Chapter Text
The cave was dark as Wuxian watched Jiang Cheng angrily make scathing comments about the Wens he’d rescued from that horrible prison camp. He sighed and let him continue, it was easier than arguing, and Wuxian was tired.
“Wei Wuxian! I can’t protect you if you do this!” Jiang Cheng growled.
He closed his eyes, hearing the desperation in his didi’s voice and replied, “Then don’t. Tell the sects that I defected. That way, my actions won’t bring shame to Yunmeng Jiang.”
He’d known that this was a long time coming, the Jins were after the Seal, and it was far too easy to isolate him, he knew that he was playing right into their hands, but he didn’t think that he had any other option. He wanted so badly to let his siblings help, but he’d caused enough trouble for Yunmeng Jiang. If Yu-Furen was still alive, she would’ve probably struck his name from the Sect registry a long time ago.
Jiang Cheng whacked him on the head and scowled, “A-jie would kill me if I let you do that, and I’ll break your legs if you suggest something as stupid as that ever again.”
He blinked, he had not expected that, “Aww, Chengcheng, are you worried for your shi-ge? You-”
Jiang Cheng scoffed, “You’re not my shi-ge, you’re my da-ge, and A-jie’s di-di, get that through your thick head before anything else, stupid.”
This was what he’d always wanted, what he’d never been allowed to have. His eyes burned as he instinctively flinched back to see if Yu-Furen had overheard, “Jiang Cheng! You can’t-”
Jiang Cheng roared, “Yes, I can! A-jie can! Wei Wuxian, you can! A-Niang is not going to hurt you anymore!”
Yu-Furen would be so mad if she heard her son say that. He grabbed Jiang Cheng’s collar, berating him, “Take it back, you can’t just speak of your Muqin like that, Jiang Wanyin!”
His hands were jerked off, “My only regret is that I didn’t do it when she was alive, Wei-”
How dare he, for years he’d accepted his role in the Jiang household without complaint, maintained the balance to keep himself safe and he just wanted to pretend that it could be erased? He hissed at Jiang Cheng, “If you couldn’t do it when she was alive, don’t you dare to now that she’s dead-”
He gasped and refused to call what he was feeling fear. Yu-Furen would whip him until that damned whip killed him this time and-
Jiang Cheng grabbed his shoulders, shaking him as he said, “Wei Wuxian! A-Xian! I’m sorry I was too much of a coward to say it when I should have! You’re my da-ge! In fact, I’ll add you to the family registry, and since you’re adopted after I was born, you’ll be my di-di, deal with it!”
Wuxian stared, and opened his mouth, before closing it again. He blinked a few times before delicately saying, “A-Cheng! You- I can’t be your di-di!”
Jiang Cheng scowled, “Watch me! And call me da-ge! Otherwise I’ll break your legs! Now stop this temper tantrum of yours and come home!”
The jovial mood suddenly dropped, he remembered the anger he’d felt when he saw what the Jins were doing to these people, he remembered how dismissive Jiang Cheng had been about the treatment of the civilians in those monstrous prison camps.
He seethed, “I rescued these people from a prison camp, Jiang Zongzhu. Elderly and a child! Did you know that there were more children among them, that none of them survived other than A-Yuan?” If Jiang Cheng wants him back, these people will come with, “I’m not leaving them.”
Jiang Cheng understood what Wuxian had just said to him, he looked tired as he asked, the defeat making him defensive and angry, “You want me to house these Wen dogs?! The Wens slaughtered Yunmeng Jiang, Wei Wuxian-”
Did Jiang Cheng really think that Wuxian would’ve shown any mercy to the Wen Dogs who’d killed his shidis and shimeis in cold blood? Did he doubt his loyalty to Yunmeng Jiang, even after everything he’d done?
He clenched his fist in anger as he growled back, “Do you think they would be left alive had they participated in the massacre, is that what you think of me?” He spat at him, “Jiang Zongzhu.”
Jiang Cheng looked ashamed as he stared at him, “I’m sorry.”
Wuxian scoffed, “If that is all, we’ll arrange a duel, and you can tell everyone that I defected. You know the way out.”
Yanli had patiently listened to her di-di as he explained what had happened when he’d demanded an explanation from A-Xian at the Burial Mounds, a place where no one could come back alive from, but A-Cheng had, just like that. A-Xian was building a home there, just like that. She wondered just how her brothers did what was considered a nightmare for cultivators for centuries. She knew that it was only because of the new cultivation method A-Xian had mastered.
She also knew that even though her di-di was resourceful, the Burial Mounds were not a place to live in, and that A-Cheng and she needed to plan quickly and efficiently to bring their wayward brother home where he belonged.
She looked at A-Cheng as he stomped around in his office muttering about foolish idiot brothers who went around doing stuff without telling anyone. She didn’t scoff at the hypocrisy, but it was a near thing.
Yanli cleared her throat to catch his attention before reminding him, “A-Cheng, A-Xian told you what he needed to do in order to come home, didn’t he?”
Her di-di scowled at her, “A-jie! He wants to bring the Wens here with him! And I can’t let any Wens into Louts Pier, not after what happened! Anyone else and I would’ve, but the Wens, they-”
She pressed her lips together as her di-di’s voice cracked.
She wished she was good enough to forgive a bunch of elderly Wens for what their kin had done, but she wasn’t, A-Xian had been the nice one between the three of them. Some days, she wished that she could take away some of her own selfishness and shove it into A-Xian, if only so that he wouldn’t get taken advantage of every now and then, but alas her di-di was more stubborn than both A-Cheng and her combined.
Yanli was saddened by the fate of the Wen who were treated cruelly at the prison camps, but she had no love lost for them. The Wens hadn’t cared about sparing any of the Yunmeng Jiang disciples. While she didn’t want to become what the Wen had been, she would not go out of the way to save them. If only A-Xian was a little less kind.
A-Xian wouldn’t leave the Wens alone, so there was no choice, those Wen would have to be brought back to Lotus Pier, but she had to confirm, “A-Cheng, the Wens at the Burial Mounds, were they a part of the-” she choked, unable to speak about that night even after so many years, “I know that A-Xian wouldn’t have saved them had they been. If they were Wen Qing’s people, they’re Dafan Wen, which means that they’re healers, right?”
The Dafan Wen were famous before the Sunshot campaign for their medical cultivation prowess. They could use healers. While their numbers were not what they had been before the massacre, they were growing steadily, in fact, they had grown significantly over the campaign, but right now, most of their disciples were fighters.
They were rebuilding the sect now that the fighting was done, and they would need more than just fighters. They would need healers, masters, workers to once again become a smoothly running great sect.
She has trained for this her entire life, she was supposed to be Jin-Furen, and A-Niang would’ve rather cut off her own hands rather than send Yanli into the vipers pit that was the Koi-Tower unprepared.
While her future as Jin-Furen was no longer a path, she would not let her skill go to waste. A-Niang was no longer there, and Lotus pier needed a Jiang-Furen.
Jiang Yanli was more than ready to step up to fill those shoes.
Yes, bringing the Dafan Wen here would give them just what they need. Plus it will get A-Xian back home, which is even better. Helping A-Xian and Yunmeng Jiang at the same time.
But A-Cheng let out a sob, “A-jie, please, they are Wens, I can’t, even if I understand that they’re innocent, would our dead understand that? The people who died, the people whose bodies were desecrated without any respect? The living can be reasoned with, but the dead cannot, A-jie!”
That- would be a problem, a big one. One that she hadn’t considered, she closed her eyes and rebuked herself silently. This often happens, she is used to not thinking about the cultivation side of matters, since hers is so weak and she’d often been left out of issues which involved cultivation issues. That is something which will have to change now. It was something A-Niang was going to train her with before the- before, but now that was no longer an option.
A-Cheng and Yanli both have been left with the roles of Zongzhu and Furen with incomplete training. A-Xian is the Head disciple, has been for years, he’s the only one of them three properly ready for their roles in the rebuilding sect.
Yanli didn’t know if their dead sect members would react violently to the Dafan Wens coming to Lotus Pier, but if A-Cheng said that they would, she would believe it. He wouldn’t lie to her about it, especially not since he also wanted A-Xian back.
There had to be a middle ground somewhere.
She tentatively asked, “A-Cheng, what if they weren’t Wens?”
A-Cheng looked annoyed, “A-jie, I just told you that if they were anyone but Wens, I would’ve brought them back before that idiot was done speaking!”
She lightly smacked his head, “I meant that what if they gave up their name to take a different one? The Dafan Wens already are much removed from the Qishan Wens, do you think they would give up the name Wen if it offered them a more peaceful life?”
A-Cheng thought about it for a while, his eyes narrowing as he worked out the details in his head. She fondly remembered the days when both her di-dis would sit on the pier, working out problems assigned to them by shifu. It often ended with one of them kicking the other off into the water, or with them pranking some poor disciple passing by.
When he was done thinking, he slowly said, “That could work, A-jie, it would be perfect” He grinned, “I have a plan, A-jie! You distract that idiot with your soup, and I will talk to Wen Qing about her people taking the name Wei, she seems like a sensible person, and this mess could be sorted soon” He scowled, “Now we just need those snakes at Koi Tower to look away for a second, and then I’m dragging our idiot brother back kicking and screaming.”
The mental image is funny enough that she lets out a relieved giggle, before saying, “A-Cheng, I want to visit the Burial Mounds.”
A-Cheng blinked at her as if wondering that she was stupid, before saying, “A-jie, that place is not the old man’s lotus pond that we can just sneak into and steal from, it is the Burial Mounds!”
She sighed, “Then how is A-Xian living there? Besides, we need to meet up to make a proper plan about how to go forward, and I refuse to do that without involving him in the process, A-Cheng.”
The idea of stuffing her di-di full of soup before carting him back to Lotus Pier is surprisingly satisfying, but bringing back all of Wen Qing’s (surviving) people would take some more planning.
A-Cheng sighed, “Alright, A-jie, I guess we’re going to the Burial Mounds in a few days to make sure our idiot brother doesn’t do something stupid.”
She smiled brightly, “That’s the spirit, A-Cheng!”
Her di-di muttered, “Spirit, ghost, yao, you name it whatever, it is a headache is what it is.”
She watched him leave the room, muttering to himself about reckless siblings who’ll turn him grey before his time and her heart burst with fondness. Her prickly di-di was the most adorable person ever. She turned to start preparing for the journey she will soon be taking with her brother.
Supplies for the Wens, because although she knew her elder di-di was good at making do with what he had, the reason for such skills always causing a wave of melancholy to pass through her, A-Xian had left with nothing but literally the robes on his back when he’d whisked away the prisoners and that could not sustain many people for too long.
If the Wens would be coming to Lotus Pier as soon as possible, the supplies they needed wouldn’t be the heavy ones, but rather, daily ones, food for the next few days, robes, maybe medicine for the wounded. Money, to set up transport for all the people from the Burial Mounds to their new home.
The beginning of a plan was forming in her mind, and if everything went according to it, she would soon have both her brothers home. Things were only going to get better from now on.
She let herself feel happy for now. Everything else will be tackled one step at a time.
Wen Qing listened patiently to what Jiang guniang and Jiang Zongzhu had to say to her people, a chance to live a better life, a peaceful one.
A chance to be accepted into the society as members of Yunmeng Jiang rather than be shunned by everyone as they tried their hand at surviving the Burial Mounds.
The only catch being that they would have to give up their name.
She looked at her remaining people, the ones still alive, at the thin faces which were once full with life and smiles, at the starved bodies which used to look stronger than anything just a few years ago, and wondered, if the chance at safety despite the risk was enough to shed the name she’d carried her entire life.
The name Wen had once been a source of pride, of comfort, which came from knowing that their family who lived in the Dafan hills were healers, that her A-die and A-niang would always be there to take care of her and her di-di.
Then her bobo started making power grabs, which weren’t something she really understood until it was too late. Until her parents were gone and her cooperation to her bobo’s schemes determined the safety of her di-di.
Wen Qing had been scared. She had been living in absolute terror for a very long time now.
Maybe she could’ve left it all behind and run away, far away from everything, from her bobo and been a rogue medical cultivator, helping people she came across on her way and roam around the Jianghu as a free person, unbound by any responsibilities other than those of a Daifu.
But she couldn’t just leave behind her di-di at the hands of her bobo, and she couldn’t take him and run. So she stayed, a filial child, sister, niece.
But as a filial niece, she couldn’t hate her bobo, could she?
Could she keep playing this political game of cat and mouse with family?
She couldn’t.
So she started thinking of Qishan Wen as separate from Dafan Wen.
It made things easier. It gave her an excuse during the war to not let her bobo use her people as pawns in the stupid war which was doing nothing but piling bodies and hurting people.
She was a Dafan Wen, which is why she helped Wei Wuxian (who’d been kind to her di-di instead of ridiculing him, all those years ago) instead of killing him like a Qishan Wen disciple would have done.
Being a Dafan Wen was why Wei Wuxian helped her save her di-di and the remaining people from that godforsaken prison camp.
But being a Wen was why everyone wanted them dead.
Them being Wens was why Wei Wuxian had to come back to a place which haunts him even more than the core she had ripped out of him all those years ago and her di-di held him down.
It still makes her sick. She had thought of that procedure to help the people who’d been hurt by Wen Zhuliu. The man himself had given her insight into what his powers did, sick with the guilt of hurting people, but unwilling to go against the orders of the man he was loyal to. Never could have either of them predicted that the person donating their core would have to remain awake for it. Never had Wen Zhuliu been ordered to destroy the core of an unconscious person, he hadn’t realised that spiritual energy reacted differently when inert.
She had wanted to stop when she realised, but Wei Wuxian wanted to save his di-di and what could she have done against that plea, she knew that she would do that and more for her di-di, she had done more for her di-di under the manipulations of her bobo.
So she ignored the bile rising up her throat, cut out his core, and gave it to Jiang Wanyin, hoping against hope that it worked, that the cruel world let a broken boy save his di-di.
After the surgery was done, she destroyed the cursed paper which had documented the hypothetical procedure, and refrained from making notes on the surgery she’d performed, swearing that it would never happen again if she could help it.
A part of her hated herself for doing what Wei Wuxian had asked of her. Of crippling one of the strongest cultivators she’d ever worked with, of ripping away years of his efforts just like that.
She would hate Wei Wuxian for making her do it too, but she thought about A-Ning and understood just why he did it.
Wen Qing didn’t think it was possible for any cultivator to fear anything more than losing their golden core, but she stood corrected as she watched Wei Wuxian lead her people into the Burial Mounds.
The way he flinched from horrors only he could see made her wish to protect him from whatever scared him. The familiarity with which he led them to a safe space inside the Burial Mounds made it chillingly clear to her.
The rumours of Wen Chao throwing Wei Wuxian into the Burial Mounds? They were true.
Wei Wuxian was the only person ever to walk out alive from the Burial Mounds. He was the only person who cared to get her people out of the prison camp everyone was willing to let them rot in.
(He promised her to do the impossible for her, just as she had done for him, all those years ago. Her di-di’s life for his di-di’s life)
But even the most weary of her people could see that it was taking a toll on him, that being in the Burial Mounds was hurting him, that siphoning away the resentment bit by bit so that her people could stay alive was withering him away. They knew that they were living on borrowed time.
The decision was the simplest one that the Dafan Wen had ever made.
She looked at popo, at fourth uncle, at third aunt. They nodded at her. She knew that if she looked at the other elders, they would also nod.
She looked at Wei Wuxian, who was looking small in a way that felt wrong.
She realised with a pang in her heart that he didn’t have any blood relatives left, no one he could really call his family.
She understood that Wei Wuxian had saved her people because he was righteous like that, he could have easily saved only A-Ning, leaving behind everyone else. He wasn’t related to anyone here, but for his kindness, the Dafan Wen would’ve slowly folded him into their family.
Seems like she was wrong, the Dafan Wen wouldn’t be adopting Wei Wuxian into their family. It would be the other way around.
She smiled, let her eyes soften, and said, “Wei Wuxian, I have a di-di, who’s shy and silent. I would love to have another mischievous and unruly one. New experiences and all.”
The laugh he let loose sounded like a sob as he said, “Aiya Wen Qing! By the rules of Yunmeng adoption, you will be my mei-mie, not jie-jie.”
Trust this fool to make a joke in a matter as serious as this, “Wei Wuxian! Don’t spout nonsense, I’m older than you, I am not calling you ge-ge, you really lost some brain when you-”
Jiang Yanli coughed politely to break the bickering. How did she do that, could she teach her? Was that something that could be learnt, or were some people just born with perfect manners?
Jiang Yanli said, “Wen Qing, A-Xian is speaking of the fact that when children are adopted, their position in the family is counted by when they are adopted.”
What?
Jiang Yanli turned to look at Wei Wuxian as she spoke, “However, since A-Xian will be adopting Wen Qing as a sister rather than as his parents’ daughter, the family registry will mark her as the older sister.”
Wei Wuxian pouted, why was he such a feared man, again?
Those people clearly had never even a sichen with him.
He sulkily said, “But, shijie! I really wanted to have a prickly mei-mei, I already have a prickly di-di. Look at Chengcheng scowling behind you! And then I would have Wen Qing, giving me a full set-”
“Wei Wuxian!” Her exclamation was drowned out by Jiang Wanyin’s embarrassed voice saying the same thing. She was so glad someone else also understood her pain.
She could’ve done without the awkward eye contact she shared with the sect leader though.
Popo took pity on her and said to Wei Wuxian, “Wei-gongzi, we, the people of the Dafan Wen, would be honoured to become a part of your family” She bowed down, deeper than she had for even bobo, “We’re grateful that you’re opening your home to us all.”
Wei Wuxian rushed to pull her back into standing properly, chuckling awkwardly as he said, “Wen guniang! You and I will be family soon, please do not bow to me for this.”
Popo smiled shrewdly as she parried back, “Then you must also start calling me popo from now on, Wuxian.”
He scoffed, “Fine. You win, Wen-popo!”
Jiang Yanli teased, “A-Xian, you can’t call her that, she will be Wei-popo as soon as we finish the adoption.”
Wei Wuxian gaped at her, and then scowled, “Shijie! You can’t tease me like that, Xianxian is just three!”
Wen Qing knew for a fact that he was not three years old. Unless, was he counting from when Wen Qing had carved out a piece of him-
Jiang Yanli stopped her spiraling by saying, “Three seems a bit too much” she laughed melodiously, “Shijie thinks that Xianxian is only one!”
Oh- It’s a joke between the two of them. She rolled her eyes at him for making her worry.
Popo laughed, “If Xianxian is only one year old, can this one call him A-Xian?”
Her new di-di’s eyes widened as he shyly smiled, before nodding his yes to popo.
Wen Qing closed her eyes in relief, everything will be alright. She could rest now, knowing that her people will be fine.
Wei Qing had a nice ring to it.