was assuming that Jin Guangyao didn’t somehow manage to talk Lan Xichen into thinking it was all for the best regardless…

There were only four Great Sects left, now. If the Lan and Jiang did nothing, who would be left to stand up for the Nie?

“I have to get inside. Nie Huaisang will need my support,” Lan Wangji said, but instead looked down at the children beside him.

“Go,” Lan Sizhui said, releasing his hand and stepping back away from him. “I’ll take Jingyi and hide in the room we’re staying in. You won’t need to worry about us – go, do what you need to!”

Jiang Cheng flinched as if he’d been struck.

Lan Wangji glanced at him. “The Jin sect army,” he said. “However unlikely, there’s still a chance that we are misinterpreting their motives.”

“I’ll go find out what I can,” Jiang Cheng agreed at once. “How many there are, what can be done…I’ll find out and report back.”

Lan Wangji tossed him the guest token he’d been given. “Be cautious,” he said. He still hadn’t forgiven Jiang Cheng for what he’d done in the Burial Mounds, but he was willing to wait until a better time to talk it over with him – now was not the time to try to gain understanding.

Jiang Cheng nodded and left at once, and Lan Wangji saw the children off, then hurried to do the same.

By the time he made it to the main hall, his brother and Jin Guangyao were already there, and Nie Huaisang was confronting them with nothing more than a fan gripped in white-knuckled hands and a glare.

“– dare you talk as if he’s gone mad, as if he can’t be trusted?” Nie Huaisang was shouting. “You should know how seriously we take such words here!”

“It is because of that that we are worried,” Lan Xichen said, and now it was Lan Wangji’s turn to flinch. His brother’s voice sounded just the way it always did, comforting in its familiarity: he sounded calm and patient, thoughtful and wise, sure of himself. He sounded as if he knew better than anyone else what was right and what was wrong. “Huaisang, you don’t know how much your brother has been worried about suffering the way your father did. He knows that qi deviations can be subtle as well as harsh – he understands that his reason might be the first to go –”

“And so you took it upon yourself to decide that for him?” Nie Huaisang sneered. “You keep saying that he understands, that he would understand, all that. But that’s a lie, isn’t it?”

“Huaisang, please,” Jin Guangyao said, his voice just as gentle as always. “You know we only want what’s best for your brother.”

“Do you?” Nie Huaisang said, but he was still looking at Lan Xichen. “You knew he hated the quiet room, er-ge. You knew that he’d never wanted anything to do with it – it’s not like that was anything new! That was something he’d said repeatedly, year after year, month after month, for his entire life. You knew how he felt about it, and you decided to ignore what he wanted in favor of what you wanted. How is that wanting what’s best for him?”

“I was only concerned for his health,” Lan Xichen said, sounding injured by the accusation. “I had nothing but good intentions…”

“Your intentions are immaterial compared to your actions,” Lan Wangji said, and they turned to look at him, both of them surprised – maybe they really hadn’t noticed he’d left the Cloud Recesses.

Well, he thought bitterly: they’d notice now.

He took a step into the room, then another.

“Your actions are this,” he said, ignoring the way his brother stared at his forehead, unadorned by the ribbon that had been there ever since he’d been a small child, receiving it for the first time from his uncle as a precious gift. “You did not trust or respect your elder brother’s word. You disregarded his decision, treating him like a child who can’t be trusted to make up his own mind – you put your own desires ahead of his, and in doing so, betrayed him. Did you really think he’d thank you for it?”

Did you think I’d thank you one day for authorizing our sect’s attack on the Burial Mounds without ever having to explain yourself? Even our uncle respected me enough to tell me at once what he had done and let me decide how I felt about it, accepting the consequences of his actions!

“Wangji,” Lan Xichen murmured. “You’re still healing, you shouldn’t be wandering around…where is your self-restraint?”

Where is your forehead ribbon, he meant, and Lan Wangji shook his head.

“Wangji, you don’t understand,” Jin Guangyao said, and Lan Wangji stiffened at the unasked-for intimacy of the address. “Whatever da-ge said to you, whatever he did, you cannot allow others to guide you by filling your heart with incomplete echoes of what you have lost. You will never forgive yourself.”

Lan Wangji was so furious that he could not speak. Was Jin Guangyao implying that Nie Mingjue had, what, seduced him? That Lan Wangji held his love for Wei Wuxian so cheap that he would have his head turned by the first person willing to make up to him in such a fashion?

“I should hope you know my da-ge better than that, er-ge,” Nie Huaisang said coldly, still speaking only to Lan Xichen. “Or is this something else where you will believe the words of that lying dog over everyone else and the evidence of your own reason to boot?”

“Huaisang, that is unwontedly cruel, and uncalled for,” Lan Xichen said, tearing his eyes away from Lan Wangji. “Whatever Wangji has decided, I do not blame Mingjue-xiong for it.”

Implying, Lan Wangji supposed, that it was Lan Wangji that was to blame for it.

“Put the blame where it belongs,” he said stiffly, staring at his brother as if looking at a stranger. “Was I to leave Chifeng-zun where I found him, half-dead and dying in our jingshi where you left him at Lianfang-zun’s incitement?”

“You think I don’t recognize that I’ve done wrong?” Lan Xichen demanded. “I will speak to Mingjue-xiong and apologize – I will explain my reasoning and let him decide how I can make it up to him. But please, there is no call for you to be cruel to A-Yao. Do not blame him for my mistakes.”

“What about for his lies?” Lan Wangji asked. He took a breath, sharp and unhappy, and suddenly it was desperately, urgently necessary to know the truth. “Brother, tell me you didn’t know. Tell me you weren’t in on it – that you didn’t try to kill Mingjue-xiong in order to cover up your affair.”

“What, kill, you think I would try to…Wangji! Affair?” Lan Xichen exclaimed, and he seemed genuinely shocked. “No, Wangji, you’ve misunderstood entirely! It’s not like that at all. Mingjue-xiong and A-Yao, they were once lovers –”

“No, we weren’t,” Nie Mingjue said.

They all turned at once. He was standing at the door, all but clinging to the doorframe to keep himself standing; he was swathed in bandages and still stuck with needles. None of them had heard him or seen him approach – he must have heard them shouting and dragged himself over.

He sounded tired. He sounded quiet.

He looked at Lan Xichen.

“I was never Meng Yao’s lover,” he said. “Not now, not before, not ever. And Xichen…you knew that, didn’t you?”

Chapter 7

There was no noise in the grand entrance hall of the Unclean Realm. No one was speaking or making any movement, with little enough sound to make it possible to hear a pin drop, and yet Lan Xichen felt as though he were suddenly drowning in a flood of noise.

The noise was from his own thoughts, loud and ringing and clashing like a cacophony of bells all crashing together inside his head.

“What?” he said, voice blank, and next to him Jin Guangyao froze. The reaction wasn’t anything that strange, really, he always reacted like that when Nie Mingjue was around; it was something he’d explained in past instances as being an involuntary reaction born of the trauma of his youth, a fear of powerful angry men that he could not deny despite himself, and Lan Xichen had always understood even though he knew Nie Mingjue was not that sort of person. He had never challenged that reaction, but rather had always sought to comfort him, make it easier for him.

It wasn’t as if reacting that way was an admission of guilt, no matter what his brother or Nie Huaisang might be thinking; it was only that they were firmly turned against Jin Guangyao now, judging him, biased against him for things he could not control and therefore leaping to the worst possible conclusions against him.

Normally, this would be when Lan Xichen, who prided himself on being a protector, on being able to smooth things out, would step forward to explain things and set things right, but – he couldn’t.

He couldn’t do anything.

He couldn’t think.

They were never lovers?

“I…” he started to say, then trailed of. “What do you…what?”

Nie Mingjue said nothing.

He didn’t have to: Lan Xichen’s thoughts were doing more than enough talking.

You knew, his thoughts sang or maybe screamed. You knew Nie Mingjue would never betray you, you knew he’d never do what you have done to him, you knew, you knew, you knew!

No, Lan Xichen argued back, suddenly frantic as if he’d been caught in some trap, assaulted from an angle he hadn’t expected – that he had refused to admit to himself was there, lying in wait for him. No, stop saying it like that. I didn’t do anything wrong, I didn’t! I would never do anything like that. I would never betray my beloved – I would never willingly or intentionally hurt Nie Mingjue! I love him. No, I believed it was true that they were together, that we were all together, I really did believe it, I really did, genuinely and truly. It’s not my fault…  

Nie Mingjue looked tired, Lan Xichen thought. He looked tired and sad, and a little angry the way he always did. He was wrapped in bandages in a few places, he leaned against the door frame as if he needed its support…

But he didn’t look sick.

Somehow, Lan Xichen had talked himself into thinking that Nie Mingjue would look a certain way when they arrived here at the Unclean Realm, that he would feel a certain way. He thought that he would somehow be able to perceive the qi deviation that was tearing his beloved away from him one step at a time, that invisible enemy that he hated so much; he thought there would be some sinking feeling of wrongness there surrounding Nie Mingjue, the way there had been around Wei Wuxian towards the end of the war, the resentful energy corroding his spirit and tainting his soul even as they watched. Jin Guangyao had agreed with him when they’d talked it over, many times before: he’d spoken of having long seen the dark shadow that hung over their sworn brother, the lingering touch of his doomed fate.

Lan Xichen had been so relieved to hear that someone else could see it, too.

They’d discussed it so much that he’d formed a clear and vivid image in his head, Nie Mingjue and the qi deviation that was killing him, visible to the naked eye, as easy to see as any memory.

But for all the bandages, for all the needles, for all the weakness, Nie Mingjue didn’t look like that. His skin was still flush with health, his back was still straight, his golden core shining strong – his eyes still clear.

Clear…and coherent.

He knows, Lan Xichen suddenly thought to himself. He knows, he knows, and with horror he suddenly realized that he, too, really had known.

He’d known all along that Nie Mingjue wouldn’t approve of what he was doing with Jin Guangyao, neither the flirtation nor the rest of it – he’d known the whole time that Nie Mingjue was the same as he had always been, straightforward and righteous, true and steadfast, and that he had been the one to stray off the single road they had promised to walk together, falling into love and into bed with another.

He had known exactly what he was doing.

If he hadn’t known, why would he be afraid of Nie Mingjue knowing now?

Lan Xichen shook his head, trying to stop the sound of his own thoughts, trying to stop reality through sheer force of denial. I’m not like that, he tried to remind himself, I wouldn’t do that, that’s not the sort of person I am. I would never hurt the person I love. It’s only that A-Yao said they were lovers and I believed him…but A-Yao wouldn’t lie to me. He loves me, too, and loves Nie Mingjue as well – he’s said so! It must have been a misunderstanding. Yes, that’s it! I must have thought they were more than what he said they were. I always get things wrong, I’m always thinking too much – it was just a mistake!

A mistake.

Yes, that made sense, that was reasonable, Lan Xichen thought, and he was abruptly reassured, comforted, relieved. That made sense.

It wasn’t that he was a bad person, the sort of person who would betray his lover of many years in such a vile way – he wasn’t like that. He was righteous and good and kind, the person who protected others, the sort of person who could make those who loved him proud of him and happy with him and never, ever angry with him.

Nie Mingjue will understand, he thought, his eyes filling with tears from sheer relief. He knows that I never feel like I’m good enough, that I’m always under pressure to be perfect, that I’m just not strong the way he is, always bearing up with it all. I needed support, that’s all, and that’s reasonable of me, understandable. Maybe I misunderstood Jin Guangyao, maybe it went too far, further than we meant – really, it was inevitable that some sort of mistake would be made. Mistakes are inevitable, and therefore forgivable. Who doesn’t make mistakes? No one is to blame, not really: not me, not A-Yao, not Mingjue. I will explain, and he will understand, understand and comfort me, reassure me that it’s not that bad, that it’s not my fault, that he’s not really angry at me – that we can work through it together.

Yes, Nie Mingjue will understand. He always understands…

“Da-ge,” Lan Xichen said, looking at him. “Da-ge, please – let me explain.”

“Yes, da-ge, please listen,” Jin Guangyao said, echoing him, and glancing over at him, Lan Xichen could see that he looked absolutely miserable, down to the little furrow in his brow that revealed his true expressions, the secrets only Lan Xichen could read. Undoubtedly he was about to throw himself forward to take the blame for what had happened, and Lan Xichen couldn’t let him do it. It might be only a mistake, but Nie Mingjue was always so suspicious towards Jin Guangyao; he would always willfully misunderstand him, always see the worst behind everything he did. As long as it was Lan Xichen’s mistake, Nie Mingjue would understand, soften, stop being so rigid – it wouldn’t be the same if the mistake were due to Jin Guangyao. Nie Mingjue would take it badly and only get angry, and Jin Guangyao hadn’t even been the one to promise fidelity the way Lan Xichen had.

No, Lan Xichen couldn’t let Jin Guangyao take the blame for his mistake.

“Let me explain,” he said urgently, hoping that Nie Mingjue’s affection for him would let him yield this one time, too. He just needed a chance to explain, and they would be able to resolve it – Nie Mingjue had never refused him before, not when he knew it was important to Lan Xichen. “Da-ge, it was a mistake…”

“Did brother know about the rest, too?” Lan Wangji interrupted, not letting Lan Xichen speak, and his voice was freezing cold. Truly cold, freezing cold like the snow outside their mother’s house when she’d died. There wasn’t anything of the warmth Lan Xichen had always been able to read off of Lan Wangji’s expression, the ones that made him feel confident in defending his brother to others no matter what – Lan Xichen had always prided himself on being able to understand his brother from the small hints and nuances of his behavior, the wrinkle of his nose or the furrowing of his brows, the way his ears went charmingly red; it was the same thing that made him so confident that he understood Jin Guangyao. No one knew his brother like he did….

He’d thought he’d known his brother, anyway.

Before Wei Wuxian. Before the Nightless City.

Before the punishment.

It still pained him to think about it, the discipline whip coming down on his little brother’s back time and time again, once for every wrong he’d committed with his eyes open and no regret. There had been so much blood. He still remember the pained gasps and shrill breaths…he hated the very thought of Lan Wangji suffering that pain, hated it as much as he loved his brother.

It was because he loved his brother that he’d pulled away from him after, just a little, just for a little while. It was only because he was unable to look at him without thinking of that punishment that Lan Wangji had brought down on his own head – it was because he had suffered so much as the witness to the punishment, the punishment Lan Wangji had forced him through his extreme acts to have no choice but to authorize. He suffered so much; it was only reasonable that he take a step back, protect himself, care for himself. He needed to tend to his own well-being before he could tend to anyone else’s, wasn’t that what Jin Guangyao was always saying, and rightly, too?

Anyway, it was all just temporary. Once Lan Wangji was better, all healed up with the scars hidden under his clothing as if they had never been inflicted, everything would be better. Lan Wangji would no longer be suffering, and Lan Xichen would be able to look at him without thinking of blood. The entire situation was a tragedy, everything with Wei Wuxian had been a tragedy and he regretted now so much that he had encouraged them before, but in the end, time would heal all wounds; the tragedy would pass and things would all return to normal between them, the way they had been before the war, before Wei Wuxian, before everything.

Lan Xichen had been reassured by that inevitability.

Now, for the first time, it occurred to him that maybe their reconciliation wasn’t inevitable.

Not when Lan Wangji was standing there in Nie sect robes – neutral in tone, but very clearly Nie sect in style and cut – standing there with his forehead ribbon missing and wrapped around Nie Mingjue’s wrist instead, given to another for safekeeping in a way that, despite Jin Guangyao’s obviously accidental implication, he did not think was in any way sexual or romantic. Not when his voice was colder than Lan Xichen had ever heard it.

Not when he was asking –

“Brother, tell me. Did you know?” Lan Wangji demanded, as stern and stiff and unyielding as their uncle had ever been, putting righteousness above everything. “Were you trying to kill Mingjue-xiong, too?”

“No!” Lan Xichen exclaimed, relieved to finally have a clear answer to something – to have something to think of that wasn’t Nie Mingjue’s eyes, looking at him sadly, judging him and finding him wanting, something that wasn’t Lan Wangji’s fierce coldness, blaming him for being disappointing, for not living up to expectations. He hated that feeling, that feeling of not being enough; he wanted to leave this room immediately and return to the quietness of the Cloud Recesses with Jin Guangyao at his side – his A-Yao never made him feel like this, would never make him feel like this. “No, Wangji, you have it all wrong, that’s not what happened at all. This is all just a mistake – a terrible mistake –”

“Another mistake,” Nie Huaisang said, contemptuous, and Lan Xichen had almost forgotten he was there. “What mistake can there be? The Lan sect’s quiet room can only be used by outsiders with the permission of the sect leader – you authorized it. You took da-ge there. And then you locked him inside, and you left him there.”

“I didn’t mean to! It was – ” Lan Xichen hesitated, not wanting to bring up the drugged tea. They would misunderstand – they would blame Jin Guangyao. Their distrust would hurt the sensitive Jin Guangyao even more than it hurt Lan Xichen, who knew it was only a misunderstanding that could be resolved, and Lan Xichen couldn’t have that. Jin Guangyao couldn’t suffer for Lan Xichen’s mistakes. Lan Xichen might be weak, might have gone astray, might hate confrontation, but he was a protector, too – he’d always been a protector, it was part of who he was, a fundamental part of his image of himself, his self-perception as the one who was righteous and kind and gentle, the one who offered comfort and took care of others. He could stand in front of Jin Guangyao if he had to, the way he’d once stood in front of Lan Wangji, taking upon himself the blame. “It was a mistake. I only meant for da-ge to be in there for half a shichen at most – I was going to supervise. There was a misunderstanding…”

“And what about the Song of Clarity?” Lan Wangji asked. “Was that a misunderstanding, too?”

Lan Xichen stared at him, not understanding.

The Song of Clarity was the first idea he’d come up with to help repair Nie Mingjue’s corroding meridians, to calm his rioting qi. It had seemed to help for a while, and Jin Guangyao had reported that it continued to help even once he’d taken it over, but Nie Mingjue had of late started to reject it, refusing to let Jin Guangyao play for him no matter how Lan Xichen pleaded with him.

“The Song of Clarity is a healing song,” Jin Guangyao said, trying to stand up for him. He was always supporting Lan Xichen, whether in fighting his sect for funding to help rebuild the Cloud Recesses or in helping Lan Xichen process his emotions, soothing his anxiety, giving him comfort in the times he needed it most. “What is there to misunderstand?”

“Healing is healing,” Lan Wangji said. “But medicine can also be poison – and the Song of Clarity is spiritual poison.”

It’s…what?

“I have already tested it,” his brother announced. “The Song of Clarity played for Mingjue-xiong is not the same as the orthodox version taught to us by our uncle.”

What?

“That’s impossible,” Lan Xichen said, frozen in shock. “What are you talking about, Wangji?”

“Perhaps you misunderstood,” Jin Guangyao murmured, voice gentle as always. “Or – not you, Wangji. But…well. Everyone knows that da-ge has no ear for music. Perhaps, when he was listening to you play it, he simply…made a mistake?”

“I could grow to hate that word,” Nie Huaisang growled, and strangely enough Lan Xichen felt as though he agreed with him.

“It couldn’t have happened that way,” he said to Jin Guangyao, who looked surprised at his interjection. “I mean, it wouldn’t have been da-ge who identified the difference. That’s impossible.”

After all, Lan Xichen knew, as relatively few others did, that Nie Mingjue was genuinely tone-deaf – really, truly, fully tone-deaf, at least when it came to music. People often didn’t really believe it on account of him being able to converse without difficulty, understanding the difference in the tones used in speech, and the way he matched so well in a fight alongside Lan Xichen when he was using Liebing.

But Lan Xichen had known since childhood that the section of the mind that enabled speech was different from the section that allowed for the comprehension of music – that amusia wasn’t necessarily related to aphasia, that Nie Mingjue’s impairment in understanding music had no impact on his ability to understand speech. He knew, too, how long it had taken Nie Mingjue to master the art of matching his strength to Lan Xichen’s: they’d trained together for months and months before they’d managed it, and it was only once they were adults that it began to seem effortless, deceiving those that did not know into thinking that it was easy.

Jin Guangyao pursed his lips. He looked genuinely troubled, his eyes narrowing in thought. “I see,” he said, and he sounded a little hurt – Lan Xichen had the sudden inexplicable feeling that Jin Guangyao was almost feeling attacked, pressured, as if he’d gone into a situation without being armed with full information, and also that it was somehow Lan Xichen’s fault, that he had let him down somehow. “But how then was the conclusion reached that the Song of Clarity was spiritual poison? Er-ge himself tested the effects of it and found them beneficial…I can’t imagine what must have gone wrong. It really must be some mistake on the part of the person who imagined that it wasn’t being played correctly. Huaisang, was that you..?”

Nie Huaisang had a fine ear for music, Lan Xichen knew, but he wouldn’t have been able to figure out something as complex as the Song of Clarity, and that was assuming he even bothered to listen to it, which he hadn’t done even once when it was Lan Xichen who’d come to the Unclean Realm to play it. Besides, forget simply understanding it, for someone with Nie Huaisang’s level of cultivation to figure out that there was something the matter with it…again, it simply seemed impossible.

By the time Nie Huaisang scowled in offense, Lan Xichen was already shaking his head in denial, not sure what had happened but equally sure that that couldn’t have been it. But it was Lan Wangji who spoke first: “I was the one who determined it.”

Jin Guangyao’s eyes drifted over to Lan Xichen and he seemed surprised all over again to find him shaking his head. Possibly he misunderstood the reason for it, or thought Lan Xichen was criticizing him somehow, because he pressed his lips together even more tightly. “Perhaps, then, it was my inferior playing that failed to meet Wangji’s stringent standards – or else to match his expectations of me.”

Lan Xichen startled as if he’d been struck.

That couldn’t be right. Was Jin Guangyao suggesting that Lan Wangji was blaming him without cause?

That Lan Wangji was, what?

Lying?

That was the most impossible of all.

Lan Wangji was like their uncle: demanding and inflexible, stern and solemn, passionate about the rules and obedience thereof – he had to have been, to be made chief of the discipline hall at such a young age. The rules said Do not tell lies, and therefore Lan Qiren would never lie, had never lied no matter the gravity of the moment or the consequences that would ensue; the same, thereby, was true of Lan Wangji.

Lan Wangji would not lie to him.

That was Lan Xichen’s bedrock, the foundation of his worldview, the fulcrum upon which everything else stood: somewhat distanced or not, a new confidant or not, he trusted Lan Wangji more than anyone else in the world. They had only truly had each other through the death of their mother and the implacable distance of their father’s seclusion; however much their uncle had tried to be there for them, he had been constrained by the burdens of being sect leader in their father’s place.

Lan Xichen was the only one who instinctively understood Lan Wangji, and Lan Wangji…

Lan Wangji would not lie. Not to him.

“What are you saying?” he found himself exclaiming before he even really understood what he was saying. “A-Yao – you know that’s not true, that Lan Wangji isn’t – that he wouldn’t – you know. You know, you must know, and yet –”

And yet you’re saying it anyway.

For the first time, a seed of doubt stole its way into Lan Xichen’s heart. Maybe if he wasn’t so off-balance, so shocked and panicked by the revelation that Nie Mingjue knew about his relationship with Jin Guangyao – knew, and did not approve, the way he’d been fooling himself for so long that he would – or maybe if he didn’t still imagine that he could taste the remnants of that drugged tea on his tongue, greasy and herbaceous, if he wasn’t still stinging from the horror of the realization that his plan to help Nie Mingjue had gone so horribly wrong…maybe if his head wasn’t so loud, so full of thoughts, deafening him even in the relative silence of the Unclean Realm’s hall…

“A-Yao,” Lan Xichen whispered, tempted into suspicion. “A-Yao, tell me – you didn’t –”

He didn’t even know exactly what he was saying – what exactly he was accusing Jin Guangyao of. Another mistake, surely. Jin Guangyao wouldn’t, couldn’t, have used the Song of Clarity the way Lan Wangji was describing, as a poison rather than a remedy; it was meant as a tonic, as a cure, as help, and anyway Jin Guangyao would never have done something like that to Nie Mingjue. He loved Nie Mingjue, just the way Lan Xichen did…

Didn’t he?

“Er-ge, listen to me,” Jin Guangyao said, voice suddenly urgent. “Er-ge, it’s not what you think – it’s not!”

He stepped towards Lan Xichen, and Lan Xichen…Lan Xichen stepped back away from him.

He didn’t know what to think.

A mistake, he kept thinking; it had to have been a mistake. Perhaps he had taught Jin Guangyao wrongly? But Jin Guangyao had a perfect memory, he knew, and was able to replicate his music so well that sometimes he had to check his own hands to confirm that he was not the one playing it – still, he supposed it was possible, if barely. Yet musical cultivation wasn’t so easily distorted; it wasn’t like a few notes played wrongly would turn the entire thing on its head, the way a few extra strokes might do for a talisman or like overdosing might do with some too-potent medicine. Most of the time, playing it wrong would just nullify the effects, rendering it little more than sound in the air; otherwise, how would they dare try their spell-songs in the midst of the clash and clamor of battle? For a spell meant for healing to have become spiritual poison instead…normally, Lan Xichen would have said that such a thing was impossible to achieve without the player doing it intentionally.

But it had to be a mistake. Because if it wasn’t…

What else wasn’t a mistake?

And yet Jin Guangyao was clutching at Lan Xichen’s hands all of a sudden, his eyes wide and wet with tears.

“Er-ge, I really had no choice!” he exclaimed, and Lan Xichen stared at him. “You don’t understand how it is back in Lanling, the sort of pressure they put me under…there wasn’t any other way. It wasn’t my fault…”

“And so you’re not blame for your own decisions?” Nie Mingjue said, voice loud and strident as always – as it had always been, really, and how could Lan Xichen have deceived himself into thinking of Nie Mingjue was weak and sickly, incapable of thinking his own thoughts? “Is that it, Meng Yao? How many times will you commit atrocities and then shift aside the guilt and blame? How many times will it be not your choice, not your fault…just like it was when you murdered that Jin sect officer, stabbing him in the back with a Wen blade to cover up your crime? When you played upon my affection for you to win the chance to paralyze me and leave me helpless, without either spiritual energy or the ability to move, in the middle of a battlefield? When you betrayed my confidence and sent me into a doomed battle, when you tortured me in the Nightless City, when you killed my Nie sect cultivators for no reason?”

Each accusation hit Lan Xichen with the force of an arrow.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t heard it before, Nie Mingjue’s anger at Jin Guangyao, his grievances – but somehow it had never really connected before. He’d thought Nie Mingjue was exaggerating, that he was just angry about the dissolution of the relationship, that he was trying to hide things, distort things, justify himself…Lan Xichen had downplayed Nie Mingjue’s concerns for his own purposes, just to account for his own selfish desires. He hadn’t wanted to hear that the grudge he bore was real, so he hadn’t listened; he’d chosen to believe Jin Guangyao’s version of events, rather than Nie Mingjue’s.

He’d thought he was being fair by being a little partial to Jin Guangyao. He had thought he was balancing the scales which were weighed against him by his birth and status.

And all the while –

“What did you do?” he asked Jin Guangyao blankly, disbelieving. “What have you done?”

“Er-ge, listen to me, please!” Jin Guangyao begged. “My father demanded that I mix in the other song – he threatened me – forced me –”

“So you did modify the song,” Lan Wangji said, and Jin Guangyao turned to stare at him in surprise, as did Lan Xichen. Lan Wangji shrugged, unfazed. “We didn’t have time to test it out, but I was certain of our conclusion.”

“You –” Jin Guangyao seemed genuinely shocked. “You bluffed me?”

“You were lying?” Lan Xichen asked. He felt almost numb, as if this was the surprise that pushed it all too far for him to understand. “You…Wangji, do not tell lies!”

“Do not break faith,” Lan Wangji said, and Lan Xichen flinched. “Do not make assumptions about others. Do not impart knowledge to the wrong people. Make sure to act with virtue. Do not associate with evil…Brother, I have already removed my forehead ribbon, while you still wear yours. Do you feel worthy of it?”

Lan Xichen opened his mouth to say something, but – what could he say?

Jin Guangyao really had altered the Song of Clarity into something else, something poisonous; he’d admitted it himself, however inadvertently. Whether it was his father’s instruction or not, he had still done it, and done it without revealing what he’d done; he’d still been the one to commit the act.

Just like Lan Xichen had been the one to lock Nie Mingjue into the quiet room.

That had been done at Jin Guangyao’s suggestion, too, hadn’t it? Lan Xichen had had the idea to have Nie Mingjue use the room, but Jin Guangyao had encouraged him to go further with it – he’d reminded him, time and time again, that Nie Mingjue had given up on himself and that something had to be done, that it was necessary to use stronger medicine. And Lan Xichen had agreed, thinking he was right, because…because Nie Mingjue had started to refuse to listen to Jin Guangyao’s playing.

His poisoning.

“You used me,” Lan Xichen said to Jin Guangyao. He felt empty, vacant, hollowed out by shock. “You used me to try to kill da-ge.”

He’d done it more than once, too. He’d incited him into locking Nie Mingjue into the quiet room, knowing that he was on the verge of a qi deviation already; he’d twisted the Song of Clarity into a poison and used Lan Xichen’s support to gain Nie Mingjue’s trust, to get access to an opportunity to pour it into Nie Mingjue’s ear, time and time again.

And he’d even…he’d lied about his relationship with Nie Mingjue. That hadn’t been a mistake, either, and now that Lan Xichen was actually thinking about it, he didn’t know how he’d managed to tell himself that it was. Jin Guangyao had been the one to tell him about his ‘relationship’ with Nie Mingjue, providing all the details that would make it sound right – details undoubtedly lifted from having spied on Nie Mingjue with Lan Xichen, because Jin Guangyao was a spy, a spy with a perfect memory – and Lan Xichen had accepted it, hadn’t questioned it, hadn’t verified it. He’d swallowed the lies down despite knowing better because it was what he wanted to hear.

Because he wanted Jin Guangyao, his precious A-Yao. Because he wanted to have him and keep Nie Mingjue, too, and rather than face up to his own contradictory desires, he’d just…ignored the discrepancy.

All the discrepancies.

“Did he?” Nie Mingjue asked, and Lan Xichen twisted his head to stare at his beloved. At his lover, his childhood sweetheart, the man he thought of as the other half of his soul, who stood there, asking him…

“Are you asking if I conspired to kill you?” he choked out.

Nie Mingjue didn’t flinch. Perhaps he’d gotten out all his pain at this earlier, when he’d figured out what happened…when he’d learned of Lan Xichen’s betrayal.

Because that’s what it was. Betrayal.

Not a mistake. Not an accident. Not something that could be waved away and overlooked.

He’d betrayed him.

Him: Lan Xichen. Not Jin Guangyao, though he had as well – but him.

“Yes, Xichen,” Nie Mingjue said. “That’s what I’m asking. Did you resent me so much for dying that you would rather have had it all be over sooner? So that you could be with him instead, free and clear, valuing his pretty words over my steady heart?”

Lan Xichen felt those words like a punch to the gut.

It knocked all the air out of him. Nie Mingjue believed – he really believed that Lan Xichen would –

Why wouldn’t he believe it?

Lan Xichen was instrumental in not one but two attempts on Nie Mingjue’s life. He’d sworn to be loyal to him, to their love, and he’d betrayed that oath countless times over – not just every time he went to Jin Guangyao’s bed, but every time he’d ignored Nie Mingjue in favor of Jin Guangyao. Every time he’d put Jin Guangyao first in his heart: prioritized his comfort, his happiness, his word over Nie Mingjue’s.

Every time he’d allowed himself to be convinced of something he knew, deep in his heart, was a lie.

Every time he’d chosen to close his eyes to the truth.

Every time he’d put himself – his image of himself as the righteous man, the good man, the kind and gentle man who would never hurt anyone, who would never disappoint anyone – over everything else.

Even his relationship with Nie Mingjue.

“I didn’t,” he whispered, looking between Nie Mingjue and Lan Wangji and seeing nothing but the disappointment he’d always been so afraid of, the rejection he’d feared so much that he’d foolishly sent himself to its door. “I didn’t. Mingjue-xiong…Wangji…I swear it. I swear I didn’t.”

They stared at him, their gazes cold and forbidding.

He wanted to cast himself down on his knees before them, to cry out that it was his fault, that he did it, that he was useless, worthless, awful, that he deserved the worst of all the disdain they could give him…but that would just be more of the same, wouldn’t it? If he exaggerated everything and heaped blame on himself, made it seem worse than it was, cast himself down before they had the chance to, they would be put into the position of having to comfort him, even though it was his fault.

He wouldn’t do that. He’d done enough to them.

“Please believe me.”

Silence.

Lan Wangji turned his face away from him – turned to look at Nie Mingjue, who was frowning, who looked heartbroken and tired but still wholly himself, his beautiful self that Lan Xichen had had but had not cherished, that Lan Xichen had very nearly played a part in killing.

“I believe you,” Nie Mingjue finally said. “But I don’t forgive you.”

Lan Xichen closed his eyes.

His heart felt as though it had shattered in his chest.

“There isn’t time for this,” Lan Wangji suddenly said, as if abruptly remembering something. “The Jin sect’s army is invading.”

Lan Xichen’s eyes shot open.

“The Jin sect is what?!” Nie Mingjue exclaimed, but Lan Wangji looked grim. “Meng Yao, what’s the meaning of – where did he go?”

Lan Xichen turned, suddenly realizing that Jin Guangyao had stopped speaking at some point – presumably when Lan Xichen had focused on defending himself from an accusation of murder. He’d stopped speaking, and now he was gone…and there was still worse.

“Da-ge,” he cried. “Where’s Nie Huaisang gone?”

Chapter 8

One of Wei Wuxian’s favorite tricks, back at the Cloud Recesses, had been passing notes behind Lan Qiren’s back using papermen made out of talisman paper and infused with spiritual energy.

Having been one of Lan Qiren’s students before, Nie Huaisang was aware, as Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng were most definitely not, that Lan Qiren was perfectly aware of the papermen. That old teacher was an expert in musical cultivation, with ears as sharp as any bat’s, and, for all that he insisted on regarding himself as being no more than average at fighting, he had the reflexes of an excellent swordsman, good enough to teach both his nephews, who were superlative practitioners of the art – it would be almost impossible for him not to notice something moving through the air right behind his back.

Based on Nie Huaisang’s deductions at the time of his second visit, the only reason Lan Qiren didn’t say anything about the papermen was because as much as he disdained disorder and unruliness and disobedience, he was the sort of teacher who was grimly determined teach his students something one way or another, whether they wanted to learn it or not.

(Well, Nie Huaisang would like to say it was entirely due to his deductions. In fact it had been Nie Huaisang’s brother that had originally spilled the beans about Lan Qiren after Nie Huaisang’s first summer at the Cloud Recesses, mentioning that although Nie Huaisang had failed all his formal classes, Lan Qiren had been pleased at the development of Nie Huaisang’s capacity for tactical and strategic thought, which had been demonstrated almost entirely through his persistent and increasingly creative efforts to get out of doing any work. Nie Huaisang had been utterly aghast at having been so seen.)

Ultimately, Wei Wuxian had never developed the paperman technique into anything more than a trick. During the war, they’d figured out that getting a paperman to do anything but the most basic of tasks – like passing notes – required infusing it with your own consciousness, and that once you did that, you risked having your consciousness destroyed when the paperman was. In short, it was far too dangerous to use against an enemy already on guard against incursions.

Still, as a trick, it had one principal virtue: it didn’t require a great deal of spiritual energy to use.

Nie Huaisang had spent the vast majority of the Sunshot Campaign hidden away in a variety of safe places. He’d done his part to help with the war, of course, but only indirectly – he’d helped manage the food supply, helped in gathering medicinal herbs, helped in managing the making of elixirs and pills, helped in tearing up cloth for bandages and in exchanging shipments of all the above for the wounded from the battlefield, who needed a place to rest and recuperate. He’d known that he could not fight on the front line, not with his weak golden core and his even weaker martial skills; he had known, too, that his brother needed him as his anchor, the stabilizing force that kept his foundation steady.

His brother had needed him to be safe.

Still, being safe didn’t mean being ignorant, no matter what his brother might think. Nie Huaisang had very quickly realized that the letters he received from his brother that claimed everything was fine and going well and that there was no need to worry weren’t very reliable; they were written more to preserve his brother’s peace of mind than his own. Naturally, Nie Huaisang had rebelled at once against his brother’s well-meaning attempts to keep him in the dark.

He’d reserved a few pieces of talisman paper for himself, cheap paper that he would never have lowered himself to use back in the days when high grade talismans weren’t a much needed commodity, and he’d torn them up in exactly the same fashion that Wei Wuxian taught them in one of their late nights together, back when he’d provided the spring books and snacks, Wei Wuxian the liquor and the crazy ideas, and Jiang Cheng the shocked, prudish disapproval necessary to give the entire experience its piquant forbidden edge.

He’d known that Jiang Cheng would recognize them immediately.

Sure enough, in exchange for repeated confirmations that his sister was doing well from where she was hidden away in safety alongside Nie Huaisang, Jiang Cheng had been willing to feed him a steady stream of information about the progress of the war. In return, Nie Huaisang had thrown in some additional information besides, knowing that it would make its way back to Nie Mingjue in time – it hadn’t been the quickest way to pass along news, but it’d been effective and above all secret; no one anticipated that anyone would pass news that mattered to the front in silly little papermen notes, tucked into letters sent from back home, and even fewer bothered to suspect Nie Huaisang’s letters to his brother of containing anything other than nonsense.

They’d worked well together.

They still worked well together.

Nie Huaisang tore up talisman paper as he made his way through the halls of the Unclean Realm, a scribbled response to the message he’d received in a small flittering note from Jiang Cheng that he’d hidden away as soon as he’d seen it, concealing it from everyone else – they were having a very important discussion, after all, and little things like the imminent invasion Jiang Cheng had frantically warned him of were definitely not as critical as his brother’s emotional well-being. If a confrontation was what was needed to break him free of the anchors dragging him down, he would get it.

They could worry about the rest later.

Nevertheless, Nie Huaisang wrote back to Jiang Cheng, saying, My brother will act as general, supporting you from within as you harry them from without, because of course Nie Mingjue would once Lan Wangji remembered to mention it to him. Someone had to, and Nie Huaisang certainly wasn’t going to be able to protect their home from the Jin sect’s aggression, even if he’d predicted that it would be coming.

It’d been obvious, really, once he’d figured out what Jin Guangyao was doing, what he had to be doing. Forget everything else about him, Jin Guangyao was a man that loved power and privilege and the respect that they brought him. He would never be so daring to act against his own sworn brother unless he thought that the advantages he’d get from doing so were greater than what he’d get from refraining. A connection to Nie Mingjue was a tool that offered him significant influence, regardless of the weakness of their personal relationship; the only thing he would trade it in for was something more definitive than that.

Formal acceptance as Jin Guangshan’s heir, for instance.

Jin Guangshan had long seen Nie Mingjue as the thorn in his side, and that irritation was all the worse now that Nie Mingjue was an acclaimed war hero and he himself was not. People paid their respects to Jin Guangshan in public and derided him behind his back for contributing nothing to the war but his wealth, and not even all of that, and he knew it. Naturally he would want Nie Mingjue out of the way if at all possible, even if it meant making a deal with his least-favored bastard to get it. But at the same time Jin Guangshan was not a man that knew how to appreciate what people did for him – Nie Mingjue alone had saved his forces half a dozen times – and Jin Guangyao knew that, too, so the moment he suspected that his murder attempt had failed and was on the verge of being revealed, he would have known that he needed to drag his odious father into the muck alongside him before he was used as a scapegoat.

It wouldn’t have been hard to trick Jin Guangshan into authorizing an invasion. A report that their plan was working – that Nie Mingjue had suffered a severe qi deviation and fled back to the Unclean Realm, acting irrationally – a suggestion that if the Jin sect acted quickly, they could take over before any of the now-headless chickens in the Nie sect could muster up a proper response. Nie Mingjue would be executed, his death explained away as a mercy killing on account of the qi deviation, and Nie Huaisang would be instated as the puppet leader of the Nie sect, his every move directed by his Jin sect benefactors.

Invasion was the obvious move.

But between Nie Huaisang having already activated the Unclean Realm’s shields, Nie Mingjue’s survival with a clear mind and his innate talent at warfare, and the unexpected addition of Jiang Cheng’s forces, there was simply no way that the Jin sect’s plan would work - unless, of course, they came up with something really clever.

Only one person could do that.

I’ll make sure Jin Guangyao doesn’t get away, he added to the paperman, then sent it flying. That was the most critical point, really: Jin Guangshan was no general, having left all of that stuff in the Sunshot Campaign to his retainers and to the late Jin Zixuan, but Jin Guangyao had learned the art of war at his brother’s side.  

He couldn’t be allowed to get away and return to his father’s side to help command his armies.

And Nie Huaisang was the only one who could do anything to stop it.

His brother was injured, tired, vulnerable, and absolutely critical in his role as Nie sect leader and general – he couldn’t be spared on a wild chase like this. And Nie Mingjue would need a strong person to fight at his side, someone completely trustworthy who was nevertheless unwilling to listen to any orders Nie Mingjue gave to leave him behind; that would be Lan Wangji, who was a spectacular front-line fighter and also stubborn as a mule. Normally, it would be Lan Xichen, but Lan Xichen had let them all down – and certainly he couldn’t be trusted to track down Jin Guangyao, ripe as he was for Jin Guangyao’s manipulation; he would undoubtedly let the man go at the first hint of a plea for mercy.

There wasn’t anyone else. Jiang Cheng was, of course, too far away to help and far too busy anyway, and regardless he didn’t know the inside of the Unclean Realm well enough to catch Jin Guangyao, who knew their home too well. The other Nie sect disciples weren’t an option either, Nie Huaisang want them at his brother’s command, one and all. Protecting their home came first, everything else – even revenge, even justice – would come second; Nie Huaisang wouldn’t risk distracting even a single disciple that might make the difference in preserving his brother’s life or his sect’s independence.

But he, Nie Huaisang, was useless in a battle. He couldn’t fight, couldn’t command, couldn’t do anything but get in the way and be a distraction, making others worry about him when they should be worrying about themselves.

He could be spared.

Nie Huaisang didn’t flatter himself into thinking that he’d be able to win against Jin Guangyao, if it came down to a fight. But he knew his home, and he knew Jin Guangyao, and he thought he might be able to stall him and slow him down just enough to keep him from making a difference in the battle outside.

All of this had passed through his mind in an instant when he’d seen Jin Guangyao slipping away from the ongoing confrontation between Lan Xichen and Nie Mingjue, having realized there was no coming back from the unravelling of all his deceit – he’d gone into one of the walls, heading towards the back passages.

Truly, Nie Huaisang thought, his tongue bitter with the taste of spoiled friendship, they should have known that Jin Guangyao was trouble from the start, that he had the heart and soul of a spy and a whore’s son’s instincts through and through, no matter how he tried to deny it. How else would he know where to go? Jin Guangyao might have spent the vast majority of his time in the Nie sect in the front line, at Nie Mingjue’s side, but he’d spent a little time in the Unclean Realm, and clearly during that time he’d managed to find and master the use of those extra passageways that were, in most large houses, used by servants to avoid being seen by their masters or to bring in guests that couldn’t be seen.

Nie Huaisang followed him.

They were lucky, he reflected, that Jin Guangyao’s feelings towards Lan Xichen were very likely genuine, even if he valued himself more. With Nie Mingjue weakened, Lan Xichen emotionally compromised, and Nie Huaisang useless, Jin Guangyao could have chosen to pull out his sword and attack directly. Even with Lan Wangji there, he probably could have taken a hostage before they could react and used that hostage to force his way out and back to his father’s forces. But that would have been a true admission of his guilt, it would have meant tearing off his faux-repentant face once and for all in front of all of them –

In front of Lan Xichen.

Really, Lan Xichen was probably the only person Jin Guangyao really cared for, or else he wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble for him. Getting Lan Xichen on his side could be explained away as a play for influence and protection, and a very effective one, too, but actually seducing him? Bedding a man already in a relationship with another very powerful man, a man with influence and perception and a temper that shouldn’t be crossed – that was a truly unreasonable risk. It was the sort of risk that would be taken only if the end goal was the seduction.

Jin Guangyao must have wanted Lan Xichen like crazy, enough to make him reckless, since otherwise it would have been better to wait until Nie Mingjue had died to make a move.

Nie Huaisang wondered if that would make Lan Xichen feel better about it, later.

Probably not.

In another world, perhaps, Jin Guangyao would have loved Lan Xichen enough to respect him, respect his relationship, and would have refrained from doing anything that would break his heart; in that world, they would never have ended up in the present situation. But if Lan Xichen was weak, succumbing to his desire to love Jin Guangyao and not to get in trouble for it, then Jin Guangyao was simply greedy: he’d wanted Lan Xichen, and his father’s power, too, and the latter could only be bought with Nie Mingjue’s death.

He’d played his best hand with the Song of Clarity and the quiet room, and he’d very nearly won, only to be felled at the last moment by Lan Wangji of all people – truly, the entire thing was a marvel, as if Lan Wangji had spent two decades building a reputation for absolute truthfulness just for this one ultimate bluff. Now the only hope Jin Guangyao had to achieve all his desires was to get back to his father’s side at once. It was the only option that still held a chance for him to win: if only he could use the Jin sect army to take over the Nie sect and remove his only impediment to power – and probably his father, too, if he could manage it – Jin Guangyao could also capture Lan Xichen in the bargain. Once the cultivation world was in his hands, he would have time to work his wiles on Lan Xichen for as long as he needed to, to break down his resistance and win back his affections once more.

It wasn’t a bad plan.

Luckily, for all his spy’s instincts – or perhaps, because of them – Jin Guangyao had never really understood the way the Nie sect worked, the ways in which they were different from the other rich and powerful families. Even when they were cunning, they were at heart a straightforward people, the descendants of common butchers: they’d rather have a hot meal than an inobtrusive one, and their servants and whores both walked openly through the main hallways. They didn’t need to scurry around like something dirty that couldn’t be seen.

No, the Nie weren’t like that. And that meant that their home’s back passageways, long winding paths cut into the rock that was the backdrop of the Unclean Realm, instead served – other purposes.

Nie Huaisang hurried through the hallways with one hand on the walls, and heard through his fingers the noise he was looking for: the soft echo of movement within, the sound of a person going along the inner steps. Even though Jin Guangyao was careful not to rush too fast, trying above all else to avoid making a sound, he could not avoid the sound-generating alarm arrays that had been placed there by Nie Huaisang’s ancestors, designed to pass along a warning to those with the ears and knowledge to listen. Using those sounds, he was able to figure out where Jin Guangyao was and follow him, lapping those long and winding passages easily by striding through the more straightforward hallways –

He even had enough time, as he passed by the study, to see his saber lying around, carelessly discarded after Lan Wangji’s terrifying report, and dart in to grab it.

Not that he’d be able to use it in battle. Forget beating Jin Guangyao, the master of a million techniques; Nie Huaisang was a poor enough fighter that he’d probably do more harm than good to himself with it, and the waste of even the few moments it took him to snatch it up made his heart race with terror at the thought of losing Jin Guangyao’s trail, and with it any hope of seeing justice done.

Getting it was pointless – a stupid gesture. It was only that it would make his brother happy to know that he had it with him, and that, Nie Huaisang thought, fingering the hilt of the saber as he headed purposefully towards the nearest junction between hallway and passageway, that alone was worth it.

Jin Guangyao had never understood that.

Not for Nie Mingjue, and not for Lan Xichen, either. Jin Guangyao had always cared the most for himself.

“San-ge!” Nie Huaisang shouted at the top of his lungs once he was in the back passageways as well, letting his voice echo against the rock. “Jin Guangyao! I know you’re here!”

The feeling of the vibrations in the wall paused briefly, then changed their path: Jin Guangyao did not want to run into Nie Huaisang, probably thinking that he had brought people with him.

Perfect.

Nie Huaisang picked up his robes and ran, heedless of the noise he was making – or rather, fully cognizant of that noise, letting the crash and clamor of his unsteady footfalls harry Jin Guangyao like a dog chasing sheep, purposefully pushing him off track, away from the familiar paths he had undoubtedly memorized and into new ones, different ones, ones that sent him deeper into the earth.

The old ways.

If he could only get Jin Guangyao to get lost in those paths, the paths even Nie Huaisang didn’t know that well, he could keep him from reaching his father’s side. It wasn’t much, but it was the only thing he could do, useless as he was.

“Jin Guangyao!” he shouted, time and time again, knowing that he needed to be careful, that he could only pretend to be more people than he was for so long before Jin Guangyao would figure it out. “Stop where you are! I won’t let you get away!”

He turned a corner and suddenly the narrow passageway opened up into a large underground hall, filled with statutes that showed signs of accumulating dust and lamps activated by spiritual energy arrays in the absence of windows – not having expected it to be there, since even he didn’t know his way around the old paths that well, Nie Huaisang burst into the underground hall in a flutter of robes, fan clutched in his hand so hard that his knuckles were white.

Jin Guangyao was waiting for him.

Nie Huaisang came to a screeching halt, abruptly horrified at his mistake: the narrow passageways confused the noise he was making, whether through his feet or the way he’d used his fan to knock against the wall, making extra noise to pretend to be more people than he was, but in the big empty hall it was evident that he was alone – that he’d chased after Jin Guangyao all by himself, without anyone able to match Jin Guangyao strength for strength by his side.

“Huaisang,” Jin Guangyao said, his eyes flickering around him, confirming the truth of the matter. “How could you be so foolish?”

“How could you do it?” Nie Huaisang demanded in return, edging over to one of the statutes by the side of the room so that he had a little bit of coverage in case Jin Guangyao decided to try something. He’d lose if it came to a fight, he knew it, so it couldn’t come to a fight. He had to keep stalling. Maybe if he kept stalling, he would forget how terrified he was. “How could you hurt da-ge? He was your sworn brother – your friend!”

“Huaisang,” Jin Guangyao said. He looked genuinely upset, regretful, and if Nie Huaisang didn’t know everything, he would’ve believed it. Maybe he did believe it, despite everything; it wouldn’t surprise him that Jin Guangyao regretted what happened – but he probably just regretted getting caught, rather than having done it at all. “It’s not always that straightforward.”

“I don’t understand you,” Nie Huaisang said, because truly, in his heart of hearts, he didn’t. “I really don’t, san-ge. You swore an oath in front of the whole world to be loyal to him! Why would you betray him like that? Was his friendship nothing to you? Was our friendship nothing?”

Jin Guangyao shook his head slowly. His facile features were twisted up with grief, his fingers clutching at his belt as if for strength; there were even tears in his eyes.

“Your friendship meant everything to me,” Jin Guangyao said, and that was the worst of it, because he really sounded sincere. “Huaisang…I’ve always been your friend. Always. I have never wanted to hurt you.”

The sheer gall of such a statement took Nie Huaisang’s breath away.

“You tried to kill my da-ge,” Nie Huaisang reminded him. “My da-ge. He’s the most important person in my life! How would killing him not have hurt me? And surely you must have known that doing it like that, with a qi deviation, was the worst possible way you could have done it – you knew that that was the death he most feared, the death I most feared! And you did it anyway!”

“I did. I’m sorry, Huaisang - I let myself get drawn into all sorts of things I never wanted, and it all went far too far,” Jin Guangyao said, and he cast his eyes down. “You don’t know what it’s like, Huaisang. Everything I ever dreamed of as a child, all the promises my mother made to me, all the promises I made back to her – that I would stand tall as a proper son of Lanling Jin, that I would be respected and admired, not held back simply because of who my mother was..! Everything I did in my life, I did for that, to achieve that, and I was so close to achieving it, if only I did one more thing, and then another, and another…”

He shook his head and raised his eyes, meeting Nie Huaisang’s.

“You want to know why I did what I did?” he asked. “I wanted my father to accept me, and I was willing to do anything to make that a reality. Even when he asked for – for this…I convinced myself that it was just what I had to do. That I had already sacrificed so much, too much, to stop now. That there wasn’t any choice…I was wrong, wasn’t I, Huaisang?”

He took a step forward.

In return, Nie Huaisang backed off a few steps, going to the side, ducking behind yet another statute.

“I know I made the wrong choice. I know it, Huaisang; do you think I don’t? But I was already so deep into it – by the time I realized I’d gone on the wrong path, my way out was gone. My father had me right where he wanted me, torn between the bait he held out and the way of no return that he’d blocked off. I had no choice, Huaisang! Don’t you see? I had no other way but to do what he wanted!”

It all sounded plausible.

Plausible, and believable, and even sympathetic…and it might have worked, only Nie Huaisang had heard this song and dance before, and recently, too.

“Save your breath, san-ge,” he snapped. “Intent isn’t nothing, but the action matters more. Even if your father wanted you to do it, even if he pushed you into a corner, you were the one who made the choice to do what you did. You were the one who chose to keep going, not to stop, not to come and tell us what you’d gotten yourself into – you chose not to trust us, you chose lies over righteousness. Do you think it’s any more forgivable when you do it than when er-ge does it?!”

Jin Guangyao stopped in his tracks for a moment, looking sad – sad, but resigned.

“I don’t expect you to forgive me for what I’ve done, Huaisang” he said solemnly. “I know it cannot be forgiven. But I hope you can at least understand. You of all people…”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Nie Huaisang asked, abruptly bristling. “What about me?”

Jin Guangyao looked at him with sad eyes. He took another step forward, then another. “Your brother doesn’t accept you as you really are any more than my father accepts me for who I am. Even before I started all this – I worried about you. I still worry about you.”

“How dare you,” Nie Huaisang said, this sudden and unexpected attack shaking him to the core. He’d confessed his fears and insecurities to Jin Guangyao, his secret and hastily suppressed sorrows about how he always failed to meet his brother’s stern requirements and his sect’s expectations, how he sometimes felt as though he would never fit in; he hadn’t expected that Jin Guangyao would cite him as a reason for what he did, as if he’d somehow justified killing Nie Mingjue to himself in part as some twisted version of helping Nie Huaisang. “You know he loves me – that I love him.”

“We don’t always love what’s good for us, Huaisang.”

Nie Huaisang shook his head and backed up some more, evading first one statute, then another. He couldn’t let Jin Guangyao catch him. “You’re wrong,” he said stubbornly. “About da-ge, anyway. He gave you chance after chance – even if he was angry at you, he still swore brotherhood with you. He still let you play music for him…and look how you repaid him! Look at how you repaid er-ge!”

He turned his head and jumped a little, not having realized how close Jin Guangyao had gotten to him – he darted forward, ducking behind yet another statute, this one need an arched doorway, built with a large and oddly familiar keystone. His saber was heavy at his waist, the weight slowing him down, like an anchor.

“Huaisang, please, believe me. I would never harm er-ge.”

Nie Huaisang scoffed. “San-ge,” he said. “Loving you was the worst thing that ever happened to him.”

Jin Guangyao flinched. It seemed like that had hurt. Genuinely hurt, but what did Nie Huaisang know? Every one of Jin Guangyao’s reactions so far had seemed genuine.

“I gave him everything he wanted,” Jin Guangyao said, and he sounded almost – irritated? Perhaps he really was hurt by Lan Xichen turning his back on him, by his choice to plead for forgiveness he would not receive from Nie Mingjue rather than siding with Jin Guangyao against him, for his choice to believe Lan Wangji over Jin Guangyao that one time and thereby ruining all his careful machinations. “Every last thing, no matter how much effort it took, no matter how hard it was. I supported him when he needed strength, indulged him when he felt weak…”

“You used him as a weapon against da-ge, who you knew he loved,” Nie Huaisang pointed out. “You seduced him into breaking his word, you encouraged him in his worst habits of selfishness and cruelty – you distanced him from his lover and his family and left him nothing but you, and you betrayed him. Even if he’s to blame for his own choices, you’re equally guilty, more guilty - you drove him to them! You ruined him.”

“The Lan sect ruined him, not me,” Jin Guangyao said, sounding almost regretful. “Everything he was, he already was before I met him…I really do love him, Huaisang, sincerely, I do. From the first time I met him, I knew that he was everything I’d ever wanted, the perfect gentleman, and I did everything in my power to get him – is that so wrong? Is it so wrong to want his love, and my father’s, too?”

“Uh, yes, when your father’s love is conditional on betraying every principle that er-ge holds dear –”

Nie Huaisang had stopped moving out of sheer exasperation. It was a mistake.

Because before he knew what was happening, there was a hand on his shoulder, sudden and unexpected, making him startle and try to duck away, try to pull out his saber –

He managed to get his saber out, at least.

Not that it would help him much, with Jin Guangyao’s flexible sword at his throat.

“I thought you said you never wanted to hurt me,” Nie Huaisang said, keeping very still. In a fight, he knew, he would lose; he’d known that from the beginning. His plan counted on Jin Guangyao not catching him. “You said.”

“And it’s true,” Jin Guangyao said. “I don’t want to hurt you. But sometimes – ah, sometimes, Huaisang, we just don’t get to choose.”

Nie Huaisang had never wanted to hit someone as badly as he wanted to hit Jin Guangyao right now. His da-ge was right: his act of always playing the victim got old really fast.

“I can’t believe you,” Nie Huaisang said. “I can’t – you can’t seriously be telling me that you have no choice but to threaten my life? No one is making you hold a sword to my throat!”

“There’s no need to shout, Huaisang,” Jin Guangyao said mildly, as gentle as always. “Really, if there’s one thing I’ve never understood about the Nie sect, it’s your insistence on always being so loud. Can’t we have the very same discussion in a civilized manner?”

He shook his head, looking long-suffering.

“Please don’t struggle,” he added, gesturing for Nie Huaisang to start going back down the hall the way they came. “I need you to come with me so that I can make my way back to my father’s side. I’d prefer it if you remained unharmed.”

Prefer, meaning that you’re willing to accept the alternative, Nie Huaisang thought bitterly, and this time the bitterness was aimed just as much at himself. He’d thought it himself earlier, hadn’t he, that Jin Guangyao might think to grab one of them as a hostage – and here he was, in exactly that situation. Making things worse, just the way he always did, even when he tried to help. If Jin Guangyao really did get him all the way over to the Jin sect side, he might try to use him to force Nie Mingjue to stand down, and given his brother’s over-protectiveness and need to ensure Nie Huaisang’s safety…well, Nie Huaisang didn’t know what his brother would pick between the safety of their sect and his safety, but he knew he didn’t want to find out.

Maybe Jin Guangyao would even try to use Nie Huaisang to trigger that final qi deviation in Nie Mingjue after all. Given what he now knew of Jin Guangyao’s real personality, it seemed in character.

Nie Huaisang gritted his teeth together and tightened his grip on the hilt of his saber, which was oddly warm.

He didn’t move.

Just like Lan Qiren had so inadvertantly demonstrated all that time ago, Nie Huaisang knew now that he could learn and would learn, one way or another.

“Huaisang,” Jin Guangyao said, sounding a little less gentle, a less more impatient. “Now is not the time for your stubbornness. What do you think this is going to achieve?”

“I’m not going to let you use me against da-ge,” Nie Huaisang said. He might be useless, but he wasn’t going to be another sword in Nie Mingjue’s heart. “I’m not.”

“You don’t have a choice,” Jin Guangyao told him. “This is pointless, Huaisang. Even if you refuse to move, I’ll just knock you out and drag you with me, and in the end you’ll be in the same situation, just injured – there’s no benefit to a losing move like that. Doesn’t it make more sense to just cooperate now?”

That was true. If he stayed awake, he would be able to take advantage of any change in circumstances later on, to take the opportunity to escape or get one over on Jin Guangyao, which he wouldn’t be able to do if he were entirely unconscious. It was a better move, the smarter move.

Jin Guangyao knew that.

Jin Gunagyao knew him.

Nie Huaisang hesitated.

He’d criticized Jin Guangyao for having made the choices he did, even as Jin Guangyao defended himself by claiming he had no other option. Him and his brother both, they’d condemned him for that.

Could Nie Huaisang really do as Jin Guangyao did? Could he really make the smart play, the clever play, and give in to the inevitable bad for the hope of eventually achieving something good? Was that the sort of person he was, or that he wanted to be?

Did he have a choice?

His eyes darted around the hall they were in as he wracked his brain, trying to think of some other way out of this, some way to do what he needed to do – he couldn’t let Jin Guangyao win, not after everything that had happened. He might be weak and useless, a real good-for-nothing, but he still cared. Maybe he wasn’t good at caring all that much about doing what was right about justice and fighting evil and all that, but he still cared.

He cared about his brother, cared about his sect. He cared about getting revenge for the slights that were done to him, especially when those slights hurt people he cared about. He was still a Nie.

Still a Nie…

His eyes settled on the keystone in the doorways, the one that looked so familiar, the sigils carved into it long ago by his ancestors. His hand tightened on the hilt of his saber.

The Nie sect motto was fight evil no matter where, and for all his faults, Nie Huaisang was a Nie, inflexible and rigid as all his ancestors – and whatever he might have been once, friend or ally, Jin Guangyao right now was evil.

“All right, san-ge,” Nie Huaisang said. “I’ll come with you.”

Jin Guangyao chuckled in his ear. “Good boy, Huaisang. I knew you’d understand.”

“I do,” Nie Huaisang said, and the worst of it was, he really did. “I understand you entirely. I, too, would pick love over righteousness, and I’d do terrible things because of it.”

He turned to look at Jin Guangyao, carefully not to get too close to the blade of his sword.

Jin Guangyao was smiling.

He was smiling, but when Nie Huaisang looked at him, he suddenly frowned. “Huaisang,” he said, and he actually sounded concerned. “Huaisang, did you know that you’re bleeding? Your nose – your eyes –”

Nie Huaisang hadn’t noticed.

He did notice how Jin Guangyao’s hand eased up a little, the sword going just a little further away from his neck, and the moment Nie Huaisang had enough space he twisted and shoved.

It was rough and dirty, no technique at all, not anything he’d learned at all those unwanted saber practices over the years, although all of his brother’s efforts probably helped build up the muscles in his shoulders enough to make the push meaningful. It helped that he got Jin Guangyao in a moment of possibly genuine worry, or maybe he just really hadn’t anticipated Nie Huaisang ever doing anything brave and stupid like that, but either way he managed to knock him off balance.

Jin Guangyao staggered back a few steps, putting out a hand to brace himself against the doorframe.

Not waiting to let Jin Guangyao collect himself, Nie Huaisang threw himself forward bodily, aiming right at his san-ge’s midsection, even though he knew he was opening himself up to having that sword brought down on his head.

Jin Guangyao didn’t.

Nie Huaisang didn’t know if it was because Jin Guangyao still wanted to use Nie Huaisang as a hostage or because he genuinely cared, but he lifted the sword out of the way of Nie Huaisang’s rushing charge and didn’t stab Nie Huaisang even as he got tackled by him, the two of them sprawling straight through the doorway and onto the dusty floor.

Nie Huaisang immediately rolled off and got back to his feet, backing away towards the main hallway. He was still afraid, all his bravery not doing one bit to help him feel better, but he knew what he had to do now.

“Huaisang, really,” Jin Guangyao said, sitting up and rubbing his side. He looked exasperated, annoyed, and yet fond, as if a child had been being naughty in front of him. “What did that achieve, exactly? Do you really think you’ll be able to get away from me if I were really chasing you?”

Nie Huaisang wiped the blood from his face – qi deviations were really obnoxious, even when minor – and held out his saber in what even he recognized was pathetic mockery of an offensive position. It was burning hot to the touch.

“Really, Huaisang?”

“You don’t know anything,” Nie Huaisang said, and threw the saber at Jin Guangyao, who scrambled to his feet, dodging the wildly spinning blade easily and even reaching out to contemptuously pluck it out of the air, holding it in his own hand as another weapon to use.

While Jin Guangyao was doing that, though, Nie Huaisang turned and ran through the doorway arch, reaching out to put his hand to the side of the door – where Jin Guangyao’s hand had been.

But Jin Guangyao wasn’t a Nie.  

The carvings that made the door beautiful were useful for more than decoration: the array within responded quickly, despite Nie Huaisang’s poor cultivation. It began to glow – and then the next stone in the arch did the same, each one lighting up in turn until it reached the keystone at the top.

“Huaisang?”

Nie Huaisang looked at Jin Guangyao, who had suddenly become wary but too late, and shook his head.

He felt more than saw the moment that the keystone activated. Once it did, a shield slammed down between the two of them, as tough and unyielding as the one that surrounded the Unclean Realm – tougher, even, because it needed to stand up against the most talented masters of the Nie sect, when it was their time.

Because that was what this place was for, what those not-so-secret passageways were for.

That Nie sect family secret that his brother thought Nie Huaisang didn’t know.

One way, or another. If you can’t achieve your goals through regular means, find another way - but the way you choose is up to you.

He turned away.

“Huaisang! Huaisang, where are you going – you can’t leave me here! Huaisang…”

Jin Guangyao paused.

He seemed as if he wanted to ask a question, and Nie Huaisang knew what it was.

What is that noise?

That horrible, screeching sound, the sound of metal scraping against rock – the screams of tens of thousands of beasts, dying squealing under the blade of the butcher, crystalized in the resentful energy used to forge and refine the Nie sect’s sabers. Too loud, painfully loud: as if the screaming were coming from inside your skull, driving you to distraction.

Driving you mad.

“You locked my brother in the quiet to be eaten alive by his own demons,” Nie Huaisang said. His own saber was now clutched in Jin Guangyao’s hand – weak from Nie Huaisang’s poor cultivation, but not completely inert. Now, here, in this dreadful abattoir where so many of Nie Huaisang’s bloodline had died, full of the anger and resentment that they paid as a price for their power, it sang, calling for the justice that its master could not get alone. Its fellow sabers, buried deep in the saber tombs stretching from here to the distant Xinglu ridge in a necropolis that honored steel instead of bone, sang back. “We don’t have quiet here in the Unclean Realm, I’m afraid; we only have noise. Let’s see how much you like it.”

Jin Guangyao screamed Nie Huaisang’s name, time and time again, desperate and pleading and bargaining, his silver tongue spitting out all sorts of clever arguments.

Nie Huaisang stopped his ears and refused to hear them.

He walked away, and left Jin Guangyao behind.

Chapter 9

“Wangji is doing well,” Lan Qiren said, cradling his teacup, allowing it to warm his hands as he breathed in the aroma. He had been sitting in silence for what felt like a shichen, hoping that Lan Xichen would start the conversation, but he had been disappointed.

Again.

Lan Xichen stared down at his hands, head bowed and face a little pale. Lan Qiren remembered when his nephew would greet him every afternoon with a smile – he remembered, too, the way that smile had become less and less real, more and more fake, and no matter how he tried to talk to him, he simply could not get Lan Xichen to tell him why. Lan Qiren had worried that it was the pressures of being the heir, of his expected future role as sect leader, and he’d done his best to bear as much of the weight of that as he could, while he could; he had thought it was the rising tide of the inescapable war, looming on the horizon; he had thought a thousand things. He had wondered if Lan Xichen was lonely, or saddened, or even angry, and he’d tried in each case to do what he could to ease his nephew’s unspoken dissatisfaction and nameless anxieties – but as long as Lan Xichen was unwilling to tell him what was wrong, Lan Qiren could do nothing. Nothing but be there for him, and back then, it had seemed like Lan Xichen had appreciated that, that that had been enough.

Perhaps he should have tried harder.

Perhaps if he had, things might not have…

No, there was no point in thinking like that.

Maintain your own discipline, after all.

In the end, Lan Qiren had been separated from Lan Xichen during much of the war, a necessity dictated by his nephew’s bravery and his own injuries, and then by the needs of the war itself. He had comforted himself in thinking that at least Lan Xichen had Nie Mingjue at his side – Nie Mingjue had been one of the few people who could win a real smile out of Lan Xichen in those later years, when nothing else seemed to work. They had been so charming as children, each one of them enraptured and fascinated by the other, and they had seemed so happy…they had been so happy.

It wasn’t a surprise that Lan Xichen returned from the war different from how he had been before. That was what war did, that maker and breaker of men; if Lan Qiren could have kept his nephews, who he loved like his own sons, from ever having to know battle, he would have done so no matter what the cost, even if the cost was his own life. He couldn’t, though, and afterwards, it felt as if what had been a small distance between them had turned into a chasm.

Perhaps Jin Guangyao had started in on his tricks even as far back as that. It was quite possible – Lan Xichen, normally quite filial, hadn’t bothered informing Lan Qiren of his intention to become sworn brothers with Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangyao until it had already been announced publicly, and after that, naturally, Lan Qiren had to treat Jin Guangyao with respect lest he be seen as stepping on his nephew’s face.

It was hard to say now, in retrospect, if Lan Qiren had had any inkling of what the man had been like. Lan Qiren would have liked to think that he hadn’t liked him on sight, but everything had been such a mess in those days, and Jin Guangyao so good at playing the part of a gentle and virtuous man, exactly the sort of person to appeal to the heart of a teacher like him – he really couldn’t be sure.

He did know that he’d disliked him later, after what had happened to Lan Wangji. It hadn’t been even Jin Guangyao’s fault, really. Lan Wangji’s punishment had been a harsh one, probably too harsh, breaking Lan Qiren’s heart into a thousand pieces, but it had been what was necessary to appease the anger of the sect while maintaining Lan Wangji’s reputation and freedom, and Lan Qiren had through bitter experience learned to value freedom above all else. Despite having put together the punishment himself after negotiations lasting both day and night, despite sincerely believing that it was the only way forward and there was no way out, watching the punishment be administered had been by far the worst moment of Lan Qiren’s life, and he had had many to compare.

Watching had hurt Lan Xichen as well – watching, and having to consent to it, even if he hadn’t been responsible for coming up with it the way Lan Qiren had. But afterwards, when Lan Qiren had come at once to Lan Wangji’s side, ready to bear whatever condemnation his nephew wished to throw at him – to be forgiven or rejected, to provide answers or to remain distant, whatever Lan Wangji wished – Lan Xichen had instead distanced himself, turning his face away with the thin excuse of sect business to keep him away.

Turning away…towards Jin Guangyao.

Lan Qiren had tried to talk to Lan Xichen about it – to share sorrows and commiserate or help – but every time he did, Jin Guanyao had been there. Even for someone like Lan Qiren, who was set in his ways and not especially skilled at understanding people, it didn’t take long to realize that Jin Guangyao was ever so subtly and politely impeding Lan Qiren’s attempt to connect with his nephew, and that Lan Xichen was endorsing it.

If it hadn’t been for that endorsement, Lan Qiren would have fought his way through – he was as stubborn as any other Lan, and certainly no less than his nephews. But once he understood that this distance, this refusal to compromise or connect or anything, was what Lan Xichen wanted…he had felt that he had no choice but to step back and respect his nephew’s wishes.

Perhaps he shouldn’t have. Perhaps…

There was no point in thinking about it that way.

Be strict with yourself, be easy on others.

Lan Qiren did not hold a grudge over his nephew’s past acts, for he loved him too much to do that. His love for his nephew was unconditional, even if he was genuinely disappointed in the man he had become or the actions he had taken. But simply because he loved him and always would did not mean that he would so easily forgive and forget what had been done – the Lan sect’s rule admonished them to Earn trust, not to take it for granted. The effort of repairing what he had shattered fell on his nephew’s shoulders, and only Lan Xichen could decide what to do next.

Lan Qiren only hoped that now the poison that was Jin Guangyao was gone and the lesson so harshly learned, now that he had time to understand all that he had lost through his own conduct and reflect on himself and his actions, time to mourn all that had happened before, Lan Xichen could at last begin to properly heal – at last begin to finally grow to be content with himself in the way Lan Qiren had always wanted for him.

After what felt like an age, Lan Xichen cleared his throat. “I’m happy to hear that Wangji is well.”

A dull parrot croaking back the words said to it verbatim would have been a better conversationalist.

Lan Qiren did not sigh, though he wanted to.

“He’s started wearing his ribbon again,” he said conversationally, and noted that Lan Xichen’s head lifted in interest despite himself. “While I do not think he will be returning to the Cloud Recesses on a permanent basis any time soon, he has reaffirmed himself as a member of the Lan sect.”

Lan Wangji would follow the rules as he saw fit, thinking seriously as to what they were and what they meant, accepting them voluntarily and whole-heartedly the way he had done before, and he'd teach the two boys he'd taken with him the same – Lan Qiren was pleased by that, at least, even though he suspected that Lan Wangji’s interpretation of the rules would not match up especially well with his own.

It was still better than losing him entirely.

(Lan Qiren had his own conduct to reflect on, too. He’d thought he was doing the right thing, and yet…had he really? Had he acted too rashly, too consumed with his own past horrors to see the different world of the presence? Had he also failed Lan Wangji? What about those two boys, which Lan Wangji had taken away as if he did not trust that they would thrive here? What was the right thing to have done, under such circumstances? What was the right thing to do?)

“Is Wangji happy?” Lan Xichen asked, and it was the most attention he’d paid to anything Lan Qiren had said since they had started this ritual in the days following the unsuccessful attack on the Unclean Realm. “With…with Wei Wuxian, I mean?”

“I think he is, yes.”

Now that had been a disaster of untold proportions.

It had all happened so quickly, and Lan Qiren had not been present; everything he knew about it was only by report. Unsurprisingly, the Jin sect had been in complete chaos after their would-be invasion had been rebuffed and thoroughly defeated, as anyone with any sense should have figured out from the start. After all, the Unclean Realm, shut behind its walls and shields, had been too fearsome a target and too tough a nut to crack even for the Wen sect at the height of its power, and that was before one accounted for Jiang Cheng’s heroic if near-suicidal bravery, dropping everything to rush over to Qinghe with as many disciples as he could spare the second he saw the beacon light up, determined to ensure that no other sect suffered a fate like his own had. It had gotten even worse for the Jin sect once it was discovered that their leadership was now gone, with Jin Guangshan dead at Jiang Cheng’s hand – Lan Qiren hoped for Jiang Cheng’s sake that he’d enjoyed eliminating the odious man that had so sadistically enjoyed threatening him through his nephew, though he genuinely believed Jiang Cheng’s persistent insistence that he hadn’t intended to kill him – and Jin Guangyao’s corpse being produced a few days later without any explanation. Rumors could not seem to decide what had been the likely cause of death, whether it seemed as if he’d died by his own hand or if it had been something more sinister than that. The condition of the body apparently rendered it uncertain…

At any rate, it had been a complete mess. The remaining people in the Jin sect had therefore all rushed home, looking for someone to take over and tell them what to do…

Well, that was the charitable explanation, anyway.

More accurately, after the Jin sect completely lost both face and leadership, the influential members of the sect realized that the only living heirs to the position of sect leader were little Jin Ling, who was still a toddler, and Mo Xuanyu, one of Jin Guangshan’s bastards by some barely noble mortal lady from some remote village, the latter of which had been brought back and recognized as a son of Jin Guangshan’s more as a jibe aimed at undercutting Jin Guangyao than for his own merits, which were thoroughly lacking. Those influential sect members clearly realized that the first person to control those two would control the sect, and had immediately started fighting for the right to do just that.

Unfortunately for everyone, Xue Yang had gotten there first.

Xue Yang was a traitorous dog, a wretched delinquent and later criminal murderer, but Jin Guangshan had defended and sheltered him despite it all. It had been one of the main subjects upon which he had clashed with Nie Mingjue, especially after the incident with the massacre of the Yueyang Chang sect and the intervention of the already famous Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan. Somehow it appeared that Xue Yang had received early word of what had happened, or perhaps he had just been waiting for an opportunity when everyone was gone to make mischief; at any rate, he’d either enticed or intimidated poor Mo Xuanyu into performing a forbidden body-offering ritual that summoned Wei Wuxian back to the world.

Not that they’d known it was Wei Wuxian, at least at first.

Well, Lan Wangji – there as part of the Nie sect’s counter-attacking force, grim-faced and determined not to let the Jin sect weasel out of their wrongdoing this time – had somehow managed to figure it out, and after that rather a lot of other things had happened all at once in very quick succession before Wei Wuxian had been somehow, miraculously accepted back into the cultivation world once again.

There were details in a report somewhere or another, if Lan Qiren wished to look.  He hadn’t quite been able to bring himself to do it yet. After all, in the end, Lan Qiren cared about the entire series of events only insofar as his second nephew was happy once again.

“I would even dare to say that he is happy to excess,” he said, his voice a little dry. “It is probably for the best that he is living in the Unclean Realm at the moment, as I suspect the hearts of our Lan sect elders might not be able to tolerate seeing such…profound displays of joy.”

They can’t keep their hands off each other, he meant, feeling deeply long-suffering over the whole unstoppable debacle – his family and their unrestrained hearts, fools every one of them! – and Lan Xichen, despite the depths of his misery, momentarily looked pleased and even amused to hear it.

“Nie Huaisang has announced that he is planning their wedding whether they consent or no,” Lan Qiren said, and watched Lan Xichen’s expression tense. He knew his nephew suspected Nie Huaisang of having somehow contrived to cause Jin Guangyao’s death, and knew, also, that Lan Xichen was torn up inside over it, not knowing how to feel. It was clear enough to Lan Qiren that, on one hand, Lan Xichen mourned the death of the person he had thought was his friend, the illusion Jin Guangyao had projected for him, while on the other, he knew now what Jin Guangyao had really been like, and could not help but be glad that he was gone. And yet still more, Lan Xichen knew, too, that Jin Guangyao’s death had been the only thing preventing his former friend from going to a public trial to suffer for his crimes and his father’s, from facing that level of collective disdain and disgust from the entire cultivation world, which would have been the fate that Jin Guangyao would have hated the most, abhorred even more than death…Lan Xichen couldn’t decide if Nie Huaisang had done what he thought he had done, and he didn’t know if he should hate him for it or thank him for sparing Jin Guangyao that last indignity.

Torn up inside was really too mild a word for it.

“I have faith that Huaisang will do a good job,” Lan Xichen finally said, clearly choosing to soldier on past his discomfort. Lan Qiren nodded in approval. “He’s not as useless as he used to pretend to be.”

“He is still rather useless,” Lan Qiren said, and wanted to sigh. He didn’t know how he’d gotten the reputation for being able to turn trash into gold and a waste into a gentleman, but even less did he understand how that ridiculous reputation of his had managed to survive the fact that Nie Huaisang had been his student three times over and still turned out like that. “Don’t try asking him any questions he doesn’t feel like answering, that’s for sure…but yes, he’s grown up a little, at long last. I’m given to understand that he’s actually started helping out around his sect, doing little things here and there. He’s discovered that he has a small talent for arrays and astronomy and promptly let it go to his head, strutting around like a peacock in springtime.”

As Lan Qiren had hoped, Lan Xichen actually smiled at that image.

A moment later, and the smile faded.

It was only to be expected. After all, Lan Qiren was reporting information about the inner affairs of another sect, and given the still-tense relationship between Lan Wangji and any members of the Lan sect, there was only one person he could have heard it from.

“Shufu,” Lan Xichen said, voice trembling. “How is…how is Chifeng-zun faring?”

Lan Qiren did sigh, this time.

“You don’t get to ask that, you know,” he reminded Lan Xichen gently, and his nephew dropped his head down, staring at the table with his face gone grey again. “But he’s doing – not good, perhaps, but fine. Manageable. As well as can be expected. He’s not happy about being stuck with the Chief Cultivator position that Jin Guangshan invented – I believe he’s proposed that it become a rotating position. It’s unclear if that proposal will be successful, however, given that Sect Leader Jiang nearly threw a fit when he heard of it and realized that it meant that he’d have to take a turn.”

“I can imagine,” Lan Xichen murmured. “He’s already responsible for twice the number of sects, after all.”

“Not quite. Madame Qin has now officially taken charge of matters in Lanling Jin, acting as regent for her nephew – she’s a sweet girl, honest, and with Jiang Cheng there to look out for Jin Ling’s interests, there’s no cause for concern. While they are still in the midst of dividing up everything that had become overly entangled between the two sects, it will not take long before it has been done, and we have four separate Great Sects once more.”

Lan Xichen nodded. He still looked as though he wanted to say something, so Lan Qiren waited patiently, although he knew that there was every chance that Lan Xichen would simply give up once again, sighing and dropping his head to his shoulders, retreating behind a wall of silence that no one could breach.

Today, however, his patience was rewarded.

“Shufu, I know I don’t have the right to ask,” Lan Xichen said abruptly, breaking the long silence. “But tell me anyway. Has Mingjue-xiong found another lover?”

Of course it would be that, Lan Qiren thought, not without sympathy. There was nothing in the world so precious as what you had once held in your hands, treated too lightly, and finally lost through your own negligence.

“He has not,” he said. “I do not believe he has any plans to do so in the near future. But time heals all wounds, and he is a sect leader, with obligations. I would expect to hear happy news sooner or later.”

Lan Xichen exhaled, the sound of it loud in the thick silence of the hanshi. He looked neither rejoicing nor regretful, but almost a little bit relieved – as if merely gathering his courage to ask the question had been a great effort, and that in doing so, he had perhaps so released a little of the poison still stuck in his chest.

Lan Qiren could only hope.

“That is all the news I have from outside,” Lan Qiren concluded. He put his teacup down and stood, intending to leave, but before he could, Lan Xichen reached out and caught his sleeve in his fingers, just the way he had done when he’d been a little child who hadn’t known any better.

Lan Qiren came to a halt, waiting.

“Shufu,” Lan Xichen said. “When Wangji defied the sect, he was punished. I – did what I did, with Jin Guangyao…you said that I would be punished, too. When will that be?”

“Your actions and Wangji’s are not the same, and so too your punishments are by necessity different,” Lan Qiren said. “You will not be sentenced to any strikes with the discipline whip.”

“But…I deserve to be punished.” Lan Xichen’s voice was urgent. “Shouldn’t I be punished?”

Lan Qiren felt tired, and old. Far older than his years.

“Xichen,” he said quietly. “You are the sect leader. Your life belongs to the sect, not yourself, and you will have to live up to that. You are going to have sit across the table from all the rest of them, the sect leaders of Great Sects and small sects both, familiar and less familiar, everyone who knows what you did and who you did it for. You are going to have to do that for the rest of your life. That’s punishment enough.”

Lan Xichen flinched as if Lan Qiren had struck him. It would have been kinder if he had struck him.

“I can’t do that,” he whispered. “Shufu, I can’t.”

“You must.”

“Shufu…” Lan Xichen looked up at him pleadingly. “I want to go into seclusion.”

Lan Qiren shook his head. It was not the first time Lan Xichen had asked for that, but Lan Qiren knew better than most that the quiet of seclusion, just like the forceful peace of the jingshi, their quiet room, was not always the best remedy in every case. There were cases in which the jingshi was too strong a medicine, as it was for people like Nie Mingjue, and cases, too, where it was too weak, unable to actually solve the problem that was before it; the same was true for seclusion.

He did not believe that seclusion was the right remedy here.

To put it bluntly, Lan Xichen’s fault had always been his cowardice, his desire to run away. He had not wanted to tell Nie Mingjue that he was dissatisfied with their relationship or that he wanted more, he had not wanted to confront his own anxieties, he had not wanted to admit fault, he had tried to hide himself away from the world…Jin Guangyao might have encouraged him, but it had been Lan Xichen’s own choice to succumb to those blandishments, to use them as an excuse to do what he’d so selfishly wanted to do anyway.

Maintain your own discipline.

For him, seclusion would be just more hiding. Hiding and hiding, until he was just the shadow of a person, existing rather than living…how could Lan Qiren allow that?

“You cannot,” he said, knowing his words were harsh and the message still harsher, but he hoped in his heart of hearts that the harshness would help, that Lan Xichen would finally find it within himself to rise to the occasion. “You are sect leader. I cannot handle the work of it any longer, and Wangji is no longer here; the only one who can do it is you. It is your burden, your life – no other person can bear it for you.”

Lan Xichen’s eyes were red.

He was still in mourning, still miserable, still despondent, and that was all reasonable, just to be expected. But at the same time, Lan Qiren thought that there had been some progress today: Lan Xichen had held a conversation with him, he had answered questions and asked others. He had inquired as to the things he wanted to know, even though he had known that the answers would hurt him.

Maybe sometime soon, if not tomorrow than some time after, he would go still further.

When he did – when Lan Xichen finally raised his head up high and acknowledged the mistakes he had made, acknowledged and learned from them, swore to himself that he would be a better person going forward and accepted that there was no going back, no making up for what he had done, when he accepted that he might not ever be forgiven and that even if he was there was no getting back what he had lost…

When Lan Xichen finally emerged from his self-induced misery, Lan Qiren would be there to support him.

“You made your choices, Xichen,” he reminded him. “Now you must live with them.”

He left, leaving Lan Xichen sitting in the hanshi behind him as he went, his hands clasped behind his back. Night was falling, and the Cloud Recesses was quiet.

As for whether it was the honest quiet of self-reflection or the insidious quiet of self-deceit…

Well, it was quiet.