Chapter Text
From afar, the lights at Lotus Pier no longer gleamed as brightly. A strong zephyr curdled the water surface, casting ripples in the dark night reflected on the lake. Lotus Pier was still in mourning, even if two months had passed since the Yi Ling Patriarch's fall, which had taken the lives of two chiefly beloved members of the Yunmeng Jiang sect.
Yet no one remained to mourn them except for its sect leader.
Jiang Cheng cut a stark, indomitable figure by the moonlight as he contemplated on maundering thoughts, a characteristic scowl in his gaze. From the balcony, he could see Lotus Pier and its soft, silent visage. His four month old nephew, Jin Ling, was soundly asleep, exhausted after one hour of trenchant wailing despite Jiang Cheng’s efforts to soothe him.
He did not know why babies cried so much. Could Jin Ling sense his emotional state, frayed at the edges and brimming with repressed grief, sorrow and disquieting rage?
Was Jin Ling sad that his mother, Jiang Yan Li, wasn't around? Jiang Cheng had yet to process such a loss.
Did Jin Ling resent him every time he sighed in frustration, because he was at a loss as to how a baby’s mind worked?
Did Jin Ling wake up whenever Jiang Cheng vocalised while stuck in his visceral nightmares?
Was he fit to be his parent?
After all, a baby’s life was startingly brittle and precarious. Jiang Cheng was not one to underestimate the impacts of an impaired quality of care received in one’s developmental years.
To call it an undertaking to take care of a baby while rebuilding his clan was an understatement. Besides the obvious toll on him, Jiang Cheng did not have much privacy to himself, safe for the countless nights when sleep eluded him. And those moments were spent on endless philosophical ruminations which produced no answers, because through no fault of his own, he was limited by his subjective experiences. Limited by his anger, his ineptitude, his futility.
Every waking moment was spent on either Jin Ling, his disciples, or correspondences with other clans.
There was a growing knot in his chest that threatened to burst out of his chest like a python, an ugly portmanteau of his tumultuous emotions and no outlet. Even during the lonesome nights, when there were no witnesses, he did not know if he could allow these emotions to be expressed. It would be acknowledging that they existed, and had been allowed to fester into poisonous deformities.
Jiang Cheng was just seventeen. The weight of all his responsibilities could crush him in body and soul, but he faced each new day defiantly, as if everything was meant to be.
He had made his resolve long ago. Firstly, to raise his nephew into a well-integrated adult and Jin Sect Leader. Secondly, to restore the Jiang Sect back to its original glory.
Often, he frantically repeated these deceptively short goals in his mind. Anything to give himself a sense of purpose that would obliviate the suffering that lay at the periphery of his self-control.
These days, he spent his time recruiting new disciples by asking for demonstrations from the rows of youths lining up outside the half-constructed compound. Jiang Cheng's reputation spoke for himself. The tale that he had recruited hundreds of disciples, adding considerably to the Four Great Sect's forces before they stormed the Yiling Patriarch's den, had circulated widely.
The blitzing routine of Sect Leader duties - signing documents, allocating his disciples towards night hunts, rebuilding and refurbishing Lotus Pier - all served to soften the numbing hollowness within him. New citizens had settled in, and businesses were running and flourishing.
To further appease his council of surviving clan elders, who had pressured him relentlessly for some time now, he agreed to go on his first blind date. He only acquiesced because they had promised that they wouldn't push him anymore after that.
Internally, Jiang Cheng fumed at the ridiculousness of such a proposition. The elders' rationale was that the sooner he courted while Jin Ling remained a baby, the more likely a lady would sympathise with his situation. Those heartless bastards.
He was in no mood for courting. Indeed, it had been months since he had talked to anyone that had not involved giving orders or exchanging formalities. Whenever he stopped working on official matters, his mind wandered towards darker strains, incarcerated by memories of the recent past.
There was no reprieve to be found in any corner of his world. Not in the smiling maiden who currently sat across from him; not in his private thoughts; not in anyone's company, except the untouched innocence of Jin Ling's.
"Greetings, Sect Leader Jiang. My name is... "
Jiang Cheng nodded despite having missed her name.
"Greetings," he returned monotonously, and began to pour her some tea.
"Let me be the one to do it," she exclaimed, her bearing affable but refined. It reminded Jiang Cheng of his beloved sister - everything seemed to.
"I… " Jiang Cheng opened his mouth to speak, catching her undivided attention.
"I can't do this."
"Why not?" she probed gently. "What troubles you, Sect Leader Jiang?"
He shook his head, expression betraying nothing, but a heaviness coursed through him like wildfire spreading through his insides. Just the day earlier, he had violently interrogated some demonic cultivator until the latter had begged for his life. There was no room for gentleness in his life.
It took a moment to register the effect her words had on him. He desperately wanted to rent his grief out.
He had not cried once since returning to Lotus Pier. Having been swamped with work, not even the silent witness of the night had appealed to him as a witness for his tears.
"Several things, I'm sure you've heard." He stared at her. "I am afraid I might display impropriety if this conversation continues. I bid you a pleasant farewell. I must get going."
She looked a little shocked, but reciprocated his bow of farewell.
Jiang Cheng beckoked a servant over, instructing him to show the maiden the way out.
They had been sitting in one of the pavilions at the port surrounded by water and lotuses. Every inch of it befitting a romantic encounter.
Jiang Cheng strode quickly back to his room, his composure only breaking once he had shut the door. A sudden tightness seized his chest. Jiang Cheng could only clutch at it as breathlessness overtook him and he sank to his knees.
Foreign sounds wrenched from his throat, sounding like a gutted animal which struggled for its last few breaths. A terrible, all-encompassing grief crashed upon his shoulders like a surging waterfall, causing them to shudder and his body to rock uncontrollably. It was such a gut reaction that he could not process how everything had built up.
How could mere words elicit such an outpouring from himself?
His cheeks felt hot and wet as he wiped them with the back of his hand. Finding no strength left to resist, Jiang Cheng allowed himself to sink into the maelstrom of his emotions, only to find a seemingly endless crevice of sorrow and hopelessness.
He thought himself so weak at that moment.
He was an imposter clad in a sect leader's mantle. A last resort for Yunmeng Jiang.
There was no one he could count on for his struggles. Everyone was gone.
Whilst in the throes of his breakdown, Jiang Cheng clenched his fist. There was one person mainly responsible for his pain, and he would be damned if that person appeared before his eyes again.
Jiang Cheng did not believe that Wei Wu Xian was truly dead. After all, there had been no telling of the drop of the cliff from which he had fallen, into a smoky abyss where he could have conjured some trick to save himself. It was widely regarded that Jiang Cheng had killed him; but actually, Wu Xian had fallen due to his own spiritual backlash. The circumstances surrounding his ‘death’ were nebulous enough to incite doubt.
Or was Jiang Cheng simply trying to find a reason for his burning wrath? If no reason existed, everything he felt would be unjustified, a testament to his embitterment. An innate state of lacking that his parents had never failed to point out to him.
"You promised to stay by my side. But what did you do? You killed Sister's husband, and then Sister herself," he muttered, clenching his shaking fists.
And then a long list of other litanies, such as siding with the very clan who had massacred his own, and acting as if Jiang Cheng's input, as his closest friend and shidi, had not mattered. Jiang Cheng had never gotten the chance to outwardly express what he thought about this directly to Wu Xian, but now he realised how betrayed and angry he felt about it.
A wail shook Jiang Cheng from his hazy reverie. It was Jin Ling who had awoken from the commotion he had made.
“Ah Ling,” he called out, affecting a more calming tone.
Hearing him cry made him feel self-censure and a sense of yearning at the same time. He wanted to understand this little being who said nothing but expressed so much. Venturing swiftly to the cot, he bent over to swathe the baby in his arms. The fog of rage on his features seemed to vanish with no trace, replaced by a quotidian tiredness.
That was all he was without the rage, really. A broken, exhausted teenager.
Jiang Cheng had hired a nanny last week. He did not know why he hadn’t done it earlier, or how he had survived for two months of solo parenting. The nanny helped him to prepare meals fitting for a baby's diet, in addition to giving him lots of useful advice, and bathed and changed his clothes whenever Jiang Cheng got too busy.
He heard a rustle at the door; it was undoubtedly the nanny. She was a middle-aged lady with kind, solemn eyes.
"May this nanny come in, Sect Leader Jiang?"
He composed himself with a deep breath, cradling Jin Ling near his chest.
Jin Ling's tiny, silk-bead-sized eyes seemed to capture Ah-Jie's essence in his gaze. The gentle pout of his lips and soft cheeks were filled with only fragility and tenderness.
His nephew had miraculously stopped crying, the angelic expression on his face nothing like his pouting, red-cheeked tantrum earlier.
"No need. Jin Ling has quieted down,” he murmured, soft enough so that his nephew would not re-awake, but loud enough for his voice to carry through the door.
"May I prepare some soup for Sect Leader Jiang and milk for Young Master Jin?"
"You may."
It was comforting to receive such a level of concern. And perhaps it was embarrassing how easily he conceded to her machinations of care, because whoever had heard of a weak Sect Leader? The standards set by his contemporaries were high enough. Still, he trusted the nanny to remain private about such things. Or was he placing blind faith once again… ?
Shaking his head at his incorrigible habit of thinking about the worst-case scenario, Jiang Cheng nursed the soup that had been delivered to him.
Lotus root and pork ribs soup, on the more dilute side so that its digestion would not keep him awake. She always knew how to cheer him up. She cooked it at least once a week accompanied with a bed of pearly rice grains that made him reminisce too much about bygone memories that could never be recreated.
Every other day, Jiang Cheng had nightmares about his parents’ bloodied bodies and the debacle that Lotus Pier had been reduced to. The fear racing through his veins was recreated each time. His humiliating torture at the hands of Wen Chao and Went Zhu Liu. The agony of having his golden core removed.
But the worst of them all were his nightmares of losing Jin Ling. Of his innocent nephew somehow winding up in the hands of the Wens and having his life snuffed out as quickly as a candle. He had sobbed after waking up from the first nightmare of this kind.
Jin Ling was a quiet baby, and often immobile in his deep sleep, but Jiang Cheing had loved him inexpressibly since the first time he had laid his eyes on him.
He was the only one Jiang Cheng had left. Somehow, he could accommodate no one else. He was so tired of trusting, of pursuing even though the road promised a dead end. Logic dictated that he should forget about Wu Xian and get on with life, but - he had once hoped.