postcanon, wei wuxian leaves the cloud recesses.
hearing this news, a man with a significant grudge against the yiling patriarch hires an assassin to kill said yiling patriarch. this man offers the equivalent of $30,000, so the assassin accepts.
the assassin then thinks things through and realizes that this is the yiling patriarch they're talking about. but the assassin still wants the $30,000. so the assassin comes up with a solution: he hires another assassin and offers the second assassin $15,000 to kill the yiling patriarch.
the second assassin wants the $15,000, so she accepts. the second assassin has the exact same realization as the first assassin. but the second assassin wants the $15,000, and so decides to solve the problem by hiring a third assassin for $7,500.
the third assassin also wants money, so he accepts as well. but then the third assassin realizes he probably can't take the yiling patriarch either.....so he hires a fourth assassin for $4,000.
the fourth assassin - proving herself no different than any of the other assassins in this subcontractor chain - then hires a fifth assassin to do the job for $1,000.
$1,000 is honestly not a lot of money for an assassination. but the fifth assassin initially accepts anyways. however, the fifth assassin then has a crisis of conscience: no matter how he thinks about it, $1,000 for a human life does not seem like an equivalent exchange.
so the fifth assassin contacts the yiling patriarch, arranges to meet with him in a public location, and explains all of the above to him.
meanwhile, from a different POV - things did not work out between wei wuxian and lan wangji. though their relationship started out positive, it ended up falling apart rather spectacularly; due to this, wei wuxian no longer lives in the cloud recesses and no longer has lan wangji's financial support. furthermore, because wei wuxian said some rather nasty things to lan wangji in the tail end of their relationship, everyone at the cloud recesses fully sided with lan wangji; thus, wei wuxian now no longer has the financial support of anyone else in the cloud recesses, either.
now, wei wuxian makes a living as a rogue cultivator on his own. he manages to scrape by on funds from nighthunts. however - ironically enough - the measures spearheaded by himself and lan wangji in order to make the great sects more proactively protect the people now mean there's fewer jobs available for him, so he's not making much.
which is all to say: wei wuxian is also in dire need of some money.
therefore, when the regretful fifth assassin spills all of the above to wei wuxian, wei wuxian proposes a plan of his own: he and the last assassin will fake wei wuxian's murder, and then the last assassin and wei wuxian will split the $1,000.
the fifth assassin agrees. thus, wei wuxian and the fifth assassin fake wei wuxian's death. the fifth assassin then receives his payment, and both the fifth assassin and wei wuxian walk away with $500 apiece. afterwards, wei wuxian goes into hiding.
meanwhile, jiang cheng's spies report that wei wuxian has disapppeared.
jiang cheng immediately suspects bullshit, so he begins to investigate. along the way, lan wangji finds out about wei wuxian's disappearance as well, and so freely appends himself to jiang cheng's investigation.
jiang cheng very quickly finds the man who hired the first assassin - bragging in a private business meeting about having finally gotten revenge on the yiling patriarch. a rather upset jiang cheng then kidnaps this man and extracts all the information he can get out of him.
using this information, jiang cheng and lan wangji track down the first assassin. using the same means, jiang cheng and lan wangji then obtain the name of the second assassin. using this method, an increasingly upset jiang cheng and lan wangji work their way down the chain of assassins.....all the way until they gets to the fifth assassin, who confesses immediately to having conspired with wei wuxian to fake wei wuxian's death.
afterwards, it is not particularly difficult to dig up wei wuxian from where he has gone into hiding. jiang cheng strangles wei wuxian for no money at all.
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