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He hurt. It wasn’t pain, exactly, but it was all he had, like he’d sunk into the depths of Yunmeng’s numerous lakes and he could no longer separate top from bottom or break from water into sky. He was floating, he was drowning, the syrupy water sticking to his eyes; he drifted, between this life and the next, empty and endless and aching.
There was a warble of sound to one side. He tilted towards it, arms pinwheeling—or tried to. They were limp. He realized—with terror, devastation, panic—that he could not move. He was a bloated, drowned body, an unidentified dead weight. Thoughts jumbled through his mind like a swarm of lotus leaves. He could not open his eyes.
Where was he?
Something scratched at his face, the only thing piercing the drowning deep of nothing. It skittered, weightless, across his cheek. A strand of his hair, blown by the wind. He continued floating, stillness in motion. His hands were folded across his stomach.
“—xian!”
Someone was screaming.
“—Ning!—him—”
It was a bestial keening, an animal in pain, distorted and bubbling through the water. Sometimes louder, sometimes softer, sometimes silenced into whimpers. He caught only moments, snatches of sound, tiny glimpses of a world he was rapidly leaving. Even then, the sounds would have turned his stomach if he had one left.
Wei Wuxian?
His brother—crying—
Jiang Cheng struggled forward. Nothing moved.
It lasted moments, it lasted hours, it lasted days, the bustle of faint motion and fainter distress fading in and out, too close to ignore, too far to touch. Jiang Cheng continued his agonizing drift towards eternity. Then a final, doubled scream pierced him, a stone rippling through water: one, a wordless howl of full-throated anguish; one, a single exclamation of terrified, exhilarated pride: “Jie!!!”
Jie. He recognized that, once.
Someone swam above him, sailing through his consciousness, close enough to touch. They parted the waters like a glass-bottomed boat, sure and smooth and frictionless. Their presence did little to blot out the sun; he felt its tingling warmth, a wash of heat on his nose.
“A-ning.” The fingers on his wrists were cool, a feather-light touch. “Stabilize Wei Wuxian, then come help me.”
Wei Wuxian?
The thought swam away from him almost as soon as it formed, like a school of disturbed fish. He chased after it through the honeyed water, blind and desperate. Why was…where was…?
Wei Wuxian?
A second shadow joined the first. “Jiejie.” The voices were so close. He could make out their words, only a swooping distortion around the edges.
“Wei Wuxian?”
“He’s. He’s un…unconcious.” A falter. “Does, does Jiang-gong, gongzi have to be…?”
“No. Only the donor. Lucky him.” The fingers left his wrist. “We’ll start with the zutaiyin meridian, seal the rest, and unseal on my mark. If we don’t channel the qi properly he’ll deviate and this will all be for nothing.”
“Right.” Fingers tapped a harsh, precise path through the crests and plains of his corpse. A long, faltering silence, where his two—torturers, healers—companions might be exchanging gestures invisible to Jiang Cheng, and finally, a shaking exhale that might’ve been a sigh.
“A-ning. On three. Three…two…one…”
Fire.
A hot surge poured through him; he expanded, herbs scalding in a pot. The tincture was too hot; it rose, blistering through his meridian points in its slow, inexorable wake: fujie, daheng, fuai…
Jiang Cheng screamed—soundless, a prisoner of his own body. His voice worked no better than the rest of him. Something—hands—gripped him, framed him around his shoulders, a comfort, a restraint. They were trying to be gentle as they burnt him from the inside. Fushe, chongmen, jimen…
In the pit of his being, in the empty pocket of loss, heat was settling like a spider building a nest: gossamer threads winding together, tendrils knitting, reattaching to what had been severed, wisp-thin like hope. It pulsed, bright like the sun, spreading outwards from the cursed hollow like an overflowing bath. Qi flooded him, foreign and familiar like ringing laughter, seeping into dried-up riverbeds and filling his gaping holes. He was burning, he was drowning. Drowning from the inside.
The world fell away, the water, the drowning deeps. All the water was inside him now, droplets building up to puddles, puddles to ponds, ponds to lakes to sea.
A-jie—Wei Wuxian—
Wei Wuxian—
He kept screaming, voiceless, helpless; he would never, ever stop.
Jiang Cheng woke.
The sun had crested past its zenith; it beat its gentle warmth on his cheek, long enough that the skin had started stinging. His other cheek was pillowed on rough grass, his limbs sprawled from their careful arrangement. He must’ve turned in his sleep.
He sat up—too fast. The world spun briefly; he had not eaten in—days, weeks, years. He didn’t know; it didn’t matter. To cultivate was to challenge, even in dreams, the spectre of mortality. If his fleshy shell felt weak, he only needed to meditate, to draw on his—
His—
His robes were carefully closed, the sash tied neatly, ends perfectly even. His hands shook as he tore them apart: outer robe, inner robe, the wrap of the skirt, each layer a desperate question. An insect scurried out from folds of fabric. Blunt nails dragged across skin, scratched at the dusting of hair. His silent bell tumbled against his hip and offered no clarity at all.
He was exposed, now, from shoulder to waist. The scar from the discipline whip striped him, more numb than tender; it rose out the skin, ridged and ugly and dark, cutting from collarbone to navel. He bore no new marks anywhere, the singular scar alone and stark, a reminder of his shame.
No new marks. Of course not. A golden core was a spiritual thing, qi manifested into form; it would not be so base as to need a scalpel. Wen Zhuliu had eviscerated him, scraped him raw and empty, with only a touch.
Crushed his—
Jiang Cheng gulped air, once, thrice, his lungs still empty. Eyes squeezing shut, heart stopping, and reached—
The qi came readily, a fluttering stream of warmth. It flowed, gentle and shy, a spring welling from drought. If the qi felt a little wobbly, well, did he not just form a whole new core? Years of cultivation, paid in frantic studies and cutting disappointment, renewed within hours and days; if it felt unfamiliar, could anyone blame him?
“Oh.” He choked the word, sagging into the dusty ground, the enormity of wholeness leaving him weak and trembling. “Oh.” It came out as laughter, jagged pieces of it; they tore him open in puffs of relief. “Jie.” He curled in on himself as if he could feel his sister’s presence, a press of lips in his hair.
Someday he’d learn to stop looking to his sister for comfort. Someday she’d leave too, for that peacock if nothing else.
His new core simmered, warm and soothing, like a pot of soup on a gentle boil. He was whole. His meridians were clear and unblocked, his blood flowing freely through his veins. He felt light, weightless, like he could rise and start flying.
For a moment, he breathed in birdsong and rewrote it to home: his parents at each other’s throats, his sister despairing over her unruly brothers, the shouts of disciples in the training yards. They were all safe, whole, hale, and any moment now he’d hear his mother screaming at Wei Wuxian and the clatter of something breaking; he would draw soft cloth across Sandu and bitterly wonder whether the wielder chose the name or the reverse. The name, once chosen, was immutable; to have the heir of Jiang wield the roots of all evil was either hubris or the world’s sickest joke. He’d be a laughingstock three times over: the wielder of evils, lesser than his subordinate, the cultivator with no core—
His core—
Everything rushed back, dream shattered, hope crushed. The surest proof was the core nestled in his insides. It had all happened: the wash of agony, of searing from the inside. His brother, screaming—
Wei Wuxian, screaming like a wounded thing. Like he was dying.
Jiang Cheng scrabbled to his feet, hair whipping wildly into his face, his robes splayed open, exposed. He fell to his knees almost immediately, pawing desperately at dirt and grass. Was there a—a needle, an imprint, a scrap of fabric, anything—
Nothing, save for the whistle of the breeze and the hum of insects. There were grass stains on his robes and dirt on his face. He was the only one out of place, qi-filled and untamed.
Stupid, for even looking. A doctor of Wen Qing’s calibre wouldn’t leave a trace. He dreamt of her, sometimes, in the harrowing dark. He’d carried that damned comb from Caiyi and ever since, bundled close against his heart. A fool to the last. He could dream of her, but not her brother. And not his. Not like that.
Wei Wuxian, screaming, from agony to soundless. Dying, slowly, until he was without breath.
Impossible. The transfer of a core—ridiculous. Who even would—
Impossible.
But so was forming an entirely new core.
His new core shimmered inside him, this warm, soothing, alien thing. It felt like laughter. It felt like safety. It felt like the depths of Cloud Recesses’ iciest springs.
“Wei Wuxian!” It echoed like a condor’s scream, the terror piercing long after his throat had stopped. “Wei Wuxian!!!”
Power was lightning, sparking in his veins. Terror seeped into his blood like a fine, strong wine. And pain? Pain was a reminder carved into flesh, who he was looking for, who he used to be.
Jiang Cheng snapped his arm downwards. Skin split and muscle tore in a violent flash of purple, the scream pitching higher. His teeth bared, his blood sang.
He liked hearing them scream.
Let them scream. Let them scream as loud as he had. He would flay the flesh from their bones as Wen Chao did to him. Let them carry pain and weakness to their graves, their last moments in agony and despair. He prayed with bloodstained hands every night to the lost souls of Lotus Pier.
“Where. Is. He?!” Jiang Cheng bellowed into the Wen dog’s face. Zidian crackled, purple arcing into white, victor and victim awash in ghastly light. He was drunk with it, the love in its caress. Violence was his mother’s kiss.
He was vengeance, he was hatred. He was the last sons of Lotus Pier, combined.
“Mother—mother—” Another strike, and the scream died halfway, the body collapsing in a heap, twisted in life and death. He’d pissed himself.
Jiang Cheng sneered. Zidian reformed on his hand. “Coward.” His core lurched in his navel. He, too, had screamed for his mother when he thought he was going to die.
He rummaged the corpse for letters, silver, any clue that would assist him. When done he kicked the body, shattering the skull. Let the vermin have him. Let him join his brothers. Jiang Cheng would kill every Wen dog from here to Qinghe if that was what it took. He’d nearly turned that sleepy village inside out during his wait; those villagers that remained probably feared him more than any monster now.
He should be exhausted, but he couldn’t close his eyes. Every time he did, he’d hear his brother’s screams. Better, then, to blot it out with other people’s screaming. Better, then, to lash in purple and not think about gold. He’d rip it out of him if he could, but—no. He was without his sword, and he could not die here. So Jiang Cheng walked on, windswept and raging. He wasn’t alone. His brother was with him. His sister was waiting. Wei Wuxian wasn’t dead; he’d find them both. Even the maddest doctor wouldn’t carve life out to die.
Zidian crackled on his hand, violet sparks haloing unstained silver. It sang to him in a way even Sandu would not, warm like a smouldering fire, pure and unsullied no matter how many lives it took. He could not say the same for his missing sword, his robes, his soul. It mattered not; red and purple all looked black in the dark.
He began walking again. It was a long way to Qinghe on foot.
Behind him, the dead trailed like a cape.
“Jiang-zongzhu.”
Jiang Cheng looked up from where he sat. Lan Xichen offered him a cloth, his smile warm even now. Somehow both his robes and the cloth were clean, as befit a spotless Jade of Lan. Had they a transportation talisman to send them elsewhere, he could have been offering tea.
Jiang Cheng let go of the corner of his bloodied robe. A first class spiritual weapon demanded respect, even for cleaning, even for something as cavalierly named as Suibian. “Thank you.”
The ruins of the Qishan Disciplinary Bureau smouldered around them. He would’ve let it burn behind him without a second glance, as funeral pyre and warning both, but Lan Xichen had wanted to stay until it collapsed into ash.
“If the fire spreads too far, it’ll harm the nearby innocents.” He’d smiled then too, a little regretful, a little wan. Lan Xichen did not believe in revenge. “Not all of them are Wens. Most are just vassals.”
May the world deserve such kind men. Jiang Cheng had carved out his kindness the night Lotus Pier fell. He could not imagine being so soft again.
Lan Wangji was playing his qin, the serene notes stark against the backdrop of death. Was it a prayer for the dead? Was it to send off resentful souls? Either way, it was more than these bastards deserved. Jiang Cheng’s hands itched with the urge to flay them still, to carve flesh off of bone.
“Zewu-jun. Hanguang-jun.” Sandu anchored Jiang Cheng’s left hand; Suibian, his right. He was still shaking, from crown to toe, from surface to his stolen core. “What do you know about Burial Mounds?”
It was Lan Wangji who answered, voice a monotone, as clipped and unhurried as if he was reading from a book. “An old battleground filled with unnamed bodies. The trees are cursed and black, the soil barren. It is warded off for safety. Many have tried to cleanse the hatred and resentful energy.” He met Jiang Cheng’s eyes, enunciating every word precisely. “Not one has left alive.”
“Jiang-zongzhu?” Lan Xichen’s smile was still perfectly polite, but caution was bleeding into the corners. “What are you planning to do?”
Jiang Cheng’s answer was as curt as Hanguang-jun himself. “Attack.”
Caution shaded into careful doubt. On a lesser man, it would be aghast. “Jiang-zongzhu.”
“Lan-zongzhu.” It came out calmer than even he expected. There was a metallic note to his voice, an edge of rusted steel. “I think you understand.”
The barb struck home; Lan Xichen’s expression flickered, the light dimming in his eyes. He was silent for a long moment before he inclined his head.
Sect leader to sect leader, duty to duty. Lan Xichen had served his duty over his family. He was the First Jade of Lan, the model of their generation. Of course Jiang Cheng would measure up against him and be found wanting. Here, in this man, was virtue. Mercy. Kindness. The map of whom to be.
Jiang Cheng? He just wanted to hurt. His world had narrowed to a sword’s point. He was at home in this field of dead.
Yunmeng Jiang Sect had fallen. There were only three left. Jiang Cheng had followers, vassals summoned from Yunmeng’s outer lands, drafted to fight and carry their flag. He called them disciples and they called him zongzhu, but it was a glorified farce on both sides. He had not taught them, protected them, or ever fought for them; all allegiances were temporary, forged in desperation and circumstance rather than blood or choice. If they survive this war they could be sworn in, but would they even want to? Could they bring themselves to serve a master whose voice still broke, who was young enough to be their brother, their son?
A sect could not be without a leader, but what was a leader without a sect?
He would let Jiang Sect die, leave all the murders unavenged, be as weak and wretched as his mother’s worst fears. He would shame his ancestors and blight the Jiang name, pay all that and more, than lose one more piece of his family.
They were the only three left.
Zewu-jun watched Jiang Cheng carefully; he, too, could see the monsters running wild between his teeth. “What about Jiang-guniang?”
“I won’t tell her.” Either he would succeed and bring Wei Wuxian home or he would die. Call him selfish. Either way, he would not see his sister cry.
There was a beat of unmoving silence, then Lan Wangji rose, poised and graceful, qin vanishing with a sweep of his snow-white sleeve. “I will go, too.”
From above, Burial Mounds was a splotch of black. Malevolence lingered in a literal fog, curling black and dense amongst the trees, resentment and hatred given form. Even this high up, Jiang Cheng could feel its pull, the tendrils tugging at all the dark and ugly parts of him, the monstrous parts that sang back. Jiang Cheng tried not to think about falling. Tried not to think about Wei Wuxian falling. Tried not to think about Wei Wuxian never falling from this height, ever again. “You said no one leaves here alive?”
“Mm.” Lan Wangji dismounted from Bichen. Against the black landscape he looked whiter than ever, a man in mourning robes.
It was too early to mourn Wei Wuxian. The Wen dog may have been lying. Wei Wuxian could have survived. To him, achieve the impossible was a given, not inspiration.
Jiang Cheng hopped off Sandu onto the blackened soil and stared.
The wall was broken. What once enforced the quarantine of this cursed place was but crumbling, sharp-edged ruins, yawning at them like a monster’s mouth. Spears of dead trees stabbed out of the ground in rows of uneven teeth. The sandy ground was rough, gouged loose and uneven; a misstep would send Jiang Cheng to join those beneath.
Lan Wangji surveyed the rubble with a bland, critical eye, then swiftly started up the path. Jiang Cheng followed, eyeing the writing on the ruined wall. “Did the malevolence grow too strong to be contained?”
“Unlikely. Not by itself.” Lan Wangji cast an appraising look to the blackened trees, the cave mouth cruelly hewn from stone. “The resentful energy is strong. But not as strong as expected.”
Jiang Cheng agreed. The malevolence choked him, his sins thick in his lungs, but it was…tolerable. This alone would not be enough to kill, at least not quickly. A slow, strangled death at worst. Not enough to kill his brother—
Who was ordinary, now. The thought chilled him all the way down to his stolen core.
They searched the mountaintop. Or rather, Jiang Cheng searched the mountaintop. Lan Wangji had given up on the endeavour by the time they emerged from the empty cave, and seemed content with watching as Jiang Cheng ran himself ragged scouring every inch of this cursed place.
“Enjoying yourself?” Jiang Cheng snapped at him finally, sweating into a fine temper.
“He is not here,” Lan Wangji intoned, stating the obvious. “There are others with him.”
Jiang Cheng blinked, dread seizing his heart. “What others?”
In answer, Lan Wangji unsheathed Bichen, shining blade plunging into barren soil. Jiang Cheng heard the distinctive clang of steel cleaving bone.
Lan Wangji repeated this action three times before he sheathed Bichen, briefly wiping his blade on a cloth. Even the unearthed bones were black, here. “Two bodies. There should be at least five.”
Now that he mentioned it, there was a lot of overturned earth for a place with no one living. Jiang Cheng fought the tightness seizing his throat as he managed, “he’s not one of the bodies?”
Lan Wangji fixed him with a unblinking, catlike stare that sent shivers down Jiang Cheng’s back. “I would know.”
That Lan Wangji could claim to know Wei Wuxian down to his bones was a poisoned kind of relief. He’d take it, poison and all. For his siblings, he’d swallow the sun whole.
Then the enormity of the statement hit him; Jiang Cheng swayed with it. “I—he—there are bodies with him?”
It was a pointless question; Lan Wangji was not in the habit of repeating himself. They looked to their surroundings instead, the constellation of desecrated graves, all the dead in between them. Then, abruptly, Lan Wangji turned to leave in a graceful flurry of snow-white robes.
Jiang Cheng jogged after him. “Where are you going?”
Lan Wangji did not slow. “Pursue.”
It was one thing to desecrate Wen dogs; Jiang Cheng would grind them to dust and piss on their bones. But to disturb the graves of so many (presumed) innocents…it was wrong, an affront to the dead. Nothing that Jiang Cheng would stop at now (though he would still pause), but such was beyond his brother. Wei Wuxian had always been impulsive, reckless, but he had lines he wouldn’t cross. And yet, three months spent more dead than living blurred the starkest of lines.
The trail through Yiling was marked by a literal line of death. Some were the fetid bodies unearthed from Burial Mounds; some were fresh, recently departed, bade back to a mockery of living. Some were of Wen Sect, robes red like splattered blood. Many were not.
Bodies were a resource, now. Waste not.
The Yiling Supervisory Office was a collapsed, crumbled ruin, still smouldering in the corners. The air stank of burnt flesh, vapourized fat sinking into pores, the hatred hanging like a shroud. They’d burnt the building to the ground to reduce the bodies. The flames hadn’t been hot enough for that: corpses, new and old, scattered the grounds, singed and broken and charred and shrunk. The weight of lives sat heavily: the pressure in the throat, the rage of old ghosts. Flesh melted, made molten in the heat, bled together until unrecognizable: they were all dead souls to you.
Three months ago, his world had reduced here to grey, exhausted grief. He’d been hollowed out and set adrift where his siblings couldn’t reach, and he remembered staring at the ceiling behind closed eyes, hours blurring into days, bleakly wishing for an end to the sheer burden of existing. Did Wei Wuxian feel like that now, scoured empty and raw? Choosing the loss helped not at all. Jiang Cheng had hoped for death when he had slipped out of that inn, but he’d known that Wen Zhuliu was waiting at Lotus Pier.
Wei Wuxian had been the talented one. The prodigy, the favoured child. And he’d traded his golden zenith for Jiang Cheng’s empty insignificance. Would it hurt any less to choose the loss a second time? Would they pass that core back and forth until one or both die, parry and thrust, the way they used to spar?
Wei Wuxian had always won.
There was no regal firebird amongst the dead. Perhaps she, too, had risen from the ashes, head craned and eyes unseeing, and so, so proud.
Lan Wangji continued playing, to send the souls onward. Jiang Cheng was human enough to be grateful.
The trail of resentful energy was less of a beacon and more of a faulty compass, unfurling lazily like a map being drawn. Neither Jiang Cheng nor Lan Wangji were particularly talented at tracking humans; animals and monsters weren’t intelligent enough to hide their trails, nor able to silence witnesses. Lan Wangji spoke with the dead, but could only ask the most basic of questions, and even that begot more questions than any spirit was able to answer.
Who killed you?
Wei Wuxian.
Were they hunting the Wens, or this familiar summoner of dead? Did it matter? They led down the same damned path, if not the same end. The Wens had to die. As for Wei Wuxian…
Two weeks until Jiang Cheng spotted Wen Zhuliu scuttling out of an apothecary, expression wooden and steps hurried. Lan Wangji stopped Jiang Cheng from carving him on the spot. It would not have ended well; there were no more golden cores to spare for Jiang Cheng’s inevitable defeat. Would Wei Wuxian put Wen Zhuliu’s core in him next, Jiang Cheng wondered. Would Wei Wuxian accept it for himself?
He pictured it: Wen Zhuliu screaming, pinned and helpless, a moth mounted on a board. Wei Wuxian unconscious—Jiang Cheng would make sure, this time—as a monster with healer’s hands wrenched the sun from a body and transplanted it into darkness. Wei Wuxian was—had been—a boy of sunshine; was he still? Could he be? His warmth and laughter ripped out of him, displaced and dying in Jiang Cheng’s vacant shell. If Jiang Cheng put another’s core into him, would it take? Would his brother be the same?
Jiang Cheng would. Did that make him a monster too?
Wen Zhuliu stole into a rest station, eerie in its emptiness. It should not have been empty. Even this far from civilization, there were travellers, sentries, Wen Chao’s personal escort of guards. Had the remaining Wens died protecting their master, or had they been sent off? Absurd, for even considering it. But their world rested on the impossible being achieved. A core transferred, the dead returned. Perhaps here, too, Wen Zhuliu could discover something akin to mercy.
Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji watched from the roof. Wen Zhuliu ascended stairs, shuttered open windows, and finally approached the two figures—one seated and huddled, one standing and attentive—awaiting his return. “Daifu.”
“You’re back. Prepare some warm water,” Wen Qing replied. The embroidered flames on her robe were still visible under the hem of her cloak.
Jiang Cheng almost fell off the roof.
Wen Qing unwound layers of bandages like she was peeling an onion. Wen Chao howled like she was stripping his skin. After the third layer, Wen Qing paused and said, quiet and firm, “Silence.”
He obeyed, lips pressed taut, like she was of the clouds instead of the sun. Muffled whimpers and blinked back tears as Wen Qing dressed his wounds. Wen Zhuliu returned with warmed water, and the pair worked in silent synchrony, ointments and pills and linens exchanged, two servants caring for their ailing master.
Wen Chao finally spoke again, a hoarse whimper: “How long until we reach my father?”
“At this pace, two days.”
“And—and I—”
Wen Qing looked down, detached. “You’ll live.” He would, when so few others did.
A shingle shattered in Jiang Cheng’s hand. Wen Zhuliu looked up. A fraction of pause, less than a heartbeat, quicker than a blink—
The roof exploded outward, Wen Zhuliu tearing through slate. They exchanged three blows in a flurry of black and white and purple. Jiang Cheng broke off first (the weakest, always was, always would be), Zidian crackling, and dove for Wen Chao. Wen Zhuliu intercepted and Lan Wangji followed; they traded three more blows on the way down. Jiang Cheng landed in a crouch, panting. Wen Zhuliu’s fists were raised. Lan Wangji fluttered to a stop, hand behind his back.
They froze like that. They forgot to breathe. Wen Chao’s warbling scream drowned in the tension between.
Jiang Cheng spoke first. “Wen-guniang. You’re helping them?”
She raised her chin. She could’ve been a Lan, her voice steady, measured and unashamed. “I help people. I do not harm.”
Jiang Cheng bared his teeth. “I don’t consider him human.”
She waited, letting them take in the sight of Wen Chao. The melted flesh, the fingerless hands, the seeping ruin of his butchered legs. “Then, the one who tortured him thus: is he human to you?”
“I’d thank him. And hate him, for beating me to it.” He had no pity. He had forgotten how. Wen Zhuliu had crushed all capacity for softness the night he crushed Jiang Cheng’s core. “Who was it?”
Her expression wasn’t mercy, like a healer’s ought. Wasn’t cold, like Lan Wangji. But they were all monsters. Maybe softness was beyond her too. “You know the answer to that.”
Footsteps sounded on the stairs. Wen Zhuliu’s body coiled, tense for a fight. Wen Chao blanched, clasping Wen Qing’s cloak between his fingerless hands. Lan Wangji gripped Bichen’s hilt; Zidian sparked in Jiang Cheng’s hand. They all turned to face the stairs, and for an infinitesimal, ridiculous moment they were on the same side. The malevolence preceded the person; the oil lamps seemed to dim. Jiang Cheng shivered down to his core, his sins crawling down his back.
The footsteps turned the corner. Even expecting it, the sight struck Jiang Cheng like a blow: the familiar eyes, the arch of brows, lips that formed words, laughter, the shape of empty promises. Hope and dread twisted his gut, and one thought seared through his mind: impossible.
And Wei Wuxian had done just that.
“Wen Chao. Wen Zhuliu. You two sure are swift.” Wei Wuxian’s gaze lingered on Wen Qing, and a flicker of—warmth, surprise—feeling seemed to reach his eyes. “Wen-guniang. Long time no see.”
Her spine steeled another fraction. “Would that it were longer, Wei-gongzi.”
“That’s cold.” The baleful gaze trailed over. “Lan Zhan. Jiang Cheng.”
Lan Wangji’s hand tightened on Bichen. His eyes were on the ghoul clinging to Wei Wuxian’s ankle: a toddler’s size, skin pallor-grey. It glared back, beady eyes glittering. There was gristle between its oversized teeth. It looked like it was deciding which of them was soft enough to eat.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji said, stone in two syllables.
Jiang Cheng’s eyes blurred. There was no time for shouting, or for the punch to the face Wei Wuxian so dearly deserved. “You bastard.”
“Save the reminiscing for later.” Wei Wuxian turned his gaze to Wen Qing again, utterly unconcerned about Wen Zhuliu. Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji followed his gaze, bodies shifting; they were on the same side again despite, because of, everything. “So, Wen-guniang? Draw your lines.”
“There is no blood on my hands. I help people.”
“Even Wen dogs.”
The corner of her mouth curved, humourless. “I am a Wen.”
Jiang Cheng ground his teeth. Wei Wuxian grinned, dark and cruel, but there was a flicker of his old self there, the respect for her iron. “I owe you. If you stay your hand, you will come to no harm. But the dogs with you…I will bleed them out. I want them to die as many deaths as Yunmeng Jiang Sect did that night.” He pointed a finger at the cowering form behind Wen Qing. “Him first. I…want him…to scream.”
At the word scream, the ghoul launched itself through the air, fangs flashing. Wen Zhuliu leapt forward and met two lengths of bared steel. He spun away from Sandu and went for Jiang Cheng’s throat. Bichen cut between them, meteor-bright, and Wen Zhuliu pivoted again; both blade and hand closed on empty air.
“Wen Zhuliu!” Wen Chao shrieked. Jiang Cheng missed his stab. The words and the ghoul had scarcely fallen from the air when Wen Zhuliu leapt behind Wen Qing, his hand on her back.
Everyone stopped. Even the ghoul, who’d dropped straight down like a stone at its master’s gasp. It landed on the panelled floor, hissing furiously.
Wen Qing spoke first. There was the faintest tremble to her voice. “Wen-jiangjun. This is beneath you.”
“It is.” The heavy, courteous words held just a hint of regret. “But I have my duty.”
Wei Wuxian’s rictus smile stretched, eyes alight and narrowing. “Him? Is he worth it?”
Wen Zhuliu looked to him, and then to Jiang Cheng. “Isn’t yours?”
The smile fell off of Wei Wuxian’s face. Zidian sparked up Jiang Cheng’s arm. The stillness drew out, bowstring-taut and violent.
Lan Wangji’s eyes hardened a fraction. Wen Zhuliu spared him a glance. “Hanguang-jun. You are very fast. I will still be faster.” He reached behind him with his free hand to grasp at Wen Chao, forgetting, for a moment, that his master could not stand. “Let’s go. Daifu, I apologize for my offense.”
Her ink-dark eyes swept their faces, stopping on Jiang Cheng’s. What did she see, he wondered. Something terrible, something worthy, something imaginary? In him, she had done the impossible. He was a testament to all her monstrous dreams.
Something shifted in Wen Qing’s expression, an apology in the line of her mouth. She turned for the stairs as bidden, steel in her spine…and suddenly, with no warning, dropped to her knees.
The thing about hostages was this: they could be killed at any time. It could be for anything: speaking out of turn, sudden movements, the shape of their nose. A captor who would not follow through was not worth the name. And Wen Zhuliu was not a man who boasted.
So she dropped, and he struck; he was a killer, after all. Trained for it until it was easy, as automatic as breathing. So she fell, too quickly, her body tumbling doll-limp, spitting blood as she went. And he looked up at Wen Chao’s startled shriek, just in time to see two streaks of silver.
Wen Zhuliu was fast; Hanguang-jun was faster. Blue-silver flashed and reformed into a sword between his ribs, bared steel erupting from his back and through Wen Chao’s face. A second later, Sandu joined Bichen, finding its seething, golden target as clearly as if it’d been marked.
Wen Chao’s scream died, instantly. He died faster than any of his victims. Justice was far more merciful than vengeance.
Wen Zhuliu crumpled, a slow collapse from one side, like a marionette with cut strings. Lan Wangji lowered Bichen with him, keeping him immobilized on the blade. Jiang Cheng ripped Sandu out, twisting it as he went. There was too little of his life left to matter. The wound must be agonizing, like the golden grief clawing Jiang Cheng’s insides.
Wen Zhuliu’s features contorted. His last words choked out of him, steady, weary, gossamer-thin. It robbed Jiang Cheng of his victory. “All…things…end.”
His eyes closed. A second later, blood seeped from his nose, his mouth, his ears, his eyes. It should not make a difference; he had only minutes left. It should not make a difference whether he bled out his last moments or shattered his own insides.
It should not make a difference, but it did. Blood bloomed roses on his dark robes. He wore red after all.
Jiang Cheng remembered, a second too late, that he had meant to save Wen Zhuliu’s core. Then remembered, several seconds late, that any core was useless without the doctor. “Wen-guniang!”
Wen Qing stirred from her heap. She could not get up.
It did not make any sense to feel like the world was ending, not any more than it already was. Sandu clattered to the floor as Jiang Cheng dropped at her side. She swayed in his grip, body limp against his, but slanted a dry look behind almost-closed eyes. “Let…go, Jiang-gongzi. I won’t…die.”
“Shut up,” he snapped, forgetting for a brief moment that she wasn’t whom he could say this to. “You—you can’t. I—I need—”
White swept the corners of his vision. Lan Wangji sank to kneeling on her other side. Two fingers rested on her wrist; her eyelids fluttered at the steady flow of qi. She moaned, softly, between her teeth.
Lan Wangji’s other hand reached into his robes for a bottle, tapping two pills into her palm. He considered for another long minute before raising his gaze to meet Jiang Cheng’s, briefly. “She’ll live.”
Jiang Cheng breathed. So long as she lived. So long as she was whole. That Wen Zhuliu’s blow didn’t rupture her meridians, or leave her paralyzed, or damage her dantian in any irrevocable way. So long as she was still her, and not reduced to baseness. She would be a quarter of the doctor she was now with only her blades.
It took him a moment to realize Lan Wangji had promised no such thing.
Wen Qing winced against his shoulder, eyes cracking open. It took several minutes before she moved, slowly, like agony, her hand drawing to her face. She swallowed the pills—dry, but for the blood still in her mouth. “Why so much…upset for a Wen dog…Jiang-gongzi?”
Jiang Cheng flushed all the way down to his neck. His mouth moved, a tear in flesh, ugly and ragged and soundless.
Wei Wuxian knelt down too, a more respectful distance away. Some of the balefulness lifted from his features; for a moment, he looked like Jiang Cheng’s brother again, despite the pallor and red eyes. “Oh, he’s been pining for you for a long, long time, Wen-guniang. Since—”
“You shut up!” Jiang Cheng moved before Wei Wuxian could blink, dumping Wen Qing into Lan Wangji’s lap; he swung, fist cracking across Wei Wuxian’s face. It was a weak swing, the kind to barely bruise, if that. It was the kind of swing he’d managed in the Yiling Supervisory Office when she’d saved his life. A terrible swing that his mother would despair of, all poor form and no qi. The kind of swing he’d have, now and forever, if not for the core searing in his body.
“Wei Ying!” A ghastly screech echoed Lan Wangji’s words; the forgotten ghoul snarled, Wen Chao’s flesh still hanging from its teeth.
But Wei Wuxian was laughing, his head snapped sideways, sprawled painlessly onto his back. The sound was malevolent and still completely Wei Wuxian. “What, you wanna fight?”
It was just like him, to laugh with an opponent an armspan from his throat. Jiang Cheng saw red. He saw gold. This next blow would not be weak. “You fucking bastard.” His qi roiled; would that he would deviate on the spot. “I need her to put it back.”
Three beats of long, violent silence. Wei Wuxian blinked, bloodshot eyes shuttering; he rose onto his elbow, expression guarded. “Put what back?”
He shouldn’t say anything. He should take this shame to the grave. But he seared with it, this sun in his insides, and if he didn’t say it now he never would. What did it matter now? Three of the four here knew. Wen Zhuliu too, if the dead counted. With Wei Wuxian now, he absolutely did. “I didn’t want your fucking core!”
It rang, pitched and sharp, into the corners of the room. Lan Wangji’s eyes went wide.
Wei Wuxian’s inhale was choked. “What are you talking about?”
“Two days, one night.” Some of the memories came back from the drowning deep after he had figured out what, exactly, he had been forced to witness. “She took your core, and gave it to me.” It bubbled out of him, warm and flowing, like qi, like rage, like grief. His hysteria rose, crested, swept them all in its tide. “Do you think me that pathetic? Do you think I need your pity? That I can’t stand, that I can’t live, without your fucking sacrifice?!”
He couldn’t, he couldn’t, he couldn’t. And that burnt worst of all: that Wei Wuxian was right. He’d expected death to take him that night: Wen Zhuliu if quick, Wen Chao if slow. Losing his core was just the slowest means to the end he’d already accepted.
“You…” That sounded like the Wei Wuxian of old: spluttering, wide-eyed denial, like he could shit-talk to Lan Qiren himself with a jar of Emperor’s Smile in hand. “I didn’t…”
“I was there.” They’d moved him; maybe a needle had shifted. Maybe Wen Ning had made a mistake. A hair’s width, an impossible divide. “I heard you.” Screaming until hoarse, then hoarse to raw silence. Wei Wuxian hadn’t heard him.
Jiang Cheng sank to all fours, inches from his brother. He bit every word, the crush of teeth against memories: the pork rib bones, the bark of dogs. His words, though, were for Wen Qing. “Daifu. Can you put it back?”
Wei Wuxian sat bolt upright, almost headbutting Jiang Cheng’s chin, everything but horror slackening out of his face. “Jiang Cheng, no—!”
It took Wen Qing a moment to respond. She was behind him, leaning against Lan Wangji; he couldn’t see her face. But in the absolute stillness of the room, he could hear her breathe: ragged and harsh, sorrow deep like the sea. The first time she confronted the gulfs one crossed for love, whether her patients were deserving. “I don’t think he is willing.”
Jiang Cheng swung to face her. “I wasn’t either,” he snarled, and Lan Wangji turned as white as his robes.
Wen Qing struggled against Lan Wangji, pushing herself upright. The movement cost her, but she looked him in the eye, the consequences of her mercy. The grey was only in her face. “A plant weakens every time it is repotted. So too does a core. There was never any better than a fifty percent chance.” At this, Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji both flinched. “To reverse it now, so soon after…I’d kill you both.”
“So soon after,” Jiang Cheng echoed, voice breaking, torn ragged and open like a wounded thing. “Meaning, if we wait—”
“A-cheng,” Wei Wuxian rasped. “A-cheng, I…no. I don’t want it.”
“And it’s all about what you want, isn’t it?!” Jiang Cheng shouted back. His vision blurred. Wetness wound its way down his face. “It’s always about you. The golden child. The prodigy. What about me? What about what I want?” He slammed one fist into the floor, wooden panels splintering; when he withdrew, he could see the floor beneath. What a waste of qi. What a blasphemy to a gift he had never wanted. Wei Wuxian’s core seethed in him, a roiling, burning sun. It wasn’t his. It would never be his. “I wanted you to be safe. You were supposed to be safe.”
How could he say, now, why he’d left that inn? Wei Wuxian had carved out his insides for Jiang Cheng’s sake. To say I did it first, I saved you first, you idiot, you fucking idiot—like he couldn’t bear losing, even now, even in this—
It was impossible. And here Wei Wuxian was now, a dead man walking, achieving the impossible and paying the price. How many had died? How many would? When even the mad doctor who had done the deed found him sinister, a harbinger of worse than death? Jiang Cheng was supposed to be the monster. The wielder of evils. Wei Wuxian was the one who understood the spirit of their lessons, what it meant to be Jiang. The demonic path stained the soul, the temperament, the heart, but Wei Wuxian had no other path now. If he cracked that ghoul open, would it still bleed?
“A-cheng,” Wei Wuxian repeated, choked, a horrified and broken thing. “I…you…”
Jiang Cheng caught the front of dark robes, sank forward until his head hit his brother’s chest. “Take it back, damn you, I don’t want it.” The words were blurred, buried in fabric. “Ge. I’ll shove it back into you if it’s the last thing I do.”
Ge. No one who had first heard Jiang Cheng say it was still alive. He’d screamed it as the discipline whip lashed him, screamed it to all the dead souls of Lotus Pier. Maybe Wei Wuxian heard it anyway, the ruins of promises, the shape of the words. He was crying enough for it to not matter.
Here were the last sons of Lotus Pier, combined.
“Wen-guniang.” Wei Wuxian wearily offered her the horse’s reins. He nearly melted into the dark, black on black, only a flash of white teeth as he spoke. “You sure about this?”
Wen Qing took a breath and rose, with only a little assistance from Lan Wangji. He’d been tending to Wen Qing, though from what Jiang Cheng could overhear it was mostly Wen Qing schooling him. Even the Second Jade of Lan wasn’t peerless in everything. “I’m a Wen, but I want no part of your war. You’ll find no blood on me or mine.” She bit her lip, casting a sidelong look at Jiang Cheng. He didn’t look at her.
She wasn’t lying, but what she had done had been so much worse than just bloodying her hands.
Wen Qing exhaled, mostly even. Her ghastly pallor matched Wei Wuxian’s but did not disturb her calm. This was someone long used to a certain kind of sadness. “If we can be allowed to leave, that would be more than enough.”
Lan Wangji nodded first, after a moment. Wei Wuxian followed. Jiang Cheng said nothing. The four of them stared at each other across the void, this endless ache of loss.
Somehow the gulf seemed widest for Jiang Cheng. He was the only one without allies here.
“Jiang Cheng,” Wei Wuxian tried, and Jiang Cheng slanted a look at him. “Are you going to tell Shijie?”
Jiang Cheng took a breath. His words came out toneless, brittle like ash. “No, you will. Every fucking detail.” Let him be the one to scrape himself raw. Jiang Cheng didn’t think he could survive that ever again. “She’s at Lanling. Tell her there. Or anywhere.”
Something fell in Wei Wuxian’s expression. “Any…where?” he repeated, slowly.
“There’s no Lotus Pier,” Jiang Cheng said. The words bled with all their bluntness. “It’s still occupied. No home to go back to.” For any of them.
He couldn’t ask him to stay. Couldn’t tell him he needed him. The stolen core seethed in his navel, his gut twisting under his ribs. Hadn’t Wei Wuxian paid enough for his oath? His talent, his cultivation, his spirituality, his temperament, distilled into gold and torn out of him. And in the darkness left he was still more Jiang than Jiang Cheng would ever be.
They’d been willing to die for each other and now they couldn’t breathe the same air. Who was he defending now?
“Anywhere you want,” he repeated, with an emptiness to match the sky.
Lan Wangji shot him a glacial look. “Wei Ying.” It was quiet but firm, a bedrock, a mountain. Something able to bear weight, something to be steadied on, unlike Jiang Cheng’s drowning deep. “Come back to Gusu with me.”
Wei Wuxian stared, wrung-out and wretched, at Jiang Cheng’s face. A heartbeat passed, two, ten, until silence was his answer. He did not resist as Lan Wangji pulled him away.
Maybe it was just as well. Wei Wuxian would secede from Jiang forever to let Jiang Cheng keep his core. Maybe, in exchange, he could give his brother a chance at happiness. Suibian anchored him to dried-up riverbeds, a monument to all their sins.
Jiang Cheng watched, frozen to stone, as Bichen rose, chasing distant clouds.
Beside him, Wen Qing cleared her throat. She was still clutching the stable horse’s reins. “Are you just going to let me go like this?”
“What else would you have me do? Lock you in a dungeon? Death by a thousand cuts with one of your knives?” Revenge was supposed to be sweet, but even bloodlust couldn’t fill him now. He was hollowed out and seething and drowning from the inside. “Someday, I’ll find you. I will return this core if it is the last thing I do.”
She flinched at that, trembling slightly. The threat was an empty one, but threat nonetheless. It was a big world. Besides, cultivators lived long lives if they didn’t die from external causes (politics, blades, impossible feats of medicine). Maybe they’d both outlive Wei Wuxian and render this debt moot.
He’d once thought her beautiful. Had admired her grace, her pride, the compassion that belied her ice. But now, staring at her ink-dark eyes, he thought her the most monstrous thing he had ever seen. Even Wen Ruohan only blighted the skies.
“Go, Daifu,” he said grimly. Exhaustedly. She only ever wanted to look after her family, same as he. They both failed at that. “Go find your brother. I hope the heavens are kinder to him than they were to mine.”
She bowed to him, deep and low, a doctor to the last. In the end, it was her own blood on her sleeves. “I’m sorry.” She stayed that way for a long time. “Jiang-zongzhu. Wen Qing takes her leave.”
He watched her ride off, and a piece of something like hope left with her. Jiang Cheng shook himself, like a dog, like waking from a dream. Ridiculous. It was past time for him to stop yearning for the impossible, whatever his dead parents had said. There was no approval to come from beyond the grave.
He reached into his robes for a small bundle, the silk near invisible in the dark. He’d been carrying this fantasy since Gusu.
He dropped the comb, silk and all, as Sandu took to the sky.