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robininthelabyrinth · 4 years

Text

prompt: Bodyswap of Nie Mingjue and Baxia?

link to ao3 because this is long

There were a lot of rules about the saber spirits, but the most important one was always: You control the saber, do not let it control you.

The line between being a hero and being a monster was a very thin one, easy to overstep: with the horrible temper that was as much an ancestral inheritance as their cultivation style, it was all too easy for members of their family to become corrupted. Cultivating the saber spirit gave them power, but it also inspired rage – it would be all too easy to start making excuses for your conduct, to become corrupted by your own desires, to say “Oh, it’s his fault, he made me angry” or “He shouldn’t have gotten in my way” when what you meant was “I decided he didn’t matter.”

That was unacceptable.

If people didn’t matter, then nothing mattered, and all the sacrifices that had ever been made in the name of upholding justice and righteousness, using violence for good, were for nothing.

Control and principle – those were the foundations of Nie cultivation.

The saber spirits heightened the tension of it: the balance between power and responsibility, between blind rage and principled justice. Each saber spirit belonged to a single master, reflecting the quirks of their personality, but at the most base level they were all the same, simple and straightforward: they wanted to destroy evil.

All evil.

Without exception. Without mercy or nuance or – anything.

That’s why it was the job of the saber’s master to keep them in check. A saber spirit would make no distinction between a lost ghost draining a little yang energy to preserve its own life or a fierce corpse murdering people left in right, between a yao that took in the energy of the sun and moon and a yao that fed on corpses, between a small child stealing bread to feed their family or a criminal stealing in through the window to commit a rape – only a human could make those sorts of decisions.

Or so Nie Mingjue had always been taught.

“I don’t know,” he whispered, late at night, Baxia lying on the bed next to him instead of properly in her case where she belonged. “I think you could probably learn to tell the difference, if you wanted.”

Baxia purred in his mind, temporarily calm and sated – he’d gone night hunting the day before, accompanying his father, and he’d been the one to take down the creature: a maddened yao that had once been a boar, and which had recently taken to ripping people to pieces with its tusks.

His father had been very proud. He’d ruffled Nie Mingjue’s hair as if he were still a child – he wasn’t, he was a big brother now, his little brother born just last month – and called him his prodigy, ignoring the way the other Nie cultivators on the night hunt frowned.

They always frowned.

Nie Mingjue wasn’t supposed to get his saber until he was twelve. Before that, it was all practice sabers: heavy wood, to help strengthen the arms and shoulders, and eventually dead steel, to learn to finesse and how to not cut your own head off, and only once you’d shown sufficient skill in those could you finally get a spiritual weapon of your very own.

Nie Mingjue picked up Baxia for the first time when he was six.

There’d been fighting, an incursion into the Unclean Realm by assassins – some small sect, probably egged on by Wen Ruohan in a way that could never be traced to him, but anyway they were all dead now – and when he’d heard the screaming, it hadn’t even occurred to him not to help.

Suppress evil, no matter where it lives; uphold justice, no matter what it takes.

He’d been only a child, but there had been children screaming, children his own age confronting fully grown cultivators, and that hadn’t been fair at all.

Nie Mingjue had sprinted to the armory, hoping to find something – anything he could use, even just one of his practice sabers, and that was the first time he’d seen her.

Baxia – though she hadn’t been Baxia back then – had only been half-forged then, enough spiritual weapon to channel his qi but not enough to really respond to his commands. That was fine: he didn’t know the techniques to wield her properly back then, anyway.

The basics were good enough against cultivators who never expected that the young child heir of the Nie family would be able to lift a sword longer than he was tall, much less wield it.

He’d aimed low at first, going for tender ankles and vulnerable knees, and then when they’d tried to leap up against him he brought his saber up against them, aiming for their bodies.

There was a lot of blood.

Nie Mingjue was descended from a butcher: his father had been taking him to see animals get hacked up for their kitchens since before he’d started walking, a way to inure him to blood and guts and gore, to animal screams that weren’t so different from the screams of the battlefield.

It was still strange, seeing blood on the flood, blood on his blade, to see the light fade out of a man’s eyes and know that he made that happen – that his soul would be irrevocably marked with the stain of having taken a life.

As a reward, Nie Mingjue’s father had ordered that Nie Mingjue could take up his saber early.

A lot of people in the sect didn’t agree with that decision. Even now, two years later, they still frowned whenever Nie Mingjue did something, muttering warnings about how children couldn’t be trusted to control themselves, how the saber spirits were unpredictable, how a cultivator’s life might already be cut short and how there was no need to cut a childhood short as well.

Nie Mingjue’s father ignored them. Nie Mingjue ignored them, too.

He liked Baxia.

And he thought, maybe, that she liked him, too.

No one had ever told him that he shouldn’t have been able to tell.

The first time they switch, it’s to save his life.

It wasn’t the first time they’d gotten closer than they should: Nie Mingjue had figured out if he channeled not only qi energy but vital energy into Baxia, circulating it through her as if she were an extension of his meridians, they would fight better – she would be light in his hand, anticipating his movements, putting her force behind his blows alongside his own. He’d even noticed that he could almost ‘see’ things differently – flickers of pulsing qi in cultivators, ghostly flame in corpses – and he thought it might be that he was seeing things the way she saw things, if a saber spirit could be said to see.

He’d done it more and more, only for one of his teachers to notice and scold him fiercely. Allowing something into his vital qi was opening himself up to possession; it might help his cultivation in the short term, an emergency measure, but in the end, the saber spirit would turn on him, devour him – after all, who was truly free from evil?

At first, Nie MIngjue tried to be good, to stop, but Baxia all but sulked at him – his swings dragging a little more than could be blamed on air resistance, a feeling of dissatisfaction and unhappiness even when he killed some fierce corpses for her, randomly waking him up in the middle of the night with fake alarms because his saber figured out long ago that he hated that – and eventually he just gave it up.

Every Nie saber was different, after all; like all spiritual weapons, they reflected their master. Maybe he and Baxia were just – different?

(And if it made it just a little easier to keep an eye on little Nie Huaisang, who’d just learned what crawling was and that he liked utilizing it to get to the most dangerous places possible, well, that was just an additional perk – how people ever took care of children without having a second pair of eyes, Nie Mingjue had no idea.)

And then they were at a night hunt, fighting something especially big and bad and vicious to the extreme, and all of a sudden Nie Mingjue felt something that reminded him of Sect Leader Wen, of the slick nauseating feel of his cultivation, and his father’s saber shattered.

Everyone panicked, shouting, and the beast roared, seeing its chance, and it jumped forward, goring Nie MIngjue’s father – still stunned – in the belly and knocking him down, and then rushing towards Nie Mingjue himself who was frozen in horror.

The next thing he knew, he wasn’t – he wasn’t knowing, anymore, or at least not the way he had before.

Everything around him was qi, and qi was in everything: different colors-textures-flavors (flavors?!) that showed him the difference between a living person and the dead, between plants and animals and the dirt beneath them, and even the subtle gradations inside the three souls and seven spirits, the way the qi-flame varied in color, the lightness of the soul slowly corrupted with rot – with evil.

It was vile.

He watched as his body leaped to the side, avoiding the beast’s charge – the movements were a little jerky, he thought, and Baxia sent some frustration back that he thought might roughly translate to listen it’s a new body and I’m trying here if she were capable of speech – and then spinning around, leaping up, and then bringing him down on her.

There was an encouraging sort of feeling from Baxia – go on, do the thing, you can do it – and somewhere along the way down, aided by the force of muscle and gravity, Nie Mingjue figured out that he was supposed to bite down, the sharp end of him all a single tooth, sharp and vicious, and he grabs onto the beast’s qi with all his might, tearing at it furiously, venting his rage.

A few more swipes with the blade and the beast died, Nie Mingjue drinking in its vital energy as if it were water as the creature’s souls and spirits scattered – he even purified the ones he could reach, making sure that nothing would remain behind, rotting and infecting the world with its madness and evil.

It felt good. To see that evil disintegrate into the wind, to know it would never hurt anyone again – good.

He wanted more.

There was a tug on his mind, Baxia calling him back as if he risked going too far, and habit kicked in: he turned in response to her call, trying to come to her side or have her come to his, and suddenly the world went off-kilter again and he was standing up on two legs (he had legs?) and the beast was dead in front of him, stinking of blood and bile –

He was human again.

Nie Mingjue dropped his saber, staggered to the side of a tree, and vomited.

Baxia returned to her place on his back, a quiet vibration that conveyed no feeling, only a reminder of her presence. He didn’t know what to say to her, what to think, what – anything.

You’ll leave yourself open to possession indeed.

Luckily, no one in the clan had noticed the lapse: the other Nie cultivators who had been on the hunt with them, both young and old, applauded Nie Mingjue for the steadiness of his nerves (a lie) and one of the elders even commented that it seemed as though his cultivation had increased substantially.

It had, too, but what was Nie Mingjue supposed to say? That he’d literally eaten another creature’s cultivation, drinking its blood and gnawing on its bones, until his spirit has become swollen with power?

That he’d enjoyed it?

He had three days to wonder and worry about it, trying to think about how to handle it, and then his father opened his eyes for the first time after the coma from the wound inflicted from the beast, eyes full of madness and fury aimed at every living being around him, and then he had other things to worry about.

After he became Sect Leader, Nie Mingjue spent a great deal of time telling his saber that he couldn’t just stab Wen Ruohan across the table of a discussion conference.

In his head, of course – Nie cultivators were known to be close to their sabers, even closer than most cultivators of other sects were with their beloved swords, but it would still be seen as strange to actually talk to your sword as if it could respond.

Baxia couldn’t talk back, of course – she was still a sword, in the end, incapable of human speech – but that never kept her from talking back, albeit in her own way.

She liked to highlight parts of Wen Ruohan’s body that would make for good cutting – Nie Mingjue’s eyesight had never quite returned to normal since that first switch, and he could always see a very faint ghostly overlay of qi on all living creatures around him, especially cultivators – and send encouraging feelings to him, like a mother cat nudging her kitten towards its first mouse, and Nie Mingjue would press his lips together and not smile because that would be weird.

It was one of the only things that made the discussion conferences – sitting across the table from his father’s murderer – bearable.

Nie Mingjue was perfectly aware that if anyone, even those in his own sect, ever found out about his unusual relationship with his saber, they would condemn him as unorthodox, possibly even crossing the line into demonic cultivation, even though he never touched resentful energy for his own use, never summoned ghosts or demons, nothing of that sort.

But he couldn’t stop.

Even if he wanted to – and he didn’t really want to – there was going to be a war soon, and his sect depending on him. His brother needed him.

And he needed Baxia.

After the first time, it had gotten easier than ever to slip sideways into her – to let her be the man, and him the sword. Nie Mingjue was, if he did say so himself, a very good saber, Baxia laughing in agreement at the thought, and it was so freeing to be nothing but a weapon, to have no concerns but wanting to kill and kill and kill.

Naturally, that was why he couldn’t permit himself to do it too often.

Connecting with Baxia was no longer something he had to try to do, as it had been when he was younger, but rather the opposite: he would have to try very hard to try to seal the connection between them, something he did only when he was extremely upset about something, and even then he wasn’t sure the link ever closed down all the way.

She was an extension of his body, a part of him; his vital qi poured into her, unreserved, and when he cultivated, her cultivation increased apace as well, her saber spirit strengthening to new heights of power – what helped him, helped her, and what helped her helped him.

It could almost, embarrassingly, be considered a form of dual cultivation.

It never felt wrong.

Nie Mingjue prided himself on his adherence to principle, to ethics; he knew people said he was too strict, too harsh, even unmerciful, but there was forged steel in his soul now, unyielding, and every year that passed he found his tolerance for evil grew less and less.

Evil in the world – and evil in mankind.

He knew there was evil in himself as well. He never deceived himself on that front: if Baxia were free to do as she pleased, to massacre all evil as she wanted, he would be one of her targets, no matter how she grumbled whenever he thought that. Virtue could be as corrupting as vice; he wasn’t any better than the people he condemned.

The only thing he could say for himself is that he always tried to do the right thing. He tried never to take action solely for his own benefit, to lift his saber only in the defense of a just cause, to do what he must and go no further.

Excepting only, perhaps, for Baxia – but as long as he controlled it, as long as he turned her only against evil, then surely, it was still within the boundaries of the limits his ancestors had laid out, that strange cultivation style of the saber spirits.

Well. Mostly against evil.

If perhaps during an especially boring discussion conference where his only job was to look fierce and disapproving, he let himself drift a little, and someone else (equally good at fierce and disapproving, if not actively better than him) take his place – if sometimes when he slept he let her go for a walk to stretch out legs she didn’t have and play around with the feeling of having thumbs – if occasionally she would coax him into letting her be the one to sharpen him, rather than the other way around, so that he could feel exactly how it ought to be done –

That didn’t seem too wrong.

The ability to detect evil in the souls of men did not actually mean that Baxia was good at people.

On the contrary, in fact – in many ways, she was very much a typical saber, wanting only to destroy, and it had taken years of explanations before she reluctantly applied some human standards to her perceptions of what constituted evil.

Sometimes, Nie Mingjue agreed with her – Jin Guangshan was a pathetic waste of a man, a worthless good-for-nothing no matter how decent his cultivation was – and sometimes he couldn’t even begin to understand her perspective – Jiang Fengmian was lukewarm about everything, which was irritating beyond belief, but Baxia wanted his head on a pike yesterday and sulked when he told her that absent a very good reason she was not going to get what she wanted.

She babied Nie Huaisang the same way he did, and bullied his saber into being obedient to him – very much not how that was supposed to go, but Nie Mingjue had always been weak where his baby brother was concerned – but she viewed most of the world with intense suspicion and not a little bit of rage.

She didn’t like Meng Yao.

It was a bit like Jiang Fengmian, actually. There was no reason that Nie Mingjue could think of, and even shifting into a spirit to study the other man didn’t reveal anything other than the usual evil one would expect to see in any person, and it wasn’t as though Baxia could tell him – she just hated what she hated, and no matter how much Nie Mingjue pointed to Meng Yao’s good acts, his defense of the common folk, his merits on the battlefield, she never gave in.

Still, good help was hard to find, and Meng Yao had never done anything that didn’t fit in well with Nie Mingjue’s standards – even if there was something wrong with him, deep down, did it really matter, as long as it never showed its face?

Nie Mingjue tried to keep his distance, emotionally, but it was hard. Meng Yao seemed on the surface to be a good man, efficient and capable; he was intelligent and well-spoken, creative and stubborn, talented to the point of brilliance.

Nie Mingjue didn’t have many friends, and Meng Yao was – there. Even Lan Xichen, who he trusted (and Baxia agreed, even if she thought Shuoyue was a bit of a priss), liked him; the conversation between the three of them flowed easily, pleasantly, and Nie Mingjue almost felt as though he were something other than the leader of a sect at war, as though he were a regular cultivator chatting with his generational cohort about all manner of things.

Baxia howled in the back of his head, wanting to rend Meng Yao limb from limb.

He ignored her.

In the end, she was right, and he was wrong.

The evil buried deep in Meng Yao’s soul could not be denied.

His betrayal at Langya, premeditated murder and then a personal attack; his decision to change his colors and join the Wen sect, his murder of helpless Nie sect cultivators; the cool manner by which he traded his war glory to the Jin sect for a place and a name that only shone gold to the outside world –

It was a disappointment.

Nie Mingjue should have trusted Baxia.

(He agreed to swear brotherhood with the man because Lan Xichen wanted it, because he still hoped against hope that he could purify the evil in Meng Yao’s heart the way he did the evil of ghosts, could bring back the friend he’d once thought he’d had – but it was still a disappointment.)

Maybe that was what gave him pause, during the competition at Phoenix Mountain – he’d only met Wei Wuxian in passing before, never spent much time with him, and even less once he’d become the fearsome Yiling Patriarch that wielded demonic cultivation as a scythe against their mutual enemies.

He’d expected to have to talk Baxia down from trying to kill him at once. After all, according to the stories, he stank of resentful energy, having pulled it inside of himself until it tainted every inch of him; it followed him like a cloak of power and cruelty.

The reality was – different.

Him? Nie Mingjue thought at Baxia, mildly appalled. You like him? Really?

Baxia purred, pleased.

This I have to see.

He usually tried not to let Baxia take over in front of his fellow sect leaders, who were by now all very well trained at spotting abnormalities of even the slightest sort, but the curiosity was killing him.

In the eyes of a saber, Wei Wuxian was – a man.

Just that, nothing more. He had some virtues and some faults, good and evil mixed together in no greater or lesser proportion than Meng Yao, and while he was surrounded by resentful energy, was shot through with it, it did not infect his souls or spirits with rot any more than anyone else. It passed through him like any other type of qi energy did, the ghostly flame sliding through his meridians as though he were on the verge of becoming a demon himself and yet not absorbed within, not kept – he used only what he pulled at any given time, letting the power run through his fingers like water, and never stored it inside –

He lacked a golden core.

No wonder he couldn’t store any power; even if he wanted to, he couldn’t, the taint injuring him as it flowed through his system without purification – it was as if he were drinking alcohol while lacking a liver – but at the same time he lacked the ability to build it up inside of him.

Nie Mingjue wondered what had happened.

He waited until later – after a number of embarrassing incidents, mostly involving Jin Zixuan’s confession of affection to Jiang Yanli, a love affair which Nie Mingjue had absolutely no interest in but which made Nie Huaisang roll around on his bed, clutching his fan to his chest and sighing dreamily – and then he went to where the Jiang sect was housed and asked to speak with Wei Wuxian.

“You know it’s quite late, Sect Leader Nie,” Wei Wuxian drawled, his arms crossed in front of him defensively. “And I’m not any more inclined to give up the Stygian Tiger Seal because of the hour.”

“What?” Nie Mingjue asked, bewildered, and then – “Oh, that. It’s a vile thing and ought to be destroyed, but that’s on your conscience. If you misuse it, I’ll turn my blade against you; if you lose it to someone else, I’ll drink at your funeral; other than that, it’s no business of mine.”

“…oh,” Wei Wuxian said, his arms loosening. “Sorry, I assumed. You came to speak with me and not Jiang Cheng…”

“I’ve been speaking with Sect Leader Jiang all day,” Nie Mingjue said, impatient. “About everything from matters of principle to fishing rights in small rivers that only three people even know exist – and we’re scheduled to do it again tomorrow. Why would I bother him after hours?”

Wei Wuxian laughed, then looked surprised at himself and coughed to cover it up; he stepped out of the doorway to let Nie Mingjue inside. “All very good points. So it is me you want to talk to…what about? If it’s not the Stygian Tiger Seal…my cultivation, perhaps?”

“In a way,” Nie Mingjue said. “I should warn you in advance that you may find my questions rude.”

Wei Wuxian waved that away and turned to fetch them some jars of wine. “I don’t care about rudeness. As long as your question isn’t ‘why do you still do it’.”

“Why would I ask that? It’s always better to be a cultivator, however unorthodox, than not at all.”

Wei Wuxian stopped moving after having picked up only one jar, his hand still outstretched towards the second one.

“Now that’s an odd way to phrase it,” he said, and his voice was low and sounded dangerous, but Baxia didn’t so much as quiver, so Nie Mingjue knew there was no real threat of a fight. “Second Young Master Lan spends a great deal of his time imploring me to resume orthodox cultivation; I would have thought you’d be of the same opinion.”

“But orthodox cultivation is impossible without a golden core,” Nie Mingjue said, puzzled as to why Wei Wuxian would care about what Lan Wangji thought enough to mention him, or for that matter why Lan Wangji apparently spent all his time pestering Wei Wuxian in an effort to make him mend his ways.

Wei Wuxian dropped the jar in his hand with a deafening crash.

Wei Wuxian sent Nie Mingjue a letter after he’d settled down in Yiling.

In it, he very politely (the man knew what politeness was?) apologized for the disturbance he had caused, explained that the Wen sect remnants were composed entirely of old men and women, a child, and only two young people, one of which was now the Ghost General, that had helped him before, on the occasion which they had once had the opportunity to discuss, and so there was a life debt between them. He stated that if Nie Mingjue wished to visit and review the situation himself, he would gladly open his gates to one who did not seem prejudiced against him, who might judge the situation fairly; he requested, very humbly, that if Nie Mingjue wouldn’t mind considering lending his voice to the Jiang sect, which was even now negotiating a marriage with the Jin sect, and which had undoubtedly been put in a very bad position as a result of his apparently inexplicable actions.

Nie Mingjue snorted at the mix of earnestness, presented as slickly as any diplomat – Wei Wuxian had clearly been trained by the Jiang sect to be their ambassador, and sometimes the training even managed to overcome his extremely irritating personality – and took Nie Huaisang with him when he went.

A gesture of good faith.

It turned out to be necessary, since Baxia took one look at Wen Ning and all but begged to chase him around, promising not to hurt him but please oh please –

Nie Huaisang smacked Nie Mingjue in the face with his fan, which had never happened before, and Nie Mingjue snapped out of the daze he was in and recalled Baxia to his hand at once, his face coloring in embarrassment.

“Forgive me,” he said to Wei Wuxian, voice stiff; he couldn’t believe he’d just done that. “I meant no offense to either you or to Wen Qionglin.”

Wei Wuxian’s extremely angry expression abruptly vanished off his face, leaving behind only confusion. “You – know his courtesy name?”

Nie Mingjue frowned. “I wasn’t aware that my reputation indicated an inability to utilize common courtesy.”

“…most people just call him the Ghost General, nowadays.”

Nie Mingjue didn’t know what to say to that apparent non-sequitur (who cared what other people did?), and looked to Nie Huaisang to see if he had a better response.

Nie Huaisang shrugged. “I thought you said he was conscious, Wei-xiong? If he is, then he’s a person, and if he’s a person, he has a name. It’d be as rude as me calling Baxia ‘that old stick’.”

That was, in fact, something Nie Huaisang had done once, when he’d been a teenager and angry about having to go to the Wen sect’s camp – in fairness, Nie Mingjue hadn’t been exactly pleased about that either – and Baxia had chased him up and down the hallway, smacking his ass to make him jump every time she caught him, until he was out of breath and apologizing and also laughing more than a little.

Nie Mingjue put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “He doesn’t have that much of a death wish.”

Wei Wuxian laughed. “I keep forgetting you have a sense of humor under there. Would you like to come inside? I don’t have much here, but we can talk about whatever you need to give yourself comfort that the Wen sect remnants aren’t going to hurt anyone.”

“It’s not necessarily a matter of future harm,” Nie Mingjue said. “There is also the past.”

“They’re non-combatants –”

“Wen Qing ran a Supervisory Office.”

Wei Wuxian winced.

“It’s something we can talk over,” Nie Huaisang said. “She might need to submit to a trial or something, but I don’t think death is necessarily the only outcome. Maybe something in which she uses her abilities in service to the community..?”

“She’d be happy to, if anyone would allow it,” Wei Wuxian said wryly. “Oddly enough, not too many cultivators are willing to allow someone surnamed Wen to examine them.”

“We can set a good example,” Nie Huaisang chirped. “My brother and I – why not? Maybe she can explain why he acted so uncharacteristically earlier.”

Nie Mingjue sighed. If there was one lesson he’d never managed to get into Nie Huaisang’s head – there were many, actually – it was that family laundry shouldn’t be spread out in front of others. He couldn’t have waited until after they’d left?

Wei Wuxian blinked at them both. “You’ll have to forgive me, Nie-xiong; I’m not that familiar with your brother. What was uncharacteristic?”

“He let Baxia do as she liked instead of stopping her,” Nie Huaisang said promptly. “It was impulsive, and he normally would never.”

“And you think it’s a medical issue?” Nie Mingjue asked, doubtful. More likely all those years of jointly possessing his own body with Baxia was starting to need paying for. “Huaisang…”

“It’s worth checking!”

Wen Qing didn’t find anything other than some disturbed qi, which could be the result of just about anything, and Nie Mingjue told Nie Huaisang to drop the issue in a tone that brooked no dispute.

Still, since it was clearly worrying his brother, there wouldn’t be any harm in asking Meng Yao – no, Jin Guangyao, he was Jin Guangyao now – to come over to play Clarity for him a little more often.

They could talk a little about Jin Guangshan’s frankly unseemly attempts to weasel the Stygian Tiger Seal out of Wei Wuxian at the same time. Based on everything he’d heard from Wei Wuxian, including the man’s willingness to destroy at least a half of it as a gesture of good faith, there was really no basis to claim that it ought to be confiscated from him. And with the Nie sect standing alongside the Jiang sect, the Jin sect would have no chance to use this as an opportunity to rally the cultivation world against Wei Wuxian and use the excuse to extract the seal for their own unknown purposes.

The whole situation would probably irritate Jin Guangshan immensely, even if only as proof that he was not in fact the obvious successor to the Wens in terms of dominating the cultivation world.

Chief Cultivator – hah!

If one had to be selected, and Nie Mingjue was against the whole idea, then it wouldn’t be Jin Guangshan. It wouldn’t be anyone from the Jin sect; every time he visited Lanling, Baxia shook on his shoulder and he agreed with her anger – the entire place was shot through with corruption, festering in evil, ambition and greed the only virtues they recognized. Allowing them to sit, fat and comfortable, at the top of the cultivation world for no other reason than their ambition and their wealth, the fact that they’d hung back and let others do the majority of the fighting and so didn’t need to waste money in rebuilding…it was unacceptable.

He’d have to make that clear to Jin Guangyao, somehow.

He hoped his sworn brother wouldn’t be too disappointed.

Severe qi deviations were said to be horrifically painful, with every vein in your body bursting, every meridian cracking, your blood boiling, your bones breaking as your qi reversed course and began destroying you from the inside –

Whoever said that was right.

Nie Mingjue felt his mouth fill with blood, his eyes dripping with them, and he saw Jin Guangyao everywhere around him, laughing at him, Meng Yao mocking his weakness in trusting him over his own instincts, over Baxia; he tried to lash out against him, only for him to disappear in front of his eyes, reappearing elsewhere, and he wanted nothing more than to kill – to kill – to stop him before he hurt anyone else – before he laid a finger on Nie Huaisang, before he deceived Lan Xichen, before – he had to kill him – he had to –

There was so much pain.

Pain and rage, fear and fury; it was like a tide that rose up, inexorable, to swallow him.

He screamed – and everything stopped.

There was no pain.

Steel did not feel pain.

Nie Mingjue was a saber once more, his qi still sick and pounding inside of him, going the wrong way, his rage still overwhelming him, but for a saber that was all right, it was all right not to know anything but rage and fury and the desire to kill: you control the saber, it doesn’t control you.

As long as his master held him back, he wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone he shouldn’t.

He himself would not be hurt.

Steel did not feel pain.

Baxia complained about scratches in her surface, sulked about them, but that was just vanity, which he’d inadvertently taught her; she didn’t actually suffer, as long as she never broke –

Baxia.

If Nie Mingjue was the saber, then she was the human: she was the one in the body that was self-destructing, she was the one who was bleeding out of every aperture, she was the one who was screaming.

Baxia!

She shook him off, pushing him firmly back towards the blade and away from the flesh; steel felt no pain, and she was steel all the way through her soul – a little pain was not going to stop her.

She straightened his spine, stood up tall, and bared his teeth at Jin Guangyao, who was even now backing away, his arms around a frantic Nie Huaisang, who did not understand. She pointed Nie MIngjue at their enemy, their mutual enemy, and he wanted so badly to fly forward, sharp end first, wanted to pierce that traitorous dog through the heart and make sure he would never harm anyone again.

He wanted to rend him to pieces with his teeth, like a wild dog himself; he wanted to drink his vital energies and purify his innermost soul, to send him to his next reincarnation before his soul could even think of lingering – let him be reborn as a dog, as a snake, as a worm! Let him pay for the wrongs he has committed!

No. No, on second thought, he shouldn’t die. He should live – live and face the penalty for his actions. Let him be cast off from his comfortable life, let him live forever in seclusion with no friends and no succuor, let him know that all of his ambition has come to nothing.

Nie Mingjue roared in silent fury, and Baxia opened his mouth and roared as well: the sound that emerged from his throat was inhuman, the scream of steel scraping steel, a sound no human should ever be able to make.

“Er-ge!” Jin Guangyao shouted, his eyes white all around the irises; he clearly hadn’t anticipated Nie Mingjue surviving the qi deviation to this point. “Er-ge, come here – da-ge has gone into qi deviation, and he’s trying to kill me!”

“He’s not trying to kill you!” Nie Huaisang shrieked. “She is –”

And then, as if realizing what he’d just said, he turned shocked eyes on Jin Guangyao, abrupt realization filling his face.

“She’s trying to kill you,” he repeated dully. “Kill you – she only wants to kill evil, to punish wrongdoing. What have you done?!”

In the end it turned out that Wen Qing’s expertise was useful after all.

She came to Lanling and went to work immediately, but it still took nearly two weeks for her to set all of Nie Mingjue’s meridians and spiritual veins back into place, working on each one at a time; the entire process would have been agonizing enough to kill any man just from the pain alone.

It was a good thing that the one undergoing the process was not a man.

“So, this is weird, right?” Wei Wuxian asked Nie Huaisang, who’d refused to leave his brother’s side; he ate and slept on the floor next to the bed where Wen Qing operated, and his fingers were clenched around the saber’s hilt in silent supplication. “You Nie – you’re not all half-swords, are you?”

“Sabers,” Nie Huaisang corrected, rubbing his eyes. “And no. It’s just my brother. He and Baxia have always been very close.”

“Close,” Wei Wuxian echoed. “Close. Yes, I suppose that’s – a way to put it. He’s literally letting himself be possessed by his own apparently sentient saber spirit right now; I suppose you would need to be close, for that.”

“At least Baxia serves only one master,” Nie Huaisang said sharply. “Can your Tiger Seal say the same? Or is that honor reserved for your Suibian, which even now is gathering dust on your shelf, and which you will never use again?”

Wei Wuxian stopped and grimaced. “I’m being obnoxious. Forgive me.”

Nie Huaisang waved a hand, dismissing it. “And I’m tired; think nothing of it. As long as – as long as this works. As long as we can get him back.”

Wei Wuxian only ever took the briefest glances at the table where Wen Qing operated; he did so now and immediately turned away, shuddering in memory – it was even more gruesome than what he’d endured. “Is he…in there? Being suppressed by her?”

“No, thankfully not,” Nie Huaisang said, and tapped the blade of the saber. “He’s in here.”

Wei Wuxian blinked. “He’s – in the saber?”

“He is the saber. They’re – sort of joined, I think? If they were once separate entities, they’re not anymore; the saber and the person are both part of a single body – no, two bodies, two bodies with two consciousnesses. Most of the time, da-ge possesses the human body and Baxia the saber, but sometimes they switch and she takes the body and he the saber; that’s what’s happening now.”

“How did that even happen?” Wei Wuxian wanted to know. “It makes my unorthodoxy look almost boring – a heresy, sure, but one that flowed naturally out of how things are typically done, the sequel to a book, written in the same style. What he’s doing…it isn’t even from the same library!”

“It is for us,” Nie Huaisang said with a shrug. “We cultivate saber spirits, like I’ve explained. This is – different, yes. But on the other hand, he might be the first Nie cultivator in a thousand years to survive the qi deviation that comes from cultivating the saber spirit.”

“Probably would have been better to test that theory a few decades later, though, huh?”

Nie Huaisang grimaced. “Yes. When I think about what Jin Guangyao nearly did…! And I liked him, Wei-xiong; I really liked him. Da-ge liked him, and da-ge doesn’t get close to people, not easily. It always hurt him, what Meng Yao did to him, but he still swore brotherhood with him so that he could try to teach him good from evil…”

He shook his head.

“I can’t believe you’re even considering not executing him,” Wei Wuxian said, shaking his head as well. “Is permanent seclusion really going to be enough?”

“Well, there’s going to be a trial,” Nie Huaisang said. “Though it’ll be fairly short, given that da-ge survived and Wen Qing already indicated that there appears to be the effects of spiritual poison – I would never have thought he’d be using that stupid song to do it. The one er-ge taught him so that he and da-ge could make up…! You’re not wrong, Wei-xiong; seclusion might be too good for the likes of him. But er-ge is insisting we give him a chance to explain.”

“He’s good at manipulating emotions,” Wei Wuxian said. “Aren’t you concerned he’ll play on whoever you have as judge?”

“Not if they’re appropriately objective.” Nie Huaisang looked at Wei Wuxian sidelong. “What do you think?”

“Me?”

“Well, you and Jiang Cheng. The Jiang sect is the only one of the Great Four sects not implicated by all this – though I suppose your sister is engaged to Jin Zixuan. Do you think that would be enough to disqualify you?”

“No, we’ve never gotten along; I wouldn’t be biased. Which I mean…I guess that means I could do it?”

The saber in Nie Huaisang’s hands trembled, moving forward a little as if straining to fly up and go somewhere.

Nie Huaisang looked down at it, and nodded. “Da-ge’s right – there’s something else I should mention. Something we just found out, in the basement of Koi Tower…”

“In the basement? What did you find?”

“A boy by the name of Xue Yang,” Nie Huaisang said. “And he has a very interesting story to tell.”

#mdzs #nie mingjue #nie huaisang #baxia #jin guangyao #wei wuxian #my fic #my fics #yes this is the one that ate my soul #close

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djinmer4 · 4 years

Text

Matchmaking for the Greater Evil (2/4)

He’s always had a soft spot for Nie Huaisang.

Granted, it hasn’t always been a priority for him. Between trying to pass classes at Gusu, running after Wei Wuxian, that road trip trying to locate the Yin Iron, his crush on Wen Qing, the Sunshot Campaign, then finally rebuilding Lotus Pier and raising his nephew, there had been plenty of things to distract him. But it had always been there in the back of his mind, driving him to let the other copy answers off of his notes, watch him take hours to paint his fans, protect him against the various threats on the road trip, and preventing him from raising a fuss whenever the Second Young Master would come by with orders that he’d rather ignore than follow. Really, he’s just lucky Huaisang’s not the type to take advantage, otherwise, he’d be completely screwed.

As time goes on and their childhood companions fall away, Nie Huaisang becomes a larger and larger part of his life. By the time Chifeng-zun passes away, Jiang Cheng takes it upon himself to aid the new Sect Leader. Lianfeng-zun and Zewu-jun were there to help, of course, but neither of them had rebuilt their sects from the ground up the way he had. The Unclean Realm’s in much better shape than Lotus Pier was, but on the other hand, Nie Huaisang had never dedicated himself to learning how to run a sect the way Jiang Cheng had. The other is grateful for his advice, although perhaps a little embarrassed to be losing face by revealing how ill-prepared he was for the role. Huaisang is fine pushing off his diplomatic duties on his brother’s sworn brothers but hesitant to ask for help on internal matters. Fortunately, Jiang Cheng finds he enjoys helping the other out. He always felt like such a helpless mess compared to his older siblings; it’s nice to be the one someone else depended on.

And it gives him a chance to reminisce with someone who doesn’t need everything spelled out. Huaisang had been there for most of it after all. Even when nostalgia turns from bittersweet to just bitter and the words choke in his throat, the other man will take up the narrative, bleeding some of the pain off as he cites some unimportant detail or forgotten memory to distract him. Nights like that, Jiang Cheng finds he sleeps better, the nightmares not so dark.

~~~~~~~~

“Jin Ling! What the hell are you doing? I could do a better job with my eyes closed! You don’t have to get a bull’s-eye, but at least hit the damn target next time or I’ll break your arm!”

“Now, now, Sect Leader Jiang. Don’t you think you’re being a little harsh?” He turned and saw Sect Leader Nie coming up to the Lotus Pier training grounds. The fan he waved in front of his face did little to hide the soft smile he directed at the trainees. “It’s a shichen past noon and the hottest part of the day. Surely you can let them take a break now?”

Jiang Cheng tried to ignore the pleading glances of his trainees but made the mistake of looking at Jin Ling. The boy had just reached his eighth year and had already mastered the art of using puppy eyes to get his way. “Fine, you’re all dismissed. Make sure you practice and do a better job tomorrow or I’ll have you all restring your bows with your own hair!” The disciples bowed in a hurried manner, thanking him for the training then headed towards the cafeteria. “Jin Ling!” A single yellow petal in a river of purple lotuses swam upstream against the current. “This time make sure to maintain your own bow and arrows and quiver. Your servants won’t be accompanying you on night-hunts and if you try to foist that task off on the quartermaster again, I’ll break both your legs!”

“Yes, Jiujiu!”

Satisfied he’d made his point, he turned to his other honored guest. He held out his arm for Huaisang to take and ignored the Zidian-like thrill that went through him as the other accepted. “You’ve completed your correspondence then?”

“Most of it anyway. There’s one issue, not urgent, that I’m going to need to deal with in person when I get back to Qinghe. And two border disputes with some minor sects, one about fishing rights to the East and one about a river that changed course in the West. I’ll forward both of those to Jin Guanyao.” The shorter man looked around and pouted. “This isn’t the way to the commissary.”

“It’s not. If you’re done with your correspondence, we might as well take the time to have a meal in private.” Jiang Cheng waves down a passing servant and orders a meal for two with tea (no alcohol this early in the day) to be served in his private study. He felt his face fall into a familiar frown. “Why do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Let Zewu-jun and Lianfeng-zun handle all your diplomatic relations. You’re smart enough to do all that yourself. I know you are. I’ve seen how you handle everything in the Unclean Realm and you’ve always been ten times better than I am at dealing with people. Why not prove all the fucking idiots who think you’re an idiot wrong?”

Huaisang looks up at him through his lashes, one corner of his smile curled up just a little higher than the other. He stretches up and Jiang Cheng can feel his breath on his cheek. He can also scent a recent change in the incense the other uses, from citrus to something that smelled of pine and apples. “Let me tell you a secret.” He feels his heart skip a beat at those words.

“You’re absolutely right. I could handle all those issues with other sects by myself. But do you know what the reward for doing a good job is?” Jiang Cheng shook his head. “The reward for doing a good job is more work.” Huaisang’s voice adopted a familiar, whiny tone. “Running a sect is so hard, Jiang-xiong! It takes so much effort, I barely have any time to paint anymore!” They continue to walk along the docks, the taller man deftly guiding the other along a more circuitous route that showed off Lotus Pier’s best features. “And San-ge always loves being needed. Really, if he didn’t want to help me with these things, all he would have to do is either push them off to Er-ge or leave them for me. Why should I bother when he’s so willing to do the boring stuff for me?”

Despite himself, Jiang Cheng feels his mouth twitching into a smile. Some things never changed, and he’s glad Huaisang’s still has the laziness from Gusu. “Besides, you know what the best part is? Since everyone’s expectations are so low, they never ask anything extra of me. Or if I need something from them, they’ll just say yes without arguing because obviously, I’m too incompetent to take care of things myself. I can foist all sorts of unpleasant duties on other Sect Leaders.”

He gives up and lets the grin spread across his face (two Jiang Sect cultivators stop dead in their tracks, quickly turn and all but run the other way). It’s ridiculous but he feels like bubbles are rising through his chest. This secret, this thing that no one outside of Qinghe Nie knows except him, makes him feel special. Like Huaisang is giving Jiang Cheng a little part of himself to keep. The thought of being allowed to know something so precious makes him giddy.

Then the last statement registers and the smile drops off his face as if it had never been. “Wait a moment. Have you been tricking me into accepting some of Qinghe’s night-hunts?”

Huaisang drops his arm, laughs, and sprints away from the enraged cultivator.

“I don’t know! I don’t know anything about that! I don’t know anything at all!”

#sangcheng #mdzs #tumblr's playing the tag game with me #so let's see if this actually shows up

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somepinkthing · 4 years

Text

A/N: so when I think about it, while we know the nies are half brothers, its up to interpretation how that came about. Now, I've seen a variation of either the father remarried, poly parents, OR nhs was a bastard. But its generally agreed upon that NMJ was the undisputed rightful heir. I.... wanted to see what would happen if that weren't the case.

Idk where this is going exactly or if it'll go further than this but 🤷‍♀️ I just wanted to see nhs standing up for his brother this went so far

---

Hong ChangHe was as sickly as she was beautiful. Pale, thin, and with a genteel nature. The perfect wife, were it not for her weak constitution. Every winter, she was bedridden for at least a week. Every spring, she had to stay inside most of the days for fear of the pollen in the air. Luckily, she’s had access to the best doctors around since childhood. Luckily, she was cautious and diligent. Luckily, according to all sources, she would grow to live a long and prosperous life so long as she avoided any major traumas.

… like childbirth.

“I did not marry you for you to bear me a child, my love,” Sect Leader Nie murmured to his wife, lips brushing the top of her head.

“I know,” she whispered back, “and yet the lack of an heir will hang over our heads for as long as we don’t produce your sect a child.”

“I knew what I was getting myself into when I married you, my love,” he replied.

Madam Nie looked up at her husband defiantly.

“As did I. I married the man I loved… and the leader of a great sect. We said we would cross this bridge when we got here, and here we are.”

Nie LuYuan sighed, pushed his wife’s hair out of her face, and wiped her tears.

“And here we are. So, what now?”

---

Nie Mingjue’s birth was a cause for celebration, albeit a very private and almost shameful one.

The woman who birthed him was attended to by the best doctors and midwives a woman could ask for, but she was all alone otherwise. The man who impregnated her, her sect leader, was not allowed in the room. His wife… preferred to wait with her husband.

For hours upon hours she labored and screamed alone. Push, breathe, push, breathe. Rinse and repeat.

And at the end? At the end, a healthy 9.5 lb baby was placed into her arms, allowed to feed from her breast, and cradled against her.

“Give me one hour,” she pleaded with the waiting couple. One hour to hold him, to be his mother. She dare not ask for longer, though she likely could.

Any longer and she feared she might change her mind.

“Of course,” the sect leader agreed, nodding in understanding.

“We will wait outside,” his wife said, smiling at her with pity shining in her eyes.

Alone with just his mother, the baby in her arms slowly settled and stopped crying. His face scrunched up when she kissed him on the nose, unused to such a sensation. He was so pink, almost red.

“Like a lobster,” she giggled. The babe immediately began to cry again, as if offended, sending his mother into hysterics.

"You have a good set of lungs, little Nie. That's good."

The baby grunted in response.

"Now, don't pout like that. You are a future sect heir. You be a good one now, you hear? Righteous, upstanding, a protector of the weak. Ah, but have fun sometimes too! And don't forget to be kind when possible. Make lots of friends. Listen… listen to your parents…"

The baby had long since fallen asleep to the lull of his mother's voice.

"And remember, there is always someone in your corner. Even if you don't remember me…."

In his sleep, the little newborn gurgled happily, surrounded by warmth and love.

---

Three weeks later, a maid left the employ of Qinghe Nie. She went north, to return to her family.

She was escorted home by an armed guard. In her hands, she held enough gold for her or her family to live well for generations. Her children, her parents, they would never want for anything ever again.

She never got to speak to the baby she birthed again. She never asked to either.

She did not regret her decision.

---

"You will be a good boy, Mingjue," Sect Leader Nie whispered tenderly, tickling his new son's belly and laughing with him. "I can already tell. And us? We will do our best for you."

Changhe watched her husband, giant bruiser of a man, cradle this newborn against himself so gently and she smiled. She tucked the hesitation bubbling in her gut as deep as she could and reached for the baby. This was her idea, come to fruition. Her husband had been so against it, hating the idea of laying with another and hating having to lock his wife up for 9 months with no reason, but had relented at her insistence. She could be nothing but pleased on this joyous day.

"Let me," she requested.

Her husband beamed at her and placed the baby in her waiting arms.

Nie Mingjue. Her son. Her heir.

He was a hefty thing. The midwife had told her he was one of the biggest babies she'd ever birthed. Changhe certainly could never have pushed him out. And yet… he was still so tiny. Were all babies this small?

Small as he was though, she could see her husband's strong jawline and structure already in him. His huge nose too, she thought to herself with a giggle.

"That nose takes up half his face," she griped.

"It runs in the family, it's not our fault!" her lord husband protested, pouting.

Changhe laughed and pressed a kiss to her husband's cheek. Finally, she felt the anxiety and hesitation in her gut abate. This was her son, despite it all. She had done it. She had given her family an heir, she had completed her duty. For the first time in ten months, it felt like everything was coming together….

… and then the baby opened his eyes.

They weren't her husband's eyes. Naturally, they weren't hers either. They were someone else's. Some other woman. These eyes belonged to the woman who birthed him. Sharp and judgemental, trapping her in their golden-brown gaze, reminding her of her failure--

"Oh! He's looking at us," her husband whispered over her shoulder in awe.

"Th-the midwives said he can only see shapes, don't be ridiculous."

Luyuan chortled. "No. He's looking. A father can tell."

A father can, perhaps a mother could have too (if only she had been this baby's mother).

"You'll be a good man, son," her husband murmured.

"Yes," Changhe agreed, killing the hesitation threatening to bleed into her voice with extreme prejudice.

"He will be a fantastic heir. I'll see to it."

---

Almost six years later, Sect Leader Nie was delivered an urgent message in the middle of a meeting. Without any explanation, he tore from the hall at a running sprint to go find his wife.

He found his sobbing child first.

"Mama's sick …" his young son cried, sitting outside the master bedroom.

Heart dropping to his feet, Nie Luyuan scooped Mingjue up and entered the room. He pressed the child's face into his shoulder, ready to set him outside again if need be.

"My love…."

Hong Changhe was bent over a bedpan, a doctor by her side. She had been throwing up, she was barely upright, and she was beaming.

"My husband," she whispered through happy tears, "My dear, I am with child."

"With… with child?!" Luyuan asked, disbelief and worry mixing together in his tone.

Changhe nodded eagerly, the usually proud woman clearly acting out of it. She had ignored the doctor's insistence that she rest at once, holding out to deliver this news herself. Her exhaustion was clear for all to see but she would not have had her husband hear this from anyone else.

"Finally, I can provide you a child."

Luyuan felt his stomach lurch, holding Mingjue tighter against him.

"Finally, we can have a real son."

#nie bros #nie mingjue #nie huaisang #nmj #my fic #my writing #mdzs #mo dao su zhi #the grandmaster of demonic cultivation #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #gdc #founder of diabloism #founder of demonic cultivation #the untamed #cql #mdzs fic

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aki-draws-things · 3 years

Text

NaNoWriMo 2020 #09

That fic should have some warning tags for implied rape and abuse, (and i’ve tagged it.) but rest assured i didn’t described a single thing. I don’t write smut so I’ll just limit myself to let it be implied it happened.

As the other chapters too, characters are most definitely OOC. I won’t use the Nano challenge to make a study on them and figure out their voices, I just let the stories come out, I still wish to apologize for that. I’m still trying my best to make those fics nice and entraining enough.

(Next three days will be connected and finally angst will punch us straight in the face! :D Is someone ready as I am?)

Day: 09/11/2020

Prompt: dirty secret

Ship: None official

Word Count: 2192

"Shi-ge!" if anyone would connect the excited voice to the one and only uptight Jin ZiXuan, that wouldn't be the Jiang siblings. None of them, even though Jiang YanLi always said that there was more than a stern look underneath, but it was her heart speaking, her brothers were sure of that. They turned in time to see Nie HuaiSang and Jin ZiXuan colliding against a taller man who easily grabbed them before they could risk tumbling over. That was a weird sight, mad weirder by the knowledge that nothing strange went around cloud recesses to make them act like that. Well, perhaps nie HuaiSang had a valid reason to behave like that, they found out a little later, the man was, in fact, his older brother, leader of the Nie sect. Yes, huaisang could act like that and throw himself at him. But the Jin peacock?

When he was little, Jin ZiXuan, knew nothing about hate. Many people seemed to despise and hate his father and he couldn't figure out the reason not even . if he tried. Maybe he wasn't the most open and affectionate man, maybe he didn't spend much time with his family as other fathers did, but that wasn't enough to hate him.

Then one day two boys were taken in Jinlintai, dressed in a dusty dark gray robe the older and a cream one the younger who looked roughly his age, his father said they would now live there and Zixuan nodded eagerly. He would finally have someone to play with that wasn't his annoying cousin. But why did the two boys look so sad? Didn't they like the palace? Or their rooms? Or the new, better clothes? Jin zixuan was confused.

The older one locked in his room for hours, studying dutifully. Or he went to the training ground among the older Jin disciples, with a sword much bigger than theirs, and trained until the sun set and the younger one left their plays to run fetch him and drag him back to his room. Back and forth. Every day.

He scowled and snarled angrily at his father for reasons Jin zixuan didn't understand. Maybe their parents never taught them to be polite? But he was so kind and caring with his little brother.

"A-die and A-niang are gone." the younger, Huaisang, explained to him once.

"gone? Gone where? Are they coming back?"

Huaisang scrolled his shoulders.

"I don't know. Da-ge always says gone."

It would take a couple more years for him to understand what gone meant. His lips trembled as he tried not to cry.

"why are you crying?" the older, mingjue, asked. "it's not your family to be dead."

"but it's sad, shi-ge…" he bawled softly against his chest. Huaisang crawled on him and hid his face against the neck over the golden robes. "I don't like shi-ge and shidi sad." Huaisang started crying too and soon enough nie mingjue found himself having to pick both of them in his arms and go back to the palace.

"then stop crying, silly boy."

One thing Jin guangshan didn't know the day he gladly took the two nie boys in his sect was the truth about the older one. He didn't complain when the Nie sect elders came to him and asked for his protection after their master died too early, on the contrary. Having some sort of power over Qinghe would make him greater, even almost compared to the wen sect now. He was surprised the older son of the Nie leader didn't take over his sect. He was Sixteen, old enough to lead them. Or so the world thought. The elders gave him vague answers, how nie mingjue while having a high cultivation was unfit to lead them, really, Jin guangshan never complained. He couldn't see the unfitting things they supposedly talked about but it was fine for him. He had power, he was in control of one of the main sects and he only had to thank wen ruohan for that. In the public eyes he was going to teach nie mingjue and raise him to become one day the great leader he was. In truth he meant to keep his grasp on Qinghe for as long as possible and there was an easy way to ensure that.

A child.

It had been two years since the Nie brothers came to Lanling and jin guangshan secretly took great pride and pleasure in having unfold one of the greatest secrets the Nies were keeping. The younger one, with his poor cultivation and his innocent mind, with his liking for pretty songbirds and for arts was in fact, a young girl.

Still too young, he reminded himself, but in a couple of years she would be old enough to bear his children and at that point her brother could do nothing but leave the power to him if he didn't want all the affair to be exposed.

Yes, Jin guangshan prided himself in his knowledge.

But when he went to inform nie mingjue of said knowledge and his plans he almost didn't believe his eyes.

He almost lost his eyes to a double hairpin.

It took him a couple of minutes to realize he had been wrong, that explained even better the reasons nie mingjue didn't take his clan in hand. He couldn't. The Nie sect, just as most of the main sects, had always been led by men. Lan Yi tried once, but never succeeded. Leading wasn't a woman's duty after all. They were weak. Unfit.

"get out before I carve your eyes out." he, she, threatened him, chest now covered with a loose robe and fresh clean bandages scattered over the bed. Jin guangshan should have been afraid, he knew the strength nie mingjue had all too well, he saw him her defeat his best disciples in training, even the older ones. And look at that. She was a girl.

Jin guangshan barely remembered nie MingJue's mother, she was undoubtedly strong, and her eyes had a gold hue when she was angry. Mingjue probably took her high cultivation from her. Still, unfit to leadership.

"You won't." he simply said. Closed the door behind himself and took a step closer looking closer at the body before him. She was pretty, after all. Perhaps with the right kind of clothing it would be easy to hide the larger shoulders, a different hairstyle would make her look more feminine, even eligible for marriage.

His plansw changed.

"I was wrong." he admitted, a hand reaching to take a strand of hair. Nie mingjue stepped back. "you know, I thought little huaisang was the girl, I would have never imagined. But now that I know I notice all the little things. It's quite obvious."

"no it's not." nie mingjue growled. “There’s nothing obvious because you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Defensive, Jin GuangShan thought. Desperate to keep herself safe. She wouldn’t be easy to tame, too wild, just as most Nies, but the reward would be even greater if, when, he would succeed.

“Oh, but I’m not here to judge you, Miss Nie. - Nie MingJue sprinted forward, he pushed Jun GuangShan against the wall hand held a hairpin between his eyes, definitely not afraid to use it. He remained calm. - I can understand why you never mentioned it. You, a woman, unable to lead your clan at your father’s too early death. Your brother, still too little, his cultivation too poor. The Nie Sect is destined to fall.”

Nie MingJue wasn't to speak back, to say once more he was a man, no matter what his body would say, he had always been a man ever since he had memory, and as such both his parents and HuaiSang's mother raised him. As the one he truly was.

“Sometimes the reincarnation cycle get messed up a little. Sometimes the heavens like to test our strength in order to make us stronger.”

“Why do they like it? It’s not fun! It’s painful.” Nie MingJue complained.

“Because they have yet to learn, - His father said fastening a braid on his head. - That us humans will find a way to defy them. There’s nothing wrong in the way you are or you feel.”

“It’s unbalanced.”

“And then you find your own way to balance it. Show them not to mess up with us Nies.” Yue HuangShui laughed and Nie MingJue followed their worlds ever since.

“But I have a way to prevent it.” Jin GuangShan’s voice brought him back to reality. There was something in his look that MingJue didn’t like, something that screamed at him bot to trust him.

“What?” His voice came out strangled and almost shy, he shuddered as the Jin Leader moved closer, his hand opening the robe just enough to expose his skin.

“A rightful heir.”

Nie MingJue always cried more than his little brother Huaisang, that was common knowledge for most people who knew them. He did his best to look stern when outside in public, he took every hit and every hint and let them build up inside of him only to explode when he was finally alone.

“Rightful my ass.” He muttered in anger and frustration some months later when he found his usual robe was too tight and uncomfortable and he settled for something loose.

“If he dares to set foot in the Unclean Realms I’m going to throw him down the walls.” He threw a warmer robe over his shaking shoulders, as he emptied a bowl outside. His qi rattled along with his anger and he ended up feeling sick once more.

Maybe in that way he would get rid of — No.

He fell on his knees, hands pressed over his mouth in shock. How could he even think that? What kind of monster would ever think that.tears fell and he curled up on himself.

“Shi-ge, do you still feel sick? Do I have to call a healer?” He yelled at Jin ZiXuan too Levi him alone.

“Da-ge you need to eat something.” Nie Huaisang put his head inside the room and looked at where his brother was curled on the floor. “I have soup.”

“And fruit.” ZiXuan chimed in, a plate held carefully on a tray next to a steaming bowl. “I’ve asked A-Fu to cut some bunnies in the apples!”

“I’m not hungry.” They left the tray inside the room and with a look at each other they left.

“Shi-ge…” Jin ZiXuan called sleepily. “Jue-gege…” He poked at his cheek until he finally woke up to find the young Jin heir with a consumed candle and a blanket standing next to his bed, Huaisang sleeping soundly on his own bed against the wall.

“What A-Xuan?” He yawned and the boy climbed on the bed next to him holding the blanket at his chest.

“Do you like A-Xuan?” Nie MingJue nodded, not in the right mood for that kind of conversation, and neither was ZiXuan, both too sleepy for that.

“Will you like Meimei too?”

“How can you say it will be a little girl?” He asked, voice softening as ZiXuan bended over and curled over his chest and stomach.

“No stealing Da-ge…” Huaisang slurred climbing on the now crowded bed and fast falling back asleep.

“I’d like a little sister. - He revealed closing his eyes. - but a little brother would be nice too. A-Xuan will like him anyway. A lot lot.”

When the time came Nie MingJue almost refused to look at the little things crying at the top of her lungs. He managed to ignore her for three whole minutes before feeling his chest tight at her cries and gathering her in his arms where she settled comfortably.

“She’s so pretty.” Jin ZiXuan nodded in agreement with huaisang, his finger held in her tiny hand without the intention of letting go. She was going to be a Nie, MingJue said. She would never be a Jin, she wouldn’t grow up in Lanling but in Qinghe, she would never be one of the many bastards and, even more importantly, she would never be recognized as Jin GuangShan’s daughter.

“But she’s still your Meimei.” He assured to a mildly worried ZiXuan who, in answer, hugged her little arm and brushed his cheek against her head like HuaiSang always used to do in affection.

A young girl in dark gray robes ran from behind Nie MingJue and threw herself at Jin ZiXuan who promptly caught her.

“Da-ge! I want to show you something when you come to Qinghe!” She exclaimed excitedly before throwing herself in the same fashion at Nie huaisang who, while trying to catch her, tumbled on the grass with her arms secured around his neck.

“I’ve heard some things from Huaisang during this past months.” Jin ZiXuan said, his voice vague. “About a proper Master Nie who tamed the great beast of the mountains.” Nie MingJue barely hid a smile gathering the little girl on his arm and dragging HuaiSang back on his feet.

“Can we expect a new little brother?”

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queenmorgawse · 5 years

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transmigration for dummies

chapter four. mdzs scum villain au. concept credit to @lee-luca. read on ao3 for end notes. previous | first | next

About halfway ( according to his questionable sense of direction, anyway ) to Mo Village, Lan Fan catches up to him, hovering about five feet away. Jingyi sees her lips moving, but her words are lost to the whistling wind. “What?” he screams back.

She makes a face and shouts at him, in defiance of at least three Gusu Lan rules, “Mom came back yesterday, she told me to tell you you’ve got to look after me and also share your food!”

“Mom?”

“Yeah! Just because I see her more than you do doesn’t mean you don’t need to listen to her!” She points a threatening finger in his direction. “I’ll tell her if you bully me!”

Jingyi’s only half listening to her. His head is reeling. Since when does the original have a little sister, or a family at all? Whose headcanon is this?!

Lan Fan is still looking at him expectantly, though the effect is a bit ruined by the way the wind keeps whipping her long hair back in her face. “Got it,” he manages to garble out after about thirty awkward seconds of silence. Satisfied, she pours another load of spiritual energy into her sword, willing it to go faster. She catches up to her friends in the front in no time, leaving Jingyi to his existential crisis.

Come to think of it, it’s not that weird for him to have an entire sister he didn’t know was his sister, even though they’d only met about four days into his new life. They don’t look that much alike - he and Lan Fan must take after different parents, even if he doesn’t know who they are either. Plus, with the way the Lan clan literally has the girls and women living in an entirely separate part of the Cloud Recesses, the two of them probably never spent much time in the other’s company outside of training.

The thought makes Jingyi’s stomach churn with unease. Up until now, he only had to worry about not looking too suspicious in front of his fellow disciples. He can probably manage Lan Fan too, if the way she acts towards him is any indication. It’s relatively safe to assume he doesn’t have a father either : if they live in the same part of the Cloud Recesses, they would have run into each other by now, right?

He can fool his friends. He can even fool Lan Sizhui, who knows him best out of everyone here. But can he really look a mother in the eye and pretend he’s her son?

They’re not real, Jingyi tells himself. They’re just people the System created. But even as he repeats this mantra, he knows he’s not convinced. Everyone is too fleshed out, even compared to their novel counterparts, for him to treat them like they’re disposable.

It doesn’t matter, he ultimately decides. He won’t have to get used to having a dad, at least. Lan Fan, though ⎯ he can’t just brush her off. They have a mother, even if he doesn’t know her name yet, and she’s counting on him to protect Lan Fan.

Well, in light of their comparative fighting prowess, she might have to be the one doing the protecting, but it hopefully won’t come to that.

Jingyi spares a thought for Nie Mingjue’s dismembered arm waiting for them in Mo village, and silently revises that statement.

Within five minutes of knowing her, Jingyi can safely say this : Madam Mo reminds him of his least favorite middle school teacher. Granted, Mrs Robin didn’t dress this fancy, but she certainly sneered down her nose at people a lot and never pronounced Jingyi’s name right, despite it really not being as hard as it could have been. About halfway through the year, Jingyi had given up and started calling her by her full name, Mrs Robin-Banks, which had earned him about a month of scraping the undersides of tables clean of bubble gum.

Exactly like he used to do in class, he tunes out of her speech about how her son definitely has the potential to be a cultivator, if only a great clan - any of them, of course not theirs specifically - would notice him and take him under their wing…

On his left side, Tao Ming rolls his eyes so hard they actually go white for a second, right before Lan Fan discreetly elbows him in the ribs. It takes all of Jingyi’s self-control not to do the same.

He may have been watching the door for Mo Xuanyu’s arrival, but it still doesn’t prepare him to the chaos that erupts when the man himself barges into the hall.

Jingyi isn’t sure how much of the effect can be chalked up to his own knowledge of the character, but Wei Wuxian is a riot from his very first moment here. While the other disciples look on, half fascinated and half appalled, he leans forward, following the other’s movements. Energy runs through Wei Wuxian like a wire, whether he is scampering about the room to escape the servants or taunting Mo Ziyuan and his parents. Saying he can’t stay still would be an understatement.

As entertaining as the situation is, it is also highly awkward, especially when one of the girls reaches for Mo Xuanyu to help him to his feet, revealing the red footprint at the center of his chest. Despite knowing this beforehand, the sight makes Jingyi sick.

“Did everyone see that? Did you? The burglar is also beating someone up! How heartless!”

While he was lost in thoughts, Wei Wuxian dusted himself off, and is now pointing an accusing finger at his ‘cousin’. Before Jingyi can remember his mission or say anything, Sizhui’s calm voice cuts through the commotion. “Please calm down. Words are more powerful than weapons.”

Yeah, but it’d help a lot if I could punch this guy in the face. If he thought watching or reading about Mo Ziyuan going on his mama’s boy spiel, the entire thing pales in comparison to real life. Jingyi is itching to leap across the tea table and throttle him with his bare hands so he’ll just stop talking, but that might be an infraction unforgivable even for the most un-Lan Lan to ever Lan.

Sensing the shift in atmosphere, Wei Wuxian stays behind Sizhui, peeking out from behind his shoulder with all the offended dignity of a jilted maiden.

Madam Mo’s smile looks plastered on, like the smallest tug would be enough to peel it off her face. “This is my younger sister’s son. He’s not so bright here ; everyone from the Mo Village knows that he is a lunatic, and often speaks strange words that shouldn’t be taken seriously. Cultivator, please…”

“Who said that my words shouldn’t be taken seriously? Next time, try stealing anything from me again. You steal once, and I cut off one of your hands!” Wei Wuxian interrupts. Jingyi winces. Of course, no one here can possibly know the weight these words carry, but let him cringe in peace, okay?

Lan Fan chances a glance towards Sizhui. “Shixiong, should we…” In an attempt to be subtle, she glares towards the fuming members of the Mo family, then schools her expression into a serene one when turning to their leader again.

Sizhui clears his throat. “We will borrow the West Courtyard for the night. Please remember the things that I’ve talked about—after nightfall, close all of the windows, don’t come outside, or worse, walk toward the courtyard.”

Nice try, dude.

To be fair, Jingyi feels a little mean, just letting things happen. Plot-essential as they are, this night did result in the death of four (he thinks?) people.

【Canon events must proceed as they were written,】the System pings, sealing the debate.

Things cool down after that. Their little group files out of the hall in their usual orderly fashion and gets to work, evacuating the last of the servants from the West Courtyard and unpacking their supplies. It’s almost pastoral.

Trouble finds them all the same, while Jingyi is checking on the position of the last of the Spirit Attraction flags.

He spots Mo Xuanyu’s ghastly makeup from a mile away. Telling the protagonist off is useless, he knows, but a good little Lan disciple would have to enforce the most basic of the instructions they gave. “Hey, you! Go back, alright? No one’s allowed here until we’ve dealt with the corpses!”

As expected, Wei Wuxian ignores him, hopping up on the roof and making a grab for the nearest flag. Even if Jingyi wanted to catch him, he couldn’t have ; for someone who was dead twenty-four hours ago and received a nasty beating since, the man is surprisingly nimble.

“Give it back!” he still shouts, chasing after him. “Weren’t you a cultivator once? You should know better than to mess with that!”

“I’m not giving it back, I’m not giving it back! I want this thing! I want this!” Wei Wuxian sing-songs back, sticking to his role as the local madman. Where’s the guy’s Oscar, huh? This is Amy Adams all over again.

Fortunately, all his flailing about gives Jingyi time to catch up. He grabs him by the arm, shaking the flag out of his slackened grip. “There!”

“Jingyi, don’t hit him. He’s not feeling well.” Sizhui must have been drawn in by the ruckus, leaving his own side of the flag formation.

“I didn’t hurt him!” Jingyi protests. “He was the one making a mess first!”

Sizhui gave him an understanding look, then turned back to Wei Wuxian. “Young master Mo, it’s getting late, and we’ll start capturing the walking corpses soon. For your own safety, please return to your room. The flag…”

“It’s just a flag, so what’s the big deal?” Wei Wuxian cuts in with a huff. “I can draw way better than this!” Before the other juniors’ astonishment can manifest, he’s sprinted off, leaving the discarded flag lying in the dust behind him.

Lan Fan and a few of her friends giggle from their own positions on the roof, while Tao Ming glares at the direction Wei Wuxian disappeared in. “What a maniac! Why can’t these people even follow simple rules?”

“It’s all right, A-Ming,” Sizhui soothes. “We still have time, so let’s just fix it up before sunset. As long as he doesn’t come back, everything will be fine.”

“Back to work, everyone!” Jingyi adds. It earns him a 【Uncharacteristic willingness to follow orders : -5 points.】alert, which he responds to with a classy middle finger behind Sizhui’s retreating back.

The OOC function really can’t come a second too soon.

The rest of the evening goes by uneventfully. Once it’s clear that Mo Xuanyu will not be coming back before dawn, their group wastes no time fixing the flag formation and preparing their weapons. When dinner comes around, Jingyi dutifully shares half of the veggie buns the Mo family servants bring them with Lan Fan.

To his relief, it doesn’t prompt any family bonding for them. Not that they would have had much time to talk, since his little sister spent most of the meal trying to fit as many baozi into her mouth as she could, which would surely not be as tolerated in the Lan clan dining hall.

The handful of corpses that do show up, hooked in by the flags, are more than easy to dispel. Even Jingyi, who can admit he chickens out easily, feels almost bored chopping the slow, clumsy undead to pieces. It’d be a peaceful night, if not for his knowledge that sooner or later, they’d all be summoned to the main hall again to be witnesses to a murder.

Bingo, Jingyi thinks when a young serving girl bursts into the West courtyard, shaking like a leaf. Her sobs wake up the few disciples who dozed off following their watch schedule ; they reach for their swords in no time, expecting another wave of corpses. It does nothing but scare the poor girl further.

Jingyi reaches her first. “What happened?” he asks, knowing full well what just went down.

The girl sniffles. She’s really a child, possibly younger than Lan Fan. “I-Madam Mo told me to call you because, because…” She cuts herself off with another sniffle, curling into herself.

“Breathe,” he advises her. “With me, okay?”

She follows suit, obediently inhaling and exhaling in sync with him, until her shaking has subsided enough for her to form a coherent sentence. “Cultivators, Mistress wants to see you as soon as possible. She said…” Another hiccup. “She said the lunatic killed her son!”

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #the grandmaster of demonic cultivation #lan jingyi #zhuiyi #mdzs fic #transmigrator!ljy #kim's fics

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boat-full-of-lotus-pods · 5 years

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MDZS Chapter 110. “Concealment” Part 4

Everyone has their own path

Wei WuXian replied, “Naturally, coffins are for storing the dead. I’m guessing what it originally contained was Jin GuangYao’s mother, Meng Shi’s corpse. He’d come here tonight intending to retreat his mother’s corpse and flee to Dongying with it.”

Lan XiChen was still at a loss for words. With an “Ah,” Nie HuaiSang suddenly said, “Right, that makes a lot of sense.”

Wei WuXian continued, “What do you think the person did with GuangYao’s mother’s corpse after digging it out?”

Nie HuaiSang replied, “Wei-xiong, why are you always asking me? No matter how much you ask me, how would I know?”

After a pause, he continued, “But hm……”

Slowly, Nie HuaiSang gathered up his rain-drenched hair and said, “I’m guessing, since this person hates Jin GuangYao so much, he’s probably going to be particularly cruel towards something which Jin GuangYao held so dear.”

Wei WuXian suggested, “For example, tearing the corpse into pieces and scatter it across the land, just like what had happened to ChiFeng-Zun?”

Shocked and startled, Nie HuaiSang staggered backwards, “That that that…… that would be too cruel…….”

Wei WuXian studied him for a while but ultimately moved his gaze away.

After all, speculations were just speculations. No one had any evidence.

The expression on Nie HuaiSang’s face appeared lost and exasperated. Perhaps he was faking it. Maybe he didn’t want to admit to using people like pawns, treating them as if their lives were nothing; or maybe his plan didn’t end here. Maybe he needed to disguise the truth to accomplish greater, higher goals. Or, maybe it wasn’t so complicated after all. Maybe the one who had delivered the letter, killed the cats, and pieced Nie MingJue’s head back to his body had been someone else, and that Nie HuaiSang was truly as useless as he looked.

Or maybe Jin GuangYao’s last few words were simply lies that he’d spun after Nie HuaiSang had seen through his backstabbing attempt, aimed to sow doubts in Lan XiChen’s heart so he could take the opportunity to take him to the grave After all, Jin GuangYao was a notorious liar. It wouldn’t be surprising for him to be able to spew anything any time he wanted.

As for why he’d changed his mind in the last moment and pushed Lan XiChen aside, who could really know what he was thinking?

With veins pulsing on the hand that was pressed to his forehead, Lan XiChen lamented, “……What exactly did he want? Once upon a time, I thought that I knew him very well, until I realized that I didn’t anymore. Before tonight, I thought that I had learned him anew, but once again I know nothing.”

No one could answer him. Lan XiChen repeated, at a loss, “……What exactly did he want?”

But if he, the one who was the closest to Jin GuangYao, didn’t even know the answer, then no one else would.

After a moment of silence, Wei WuXian said, “Let’s stop standing around doing nothing. Get a few of these men to go find more people, the rest of them can stay and guard this thing here. This coffin and these qin strings won’t seal ChiFeng-Zun for long.”

True to his words, a series of thundering noises came from within the coffin, radiating an aura of insuppressible rage. Nie HuaiSang shuddered. Throwing a glance at him, Wei WuXian said, “You see? We need to find a stronger coffin fast, dig a deep hole, and bury it again. Definitely shouldn’t be opened for at least the next century. If opened, I guarantee you the resentful spirits will still be there to cause more problems, disaster awaits……”

Before he even finished speaking, a series of crisp, vigorous dog barks came from the outside.

Wei WuXian’s expression changed in an instant. Meanwhile, Jin Ling’s spirit reluctantly lightened up a little. “Fairy!”

The thunder and lightning had passed. The pouring rain had diminished to a small drizzle. The darkest hours of the night were already over and the sky glowed with dim light.

Drenched from head to toe, the dark-furred spiritual dog sprinted towards Jin Ling on all fours like a torrent of dark wind. With a pair of round, teary puppy eyes, she stood up on her hind legs, sprawled over Jin Ling’s legs and made low whimpering noises. As Wei WuXian saw Fairy incessistantly licking Jin Ling’s hand with her scarlet tongue darting out between her sharp, pale teeth, his face was ashen and his eyes were frozen. Opening and and closing his mouth, he felt as if his soul was ready to evaporate out of his mouth in a bundle of smoke and fly towards heaven. Lan WangJi quietly stood in front of him, blocking him from Fairy’s line of sight.

Immediately afterwards, about a hundred or so people surrounded the entire Guanyin temple. Every single one of them had a sword in their hands. With caution and alarm all over their faces, they looked prepared for a brutal battle. Once the first wave entered, however, they were all startled by the scene before them. The ones on the ground were all already dead, while the ones who were still alive were either half-down or no longer standing. To summarize, corpses were everywhere, covering the floor in chaotic disarray.

From left to right, the two armed at the front were respectively the Head of Staff from the Yunmeng Jiang Sect and Lan QiRen. Lan QiRen was still too puzzled to speak, and the first thing that greeted him was the sight of Wei WuXian and Lan WangJi plastered so close together as if they were a single person. Instantly, Lan QiRen forgot everything he wanted to say. Murderous anger flared upon his face and his brows stood. Fuming, his breath was making his beard flare and shake. The Head of Staff hurried to help support Jiang Cheng, saying, “Sect Leader, are you alright……”

Meanwhile, Lan QiRen shouted, “Wei……”

Before he could finish shouting, a few figures clad in white darted out from behind him, all shouting, “HanGuang-Jun!”

“Senior Wei!”

“Senior Patriarch!”

The last youth bumped into Lan QiRen. Nearly stumbling, Lan QiRen warned, furious, “No running! No shouting!”

Aside from Lan WangJi, who called him “Uncle,” everyone else ignored him. With his left hand seizing Lan WangJi’s sleeve and his right hand seizing Wei WuXian’s arm, Lan SiZhui beamed, “This is wonderful! HanGuang-Jun, Senior Wei, you’re all fine. Looking at how agitated Fairy was, we all thought that you guys were in deep trouble.”

Lan JingYi said, “You must not be thinking straight, SiZhui; what trouble couldn’t HanGuang-Jun handle? I said a long time ago that you were worrying over nothing.”

“JingYi, weren’t you the one who was worried sick all the way over?”

“Go away! Stop talking nonsense.”

Finally spotting Wen Ning, who had finally managed to crawl up from the ground, from the corner of his eyes, Lan SiZhui immediately grabbed him and dragged him towards the group of youth as well, chatting about what all had happened.

As it turned out, after Fairy had injured Su She, she ran all the way to find the nearest subsidiary sect of the Yunmeng Jiang Sect within the city, and barked in front of their door nonstop. When the leader of the subsidiary sect saw the special collar on Fairy’s neck, the golden symbol and the family sigil, they realized that Fairy’s master must have come from a prestigious place. Noticing the blood marks on Fairy’s teeth, claws and fur, it became evident that a chaotic battle had just happened. No doubt the dog’s master was in danger. Too scared to waste another minute, the sect leader had immediately rode on his sword to the Lotus Pier to inform the Yunmeng Jiang Sect, the largest and most powerful sect in the area. The Head of Staff there had immediately identified the dog to be Young Master Jin Ling’s Fairy, and had immediately send out backups for rescue.

At the time, the Gusu Lan Sect were just about to leave the Lotus Pier, but Fairy had blocked Lan QiRen’s way. Leaping, she ripped off a stripe of white from the corner of Lan SiZhui’s robes with her teeth. Placing it on top of her head with her paw, she seemed to be trying to tie the stripe of white around her head, and then dropped onto the ground and pretended to be dead. While Lan QiRen was puzzled, Lan SiZhui had an alarming revelation, “Mister, look at that; doesn’t it seem like she’s trying to mimic our sect’s forehead ribbon? Is she trying to tell us that HanGuang-Jun or someone else from the Lan Sect is in danger?”

Thus, the Yunmeng Jiang Sect, the Gusu Lan Sect and a few other sects that hadn’t left yet all gathered up their people and headed over for rescue.

Lan JingYi praised, “All this time we’ve been calling her ‘Fairy’, ‘Fairy’, who knew she’s actually a spiritual dog!”

But no matter how spiritual or how smart it was, to Wei WuXian, a dog was still a dog—the most frightening existence in the world. Even though he had Lan WangJi blocking in front of him, he still shuddered nonstop. Ever since the group of youths from the Lan family had come in, Jin Ling had been stealing furtive glances towards them—towards the sight of them talking and chatting loudly around Wei WuXian and Lan WangJi. Seeing that Wei WuXian’s face was becoming paler and paler, Jin Ling patted Fairy’s butt and said quietly, “Fairy, go outside first.”

Shaking her head and wagging her tail, Fairy continued to lick him. Jin Ling chided, “Hurry and go. What, you don’t listen to me anymore?”

Fairy gave him a sad look, and dashed out of the temple, wagging her tail. At last, Wei WuXian relaxed. Jin Ling wanted to go over but felt too awkward to actually do it. Just as he was hesitating, Lan SiZhui suddenly saw what was by Wei WuXian’s waist. Frozen and startled, he asked, “……Senior Wei?”

Wei WuXian said, “Hm? What?”

Lan SiZhui said numbly, “Your…… Your flute, may I take a look at it?”

Wei WuXian brought it down and asked, “Something’s up with this flute?”

Receiving the flute with both hands, Lan SiZhui’s brows creased slightly. He looked a little lost. As Lan WangJi watched him, Wei WuXian turned to Lan WangJi and asked, “What’s up with your SiZhui? Does he like my flute?”

Lan JingYi exclaimed, “Huh? You’d finally lost that awful-sounding flute of yours? This new one here’s not bad!”

Little did he know that not only was this flute “not bad”, it was the legendary, treasured Ghoul Flute Chenqing upon which he’d always dreamed of gazing one day. Right now, however, he was merely thinking in glee, ‘This is great! At least he won’t be embarrassing HanGuang-Jun anymore the next time they duet together. Heavens! The flute he had before was ugly in both looks and sound!’

Lan WangJi said, “SiZhui.”

Only then did Lan SiZhui remembered himself and offered Chenqing back to Wei WuXian with both hands. “Senior Wei.”

Retrieving the flute, Wei WuXian at last remembered that it had come from Jiang Cheng. Turning to the latter, he added, “Thanks.” Waving Chenqing, he said, “Then, I…… will be keeping this?”

Jiang Cheng threw him a glance. “It was yours to start with.”

After a pause, his lips twitched as if he wanted to say something more, but Wei WuXian had already turned to Lan WangJi. Seeing this, Jiang Cheng didn’t say another word.

Of the people gathered, some were cleaning up the scene, some were strengthening the wooden coffin’s seal. Some were trying to figure out how to relocate it safely and securely, while others were angry. Lan QiRen raged, “XiChen, what exactly is up with you?!”

With an unspoken sorrow stitched between his brows, Lan XiChen pressed against his temple and replied in tired words, “……Uncle, I’m begging you. Stop asking. Please. I really don’t want to talk about anything right now.”

In all the years he’d raised him, Lan QiRen had never seen Lan XiChen so irritated and discomposed, so disquieted and hard to reason with. Looking from Lan XiChen to Lan WangJi, who was being surrounded together with Wei WuXian, Lan QiRen’s rage magnified, consumed by the realization that these two pupils of his—once perfect and spotless—had both stopped listening to him, and neither would give him peace of mind.

The coffin containing Nie MingJue and Jin GuangYao was not only unusually heavy but needed to be carefully handled. Thus, the few brave souls who volunteered to relocate it were all sect leaders. One sect leader took a look at the face of the Guanyin statue and started. Then, as if discovering something fascinating, he called out to those next to him and said, “Look at this face! Doesn’t this look like Jin GuangYao?”

The one next to him looked and then muttered in wonderous contemplation, “It really is his face! What was Jin GuangYao doing with something like this?”

Sect Leader Yao said, “Made himself a god out of pride and arrogance, duh.”

“That’s a lot of pride and arrogance, hahaha.”

Wei WuXian thought to himself, ‘That’s not necessarily true.’

Jin GuangYao’s mother had been a whore looked down upon by the whole world. Therefore he constructed a Guanyin statue in her image so that she could be praised and respected by tens of thousands kneeling by her feet, offering her burning incense all day long.

But there was little use for bring up it up now. Wei WuXian understood, better than anyone, that no one would care, and that no one would believe it. Anything that had even remote ties with Jin GuangYao would never be given the benefit of the doubt again. From now on, people would only assume the worst of the worst of him, and words would ripple like ceaselessly waves.

Soon, the coffin would be sealed inside an even bigger, stronger casket. Seventy-two mahogany stakes would be nailed into it before it became buried deep beneath the earth, underneath a mountain surrounded by warning posts.

And whatever that was sealed within would never be reborn underneath the weight of a thousand seals and the scorn of thousands more.

Leaning against the door frame, Nie HuaiSang watched as the group of sect leaders carried the coffin outside the Guanyin temple’s doorsteps. Lowering his head, he swiped at the dirt and grime caking his robes when something seemed to catch his eyes, making him pause. Wei WuXian followed his gaze. Laying on the floor was Jin GuangYao’s hat.

Nie HuaiSang bent down. It was only after he picked it up did he wander outside slowly.

Outside, Fairy was already worried sick waiting for her master, and cried out two long howls. At the sound, Jin Ling suddenly remembered that Fairy had been just a dumb young pup no taller than his knee when Jin GuangYao had first brought her to him.

At the time, he was only a few years old and had just fought with a few other kids at the Koi Tower. Even though he’d won, it hadn’t felt like a victory, and so he had thrashed his room in a huge tantrum, shouting and crying. None of the maids and servants dared to approach him, scared that he’d hit them. With a face full of smiles, his youngest uncle had suddenly appeared and asked, “A-Ling, what’s wrong?” and he’d instantly shattered five or six flower vases by Jin GuangYao’s feet. Jin GuangYao had said, “Aiyoh, so scary, I’m so scared,” and left while shaking his head, as if he was truly scared.

The next day, still mad, Jin Ling had refused to leave his room to eat, and so Jin GuangYao had roamed back and forth outside his doors. Jin Ling, with his back against the doors, shouted at him to stop bothering him, and had been suddenly greeted by the weak howls of a small pup.

Opening his door, Jin GuangYao had been half-crouching right outside with a black-furred small dog tucked in his arms, its sparkling eyes big and round. Jin GuangYao smiled up at him and said, “I found this little one here, not sure what to call it. Would A-Ling like to give it a name?”

That smile had been so warm and genuine. Jin Ling couldn’t ever believe that Jin GuangYao had faked it.

Suddenly, fresh tears rolled down his cheeks again.

Jin Ling had always believed crying to be a sign of weakness, and had thus always looked down upon it. Right now, however, aside from crying his eyes out, he had no other means to express or unleash the pain and fury in his heart.

For reasons he couldn’t understand, he couldn’t find anyone to blame, or anyone to hate. Wei WuXian, Jin GuangYao, Wen Ning—every single one of them should be responsible for the death of his parents in one way or another. Every single one of them rightfully deserved his hate. Yet, in one way or another, he found himself incapable of hating any of them. But if not them, then who else could he hate? Did he deserve to have his parents taken away from him so young? He was already incapable of avenging their death—incapable of making the kill. Was he also to be robbed of his hatred? Was he not even allowed to hate with no repercussion nor hesitance?

It didn’t feel right. It didn’t seem fair. He almost felt like he should have died with them. That would have been more right.

At the sight of him crying soundlessly at the coffin, Sect Leader Yao asked, “Young Master Jin, why are you crying? Are you crying for Jin GuangYao?”

When Jin Ling didn’t answer, Sect Leader Yao spoke with the air of a senior chiding a fellow young disciple of his own house, “What’s there to cry? Cease your tears. People like your uncle don’t deserve other people’s tears. Young Master, I’m not just speaking for myself, but you cannot be this weak and frail! You’re acting like a woman. You need to know what’s right and what’s wrong, and straighten your……”

Had the Lanling Jin Sect still held the seat of the Chief Cultivator that sat above hundreds of sects, never would any of the other sect leaders dare to chide a disciple of the Jin Sect in the tone of a condescending senior even if the chance was handed to them on a silver platter. But now that Jin GuangYao was dead, the Lanling Jin Sect had no one left to support the roof over its head. With its reputation utterly ruined, it would probably never return to its glory days. And so the others finally dared to come at them. Jin Ling’s heart was already in churning turmoil. Sect Leader Yao’s unnecessary, condescending words only made his mood worse. Rage exploded like a gush of fire inside his chest as he shouted, “So what if I just want to cry, what’s it to you?! Who do you think you are to comment on my crying?!”

Sect Leader Yao didn’t expect to be shouted at for his chidings. After all, he was still a sect leader; not spectacularly renounced but respected all the same. His expression darkened immediately. Someone next to him persuaded, “Let it go, don’t quarrel with a child.”

Tucking away his anger, he huffed and said, “Of course. Heh, what use is there in arguing with a little child who has yet to learn black from white?”

After seeing the coffin carried onto the carriage, Lan QiRen turned around and, after a pause, asked, “Where is WangJi?”

He had only just been thinking of dragging Lan WangJi back to the Cloud Recesses and have one hundred and twenty days of lengthy, private conversation with him. And if that failed, he planned to confine him again for a little while. Little had he expected Lan WangJi to disappear in the blink of an eye. After roaming a few times around the premises, he yelled, “Where is WangJi?!”

Lan JingYi answered, “Earlier, I mentioned that I brought Little Apple along and left it right outside the temple, and then HanGuang-Jun and…… and…… left to see Little Apple together.”

Lan QiRen asked, “And then what?”

Little needed to be said regarding what happened after that. Outside the temple, Wei WuXian, Lan WangJi, and Wen Ning were no longer in sight.

Turning to Lan XiChen, who was slowly following behind him with an unfocused gaze, Lan QiRen exhaled angrily before turning back with a swipe of his sleeves. Meanwhile, Lan JingYi looked left and right before gasping, “SiZhui? What’s going on? When did SiZhui disappear as well?”

Hearing that both Wei WuXian and Lan WangJi had disappeared, Jin Ling hurried outside and nearly tripped himself by the tall doorstep of the Guanyin temple’s main gate. Despite his haste, the two were already nowhere to be seen. Fairy happily circled around him with her tongue out. Standing by a tree, rigid and sky-high within the Guanyin temple’s grounds, was Jiang Cheng, who looked over at Jin Ling and spoke coldly, “Clean your face.”

Giving his eyes and face a few forceful wipe, Jin Ling dashed over and asked, “Where are they?”

Jiang Cheng responded, “They left.”

“And you let them go just like that?” Jin Ling burst out.

Jing Cheng’s response dripped with sarcasm. “Or what? Ask them to stay for dinner? Say ‘thank you’ and then ‘sorry’?”

Agitated, Jin Ling pointed at him and said, “No wonder he left! It’s because you’re always like this! Uncle, why are you so unlikable?!”

At the words, Jiang Cheng raised his hand, mad as well. “Is this how you should speak to an elder? You’re asking for a beating!”

Jin Ling visibly shrunk. Fairy’s tail went between her legs as well. Ultimately, Jiang Cheng didn’t land his palm on Jin Ling’s head and instead weakly lowered it.

He irritatedly added, “Shut up already, Jin Ling. Shut up. Let’s go back. We’ll all go back to our own.”

Startled, after a moment of hesitation, Jin Ling pliantly remained quiet as told.

Head sloping, Jin Ling walked by Jiang Cheng’s side for a few strides before looking up. “Uncle, you wanted to say something earlier, didn’t you?”

“What? No. I didn’t.”

“You did! I saw it, you wanted to say something to Wei WuXian but then you stopped.”

After a beat of silence, Jiang Cheng shook his head. “There’s nothing to be said.”

What was there to say?

Tell him ‘I didn’t get caught back then by the Wen Sect because I was trying to retrieve my parents’ bodies from the Lotus Pier.’

‘When you went out to buy food at that little town where we ran to, a group of cultivators from the Wen Sect had caught up.’

‘I found out early and left the place we were staying at, and avoided capture by hiding at a street corner. But they were patrolling the streets, and soon they would have caught up to you.’

‘And so I left my hiding place and attracted their attention away.’

However, just like all those years ago when Wei WuXian had ripped out his own golden core for him without telling him, here and now, there was no way for Jiang Cheng to bring this up again.

#魔道祖师 #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #novel translation #my translation #'i am back' i said #and then i disappeared for 2 more weeks...#claaaassic shortsightedness coming from me #apologies apologies

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