Chapter Text
Yu Ziyuan—Madam Yu, never Madam Jiang, “remember where you come from, Ziyuan”—was angry.
All right, she was usually angry. She was angry a lot. Had been for a long time. Ever since her husband had decided that he was more invested in the stray son of his two best friends than in his own. Ever since he’d started grooming that Wei Wuxian as if he were his successor and he had no hope for their own Jiang Cheng.
Ever since she started to worry that he was right.
She was angry with him; angry with herself; angry with Jiang Cheng alternately for not being able to best Wei Wuxian and for trying, for not realizing that Wei Wuxian was his weapon as surely as Zidian was hers and he didn’t have to be better than him (and then angry at herself, again, for never finding a way to say that that didn’t get his hackles up before she could finish the sentence); angry at her daughter, her beloved but sickly Yanli, for following her father’s lead and treating “A-Xian” like her senior little brother and then angry at herself again for the realization that it was only Yanli’s acceptance that was keeping their family together at all.
In short, she was not just usually angry; she was always angry.
But now? Now she was fucking furious.
She had been willing to accept that the Wen Clan’s power made them strong enough to demand Wei Wuxian’s punishment for something she could see in her son’s eyes that Wei Wuxian had not done. After all, they’d just helped the few survivors of the Yao sect make their way to the Jins for help. Her husband and his closest retainers were away from Lotus Pier, and she was not fool enough to believe that the twelve footsoldiers that Wang Lingjiao had brought with her were the only Wens nearby.
So she had been willing to discipline Wei Wuxian in order to keep the peace. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t disciplined him before. He could withstand a few hits from Zidian—he was her first disciple, what kind of leader would she have been if she hadn’t trained her head disciple, her son’s right hand, to shake off the blows of a spiritual tool?—and it would keep all of them safer.
Much as she hated that Jiang Cheng was making this harder than it had to be, his histrionics had definitely sold the attack, too. He would need to learn how to weigh the greater good against the lesser if he was to succeed his father—but maybe she could find him a bride who could make those choices for him, just as she had always done for Fengmian.
So it had seemed, in the moment, like the right choice. The necessary choice. And much as she resented him, she could see in Wei Wuxian’s eyes the recognition that he understood why she was doing it, understood and respected it.
He didn’t even cry out.
But that Wang girl went beyond herself when she demanded Wei Wuxian’s hand in exchange for some nonexistent slight (or—probably not nonexistent. That boy needed to learn discipline, so he’d probably done something, but she remembered Jiang Cheng’s ridiculous panic when they’d come back, his worry over whether his shixiong would even survive, and there was no way that Wang girl’s description of what had happened was anywhere near the truth).
Wei Wuxian’s role was to be Jiang Cheng’s right hand; thus his right hand was Jiang Cheng’s too.
But while there was no way she was going to do it, there was, as Jiang Cheng had yet to learn, strategy in all things.
She ordered the doors closed, “so that no one could see the blood,” and she could see in everyone’s faces, even her son’s, that they believed she meant Wei Wuxian’s.
Fools.
But none of them as foolish as that Wang girl.
She was angry at Wei Wuxian. She was always angry at Wei Wuxian.
But she was fucking furious with this little asshole.
(Yu Ziyuan had long since cured herself of swearing out loud, as it was unbefitting of a sect leader’s wife, but there was no one listening inside her fucking head).
If there was blood to be spilt, it was not going to come from the Jiang clan—or any of their servants.
The Wang chit made it easy for her, mouthing off some nonsense about making Lotus Pier a Wen Supervisory Office as if the Jiang sect did not exist. That only proved that Yu Ziyuan’s instincts were, as usual, correct: there must be a much larger Wen force somewhere nearby if they were openly considering taking Lotus Pier. And if that was their plan, there was no use trying to prevent their invasion. The only way to do that would be calm, dishonorable, vile submission.
She ground the woman’s face under her foot, and it felt good.
And then, as if she needed more evidence of the nearby presence of a Wen army, Zhao Zhuliu flew through the window and attacked her dearest friends.
Oh, he might go by Wen Zhuliu now, and there was no way he was more than a few li from the side of one of Wen Ruohan’s little asshole sons, but he was still the same Zhao Zhuliu, Core Melting Hand.
Still the same strengths (it was in the name) and still the same weaknesses.
Well, if she knew him as the Core Melting Hand and he knew her as the Violet Spider, it was really his own fault if he forgot the main thing about spiders: never come to them in their own webs.
He was truly as complete a martial artist as one might see: strong, quick, wily. But he had one fatal flaw, which was on offer today.
He knew his strength, so he always saw himself as the greatest danger in the room.
But she knew that she and Jinzhu and Yinzhu could take him down as easily as she had lashed away that Wang girl’s guards, as long as it was an even fight.
That meant that the greatest danger in the room was not Wen Zhuliu, but the flare she could see hanging from the Wang girl’s robes (and really, dear, critiquing her sense of design while wearing that ugly old thing was too, too gauche).
She lashed out with Zidian and he moved to block it, but he assumed it was aimed at him—and so he missed.
Zidian squeezed itself around the Wang girl’s throat and Yu Ziyuan yanked, and suddenly the little fucker was gasping for breath ineffectually by her side. She swiped the flare and threw it to Jiang Cheng, who managed to do something useful and smashed it to bits on the stone floor.
Then she threw the Wang girl after it, and he and Wei Wuxian (who was somehow standing up after that whipping: she must have trained him to resist Zidian better than she realized) hustled her out of the doors, grabbing swords from the fallen Wen soldiers as they went.
Wen Zhuliu moved, but now it was just the four of them in the room, and all they had to do was keep his hands off their chests, away from their golden cores.
Ah, Zhao Zhuliu. She and her maids had years of experience fending off men who wanted to touch them.
She watched the blood drip from Jinzhu and Yinzhu’s knives as they formed up behind Wen Zhuliu, and she smiled.
He smiled back, cocky and assured, and it was thus that she chose to remember the Core Melting Hand, afterwards. He had been a good opponent after all, and she was glad she had had the doors closed, because it really would have been a shame if someone had seen just how much blood he lost by the end.