Chapter Text
She comes to all at once, an assault of light and sound on her senses. She can still smell the blood on the battlefield, taste the salt of her own tears. “A-Xian!”
Her eyes focus and she realizes she’s in Jinlintai, though not a room she’s seen before. The gaudy decor is unmistakable and the smell of sweat and blood is slowly being worn away by a familiar incense. How did she get here? Where is her son? Where are her brothers?
After a moment, she realizes she isn’t alone. There’s a young man staring at her with what looks like delight or maybe wonder, though there’s something dark in his smile. He takes a small step back when their eyes meet. His eyes trace the lines of her body then dart back up to her face. When she shivers, he starts laughing, doubles over with the force of it. She pulls her knees to her chest, abruptly realizing she’s on some kind of low table and she’s not dressed in her mourning whites. It comes back to her in flashes, the tears in A-Xian’s bloodshot eyes, A-Cheng’s strong arms wrapped around her, knowing she was safe, but her brothers were both so lost.
Her hand drifts to her chest. She doesn’t feel any pain. She doesn’t feel much of anything, except the sharp sting of grief and a trickle of fear that she can’t put words to. The boy⏤no, he’s a man, a young one⏤is still laughing. He stops just long enough to catch his breath and look at her, eyes dancing. “Wow. I really fucked up.”
She winces at the implication and too late realizes that reacting at all was probably a mistake. He darts forward so that their faces are almost touching and she fights back an urge to shiver again. He stares at her like he’s looking for something and then snaps his fingers in front of her eyes, grinning when she flinches back. “Nice reflexes.”
“Who are you?” Her voice comes out soft and thready. She hates how weak it makes her sound. “What’s going on?”
At first, he just laughs again. It’s as though someone has told a very funny joke that only he understands. His smile is bright and it almost reminds her of A-Xian’s, but A-Xian’s eyes were warm. This man’s eyes gleam, but they’re cold, and he bares his teeth like a predator.
“You know, I didn’t know if this would work? The Yiling Laozu wrote the spell, but he didn’t exactly leave comprehensive documentation. I had to make some guesses.” He smirks. “And some improvements.”
He hops up on the table, much too close for comfort, and reaches towards her. She freezes like a prey animal and hears her mother berating her for it in the back of her mind. He doesn’t touch her though, just removes some talismans that were laying across her torso. Oh.
“How long? How many days was I⏤” She can’t quite bring herself to say it and she hears her mother’s voice scolding her again. What, so you can throw your life away, but you can’t even acknowledge it?
If he notices anything in her expression, he doesn’t comment, just answers her question. “Three days, give or take. Wei Wuxian only outlived you by a few minutes.” He pauses then, eyes wandering up to the ceiling, then back down to her. “At least, that’s what everyone is saying. He definitely fell off a cliff in Nightless City. People say Jiang-zongzhu killed him, but A-Yao doesn’t think so.”
He hops off the table and starts meandering around the room, picking up pieces of paper seemingly at random. He returns to the table and thrusts them towards her. “Can you understand these?”
She takes them without thinking about it, still stuck on his last sentence. People say Jiang-zongzhu killed him . A-Cheng wouldn’t. Even if⏤ even if he blamed Wei Wuxian for her death and the deaths of the disciples at Nightless City. He would never go that far. She’s sure.
Her eyes drift down to the papers in her hand. “This is my brother’s handwriting, Wei Wuxian’s.” She’d know it anywhere.
The strange man rolls his eyes. They’re still gleaming, but a tinge of annoyance has crept into his smile. “Well, I know that. ”
She sighs slowly⏤does she even need to do that anymore, she wonders⏤and meets his eyes. “Thank you for bringing me back.” Some of the irritation in his face is replaced with surprise, but it quickly melts back into what seems to be his signature smirk. “I’m happy to help you, especially considering what you’ve done for me, but I think it might help if you could provide a bit of context.”
He cocks his head to one side and crosses his arms. “Okay, I’ll play. What context do you want?”
Play. This is a game to him. Yanli is suddenly very certain it’s a game she’s going to lose, but she’s sitting on a table in a room in Jinlintai she’s never seen before with her hanfu crossed the wrong way and a scar across her breast where a sword pierced her heart. She doesn’t have a lot of options. “Could we start with who you are? And your relationship to Lanling Jin?”
He dips in a parody of a respectful bow and says, “Of course. This one is Xue Yang, courtesy Chengmei. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”
She has. “I wasn’t aware you still lived.” That was the wrong thing to say. “You’re looking well.”
He seems to like that. “I’m looking better than you right now. That’s for sure.”
She glances down. Her skin is very pale and if she’s a revenant like Wen Ning, she guesses that she must have the same black veins. “I suppose you’re right. How did you come to be here?”
He raises his eyebrows. “That’s what you want to know? Not, oh I don’t know, why you’re a fierce corpse?”
Well, that answers one question. “I’d like to know that too, if it’s alright.”
He laughs again. It’s odd for such a sweet sound to be so cruel. “How are you this polite? They would have eaten you alive in here, Young Master or no.”
He’s not wrong. “Well, you certainly have the measure of Koi Tower. Have you been here long?”
“Too smart for your own good too.” He bops her on the nose with the index finger of his left hand, giving her an up-close view of the odd little glove he wears. It’s a prosthetic finger, she realizes, though she guesses he won’t react well to being asked about it. “I’ve been here long enough that Jin Guangyao and his idiot father forgot that I get bored if they ignore me for too long. Not that I can really blame them. It’s been a very busy few days. Young Madam Jin died, did you hear?”
Fuck you . The words are half her brother’s and half her mother’s and as such they don’t cross her lips. She feels like they must show on her face though, because he affects an exaggerated pout and says, “Oh, don’t look at me like that. You’ll hurt my feelings. At least I didn’t bring you back feral.”
What feels like an echo of nausea roils through her and she murmurs, “Yes, thank you for that.”
He rolls his eyes. “So fucking polite. I didn’t do it for you.”
“Why did you do it?” The question is out of her mouth before she can stop it. She thinks maybe he wanted her to ask, but she’d have liked to have been a little more strategic about it.
He smiles and it’s more real this time. His eyes are still gleeful and filled with something deep and dark, but his mouth is softer. It’s a very beautiful smile. “No one else has been able to recreate the Yiling Laozu’s work. I could, so I did.”
“You said you made some improvements?” She’d really like to know what they were and she’s hoping that stoking his pride will coax him into sharing that information.
“Yeah, it was supposed to make you obey me. We can’t get the Ghost General under control without the mind-control nails and those are a bitch to put in. Did it work?” Yanli doesn’t answer. She doesn’t feel especially obedient, but she’s not sure how she’d tell. “Hm. That’s not a great sign. I feel like if you were under my control you’d answer a direct question. Maybe I should try an order? Okay, punch a hole in that wall!”
Yanli wilts a little in relief when she feels no compulsion to obey. “I don’t even know if I could punch a hole in the wall. I think it might draw a little too much attention though.”
He runs his hands through his hair, looking a little aggravated. “I just told you I was trying to control you. You’re allowed to be angry or scared or anything except this weird polite thing you default to.”
He doesn’t seem overly perturbed that she isn’t under his control, so Yanli manages a small smile and says, “Well, it seems like maybe you’re not controlling me, so I will probably continue to be polite for the time being. I default to it because it works.”
That earns her another laugh. “You and Jin Guangyao.”
Her heart sinks. There’s no world in which Jin Guangshan is organized enough to do something like collect her brother’s work and distribute it to demonic cultivators. This is his son’s purview. She knows she shouldn’t be surprised, but there’s still a twinge of disappointment when she recalls how his eyes lit up the first time she let him hold A-Ling. She’d thought of him as family.
Before she can ask more about his involvement, something else Xue Yang said stops her in her tracks. “You said you’re controlling the Ghost General? Does that mean he isn’t dead?” Wen Ning was a dear friend to her brother when he was in dire need of them. If she can help him, she’s going to.
Xue Yang grins, wide enough that she can see his canine teeth. “Wanna see?”
Without waiting for her answer, he wraps an arm around her and yanks her off the table. She catches herself with only a small stumble and realizes her reflexes are fast, maybe faster than they’ve ever been. She files it away in her mind for later and concentrates instead on their winding path through back stairwells and servants doors. Faintly, she realizes they must be heading toward the dungeons.
She’s never been down this far; she’d occasionally ventured into the cellars where they store spices and other bulk ingredients, but never further down. The corridors smell or damp and mildew, with a tang that she can’t discern as being rust or blood. She suspects she knows. Her shudder catches Xue Yang’s attention and his hand on her shoulder briefly tightens.
“Don’t worry. No one goes down here except for me and⏤ Well, it’s really just me you need to worry about.” He’s practically skipping through the rows of cells. She should find it hard to keep pace with him, but she doesn’t. Her feet just seem to know the speed and cadence they need to keep her balanced and moving steadily forward. She wonders if Wen Ning felt this way or if it was one of Xue Yang’s improvements. She’s thinking about asking since he seems to like talking about his work, but before she can, they reach a cell that’s separate from the others. It’s small and dank, light barely filtering in from the hallway outside. There, slumped lifelessly in a corner with chains binding his arms and legs, is Wen Ning.
She feels faintly like she ought to be nauseated. It’s a horrifying sight, his skin waxy and snaked with black veins, his hair greasy and matted, his eyes lifeless and staring at nothing. Her heart aches and her head is spinning and she wants to be ill. Her body does not cooperate. Maybe she can no longer feel things like nausea.
She feels a stinging on the side of her head and she realizes Xue Yang has just flicked her ear. “Are you just going to stand there and stare? I’m not going to do it to you if that’s what you’re worried about.”
She hadn’t been worried about it until he said that.
She steps forward slowly and kneels, peering into Wen Ning’s face. There’s nothing of the shy, sweet boy who carried her brother on his back and saved her soup for a child in the Burial Mounds, only a blank mask and an echo of unending pain. Is this what resentful energy feels like?
She hears Xue Yang move behind her and she has a feeling he’s getting ready to flick her again. She takes a breath to steady herself, then remembers she doesn’t need to breathe. She makes a decision.
Before she can second guess herself, she’s standing and spinning to face Xue Yang. She catches his wrist in one hand, bracing just enough that he can’t reach to flick her like he was poised to do and he also can’t pull away. His eyes widen, but so does his smile. He tilts his head and waits, looking at her the way a cat looks at an insect. She holds his gaze. “I’ll help you.”
He raises his eyebrows, but he doesn’t interrupt her and he doesn’t yank his wrist back, so she keeps speaking. “I’ll help you with Wei Wuxian’s notes. There is no one in this world who knew my brother better than I did.” She thinks Lan Wangji might take issue with that statement and sends him a silent apology for the implied disrespect. “If anyone can make sense of all his notes and inventions, it’s me.”
“Okay.” He’s still smiling, but his eyes have gone from curious to skeptical, maybe a little annoyed. She doesn’t want to find out what his annoyance will bring her, but she doesn’t have a lot of leverage. “So what do you want?” Her surprise must show because he elaborates. “You’re not offering out of the goodness of your heart. Not even you’re that fucking polite. So you want the Ghost General, I’m guessing. You probably want some other shit too if you worked up the balls to put your hands on me.”
Well, now or never. “You’re right. I want the Gho⏤ I want Wen Ning, back the way he was if that’s possible. And I want my son and brother safely out of this viper pit. I’ve lost enough because of Jin Guangshan.”
He laughs, showing all of his teeth, and uses her grip on his wrist to pull them closer together, resting the hand wearing the glove on her waist. She fights the urge to shiver. She’s sure it would only make him laugh more. “What the fuck do you expect me to do, Jin-er-furen?”
She raises her eyebrows and tries to channel A-Xian’s confidence, for all the good she expects it to do. “I assume you can ride a sword, or failing that, a horse. It’s not that difficult to fly to Lotus Pier, especially not for a powerful cultivator.”
He rolls his eyes, apparently dismissing her weak attempt at manipulation. “And you expect Jiang-zongzhu to what? Welcome me with open arms?”
She holds her ground. “I’m his sister. He will welcome me and he will listen to me.” A faint glimmer of an idea flits through her mind and she seizes on it, finding her words as she goes. “How long do you expect to retain Jin-zongzhu’s favor? There is not a single human in this world that isn’t disposable to him, not even his children; he can always make more, after all. What do you think he’s going to do when he finds out you turned his daughter-in-law into a fierce corpse?”
Bizarrely, his face softens at that. “I like you better snappish.” He trails the fingertips of his good hand over her cheek and then bops her on the nose. “Okay, let’s see if you’re right. If you’re not, you’re still going to help me, but I get to pick where we go and what we bring with us.”
She doesn’t like the sound of that, but she nods. Jiang Cheng will help her. He’ll listen. She’ll get to hold her son again and keep him safe. She has to. She allows herself one moment of reverie in the space of a blink and then shifts her focus back to Wen Ning. “Would it be better to bring him back now? I think I’d prefer him to be himself when we see my brother.” She understands Jiang Cheng’s anger toward him, maybe even shares a little bit of it herself, but Wen Ning deserves to be able to defend himself should her brother lash out.
Xue Yang rolls his eyes but doesn’t argue, just wraps his hand around one of the lengths of chain binding Wen Ning and drags him out of the corner into the middle of the cell where there’s more light. Wen Ning doesn’t react at all, not to the movement and not to Xue Yang shoving his fingers into his hair and muttering to himself. When she focuses, she realizes he’s counting the nails in the back of Wen Ning’s skull. There are three.
With no preamble or ceremony, he grabs the first one and pulls. Yanli watches the nails slide out with a rough grinding noise that makes her wince. Xue Yang must notice, because he scowls at her and mutters, “He’ll be fine. It barely even hurts.”
She’s not sure he could know that unless he tested them on himself, but she doesn’t press, instead murmuring, “Thank you for not using them on me.”
He gives her a blank look, then yanks the final nail out of Wen Ning’s head and steps back, nudging her to do the same. Wen Ning’s body shudders and slowly some awareness returns to his eyes. He shies away when he spots Xue Yang, but freezes when he sees her standing next to him.
“Jiang-guniang? Um, I mean, Jin-er-furen?” Slowly, the fear and confusion on his face melts into shame and he sinks into as low of a bow as the chains will allow. “Jin-er-furen, you have my deepest apologies. There is nothing I can do that will atone for what you lost because of me, but please know that I never wanted to cause you pain and that your husband’s death was an accident. Wei-gongzi and I were under attack and I lost control.”
She’d heard slivers of the story and filled in a bit herself, knowing no story was ever as simple as the shades of black and white that Jin Guangshan and the other sect leaders sorted them into in whatever manner suited them. Still, it soothes something in her soul (if she still has one) to hear from his own mouth that Wen Ning had meant her husband no harm.
“I understand, Wen-gongzi. Please get up. There’s a lot to explain and we don’t have much time.” She turns to Xue Yang, who has already begun to look bored and irritated again, and asks, “Can you remove the chains?”
He flicks a burst of spiritual energy at them and they fall away. Wen Ning gingerly climbs to his feet, rotating his wrists and shoulders carefully, probably to dissipate any stiffness from the confinement since she supposes he doesn’t have to worry about circulation. She sees the exact moment his eyes snap to her neck, taking in the black veins that match his own. “Jiang-guniang?”
“After you surrendered, Jin Guangshan held a conference in Nightless City. He said he was scattering your ashes and then the assembled cultivators rallied to attack A-Xian. He found them first.” She swallows reflexively, suddenly all too aware of how dry her throat and mouth feel. “The battle was ugly. A-Xian was trying, I think, to stop the slaughter, but he was so hurt and angry.” A flicker of guilt crosses Wen Ning’s face.
“I pushed him out of the way of a sword. After that, I didn’t see what happened, but⏤” She glances at Xue Yang, whose eyes haven’t left Wen Ning since the chains fell away. He catches her look and picks up the thread.
“Everyone is saying he’s dead. I’m not so sure. He fell off the cliff at Nightless City or maybe jumped off. The way people are telling it, Hanguang-Jun pushed him off and Jiang-zongzhu stabbed him on the way down.” Skepticism flashes across Wen Ning’s face and Xue Yang smirks. “Yeah, I don’t believe it either. A-Yao thinks they were trying to pull him up, at least Hanguang-Jun was. Jiang-zongzhu isn’t correcting anyone though and no one knows where Hanguang-Jun is.”
“They were friends. He wouldn’t.” Wen Ning is murmuring almost to himself, but privately Jiang Yanli agrees with him. Wei Wuxian might have been completely oblivious to the love that flickered through Lan Wangji’s eyes when he looked at him, but she saw it as clear as day.
“Probably not,” Xue Yang agrees. “Not my fucking problem right now though. You’re my fucking problem right now.” Wen Ning casts a distressed look toward her.
“Wen-gongzi, we need to leave. Whatever Jin Guangshan is planning next, it’s nothing good. We’re going to take my brother and son and regroup at Lotus Pier where it’s safer.” She hesitates on the next part, knowing it’s not going to get a positive response. “And we’re taking Xue Yang with us.”
“Correction: Xue Yang has graciously agreed to accompany you to Lotus Pier alongside your brother, son, and the Ghost General in return for helping him steal all of the Yiling Laozu’s shit from Jin Guangshan and then making it make sense.” His tone is pleasant, but there’s a sharp edge in it.
“I don’t think…” Wen Ning trails off. He can see as well as she can that they don’t have a lot of options that don’t end in bloodshed, captivity, or both.
“The first thing we need to do is get out of here. I don’t want my family anywhere near Jin-zongzhu while everything is still unstable and he’s holding so much power. If we can take A-Xian’s notes back and take away his strongest demonic cultivator in the process, more’s the better.” She silently congratulates herself when her words land the way she wants and she feels a sense of smug satisfaction emanating from Xue Yang.
Wen Ning goes completely still for a moment and she wonders if Xue Yang has taken control of him the way A-Xian could, but he’d said he couldn’t do that, and when Wen Ning sighs and nods, she realizes he was just thinking. With no breath or pulse to animate his body, he doesn’t quite move the way a living person does. She wonders if that’s how she looks now.
She doesn’t really have time to dwell on it though. Xue Yang is already tugging her back the way they came with Wen Ning trotting at her heels. “We’re going to get all of the Yiling Laozu’s shit out of Jin-zongzhu’s treasure room along with anything else I think will be useful and then we will go find your brother and you can try to convince him that this isn't the stupidest decision he’ll ever make.”
She’s beginning to hate this habit of his, the way he says true things in the rudest possible fashion. “Xue-gongzi, have a little faith in me. I said I would help you and I will.”
Wen Ning gives her another distressed glance. She meets his gaze and shrugs as if to ask do you have a better idea? Between them, they can count one, maybe two allies in this entire godforsaken palace. Xue Yang has enough power to raise the dead and no particular loyalty to anyone as far as she can tell. He’s clearly not innocent in the atrocities perpetrated against Wen Ning, but he didn’t act alone.
“How many other demonic cultivators are in Jin-zongzhu’s employ?” she murmurs. If the answer is many , their odds of being caught seem high. She doesn’t want to have to fight her way out, but she’s hopeful that as a fierce corpse, she might actually have something to contribute if there is a fight.
“Competent ones? None.” His tone is acerbic. Yanli supposes it must be frustrating to feel like you’re surrounded by inferior imitators. She wouldn’t really know. “In all, maybe five or so. I expect that number to go down. If I don’t kill them, their stupidity will.”
“I guess that’s a relief.” It takes Xue Yang staring at her for a second before bursting into more of his unsettling giggles to realize she’d voiced that thought out loud.
Back in the treasure room, Xue Yang gestures for Yanli and Wen Ning to stay out of his way while he bounces manically around the room shoving things into qiankun pouches. They seem to be mostly papers⏤ maybe A-Xian’s notes, maybe his own⏤ and weapons. As he’s rummaging through a trunk, he tosses over his shoulder, “I’m almost done. Grab any shit you want.”
Yanli and Wen Ning exchange a glance. He shakes his head and she concurs. Then something occurs to her and she reaches out to touch Wen Ning’s hand, hoping she isn’t overstepping. “Do you know where any of Wen Qing’s belongings are?” Wen Ning goes still again and then a shudder runs through him. She squeezes his hand.
Xue Yang gestures in the direction of a cabinet and Yanli pads over and opens it. There, on a shelf at her eye level, is Wen Qing’s hairpiece, laying on its side next to a sword that she thinks she recognizes. “Is this⏤?”
“It’s hers.” Wen Ning’s voice is soft and laced with anguish. She takes the ornament and sword down carefully and hands them to Wen Ning, who nods and murmurs a quiet thanks.
“Let’s go.” Xue Yang leads them to the mirror and does something that summons resentful energy around the three of them. It’s somewhere between a mist and a shadow and she shivers when it brushes her skin. “This will keep us from notice as long as you don’t make too much noise or do anything stupid. Got it?”
She murmurs an assent for the both of them and Xue Yang leads them to her brother’s quarters with no apparent difficulty. She wonders if all of the demonic cultivators are given free rein of Jinlintai or if he just does what he wants.
They reach the door and she expects them to stop, but Xue Yang opens it, the resentful energy dampening any noise they might make. A-Cheng is awake, standing at his window with Jin Ling in his arms. His eyes are red and swollen.
Xue Yang nudges her in the ribs with his elbow. “Alright. Get on with it.”
With that, the cloak of resentful energy falls away from her, though it still obscures Xue Yang and Wen Ning. She braces herself and steps up behind him, leaving no time for doubt or fear. “A-Cheng.”
He spins to face her, Jin Ling clutched to his chest. Her heart sings at the sight of her son in her brother’s arms, then shatters at the hope and loss twisted across his face. “A-Jie. You’re⏤ this isn’t real. This is a dream.” He steps back, taking in her pallor and the veins on her neck. “A nightmare. A-Jie, I’m so sorry.”
She reaches for him, then thinks better of it. “A-Cheng, this isn’t a dream. Please listen to me.” He’s shaking and his eyes are wild. Zidian is starting to glow and she pleads, “A-Cheng, you can hit me with Zidian if you want, but please put my son down before it burns him.”
The glow dissipates immediately. Jiang Cheng looks stricken. “I would never let it hurt him. I won’t let anything hurt him.”
“I know, A-Cheng.” She tries to smile. She’s not sure if it looks right. “A-Ling is lucky to have you as his jiujiu. I’m so sorry the two of you have been alone.”
“Jie, what’s going on? Is Wei Wuxian⏤ did he do this to you?” Jiang Cheng still looks lost and devastated, but at least he seems to believe she’s real now.
“It wasn’t A-Xian. I don’t know where he is or if he’s alive.” She takes a breath she doesn’t need and prays to whoever’s listening for strength. “From everything I’ve been told, it sounds like he’s dead.” It hurts more than she expected to say it out loud and she sees her pain mirrored in her brother’s face. She pushes through it.
“Jin Guangshan is trying to recreate the Stygian Tiger Seal and other work of A-Xian’s. One of his demonic cultivators brought me back and he’s willing to help us get out of here if I work with him to go through A-Xian’s notes. You should know that Jin Guangshan kept Wen Ning alive. They’ve been experimenting on him.”
A complicated mixture of emotions flashes through A-Cheng’s eyes. Yanli turns to the shadows where Xue Yang and Wen Ning are waiting, angling her stance so that she’s between them and her brother. “Please come out now.”
Their cover falls away and A-Cheng’s face contorts with rage. She half-expects Zidian to flare again, but her earlier admonishment holds. Wen Ning immediately drops into a low bow. Xue Yang shifts his weight from foot to foot and dips his head in what might nominatively be called a bow if the smirk and raised eyebrows didn’t remove any illusion of deference.
“You⏤” A-Cheng snarls, before Xue Yang cuts him off.
“Me,” he says. “Nice to see you again, Jiang-zongzhu. Congratulations on the promotion.”
As A-Cheng’s face grows redder, Yanli risks resting her hand on Xue Yang’s arm and murmuring in an undertone, “Please don’t.” It seems to startle him into silence, and she turns back to Jiang Cheng. “I’m aware that you have history, but we don’t have a lot of options, A-Cheng. I won’t leave my son here, not now that I know what Jin Guangshan is capable of. And the longer we delay, the more likely it is that we’re caught and I join Wen Ning in the dungeons as another experiment.”
Xue Yang’s cheerful nod isn’t reassuring in the least, but at least it helps her make her point.
Jiang Cheng glowers and Yanli can’t stop herself from going to him and tracing the frown lines on his face with her fingertips. “A-Cheng, I know that the last few days have been horrible and you’ve been carrying all this on your own. I’m here now and I’m not going anywhere.” He leans into her touch; it’s a small thing, not even visible to the room’s other occupants, but it’s enough.
“Jie, I don’t like this, any of it. I don’t want a demonic cultivator at Lotus Pier and I really don’t want him there.” Yanli isn’t completely sure to whom the “him” refers, but she has a disappointing suspicion that it’s Wen Ning. Wen Ning, who saved his life. Wen Ning, who was at A-Xian’s side when no one else was. Wen Ning, whose first instinct after being freed from days of imprisonment with nails in his head, was to apologize to her for causing her pain.
Jin Ling wakes then and begins to whimper. Yanli and Wen Ning both move as if to comfort him and she doesn’t miss how Jiang Cheng’s arms tighten reflexively before he catches up to himself and hands her son over to her to rock in her arms. She’ll have to get a wet nurse, she thinks. She won’t be able to feed him. It’s not the worst fate in the world. Plenty of childbearing cultivators employ wet nurses.
She senses Xue Yang growing impatient and takes the opportunity to push Jiang Cheng while he’s unable to raise his voice for fear of agitating A-Ling further. “A-Cheng, grab anything you need to bring with you, tell your disciples you’re taking A-Ling back to Lotus Pier and to meet you there after they make your apologies to Jin-zongzhu. We need to go.”
He scowls, but sweeps out of the room, leveling a glare at both Xue Yang and Wen Ning that promises a painful death if his sister and nephew aren’t exactly as he left them when he returns.
Once the door has closed behind him, Xue Yang lets out a low whistle. “You think I can get him to hit me with that Zidian thing?”
In spite of the fraught nature of the last few days that she can remember, Yanli laughs at the absurd question. “I think you probably could, yes.”
He considers this for a moment, then asks, “You think I could get him to do it while he was fucking me?”
Wen Ning’s expression is scandalized. Yanli has to bite her lip in order to fight back a noise that would wake A-Ling, who has finally drifted back to sleep. When she’s got her composure back, she gives Xue Yang a genuine answer.
“No, I really don’t think so.” As far as she knows, A-Cheng has never been interested in that kind of intimacy, but if he happened to be, it probably wasn’t going to occur with Xue Yang.
Jiang Cheng returns before Xue Yang can respond. “It’s handled. My first disciple is going to tell Jin-zongzhu that I’ve been called back to Lotus Pier on urgent business and that I’m taking Jin Ling with me because of the instability in Koi Tower.” He hesitates a moment, seeming to gather himself, before turning to Xue Yang to address him directly. “What kind of shit storm am I bringing down on myself right now?”
Xue Yang shrugs. “Maybe a bad one. Maybe none at all. If I had to guess, Lianfang-zun isn’t going to tell his father a thing except that everything is going according to plan, so it’s him we’ll need to worry about.”
Jiang Cheng huffs, seeming slightly mollified and Yanli and Wen Ning exchange a look. They both know that underestimating Jin Guangyao is a mistake. Now is not the time to have that conversation though.
Xue Yang leads them through a series of corridors that seem to be deserted and then down another set of hidden stairs out of Koi Tower. Jin Ling sleeps peacefully in Yanli’s arms, even in the absence of a heartbeat to soothe him. She hopes this means he recognizes her, even if she looks a little different, feels and smells more than a little different. Her chest aches. She ignores it.
Once they’re in the clear, Wen Ning departs, saying that he can get to Lotus Pier faster than a human and would only slow them down by having to be carried on a sword. She makes a mental note to ask him to teach her that trick if it’s possible.
After he’s safely out of sight, A-Cheng draws his sword and waits expectantly for her to step on. So does Xue Yang. Forestalling the inevitable argument, she demures. “A-Cheng, I need you to carry Jin Ling. It will be cold in the air and I don’t have body heat to warm him. It will have to be one of you.”
She risks a glance at Xue Yang, who barks a laugh and says, “Yeah, don’t hand me your child.”
Jiang Cheng is close to his breaking point, but he’s never reached it with her and she hopes with all of her heart that this is not the moment his indulgence fails. “I will be fine riding with Xue-gongzi. Let’s go.” She passes A-Ling over into his arms before he can argue, kissing his cheek and murmuring, “I trust you. Keep him safe.”
She takes the hand Xue Yang offers and steps up onto his unusual sword. It radiates a dark energy that seems to stop just short of touching her skin. It’s not the same as what she felt from A-Xian’s flute, but it’s not entirely dissimilar. She makes a note to share this with Xue Yang if given the chance. She thinks he’d like hearing it.
The flight is oddly quiet given that Xue Yang seems to love to fill any silence he’s presented with. They’re flying just behind A-Cheng, though she gets the sense that Xue Yang would pull ahead if he thought he could get away with it. She’s standing behind him, holding onto his upper arms for balance, both of them probably aware that holding onto his waist or allowing him to hold hers would be a less awkward position, at least physically. She resigns herself to stiff wrists and tries to relax.
About two-third of the way to Lotus Pier, after A-Cheng has stopped turning to look at them every two minutes, Yanli begins to get the sense that Xue Yang is wondering what would happen if he pushed her off the sword. Given her limited acquaintance with him, she thinks it likely that he would push her off just to have the answer to his question. She doesn’t want to find out what happens to a sentient fierce corpse that falls from a height like theirs. Going off of nothing but instinct, she allows her fingers to tighten a little on his arms and leans forward to speak directly into his ear. “Please don’t push me off. My brother will kill you.”
He starts and turns his head to regard her with wide eyes. For a long moment, he just glares at her, though for all that he seems distracted, the sword never falters. She keeps her face neutral, holds her ground and his arms. His eyes don’t soften at all, but his frown melts into a smile that seems genuine for all that it promises something dark. “Why Jin-er-furen, I would never.”
“That is patently false. Do me the courtesy of not lying to me and please just keep us both on this sword.” He laughs again, throwing his head back and tossing his hair so that it almost hits her in the face. She jerks back, but doesn’t let go of him.
“You know, you were doing really good up until you dropped that ‘please’ in there.” She relaxes a little bit. If he’s laughing and making jokes, he’s not any less dangerous, but a violent criminal in a good mood is better than a violent criminal that’s angry or vindictive.
“I apologize, Xue-gongzi. I’ll try to be less polite going forward.” He seems amused again, but there’s a strange undercurrent of tension and she can’t place where it’s coming from.
After a moment, he murmurs almost too low for her to hear, “If you call me gongzi again, I will dissect you. Start there.”
He’s not joking about the dissection, but it’s a simple enough request. “All right, Xue...Yang.” If he doesn’t like formal address, she’d be willing to bet he doesn’t like using a courtesy name either. When the strange tension she was feeling dissipates, she figures she guessed right.
They’re silent until A-Cheng leads them down to land in front of the gates to Lotus Pier.