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The Other Mountain - ao3 - Chapter 28

Pairing: Lan Qiren/Wen Ruohan

Warning Tags on Ao3

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Wen Ruohan had long since passed the point of ever admitting that he was afraid.

His vanity would simply not permit it. After all, he was Wen Ruohan, the sect leader of the mighty Qishan Wen, the near-god, the would-be tyrannical ruler of the cultivation world. He had outstripped all others, his cultivation perfected far beyond what any of the rest could achieve. Perhaps it might have once been acceptable to be afraid when he was younger, when he was just one among many jockeying for position and leadership, but once he’d passed his first lifetime, he’d left such petty human things as fear far behind. Such feelings were as far beneath him as ants to a giant.

He would, however, admit to having some…concern regarding the upcoming battle with Qingheng-jun.

Other people might be able to comfort themselves with the presence of an army at their command, thinking to themselves that they would be able to simply overcome their enemy through force of numbers, but Wen Ruohan did not permit himself any such illusions. Qingheng-jun might be insane, Wen Ruohan had no doubt about that, but he was still immensely clever: he would not let himself be caught out in a bad position like that, taken by surprise.

He’d find a way to force a one-on-one fight.

And given Wen Ruohan’s current condition, it would be a fair fight, the likes of which Wen Ruohan hadn’t known in decades.

Qingheng-jun was after all an accomplished cultivator, talented and promising, and unlike the majority of such cultivators, who got weighed down with the worldly concerns of night-hunting and sect business and married life, he had spent ten solid years in seclusion focusing on nothing but growing his power and refining his techniques. He was much younger and less experienced than Wen Ruohan, to be sure, with much less time to have built up his power and knowledge – but Wen Ruohan, for all his own immense innate talent, was one of those cultivators that devoted much of his time to worldly affairs. He had always cared very much about making sure his sect took its rightful position as first in the world, and furthermore he had used up too much of his spiritual energy fighting the landslide; although the level of his internal strength had not been damaged, it would be months before he recovered enough qi to make proper use of much of it.

The prospect of such a duel would have been different if Wen Ruohan was still at the height of his own power, capable of miracles. If that were the case, even Qingheng-jun with his ten years of unbroken seclusion would pose no real threat to him. But as it was, there was every chance, in his weakened state, that the two of them would balance out in terms of strength. Nor did Wen Ruohan have any advantage in terms of temperament: they were both ruthless, both cruel, even vicious, meaning that false appeals to morality would be insufficient to distract Qingheng-jun long enough to win an advantage, the way they might if used against others.

A fair fight indeed.

Wisdom and experience against youth and promising talent – that was always a tricky match-up. Only fate could say who would come out ahead in the end.

This particular match-up was also particularly pernicious to Wen Ruohan. As a master of arrays, he relied more on having spiritual energy in his fighting style than most cultivators, since arrays and talismans both required ample spiritual energy to use effectively. In contrast, Qingheng-jun was a cultivator that specialized in the sword; while swordplay benefited from the use of spiritual energy, it was in the end a sword – failing everything else, it could always be used simply to stab one’s opponent.

Wen Ruohan could use a sword, of course. What cultivator couldn’t? But it wasn’t his preference, and he was a Wen, innately self-absorbed and self-indulgent – although he didn’t completely neglect his swordplay, he hardly trained in it with the consistency that Lan Qiren did, as reliable as any clock even with his second choice in weapon. On the contrary, Wen Ruohan always played to his strengths: whenever possible, he would much rather use his arrays, relying on his brilliance and his techniques, refined over the years to near perfection, than anything else.

Only this time, he couldn’t.

Wen Ruohan’s most powerful weapon, the black sun, was absolutely out of the question at the moment. It was an immense power, but an equally immense drain, and it fought against him as much as it did the rest of the world that it so thoroughly scorned. If he tried to summon it now, when the question of who would win that battle was murky and unclear, he would only be risking his own doom, and quite possibly that of the entire world. Naturally that was unacceptable – Wen Ruohan might be ruthless and tyrannical, but he wanted to rule the world, not destroy it. Moreover, he was an orthodox cultivator, not some sort of demonic cultivator that fueled their own power upon the deaths of others; carelessness, or even recklessness, with the state of the world would only damage his cultivation and make the bad result he feared even more likely.

Of course, the black sun was far from being his only weapon. He had his usual arrays, and plenty of less usual ones, but even with those, he would need to be measured with their use in a way he’d long since grown unaccustomed to. With limited spiritual energy available, he would have to dole them out sparingly, wisely, and supplement them with his sword – an unfortunate combination that pitted his weakness against Qinhgeng-jun’s strength.

In other words, a match against Qingheng-jun would be like fighting with one hand tied behind his back.

As a result, Wen Ruohan was…appropriately cautious. Not afraid, of course, but wary, vigilant, concerned. Presupposing nothing, not even victory.

He was less concerned now, after last night.

Lan Qiren had been – magnificent.

It was only to be expected, naturally, as no one that Wen Ruohan had chosen to give his heart to would be anything less. And yet, even with that in mind, he could safely say that his expectations, already high, had nevertheless been surpassed in every possible respect. Even Wen Ruohan with all of his many years of experience could definitively say that he had never experienced anything like that before.

It wasn’t just the sex, though that had been excellent as always, or even the unusual intimacy of bedding someone he felt he could genuinely trust and who genuinely trusted him – even if he just focused purely on the practical, the results of their dual cultivation had vastly exceeded anything Wen Ruohan might have anticipated. Lan Qiren had tackled dual cultivation with the same facility with steep learning curves that he’d applied to learning about politics or sex, and as a result, the power they’d been able to generate from it, the power they’d both shared…! Their cultivation techniques were not the most naturally compatible, but they had made it work, and oh, how very well it had worked!

Wen Ruohan was certainly nowhere near to being back to where he had been before he had blown all his spiritual energy on destroying the landslide, but he was confident that Cangse Sanren’s estimate of half a year or more to regain his power had been reduced considerably, and all over the course of a single, highly enjoyable evening. An evening that could be repeated in the future, both before he regained his power and yet again afterwards, finally giving him a chance to see if Lan Qiren’s exceptionally pure golden core would have any sort of effect on increasing his own power beyond the point that he had managed to get by himself…

The simple fact of the matter was that Wen Ruohan loved power, and always had. He had many times been accused of loving it more than anything else, whether wives or children or even sect, and he had to admit, though never aloud, that there might be a grain of truth in that accusation. To have two things he loved together, power and Lan Qiren both…it was as heady an aphrodisiac as he could imagine.

(Also, Lan Qiren’s reaction to finding his own power so substantially increased had been just as funny as Wen Ruohan had been anticipating. He had no regrets about sharing the power equally between them, and nothing would change that, no matter how many complaints of But it was supposed to go to you! or Surely you know I do not have a need for it or even the plaintive But how do I make the glowing stop?! Lan Qiren made.)

Even the song Lan Qiren had written for him had been beyond anything Wen Ruohan had anticipated.

The sound of it had been nothing like anything he was expecting, to the extent he’d expected anything. He’d assumed, he supposed, that the music Lan Qiren wrote with him in mind would be much like his reputation: intense but gloomy, moody and temperamental, unstable and vicious, possibly even somewhat discordant, the lurking insanity slipping its leash and showing its face to the world. Only it had slipped his mind that Lan Qiren, perhaps alone in the world, did not see him that way – and so the song was something else entirely.

It had been intense, to be sure. But it had been striking and grandiose rather than miserable, the music immediately and immensely compelling, extremely complicated in a way that made it impossible to pay attention to anything else, music that thrummed beneath the skin and swept the listener away with its enthusiasm. It was powerful and moving, it filled the ear with joy and sped the pulse with excitement. Listening to it evoked the feeling of being on top of the world – of being the best, of knowing you were the best, of being unrestrained by fear and doubt. Of being free of all the shackles of the world and knowing yourself to be capable of miracles.

It was Wen Ruohan’s beloved Wen sect’s self-esteem – many would say self-love – distilled into its purest form.

But it wasn’t just that. Underneath that exuberance and enthusiasm, the music had a foundation as steady as Lan Qiren’s unshakable principles, turning self-regard into self-assurance, into a bone-deep understanding that in the end you were purely yourself, nothing more nor less, and could be nothing else – and that that was all that you needed to be.

It married irrepressible confidence in the self to implacable surety of the self, and turned them together into power. Into impossible, unstoppable force, which broke down all barriers in its path.

Just like the two of them.

Wen Ruohan had never been the most musically inclined. He’d had a gentleman’s training, of course, and knew both how to appreciate good music and play an instrument if he were called upon to do so. Given his innate brilliance and quick learning capacity, he could even pull off a few tricks of musical cultivation if he really needed to. But it had never been a strength, and with art just as with cultivation, Wen Ruohan always played to his strengths. As a result, music had never been more to him than an enjoyable pastime at best. It had never made its way into his heart, never seized hold of it, the way it seemed to do for musicians.

He’d assumed it never would.

Well: he was wrong.

He could admit it, and joyfully, because what he’d gotten in return was so much better than being right.

Ah, Lan Qiren – Lan Qiren – Lan Qiren, who loved him, who trusted him, who saw him and saw everything he liked about himself, and who in return asked only to be treated with equal regard, to be loved as he loved, as if Wen Ruohan would ever have been able to do anything less –

“Someone’s in a good mood.”

For once, Wen Ruohan did not startle or lash out in paranoiac terror in response to someone having snuck up on him without him noticing – but only due to years of experience at being snuck up on by this particular person.

“And I suppose you, Lao Nie, are here to be irritating,” he remarked, much as he always did, turning his head slowly to regard his…former lover, he supposed.

There was a sharp stabbing pain in his chest when he looked at Lao Nie now, even though the man had exchanged the stormy expression of the discussion conference in favor of his usual relaxed grin, going back to being carefree and careless the way he always was. There was no sign of the emotional turbulence that had put him in such a bad mood, every indication wiped away and hidden, Lao Nie going back to pretending that nothing was wrong and never had been because that was how he had always dealt with the knowledge of his impending untimely death.

But Wen Ruohan knew the truth. He knew what was coming, and how much sooner than expected it was due, even though Lao Nie hadn’t shared that information with him. It hurt him to know it. Not as much as it hurt Lao Nie, who was the one actually dying, he knew that, but it was still pain nonetheless, and as a narcissist Wen Ruohan admittedly tended to rate his own pain as being more important than others.

Seeing Lao Nie here, now, brought up all sorts of uncomfortable feelings.

Seeing him now, here…

Wen Ruohan abruptly frowned. “Why are you here? Did Cangse Sanren reach you so quickly?”

That seemed temporally implausible, if not completely impossible. Qinghe was far too far away – no one could fly that fast, not even him.

“No, I was on my way to Lanling already,” Lao Nie said cheerfully, which made a great deal more sense. “I bumped into Cangse Sanren while she was on her way out of the city and I was on my way in. Don’t worry, we swapped tokens: she gave me her pass to get through your army and into the city, and I gave her my sect leader’s sigil so that she’ll be able to order everyone back at home to collect those cursed coins in my stead. There’s no problem with your plan.”

It was annoying how reliable Lao Nie could be when he wanted to, Wen Ruohan reflected. That was the deceptively alluring part of him. He just knew Wen Ruohan so well – he could tell at a glance exactly what his concerns were and immediately speak to alleviate them.

He made everything easy.

“I’m here to help you find Qingheng-jun,” Lao Nie continued, his smile fading into seriousness. “If he’s trapped in Lanling City, he’s definitely going to go to ground somewhere difficult to reach with multiple people, try to force you into a one-on-one fight that would be more to his advantage. You and I are the only ones I can think of that would be strong enough to match him like that without getting slaughtered. With me here, we can check the possible places twice as fast.”

Like he’d said: with Lao Nie, everything was easy.

It had always been so easy.Easy, easy, easy – right until it was so difficult as to be impossible.

Like winning Lao Nie’s heart, or his loyalty, or his trust, or becoming anything more than just a casual friend that sometimes shared his bed. And not because of any lack on Wen Ruohan’s own part, any paucity or failure in his own feelings or even actions, but simply because Lao Nie simply lacked the capacity to be more than a friend to anyone.

Except maybe his saber.

Wen Ruohan didn’t even pretend to begin to understand how that worked.

“That’s right,” he said, and picked the easier path of not saying anything just yet. Lan Qiren was the one who always chose the harsher and more virtuous path, not Wen Ruohan. He’d wait until Lan Qiren was back and let him raise the difficult subject with Lao Nie, and then, if he had to, he would step in and forcethe man to let them help. “You are very welcome. Do you want to start on the west side of the city or the east?”

“The north, of course, while you take the south. You’re remarkably accommodating today, Hanhan; normally you’re much more possessive about these things! Here I thought I’d have to fight you first just to get a chance to help. Qiren must have put you in a really good mood.”

Not a good enough mood to deal with this.

“I sent Qiren away to Gusu Lan to deal with the coins, and I want to get this finished before he returns,” Wen Ruohan said shortly, and Lao Nie’s growing smirk disappeared at once, meaning that he understood the implication. Which meant that Wen Ruohan didn’t need to explain, but he did anyway, just to make sure that the message had been fully made clear: “The last time they met, Qingheng-jun decided that the taboo against personally murdering blood relatives was beneath him. He tried to kill Qiren. That will not happen again.”

No mercy this time.

“Understood,” Lao Nie said, solemn and serious as he so rarely was. “Understood and agreed. Don’t worry, Hanhan, you can count on me. The Nie sect’s motto is Do not tolerate evil no matter where, remember? Same thing applies when it’s who.”

Wen Ruohan inclined his head in agreement. If there was one thing that could be said for Lao Nie, it was that he was a consummate member of his sect. No evil meant no evil, no matter where, no matter who – just as he had been willing to turn against Wen Ruohan when he’d thought him beyond the point of saving, so too would he turn himself against Qingheng-jun, who had once been his friend.

His friend, and his source of guilt.

Lao Nie was as ruthless and careless with himself and his own heart as he was with anyone else’s, that much was true. Somehow that fact did not help in the slightest.

“Happy hunting,” Wen Ruohan said, and even meant it. Perhaps abiding by his sect’s principles would help Lao Nie the way abiding by his sect’s rules did Lan Qiren.

As for Wen Ruohan, he didn’t bother with such things. Rules and principles were both equally overrated – he didn’t need anyone else’s guidance, only his own; he would make his way in the world through the path he forged himself, and never doubt it for a moment. He mounted his sword and flew off to the south of Lanling City to begin surveying the possible places Qingheng-jun could be hiding.

The number of places was naturally limited, both by his (and Lao Nie’s) guess that Qingheng-jun would look for a place that would allow him a one-on-one fight and by Wen Ruohan’s own army, currently marching through the city and investigating every nook and cranny for those cursed coins. They had all been instructed to light flares if they saw any sign of Qingheng-jun, or alternatively if any number of their squads were drawn off and killed unexpectedly – that would be the first sign of him, more than likely, unless Wen Ruohan happened to get lucky and find him first.

He would prefer, if at all possible, to get lucky. His soldiers might not mean as much to him as his precious sect disciples, who in turn were not as important as his even more valuable family, but they were still his, and everything that was his was better than everything that wasn’t. Everything good under the sun should belong to him.

Now: where could Qingheng-jun be…?

Wen Ruohan could create a tracking array, look for any sort of bolt-hole where there were restrictions on entry. But who knew how many such places existed in Lanling City? Lanling Jin was full of rats that thought themselves vipers; every sub-branch probably had a secret treasure room and a secret armory and whatnot – and Qingheng-jun wouldn’t go find one of those, anyway.

No, he had too much dignity for that.

Wen Ruohan could understand that. Who wanted to risk losing your life in some stupid pointless little treasure room?

In fact, it occurred to him that he was thinking too small. Why search for him building-by-building like some common person? Let him use that same logic: where would Qingheng-jun be willing to have some sort of climactic final battle?

Qingheng-jun was remarkably similar to Wen Ruohan in many ways. He had a profound sense of his own dignity, enough that others would call it vanity, and he would never be willing to associate his name, whether in victory or defeat, with somewhere tawdry – and Jinlin Tower was full from head to toe of all that was gaudy and tawdry.

Especially to someone with a Gusu Lan sensibility.

After all, like it or not, hate it or not, Qingheng-jun had been born and raised in the Gusu Lan sect. Even when he turned against it, despised it, thought he had abjured it in every respect, he had still been shaped by it. Despite everything, he was unable to wholly give up the mindset it had inculcated in him, the principles it had taught him. If he had, he wouldn’t have been so concerned about seeking to implement a fitting punishment for all those he blamed for his wife’s death, rather than merely getting revenge – and he wouldn’t have been so invested in seeking to reform the sect in his own image, rather than destroying it. To implement new rules over the old, rather than to truly break free of the notion of rules entirely.

Gusu Lan, and Wen Ruohan: those two things together formed a very particular personality, with very particular preferences. So…where would Qingheng-jun go? Where would someone accustomed to the clean, gentle lines of the Cloud Recesses voluntarily choose to hide when trapped in this filthy pit of gold and greed?

Ah, of course.

The gardens.

Wen Ruohan might not the most devoted swordsman, might not be particularly notable as a musician, but he vastly preferred either of those subjects over the discussion of things like flowers – and yet, despite that, he had somehow spent a not-inconsiderable portion of his time over the past hundred years listening to the endless rounds of debate between Lanling Jin and Gusu Lan regarding whether gardens ought to retain their natural wild and austere beauty or be tamed into gorgeous wanton snarls of petals and color pieced together by human ingenuity. His Nightless City had established several gardens of each type just to avoid having that particular debate come up ever again, but the other sects still persisted in defending their preferences.

In a fit of completely characteristic pettiness, the Jin sect leader of several generations back – further back than Wen Ruohan could recall, which was saying something – had set up a single garden in Lanling City that was modeled after Gusu Lan’s preferred style, presumably to make the point that no one would possibly choose such a thing if they had the lush gardens of Jinlin Tower as an alternative option. The people of Lanling City had fulfilled this particular sect leader’s desire, leaving that particular park largely abandoned, although whether the people’s preference was a genuine aesthetic choice or merely the wisdom of not disagreeing with their local overlord had always been an open question.

It had been named, very snidely, the Paired Birds Promenade.

Yes: Wen Ruohan could see Qingheng-jun going there.

It would be just right for someone as self-important and overly dramatic as him.

(It wasn’t hypocrisy to say as much, Wen Ruohan informed the rather rudely goggling Lan Qiren in his mind. He’d never denied his flaws – he merely did not acknowledge them to be flaws when they were his own.)

And because Wen Ruohan was unquestionably brilliant, he found Qingheng-jun exactly where he expected to.

“I find it difficult to say whether it should be called vanity or arrogance,” Qingheng-jun said, almost as if he were continuing the conversation Wen Ruohan had been having in his own mind. He was standing on a lonesome hill towards the eastern end of the gardens, shaded by a scholar tree – he had a particularly heroic bearing at the moment, his pale blue robes and his hair lightly ruffled by the wind as he gazed out into the distance. “Coming here by yourself, I mean.”

“Did I rob you of the chance to show off your talisman work?” Wen Ruohan asked idly, stepping off his sword and onto the ground, feeling the circle of restriction that he’d expected to find snap immediately into effect, keeping anyone from joining them and making it an unbalanced fight. It was a good one, irritatingly enough. As he’d expected, he would find no obvious weaknesses here. “I’m not inclined to waste my soldiers for such a purpose.”

Qingheng-jun turned to regard him, his expression cold and indifferent. His face was oddly dissimilar from Lan Qiren’s, despite the strong resemblance of their features, both classic exemplars of the Lan style – Lan Qiren’s expression was often neutral, often flat, but rarely cold, and never indifferent. He was warm beneath his seemingly remote façade, the heat from his fiery temper and passionate heart always present even when he tried to suppress them. Qingheng-jun, by contrast…

There was nothing there.

“I would have thought that you’d think it a worthwhile trade if it meant wearing me down before we fought,” Qingheng-jun said, his logic pristine and ruthless, cold as any mountain snow. “Soldiers’ lives are meant for spending.”

His lip curled up in a sneer. “Or is it that my younger brother would disapprove of such a maneuver that now restrains you…?”

“Wrong on all counts. As much as I respect Qiren, for once his opinion was irrelevant to my consideration,” Wen Ruohan said, enjoying the way Qingheng-jun’s eyes narrowed at the praise of his brother. “You forget: my soldiers are mine, and are therefore more valuable than anyone who isn’t. Their lives may be for spending – but you think too much of yourself if you think I would bother to spend them on you.”

Qingheng-jun pressed his lips together briefly, but did not lose his temper.

“Tell me,” he said instead, voice slow and thoughtful. “What is it about him?”

Wen Ruohan arched his eyebrows, even as he waved his hand, letting his sword leap into his hand. “You mean Lan Qiren?”

Qingheng-jun inclined his head in agreement.

“You shall have to clarify. What about him?”

“You said that you…respect him.” Qingheng-jun sneered once again, the expression twisting his otherwise handsome face. “The so-great Wen Ruohan – I hadn’t realized that you respected anyone but yourself.”

“Myself and my family,” Wen Ruohan corrected. He’d always been quite clear about his partiality to his own clan. Like any good descendant of Wen Mao, he rated his clan above the rest: the sun in the sky above all had been his ancestor’s motto, proud and arrogant, and Wen Ruohan was only the most successful of his descendants, not necessarily the most ambitious. They were all like that.

“Yourself and your family – and my brother. Apparently.”

“And your brother,” Wen Ruohan said agreeably. “Apparently.”

He chuckled at the aggravation on Qingheng-jun’s face and meandered forward, his pace slow and steady, as if he were merely here to stroll in the park. Even his sword dangled from his hand, lazy and bored – apathy and indolence incarnate, his sloth simultaneously genuine and a deliberate insult to anyone he was facing.

“Does it really bother you so much?” he asked, though he knew it did.

“I merely wish to understand,” Qingheng-jun said. That was a lie, and they both knew it – do not tell lies, but of course Qingheng-jun considered himself above such things. “Only…why him?”

It was a good question.

Good, and also incredibly stupid.

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Wen Ruohan admitted freely. “But that’s not how love works. Don’t you know that best of all…?”

He saw from the look on Qingheng-jun’s face that that strike had hit true.

“Or maybe I’m mistaken, perhaps you don’t,” Wen Ruohan concluded, a smirk curving his lips. “After all, from what I understand from Qiren, you couldn’t even live up to the lowest of his expectations for a son of Gusu Lan.”

Qingheng-jun scoffed. He was still pretending that he had the upper hand in their conversation, that he felt secure in his superiority over Wen Ruohan’s temporary weakness – but where his cleverness and ruthlessness might have worked time and again against Lan Qiren, with one very notable exception, it was nothing against Wen Ruohan.

Wen Ruohan knew him.

Not because he’d ever bothered to get to know Qingheng-jun personally. But rather because in Qingheng-jun, Wen Ruohan could see himself, and Wen Ruohan knew himself very well indeed.

“My brother does not set the standards of Gusu Lan,” Qingheng-jun said. “He is not sect leader. I am.”

Now it was Wen Ruohan’s turn to scoff.

“Do you really believe that?” he asked. “A name does not make a thing. Intent is meaningless in the face of action; the only thing that has ever mattered, in any context, is who actually does the work. It’s as true for sect leadership as it is for anything else – a sect leader is the one who leads the sect. A father is the one who molds the children. A husband…”

He laughed.

“Never mind. You wouldn’t know what I’m talking about.”

Qingheng-jun’s expression was ugly. “You mock me!”

“Have you only just now noticed?” Wen Ruohan said, now taunting openly. “And people say Qiren is bad at understanding others…of course I’m mocking you. Should I respect you? You? You, who are only here to die? You, who couldn’t even pull off a simple plan like kill them all properly…?”

Qingheng-jun drew his sword.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t be able to guess at once what you were doing?” Wen Ruohan asked him. “Me? The only difference between the two of us is that you are pathetic.”

“You know nothing about me,” Qingheng-jun said, voice cold as always, and attacked.

Wen Ruohan immediately lifted his own sword to block that first shatteringly powerful blow, feeling the cold of Qingheng-jun’s frost echo through his blade as he did. He brought his other hand up, summoning the array he’d kept dancing at the tips of his fingers and casting it into Qingheng-jun’s face.

As he’d expected, Qingheng-jun was too clever to fall for that – he’d known some sort of attack like that was coming and he countered immediately, casting a handful of talismans out and activating them at once, letting them take the hit that had been aimed at him, and following that action up with another strike of his sword.

His swordsmanship really was beautiful.

Such a waste.

Wen Ruohan was forced onto the defensive, using his sword to block the blows that were coming fast and hard, Qingheng-jun’s surprisingly vivid blue crackling against his own black.

“Foolish,” Wen Ruohan said, despite that. He’d been in far too many battles, and under worse circumstances, to let a strong opening unnerve him. “I am the only one who knows you. The only one who can know you.”

He meant it, too.

Wen Ruohan had been where Qingheng-jun was now. He’d fallen to the lowest point a man could go – he had lost everything, he had lost everyone. He had been tormented by the losses that had been caused by his own hand as well as those of others. He had been overwhelmed by suffering, suffused by it, drowned in it, and as a result, quite logically, he had gone insane. For all that his own isolation had been social rather than literal, as Qingheng-jun’s had been, Wen Ruohan too had found himself alone for far too long, painfully and completely alone. Of the people who had filled his life and his heart as a young man, there was not a single one left…

Like Qingheng-jun, Wen Ruohan had been a selfish man to start with. Being alone, being in pain – it had twisted him, made him cruel, made him indifferent, made him lash out at those around him, those reminders that life somehow went on even when his own felt as though it had stopped. His apathy had grown by the year, eclipsing everything else, eating away at his memories of joy and of excitement, until all those things that had once made life worth living were long forgotten. Until the only thing that could bring him pleasure was sating his sadism, making others hurt to see how they struggled and yearned to live, warming himself with that echo of feeling.

Oh yes – Wen Ruohan knew all too well what Qingheng-jun was going through.

He knew also that many of Qingheng-jun’s grievances and resentments were justified, or at least justifiable, whether they were against his sect, against the world, against uncaring fate and luck itself. He knew, because he had felt that way, too. He, and he alone, could understand.

He could sympathize, he could empathize.

He just didn’t care.

Wen Ruohan had been in Qingheng-jun’s position, yes. But he’d made it out again on the other side, because he was better.

“Did you do it?” Qingheng-jun asked him, casting out his sword in a gorgeous move, surrounded by swirls of spiritual energy that were as lovely as they were deadly, dancing around him like eddies of wind – Wen Ruohan was forced to dodge, retreating to the side before lunging forward, trying for a counterattack that Qingheng-jun deflected.

Not easily, Wen Ruohan could see Qingheng-jun’s arm shaking with the force that Wen Ruohan could put behind his blows, but successfully nonetheless.

Wen Ruohan quickened his pace, trying a different style of attack, fast rather than powerful, but Qingheng-jun met him head-on, his sword moving just as fast as Wen Ruohan’s, his steps just as sure.

The cold wind at the top of the mountain, blowing around every obstacle.

Lovely.

Such a waste, such a waste…

“Did I try to kill everyone, you mean?” Wen Ruohan asked, twisting the fingers of his free hand into a series of hand seals, setting up another array even as his sword clashed with Qingheng-jun’s. “Of course not. If I had, you would know. Or not, as it might be – you would be just as dead as the rest.”

“Not that.” Qingheng-jun bared his teeth at him. “Did you murder your first family?”

He matched the words with a pointed strike, all of his power behind it.

Wen Ruohan reached out and caught the blow with his free hand, redirecting the spiritual energy he’d been using to set up the array into the power he needed to protect his flesh from Qingheng-jun’s steel.

The way nothing would protect him from Qingheng-jun’s words.

“Yes,” he said, wrapping his hand around the sword to hold it, and Qingheng-jun, in place. “Though I did not mean to.”

He brought the array that he’d been working on earlier up all at once, forcing it into existence, and Qingheng-jun let out an involuntary shout as it opened up beneath his feet.

Now it was his turn to have no choice but to dodge, redirecting his own spiritual energy as a defense, pulling his sword out of Wen Ruohan’s grasp and leaping backwards into the air.

Wen Ruohan went after him.

“My first wife betrayed me,” he said, settling into what had once been his preferred fighting style, attacking with both hands in turn, array in one and weapon in the other. “And I betrayed her in turn, one after the other until there was nothing left between us but loss. In time, the two of us destroyed everything that we had ever made together.”

Even their children.

Wen Ruohan hadn’t meant for that to happen. He didn’t think his wife had, either, though of course by that point she had lost too much of her reason to really understand the depths of what they had lost – he’d done that to her, however accidentally. That was the cost of betrayal, the greatest cost. Losing his family had always been the one consequence that he had never been able to forgive himself for causing. The cost of his betrayal.

Just as his betrayal had also cost him Wen Ruoyu, the brother he had loved so much.

Wen Ruoyu had been the only sibling Wen Ruohan had ever really cared about – and he’d had many, brothers and sisters both. Wen Ruoyu was the one younger brother who had genuinely seemed to like Wen Ruohan, who had followed him voluntarily, the one who Wen Ruohan had permitted to follow him, however unwise it had seemed to be at the time. Wen Ruoyu had tagged along in his every step, had adored him and supported him and who Wen Ruohan had adored and supported in turn. As they had grown older, grown stronger, they had challenged each other to surpass their limits, and they had done so marvelously, exceptionally, unexpectedly. The two of them together had been unstoppable: able to overturn every obstacle in their path, blazing through the skies like twin suns, burning away the haze of the world.

If only Wen Ruohan had believed in him as fully as Wen Ruoyu had believed in him – if only he hadn’t let himself be blinded by his ambition, led into folly through his own weakness – if only he hadn’t lost track of what really mattered – if only, if only, if only!

“And then I went mad, of course,” he added matter-of-factly. “There is a point after which it is by far the most straightforward option.”

It was only very recently that he had been able to crawl out of the pit he’d fallen into.

Lao Nie had been the first to help him find his way. Fight evil no matter where, in his own inimitable style, though perhaps Lao Nie had not thought of it that way, driven as he was by his own self-destructive attraction to everything that could bring him harm, wrestling with the knowledge of his sect’s poisonous self-sacrifice and his own impending premature death. Whatever his motivations, he had forced himself into Wen Ruohan’s increasingly empty life, with his intriguing mixture of ruthlessness and joy, supreme selfishness and selflessness in one, his irrepressible humor and charm. He had coaxed Wen Ruohan first into curiosity, and from curiosity into enjoyment. He had shown him the way forward. No, more than that – he had pushed him down the first step on the road of having to actually live rather than merely survive, and for that, Wen Ruohan owed him.

Before Lao Nie, Wen Ruohan had very nearly let go of everything. His apathy had grown to such an extent that not even anger or pain could move him – as best exemplified by his new marriages, bloodless and political, nothing more than a means of getting him closer to his goal of ruling the world, of putting his sect above the rest. After his family had died, he had refused to remarry for so many years, for decades. He had even declared the subject of them taboo, and brutally executed anyone who so much as mentioned them, however obliquely.

And then he’d just…forgotten.

Those cousins of his who had hoped to take advantage of his unmarried state had all grown old and died, waiting for their turn; their children, his new advisors, had not known anything but his never-ending rule, as endless as the blazing light that filled his Nightless City at every hour. They had suggested that he marry in order to consolidate his power, and not seeing any reason not to, he had done so – not once, but twice. He had promised his wives sons and positions of power, and he had delivered on his promises. And then he had looked away from those sons, unable to look to closely at them lest he see the shadows of the ones who had preceded them. He had justified it by telling himself that he would make it up when they were older, when they were interesting, when they were grown men and fully formed people and like him. He had treated them as either prospective enemies, to be held distant for lack of trust, or else as extensions of himself, limiting himself to loving them as he loved himself, a safe and complete love. He hadn’t been able to do anything more.

He had been, though living, more dead than alive.

Lao Nie had been the first step on the road back to himself, but he hadn’t been enough. He hadn’t been willing to step onto the road with Wen Ruohan, to walk alongside him for that whole journey, the two of them together side-by-side, equal in their commitment to each other. He hadn’t been willing to go so far as to pledge loyalty and fidelity and trust. It hadn’t been his fault: Wen Ruohan, as he had been when Lao Nie had first encountered him, had not been worthy of trust, benumbed and accustomed as he was to treachery; he had expected it in everyone and far too often found himself justified, and he responded by being even more treacherous in turn. It would have been a very bad idea for Lao Nie to have trusted in him back then.

And yet…it had changed, in time. He had changed. He had started to find his way back, to rebuild the human that he had once been out of the god he’d nearly become, had changed into something different, into someone who wanted more. Someone who wanted those things, love and trust and the harsh pains of those emotions just as much as their easy joys.

But he hadn’t told Lao Nie about it. He hadn’t ever asked the other man for what he wanted.

He hadn’t wanted to be told no.

Just as Lan Qiren wasn’t a man made for lust, Lao Nie wasn’t a man made for love. He loved, yes, but only as a friend loved, not as a lover did. Not for him were the exquisite agonies and ecstasies of that type of love, a complete and consuming love, viciously possessive and exclusive of others, as much mutual obsession as anything else.

And yet Wen Ruohan hungered for exactly that type of love. For love, and faith, and trust – and then he’d found it, however unexpectedly, in Lan Qiren. Who was, no matter what his brother tried to claim, the purest example of a Lan of Gusu Lan, a man who always strove to live up to that which his sect aspired to.

Rules and righteousness, and a madman’s loving heart beating steadily behind it all: that was Lan Qiren from beginning to end.

And Qingheng-jun had asked Wen Ruohan to explain.

As if such things could be explained.

Wen Ruohan sneered and lifted his sword, bringing it down in a strike of his own, his spiritual energy blisteringly hot, the power of it seething and boiling with fury.

Qingheng-jun threw himself to the side to avoid it.

“Well done, Sect Leader Wen,” he said, after, glancing back at the devastation that had been left in the wake of Wen Ruohan’s blow, the furrows in the earth and the blackened corpses of flowers and bushes that had caught fire. He had a swordsman’s appreciation for the art, if nothing else, and beneath all that madness, he really was a consummate gentleman: he would not withhold his praise when it was justly earned. “It seems you retained more of your power than I had heard.”

“Retained? Regained.” Wen Ruohan laughed. “Thank your brother for that!”

Qingheng-jun’s brow furrowed.

“He hates you, you know,” Wen Ruohan told him, relishing the words. The Lan Qiren that existed purely in Gusu Lan had barely been able to admit that fact to himself, however true it had been; his Lan Qiren, in contrast, had accepted it and moved past it. He was far better a man than either Wen Ruohan or Qingheng-jun could ever be. “You pushed him too far this time. There is no coming back from this, no peace to be had, no compromise possible. The two of you can no longer exist under the same sky…I’m here for him, not for you. I am the instrument of his will.”

“Will is will, power is power. As you yourself said, intent is not action.”

“No, but intent gives rise to action.” Wen Ruohan smirked. “Come now, you’re far from young and naive. Gusu Lan may be full of prudes, but even Qiren had heard of dual cultivation before.”

“You…” Qingheng-jun’s eyes almost bulged. “With him?!”

Such a reaction was strange, and perhaps a little sad, Wen Ruohan reflected. He himself had wanted to dual cultivate with Lan Qiren and yet had nearly discounted the possibility, so certain was he that Lan Qiren would refuse to do such a thing with him. And yet here was Lan Qiren’s own brother, his own flesh and blood, the Wen Ruohan to Lan Qiren’s Wen Ruoyu, and he thought that Wen Ruohan ought to have been the one reluctant to dual cultivate with Lan Qiren.

“I did,” he confirmed, and nearly laughed again at the puckered expression of distaste and disapproval on Qingheng-jun’s face. Now there was one who wouldn’t have done such a thing even if his wife had liked him enough to agree. He clearly couldn’t even conceive of rendering himself so vulnerable to another person, to give himself to another without reserve. “It was glorious, just as he is.”

Qingheng-jun’s expression of distaste did not change.

Unfortunately, the perfection of his sword forms did not falter, either, and he really was a better swordsman than Wen Ruohan. Wen Ruohan was keeping up, the arrays he could summon his best weapon as always, supported by his experience in fights such as these, but he wasn’t winning. There was a reason he kept up the conversation, goading and hunting for weaknesses, looking for a way to throw Qingheng-jun off his equilibrium, and they both knew it.

Well, if such a way existed, Wen Ruohan hadn’t found it yet.

He knew that Qingheng-jun hated Lan Qiren, hated the Lan sect, but it wasn’t enough. Lan Qiren, simply by virtue of being himself, could cause far more damage to his brother’s psyche than Wen Ruohan could with all his taunts and jabs. He’d explained the full circumstances of their conversation to Wen Ruohan before he’d left, hoping to arm him with everything he could, and it had been all that Wen Ruohan could do to keep from laughing out loud when he’d realized that it had been Lan Qiren’s misplaced empathy that Qingheng-jun hadn’t been able to tolerate. Pity from a hated enemy, condescending comments from someone you thought had won over you, someone you thought was rubbing their victory in your face…

Amazing.

Completely accidental, of course, but amazing.

Was there any way he could use that?

“Tell me,” he drawled. “Do you really think of Lan Qiren as some sort of – ”

What had been the term Cangse Sanren had used?

“– some sort of seductive vixen?”

Qingheng-jun’s next blow went wide. Wen Ruohan took advantage at once, pulling back to catch his breath and take stock of his reserves – arrays required more energy than swordsmanship, and doing both was taxing. He’d recovered quite a lot from where he had been, but he was far from his peak; he needed to conserve his strength where he could.

“I really have to wonder about that. I mean, have you met him?” Wen Ruohan shook his head pityingly. “He is rather dreadfully boring, isn’t he?”

That was part of the wonder of him. Lan Qiren was boring, a rule-abiding stickler, a stern moralist, a monotonous old teacher despite his relative youth, but that wasn’t all he was. He was passionate and complicated, a mix of contradictions, a war within himself, all things within himself.

Even the boring parts of him were interesting.

“Quite good in bed, though. I assume it’s a natural gift, that ability to steeply climb learning curves and gain mastery over a subject…especially since it was quite evident that he came to my bed a virgin.”

Another strike that didn’t quite reach where Qingheng-jun wanted it to.

Because, of course, Lan Qiren coming to Wen Ruohan untouched meant that he really hadn’t done what Qingheng-jun had thought he had, his younger brother betraying him in bed with his wife, replacing him after he’d made such sacrifices – such unasked-for sacrifices, though it was clear Qingheng-jun had never thought of them that way. Everyone always saw themselves as the hero in their own story.

Only it was getting harder and harder for Qingheng-jun to pretend, even to himself, that he was anything but the villain here.

Wen Ruohan was getting close, he could feel it. Qingheng-jun’s swordsmanship was good, exceptionally good, and if he were anyone else, anyone other than the man who had hurt Lan Qiren, then Wen Ruohan might have entertained thoughts of trying to recruit him. He’d always valued talent, had always appreciated art no matter what form it was in, regardless of being its target. He was even willing to forgive terrible crimes for it, heedless of the cost – but only when the cost was to himself, or to his sect, or to the world.

Not to Lan Qiren.

No, there would be no way out of this for Qingheng-jun. Wen Ruohan was not going to hold back his blows, wasn’t going to try to recruit him, wasn’t going to show him any way out.

He was going to kill him.

Just as soon as he could figure out how.

He just needed a little bit more –

“He wrote me a song, you know,” Wen Ruohan said suddenly, motivated by some unknown instinct. His memory of little Lan Wangji’s face, maybe, all screwed up in distaste as he reluctantly made the suggestion, or else Lan Xichen looking so childishly appalled at the idea of such a thing, ameliorated only reluctantly when Lan Wangji had reminded him that they were already married – Gusu Lan were such musicians, really. Though he wasn’t sure whether such a thing would make an impact on a swordsman like Qingheng-jun…

“He what?!”

Apparently it would.

“How dare he – he wrote you a song – ”

Qingheng-jun’s blows were getting wilder and wilder. More powerful, but that had always been the risk of the game Wen Ruohan was playing. Qingheng-jun had been keeping him mostly on the defensive, or else letting him have openings that he then closed immediately – Wen Ruohan’s current approach was simply not working. He knew it, he accepted it, and he wasn’t so prideful that he would resist change just for the sake of doing so.

He needed to get Qingheng-jun off-balance just long enough to figure out something new.

“Of course he did,” he said, keeping his tone light and casual, echoing Lao Nie at his most unbelievably irritating. “Isn’t that what musical cultivators like him do? Write songs? I wouldn’t think it was that unusual – ”

“Why does he get to have a song?!” Qingheng-jun shouted, and –

Ah.

So that’s what it was.

“He’s never been my equal, never,” Qingheng-jun spat out, and Wen Ruohan could see the madness in his rage-reddened eyes now. “He was just an afterthought, a left-behind, a remnant – he shouldn’t have even existed! I had two younger brothers before him, only a few years younger than me, both of them talented and good, and they were all the sect elders needed, spares just in case something happened to me. If only they hadn’t died! If they had lived, my parents would never have felt obligated to try again for another, and Qiren would never have been born. My mother wouldn’t have needed to take medicine to have him, wouldn’t have weakened her health for him, wouldn’t have ripped herself apart at the birthing bed and gotten sick and died because of him – ”

“Blame your sect for that,” Wen Ruohan said. “Oh, wait. You already do.”

Qingheng-jun wasn’t even listening. “When she died, she took my father with her. It was only a living corpse that remained sect leader after that. All the burden came to me. All the responsibility, all the expectations, everything, and all the while Qiren could go on untroubled, dull and slow and fumbling and boring and nothing. Nothing worthy of that sacrifice, of either of their sacrifices. And yet…”

“And yet he gets to have the song,” Wen Ruohan said knowingly. “He gets to have that once-in-a-lifetime love, the type of love that haunts you and possesses you and drives you to extremes of destruction and creation both. The love you never had.”

Qingheng-jun’s next blow left nothing but wreckage in its wake, but Wen Ruohan was already long gone.

“It’s only to be expected from him, really,” he said, and let his voice drip with pity thick as syrup, as much of it as he could conjure. It wasn’t for nothing that Lan Qiren had dubbed him the second most obnoxious man in the world. “After all, Lan Qiren is everything that he should be – a true Lan of Gusu Lan.”

And that was it, that was the difference.

Not the difference between Qingheng-jun and Lan Qiren. Wen Ruohan wasn’t the sort of person who thought that everyone ought to follow their sect mottos blindly, thinking that there was only one way to live up to what they were meant to be; such an idea was restrictive and ridiculous. He himself was far from the true ideal of Qishan Wen, with his quixotic focus on arrays instead of swordsmanship or medicine, though he was still his sect’s true-born son, just as ambitious as anyone in his family, as arrogant. It had been Wen Ruoyu who had been the real outlier: possessive but willing to share, a collector of trinkets and people rather than strength or influence, sociable and generous rather than standoffish and arrogant, a spearman rather than a swordsman, lacking even the slightest traces of medical talent, disdainful of the trappings of duty or the temptations of power, lacking ambition for himself but avidly loyal to those he loved.

By any family standard, Wen Ruoyu had been completely unfit for the proud surname Wen.

Yet Wen Ruohan would have killed anyone who said that, anyone who might have suggested that his differences meant Wen Ruoyu wasn’t among the best their sect had ever produced. Not only would he kill over such an insult, he had, and often enough, too.

No, it wasn’t the difference between Lan Qiren and Qingheng-jun: it was the difference between Qingheng-jun and Wen Ruohan.

They’d both gone mad, after all. They’d both turned cruel and vicious, lashing out at the world that had robbed them of their rightful due, that had turned against them after all they had done for it. They’d both been driven by somewhat justified grievances until they’d gone too far and committed crimes with their own hands, both of them having fallen into the pit of despair, of apathy and malice and madness.

But where Qingheng-jun had thrown away everything that mattered, rejected family, friends, sect, wife, and even principle, Wen Ruohan was different.

Wen Ruohan, even when he had had nothing else, had always had his sect.

Even when he’d lost everything else, even when he’d forgotten the reason for his own existence, even when he longed to destroy everything around him just to make it all go away, he hadn’t actually taken that final step. He’d been Sect Leader Wen by then, and he’d always taken that seriously. His actions reflected on his sect, his actions defined his sect: all boats were lifted by the same tide, and sunk by the same hurricane.

If he led them to victory, they would benefit. If he led them to ruin, they would suffer.

His sect was his responsibility.

His sect was his.

All good things in the world ought to be his, the world ought to be his – and that meant he owed it a duty of care in return.

Wen Ruohan loved himself. He was vain, narcissistic, self-absorbed. He saw his sect as an extension of himself, and just as he knew himself to be the best, the finest cultivator in the cultivation world, nearly a god, so too did he know that his sect was the best. The facts did not matter, the truth did not matter, nothing mattered, nothing but his certainty of that fact.

He knew his sect was the best – and if they weren’t, it was his duty to make it true.

No matter the method, as Wen Ruoyu had always said with a grin. As long as you win, no matter the method…

No matter the method.

That was it.

What was he doing?

Wen Ruohan spared a moment to shake his head at his own foolishness. Going up against Qingheng-jun sword against sword – he’d known he wouldn’t be able to win that way, but he’d been reckless as always, arrogant as always, counting on his arrays to carry him to victory as they always had. But he wasn’t as strong as he’d been, wasn’t able to fight with just arrays rather than with array and sword both, and he wasn’t as practiced at fighting from a position of weakness as he had once been, either. He had grown lazy in his apathy, sitting back and letting his power do the fighting for him, letting his army or his influence or his control of so many sects move the pieces for him.

He'd need to fix that, going forward. He should spar more often, with Lao Nie and Lan Qiren and others; he should bind his own power, cut off his own excessively strong cultivation, and practice fighting that way, to make sure he gave himself a real challenge.

There was no way for him to win like this.

So…why fight like this?

Just because it was expected? Because it was convention?

Does the sun care for the expectations of the earth? Wen Ruohan had asked Yu Ziyuan, laughing at her. I have never restricted myself for the sake of others. Why would I start now?

They’d been talking about marriage, but what was true for the marital was just as true for the martial.

Wen Ruohan laughed out loud.

Qingheng-jun startled at the sound of it, pulling back warily – thinking that Wen Ruohan was up to something, no doubt, and he’d be right to think so, too.

Wen Ruohan contemptuously threw aside his sword, letting it clatter to the ground. And in its place, he summoned another weapon entirely.

“A spear?” Qingheng-jun asked, clearly surprised. “Since when do the Wen fight with a spear?”

Wen Ruohan spun the spear around in his hand, and found it as warm and welcoming to him as it had ever been, without the slightest hint of rancor or anger despite how long it had been since he’d wielded it. The spear was called Zhencang, and it had been Wen Ruoyu’s spiritual weapon, the one he had made his name with all those years ago. It had been because of this spear that he had begged and bullied and bribed Wen Ruohan into learning how to use a spear at all, pestering him every morning and every evening until he begrudgingly agreed to practice with him.

More than practice – to adjust his own style, his footwork and his reach and his thinking, to match it.

There were many similarities, he’d found, between arrays and spears. Both were weapons of longer distance, excelling in middle-range attacks with greater reach and greater leverage rather than close melee that was the domain of the sword, and both could be used to devastating effect against those who were less familiar with them.

Wen Ruohan hadn’t used Zhencang since the day his brother had died, but neither had he left it behind. It had been habit more than anything else to bring it with him, the remnants of a long-ago vow that he had once made to himself. His brother had been alive and free, never confined, and so too would his spiritual weapon be – not for his brother’s spear was the lonesome fate of the cold treasury room, not ever, not even if Wen Ruohan never wielded it again in his life.

He’d forgotten.

He remembered now.

“Since always,” Wen Ruohan said with a savage grin. “Learn your history, will you?”

He lunged forward.

As he’d expected, Qingheng-jun did not have much experience in fighting against a spear. A spear was a soldier’s weapon, not a gentleman’s. The Lan sect prided itself on elegance, and its disciples followed their sect, alternating between the beautiful sword forms of which both Lan Qiren and Qingheng-jun were masters and the underestimated but no less potent power of their music. The spear, in contrast, was a utilitarian weapon, meant to fight horses or enemy soldiers, meant to stretch out one’s power onto others. And although it, too, could be elegant, in Wen Ruohan’s hands, it was all aggression.

Array in one hand, weapon in the other – yes, this was his preferred fighting style.

He attacked.

Now it was Qingheng-jun who found himself on the defensive. Now it was he who had to dodge, he who had to speed up, who had to block time and time again, receiving the blows instead of striking them.

Now it was Qingheng-jun who was going to lose.

They both knew it.

It was a shared understanding between them, shared in their eyes as they gazed at each other, in the growing smirk on Wen Ruohan’s face and the growing scowl on Qingheng-jun, in the increased desperation of his movements, in the way he spent his spiritual energy recklessly, frantically, but to no avail. He couldn’t find any openings, Wen Ruohan beating him down with spear and arrays both, using his sword only to fly and barely even for that. He couldn’t find a way out.

Wen Ruohan wasn’t going to leave him a way out.

Qingheng-jun’s fate was sealed, and they both knew it. He was going to die. He was going die, and his crimes were going to be covered up for the sake of the Lan sect and his sons, for the sake of letting Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji grow up as the sons of that brilliant but tragic swordsman that Wen Ruohan would have loved to have recruited and not of the murderous madman he’d turned into instead. He was going to die and be erased, be replaced by Lan Qiren first and by Lan Xichen and by Lan Wangji later, and there was nothing he could do about it.

It was just a matter of time, now.

He was going to die –

“No,” Qingheng-jun spat. “No! I refuse – I surrender.”

Wen Ruohan’s hand froze.

“You what?”

He must not have heard correctly.

“I surrender,” Qingheng-jun said, and threw down his sword. It clattered onto the ground, its beautiful tassel becoming stained by the mud of the earth they had churned up with their violence. “You heard me. I surrender myself to you. I request punishment for my crime – adjudicated punishment, and the chance to atone.”

“Why in the world would I grant that to you?” Wen Ruohan wondered. “Have you mistaken who I am? My Wen sect doesn’t have such beliefs.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Qingheng-jun agreed, and then he smiled, a cold nasty sort of smile. “But Qiren does.”

Qiren does.

He was right.

Qingheng-jun was right, damn him. Lan Qiren had said it himself, when they’d been talking about Wang Liu: What do you mean, what do I want to do with him? Naturally he must be given a fair trial and a fair sentence, a fair punishment. It’s different, once he’s been taken into custody: before, he was an enemy, and now he is a prisoner.

And I, at least, do not mistreat prisoners.

If Wen Ruohan killed Qingheng-jun now, after he had voluntarily surrendered, he would be executing a prisoner, not defeating an enemy.

He could still do it. He was a Wen, not a Lan. He wasn’t bound by Lan Qiren’s multitude of rules, he wasn’t bound by Lan Qiren’s conscience…but Lan Qiren was, and Lan Qiren would disapprove.

More than disapprove. He would feel guilty.

Complicit.

Wen Ruohan had himself said that he was here to act as the instrument of Lan Qiren’s will, and he had meant it. But if that was his purpose here, he had to decide whether he was going to follow that will to the end, whether to obey it over the dictates of his own inclinations. He had to decide if he was going to handle this the way Lan Qiren would have wanted him to, or ignore it and forge his own path the way he always had.

Whether he would do things in Lan Qiren’s name that Lan Qiren would never have wanted.

Wen Ruohan could kill him and then lie, of course. There was no one here but the two of them, no one here to see Qingheng-jun’s surrender – Wen Ruohan was a cultivator just like any other. He could kill the man and banish his spirit before anyone would think to question him, covering it up just as thoroughly as the mine had been covered up, as thoroughly as Qingheng-jun’s attempted massacre had been covered up. He could tell Lan Qiren that he’d killed his brother in fair battle, could bear the secret himself, relieve Lan Qiren of the guilt of knowing it wasn’t true.

He could lie.

But – if he lied about something like this…wasn’t he undermining the trust Lan Qiren put in him?

This is my promise to you, he’d said to him, and he had meant it. This is my oath that I will trust in you in the future, and be someone whom you can trust in, in turn, someone worthy of your trust. My promise is this: that everything I do in the future, I will do with thoughts of you.

Do not tell lies.

He’d said it, and he’d meant it.

That meant he couldn’t lie.

And if he couldn’t lie – then he couldn’t kill Qingheng-jun.

So, despite everything, despite Qingheng-jun’s victorious smirk that he itched to beat off his face –

Wen Ruohan held back his hand.

“Well,” he said, meaning shit and fuck you and fuck me and a thousand other curses that all wanted to come pouring out of his mouth all at once, none of them finding purchase over the others. “Well, then.”

Qingheng-jun laughed.

It was a desolate sound.

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