What if instead of being his dad Wen Ruohan was his grandfather. And one of his sons had sizhui.
Nie Mingjue staggered a little after he stormed off, the adrenaline rush of fury – at Meng Yao’s betrayal, his many betrayals, at Lan Xichen for accepting Meng Yao’s explanations at face value, at himself for not being able to do what he probably should – all fading away into exhaustion and pain.
It was at that point that he acknowledged that, in his anger, he had probably made a mistake by storming off in the first place – even with Baxia in hand, even with Wen Ruohan finally dead, Nie Mingjue really shouldn’t walking around alone in the Sun Palace.
He was injured, and heavily so; any Wen that wanted could probably take him down. A strong wind could probably take him down.
Still, it wasn’t as if his pride would permit him to go back and ask Lan Xichen to leave Meng Yao’s side for long enough to notice that a man he’d called friend for over a decade had been rather brutally tortured for several days and could very much use some medical assistance - apparently, tending to the injuries to Meng Yao’s ego after Nie Mingjue had shouted at him about the fact that he’d murdered people was more important.
So Nie Mingjue kept on going, lifting his sleeve to try to wipe the blood out of his eyes.
It didn’t work very well, mostly because there wasn’t much space left on his sleeve that wasn’t already covered in blood, and it only ended up making it worse.
On a whim, he turned towards the corridor where he knew from experience years before that the Wen clan’s rooms were located, thinking only that he might be able to find a sheet or some spare clothing to use to wipe his face clean.
He found something different.
The Wen cultivator was only a boy, around the same age as Nie Huaisang; his knees shook and his eyes were white all around the edges in his terror. The colors of his robes suggested he was surnamed Wen but of low status, and while there was a sword at his belt, it looked as fresh and unused as Nie Huaisang’s saber.
Instead of wielding it, he was clutching a small child, a year or two old at most, to his chest.
Nie Mingjue stared, and the boy stared back.
“These are the rooms for the main family,” Nie Mingjue said after a moment of silence, and the boy blanched, inadvertently confirming his suspicions. “Whose child is that?”
“Please don’t kill us,” the boy said, lip quivering. “Or don’t – just don’t kill him. A-Yuan didn’t do anything.”
“Whose child is that?” Nie Mingjue repeated. “Wen Xu’s?”
He couldn’t imagine it being Wen Chao’s, though he supposed it was theoretically possible.
The boy nodded reluctantly. “I wasn’t planning on telling him anything about that,” he offered. “He wouldn’t need to know…”
“That I killed his father?” Nie Mingjue asked, arching his eyebrows, then shook his head, dismissing the entire thing. If a child grew up and wanted revenge for his father, he of all people wouldn’t stop him from trying no matter how little Wen Xu deserved the honor; he could deal with the problem whenever it arose. “I’m not going to kill you. Either of you – what’s your name?”
“Wen Ning – ah, Qionglin. You’re not going to..?”
Nie Mingjue nodded at the sword at his waist. “Tell me, Wen Qionglin. Have you ever used that?”
“Uh, I fly sometimes? Not well, though,” Wen Ning said, looking confused. “What does – oh.”
Nie Mingjue rolled his eyes, feeling like the point had been made.
Wen Ning clearly did not agree, still looking lost and not a little terrified.
“Yes,” Nie Mingjue clarified dryly. “I am not going to kill you. There’s no battle happening right now, so killing you would be the same as killing a civilian, and unlike your sect, we don’t do that. Or anything else, for that matter.”
“Wen Xu had neither a wife nor a concubine,” Nie Mingjue said. “I’m making an assumption, but given the child’s age, the timing…and the fact that that child has the look of a Lan.”
Wen Ning winced again and bowed his head. “His mother was taken against her will from the Cloud Recesses after Wen Xu burned it,” he confirmed in a quiet voice. “She – she committed suicide, not long after the birth.”
Nie Mingjue sighed. He’d been right, then; this child was one of the many remnants of war.
He thought, for a moment, of calling Lan Xichen over to tell him that he had a cousin lingering here. Surnamed Wen, of course, and that would be a hard burden for the child to bear growing up, but the child was still Lan blood; Lan Xichen would take him back to Gusu in a heartbeat.
Of course, Lan Xichen was still with Meng Yao – calling one would bring the other. Meng Yao, who had just killed Nie cultivators that Nie Mingjue had known his whole life and blamed him for not understanding why he just had to do it, even though he knew Wen Ruohan would be dead soon, and Lan Xichen, who defended him without a second thought, without giving a chance for Nie Mingjue to explain his grievances, without trusting him to have a reason for his anger…
Meng Yao, who had sent them letters with information – sent Lan Xichen letters with information.
The same information that had led Nie Mingjue into the trap at Yangquan, which had led him to the Sun Palace, where Wen Ruohan couldn’t wait to see him kneeling before his throne, where Meng Yao had used that moment of inattention, focused on Nie Mingjue’s pain, to stab the man in the back –
Where Lan Xichen had come so conveniently quickly after the death was accomplished.
Had Lan Xichen known what Meng Yao was planning? Had he known what he was sending Nie Mingjue into?
Had he known and decided not to tell him?
(Nie Mingjue would have gone willingly, if they’d told him. Being captured as nothing, the torture was nothing, he would bear it all a thousand times over if it meant that he would see Wen Ruohan’s death. But he would have only taken volunteers with him, men prepared to accept death, and not – not as it was.)
For what might be the first time in his life, Nie Mingjue felt a momentary pang of distrust in Lan Xichen’s judgment.
“If you find yourself in need of help with the child, come to my Nie sect,” he finally said, a compromise with himself. He’d normally offer a token of some sort, but he didn’t have any on him; they had all been taken away long ago. “You’re both surnamed Wen, so you’ll probably end up in a prisoner of war camp at first, and then get resettled, but if it ends up being too hard, you can tell them to ask for me…and if I’m not around for whatever reason, ask for Lan Wangji. He’s reasonable and righteous, as well as discreet. He won’t turn you down.”
Wen Ning nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind, Sect Leader. Thank you.”
Nie Mingjue waved a hand at him, nose wrinkling as he felt the blood start dripping down his forehead again. “You should leave first. Get far away from here, before anyone else makes the connection I did.”
Wen Ning began to go, then hesitated. “Do you need medical assistance, Sect Leader Nie? I know a little…”
“I’ve been in Wen Ruohan’s custody since Yangquan,” Nie Mingjue said, and Wen Ning blanched; at least he realized what that meant, even if, somehow, Lan Xichen didn’t. “‘A little’ isn’t going to help.”
“You probably shouldn’t be walking around if you’ve got broken bones,” Wen Ning said anxiously. “Or burns. Or deep cuts. Or, uh –”
Eventually Lan Xichen had found him, furious at the apparently belated realization that Nie Mingjue had not gone straight back to his camp for medical help – as if Nie Mingjue would know where their camp was, given that he hadn’t been told anything – but the evidence of his concern helped ease Nie Mingjue’s fears.
He was aware it probably shouldn’t – he still believed there was no reason for those Nie cultivators to die, believed that Meng Yao could have offered to send them away to the Fire Palace the way he had done later when he wanted to preserve Nie Mingjue’s life – but he couldn’t help himself. Between his temper, his position, and his reticent personality, he had many admirers but almost no close friends, and so he treasured the ones he had like gold. The thought of breaking with Lan Xichen left ashes in his mouth.
In fact, if one looked at it a certain way, Lan Xichen might be the only friend he had left – he’d had others, growing up, but they’d become distant after he became Sect Leader, the impossible barrier between them, and even more distant once he’d become war leader, responsible for their lives and deaths. He’d once thought he’d had another true friend in Meng Yao, but that was before he realized how many of their interactions had been staged with a deliberate goal in mind.
Before he realized that Meng Yao had never thought of him as anything other than a stepping stone.
And now Lan Xichen wanted them to become sworn brothers.
Nie Mingjue had been repulsed by the idea when he’d first broached it, only a day or two after the events in the Sun Palace. Becoming Lan Xichen’s sworn brother was nothing, but Meng Yao…? Before, maybe, but now…?
“A-Yao really did think he was doing the right thing,” Lan Xichen said, his eyes full of sincerity, and Nie Mingjue wondered when it’d become ‘A-Yao’. Lan Xichen didn’t even refer to Lan Wangji with such a term, though that might be more due to Lan Wangji being such a stickler for etiquette. “I know you think that he didn’t have to kill them, but he was the one who’d been there so long, who knew Wen Ruohan’s thinking – he couldn’t give up the opportunity we’d created at so much cost.”
The opportunity you created with my flesh and bones, Nie Mingjue wanted to say, but didn’t. He would have agreed if they’d ask, and surely that was the same as having agreed, wasn’t it? It would be petty to hold it against them.
It would be petty to continue feeling hurt.
“And his attack on me at Langya?” he asked, his arms crossed. “After having engaged in the premeditated murder of one of his own superiors?”
“It’s more complicated than just that,” Lan Xichen said. “There were reasons – you can’t look at things as just black and white, Mingjue-xiong.”
Nie Mingjue wasn’t sure how planning to stab your own fellow soldiers in the back in a way designed to disguise their deaths as enemy casualties didn’t fall pretty firmly into the “unmitigated black” category.
Oh, sure, Meng Yao had reasons, he always had reasons! But even if there was abuse, Meng Yao had had other options – if no one at Langya would list, he could have written a letter to Nie Mingjue himself to lay out his grievances; Nie MIngjue had already been acting as the overall commander of the war by then, and even Jin Guangshan’s thick face, pretending he didn’t know who Meng Yao was or that he’d never seen any letter, wouldn’t stand up to a direct conversation.
There were other things Meng Yao could have done, and he pointed them out to Lan Xichen.
“That’s all the more reason you should swear brotherhood with the two of us,” Lan Xichen said, and he was in earnest; he had always been so very earnest. “As the eldest, you would have the opportunity to help teach A-Yao how to walk on the right path, even when he feels he’s trapped. You were such good friends with him in the past – you could be friends again!”
It sounded more like responsibility than opportunity, but in the end Nie Mingjue really had liked Meng Yao once, really had had faith in him, and maybe Lan Xichen was right; maybe there was a good man under there, twisted only by desperate circumstances.
So he did it, gave his good name to a man he wasn’t sure he could trust, and that was just another thing on top of everything else he had to do: there was a war to finish, bodies to bury, the Unclean Realm to rebuild, politics to manage…it was all a mess, and one he had to tackle alone.
It wasn’t until the celebration at Phoenix Mountain that he finally had a chance to put down his burdens, even if only for a little while.
“Meng Yao,” he said, because the name Jin Guangyao felt more like an insult on his tongue. “Can you find someone for me?”
Lan Xichen had asked him to think of things he could ask Meng Yao to do, insisting that it would help mend their relationship for Meng Yao to feel wanted rather than merely scolded.
“Find someone?” Jin Guangyao echoed, turning to look at him. “Of course, da-ge. You need only ask. I’m only surprised – you don’t often ask about people in specific.”
Nie Mingjue supposed that was true.
“You’re helping with the resettlement of the Wen civilians, aren’t you?” he asked.
The Jin sect had volunteered for the work, and it made sense: they were the wealthiest sect, capable of buying up land for the Wens to live on and paying for the wages of the men it would take to keep an eye on them until they could feel certain that they weren’t planning rebellion. It would be good for the Wen civilians to have some land where they could farm, an honest life they could lead, and it was probably better for them to live nearer to the Jin sect, which had suffered much less in the war, than risk anger elsewhere.
“One of them is named Wen Qionglin,” he continued when Jin Guangyao nodded. “Skinny, like you, but taller – maybe half a head. Big eyes.”
“He must be a rare man indeed for da-ge to notice his eyes,” Jin Guangyao teased, though there was some expression Nie Mingjue didn’t recognize in his eyes. It was almost dark, something possessive and angry, but that didn’t make any sense. Perhaps he was only still irritated at how badly his first major event for the Jin sect had gone.
Nie Mingjue had only mentioned the eyes because at the time it’d seemed as if they were wide enough to take up half of his face, the boy as skittish as a rabbit; he shrugged, not wanting to talk about it too much. He’d made a decision based on pain and anger, and he still didn’t know if it had been the right one.
“If you can find him for me, let me know where he is,” he said. “If you can’t, you can’t. It’s fine - I have other places I can look.”
In the end it hadn’t been Jin Guangyao who had found Wen Ning, but Wei Wuxian.
Nie Mingjue only heard about the whole disaster much later on – he’d assumed from Jin Guangyao’s silence that the boy had somehow managed to evade the Jin’s resettlement efforts and had turned to checking elsewhere.
He hadn’t been expecting to find him again as Wei Wuxian’s Ghost General.
That had been a shock, as had finding out about the boy’s identity –
“He’s Wen Qing’s brother,” Jin Guangyao told him, later. “She ran a Supervisory Office in Yiling, caring for prisoners to make sure they stayed alive pending interrogation – torture, really. He assisted her…did you really think he was just a civilian, da-ge? You really shouldn’t let yourself be so easily deceived by an innocent smile.”
– but in the end Nie Mingjue decided that it was still his responsibility to find out what had happened to the little Lan boy.
There was a barrier at the bottom of the Burial Mounds that Nie Mingjue lightly touched with his saber – not enough to actually destroy it, which would cause a backlash, but enough to make the person who put it into place notice. It was little more than a means of knocking, really, but Wei Wuxian stormed down the mountain in an offended fury.
Perhaps Nie Mingjue had come on a bad day.
“You’re not welcome here,” Wei Wuxian said. “I’m not handing over the Stygian Tiger Seal, or the Wens – I want to be left alone.”
“I’ve already separated from the Jiang sect and been condemned by the entire cultivation world; what more do you want?! I’ve had enough. Wen Ning, make sure he leaves.” With that, he turned on his heel and went right back up the mountain, leaving Nie Mingjue blinking.
Wen Ning shuffled forward. His face was flat, seeming almost cruel in its indifference, but Nie Mingjue suspected that was just the stiffness of death. “He won’t come back down,” he said.
“That’s fine,” Nie Mingjue said, still somewhat taken aback by the sheer level of rudeness. “I came here to speak to you, anyway.”
“I wanted to check up on you,” Nie Mingjue said, feeling abruptly very awkward – Wen Ning had died, after all, and in bad enough circumstances that he’d risen up again as a fierce corpse. He couldn’t even be sure that the fierce corpse, however conscious, was still the Wen Ning he’d been before he died; some rumors suggested it was something else moving the body, some tool or dreadful summons of Wei Wuxian’s. “And the child.”
There was a moment of silence, when Nie Mingjue began to wonder as well, but finally Wen Ning stirred and spoke again.
“…he’s doing all right,” he said, and there was a small smile on his face. “Wei-gongzi took A-Yuan down the mountain to the village recently and he got a whole bunch of toys; he’s been very happy.”
“I’m glad,” Nie Mingjue said, and felt rather stiff himself. “I should have done more for him, the first time we met. I regretted it later, but couldn’t find you.”
Nie Mingjue nodded. “When I was at the Phoenix Mountain hunt a few months back, I asked my sworn brother to check the Jin resettlement program, as he helps organize it,” he said. “He must have overlooked you somehow – I told him to look for Wen Qionglin; perhaps that was the issue.”
It didn’t seem especially likely, since Jin Guangyao had been able to find out about Wen Ning’s past, but he couldn’t think of any other reason why the normally efficient man would make such an oversight.
Wen Ning was quiet for a long moment, a strange expression on his face. “What are your plans now, Sect Leader Nie?”
Nie Mingjue frowned. “What do you mean?”
“About A-Yuan. His parentage…”
“You said he was fine and happy,” Nie Mingjue pointed out, realizing that Wen Ning was probably worried that he’d insist on the boy returning to the Cloud Recesses. “I’m not…Lan Xichen is very busy with his own concerns, anyway, and if the child is happy, then nothing need change. And Wei-gongzi’s hysterics aside, Yiling is fairly well protected by him at the moment, so this is probably the safest place for him to be.”
The Jins were furious about what had happened; he wouldn’t trust the Wens with them right now. In fact…
“If the Jin sect start making trouble, my earlier offer to care for him is still valid,” he said, and this time he did have a token at his waist that he was able to offer up. “Given your actions during the war, it can no longer extend to you as well – assuming you can even leave Wei-gongzi’s side, anyway.”
“Who told you what I did during the war?” Wen Ning asked. “That sworn brother of yours again? Lianfeng-zun?”
Nie Mingjue nodded. “As I said, I asked him to look for you; he found out in passing about what was done under your sister’s command. I can’t offer succor to someone who helped torture my Nie cultivators, even in the guise of offering medical aid; there would need to be a trial, and passions are still inflamed. Better that you stay here.” There didn’t seem to be anything more to say: he’d found out what he’d wanted. “I’ll take my leave, then.”
Wen Ning slowly nodded. “Come back again sometime, Sect Leader Nie,” he requested, and even seemed sincere about it. “And – stay safe.”
It was a strange farewell, but Nie Mingjue supposed that the remnants of the Wen sect – and a fierce corpse, no less – would be more concerned than most about security and well-being.
“Wei-gongzi,” Wen Ning said, sitting on the floor next to Wei Wuxian’s working bench in the cave. “I have a question.”
“Is this about my sister’s wedding again? I’ve already accepted that I can’t go. You don’t have to keep worrying.”
“Not about that,” Wen Ning said. “Something else.” He hesitated. “I have a friend –”
Wei Wuxian dropped the half-finished compass of evil onto the workbench with a thunk and spun around to look at Wen Ning with a grin. “You have a friend? Go on.”
Wen Ning stared at him, bewildered.
“Everyone knows that asking for advice on behalf of a friend means asking for it for yourself!” Wei Wuxian sai, beaming. “Go on, tell me – do you like someone? Or is it something to do with your body –”
“It really is about a friend!” Wen Ning wailed, hiding his face behind his hands. “Or, well, not a friend. Someone I know. He’s the one with friends – bad friends.”
“Bad friends? What do you mean?”
Wen Ning peeked between his fingers, but Wei Wuxian appeared to have calmed down a bit from his earlier manic glee.
“I think,” he said, thinking very hard about his words before saying them, “that – this person I know, that he’s being manipulated by one, maybe more than one, of his friends. I don’t know why, but…I don’t know. It gives me a weird feeling. Like something bad is going to happen. And I don’t know if I should tell him or if that would only make things worse or…I don’t know.”
Wei Wuxian nodded, finally looking serious. “Is there a chance that we can drop the ambiguity?” he asked. “I can help better if I know who the people you’re talking about are.”
“It’s a bit sensitive. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble…”
Wei Wuxian looked around the cave pointedly. “I’m pretty sure we’ve offended everyone we could possibly offend already, Wen Ning.”
“…I think Chifeng-zun shouldn’t have sworn brotherhood with Lianfeng-zun and Zewu-jun,” Wen Ning said in a rush.
“I retract my previous statement,” Wei Wuxian said weakly. “What? How do you even – you consider Chifeng-zun a friend?”
“He was very nice the first time we met,” Wen Ning said.
“Okay,” Wei Wuxian said. “Okay. This is fine. You did in fact find the only three people in the cultivation world that I haven’t crossed yet, but – it’s fine. Okay. Let’s deal with this. What do you mean he’s being manipulated? And what’s wrong with Lan Xichen? He’s the real nice one.”
“I’m not saying he isn’t! It’s Lianfeng-zun that’s the problem, I think.”
“I haven’t heard anything bad about him, other than the fact that he runs whenever Chifeng-zun appears,” Wei Wuxian said. “But then again, rumor doesn’t get you very far, or else we’d be living in a palace of blood and gore right now – emphasis on palace. It’d probably have better washroom facilities than we have.” He sighed and shook his head. “What makes you say what you’re saying?”
“I’m not sure…it’s probably nothing. They didn’t pay any attention to Chifeng-zun when he’d been tortured, letting him walk around where he could’ve been killed, and then they swore brotherhood before his wounds had even scabbed over, and I swear they must have pushed him into it, what with the way he treats Lianfeng-zun...Anyway, then there’s everything that’s been happening with Lianfeng-zun and me - ”
“…you know what, let’s focus to that,” Wei Wuxian said, holding his head as if it hurt. “What has Lianfeng-zun to do with you?”
“Chifeng-zun asked him to look for me, a few months ago, and he deliberately didn’t tell him where I was,” Wen Ning said. “And he also told him a bunch of stuff about what I did during the war that’s really not true – he thought I was involved in torturing people, and I wasn’t, I swear! – and anyway, I don’t know why he’d do that. Sworn brothers shouldn’t lie to each other, should they?”
“Generally speaking, no,” Wei Wuxian said. “Okay, yes, that’s all a bit suspicious; that bit with him exaggerating what you did during the war sure sounds like he’s abusing Chifeng-zun’s trust to isolate us even more. But what’s wrong with Lan Xichen? He’s Lan Zhan’s older brother – I like him.”
Wen Ning nibbled on his lower lip. “It’s not what he did,” he said slowly. “It’s only…okay, let me tell you a story. There was an uncle I liked once. He’d been a guest cultivator, but he married one of my cousins, and he was really nice to me; I used to go over to see him a few times a week. And then one day my sister told me I couldn’t talk to him anymore because he was gone: she’d had him ejected from the sect because she’d found out that he beat his wife.”
“I didn’t believe it at first,” Wen Ning said. “He was always really nice to me, you know? He’d never raised a hand or behaved badly where I could see. A bunch of other people hadn’t believed it, either, for the same reasons. He behaved well, he had a good reputation, he smiled…my cousin tried to kill herself. That’s how my sister found out, and she believed her. And she was right, too.”
“Lan Xichen is as nice in private as he is in public, though.”
“No, you don’t understand – I don’t think he’s the guest cultivator in the story. I think he’s me. Me and all the other ones that refused to believe what was going on even if we saw the signs, just because we liked him so much. He wouldn’t have gotten away with it for as long as he did if we all hadn’t been willing to defend him.”
“So you think Lianfeng-zun is the one that’s up to something in secret,” Wei Wuxian said slowly, fingers drumming on his leg. “And Lan Xichen is acting, however inadvertently, as his shield…Chifeng-zun would definitely believe whatever Lan Xichen told him. That’s probably how he got captured in Yangquan to begin with, actually; that makes a lot of sense. But what benefit would there be to Lianfeng-zun to manipulating Chifeng-zun into hating you? Hating us?”
He frowned. “Do you think the Jin sect is planning on trying something against us here at Yiling, and Lianfeng-zun is trying to get Chifeng-zun on board? I know the Jin sect wants my Stygian Tiger Seal, while the Nie sect has never much cared about it…this could be serious.”
“One question, though. You said he deliberately knew where you were and didn’t tell him – are you sure about that? That’s the key point, at least to me: getting your past in the war wrong, that could be a mistake, and we don’t know if there was some sort of earlier agreement about what happened in the Sun Palace. How do you know Lianfeng-zun knew where you were?”
“He visited,” Wen Ning said, and looked down at his hands, which were clenched so hard that the knuckles were white. “He looked right at me while he was talking to some of the guards. And…”
“And then I died, Wei-gongzi,” Wen Ning said solemnly. “Less than a day later, the guards he was talking to killed me.”
“Not that I’m not always happy to see you, Wei-xiong,” Nie Huaisang said, ignoring the way that he could feel his sect elders a few rooms over bursting into flame in sheer rage without ever realizing why, and also the way his elder brother was going to break both his legs if he ever found out that this was what Nie Huaisang was doing with the role of acting Sect Leader in his absence, “but…why are you here again?”
“To save your brother!” Wei Wuxian said with a grin. “Also possibly to get your thoughts on what a good wedding gift for my sister would be. I can’t decide whether to go with something fancy, heartfelt, or crude.”
“Don’t go with fancy, the Jin sect has all the fancy they need for a lifetime,” Nie Huaisang said at once, because that much he could answer. “And – wait, what was that about saving my brother?”
“Also, I may need to marry Lan Zhan in order to finalize an adoption,” Wei Wuxian said thoughtfully, as if he wasn’t blowing up explosives in Nie Huaisang’s brain with every word. “He doesn’t know about it yet. Do you think you can find someone who can officiate?”
“My brother can do it, he’s technically an elder in the Lan sect by virtue of being sworn brothers with their sect leader,” Nie Huaisang said, mouth moving on automatic. “And – what? Marriage? Adoption? Not know about – also, can we go back to the bit about saving my brother?”
