Chapter Text
Life on the streets had not been kind to Wèi Wúxiàn. As grateful as he was to Jiāng Fēngmián for finding him, a resentful and selfish part of him wondered why it had taken Jiāng Fēngmián four years to find him, why he hadn’t found him before the trauma of living on the streets at such a young age had time to settle deep into the marrow of his bones. His body was constantly in pain—something, somewhere, always hurt. The rational part of him reasoned that maybe his pain had nothing to do with the streets and was instead something he was born with. He’d learned early on that showing any weakness meant that it’d be targeted and used against him. So he hid his pain under bright smiles, raucous laughter, and innocent mischief. He bore his punishments quietly, waiting until he was alone to break down.
The first time his knee dislocated, he had simply pushed it back into place and continued training, ignoring the burning fire that crawled up his leg. That night, he invented a cooling talisman to keep the swelling down and never bothered stepping foot in the healing hall. No one had said anything to him about it, so he’d assumed everything was fine.
Wēn Qíng was the first person to notice Wèi Wúxiàn snapping his shoulder back into place.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, walking up to him with all the authority and gravitas of a doctor ready to paralyze him with needles and pour bitter medicines down his throat. With that kind of aura, no one could fault Wèi Wúxiàn for trying to worm his way out of the conversation.
“Ah, nothing, nothing!” he said, waving his hand lazily.
Wēn Qíng stared him down. Wèi Wúxiàn refused to be cowed.
“Do I need to bring Ā-Yuàn in here to make you behave?” she threatened.
Wèi Wúxiàn crumbled immediately. “No need for that!” he insisted, knowing from personal experience that he could never say no to Wēn Yuàn’s big, sparkly eyes and cute little face. “It’s really not that big of a deal, it happens all the time.”
“What happens all the time?” Wēn Qíng asked as she led him to sit on his hard stone bed.
“Things just fall out of place,” Wèi Wúxiàn said with a shrug. He immediately winced as the motion pulled on his sore tendons. “It’s been happening ever since I remember. Like I said, nothing terrible! I just push it back into place and carry on.”
“Your joints frequently dislocate.” She pushed him to lay down across the stone bed on his stomach.
It was phrased as less of a question and more of a statement, but Wèi Wúxiàn answered anyway. “Yeah. I think it’s because of my early childhood.” He didn’t elaborate further.
Wēn Qíng looked up from where she was carefully prodding at his shoulder with her thin, cold fingers. “You think? Has no one treated this before?”
“No,” he replied flippantly. “I was always able to put it back and no one said anything. I don’t think anyone really noticed. It’s pretty normal, right?”
There was a pause as Wēn Qíng finished assessing the damage and started applying acupuncture needles. She began at his wrist, placing one needle in his hand near his thumb before moving up his arm.
“Wèi Wúxiàn…” Wēn Qíng sighed. “No. Frequent dislocations are not normal. In fact, they are anything but normal. How did no one notice?”
Wèi Wúxiàn went to shrug, but remembered the needles and hummed instead. Wēn Qíng pressed a needle into a spot that made his entire back spasm. She paused, tapping lightly around the area until the muscle relaxed again as she murmured observations to herself.
“Your jīndān1 probably hid a lot of the usual symptoms and signs,” she mused, “and war is war. But after? Being drunk can’t explain a dislocated shoulder.”
Wèi Wúxiàn didn’t answer her. Truth was, even he was unsure how no one noticed just how broken his body was. He couldn’t give himself the credit, as he really wasn’t the best actor. Jiāng Chéng had accidentally tugged his arm out of his socket once with very little effort. He hadn’t even noticed Wèi Wúxiàn pushing it back into place with a sickening snap. Jiāng Yànlí had frowned at his weight loss and tried to get him to eat more, but eventually she got too busy to remember to keep a closer eye on him. No one had noticed his occasional limp, but that was easier to explain away with drunkenness. He doesn’t blame them, not really, but he was a little surprised. Maybe even disappointed, though he squashed that feeling as quick as it rose up.
Wēn Qíng placed the last needle and sighed.
“There’s too much to fix all at once,” she said, resigned. “Even before you were thrown in here your body was barely holding on. Now, with the shattered vertebrae in your spine, all the broken bones in your hands and feet, the cartilage tear in your hip… it will take years to heal. While the yuàn qì2 is holding you together, it’s also not letting you heal naturally. We’ll have to cleanse each part before healing it and block it off from any energy while it’s healing before moving to the next one.”
“And we can’t afford to do it all at once,” Wèi Wúxiàn said.
“You’ll die if we do it all at once,” Wēn Qíng snapped. “This has nothing to do with your cultivation, Wèi Wúxiàn. If that is all it came down to, then I would be blocking off all your meridians as we speak.”
“But Wēn Qíng—”
“There’s no use wondering,” she continued. “It won’t help anyway. Your body needs the yuàn qì to keep it from literally falling apart just as much as this settlement needs it. But neither of those things need you to be at your full power. We can start small, blocking off the meridians in your left foot and setting all the bones correctly there. You don't need a left foot to cultivate, Wèi Wúxiàn.”
“But if the Four Great Clans3 come to our door you’ll need me at my full power. You’ll need me to walk, Wēn Qíng.”
He wished he could face her, see her expressions. Why did she have to do this while having him immobilized on his stomach across his stone bed?
“Wēn Xìn can help walk you down,” Wēn Qíng sniffed. “It’s not like you move around a lot with that flute anyway.”
“Wēn Qíng, listen to me—”
“No,” she snapped. “You listen to me! I will not sit here and watch you work until your body deteriorates into dust, not after all you’ve done for my family. You will be a nice, obedient patient while I go through and try to fix all the shit broken in your own goddamn body.”
Wèi Wúxiàn sighed. He could picture the guilty glint in her eyes at the unspoken ‘all the shit Wēn Cháo broke.’
“Fine,” he relented. “We’ll start small. Just—the hands go last, okay?”
“Okay.”
It was a good plan—a great plan, even. Wēn Qíng had forgotten one small thing, though: Wèi Wúxiàn’s proclivity for trouble.
“First you let yourself get stabbed by Jiāng Zōngzhǔ4—and only break his arm in return—and now this!” she seethed. “Why did you approach Ā-Níng like that knowing you couldn’t handle a hit from him, much less being thrown into a tree? You use a goddamn flute, Wèi Wúxiàn! Why did you have to insert yourself into the battle? That is just pure stupidity! Lán Wàngjī was right there with his bright shiny jīndān to miraculously heal all the injuries he ever gets! Something that you do not have!”
“I don’t have one because you took it out of me!” Wèi Wúxiàn growled.
They both fell silent.
“You might not walk again,” Wēn Qíng whispered after a long while. “There’s too much damage. At the very least, you’ll be in constant pain every time you move. Even if I had all the tools and supplies in the world, even if you had a jīndān, I still couldn’t fix this.”
A pause.
“I’ll just use more yuàn qì to—”
“It won’t work,” she interrupted. “That is already starting to fail. Your whip wounds are opening back up, as well as the bites on your arms and legs. Wèi Wúxiàn, there’s too much it needs to hold together. Maybe you could’ve held on with just the stab wound, but this…”
“What do we need to do?” Wèi Wúxiàn rasped.
“You need to stop expending energy. Keep what is already inside you and don’t try to take in or release any more. I need more supplies. If you are to survive this, we need to be more aggressive than our original plan, focusing on multiple areas at once. You are going to be bedridden for a long time.”
“But Wēn Qíng!” Wèi Wúxiàn cried. “What about the wards? The seal? How are we going to stay safe if I am useless?”
“How are we going to stay safe if you are dead!?” she snapped. “I’d rather you useless and alive than useless and dead!”
“Why?!” he shouted with frustration. “I knew I was going to die soon anyway, why not now?”
“Do not,” Wēn Qíng said slowly, voice almost trembling, “ask me for death again.”
She stabbed a needle into his forehead and he collapsed back onto the bed.
“I am your doctor.”
Another needle, this time into the back of his neck, making his whole body go numb. The fog of pain receded, leaving Wèi Wúxiàn clearer minded than before.
“My purpose is to keep people alive.”
Another two in his shoulders.
“I will not stand by and watch you kill yourself to save my people.”
Wèi Wúxiàn tried to reply but found he couldn’t feel his face.
“We will continue the discussion of your treatment plan once you are able to see reason,” she stated primly before flicking him with a finger and promptly knocking him out.
Three days later, Wēn Qíng took the needles out of Wèi Wúxiàn and poured several bowls of medicine down his throat before allowing him to speak a single word.
“You are so cruel to me, Qíng-jiě,” he whined.5
“Don’t test me, Wèi Wúxiàn!”
“Ah, Wēn Qíng…”
He became somber at the tortured expression on her face.
“Alright, alright. I’ll behave.”
“Can you?” she asked with faux disbelief.
Immediately, the previous high tension released into familiar playfulness.
“Rude,” he laughed.
She rolled her eyes and brought out her medical bag. Wēn Qíng poked and prodded at him, had Wēn Níng turn him onto his stomach so she could inspect his back and then flipped him back over again to test his reflexes. Her expression became blanker after each response until she almost looked like Lán Wàngjī, face carved of stone jade.
“So, what’s the diagnosis? Will I live?” he asked softly, grinning a little at the end.
“You’ll live,” Wēn Qíng snorted, her face softening a little before pinching into an expression of guilt and regret. “I can’t say for certain, but… it’s highly unlikely you’ll ever be able to walk normally again. You certainly won’t be able to take more than a few steps without help. These types of injuries are impossible to fully heal, and there are often good and bad days. Some days you’ll be able to get by with just a cane, but others…”
“I see,” was his only reply.
“Wèi Wúxiàn, I’m—”
“Don’t,” he interrupted, voice still soft. “It’s my fault, not yours. You were right; what kind of idiot puts himself into a battle with the strongest fierce corpse ever created with only a flute?”
He laughed, but it was mirthless. Wēn Níng shifted guiltily at his sister’s side, wringing his cold hands.
“It’s not your fault,” Wèi Wúxiàn repeated, this time directing his words to Wēn Níng. He turned to Wēn Qíng, his expression grave. “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Wēn Qíng replied honestly. She sighed, rubbing at the tired lines of her gaunt face. “Get some rest. I’ll talk with the others and see what they want to do.”
“I won’t let you turn yourselves in,” Wèi Wúxiàn said firmly. “If you try, I will follow and give myself to the Jīn alongside you.”
Wēn Qíng rolled her eyes. “Stubborn ass.”
Wèi Wúxiàn’s laugh was fond this time. He watched the two siblings leave the cave with a thoughtful expression, but before long he felt his eyes droop thanks to whatever medicine Wēn Qíng had forced him to choke down. His sleep that night was dreamless.
He was woken up the next morning by Wēn Yuàn using his stomach as a stage for whatever story he was concocting with the butterfly toy Lán Wàngjī had given him and the terrible looking tiger toy Wèi Wúxiàn had made. He waited for the boy to notice him, watching him hum and mumble to himself with a fond smile. Finally, Wēn Yuàn looked up and gasped, his eyes shining as his mouth split into a gummy smile.
“Xiàn-gēge!” Wēn Yuàn shouted in glee, abandoning his toys to hug Wèi Wúxiàn’s neck with surprising gentleness.
“Ā-Yuàn! Be careful with him!” Wēn Qíng scolded.
“Hello, little radish!” Wèi Wúxiàn rasped. “Have you missed me?”
“Mmhm,” Wēn Yuàn hummed into his ear. “Qíng-jiě said Xiàn-gēge is sleepy and can’t play, but now you’re awake!”
“That’s right,” he chuckled, wanting to lift an arm to hold Wēn Yuàn closer to him but being unable to gather the strength to do so.
Every part of him hurt, from his head to his toes. Just laying still was agonizing, the pain so deep in his bones it seemed impossible it would ever leave. He bit back a wince as Wēn Yuàn shifted next to him, putting just a little too much weight on Wèi Wúxiàn’s bad shoulder.
“Wēn Yuàn!” Wēn Qíng called sharply.
The three-year-old flinched, his eyes going big and glassy with burgeoning tears just as Wēn Níng came and gently swept him off the bed and out of the cave, his little sniffles echoing across the rockface. Wèi Wúxiàn watched the boy leave until he couldn’t anymore, while Wēn Qíng watched him with an unreadable expression.
“Where does it hurt?” she asked.
“Everywhere,” he admitted, being truthful for once.
Wēn Qíng pursed her lips together and turned around, throwing some herbs into her mortar and smashing the pestle down with more force than necessary.
“We have come to a decision,” she said, not turning around.
Wèi Wúxiàn watched her back, seeing the tension in her shoulders even as she visibly tried to calm herself.
“Remember that idea you had for the stronger wards? The one where you couldn’t figure out how to make it permeable on both sides?”
He remembered.
“We’ll spend the rest of the year preparing as much as possible. Come the first frost, our sect will announce that our founding patriarch and first zhǎngmén,6 Wèi Wúxiàn, died in his sleep from injuries sustained while destroying the Yīn Hǔ Fú.7 The sect will enter a period of seclusion to mourn their founder, and the wards will be enacted. While we are protected from the rest of the world, you will finally rest properly. Once I deem you stable enough, then you can work on fixing the wards to allow us to cross through.”
Wèi Wúxiàn stared at Wēn Qíng with wide, shocked eyes. Before he could formulate a single word, Wēn Qíng continued, still mashing herbs in her mortar.
“We will tell the citizens of Yílíng our plans and barter with them—seeds, grain, cloth, a few animals, and their discretion in return for closing off the mountain and containing all the yuàn qì inside our borders.”
Finally, Wēn Qíng turned around and forced the medicine she had just finished down Wèi Wúxiàn’s throat. Once he was done grimacing, she stepped back and waited.
“Sect?” he croaked. “Zhǎngmén? It won’t work.”
“Why not?” she retorted.
“Why? Well—because—it just won’t!”
“Give me a reason, Wèi Wúxiàn. Poke a hole in it.”
“We’ll starve.”
“We have survived thus far.”
“What if I never figure out the wards?” he asked, his voice unusually meek.
“You will,” was her confident reply.
“The townsfolk won’t take our deal.”
“Sìshū8 thinks otherwise, and I agree. You’ve seen how they react to us, to Ā-Yuàn. They’re wary, yes, but that’s only because we have not told them anything. We could be preparing to slaughter them in their sleep, for all they know. Once they know we’re not a threat, that we’re doing them a favor, they’ll come around.”
“Why do you seem so sure this will work?” he demanded.
“I’m not! I have no idea if this will work, or if we’ll all starve come winter! But there’s no other choice, Wèi Wúxiàn. We either take the chance of starvation or we die by the hands of the oh-so-righteous Four Great Clans. There’s no other way this will end. They won’t stop as long as you and the Yīn Hǔ Fú survive. You know that!”
“Wēn Qíng, I don’t think it can be destroyed without taking me with it,” Wèi Wúxiàn murmured.
“That’s why we’re using your ward,” Wēn Qíng said. “You didn’t want to do it in the first place because it could drain the Yīn Hǔ Fú of all its energy.”
“I don’t know that for sure.”
“We don't know anything for sure, Wèi Wúxiàn. All we can do is take the leap of faith and pray to our ancestors that it works out.”
Her piece said, Wēn Qíng left the cave, allowing Wèi Wúxiàn the space to think on her words. He knew he wouldn’t go against the decision the Wēn remnants had come to; he wasn’t their zhǎngmén nor their patriarch, no matter what the jiānghú9 seemed to believe. The hardest part was acknowledging what this decision meant.
It was already unlikely he would see Jiāng Yànlí or Jiāng Chéng again, but there had always been a possibility. With this new ward, he wouldn’t see them for years, possibly ever again if he didn’t survive whatever treatment Wēn Qíng had planned. He thought he’d already accepted this possibility, but he still held some hope. Now, it was being crushed into dust. At least this way, those he cared about will be spared any unnecessary grief. They will mourn him, but eventually that pain will subside. There won’t be any ‘what-ifs’ or hope left for them to meaninglessly cling onto. Wèi Wúxiàn steeled his heart, knowing there was no better alternative, and finally allowed himself to succumb to sleep once more.
One week before Wèi Wúxiàn was expected at Jīnlín Tái to attend Jīn Líng’s one month celebration, a resounding explosion echoed from Luànzàng Hill, sending all of Yílíng into a frantic haze of fear, thinking the mountain was about to fall down around them.
Wèi Wúxiàn never arrived at Jīnlín Tái, leaving Jīn Zixūn and his army waiting at Qióngqí path until Jīn Zixuān showed up and dragged them all back. Some days after, word finally reached the Great Clans of the mysterious explosion. Jīn Guāngshàn immediately sent cultivators to investigate. Upon arriving in Yílíng, the Jīn cultivators found an impenetrable ward around Luànzàng Hill, making it impossible for anyone to step past the foot of the mountain. Posted on a tree just in front of the shimmering ward was an edict that forever changed the jiānghú.
Declaration from the Sǐhuī Mountain Sect
Wèi Wúxiàn, the Yílíng Lǎozǔ and first Zhǎngmén of the Sǐhuī Mountain Sect, destroyed his most regretted invention, the Yīn Hǔ Fú, as a sign of goodwill to the Great Clans. He was fatally injured in the resulting blast of energy from the Yīn Hǔ Fú’s destruction. After days of suffering, Wèi Wúxiàn succumbed to his injuries.
To enforce the sect’s indefinite period of seclusion to mourn our loss, the Yìng Barrier10 has been risen around the borders of Sǐhuī Mountain, formerly named Luànzàng Hill.11 Any attempts to break the barrier will be met with equal amounts of force.
—Wēn Qíng, second Zhǎngmén of the Sǐhuī Mountain Sect
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金丹 - jīndān: (alt. golden core) A concentration of líng qì (spiritual energy) in the lower dāntián, used in cultivation.
Saint. "‘Cores’ in Chinese Cultivation Novels." Immortal Mountain, 20 Nov. 2016. go back⤴ - 怨气 - yuàn qì: lit. “hatred vapor.” yuàn qì. go back⤴
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I’m using the term ‘clans’ here for [世 - shì] or [世家 - shìjiā]. It’s important to this story that a clear difference is made between clan [世家 - shìjiā] and sect [门派 - ménpài].
A quick explanation is that their organization is different; a ménpài has a strict master-disciple relationship with a rigid seniority system with the disciple relationships clearly defined, while a shìjiā is organized by blood ties. In a ménpài, the best martial artists have higher ranks and are selected with good moral character as a priority. In a shìjiā, blood ties are more important than character or skill. Yúnmèng Jiāng, Qīnghé Niè, etc. all prioritize blood ties, making them shìjiā or ‘clans’ and not ménpài or ‘sects.’
tamingwangxian. “Difference between sect (门派 ménpài) and clans (氏 shì /世家 shìjiā).” Tumblr, 21 Feb. 2021. go back⤴ - 宗主 - zōngzhǔ: head of a clan / clan leader. go back⤴
- 姐 - jiě: older sister. go back⤴
- 掌门 - zhǎngmén: lit. “palm door,” sect leader. go back⤴
- 阴虎符 - Yīn Hǔ Fú or ‘Yīn Tiger Tally.’ go back⤴
- 四叔 - sì shū: lit. “fourth father's younger brother,” fourth uncle. go back⤴
- 江湖 - jiānghú: lit. “rivers and lakes,” a section of society operating independently of mainstream society, out of reach of the law; the world in which wuxia tales play out. go back⤴
- 映 - Yìng: to reflect (light) / to shine / to project (an image onto a screen etc). go back⤴
- I’m renaming the Burial Mounds [乱葬岗 - Luànzàng Gǎng] to Dead Ash Mountain [死灰山 - Sǐhuī Shān], taken from the idiom [死灰复燃 - Sǐ huī fù rán: dead ashes rekindle; something lost or lifeless revives unexpectedly / a resurgence or revival after defeat]. The name was inspired by the Cāng Qióng Mountain Sect [苍穹山派] in Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System. Is this a good name? I hope so! If not, PLEASE tell me and I will fix it. go back⤴