^ Sorry anon, not exactly what you were asking for. :) But you asked for Jiang Yanli, and I delivered.
~
Jiang Yanli was sweating by the time her boat from Lanling finally docked at the pier. In the back of her mind was the constant nagging agitation of being away from Jin Ling, but Zixuan had reassured her that he would clear his agenda for the day and stay with their son diligently. The animosity and tension that simmered beneath the surface of Jinlintai’s false tranquility could erupt...any day. Like arrows on a bow pulled taut, they were all waiting for the release.
At time like this, Jiang Yanli did not think she would have to worry about yet another disaster, but here she was, rushing to her maiden home bearing the most heinous of rumours.
Jiang Yanli’s frown darkened, remembering the smugness on Jin Zixun’s face that morning in the peony garden. The derogatory remarks had almost been enough to make her hurl up her breakfast.
Is this the teachings of Yunmeng? I would have expected better from Lotus Pier, but then again, that ill-bred tramp have always been this way. It wouldn’t even be surprising had his target not been Lan Wangji. Righteous holier-than-thou Lan Wangji. Only goes to show you can never really know a person, isn’t that right, dear cousin?
Jiang Yanli stormed through the front gates, a torrent of gold silk and coral chiffon. Not waiting for disciples to announce her, she aimed straight for the main hall.
“A-die, a-niang!”
Her heart was in her throat. Oh, but she could already imagine her mother’s face. This could end badly in so many ways. If there was any truth to these rumours...she did not know how Gusu Lan dealt with such an infraction, but the Violet Spider would demonstrate to the world exactly why she was dubbed thusly. The stain upon Yunmeng and Lotus Pier, upon the Jiang family - there was not a doubt in Jiang Yanli’s mind that her mother would take it all out on Wei Wuxian.
Impossible. Simply impossible. It can’t be true. A-Xian would never. He would never -
Except maybe it was all true. It could be... because - because she herself had seen it, just weeks ago, at Jinlintai, at A-Ling’s one-month celebration -
“Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, look, look how chubby he is, isn’t my nephew the cutest?”
“Mn. Very cute.”
It should’ve been an innocent enough exchange, and it would’ve been, had she not seen the hand Lan Wangji laid against the small of A-Xian’s back as he leaned over his shoulder to peer down at the baby. Jiang Yanli, who had looked away briefly to instruct the wet-nurse to fetch a soother for A-Ling, had turned around to witness the hand caress her brother low along his spine, close to his tail bone.
Heavens above, what if it’s true...
She was shocked to say the least. That should’ve been an inappropriate action for anyone who wasn’t Lan Xichen, and even if it were Lan Xichen, the placement of that hand was dangerously bordering on indecent! Though the garden at the time contained no one but them three and baby Rulan basking in their loving attention, they were still very much out in the open public. Any disciple or banquet guest could have come strolling through and seen!
She had expected A-Xian to jerk, to flinch, to moved away and be offended by such a liberal gesture of familiarity and affection, but her brother didn’t move an inch. Instead, he turned and flashed Lan Wangji a smile that was as warm and bright as the morning sun. Graced with the potency of A-Xian’s joy, Lan Wangji’s whole countenance softened, from his eyes to his lips which curled ever so slightly at the corner into a gentle smile of his own.
Yanli had told herself that it was nothing, that she was over thinking it, that it was a good thing that A-Xian was able to befriend the unapproachable Hanguang-jun. But now...
No... oh A-Xian, didi, what have you done...
“Da-xiao’jie!” the maid exclaimed and curtsied to her as Jiang Yanli approached the doorway of the empty main hall. “Thank goodness you are here! Zong’zhu, fu’ren and shao’ye are all in an uproar!” [ Da-xiao’jie - first young mistress, it’s a spoken honorific similarly used as ‘your ladyship’]
So words have reached Lotus Pier too...
Damage control, what she needed to do was damage control. She could do this. She was not Jin-shao-fu’ren, the future Lady of Lanling, for nothing.
Jiang Yanli spun on her. “My parents, where are they?!”
“In the Master’s study!”
She followed the maid as they wound through Lotus Pier’s many boardwalk aisles and water gardens. Without realizing, the two of them quickened their pace to a trot then to a run when they heard Yu Ziyuan’s voice echoing from the distance.
“A-die, a-niang!” Jiang Yanli charged into her father’s study, interrupting her mother mid-tirade. “Something must be done about these abominable rumours circulating -”
Yanli froze, one feet still on the other side of the threshold. The heart that had been skipping in her throat dropped instantly, free falling into the deepest, darkest pit of her gut where her suspicions hid all along.
Jiang Fengmian sat in his front of his work table, hunched over, his whole weight supported by the hand spanning his forehead. In his other hand was several sheets of paper - letters or missives by the look of it, Gusu Lan’s ink emblem just visible underneath his thumb.
Jiang Yanli had never seen her father so utterly defeated.
Between her parents was her little brother, clearly in the middle of trying to calm down their mother, but was equally red in the face, and practically bristling like an enraged kitten.
Upon her arrival, three pairs of eyes flicked simultaneously to the door.
“A-Li.” The fury that seemed to evaporate from Madam Yu’s every pore tempered fractionally at the sight of her daughter. “What brings you home?”
“What brings me -” Jiang Yanli gaped, glancing from her mother to her father to her brother. “The rumours about A-Xian -”
Incensed instantly, Yu Ziyuan exclaimed, “How did you find out?!”
Once, such a display would’ve cowed her without fail, but Jiang Yanli was no longer a child of timid disposition. Living in a pit of snakes had toughened her against all manners of the world’s assault.
“I overheard my maids gossiping amongst themselves this morning. A-Xuan heard it from his cousins. I dare say even His Excellency and pomu would’ve heard of it by now.” [pomu 婆母 - husband’s mother]
Jiang Yanli pursed her lips, feeling a sudden sense of unease over top the preexisting anxiety. “Was it supposed to be a secret?”
Jiang Fengmian sighed, holding out the letter towards his children as if its mere existence appalled him. “A letter from Elders of Gusu Lan arrived this morning.”
Jiang Cheng took the sheets from their father, hesitating when Yanli strode up to him. “A-jie...”
In the background, Madam Yu paced the length of her husband’s study, cursing under her breath.
"Thank goodness you have married and married well, A-Li,” She said. “Or else this boy's philandering ways would have ruined your prospects. As it is, A-Cheng -"
Swirling on his mother in an uncharacteristically brisk manner, Jiang Wangyin interjected loudly, "I don't care about prospects, a-niang! They had him whipped! Three hundred and one disciplinary lashes! How is he now? Is he even even - even alive?! Gusu Lan doesn’t tell us anything -"
“What?!” Jiang Yanli yanked the letter from Jiang Cheng’s hand, eyes darting back and forth as she bored over its contents. A moment later, she lowered it slowly, looking up at her brother whose distress mirrored her own, and then at their parents whose distress were for different reasons entirely, reasons she understood but could not empathize at all.
The world suddenly felt enormous, cold, and without air. Jiang Yanli stumbled back half a step, as imagined scenes of A-Xian being pinned down and tortured flashed before her eyes.
“A-jie!” Jiang Cheng lunged forward and caught her by the elbow.
Jiang Yanli trembled, with fury or fear she could not discern. “How could they do such a thing to him? Three hundred lashes...What about Lan-er-gongzi? What punishment did he receive?!"
Rising from his seat, their father sighed deeply, folding his hands behind him. “Unfortunately, the fault lies with us.”
Nothing then. Typical.
Jiang Cheng made a frustrated noise. “Us?! How could the fault be with us?! That's bullshit!”
But Madam Yu, for once, agreed with her husband. “We all know that Wei Wuxian is a notorious flirt. It's hardly surprising that something like that would -”
“A-niang that isn't true!” Both Jiang children exclaimed at the same time.
“But A-Xian and Hanguang-jun were caught in the act,” Their father admonished them, displeased with their tone. “There were multiple eye witnesses.”
Eye witnesses. Jiang Yanli could only imagine what that meant. Surely they were not found in...in bed together. Multiple eye witnesses, no surely not. It couldn’t be as bad as that. At best, at best... at best it was something akin to what she’d seen. A misplaced hand, a misconstrued embrace... a kiss -
No, no, even that would be too much.
“...rolling around in the grass like a heathen, taking Hanguang-jun down with him -”
Jiang Yanli’s head snapped up at her mother’s vivid description of the event. Her words echoed what she had heard in Lanling from the maids and disciples and Zixuan’s cousins. That A-Xian and Lan Wangji were found lying together in the grass, with her brother sitting astride the Second Jade, bent over, exchanging more than just whispers.
A-Xian, A-Xian how am I supposed to help you now...what can I do now?
Tears dissolved her vision into fractals of colours and light. She turned away from her family as the first of them began to fall. Mother never liked her tears, and Father never knew what to do with them.
Her brother A-Cheng, however, could not be stopped once he got started, and whatever ignited him before Jiang Yanli arrived had clearly sparked a wild fire that burned through the last of Jiang Wanyin’s patience with this family.
"Rolling around in the grass?! Then it must be Lan Wangji's fault! You've all mistaken Wei Wuxian. Yes he's loud and obnoxious and chatty, but that's it! If people mistaken him for a scoundrel, it's only because he's friendly and talkative and doesn't have a filter half the time.”
Jiang Cheng took a breath, shifting his glance from his mother to his father, who stared at him with something akin to shock and an emotion he couldn’t quite place.
“I know him, a-die, a-niang.” Jiang Cheng continued, quieter. “Wei Wuxian, he's - he's - he was a virgin before he married.” A heated blush bloomed across his cheeks, but he pushed through the embarrassment. “A-Xian was a huge virgin! He's never even held hands with anyone!"
Exasperated, Yu Ziyuan rolled her eyes at her son, as if his arguments were nothing but the antics of a naive child. "Son, you can't know that -"
"I do know that because I know him!" Jiang Cheng protested fiercely, both red in the face and around his eyes now. He was close to tears too.
"And that Lan Wangji,” he spat with obvious disdain, “Cloud Recesses' disciples are all scared of him. Everyone knows he is cold and disagreeable! If you don't believe me, ask Jin Zixuan! A-jie, you were at Cloud Recesses too with us, is that not what the females disciples say? That he never smiles, never talks, never mingles with anyone! Gusu Lan wants to feed us the tale that Wei Wuxian, within a span of a year, went from completely inexperienced to seducing the most unsociable man of our generation?! I refuse to believe it! Who's to say A-Xian is at fault? Who's to say Lan Wangji isn't a....a... secret sex fiend!"
Jiang Cheng’s outcry silenced the whole room. Jiang Yanli felt a bubble of hysteria rising in her chest. Things were starting to spin out of control.
“Jiang Cheng!” Jiang Fengmian scolded. “You watch your language in front your elders, and you sister.”
At that, Jiang Yanli whipped her sleeve back in annoyance, raising her voice for the first time since this whole ordeal began, “Oh please a-die, I have a baby son!”
A-Xian’s life and future hung in the balance and language was where he drew the line? Not the three hundred or so lashes?!
Dropping the letter onto the table, she took a deep breath and gathered herself. Now was no time to let her emotions get the best of her.
“When did they say the incident was?” She asked.
“Two days ago,” replied her father.
Two days ago and already most of Jinlintai is well versed in the details of the scandal? Jiang Yanli believed in the power of gossip to spread like an infection, but even so, the speed at which this specific piece of information disseminated struck her as particularly malignant.
Gusu Lan would’ve wanted to contain it. To save face but also to not push Yunmeng Jiang to the brink. This is an alliance after all. Marriage is one thing, but the stability of our sects is another all together.
But the containment clearly didn’t turn out as intended. Whatever machination was behind this, the proverbial cat was out of the bag and there was no reversing its effects. Had it been simple a family matter, Jiang Yanli would not doubt her parents’ ability to wrangle some kind of compromise from the onerous traditionalists whom Cloud Recesses revered as their Elders.
和离 heli - an amicable separation. That was the best course of action, to save face and to preserve the peace between their clans.
But with rumours festering in every corner of their realm, passed from mouth to ear and mouth to ear again, embellished and dramatized along the way, it was not feasible anymore to settle this under the table.
More than just the relationship between three individuals, the reputation and dignity of two major clans rested on the line.
As a married woman in this world, Jiang Yanli knew as much as her mother knew, as much as any women knew, that this line was more often than not painted with blood.
“Did Gusu Lan voice any demands from us?”
“Not as of yet,” Jiang Fengmian replied. “Though, they invited your mother and I to Cloud Recesses in a week’s time to discuss what to do be done. They did not say in as many words, but we must prepare ourselves for the possibility that they intend to ‘xiu’fu’.”
Yanli gasped, “They want to ‘xiu’ A-Xian?” For something that was at best only half his fault?
‘xiu’fu’ was not just a divorce. It was a condemnation, like discarding a pair of used old shoes, dregs to be tossed out. It was the fate of almost every woman found guilty of betraying her marriage bed, and some for reasons even less than that. The unfortunates who were ‘xiu’-ed by their husbands could never wash themselves clean of the stain upon their persons. They lived a ruined life, a half-life plagued by gossips and scorn, not...that they lived all that long in the end.
A-Xian may not be a woman, but theirs was a gendered society, and his marrying out of Yunmeng Jiang and into Gusu Lan had fixed his position in a lower stratum. Because of this, his outcome would not be much better.
The horrifying truth was, Jiang Yanli could not dispute that Gusu Lan Sect and Lan Xichen were well within their rights to do whatever they damn well pleased.
Except they cannot deny that Lan Wangji is just as culpable. That is the only card we have left to play...
While she struggled internally with the fine minutiae of social niceties, her brother Jiang Cheng’s thoughts were going down an entirely different path.
“Why is it that none of you are indignant?!” He stomped his feet, fist clenched and shaking. “Have you for one second even considered that maybe Wei Wuxian wasn’t even a willing participant? That Lan Wangji had - had forced himself on - on...” A-Cheng trailed off, the end of that sentence too gruesome to complete. His meaning, however, was lost on no one.
Jiang Yanli sighed, touched by the extent of A-Cheng’s concern. Though perhaps in this one instance, he really did overreach. Not that this wouldn’t be a possibility of course, and had the accused been her and not A-Xian, and the man been - hm say Jin Zixun- and not Lan Wangji, then what he suggested would be at the forefront of their parents’ suspicions. Except Wei Wuxian was not Jiang Yanli. Zewu-jun did not marry him solely for his pretty face. By all standards, he was a proficient cultivator, even more powerful now that he’s matured and come into his own. That anyone could wrangled him on his back for that kind of purpose was indeed not very likely, and besides -
“Lan Zhan, would you like to hold him? Hold Rulan?”
“Mn? Looks heavy.”
“Lan Zhan!”
No, decided Jiang Yanli, her brother’s laughter still echoing in her memory. It was far more plausible that this love affair was more love than affair, which was why the wound it would inevitably leave behind for both A-Xian and Lan Wangji would be that much harder to heal.
She turned her attention back to Jiang Cheng, who had picked up on his tirade again and ploughed forth uninhibited.
“Look at you both. Look at this family, if it even is that at all! Wei Wuxian is at Cloud Recesses right now, suffering, and none of you even care! You only care about what this will do to Lotus Pier's image. A-die, you claim to love him, doted on him his whole life, but where are you now that he needs you?! A-niang, Cangse Sanren is dead. She did not raise him, you did! And even if he is Father’s son, so what, so what?! Has he not done everything you ever asked him? Has he not made Lotus Pier proud? Do you even know how many bastards Jin Guangshan has floating around unclaimed?! Yunmeng only has one Wei Wuxian, and blood or not, I only have one brother!"
Jiang Cheng broke off abruptly, face wet with tears. He made a rough swipe at them with his sleeves, but spoke no more. Jiang Yanli wasn’t sure if it was because his audacity had shocked even himself or if he had realized that any more unfiltered outbursts and Madam Yu really would let him have a taste of Zidian’s sting.
Knowing he had unloaded a lot of bold words that were the epitome of impertinent behaviour, and not wishing to stick around to find out their consequences, Jiang Cheng grabbed Sandu and spun on his heels.
Purple electricity zipped through the air as the whip tail clacked against the door frame, jolting him sideways.
“Where do you think you’re going boy? Stop at once!"
"I'm going to Cloud Recesses and getting my brother back! If Gusu Lan doesn't want him, then I will not leave him there to be abused! He deserves to come home, and to hell with them!"
“A-Cheng, A-Cheng, didi, wait, wait!” Jiang Yanli rushed to his side, stopping him in his track. “Impulsivity solves nothing. We cannot rush this. A-die, a-niang, A-Cheng has obviously had quite a shock, as we all have. He isn’t himself; please forgive him for his earlier rudeness. I’ll take him out to the river to cool off. Come, A-Cheng, come along.”
Begrudgingly, Jiang Cheng allowed himself to be dragged away by his sister.
“Not a word from you until we’re out of earshot,” she whispered to him.
Wilting, he obeyed.
Jiang Yanli kept a tight grip on this brother of hers. She knew she had to think of a solution quickly and carefully. If not, then by the week’s end, A-Cheng could very well be the only brother she had left.
