Chapter Text
The Burial Mounds were silent.
This was not the natural quiet of a sleeping forest or the peaceful hush of an upcoming dawn. This was a silence that ached. It was the hollow, suffocating quiet of a tomb, a palpable weight that pressed down on the ramshackle settlement, seeping into the warped wood of the huts and the brittle, ashen soil of the meager fields. It was the silence of a held breath, and of a hope extinguished.
The few Wen remnants who moved between the dwellings did so like specters, their faces gaunt, their eyes downcast and glazed with a grief too profound for tears. They were ghosts haunting the place they had tried, so desperately, to make a home.
Wei Wuxian sat on a cold, flat outcropping of stone at the edge of the settlement, a vantage point that overlooked the valley of death below. In his hand, Chenqing felt like a dead weight, the polished bamboo cold and alien against his skin. His body was a map of pain: a deep, bone-weary exhaustion from the days lost to unconsciousness, and a throbbing, residual ache in his meridians from the violent backlash of the resentful energy he commanded. But those were superficial wounds.
The true agony was a leaden stone lodged deep within his chest, a constant, crushing pressure that made each breath a conscious effort. It was the physical manifestation of a promise shattered.
Wen Ning was dead.
The words echoed in the cavern of his mind, senseless and cruel. They were a discordant note in the symphony of his reality, a fact he could not, would not, reconcile with.
It couldn’t be real.
The world did not make sense in a universe where Wen Ning no longer existed. He had promised. He had stood before these people, these farmers and healers and elders, and vowed they would be safe under his protection. He had looked Wen Qing in the eye and sworn her little brother would come to no harm. His word, his pride, his very purpose here had been built on that foundation.
And yet...
He had lost control. He had killed Jin Zixuan.
And the Jins had come, not with an army, but with smug-faced diplomats and veiled threats. Wen Qing, ever the pragmatist, ever the one to shoulder the burden for her people, had made the calculation. She believed reason could prevail, that surrendering themselves, the two most "guilty" names, would appease the vultures and secure safety for the rest.
Wei Wuxian had been helpless to stop them. His body, pushed far beyond its limits, had betrayed him, and unconscious, he could do nothing.
And when he woke, Wen Qing took the choice away from him. It was both a blessing and a curse and the memory of it was a blur of weakness and despair. For the second time in a short while he had slipped into a darkness thicker than any night, clinging to the frail hope of her strategy.
When he woke again, it was to the feeling of small, desperate hands clutching his leg and the soft, broken sound of an old woman’s weeping. A-Yuan’s face was buried in his robes, tiny body wracked with silent sobs. Granny Wen knelt beside his bed, her wrinkled face a mask of anguish, her hands trembling so violently she could barely hold the bowl of water she had brought for him.
"They said… they said A-Ning lost control," she whispered, the words tearing from her throat like shards of glass. "That he attacked his guards. That they had no choice but to—to put him down… like a rabid dog."
Wei Wuxian hadn’t let her finish. A sound, half-growl, half-moan, had ripped from him, and he’d turned his face away, fists clenching in the thin blanket. He knew. He knew with a cold, certain fury that settled in his veins what the Jins were capable of.
‘Lost control.'
It was their favorite, most convenient lie. They had murdered him. They had murdered the gentlest soul he had ever known, and they had dressed his execution in the language of necessity.
But a cold, vicious voice whispered in the depths of his own mind: But he did murder Jin Zixuan.
That thought was a shard of ice in his gut. The memory was a nightmarish blur, a surge of chaotic energy, a loss of control that was not entirely his own, Wen Ning’s pallid face twisting into something unrecognizable, and then… the devastating silence. The line between his command and the fierce corpse’s autonomous action had blurred that day. But in the end, he was the master and the responsibility was his alone.
His mind was a tangled web of guilt and despair, each thread leading back to his own failures. He could not think. He could not remember clearly through the haze of his own panic and the resentful energy’s corrosive fog. He just knew, with a certainty that settled deep in his bones, that if anyone deserved punishment for the tragedy, it was not Wen Ning.
Wen Ning had ever only been a sword in his hand, and a sword does not bear the guilt of the blood it spills. That burden belongs to the one who wields it.
Now, staring out at the horizon where the jagged, blood-red peaks of mountains melded into the bruised purple of the dying dusk, he felt the last of his certainties splinter and fall away. The carefully constructed fortress of his defiance crumbled, leaving only rubble and ash.
What was he supposed to do now? The path of rage was clear, a burning road in his mind’s eye. He could go to Koi Tower himself. He could unleash every horror festering in the Burial Mounds upon its glittering halls and demand answers at the point of Chenqing. He could paint their gold with blood and scream until someone told him why.
It is what the Yiling Patriarch they all feared would do. It is what they all expected. But then he felt the small weight still clinging to his leg. He heard the ragged breathing of Granny Wen, who had not moved. He saw, in his periphery, Uncle Four staring blankly at a half-carved radish, all life gone from his eyes.
If he left, if he chose vengeance, he abandoned them. The Jins would not hesitate to sweep in and finish what they started. He would be breaking his promise a second time.
His fingers tightened around Chenqing until the intricate carvings bit into his palm. The ambient resentment of the Burial Mounds, always a whispering static at the edge of his consciousness, surged in response. It coiled around him like a serpent, its voice a sibilant echo in his mind.
They took him from you, it hissed, the words dripping with malice and a twisted sense of camaraderie. They took him, and their hunger is not sated. They will take the rest. They will take the child. You promised. You failed.
Wei Wuxian squeezed his eyes shut, but there was no escaping the truth. He let the feelings he had been stifling crash over him: the incandescent fury at the Jins, the devastating grief for Wen Ning, the bitter, choking guilt for Wen Qing, who had surrendered only to lose her brother, for Shijie, who had invited him to a celebration just to lose her husband, and the utter, soul-crushing helplessness.
A single, desperate thought burned through the toxic haze of his emotions: What do I do now? And beneath it, a darker, quieter thought, the true source of his paralysis: How many more will I lose before this ends?
The wind swept down from the mountain peaks, a keening wail that tore through the settlement, carrying with it the scent of cold ash and the distant, metallic tang of blood. Wei Wuxian did not move. He remained perched on the cold stone, a solitary figure silhouetted against the dying light, trapped between an impossible war and an unbearable peace, the weight of his broken promise anchoring him to the spot.
Chapter Text
The invitation lay on Jiang Cheng's desk, its pale parchment a stark contrast to the dark polished wood. He hadn't touched it since Yanli placed it there yesterday, her slender fingers smoothing the edges with a tenderness that made his throat tight.
"He's still our brother," she had said, her voice soft but unshakable, the way their father's used to be when declaring something non-negotiable.
Jiang Cheng had scoffed, turning away to hide the way his heart had leapt traitorously in his chest. "That idiot doesn't deserve an invitation after everything." The words tasted like ash, a familiar bitterness on his tongue.
But the truth was, he had missed him.
Wei Wuxian. His brother.
Not the hollow-eyed, shadowed figure who had walked away from them after the war, the one who carried the stench of death and resentment like a second robe. Not the Yiling Patriarch who haunted the nightmares of every sect leader.
He missed the boy. The one who had once laughed too loudly during meditation, who drank Emperor's Smile until he fell out of boats, who dragged Jiang Cheng into trouble with a grin so infectious it made punishment worth it. He missed the way Wei Wuxian would bicker with him over the last pork rib, the way his presence had filled the sprawling halls of Lotus Pier with chaotic, vibrant life. The way he'd sling an arm around Jiang Cheng's shoulders and call him "Jiang Cheng" in that particular tone that meant both annoyance and fondness.
Even now, after everything, after the darkness that clung to Wei Wuxian like a shroud, after the way he had chosen the Wens over the family that raised him ... Jiang Cheng still found himself waiting.
Waiting for a letter. Waiting for a sign. Waiting for him to come back through the gates of Lotus Pier, grinning that stupid grin, saying it had all been a joke, a misunderstanding, that he was home now.
Waiting for him to choose them again.
And now, with Jin Ling's hundred-day celebration approaching, Yanli had written the invitation herself. Her elegant script spelled out his brother's name in an act of faith that felt both brave and foolish.
Jiang Cheng hadn't argued.
(Some traitorous, weak part of him had been happy. Maybe this would be the thing that finally brought him back.)
Then the world shattered.
The news arrived not with a whisper, but with a scream. A Jin disciple, pale and trembling, burst into the opulent hall where Jiang Cheng had been waiting with his sister, his words tripping over themselves in a frantic, horrified rush.
Jin-gongzi—dead—on the Qiongqi Path—the Ghost General—the Yiling Patriarch—
The air left Jiang Cheng's lungs in a violent rush. For a moment, the world narrowed to the panicked beat of his own heart. Then the sounds rushed back in: the gasps, the rising murmur of shock, and then—
A small, broken sound.
Yanli.
He turned to see her sway, the color draining from her face so completely she looked like a spirit. Her hands fluttered uselessly at her sides before she collapsed, her knees giving way. He caught her before she hit the floor, her weight slight and trembling in his arms. From somewhere nearby, Jin Ling began to wail, a sharp, distressed sound that cut through the growing chaos.
Around them, the Jin sect erupted. Shouting, accusations, demands for blood and retribution. The word "siege" was already being thrown around, sharp and deadly.
And all Jiang Cheng could think was...
Wei Wuxian.
Not Jin Zixuan is dead.
Not my sister is a widow.
Not my nephew will never know his father.
But How is Wei Wuxian going to survive this?
The thought was instinctive, immediate, and it shamed him. His brother-in-law was dead, his sister's world destroyed, and his first thought was for the one who had caused it.
And then, colder, sharper, like a blade twisting in his gut—
Does he even deserve to?
The thought sent a wave of nausea through him. Because—
Wei Wuxian had killed Jin Zixuan.
Wei Wuxian had taken their brother-in-law from Yanli, had stolen the father from the nephew whose hundred-day celebration was supposed to be a joyous occasion.
Wei Wuxian had torn apart the fragile peace their world was clinging to.
Jiang Cheng's hands clenched into fists at his sides, his nails biting into his palms hard enough to draw blood. He could feel the familiar spark of Zidian against his skin, a mirror to the storm raging inside him. His entire body trembled with the force of it: a torrent of fury, of grief, and betrayal so profound it felt like a physical wound.
He wanted to scream. He wanted to find Wei Wuxian and shake him until his teeth rattled, until he understood the devastation he had wrought. He wanted to wrap his hands around his throat and—
(He wanted him to come home, to explain, to make this right, to be the brother he remembered.)
The conflict was a live wire under his skin, tearing him in two.
The conference was a disaster draped in silk and gold.
Jin Guangshan's voice boomed across the hall, thick with a grief that didn't reach his eyes, and that Jiang Cheng didn't know whether it was performative or genuine. He demanded Wei Wuxian's head. He demanded the extermination of the "Wen vermin" festering in the Burial Mounds. He demanded justice for his son's murder, his words dripping with venom and political opportunity.
Jiang Cheng stood among the gathered sect leaders like a statue of simmering rage. His jaw was locked so tight a dull ache pulsed through his temples. He should speak. He was a sect leader; his voice held weight. He should say something: defend his brother, condemn him, something; but the words were a tangled knot in his throat.
What was there to say?
That Wei Wuxian hadn't meant to? That the kind boy who gave away his lunch to street urchins couldn't have intended for this? It sounded naive even to him.
That it wasn't really his fault? That he'd lost control of his own monstrous creation? That was an admission of guilt, not a defense.
That he was still family, even after this? The word felt hollow, a betrayal of the sister sobbing herself sick in her rooms and the nephew now fatherless.
Or should he agree? Should he add his voice to the chorus calling for his brother's execution? The thought made his stomach churn violently. He saw the image then, unbidden and horrifying: Wei Wuxian, pale and still, his laughter silenced forever by Jiang Cheng's own condemnation.
Before he could unravel completely, another voice cut through the noise, calm and clear like a mountain stream.
Lan Xichen.
He was the picture of diplomatic reason, his expression one of measured sorrow. He spoke of justice, but also of reason. He proposed punishment, but not for Wei Wuxian, but for the weapon that had acted of its own volition. For Wen Ning, The Ghost General. The fierce corpse who had, by all accounts, moved without its master's command.
Jiang Cheng's teeth ground together. He could hear Lan Wangji's influence in every carefully chosen word, could feel the Second Jade's silent, desperate presence looming behind his brother's measured speech. It made something ugly and possessive twist in his chest, a bitter jealousy that burned.
Why was Lan Wangji the one fighting for Wei Wuxian? Why was he the one standing there like a bastion of unwavering belief, while Jiang Cheng, his brother, stood paralyzed by doubt and fury? Why did he get to be the loyal one?
But—
He forced himself to listen. To think past the white-hot anger. Lan Xichen's proposal was good. It was politically astute. It was, against all odds, fair. It offered a path that didn't end in his brother's blood staining the stones of Koi Tower. It gave Wei Wuxian a way out, a thread to cling to.
Jin Guangshan's face darkened, his grief shifting into genuine irritation. But before he could muster a counter-argument, Jiang Cheng found his feet moving, stepping forward into the center of the debate.
"I support Sect Leader Lan's proposition."
His voice, when it came, was hard and steady, the voice of Sandu Shengshou, Sect Leader Jiang. It did not shake.
(His hands, however, hidden in the folds of his sleeves trembled violently.)
The room erupted. Agreement, outrage, the nervous chatter of smaller sects caught between the fear of a rogue Wei Wuxian and the terror of Jin ambition and vengeance.
In the end, the decision was made. A messenger had been sent to the Burial Mounds. Wen Qing and Wen Ning would surrender themselves to the Jin sect's justice, and in exchange, Wei Wuxian would not be hunted.
Jiang Cheng exhaled slowly, the breath leaving his body like a defeat. His chest was tight, a band of iron around his lungs.
It was the best outcome. A political solution. A way to save his brother's life.
(So why did it feel like he had just signed a different death warrant? Why did it feel like another loss, another failure to protect what was his?)
Later, alone in the oppressive silence of his guest quarters in Koi Tower, Jiang Cheng stared at the unfinished invitation on his desk. He and Yanli had planned it for days, a simple gesture, a private plea. They would invite him to Lotus Pier for the Mid-Autumn Festival. Not as the Yiling Patriarch, not as a political adversary, but as Wei Wuxian, their brother. The invitation was to be a tangible proof, should he ever wish to lay down his sword and his resentments, the gates of Lotus Pier would still open for him. The doors of home would never be truly closed.
Now, the carefully chosen words in Yanli’s graceful handwriting seemed to mock him. Each character was a monument to a hope that now felt naive, even cruel. The promise of reunion felt like ash on his tongue.
The rain began to fall outside, a soft, steady pattering against the roof and windows. It did not rage or storm, it simply wept, a quiet, endless mourning for all that was broken and all that would never be.
He wondered if Wei Wuxian would ever see it. He wondered if he would ever get another chance to send it, or if it would remain here, locked in a drawer, like a fossil of a future that had shattered before it could even begin.
He wondered, with an ache that felt as deep and permanent as the foundation of Lotus Pier itself, if they were destined to forever break each other, over and over, until nothing was left but the echo of what they once were.
Chapter Text
The dungeons of Koi Tower stank of old blood and new damp, a cloying metallic sweetness undercut by the rot of wet stone and despair. The air hung thick and cold, carrying the low moans of forgotten prisoners and the steady, maddening drip of water from somewhere in the shadows. It was the smell of power unchecked, and cruelty made routine.
Jiang Cheng walked with measured, deliberate steps, his spine rigid, his face a mask of cold authority carved from granite. Every line of his body screamed Sect Leader Jiang, a man who belonged in council halls and training grounds. He had no reason to be here. No right to be here, in the heart of Jin territory, descending into this pit of misery. And yet...
He had come anyway. A compulsion he refused to name had dragged him from the sunlit hypocrisy of the upper towers down into this choking darkness.
The Jin guards at the entrance had hesitated, their hands tightening on their swords. But no one refused a sect leader, not even on another clan's territory. Their eyes, wide with unease in the flickering torchlight, had tracked him as they led him deeper. The passage narrowed, the walls pressing in, sweating a viscous chill. They passed cells where shapes huddled in straw, their chains clinking with every shallow breath. The rust on the metal looked too much like old blood.
(He tried not to think about who else might have walked these halls. Who else, proud and defiant, might have been dragged down here in chains before him. The ghost of a memory, of black robes and a defiant glare, flickered at the edge of his mind, and he viciously shoved it down.)
At last, they stopped before a heavy iron door, darker and more solid than the others. A single, small grate was the only window to the world.
"Sect Leader Jiang," one of the guards murmured, bowing slightly, his voice echoing too loudly in the confined space. "The Wen doctor is inside. But—" He hesitated, swallowing audibly. "She's not to be released without direct order from Sect Leader Jin himself."
Jiang Cheng’s lip curled in a reflex of disdain. "Do I look like a jailbreak to you? I'm not here to free her."
The words tasted like copper and guilt on his tongue.
The guards exchanged wary glances but said nothing. A key was produced and turned in the lock with a screech of protesting metal that grated on the nerves. The door swung inward, revealing a darkness that seemed to swallow the weak light from the corridor.
Jiang Cheng stepped inside. The door thudded shut behind him, the finality of the sound echoing in the small, stone box.
The cell was frigid, the air stale. Wen Qing sat on the bare stone floor, her back against the damp wall, her legs folded neatly beneath her as if she were in a meditation chamber and not a tomb. She was unnaturally still.
She looked...
Different.
This was not the proud, untouchable doctor who had once tended his wounds in the sun-drenched infirmary of Yiling, her hands steady and her gaze sharp with intelligence. This was not the formidable woman who had stood before him in the lashing rain at the Burial Mounds, her voice unwavering even as she surrendered herself to save his brother.
Now, the faded red fabric of her robes was torn at the sleeves and smudged with grime and dry blood. A violent, yellowing bruise darkened her left cheekbone, a stark contrast to her pale skin. Her bottom lip was split and swollen. And her eyes...
When he entered, her eyes were downcast, staring at nothing, and they were empty. Hollowed out. But when they lifted, slowly, to meet his, that emptiness ignited into a cold, focused fire.
"You."
The word was not a greeting. It was a blade, honed to a sharp point and thrust directly between his ribs.
Jiang Cheng stiffened, every muscle locking.
She didn’t rise, or bow, or even blink. She just held him in that burning, contemptuous gaze.
"Came to gloat, Sect Leader Jiang?" Her voice was hoarse, rasping, as if it had been scraped raw by screaming.
(He wondered, with a lurch in his stomach, if it had been.)
Jiang Cheng’s fingers twitched at his sides, instinctively reaching for a certainty that wasn’t there. He hadn’t prepared anything to say. Hadn’t even admitted to himself why he was here, what he hoped to find in this miserable place.
"You look like shit," he muttered instead, the words coming out rough and graceless, a deflection.
Wen Qing let out a sharp, humorless laugh that held no warmth, only the chill of the stones around them. "Prison tends to do that. The Jin hospitality is… lacking."
A beat of heavy silence stretched between them, filled only by the distant drip of water.
Jiang Cheng’s throat felt too tight, constricted by things unsaid. "They’ve been interrogating you."
It wasn’t a question. The evidence was written on her face and in the weary set of her shoulders.
Wen Qing’s gaze didn’t waver. "They want a confession."
"For what?" he demanded, though he dreaded the answer.
"For being a Wen." Her lips twisted into a bitter parody of a smile. "For surviving when they think we shouldn’t have. For breathing the same air as the great clans."
Jiang Cheng’s jaw clenched. He knew, with a sickening certainty, what the Jins were capable of. He knew the specific, inventive cruelties they reserved for Wen prisoners and their allies, for those who had once held power over them.
(He had seen the aftermath of their justice before. The broken bodies, the extinguished spirits.)
"They won’t kill you," he said, and the words felt like a hollow promise even as he uttered them. He wasn’t sure he believed it.
Wen Qing’s brittle smile didn't fade. "No. They’ll just make me wish they had."
Another silence descended, heavier and more profound than the last. It was a chasm between them, filled with the ghosts of a war and a shared, fractured history.
Jiang Cheng knew he should leave. He had seen what he came to see. He should.
But.
"Wei Wuxian," he forced out, the name feeling like a betrayal in this place. "Has he—"
"Sent word?" Wen Qing cut him off, her voice like shards of ice. "No. But then, why would he? You made your choice. You stood with them."
Jiang Cheng’s temper, always simmering just beneath the surface, flared white-hot. "My choice? He’s the one who—"
"Who what?" Wen Qing’s eyes flashed. She finally moved, rising to her feet in a single, fluid motion despite her chains. They rattled, a harsh sound in the small cell. "Who trusted you? Who thought, even after everything, that you might still be his brother?"
The words struck like a physical blow, a whip-crack of truth that made Jiang Cheng recoil a step.
"You don’t know anything," he snarled, defensiveness roaring up to mask the pain her words ignited.
"I know more than you think. I know you turned your back on him!" Her voice dropped, low and venomous, each word precise and aimed to maim. "I know you let them sit in their grand halls and call for his blood. I know you stood there and listened while they debated whether to slaughter him like an animal for a crime he never meant to commit!"
Jiang Cheng’s hands shook. He curled them into fists, Zidian sparking faintly on his finger. "He killed Jin Zixuan!" The accusation was a roar, torn from him, his one solid anchor in this swirling storm of guilt.
"And you think he wanted that?" Wen Qing took a step forward, the chains scraping against stone. Her composure was gone, replaced by a furious, protective grief. "You think he didn’t break when it happened? You think he doesn’t lie awake in that burial ground of his, hating himself? You think a single day goes by where he doesn’t see your sister’s face?"
Jiang Cheng opened his mouth and found he had no answer. No retort. No defense.
Because the truth was...
He didn’t know.
He didn’t know what Wei Wuxian felt. He didn’t know if he was drowning in grief or burning with fury. Didn’t know if he even cared that their sister was widowed, that Jin Ling would grow up without a father, that the fragile peace was shattered. He knew nothing of the man his brother had become in that cursed place.
And that, that profound, terrifying ignorance was the worst part.
Wen Qing saw it. She saw the crack in his armor, the doubt in his eyes, but her expression didn’t soften. There was no pity in her gaze, only a final, cold dismissal.
"Get out."
Jiang Cheng stiffened.
"I—" He had nothing. No words.
"Get. Out." Her voice was tempered steel, allowing no argument. "You don’t belong here. Your politics, your guilt, your… confusion. You don’t belong here."
And the thing was...
...She was right.
He didn’t.
Not in this cell. Not in this prison. Not standing before this woman, who wore her suffering like armor and saw straight through to the heart of him. Not standing before a woman he had once—
(No. He would not finish that thought.)
Jiang Cheng turned on his heel, the movement sharp and jerky, and left. The door slammed shut behind him with a crash that felt like a verdict.
(If his hands trembled as he strode back down the corridor, if his breath hitched in the damp air, there was no one left in the darkness to see it.)
The knock came later that night, a soft but insistent sound that cut through the heavy silence of his chambers.
Jiang Cheng was not asleep. He had not slept properly in days, maybe weeks. Sleep offered no refuge, only a theatre for his failures to play out behind his eyelids: his mother's disappointed glare, his father's turned back, Wei Wuxian's laughing face dissolving into the cold, resentful mask of the Yiling Patriarch. He was sitting at his desk, staring blankly at a map of trade routes he couldn't focus on, a cold cup of tea forgotten at his elbow. He tensed instantly at the sound, but then he recognized the timid pattern. Before he could call out, the door slid open.
Yanli stood in the threshold, backlit by the faint glow of the corridor's lanterns. She was a silhouette of grief, her form swallowed by a simple white mourning robe too large for her frame. The dim light washed her out, making her seem ethereal.
She looked like a ghost.
No. Ghosts had more color, more presence. The spirits that haunted battlefields had fury; the ones that haunted homes had longing. Yanli looked broken. Like a precious ceramic vase that had been shattered and painstakingly glued back together, the cracks still visible, the structure forever weakened. The vibrant warmth that always seemed to radiate from her was gone, extinguished by their brother.
Jiang Cheng was on his feet before he fully realized he had moved, the chair scraping harshly against the floor. "Jiejie!" The word was a rush of air, laced with alarm. She shouldn't be here, wandering the Koi Tower's corridors alone in the dead of night. She should be resting, being cared for.
"A-Cheng," she whispered, and the sound was so small, so utterly drained, that it stopped his heart. Then she was moving, gliding across the room with a desperate urgency, her steps silent on the mats. Her hands came up, not to embrace him, but to clutch the fabric of his sleeves, her fingers twisting into the purple silk as if it were the only thing keeping her from being swept away by a torrential current. She was trembling, a fine, constant shiver that spoke of a soul deep chill.
He had never seen her like this. Not when they were children and he’d scraped his knee, not when she’d comforted him through nightmares. Not even in the devastating aftermath of their parents' deaths, when she had been their pillar and their strength. She had always been the one who was steady.
Her fingers, cold even through his robes, trembled against his arms.
"You have to help him."
Jiang Cheng went very, very still. The air left his lungs. He didn’t need to ask who him was. The name hung between them like a spectre in the room.
"Jiejie," he started, his voice rough from disuse and unshed tears. "He—" What could he say? He killed your husband? He destroyed your life? He deserves whatever comes to him? The words turned to ash in his mouth.
"He’s our brother," she said, and the words were so simple, so absolute, that for a moment, Jiang Cheng couldn’t breathe. It was a statement of fact, as undeniable as the sun rising in the east. It brooked no argument, no qualification.
How?
How could she say that so easily? How could she still believe that, after everything? His mind screamed the facts, a relentless, brutal litany. Jin Zixuan was dead. His blood was soaking into the dirt of Qiongqi Path. Wei Wuxian had killed him. Wei Wuxian had taken the father from her son, the husband from her arms, the future from her hands.
And yet...
Yanli’s eyes were wet, shimmering with unshed tears in the low light, but her voice didn’t waver. It held a core of steel he hadn't known was there. "A-Xian didn’t mean to. You know he didn’t. You know his heart."
Jiang Cheng’s jaw locked, a muscle twitching in his cheek. Did that matter? His own heart, a tangled knot of fury and grief, shouted that it did not. A good man was still dead. His sister was still widowed. His nephew would still grow up without a father. Intentions were meaningless in the face of that carnage.
But Yanli was looking at him not with accusation, but with a desperate, unwavering faith. She was looking at him like he was the one who could fix this. Like he held the power to stitch their world back together. Like he could make it right. Like he knew what to do.
And he...
He was just a man drowning in his own powerlessness. He didn’t know how to tell her he couldn’t. That he was failing her, too.
"Jiejie," he said, his voice cracking under the weight of her expectation. "What do you want me to do?"
"Stand with him," she said, as if it were the most obvious, simple thing in the world. "Just... just stand with him. Like we used to."
Like they used to.
The words conjured a memory so vivid it was a physical ache. The three of them, standing shoulder to shoulder on the docks of Lotus Pier, watching the sunset paint the water in shades of fire and gold. Before the war stole their innocence. Before the Wens came and tore their family apart. Before the world had decided they were enemies.
Jiang Cheng swallowed hard around the lump in his throat.
"The Jins won’t listen to me," he muttered, a feeble protest against the tide of her hope. "They want blood. His blood."
"Then make them listen." Yanli’s grip on his sleeves tightened, her fragile fingers surprisingly strong. "You’re a sect leader, A-Cheng. You rebuilt our home from ashes. Your voice carries weight. Use it."
For him.
For Wei Wuxian.
The brother who had left them. The brother who had chosen strangers over his own family. The brother who had taken everything from them: their parents, their home, their peace, and now her happiness, and still, somehow, made Yanli love him unconditionally.
Jiang Cheng wanted to scream. He wanted to rage at the injustice of it all, at the sheer impossibility of her request. Instead, he closed his eyes, shutting out the sight of her shattered face, trying to block out the war inside his own head.
"You always forgive him too easily," he whispered, the words a confession of his own inability to do the same.
He felt her move, and then her cool, dry palm was against his cheek. He opened his eyes to see her smiling, a soft, sad, unbearably fond expression that held a lifetime of shared history. It was a smile that held the ghost of her joy.
"That’s what sisters do," she whispered simply.
And wasn’t that the worst part? The most beautiful and terrible truth? Yanli would always love Wei Wuxian. No matter what he did, no matter how far he fell, no matter how much it cost her. Her love was a constant, like the northern star.
Jiang Cheng wasn’t sure he had that in him. His love was a fickle, angry thing, tangled up with pride and betrayal and a desperate, aching need that felt too much like weakness.
But.
For her?
For Yanli, who had given up everything to raise them, who had never asked for anything for herself?
He would try. He would swallow his pride, he would choke on his rage, he would stand before the entire cultivation world and try.
He gave a single, sharp nod, unable to trust his voice.
It was enough. The tension drained from her shoulders, and she leaned forward, resting her forehead against his chest for a brief, fleeting moment. A silent thank you. Then, as quietly as she had come, she slipped back out into the hallway, leaving him alone with the echo of her impossible request and the chilling certainty that he would inevitably fail.
Chapter Text
The air in the opulent hall of Koi Tower was thick and cloying, a nauseating mix of bloodlust and the saccharine scent of honeyed wine. It was the smell of hypocrisy and violence gilded in gold. Jiang Cheng sat stiffly among the gathered sect leaders, a statue of simmering tension. Beneath the table, his fingers were clenched so tightly around Zidian that the spiritual weapon sparked faintly, a violet flicker against his thigh, a mirror to the storm raging inside him. The murmurs around him were no longer whispers, they were a rising tide of anger, sharp and hungry.
It had been a month since the fragile agreement, since Wen Qing had been dragged away in chains and Wei Wuxian had been left, for now, untouched. A month of Jin promises that rang hollower with each passing day.
But the vultures were growing impatient. Their feast had been delayed.
"He’s still a threat!" Sect Leader Yao barked, slamming his cup down so hard the wine sloshed over the rim like blood. "The Ghost General may be dead, but the Yiling Patriarch still breathes! He still commands that damned flute!"
"And the rest of the Wen vermin still fester in that cursed place," Sect Leader Ouyang added, his voice a sneer. "Do we truly believe he won’t seek vengeance for his pet monster? He is a creature of resentment! It is all he knows!"
Jiang Cheng’s jaw ached from how hard he was grinding his teeth, the pressure a dull, constant throb in his skull. Across the room, Jin Guangshan sat on his dais like a smug, well-fed predator, his fingers steepled. He watched the room turn, a subtle smile playing on his lips, and Jiang Cheng knew, with a cold, sick certainty.
Of course.
The Jins had never intended to keep their word. This gathering, this manufactured outrage, was all a play. They had simply been waiting for the world to catch up to their ambition.
A movement at the edge of the hall caught his eye; a flash of white amidst the vibrant silks and gold. Yanli. She stood silently near the pillars, a ghost in her mourning robes, her hands folded neatly into her sleeves. She had no formal place in these discussions, not anymore. Not as a widow, not as a woman, not as a Jiang adrift in a den of Jins. Her presence was a quiet rebellion.
But her gaze, when it found his, was not meek. It burned into him, fierce and imploring.
Remember.
The word was silent, but it struck him with the force of a physical blow.
Later, he found himself in the gardens, a place of obscene beauty that felt like a mockery. The scent of cultivated peonies, heavy and sweet, choked the air, failing to mask the underlying stench of politics and deceit.
"A-Cheng."
He didn’t turn. He knew her footfall, the soft sound of her voice, even now, especially now, when it was frayed with a grief that was his fault to bear.
"You shouldn’t be here," he said, his voice low and rough. "They’re already calling for his head. Their spies are everywhere. If they think you’re...if they even suspect—"
"I don’t care what they think."
The steel in her tone made him finally turn to look at her.
Yanli’s face was pale, etched with the exhaustion of endless tears, but her eyes were steady. The same unwavering steadiness they’d held when she’d bandaged his scraped knees as a child, when she’d held him after they’d lost their parents, when she’d smiled through her own tears and said, "We have each other. We’ll be okay."
"You can’t protect him forever," he muttered, the words a defense against the hope in her eyes.
"I don’t have to," she said, her voice softening. "Just long enough for you to remember who he is."
Jiang Cheng scoffed, a harsh, brittle sound. "What is there to remember? A murderer? A traitor? The man who shattered your life?"
"Your brother."
The words hung between them in the perfumed air, simple, absolute, and heavy as a blade poised at his heart.
Yanli stepped closer, the gravel crunching softly under her feet. "Wen Qing told me something," she murmured, her voice dropping to a confidential hush. "In the moments before they took her away. She knew what they meant to do. She wanted me to know."
Jiang Cheng stiffened, a flicker of something, concern or guilt, piercing through his anger.
"She said A-Xian planted lotus seeds in the Burial Mounds."
A beat of silence. The words were so absurd, so utterly out of place, that they failed to compute.
"What?" he breathed, certain he had misheard.
"In the dead soil," Yanli continued, her voice barely above a whisper, as if sharing a sacred secret. "Where nothing grows. Where everything is ash and resentment. He found a patch of earth and he planted them anyway. He watered them every day. He told the Wens… he told them they’d bloom."
Jiang Cheng’s chest tightened, a sudden, painful constriction around his heart.
Stupid.
A foolish, sentimental waste of energy and hope in a place that devoured both.
Hopeful.
A defiant act of life in the heart of death.
So Wei Wuxian. So utterly, infuriatingly him.
"They grew," Yanli said, and now her eyes were wet, shimmering with tears that held a different quality than those she shed for her husband; these were for her brother. "Wen Qing said she saw it. A few stubborn shoots, then leaves, rising from the darkness. They grew against all odds, A-Cheng. Just like he did. Just like we did."
Jiang Cheng turned away sharply, his throat burning with an emotion he refused to name. He stared blindly at a perfect, blood-red peony.
But he didn’t see the flower. He saw a memory, vivid and aching: Wei Wuxian as a boy of ten, grinning through a mask of mud, holding up a handful of freshly stolen lotus pods like they were the world’s greatest treasure. He heard his own younger voice, yelling about trampled beds and ruined harvests. And he heard, clear as a bell, Wei Wuxian’s whisper later that night, earnest and bright-eyed: "Someday, I’ll plant them everywhere, Jiang Cheng! Even where they say they can’t grow! We’ll make everywhere feel like home!"
A fool’s dream. A child’s fantasy.
And yet.
He’d done it.
Even in the Burial Mounds. Even in the dark. Even with the weight of the world and the wrath of the cultivation realm on his shoulders, some part of that boy had been trying to build a home. Not with demonic cultivation or an army of the dead, but with lotus seeds.
The voices of the sect leaders still echoed in his mind, demanding blood, demanding war, demanding the head of the monster they had all had a hand in creating.
But louder than all of them was a different sound: the memory of Wei Wuxian’s laughter, bright and reckless and utterly free, as he splashed through the sun-dappled lakes of Lotus Pier, calling "Jiang Cheng! Catch me if you can!"
Not the Yiling Patriarch. Not a murderer.
His brother.
His brilliant, infuriating, idiot brother, whose heart had always, always belonged to Lotus Pier, no matter how far he wandered.
The conflict that had been tearing him in two, the Sect Leader who knew his duty and the brother who knew his heart, did not vanish. But for the first time, one side gained ground. The boy who planted lotus seeds in the cursed earth was worth saving. The man who had done those things… perhaps he was, too, if that boy still lived inside him.
Jiang Cheng exhaled sharply, the sound a release of a pressure that had been building for years.
"I’ll speak at the next conference," he said at last, his voice rough with the gravel of unshed tears and newfound resolve.
Yanli didn’t smile. She didn’t celebrate. She knew the cost and the battle that still lay ahead.
But the way her shoulders finally relaxed, the subtle release of a breath she seemed to have been holding for a month, told him everything he needed to know. He had made the right choice. Finally.
Chapter Text
The conference had been a farce, a glittering spectacle of hypocrisy that left the taste of ash in Jiang Cheng’s mouth. He had sat through it, a statue of simmering rage, as the vitriol built and each new accusation against Wei Wuxian felt like a slap. He forced himself to remain still and to wait. Speaking too soon would be dismissed as the emotional outburst of a conflicted brother. He needed the right moment when the argument had reached its peak and his voice could cut through the noise with the cold authority of a sect leader.
It came when Jin Guangshan himself leaned forward, his voice oozing a false, paternal concern that made Jiang Cheng’s skin crawl, and declared to the assembled sects, “The Yiling Patriarch is a rabid beast that can no longer be leashed. He must be put down for the good of all.”
In the echoing silence that followed the pronouncement, where the other leaders were either nodding in grim agreement or staring at their cups in uneasy silence, Jiang Cheng finally moved.
He rose to his feet, the legs of his chair scraping harshly against the polished floor. Every eye in the hall swiveled to him.
“Sect Leader Jin speaks of leashes and beasts,” Jiang Cheng began, his voice colder and more controlled than he felt. “But I recall a different agreement being reached in this very hall not a month ago. An agreement that stated if Wen Qing and Wen Ning surrendered themselves to Jin justice, there would be no further retribution against Wei Wuxian.”
A tense silence fell. Jin Guangshan’s smile remained, but it grew strained at the edges.
“Justice has been served for Wen Ning,” Jiang Cheng continued, pressing his advantage. “And Wei Wuxian has upheld his end of the bargain. He has remained in the Burial Mounds. He has not raised a hand against any sect. He lives a reclusive life, causing no trouble. To attack him now is not justice. It is going back on our word. It is—” He almost said cowardice. He choked it back. “—an overreaction.”
He could feel the weight of the room’s disapproval, the sharp, calculating gazes of the Jin allies. He was treading on dangerous ground now. But he pressed on, the image of lotus seeds blooming in dead soil fueling his courage.
"The only times Wei Wuxian has ever raised a hand against the cultivation world," Jiang Cheng's voice cut through the murmurs, sharp and cold as a blade, "was when he was cornered at Qiongqi Path. His actions, however reckless, however infuriatingly stupid, were reactive. They were done in defense."
He forced the next words out, each one tasting like grit and broken glass. "And the only thing he has ever sought to do from that cursed place is to protect the people under his care."
Calling the Wens his people sent a vicious pang through Jiang Cheng's chest, but he barreled on, his tone hardening into defiance.
"People who, I will remind this assembly, are non-combatants. The elderly who can barely lift a hoe. Civilians who never held a sword. And a child. Are we now in the business of slaughtering farmers and children for the crime of their name? Is that the 'justice' the great Jin Sect champions?"
The air grew heavier. He was veering into truly treacherous territory now. He was about to point out the unspoken truth: that the Jins’ treatment of their prisoners broke every convention of war, that their “justice” looked disturbingly like vengeance. He opened his mouth to say it, but before the damning words could leave his lips, Sect Leader Yao shot to his feet, his face purple with outrage.
“Protect them?!” the man spat. “He protects monsters! He defiles the dead and turns them against the living! He killed Jin Zixuan, the heir of Lanling Jin! How dare you speak of his care?!”
The dam broke. A chorus of shouted agreements and accusations rained down, drowning out any attempt he might make to respond.
“He practices wicked demonic cultivation!”
“He spits on the traditions of our world!”
“He is a blight that must be cleansed!”
“He still has the Tiger Tally! Who knows what he plans with that kind of power!”
Jiang Cheng stood rigid, his fists clenched at his sides. Each accusation was a hammer blow. He could dismantle some, but others were true. The demonic cultivation, the defiance, the fear of his power… they were facts he couldn’t argue against. They were the weapons Jin Guangshan had counted on.
He saw the smug satisfaction settle back onto the Jin leader’s face. Jiang Cheng had walked into the trap. By speaking up, he had only given them a platform to list Wei Wuxian’s crimes, reinforcing their cause and making any further defense from him sound like the ravings of a traitor.
His intervention hadn’t saved anyone. It had only made things worse. The wall of condemnation was now higher and more impassable than ever. The decision for a siege was now unanimous and enthusiastic.
Humiliation and fury warred within him. He had tried. He had spoken, and it had amounted to nothing. With a final, searing glare at the assembly, he turned on his heel and stormed out, the roar of bloodthirsty agreement at his back like a physical blow.
Now, back in the oppressive silence of his guest quarters, he channeled that fury into motion. He shoved his belongings into a qiankun pouch with sharp, jerking motions, his movements a violent pantomime of his inner turmoil. Officially, he would return to Lotus Pier. His work here was done. The great sects had chosen their course.
Unofficially, he had another, far more dangerous destination in mind.
The knock at his door stopped the flow of his thoughts. It was too soft, too hesitant to be a servant.
Jiang Cheng didn’t bother to look up from his frantic packing. “I’m not in the mood, A-jie.” His voice was gravelly with suppressed rage.
The door slid open anyway. Yanli stepped inside, a pale wraith in her white mourning robes. She was holding something small, cradling it in her palm. She approached the table and placed it down with a quiet finality.
It was a comb. A simple, unadorned wooden comb, its surface worn smooth and dark with age and handling.
“Wen Qing wanted to return this to you,” she said quietly, her voice barely a whisper in the large room.
Jiang Cheng’s breath hitched, his hands freezing over the qiankun pouch. He knew that comb. Its image was etched into a hidden, younger part of himself.
He had bought it in Caiyi Town during their studies at the Cloud Recesses. Back when the world was simpler, and his biggest worries were boring lectures and his brother’s antics. Back when he’d had a frustrating, fierce crush on the brilliant, untouchable Wen doctor who was so unlike the simpering girls who usually trailed after him. He’d given it to her after she’d expertly set a bone he’d broken during a night hunt, his face hot, mumbling something about it being a token of gratitude. But the unspoken offer was clear in his awkwardness: Keep this. If you ever need me, for anything, I’ll come. She had accepted it with a slight, puzzled frown, but a nod of understanding. She had taken the promise seriously.
The memory was a knife to the gut; because when the world had ended, when she and her people were truly desperate and hunted, she had not come to him. She had gone to Wei Wuxian.
And then, at the Burial Mounds, he had gone to confront his brother. He had shouted, he had demanded, he had listed all the reasons why Wei Wuxian’s path was folly. He had declared that the Wens were not worth the cost, that his duty was to his sect and to his family. He hadn’t known she was listening.
But she had been. She had heard every word. She had heard the Sect Leader Jiang, the survivor, and the pragmatist. She had heard him weigh her life, her brother’s life, the lives of her family, and find them wanting. Less important than political standing. Less important than the Jiang sect’s reputation.
That was when she had returned the comb. It wasn’t an accusation, not really. It was something far worse: a quiet, final act of understanding. She was releasing him from a boyhood promise he could no longer keep. She was accepting her new, precarious position in the world, and in his priorities. She was freeing herself, too, from the faint, foolish hope that perhaps the boy from Cloud Recesses saw her as anything more than a complication. It was her way of closing that chapter for both of them.
He had left it lying in the dirt at the entrance to that cursed place. A part of him had been furious she’d returned it, that she’d so cleanly severed that tie. Another part, the part that knew he’d failed her, couldn’t bear to look at it.
And now it was here, on his table in Koi Tower. She had kept it all through her imprisonment and through her brother’s death ... this small, stupid token from a simpler time.
“She kept it,” he said, his voice rough with a pain that was years old and freshly sharpened.
Yanli’s smile was infinitely sad. “All this time. Through everything.”
His fingers, almost of their own volition, reached out and traced the smooth, worn wood. It was warm from Yanli’s hand, but he could almost feel the ghost of the girl who had once held it, the one he’d silently promised to protect.
“She told me something else,” Yanli murmured, pulling him from the memory. “About the Sunshot Campaign. About how she and Wen Ning smuggled medicine to Jiang survivors. How they hid some of them in their own supply wagons, right under Wen Chao’s nose. How they—”
“I know!” Jiang Cheng snapped, wrenching his hand back as if the comb had burned him. He did know. He had heard the reports, seen the evidence. He just hadn’t let himself think about it. Acknowledging their help meant acknowledging their humanity, and that made his refusal at the Burial Mounds, and his inaction now, a profound moral failure. It was easier to lump them all together, to let them be the faceless "Wen-dogs" everyone cursed.
Yanli’s hand settled over his, her touch gentle but firm. “They helped us, A-Cheng. Now we have to help them. It is a debt of honor.”
Jiang Cheng wrenched away, pacing like a caged tiger. “It’s not that simple! This isn’t hiding a survivor or passing along medicine! This is going against Jin Guangshan, against the whole cultivation world! This is treason!”
“It is.” Yanli’s voice didn’t rise, but it didn’t waver either. It was a statement of fact.
“Wen Qing is being held in the western dungeon, third cell on the left after the second torch sconce. The guards change shifts at midnight. They are lax for ten minutes as the log is updated.”
Jiang Cheng stopped his pacing and stared at her, his blood running cold.
“You! How do you…?”
“A-Ling’s wet-nurse has a brother in the dungeon guard. She is loyal to me,” Yanli continued, as if she hadn’t just calmly handed him the detailed schematics for a suicide mission. “I can’t go myself. I am watched too closely. But you… you can.”
Jiang Cheng’s pulse roared in his ears. This was madness. This was everything he had been taught not to do. It risked everything: his sect, his legacy, the fragile peace he was meant to uphold.
“Why?” he demanded, his voice cracking with the strain. “After everything Wens did to us, after what he did to you, why would you still... why would you ask this of me?!”
“Because it’s right,” Yanli said simply, her unwavering gaze holding his.
And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Yanli had always possessed a moral compass so true it was terrifying. She always knew the difference between right and wrong, and she always, always chose kindness, even when it cost her. Jiang Cheng had spent years building walls of practicality and political necessity, telling himself the world wasn’t that simple, that survival demanded harder choices.
But maybe, standing in this gilded cage, holding this returned promise from a woman he had failed twice over, he saw that maybe it was. Maybe right and wrong were the only things that truly mattered.
He looked down at the comb in his palm. It was no longer just a piece of wood; it was a lifetime of what-ifs, a failed promise from a boy to a girl, and a chance for a man to make amends. Its weight was the weight of his own redemption.
He closed his fingers around it, the decision settling in his bones with a terrifying finality.
“I’ll go to the Burial Mounds first,” he said at last, the words dragged from a place deep within him, his voice rough but clear. He couldn’t meet her eyes. “He needs to be warned. The vultures are circling. After today…” He trailed off, his jaw tightening. The memory of his voice being drowned out by the mob, of Jin Guangshan’s smug victory, was a fresh humiliation. He was a sect leader, and he had been rendered utterly powerless. He couldn’t bring himself to say it aloud: I failed. I tried to speak for him and it meant nothing.
But Yanli, as always, understood the words he couldn’t say. She didn’t press. She only nodded, her eyes filled with a painful mix of understanding, grief, and fear, not for herself, but for both of her brothers.
He straightened his shoulders, the plan forming with a grim certainty. “If I’m going to break Wen Qing out of that dungeon, I’ll need his help.” He let out a short, sharp breath. “And… whether he admits it or not, he’s going to need mine to get them all out of this alive.”
He paused, his fingers curling around the worn wood of the comb. The weight of it was an anchor, a reminder of a promise made by a foolish boy and broken by a pragmatic man. He looked at his sister, and the next words felt like an oath.
“This time,” Jiang Cheng vowed, his voice low and fierce, “I will not fail.”
Yanli exhaled, a soft sigh that seemed to release a lifetime of tension. Her shoulders slumped in profound relief. “Thank you, A-Cheng.”
Jiang Cheng didn’t answer. There was nothing to say. He simply tucked the comb securely into an inner fold of his robes, where it sat not just against his chest, but against his heart, as a constant, heavy reminder of the path he had finally chosen, and the promise he intended to keep this time.
Notes:
Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng meeting in the next chapter? 👀
Lurker (Guest) on Chapter 2 Tue 26 Aug 2025 12:29PM UTC
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