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robininthelabyrinth · 9 months

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The Other Mountain - ao3 - Chapter 16

Pairing: Lan Qiren/Wen Ruohan

Warning Tags on Ao3

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“Come on kids!” Cangse Sanren called. “Dinner time!”

Jiang Cheng was learning to be very wary of those words.

He hadn’t thought that was possible. It was just dinner, right? Dinner was a good thing, a normal thing. You went, you sat, you ate. No big deal.

Well.

That was before Jiang Cheng started having dinner with Cangse Sanren, her husband Wei Cangze, their son Wei Ying, and the two Lan heirs, Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji.

(And Jiejie, of course, but she didn’t count. Jiang Cheng was used to her being around! She was always there for dinner back at home…and also, unlike everyone else, she was normal.)

They’d been on the road together for a whole bunch of days, maybe six or seven, and they’d already had multiple showdowns over dinner. Unnecessarily dramatic showdowns, in Jiang Cheng’s personal never-spoken-aloud but fervently held opinion.

The first time, the showdown had been the evening after they’d met up with Wei Changze and Wei Ying. Cangse Sanren had decided, as a celebration of their first night on the road with everyone all together, to serve them all dessert for dinner. Wei Ying (who was pretty cool) had been thrilled, Jiejie had been smiling politely the way she usually did when she found things funny but a little silly, Lan Xichen had exactly the same type of smile (maybe it was an older sibling thing), and even Jiang Cheng thought it was pretty cool, actually; he’d never before had a grown-up be the one to suggest, much less implement, dessert for dinner. To be honest, he thought that most of what Cangse Sanren and Wei Changze did was incredibly cool – not that he’d ever admit it. He certainly wouldn’t admit to being a little jealous of Wei Ying, who got to be with two such cool people all the time.

(Two cool people that actually seemed to like each other, no less, the way married couples did in stories. The way Jiang Cheng was pretty sure married couples were supposed to like each other, rather than the way his parents did, or thought they did, or pretended they did, but didn’t really seem to.

Except he was never going to admit any of that either. Ever. To anyone!)

Unfortunately, Lan Wangji did not think it was cool.

“Dinner is dinner,” he insisted, his round little face creased with a great big scowl and his hands clenched into fists. “Not dessert. You cannot have dessert for dinner! It’s against the rules!”

It had been the most he’d said all day. All trip, at that point.

Cangse Sanren had tried to talk him into it, but he’d stubbornly refused, and whenever anyone else tried to reach for their bowl he glared death at them until they stopped. Not that his glares were all that scary – nothing was scary when your face was that round, as Jiang Cheng knew to his own regret, because certainly any time he tried it everyone older than him would just pat his cheeks and make little cooing sounds at him, even Jiejie – but by this point Lan Wangji had already had three giant screaming temper tantrums because things had changed too quickly, so no one wanted to risk triggering another one.

Also, he bit people. Mercilessly.

(Lan Xichen said that Lan Wangji had been having a very hard time of it recently and that they should please try to take it easy on him. Jiang Cheng hadn’t entirely understood what he meant, but Lan Xichen had looked so tired and sad while he said it that he couldn’t bring himself to ask.)

“I’m pretty sure your rules only say that you can’t eat more than three bowls,” Cangse Sanren eventually said, throwing up her hands into the air. This turned out to be a tactical mistake, because Lan Wangji’s face lit up and he started very enthusiastically reciting a whole bunch of rules right back at her.

This had gone on for nearly an incense stick, when finally Cangse Sanren said with a faint sigh and a smile that seemed genuinely fond, “You know, you remind me of your shufu when he was younger.”

That had shut Lan Wangji right up. He’d blinked at her owlishly.

“…really?” he said. “You mean it?”

He looked pleased.

(“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone get Wangji to stop reciting rules in under a half-shichen before, not once he really gets into the swing of things,” Lan Xichen had remarked later, looking impressed, which was…a little worrying. To Jiang Cheng, anyway, everyone else just sort of nodded along and then tried their best not to mention the Lan sect rules anymore.)

Eventually Cangse Sanren had yielded the argument and given them all plain buns to have for actual dinner first, which they all had to eat before they started in on their dessert – Lan Wangji meticulously checked each of their plates to be sure – but after that he’d given in, however begrudgingly, and they could eat.

That had only been the first notable dinner.

The next time had involved them stopping at an inn, with Wei Changze clapping his hands together in excitement and announcing to all of them that they’d found a place that did real Yunmeng food, nice and spicy. Jiang Cheng had been glad to hear it, since he was starting to get tired of travel food even if it had only been a couple of days, and also because discussion conferences held at the Lotus Pier apparently meant that all the food for everyone got really boring for a couple of days as a courtesy to their guests, some of whom apparently lacked tastebuds. Jiejie had cheered outright, clapping her hands, and Wei Ying had been over the moon, turning cartwheels on the grass.

Lan Xichen had, very politely, asked, “What does it mean that the food is ‘spicy’?”

Jiang Cheng had thought he was joking.

Lan Xichen was not joking.

Also, neither he nor Lan Wangji had any spice tolerance.

On the very first bite, they both turned as red as chili sauce, even though they’d ordered the mildest possible dish with only a few chilis peeking through. Poor Lan Xichen been crying, or maybe not since he kept denying it, though he’d certainly been sniffling very hard and wiping at his eyes a lot. Jiang Cheng had felt so absolutely awful about it that he couldn’t even enjoy his own food properly, though Wei Ying hadn’t had that issue. He’d been sympathetic, but he’s still continued munching along rather mindlessly while watching the two Lan boys shovel plain food into their mouths in a desperate effort to make it stop burning.

Jiang Cheng wished he could be that cool.

And then, the time after that, they’d shared a campfire with a nice traveling family that said they were from the far northwest. They’d shared some of their home-cooking, with recipes and ingredients all brought straight from their homeland.

It was delicious, but Jiang Cheng turned out to be allergic. Or, well, not quite allergic, but he’d spent the rest of the evening in the dug-out privy next to the nearby river and everyone had to wait for him before hitting the road again and it had been the most humiliating event of his life.

In short: he was not looking forward to dinner. Even if he was a little bit hungry, it just wasn’t worth it!

“Normal dinner!” Cangse Sanren chirped when no one came running over, not even Wei Ying. “I swear!”

“I’m not sure I believe her,” Jiejie said to Lan Xichen, who hid his smile behind his sleeve.

Jiang Cheng hadn’t quite decided what he’d thought of the two adults that were supposedly taking care of them, but he thought Lan Xichen must be pretty nice, especially since Jiejie seemed to like him. They’d bonded over being ancient (they were both nine years old, so they’d had to do some comparisons to see who was technically older – it turned out that Jiejie was born in the spring and Lan Xichen only in the fall, so she was the older one, so hah!) and over having cute little brothers, which meant that both Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji had had to put up with listening to them tell all the horrible embarrassing stories that they could think of about them. Lan Wangji had very properly covered his face with his hands, his cheeks bright red, and Jiang Cheng had thought that was a very good idea and promptly joined him in doing so. Oddly enough, Wei Ying had spent the whole humiliating experience looking on longingly and complaining that it wasn’t fair that he didn’t have a big sibling of his own to do the same, but that was because Wei Ying was a complete weirdo.

Jiang Cheng was pretty sure he and Lan Wangji agreed on that much, at least. Sure, Wei Ying was now their weirdo, and he was a really cool weirdo, but he was definitely a weirdo.

Lan Xichen and Jiejie also talked about other stuff, though that was only late at night when everyone was supposed to be asleep except for whoever was driving the carriage. Jiang Cheng had woken up once when they’d driven over a hole in the road, and he’d heard them whispering to each other. They’d been talking about their parents, of all strange things.

(“I know that you’re supposed to honor and respect them. They just make it hard, sometimes. I love them! I do! But they fight, and they’re angry, and sometimes it just makes me want to scream…”

“I know what you mean. I never saw my father at all before recently. He was in seclusion…I think I wish he’d stayed in seclusion. Is that a terrible thing to say?”

“Not so terrible. You still honor the one who raised you, though, don’t you? Your shufu? That counts.”

“Thank you.”

“What about your mother?”

“We only saw her once a month…she was always very kind to Wangji, always trying to be cheerful.”

“To Wangji? What about you?”

“…well, she used to be. But about a year ago, she stopped looking at me because I looked too much like my father. Then Shufu yelled at her, and she got better about it, but I was still…I was upset with her about it for a while. Or, not a while, since she’s dead… I guess I understand why it was a problem, though, now that I’ve met him. I do look a lot like him. What if I turn out to be like him?”

“You won’t. You won’t, because you know you don’t want to. That’s all you need in order to be different…I mean, look at me. I’m not going to be anything like either of my parents. Attempt the impossible!”)

“Oh come on,” Cangse Sanren complained, though she had started giggling. “It’s just dinner. Don’t any of you trust me? Little monkey, how about you?”

“Sorry, a-Niang,” Wei Ying said solemnly. “Lan Zhan says I can’t commit to dinner until we know what’s in it.”

Jiang Cheng looked at Lan Wangji, who hadn’t said anything, but who nodded firmly.

Lan Wangji, to be clear, was also a weirdo. Unlike Wei Ying, who was the liveliest person Jiang Cheng had ever met – he was always talking, or bouncing around, or doing something, it was like he never got tired – Lan Wangji was usually pretty quiet, except of course for the times when he wasn’t. Those times included, firstly, any time someone asked him about the rules (he wouldn’t stop talking), and secondly, any time he got overwhelmed, because then he would throw himself to the ground and start screaming and kicking and punching. It had been a little scary at first, but then Lan Xichen explained that Lan Wangji couldn’t help himself and they could best help him by keeping him safe until he managed to get himself back under control. Wei Ying had immediately declared himself and Jiang Cheng to be Lan Wangji’s protectors, which Jiang Cheng thought sounded pretty cool, so that made it all right.

Also, on the first day of the trip when Jiang Cheng had been the one getting overwhelmed (because he’d noticed, a little belatedly, that their mother hadn’t been there to see them off, and he’d known there would be trouble as a result) and Cangse Sanren had tried to pat him on the head to tell him not to worry, Lan Wangji had tried to bite her in Jiang Cheng’s defense.

No one had ever tried to bite someone in Jiang Cheng’s defense before.

That meant Lan Wangji was cool, end of story.

Not as cool as Wei Ying, of course. Wei Ying was basically a dog in human form, always running up to everyone and absolutely certain that they were going to be best friends, all three of them, and not taking no for an answer. And since dogs were the best, that meant that Wei Ying was the best, too. Jiang Cheng had always had trouble connecting with other kids his own age, mostly because of his tendency to overthink everything, and Wei Ying just skated right on past that and declared them to be friends. And now they were friends! All three of them!

So Wei Ying was cool, too, and more than likely the coolest out of all three of them. Even if he was a weirdo, and tended to live almost entirely in his own imagination.

(“Now that we’re friends, we can be sworn brothers and defend the cultivation world together! We’re all going to be rogue cultivators, traveling with only a donkey and sword to our names – ”

“We can’t all be rogue cultivators,” Jiang Cheng pointed out. “I’m the heir of a Great Sect. I’m going to be a Great Sect leader in the future.”

“That’s fine! We’ll all be great sect leaders in the future!”

“That’s not what that means…”

“I will not be a sect leader,” Lan Wangji interjected, very firmly. “Xiongzhang gets the sect.”

“You two are no fun sometimes!” Wei Ying complained. “Fine! We’ll all go to my mother’s master’s celestial mountain and be immortals!”

“No. Shufu would miss me.”

“Yeah, my parents would be really angry…”

“Jiang Cheng! Lan Zhan! Work with me here!”

Lan Wangji reached out and patted him on the shoulder sympathetically. “We can still night-hunt together.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right!” Wei Ying beamed, immediately appeased. “Let’s do that, then!”)

Back on the subject of dinner, Cangse Sanren decided that the best way to deal with their resistance was to throw herself dramatically at her husband, who caught her, laughing.

“No one loves me,” she lamented. She was still giggling. “Nobody wants the food I worked so hard on, the food I slaved over – ”

“She bought noodles down in the town,” Wei Changze told the rest of them. “Totally normal noodles with a little meat in it, completely standard. But as you can see, it was very hard, bringing them all the way back here, it being such a long and hard way – ”

It wasn’t long and hard at all. The town wasn’t far away at all.

“– and after all that effort she put in, now none of you want any?”

“I could eat noodles,” Jiang Cheng said, deeply relieved. “Normal noodles, you said?”

The noodles were fine, to everyone’s profound relief.

Cangse Sanren made a few more jokes over dinner, eliciting mostly groans, and then Wei Changze decided to have mercy on them all by telling them a long and complicated anecdote that had them all laughing to the point of tears. They were both extraordinarily charming, though Jiang Cheng sometimes felt weird about liking them so much and thinking they were so cool – maybe because he knew that his own parents weren’t like that, not even when they were alone. He knew Jiejie also seemed to feel weird about it, or at least she did with Cangse Sanren, since she seemed to like Wei Changze even if she did seem to blush a lot when she was around him, but he had a feeling that her reasoning was somehow different from his.

(“So you’re that woman,” she’d said when they first drove away from the Lotus Pier, before they’d even found out about Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji hiding in the storage compartments. “I’ve heard about you.”

“Terrible things, I hope,” Cangse Sanren replied, making a strange sort of grimace. “And…from your mother? Please tell me you’ve heard about me from your mother.”

“Does it make a difference?”

“It does to me.” A long sigh. “I like having friends. Changze does, too…especially poor Changze. He grew up with your father, you know.”

“…yes, I know.” Jiejie had been silent for a moment, then asked, hesitantly, “Does – is that why you never come to visit the Lotus Pier together?”

Jiang Cheng hadn’t understood why she’d asked that, or what relevance it had. But Cangse Sanren seemed to get it.

“Oh, no, we’re not afraid or anything,” she said with a laugh. “Your father’s a sweetheart, and we’re as daring as you can get! But our little Wei Ying doesn’t deserve to be stuck having to deal with all that awkwardness. All those endless expectations… You’re a good girl. Thank you for coming on the trip, even if you won’t ever like me.”

“Who says I did it for you?” Jiejie said mysteriously, with a somewhat sad smile. “Maybe I just wanted to see the world.”)

When dinner was done, Wei Changze cleared his throat.

“Children,” he said, and they all looked at him. “We’re going night-hunting this evening.”

“Are you leaving us here?” Wei Ying pouted at once. He was apparently used to things like that. “Couldn’t we have at least stayed at the inn in town, then? Or maybe somewhere back next to the reservoir? I don’t want to wait by a campfire…”

“We’re not leaving you at a campfire next to a potentially haunted mine, little monkey,” Cangse Sanren said, ruffling his hair. “We’re taking you with us!”

Jiang Cheng’s mouth dropped open. “You are? Is that – a good idea?”

It didn’t sound like a good idea. They didn’t even have swords!

“It’s the best idea!” Wei Ying shouted, jumping up and down in his excitement. Sometimes Jiang Cheng could really tell where the “little monkey” nickname had come from. He grabbed a branch from the ground and started waving it around. “We’re going to get them like this and like that and we’re going to blow them all up into a thousand pieces – ka-boom – ”

“What have you been telling our son about night-hunting?” Wei Changze asked his wife, his cheeks quivering with suppressed laughter.

“Nothing inaccurate,” Cangse Sanren replied, looking equally amused. “I am a paragon of honesty and straightforwardness.”

“Mm, yes. I remember how straightforward you were when you went out for ‘a quick look around’ and came back from the Lotus Pier with the Jiang children.”

“I was straightforward! I told you right off that I needed them for a cover-up!”

“Yes, to cover up your kidnapping of the Lan children.”

“Lan Qiren said it was all right.”

“Well, if Lan Qiren said it was all right.” Wei Changze rolled his eyes and kissed her on the temple. “You really can’t use a man you’ve barely met since you were sixteen as your moral guide to the world, you know.”

“Yes, she can,” Lan Xichen interjected. “If it’s Shufu, that is.”

Both adults startled and nearly jumped, as if they’d forgotten that any of the children were even there – they did that, sometimes. Usually when they were talking with each other.

They talked with each other a lot.

(“I’m just worried that my dad didn’t tell my mom about where we were going,” Jiang Cheng explained to Wei Ying back on that first day. “And then she’ll be angry. At him, but maybe also at us, and I don’t want her to be mad at us.”

“Why wouldn’t he tell her?” Wei Ying asked, wrinkling his nose. “My parents tell each other everything. And I mean everything. Sometimes they don’t stop talking for days and days – ”

“I can hear you back there, little monkey!” his mother shouted from the front of the carriage.

“You’re supposed to!” he shouted back, grinning, and that was why Wei Ying was the coolest, even cooler than Lan Wangji. Jiang Cheng would never in a million years talk back to his mother like that. “You can tell me if I’m wrong, though!”

“…scram, you brat!”

Wei Ying giggled.)

“Are you really taking us night-hunting?” Jiang Cheng asked, shaking his head and trying to focus. He often got distracted thinking too much about things – his head was always full of things, most of which were usually worries – which Lan Xichen said was a little bit similar to Lan Wangji, just not as bad and a little sideways. Jiang Cheng wasn’t sure about that, but he’d tried out a few of the routines Lan Wangji used to focus and calm down and they weren’t bad. “Isn’t that really dangerous?”

“Not…really dangerous,” Cangse Sanren said, glancing over at her husband with a frown. “Within normal human levels of danger. I think?”

(“What does she mean, ‘human’?” Jiejie asked Lan Xichen in an undertone, but he just shrugged.)

“That’s a very good question, Jiang Cheng,” Wei Changze said, seemingly ignoring the strange half-question his wife had just lobbed at him. “You’re right: night-hunts are dangerous. But the rumors here are pretty mild – just a few specters sighted around the mine, nothing that’s actually gone and hurt anyone yet, maybe one person who thinks they might’ve seen a fierce corpse…really, it’s no big deal. Cangse and I are experienced; we could do a case like this with our eyes closed. So there’s no need to worry.”

Jiang Cheng took comfort from the confidence in his tone.

He took a lot less comfort from the way both Wei Changze and Cangse Sanren stopped dead about five steps into the spooky old former mine, which had been boarded up with creaky old boards before Wei Changze had knocked it down with his sword so that they could go inside with only some lanterns and the evening sun to light up the place.

“Huh,” Wei Changze said.

“That’s interesting,” Cangse Sanren said.

“Yeah. Interesting. That’s the word.”

“I mean, it is interesting. Wouldn’t you say?”

“I’d say…unexpected.”

“Oh, it’s that, too. No denying it.”

“No, indeed you can’t. How many do you think there are?”

“We can feel it all the way out here by the entrance. How many do you think?”

“Hmm.”

“Yeah, about that many.” Cangse Sanren pulled out her horsetail whisk and drew her sword. “This is going to be fun!”

“Jiejie,” Jiang Cheng hissed, tugging on his sister’s sleeve urgently. “I think when she says fun, she really means dangerous.”

Jiejie patted him on the head. “Senior Wei?” she said, raising her voice a little and reaching out to grab Wei Ying by the collar before he threw himself any further into the mine. Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji were both politely waiting for permission to go forward, of course, so there was no need to worry about them. “What exactly have you noticed? Something unusual?”

“Lesson time,” Wei Changze announced. “I want all of you to try to perceive spiritual energy. Can you do that?”

Of course they could do that. They weren’t babies, and perceiving spiritual energy was practically the first thing you learned when you were going to be a cultivator. It would have been pretty hard to cultivate if you couldn’t even sense things that had spiritual energy!

Jiang Cheng obediently closed his eyes and tried it out, then frowned, opening his eyes. There was something weird.

“What’s that noise?” Wei Ying asked, cracking open his own eyes. “Can anyone else hear it? It’s like…buzzing.”

“I can hear it,” Lan Xichen said, and Jiang Yanli nodded as well. “What is it?”

“That’s the sound – or rather, the feeling, which sometimes comes across as a sound – of spiritual energy laid down in a series of arrays,” Wei Changze said. He hadn’t drawn his sword the way Cangse Sanren had, but he had his hand on the hilt. “A great deal of spiritual energy.”

“In a great deal of arrays,” Cangse Sanren murmured. “Husband mine, you don’t put down this sort of thing for a few specters and a handful of hopping corpses, do you?”

Hopping corpses? Jiang Cheng was appalled. They hadn’t said anything about there being bloodsucking jiangshi here!

“No, you don’t,” Wei Changze replied, then turned back to them. “All right, children, do any of you know the situations where a cultivator would put down a lot of arrays in a single location?”

Yeah, sure, Jiang Cheng thought bitterly to himself. A really bad one!

Not that anyone else would admit that, since that would mean defying the adults.

“A really bad one!” Wei Ying announced. Jiang Cheng turned to stare at him.

“That’s right, little monkey,” Cangse Sanren said, patting his head.

Jiang Cheng pouted. He’d thought it first!

“It is likely to be in a place where a great number of people died under unjust circumstances,” Lan Xichen volunteered. “Any place with a great deal of death will generate resentful energy and draw in evil, but in most cases, cultivators will seek to liberate rather than suppress. Only where a great injustice has occurred, without plausible remedy, will it be necessary to implement long-lasting suppression arrays on a large scale.”

“It’s not just death, though, is it?” Jiejie asked. “Can’t it be any type of injustice?”

“Well, yes, but typically there is more resentful energy released upon death than upon suffering absent death – ”

“Also, we’re in a mine,” Jiejie interrupted. “Couldn’t the resentment just come from them having died at all? They could have been unwilling to go – say, if there was a mine collapse – ”

“If it was a mine collapse, you wouldn’t need what must have been an entire clan setting up arrays,” Lan Xichen said, his face going fixed and neutrally pleasant in a way that everyone had by now learned meant that he was getting annoyed but trying his absolute best not to show it. “Not to mention just leaving them here for ages and ages – ”

“You’re both right,” Wei Changze interrupted. “Jiang Yanli is right that particularly sudden mine collapse could generate the necessary resentful energy, if there were enough people – ”

Jiejie beamed.

“– but also Lan Xichen is right that the number of people that would have needed to be involved in a mine collapse on the scale that might justify suppression arrays of this magnitude is much, much greater. It wouldn’t just be the mine, it would probably have to encompass several of the towns at the base of the mountain, and maybe some further out that draw on the local reservoir, too – far, far too massive to be overlooked. No, it’s far more likely that Lan Xichen’s initial deduction is correct: this is more than likely the site of a massacre.”

“How did you know that the arrays have been here for ages?” Wei Ying asked Lan Xichen, who blinked. “My dad just said that there were a lot of them, not that they were old.”

Lan Xichen looked flustered. “I…I mean…actually…”

“Xiongzhang is right,” Lan Wangji announced, breaking his usual silence in defense of his brother. “It sounds like when they patched up the back gate at home.”

“He is right,” Cangse Sanren told Wei Changze. She was examining one of the walls of the mine with a frown. “He’s got good instincts, which is of course no surprise given who raised him. Not just about the age of the arrays – this sort of thing really does look a lot more like the concerted effort of an established cultivation clan layering arrays on top of each other than, say, the work of a passing rogue cultivator or even a whole mob of rogue cultivators. And it hasn’t been maintained for a while. Here, look.”

She pointed at the wall she’d been looking at, twisting her fingers into a hand seal. The array hidden there slowly lit up with a slightly eerie silvery light, rather than the usual gold that Jiang Cheng was used to seeing. It was a very large circle, with the usual sorts of inscriptions all around the edges, and there were five smaller circles layered on top of it in each of the cardinal directions and the center, each of them rotating slowly – and there might even be more circles layered onto the smaller circles, but Jiang Cheng couldn’t quite tell. It was very impressive.

“See? At least ten years old, and not one bit of upkeep since then. Look how ragged the edges are getting..!” She shook her head. “Why would a clan powerful enough to put down all of the arrays here in the first place not make a practice of coming back to check on it? It’s irresponsible.”

“Perhaps they moved?” Wei Changze suggested, though he seemed doubtful. “Or a tragedy, perhaps…either way, something must have happened to prevent their return.”

“No, I don’t think so. There are so many arrays here, and they’re so powerful! You’d be covered even if the entire mine had collapsed on an entire village’s worth of people – this is the result of painstaking effort. And for something to involve an entire cultivation clan…”

“Maybe it’s just a bunch of really powerful ones!” Wei Ying giggled. “Boom! Boom! Boom! Arrays everywhere!”

“That’s a good point,” Wei Changze said encouragingly, then glanced at Cangse Sanren. “It could be a smaller set of people if they were exceptionally powerful. A set of sect elders, for instance.”

“Maybe for one of the larger sects, I suppose.” Cangse Sanren didn’t seem convinced. “You’d still need a fair number of people involved. But then in that case, wouldn’t you be even more likely to see signs of maintenance? If there’s one thing I’ve figured out about sect elders, it’s that they love ordering other people around. They would have assigned some juniors to come back here to keep an eye on it.”

“Maybe they just didn’t want to come back,” Jiejie suggested. “Wouldn’t that explain the very large amount of power involved? If they knew at the beginning that they didn’t want to come back.”

“Hmm, another good point,” Cangse Sanren said, and Jiang Cheng pouted even more. Now he was the only one who hadn’t made a good point! He was falling behind! Even Lan Wangji had been right about something! “That could be it. Maybe it was a smaller group of people, putting in an extra-large amount of power because they know they’re not going to be maintaining it, or else finding a reason to want to not think about it after that. I still think it’s negligence, though.”

“There’s enough power here to last more than ten years without consistent repair,” Wei Changze disagreed. “That’s not negligence. Ten years is enough time to dissipate most of the things you encounter during a standard night-hunt.”

“If that was the case, we wouldn’t be here,” Cangse Sanren pointed out. “The townspeople wouldn’t be complaining about gui and worse haunting the hills. The only reason they’re complaining is because the suppression arrays are starting to fail to keep whatever is in here, here.”

Jiang Cheng wracked his brain to think of something clever to add in. He didn’t want to be the only one not contributing to the conversation. Everyone else had said something right – but if he opened his mouth and said something, he might be wrong, and then he’d be the only one who was wrong, and people would be disappointed in him and think he was stupid, and then they wouldn’t like him or want to be friends with him, and – and –

He was doing the bad thinking again, Jiang Cheng reminded himself. The bad thinking led to the screaming, or at least it did with Lan Wangji, and if he didn’t want to end up with the screaming, which he didn’t, he needed to pause, take a breath, and tell himself not to do the bad thinking if he could. It wasn’t a problem if he was wrong.

Anyway, he’d been right earlier, about the bad thing. Wei Ying had said exactly what he’d been thinking, and if he’d been the one to speak first, he would have been right.

He just needed to say something.

“Maybe it’s because of the door,” he blurted out. Everyone blinked at him. “I mean – we needed to use a sword to get in here – so – ”

What am I saying? Gui can go through doors, you idiot!

“You know, I didn’t think about that,” Wei Changze said slowly. “But you make an interesting point, Jiang Cheng.”

Jiang Cheng blinked. He had?

“Why was the mine boarded up?” he continued, turning to Cangse Sanren, who frowned. “Wouldn’t you want the local town to come here to leave offerings for their kinsmen? That would help alleviate their grievances and help liberate them faster, dissipate the resentful energy faster. Why keep them away?”

“Good question,” Lan Xichen whispered to Jiang Cheng, who felt his cheeks go hot and probably red. Jiejie nudged him and nodded at him approvingly, too, and even Wei Ying made a gesture of approval. So Jiang Cheng had been right, after all.

So cool.

“The town didn’t mention anything about doing rituals here,” Cangse Sanren said thoughtfully. “I wonder why – they just said there was a mine. Nothing about a massacre. A purposeful omission?”

“Not necessarily.”

“We should find out.”

“We should figure out what the arrays are doing and if there’s any chance they’ll break down,” Wei Changze objected. “If whatever is suppressed here hasn’t dissipated, then it could be a catastrophe if they ever got loose.”

“We won’t be able to figure that out if we don’t know what happened here originally,” Cangse Sanren replied, and – wait. Were they arguing?

It sort of looked like they were arguing, but it wasn’t the way Jiang Cheng’s parents argued. No yelling, no one was throwing anything, no glaring or angry gestures…

Jiang Cheng had thought that Wei Changze and Cangse Sanren were a perfect storybook couple, the type that really liked each other and were happy all the time and that meant that they didn’t fight. But apparently he was wrong, and they did fight? It was just that their type of fighting was…weird. Almost…cheerful. Friendly.

So weird.

“…I’ll take the older two to town to ask around,” Wei Changze finally conceded. “You stay here with the younger kids and investigate the arrays?”

Cangse Sanren kissed him on the cheek. “Have fun!”

“It’s not fair that the older kids get to do all the interesting things,” Wei Ying sulked to Jiang Cheng after Wei Changze had left with Lan Xichen and Jiejie, who both had looked very excited to have the chance to go question villagers rather than sit around and watch Cangse Sanren poke at the array on the wall with her really sharp and oddly red fingernails until it crackled with spiritual energy, which made her frown and poke some more. It had been interesting at first, but had lost its appeal quite a long while ago. It had already been ages and ages! Maybe even half a shichen! Or more! Yeah, lots more! “This can take all day, you know.”

Jiang Cheng made a face.

“It’s not fair, you know. I want to explore! I want to help!” Wei Ying complained with what Jiang Cheng personally considered to be a substantial exaggeration of his own abilities. “I could be so helpful!”

Make that a vast exaggeration.

“Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying turned to his faithful white shadow. “Can you convince my mom to let us go explore? You’re good at tricking people, aren’t you?”

Was he?

Lan Wangji thought about it for a couple of moments, then nodded. He climbed to his feet and walked over to where Cangse Sanren was still poking at the wall and mumbling to herself.

“Senior,” he said, sounding as serious as he ever did. “I have a question.”

He waited a few moments, then reached out and tugged her sleeve.

“Ah -? Oh, Lan Zhan, right, right,” Cangse Sanren said, and smiled down at him. “Did you say you had a question? What’s your question?”

Lan Wangji looked up at her and, with a completely straight face and big wide innocent eyes, said, “What’s a massacre?”

What a scammer.

Jiang Cheng was impressed.

Cangse Sanren’s face froze. “Uh,” she said. “What?”

“Senior Wei mentioned it earlier…? When Xiongzhang was talking about what happened here. I was hoping Senior could explain.”

“Oh, sure,” she said, reaching up and tapping her nails against her cheekbone. “I can explain, sure. Sure, sure.”

“Good,” Lan Wangji said peaceably. “Like Shufu says, never stop learning.”

“…on second thought, maybe you should go play,” Cangse Sanren said, wrinkling her nose. “Your shufu might want to explain big words like massacre using, uh, his own words, you know. Hey! Little monkey! Can you take Lan Zhan to go play?”

Wei Ying leaped to his feet like he’d been waiting his whole life for the chance. Jiang Cheng climbed up and brushed the dust off his butt, shaking his head in disbelief.

Were all grownups so easy to manipulate? Why hadn’t he known that?

(Also, for some reason, Cangse Sanren hid a laugh in her sleeve as she turned back to the array. What was that about?)

“Have fun, kids,” she said, already focused back on her array. “Don’t go far.”

“Sure, of course,” Wei Ying said, and promptly took off running in the other direction. Jiang Cheng followed him, happy to have a distraction – he’d stopped being afraid of the mine and started being bored quite a while back at this point. Anyway, there weren’t that many places to go in here, what with the entrance to the deeper parts of the mine thoroughly blocked off by a rockfall that Cangse Sanren had deemed to be caused by cultivator swords and everything else mostly just being a few twists and turns and big stalagmites, all of which eventually led back to the main area where Cangse Sanren was standing.

Wei Ying didn’t seem to care about any of that, though. He charged forward happily, leading them this way and that, nattering on and on about how he was going to fight any ghosts he met because he was such a great cultivator, and also how they could make friends with them, too, because he was so nice, and how they would show them where there was a great big old treasure…

“I’m pretty sure the only treasure in this mine is whatever they were mining,” Jiang Cheng said doubtfully. “Or maybe the arrays? I don’t know. Are arrays valuable?”

“Long term arrays are often anchored in place with treasures,” Lan Wangji volunteered, and just like that, it was decided: they were going on a treasure hunt.

Wei Ying provided the background music himself, as if they were in an opera. Sometimes it even had lyrics. Unfortunately.

“Anyway, Jiang Cheng, I was thinking,” he said cheerfully as they checked behind yet another stalagmite without success. “What if your big sister marries Lan Zhan’s big brother? Then you’d be brothers – ”

“No,” Lan Wangji said. “No marriage.”

“Your brother has to get married eventually – ”

“No more change.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jiang Cheng interjected. “Jiejie’s already engaged, so it wouldn’t work.”

“Oh, well. Don’t worry, Lan Zhan, it was just a thought.”

“Watch where you are going,” Lan Wangji said, which Jiang Cheng made a lot of sense – Wei Ying had turned around and was walking backwards so that he could talk to them.

“Don’t worry, Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying said with all of his parents’ confidence. “Even if I walk into something, the worst that’ll happen is that I’ll trip and – ”

He tripped and fell.

“Wei Ying!”

“I’m okay, I’m okay!” Wei Ying waved them away. He did in fact seem to be okay. “I told you, it wouldn’t be that…”

His voice trailed away as the ground under all their feet started glowing.

“Mm,” Lan Wangji said, voice still calm. “We seem to have found another array.”

“Not just that,” Jiang Cheng said, watching a hazy mostly see-through figure that rose up from the ground through the very thin crack in the array that had been created when Wei Ying’s foot had hit the rock that he’d tripped over. “I think we found a ghost. Run!”

“Ghoooooooost!” Wei Ying hollered, and they all bolted.

Jiang Cheng looked over his shoulder: the ghost seemed disoriented at first, but then shook itself, solidified a bit, and then….started chasing them.

“Oh no,” he said, horrified. This was why kids their age shouldn’t night-hunt! “Split up, split up!”

They split up.

The ghost veered off to go after Lan Wangji, which was pretty lucky – Lan Wangji was probably the most agile of the whole lot of them, as they’d determined through a series of races much earlier. Wei Ying was technically faster, but he could also be a little clumsy; sometimes he ran into things, or bounced off things, and that slowed him down. Lan Wangji, on the other hand, had the sort of footwork that came from having sincerely done his training twice a day every day for years and years, and he demonstrated it now.

“Let’s go distract it and give Lan Zhan a break,” Wei Ying said, and Jiang Cheng nodded. “Me first, then you?”

“No, you go second,” Jiang Cheng said, even though his heart was in his mouth. He didn’t want to get captured by the ghost, but he didn’t want Lan Wangji to get captured, either. Anyway, in all the stories, things like this always turned out fine for the heroes, so he was…probably going to be fine. “You’re faster, you’ll be able to keep away longer. All right – three, two, one – go!”

He dashed forward, barreling forward until he passed right in front of the ghost, intent on getting its attention and drawing it away from where it was chasing Lan Wangji round and round the bottom of a set of very pointy stalactites.

Jiang Cheng did manage to get the ghost’s attention successfully, but the rest of the plan didn’t work.

The ghost stopped for a moment before shaking itself and chasing Lan Wangji again.

“My turn!” Wei Ying shouted, and threw himself forward – way closer to the ghost than Jiang Cheng had dared to go, which probably made sense. That would work better!

It didn’t.

“Okay, this isn’t fair,” Wei Ying said, except he wasn’t complaining; he was biting his lower lip in worry. Lan Wangji was starting to breathe hard and he was still running. “We need to stop that ghost before it gets Lan Zhan! Maybe we try to attack it?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“What else can we do?”

Jiang Cheng wasn’t sure. “Maybe we could – ”

“Call for help?”

“No, I don’t think that would work,” Jiang Cheng said, shaking his head.

“Yeah, I don’t think so either,” Wei Ying agreed.

Jiang Cheng was about to say something, then paused. If he hadn’t made the suggestion, and Wei Ying hadn’t made the suggestion, so that meant…behind…

He slowly turned around.

Cangse Sanren, standing behind them, cleared her throat pointedly. “No, I’m pre-tty sure that calling for help would’ve been the right choice here,” she said wryly, and waved her horsetail whisk at the ghost, which wailed as soft beams of spiritual energy wrapped around it and yanked it back away from Lan Wangji, then proceeded to pull tighter and tighter until the ghost just…disappeared.

“Good timing, Mom!”

“Thank you for your assistance, Senior,” Lan Wangji panted.

“We were doing fine,” Jiang Cheng mumbled, cheeks still red with embarrassment. “And – and anyway, you shouldn’t have brought us here in the first place! What were you thinking?! We nearly got eaten!”

“A little danger is good for the growing soul,” Cangse Sanren said dismissively. “But also you boys have definitely lost ‘going out to play’ privileges. Time to come back.”

Jiang Cheng sighed. Mostly with relief.

“It was so stupid! It was such a scary ghost, I can’t believe you let it anywhere near us,” he complained bitterly. “It was – it was fast! And it was going to eat Lan Wangji!”

“Pretty small, though,” Wei Ying said. “It was barely bigger than your jiejie, and she’s the tallest. Well, tallest among us kids, anyway.”

“That’s stupid, too,” Jiang Cheng grumbled, secretly relieved that everyone seemed to be just as accepting of his nervous scolding as they were of Lan Wangji’s temper tantrums. “Why would there be such a short ghost? It wasn’t very smart, either. It just kept chasing Lan Wangji by going straight after him, when it could go through rock – ”

“Ghosts resemble their former selves in life,” Cangse Sanren interjected. She was scowling, but in a thoughtful sort of way. “It’s quite common for gui to forget that they can go through walls now, particularly if they’ve lost their minds the way that ghost had.”

“Was it an especially short ghost in life, then?” Wei Ying wanted to know. “If it was resembling its former self…”

“Very short,” Cangse Sanren said. Her voice was very stiff for some reason. “But, you know, there’s a big variety in humans…oh, look at that, little monkey! Your father’s back! Just in time!”

“Just in time for what?” Wei Changze asked, blinking as he walked in, followed by Jiejie and Lan Xichen.

“Awkward question avoidance time! How was your trip to the village, husband mine? Successful?”

“No,” Jiejie said, pouting. “Nobody knew anything about the mine.”

“We asked lots of people,” Lan Xichen agreed. “Other than the fact that there is one, they didn’t know anything at all. None of their kinsmen worked here, nothing like that.”

“…well, isn’t that sure something,” Cangse Sanren said, with what seemed like an almost unusually wide smile. “As it happens, we’ve had some interesting developments here, too.”

“Oh?”

“Lan Wangji nearly got eaten by a really short ghost,” Jiang Cheng announced.

“He what?! Wangji!” Lan Xichen hurried forward to start checking Lan Wangji over, which Lan Wangji submitted to with an air of someone doing another person a tremendous favor.

“You nearly let one of the children get eaten by a ghost?” Wei Changze asked Cangse Sanren, arching his eyebrows. “I was gone for one shichen, and you nearly let someone get eaten?”

“They weren’t nearly eaten. Also, what our darling little Jiang Cheng actually means is that the very short, very crazy ghost went only after Lan Wangji.”

Cangse Sanren was stressing certain words very strangely.

Wei Changze frowned. “Only after Lan Wangji?”

“Yeah!” Wei Ying chimed in. “It was totally not fair. Even when Jiang Cheng and I jumped right front of it, it just kept chasing Lan Zhan – it didn’t pay attention to us at all!”

“…you’re right, little monkey. That seems very unfair.” Wei Changze nodded. “Very, very unfair. Normally you wouldn’t see that sort of single-mindedness in a ghost that’s lost its wits unless there were a very particular set of circumstances…like, say, a very deep grudge.”

“Yeah, how weird is that?” Cangse Sanren said brightly. “Especially with all of these very complicated arrays that must have been set up by some very powerful people from a very large cultivator clan. A very large, very nearby cultivation clan capable of sending a small group of people able to do something like this, because we know it couldn’t have been a whole clan working on it, not without the town having known about it. Since they apparently didn’t know anything. So weird!”

“…how short did you say the ghost was, dearest wife of mine?”

“She didn’t,” Jiang Cheng said with a huff. Were they flirting? Was that why they were being so weird?“And it was huge!”

“About the size of our little monkey, I’d say.”

“No, that’s wrong, it was at least as tall as Jiejie! Anyway, why do you ask? Does it matter?”

“I’m just wondering why a ghost of that age – uh, I mean, a ghost of that size would bear an implacable grudge like that.”

“Aren’t implacable grudges usually because the ghost is hunting down whoever murdered them?” Lan Xichen asked, wrinkling his nose. “But Wangji’s only six. It couldn’t be aimed at him. Didn’t you say the ghosts have been sealed here for at least ten years?”

“It’s possible that it just thought that your brother resembled the people it was actually looking for,” Wei Changze explained. “For instance, if he had something in common with them – the shape of his face, perhaps, or his white clothing – ”

“Or his bloodline,” Cangse Sanren muttered.

“It could be anything at all, really,” Wei Changze said loudly, and elbowed her. “Anyway, have you considered how lucky you are? You’re from Gusu Lan, that’s one of the most upstanding of sects, practically a byword for conservatism and orthodoxy – isn’t that right, my dear Cangse? Practically unquestionable, aren’t they…?”

“I said Lan Qiren was unquestionable. That’s not the same thing and you know it.”

“Anyway, you kids should be very relieved. Being raised in a big sect like that means that you’ll definitely have gotten all the soul-calming rituals that will make sure that you don’t get possessed. Isn’t that great?”

“Possessed!” Lan Xichen yelped. “Wangji!”

“I am fine,” Lan Wangji reminded his brother.

“Are you sure? Weren’t you scared?”

“It was fine,” Lan Wangji said firmly. “Shufu said I needed to get life experiences outside the Lan sect and then learn from them. He made it a rule, remember? This was a life experience. I am learning.”

“Uh-huh. And what exactly are you learning?”

“…mm. That adults can be very weird.”

“That’s what you learned?” Cangse Sanren said indignantly. “Don’t tell me you blame me for letting the ghost chase you a little! It was character-building!”

(“Since when does Wangji use the word ‘weird’?” Lan Xichen asked, though he didn’t seem to want an answer.)

“It was character-building,” Lan Wangji agreed. “But also irresponsible. Just like the time you tried to eat dessert before dinner.”

“Oh come on – ”

“Those aren’t exactly comparable circumstances, you know – ”

“Wangji…”

Lan Wangi didn’t seem convinced.

“Maybe we can have the tenth iteration of this argument somewhere else,” Wei Changze said, reaching out to put his hand on Lan Xichen’s shoulder and squeezing his shoulder. He was smiling. “Cangse, what do you think?”

“You make an excellent point, husband mine. All right, kids, everyone back outside where none of you are going to be prime targets for ghosts for as-of-yet unknown but probably highly suspect reasons that I am extremely sure that a particular stick-in-the-mud of our mutual acquaintance absolutely definitely didn’t know about and will probably be highly upset to find out about!”

“…see?” Lan Wangji said to Lan Xichen. “I told you adults were weird.”

Jiang Cheng found that he had to agree.

#mdzs #jiang cheng #jiang yanli #lan xichen #lan wangji #cangse sanren #wei changze #wei wuxian #my fic #my fics #megafic #credit to those of you that guessed this was coming :D

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