#it’s uncomfortable didi time in the unclean realm | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

robininthelabyrinth · 4 years

Note

Would you continue the prompt with the Nie brothers going back in time?

sequel to this

Nie Mingjue started his first week back in time with training.

All those years as a spirit, unable to transcend to reincarnation, had taught him some little amount of patience – he had so much to do, so many things to accomplish, but no matter how much he itched to get started on all of them, it would all go to waste if he didn’t first acclimate himself to this time period, if he didn’t figure out how to pretend that he wasn’t decades older than his current self; if he slipped up, his father would think he was possessed.

Baxia continued to be unusually cooperative, almost as if she, too, knew that they needed to keep up a proper façade – she fought with him, of course, straining in his hands to go destroy things, but it’s playful, a game of tug-of-war rather than a serious attempt to go slaughter the wicked. He smiled at her as he went through the endless motions of saber control while the family elders studied his every action closely to make sure he wasn’t inadvertently heading down the wrong path.

Not his father, luckily; he was preoccupied with Sect matters during this time, and they usually only ever saw each other very briefly over breakfast – it wasn’t that Nie Mingjue wasn’t glad to see his father alive and well, he was, desperately. It was only that he didn’t actually remember what the man had been like at this time, all the good memories he had of him overshadowed by the horrible six months between his saber breaking and his actual death.

He didn’t remember what it was like, having a father, and that made things awkward in a way he couldn’t quite explain.

The only problem Nie Mingjue had foreseen with his plan was that he would invariably be reluctant to leave Nie Huaisang’s side for too long, but that ended up not being an issue - Nie Huaisang often came to play by the side of the training field. He was too small to train in anything but the most basic arm motions, small weights wrapped around his wrists to slowly strengthen his shoulders as he ran around and mimicked Nie Mingjue’s actions with a stick, but there, always there, and it was an unspeakable relief.

Nie Mingjue wasn’t sure he remembered Nie Huaisang being quite so consistent with his presence, but he assumed the issue was with his memory – it had been so many years, after all.

It was good that it was this way, though. Nie Mingjue hadn’t been sure how else he’d explain why he wanted to keep so close a watch over his brother.

It was only a few days in when he was finally allowed to do more than the basic movements. In a fit of wicked amusement, he did a move that was more advanced than he really should be capable of at this age, prodigy or not, throwing Baxia out in that most familiar motion that had been burned into him by the war, sending her piercing through the training dummy before summoning her back with a flick of his wrist.

He grinned unreservedly when Baxia returned to him, feeling finally a bit more like himself, and for some reason that was when Nie Huaisang started crying.

Nie Mingjue immediately turned and ran over to him, the decade he’d spent being both mother and father to him kicking in at once to override any other instincts he might have. But there wasn’t anything wrong with him that he could see: Nie Huaisang was fine.

Just – crying. Sobbing unreservedly, as if his heart had broken.

“Shh, Huaisang, it’s all right,” Nie Mingjue said, trying to coax him. Four-year-olds were so difficult! “Don’t worry, da-ge’s here – do you want to hold Baxia?”

Nie Huaisang shook his head and clung onto his clothing, burying his face with a nose full of snot right onto Nie Mingjue’s shoulder. Nie Mingjue sighed a little: if he’d actually still been twelve, he would be extremely uncomfortable right now, a little repulsed, a little helpless.

Twelve, in other words.

It didn’t bother him now. It was amazing what sort of gross bodily functions became boring and ordinary after you’d had the experience of being brutally dismembered, your soul forcefully broken into pieces and sealed so you couldn’t escape.

He ignored the disapproving gazes of his elders – interrupting saber practice for a little boy’s tears was not approved conduct, and he’d probably have to report to the punishment hall later for breach of discipline – and picked Nie Huaisang up in his arms, enjoying that they were both still young enough that the action would not be seen as odd.

He carried him inside.

“You’re not hurt?” he checked again, and Nie Huaisang shook his head once more. “Hungry?” Another no. “Too hot?” Averted eyes, so maybe. “Do you want to play something else?”

A hesitant nod.

Nie Mingjue still wasn’t sure what had set Nie Huaisang off, but based on the way he’d grown up, he thought he might have a good idea about what he’d like.

He took him up to their mother’s old bedroom – technically Nie Mingjue’s mother, since Nie Huaisang’s sadly short-lived mother had been a concubine – and searched in her things, finally pulling out one of the fans he was pretty sure he’d seen Nie Huaisang gawking over as a child and then treasuring as an adult.

“Here,” he said, smiling as he offered it up, “this is something to play with and keep cool – no, no, Huaisang, didi! Why are you crying now?”

Nie Huaisang clutched the fan and wailed, throwing himself at Nie Mingjue, mumbling something about da-ge being the best da-ge and possibly also something about ‘never knew it was you’ which – what?

Maybe Nie Huaisang had dozed off in the heat while watching Nie Mingjue train and had a nightmare.

Feeling more than a little helpless, Nie Mingjue just gave up understanding the inexplicable and just went about the rest of his day with a small child on one arm, which seemed to work well enough in convincing Nie Huaisang not to cry any more. When he visited the punishment hall to report on his broken training, the elder there – while approving of his principles – couldn’t resist asking him about it, and Nie Mingjue had shrugged and said something about lifting weights.

Nie Huaisang giggled. “I’m the best weight!”

“See?” Nie Mingjue said to the elder, who was fighting a smile. “He’s the best weight. I get stronger supporting him, and he’s never a burden.”

For some reason, that made Nie Huaisang go quiet, burying his face in Nie Mingjue’s shoulder as if he’d once again gone shy, and it wasn’t until they were outside – in view of voluntarily accepting the consequences of his actions, Nie Mingjue was only required to spend some time kneeling in reflection – that he spoke again.

“I won’t be a burden to you, da-ge,” he said, very seriously. He really had surprisingly good diction for a child of his age, which Nie Mingjue hadn’t noticed in his first life. But then, who would have ever noticed a scholarly genius in the Unclean Realm? “I promise. I won’t ever drag you down or – or embarrass you.”

Nie Mingjue thought of the future – years and years of Nie Huaisang, amateur good-for-nothing eventually ascending into the level of professional, followed by years of using that very uselessness as a mask to hide the oriole as it slowly stalked the mantis – and couldn’t resist chuckling.

“What embarrassment?” he asked, teasing. “Do I look like someone who can’t handle losing a bit of face? Do as you like, as long as you’re happy. Walk whatever path you like; no matter what you choose, your da-ge will hold up the world for you.”

This time around, he promised himself that he’d keep that vow. He might be doomed to die an early death in this life, Baxia conquering his spirit until he entered qi deviation even if there was no poisoned Song of Clarity pouring into his ears, but at least this time he knew it: he could lay the proper foundation to make sure Nie Huaisang would be properly taken care of, this time, put loyal retainers at his side to do the dirty work he’d sullied his own hands with in a previous future life.

“…thank you, da-ge,” Nie Huaisang said, and he was rubbing his eyes again, all red, but at least he hadn’t descended into sobbing again.

Children were so hard to understand.

“You still need to work hard to form your golden core,” Nie Mingjue told him, a little worried – he knew himself, knew that he wouldn’t be able to resist spoiling Nie Huaisang even more in this life than in the last, knew that it had been painfully hard for Nie Huaisang to get his core formed the last time around. He didn’t have a talent for it, plain and simple, but it still had to be done. “It’s important, okay, Huaisang? Even if you don’t really like playing with sabers or training, you still have to do that much. Without a golden core, you’re just a regular person, with a short life and no way to protect yourself…you don’t want to make your da-ge have to bury you, do you?”

That would kill him more assuredly than any qi deviation.

Nie Huaisang quivered all over and shook his head furiously. “I’ll work hard, da-ge! I promise!”

A simple conversation wasn’t going to be enough to mitigate a little of Nie Huaisang’s inevitable laziness, but that was fine; they had time left. Nie Mingjue wasn’t planning on dying so young that he wouldn’t live to see Nie Huaisang properly set down the path of their family’s road to cultivation, even if he knew already that he’d only abandon it later.

A couple of days after that, just as he was considering his options in terms of how to convince their father to send someone to search for Meng Yao, who he at least had a general idea of where he was located, Nie Huaisang toddled down to the main room with a piece of paper crushed in his grubby little fist.

“Mail!” he exclaimed happily. “Baba, mail!”

“A-die, Huaisang,” their father said, fond but a little long-suffering already. “Not baba. Your da-ge calls me a-die; you should…Huaisang. Did you wash your hands before you went to get the mail?”

Nie Huaisang blinked up at him, so obviously innocent that he was clearly pretending not to understand the question as if it could erase the misdeed, and Nie Mingjue coughed very hard into his fist in a vain effort to keep from laughing.

His father gave him a stern look that wasn’t stern at all – the twitching lips not entirely hidden behind his trimmed beard rather destroyed the effect – and shook his head at Nie Huaisang, who definitely knew better.

“What sort of dirt were you even playing with this early?” he asked, plucking the crushed letter out of Nie Huaisang’s hands; he sounded as helpless as Nie Mingjue always felt. It was good to know that parenting Nie Huaisang was a challenge no matter who was doing it. “How did you even..? Look at this, Huaisang; the entire thing is almost illegible. It looks like a dog ate it.”

“And then threw it back up,” Nie Mingjue added, aware that he was not being helpful and enjoying it to its fullest. “What is it, anyway?”

“Doesn’t seem like anything much, a request for aid from – uh – Yingchuan…? Mingjue, see if you can read this.”

Nie Mingjue accepted it, suddenly excited: if he recalled correctly, Yingchuan – technically a region that ought to be asking for help from Qishan Wen, not Qinghe Nie, but everyone knew who was more likely to show up without demanding unreasonable things in exchange – was where Wei Wuxian had spent some years as a child, very likely the years without his parents. It had come up in conversation once, Wei Wuxian having been greatly ashamed to discover that certain parts of his speech shared intonations with Wen Chao’s whore, who also came from that region.

“It must be from the Yingchuan Wang sect,” he agreed, squinting at the truly ghastly calligraphy. It looked as though it had been written by a small child – a very careful one that knew all the right letters, but definitely as though the brush had been clutched in a fist rather than held correctly. “Seeking assistance with…something. It’s just an ink splotch now. A-die, can I go?”

His father blinked, clearly surprised by the request. “You? Why? We don’t need to curry favor Yingchuan Wang, of all people, by sending the heir; I was planning on sending a few outer disciples.”

“If some outer sect disciples can do it, so can I,” Nie Mingjue pointed out, quite reasonably in his mind. “And while we might not need Yingchuan Wang, you know they’ll be unbearably smug about having been so honored – they’ll tell everyone and their neighbor about it, and that’ll make Wen Ruohan waste time wondering what it is that they have that we want.”

“Sect Leader Wen,” his father reminded him, and, oh, right, they hadn’t reached the point of totally breaking ties with them yet – that had only happened after his father’s death. The mildness of the rebuke and the lack of any punishment, though, suggested that things were already quite tense between them. “And I’m not sure it’s a good idea for you to go so soon after you’ve started properly training your spiritual weapon.”

“Training is only training,” Nie Mingjue reminded his father in turn. Nie Huaisang’s head was turning between the two of them like a window swinging in a strong wind. “I won’t be able to actually call her mine until I’ve bloodied her in combat.”

He’d taken Baxia’s first blood himself, of course, cutting his hand on the blade to give her the first taste of blood so that she’d know her master; he’d replicated the action after he’d come back in time, a reminder of the bond between them, and his hand still had a bandage, the palm still a little tender as the scar settled into place – a terrible place for a cut, really, but that was the point. Accepting something as dangerous as a saber should hurt.

But the saber spirits were cultivated through battle with evil, doing battle with resentful energy – if Nie Mingjue truly wanted to become stronger, and he did, desperately, he needed to go night-hunting. Twelve was a bit young to go out solo, most cultivators waiting until fourteen or fifteen so that they could make a good showing, but Qinghe Nie had always been a bit fast on that front.

In the end, fame was only secondary; before anything else, they had to uphold justice and suppress evil.

“Give me your saber,” his father ordered, and Nie Mingjue hesitated for a moment – old memories, bad ones, ones that hurt – but then he forced away his uneasiness and unhooked Baxia from his back to offer it over to his father, saber balanced between his two palms.

His father put his hand over Baxia, his brow furrowing with concentration as he examined the saber, and eventually he frowned.

“She’s very strong,” he said, and from his tone Nie Mingjue knew it wasn’t entirely a good thing; a powerful saber at such a young age meant Nie Mingjue’s talent for cultivation was prodigious – Baxia had always been exceptional, even in his first life, and especially in comparison later on with Aituan, Nie Huaisang’s lazy plonk of a saber – but it would make things harder for him later. “Yes, perhaps you should go. The sooner your saber learns to hate evil, the better.”

Nie Mingjue smiled.

“Da-ge…” Nie Huaisang said, clearly looking worried and also oddly dissatisfied, a twist of his lips as if something hadn’t gone according to plan, but Nie Mingjue leaned over and ruffled his hair until he squeaked. “Da-ge!”

“Don’t worry, Huaisang. I’ll take some disciples with me. It’ll be fine.”

The Yingchuan Wang sect was even more annoying than Nie Mingjue had previously remembered them being – they acted as though they’d never written any sort of letter, strutting around as if they were proud (proud!) that there was such a large disaster in their territory that sect cultivators and rogue cultivators alike were making their way over to find the creature that had murdered so many, villagers and traveling passer-by alike.

Nie Mingjue had racked his memory to try to see if he could figure out what type of beast there was here, but he couldn’t remember – it hadn’t made much of an impact in his last life, when he’d been at home focusing on taming Baxia, and no one had ever mentioned exactly what it was later on.

Still, it didn’t make much of a difference. They hadn’t been out in the deeply forested valley for more than half a shichen when Nie Mingjue stepped on the right piece of disturbed soil and immediately knew that there was a mass grave here.

He’d seen too many battles not to recognize the signs.

A mass grave, a sign of many deaths all at once, and yet this was an era of peace with no reported battles anywhere nearby –

“Shit,” he said shortly, and the Nie cultivators with him – all older than him and nominally more experienced – turned to look at him. “There was a plague here. Probably covered up by the local people, the corpses buried without any ritual or purification…and that’s assuming they were all dead when they went into the earth. Best case scenario, we’ll have an entire group of mid-level fierce corpses, possibly high-level; worst case scenario, all that, but with a demon and maybe some guai to join in – dead or sick dogs are often thrown into these sorts of pits as well.”

“Pits?” one of the cultivators asked. “Nie-gongzi, what pit –”

“Look at the earth!” Nie Mingjue snapped. “You can see that all of it has been disturbed, with no plants growing but the ill-omened ones. Smell the air! Blood mixing in with soil, a hint of decay, of sickness in the surrounding trees...you can sense the resentful energy that hangs over this place – it’s a mass grave, recently interred, and without any battles in the area, that means plague. And Yingchuan Wang didn’t say a damn word about it!”

No wonder Wei Wuxian’s parents had died. Nie Mingjue had known he was going to go up against something fierce and brought more help than he would have normally bothered with – his father had agreed on the basis that Nie Mingjue was, well, twelve – and even he wasn’t sure they’d be able to tackle something of this magnitude: a pair of rogue cultivators, no matter how naturally talented, couldn’t fail to be overwhelmed.

“You three, go scout out the full size of the grave,” he ordered, falling easily and immediately into giving orders. This was not a good situation, but he’d met with worse during the war; as long as swift and decisive action could be taken, it could still be resolved in their favor. “You and you, start setting up a five-point suppression array on the parts of it we can see – here, and over by the large oaks there. If we get the array up in time, we’ll be able to keep more corpses from rising and hitting us from behind as we take the ones already risen. We remaining three will each go separately into the forest to begin hunting; take flares with you in the event you encounter something you can’t handle, and if you see any rogue cultivators, bring them back here at once.”

“Rogue cultivators?” Nie Zonghui, one of the ones he’d tasked with hunting, asked, looking dumb, and all of them were staring blankly at him as if they hadn’t understood a single word he’d said. “Why –”

“Are you disciples of my Nie sect or not?” Nie Mingjue roared, ignoring how much less impressive it was when his voice was still young and tender. “I gave you orders, and you’re still here gawking! Get moving!”

They scattered immediately, sect discipline kicking in almost before he finished shouting.

“Rogue cultivators are typically weak; they will only be a burden, and taking the time to rescue them will divert our attention from the main target,” Nie Zonghui said, still lingering a little. “Nie-gongzi, are you sure –”

“No matter how weak they are, they can still form a shield line,” Nie Mingjue said firmly. Nie Zonghui was a cousin and a good soldier; Nie Mingjue could take the time to answer his question, even if he was going to insist that the man submit to punishment later for questioning his commander during battle. He understood, of course – the commander in question was twelve, and the post was meant to be nominal, more a sop to a child’s ego than an actual hierarchy – but that didn’t change the fact of it. “Suppressing evil before it can spread is the priority, but I won’t spend lives cheaply, either ours or theirs. Think of it practically: rogue cultivators don’t have access to the same soul-calming rituals as the major sects, so if they die or are injured, they might become possessed, and the number of our enemies will grow. Now go.”

Nie Zonghui nodded sharply. “Understood, Nie-gongzi.”

It was very strange being called Nie-gongzi again after so many years of being called Sect Leader Nie, Nie Mingjue reflected as he flew into the deeper parts of the forest, letting an eager Baxia guide him towards the thickest concentration of resentful energy. He’d have to learn to adjust, especially if he hoped to keep his father alive this time around…

“Are you insane?” he blurted out, throwing himself down into the ongoing battle that he found there.

There was a demon, it appeared, the twisted remains of what had been a living man, plague-ridden and thrown into a pit to be buried alive among the bodies of the dead; the resentment had overcome the man before death had taken him, and he rose from his too-early grave. If he had limited himself to those that had wronged him, Nie Mingjue might have understood – the Nie sect wasn’t as inflexible as the Lan sect when it came to allowing the dead to find purification through revenge – but this one had clearly gone well beyond that.

A pair of rogue cultivators, a man and a woman, had apparently encountered the demon by chance and decided to take it on by themselves in what Nie Mingjue could only assume was a combination of sheer bullheaded stupidity and a lack of other options, and it was going about was well as one might expect – the woman was about to be pierced through the neck from behind, having given up her defensive position to shove her husband out of harm’s way.

Nie Mingjue came down at that moment, using gravity to help bring Baxia down on the demon’s outstretched hand with full force; the hand snapped under the strain and the demon roared, furious, and Nie Mingjue engaged it at once to give the other two time to regroup.

“Thank you, daozhang,” the man gasped, grabbing his wife and pulling her back towards him – they both had swords, although she also had a horsetail whisk shoved into her belt – and then he presumably had enough time to actually get a look at who had saved him. “You’re a child!”

Nie Mingjue ignored him; it was true, for the moment, and at least the man hadn’t picked the word for a child under the age of ten. Another thing he’d have to adjust to, he supposed: being treated by the rest of the world as a child. Not everyone had proper sect discipline that he could rely on, after all…

“Whatever his age may be, he saved my neck and your ass,” the woman says, and pulls out her whisk. “Daozhang, there are three of us now, we can suppress it –”

It was a good suggestion, and Nie Mingjue nodded. “North facing mountain array?” he suggested. While not the most efficient, it was the most common three-point array; most rogue cultivators would know it.

“Do you know the budding lotus pattern?” the man asked, and Nie Mingjue took half a moment to realize that he’d apparently just run into Wei Wuxian’s unfortunate parents.

“Yes. Yunmeng style?” he asked, and the man nodded. “I’ll take the center.”

“Are you sure you can handle the strain –?” the man began, and his wife kicked him.

“He’ll be fine, you mother hen,” she said fondly. “He’s neither injured nor tired, unlike us, and that saber of his will keep him stabilized. Move!”

A three point array, especially one centered by a twelve-year-old, wasn’t enough to actually suppress a full fledged demon, but the woman used her whisk to good effect and between the three of them they were able to slowly harry it back towards the mass grave.

Nie Zonghui and Lin Tianfeng had found their own targets as well, using their sabers to drive the corpses back into the larger array where they would be trapped; they’d also found some rogue cultivators, who were standing guard around the Nie cultivators focused on maintaining the array. All had rather relieved expressions on their faces.

Nie Zonghui glanced over when Nie Mingjue and his group emerged, a momentary flash of relief at seeing Nie Mingjue unharmed that quickly turned into horror when he realized Nie Mingjue had managed to run into the demon; he shouted for Lin Tianfeng to cover his group of corpses and ran over.

Normally, Nie Mingjue would scold him at once for leaving his appointed position, but at the moment he was breathing too hard to speak, so Nie Zonghui’s actions could be probably be excused as a reasonable concern for the condition of his commander.

He gestured with his head towards Rogue Cultivator Wei, the weakest of their triangle, and Nie Zonghui changed his direction at once. To his credit, Rogue Cultivator Wei didn’t protest and swapped out immediately, though he stayed close by, sword at the ready.

Once the demon was in the five-point array, Nie Mingjue pulled back and took a moment to breathe – he hadn’t been this tired in years, being twelve was awful, he needed to get back his cultivation as soon as possible – and then shook his head to clear it. “Exterminate them,” he ordered.

“Shouldn’t we try to purify them first?” Nie Zonghui asked.

“No need. I performed Empathy on one of them earlier: they’ve already wiped out the villagers that did this to them and didn’t stop,” Cangse Sanren said crisply. “There’s nothing left to liberate here, and demons that have grown hungry for blood and souls are not easily suppressed. You should listen to your young master’s instincts.”

Nie Zonghui flushed at the rebuke and hurried off to guide the other cultivators in eliminating the target. Nie Mingjue examined his own cultivation and decided against going to help; if they needed his participation, he could, but it would be a strain.

Rogue Cultivator Wei sat down on the ground with a sigh, clearly thinking the same; his wife came over to him and he learned his head against her waist, her hand in his hair. They murmured sweet things to each other for a bit – Nie Mingjue politely pretended to have gone temporarily deaf – and then they both turned to him.

“Thank you, Nie-gongzi,” Rogue Cultivator Wei said. “My name is Wei Changze –”

So that’s what his name was; Nie Mingjue had utterly forgotten it.

“– and this is my wife, Cangse Sanren, a pupil of Baoshan Sanren.”

“Nie Mingjue,” Nie Mingjue said, and tiredly raised his hands to properly salute them. “Well met.”

“It’s a bit more than merely well,” Cangse Sanren said, smiling; there was a great deal of Wei Wuxian in her eyes and the way she smiled, though her tiny button of a nose would have looked very odd on the handsome young man her son would later become. “You saved our lives. Is there anything we can do for you in return?”

Nie Mingjue was tired; his cultivation exhausted, his arms hurting from the strain of supporting both saber and array, and Baxia was complaining that she’d barely gotten a few stabs in the demon and why wasn’t he over there helping everyone out when all he wanted was to close his eyes.

Those were the only excuses he could give for his thoughtlessly rude response.

“Just don’t leave your son alone when you night-hunt in the future,” he said, churlish with the mental image of Wei Wuxian merging with Nie Huaisang at the same age. “When the food you left for him and the landlord’s patience run out, what do you think will become of him? Do you want to see him fighting wild dogs on the streets for something to eat?!”

They both looked dumbfounded by that response and Nie Mingjue winced; he hadn’t meant to be so blunt about it. His reputation as an excessively straightforward man had always been justified by reality, but he usually managed to remember to keep to the rules of etiquette – being twelve was making him unduly impulsive.

“Forgive me,” he said hastily. “It’s not my business, I know; only it’s been a long day –”

“No, you’re right,” Cangse Sanren said, her eyes wide. “If you hadn’t come in time, we would have both perished, and then A-Ying…”

“Jiang-ge would have come to find him,” Wei Changze said, although he looked disturbed as well. “He would have –”

“How long would it have taken?” she demanded. “We’ve fallen out of the habit of writing letters; the last one we posted was from Tanzhou – it would be months before he realized something was wrong, and even then he would have gone the wrong way entirely!”

“A-Ying could have…no, he’s too young to remember Yunmeng, he wouldn’t have known –”

Nie Mingjue, who had been forgotten, coughed to get their attention. He didn’t quite feel up to walking away, which meant he had to stop this argument or else be stuck listening to it.

“Surely there’s some sect you can house in until your child is old enough,” he said, meaning the Jiang sect but unable to say it so bluntly. “That way he’ll won’t waste time kicking his heels while you’re away on night hunts.”

“I don’t want him to start training this early,” Cangse Sanren objected. “Children so young should be playing.”

Nie Mingjue huffed a laugh. “My younger brother would agree with you,” he said, though in fairness Nie Huaisang hadn’t actually yet reached the age where he’d start complaining non-stop about having to do lessons or training or – well, anything. It wasn’t as though they’d know. “He’s very firm about getting in at least three hours of cloud-watching every day. Says it’s good for his health.”

“You have a younger brother?” Wei Changze asked, smiling. “How old?”

“Close enough to step on your son’s robes,” Nie Mingjue said, then remembered he hadn’t ever asked the age of their son. “I’d guess, anyway. He’s less than half my age.”

Wei Chagnze looked at his wife and she looked back at him, that wordless communication that married couples that liked each other tended to have – Nie MIngjue had once said to Lan Xichen that if they could bottle that they’d never have another information leak ever again, making his friend laugh to tears, and oh, Lan Xichen, he’d be around now, wouldn’t he, but he’d be so small, they hadn’t even met yet – and then he said, “Can we come with you?”

Which – what?

He blinked at them. “Don’t you want to return to the Lotus Pier?”

He’d just assumed that they would: Wei Wuxian had grown up in the Jiang sect in the end, after all.

The two of them looked at each other again and then both smiled wryly, and suddenly Nie Mingjue remembered all those awkward rumors about Sect Leader Jiang having a thing for either one or the other or both of them and then having shortly thereafter married Yu Ziyuan while notoriously still pining; he felt his cheeks grow hot and cursed his twelve-year-old body once again.

“Uh, right. I mean – sure?” he hazarded. “My Nie sect is always happy to host guest cultivators of talent.”

“You saved our lives, and maybe even our son’s,” Cangse Sanren said firmly. “We owe you a life debt, and that cannot be so easily repaid. The least we can do is give your sect any merits that we earn.”

Nie Mingjue wasn’t sure that was how life debts worked – it mostly seemed like his saving their life now meant he had to find a place to house them – but whatever, he’d known that changing the past would cause some other things to change.

He hadn’t expected that it would be his sect that got stuck with the future Yiling Patriarch.

Still, that wasn’t all bad: Nie Huaisang had greatly enjoyed Wei Wuxian’s company while at the Cloud Recesses, and he’d gone to no little effort to eventually resurrect the man – they could be friends from an earlier time, this life. Maybe Wei Wuxian would end up not becoming the Yiling Patriarch at all, or maybe Yiling Wei would end up under his father or mother instead, or – who knows?

Certainly not Nie Mingjue.

“That seems fine,” he said, and stood with a stretch: the array had been successfully converted from suppression to eradication, and the demon and all the corpses were just about gone. That meant it was time to go home, since the Nie sect obviously wasn’t going to go claim any rewards and the rogue cultivators would spread all the rumors he might wish. “Go pick up Wei Wuxian and make your way to the Unclean Realm in Qinghe; you’ll be welcome there.”

“Wuxian?” Wei Changze said thoughtfully. “Wei Wuxian – I like the sound of that.”

“An excellent courtesy name,” Cangse Sanren agreed, smiling. “Thank you for your suggestion, Nie-gongzi. We’ve been arguing for months over what it should be.”

Nie Mingjue, who had entirely forgotten that Wei Wuxian wouldn’t have received his courtesy name yet, flushed red, babbled something polite to make his farewells, and went back with the others.

His father was waiting for him inside. “How did it go?” he asked, the question obviously aimed as much at Nie Zonghui as at Nie Mingjue himself.

“It went well,” Nie Mingjue replied. “Yingchuan Wang didn’t give us any useful information, but we were able to find the problem and eradicate it; no serious issues came up.”

“Good.”

“Sect Leader Nie,” Nie Zonghui said, his face and voice both a bit odd. “Might I have a word..?”

Nie Mingjue didn’t have time to think about that: Nie Huaisang had run over and started tugging at his clothing, demanding to hear about the trip, what he’d done, whether he’d met anyone interesting…

“I met a very nice couple, rogue cultivators, with a son your age,” Nie Mingjue told him, taking him off to the side so Nie Zonghui could speak to his father with some privacy. “They’ll be coming here before the season turns.”

“Coming here? Why here?”

“Adult stuff,” Nie Mingjue said, shrugging helplessly – how to explain the complicated web of affection between people? But Nie Huaisang, with the usual impatience of children, merely went ‘oh’ as if everything was explained. “You can be friends with him, if you like, Huaisang. Wouldn’t you like another brother?”

Nie Huaisang wrinkled his nose. ��Well, maybe. Not if he’s not going to stick around.”

That was fair. Rogue cultivators weren’t exactly known for staying put, and the issue they’d faced this time around would only persist until Wei Wuxian was old enough to care for himself – not long at all.

“Mingjue!” his father called, and now he had a strange expression; Nie Mingjue took Nie Huaisang by the hand and walked back over. “You confronted a plague demon on your own?”

Nie Mingjue frowned. “No, of course not,” he said. “There were two rogue cultivators –”

“A demon and nearly two dozen high-level fierce corpses,” his father said. “Arising from a hidden plague pit which you were able to identify before anyone else, and then you took command, ordering the array to be set up, assigning tasks, the entire thing resulting in a successful hunt with no casualties – all of this on your first real night-hunt. And your only report to me was it went well?!”

Nie Mingjue had no idea what his father wanted him to say here. “It did go well, though?”

His father laughed and ruffled his hair, making Nie Mingjue scowl. “It was indeed very well done,” he said, and he looked proud; Nie Mingjue felt an unfamiliar warmth in his chest. “Anything else you want to add to Nie Zonghui’s description?”

Nie Mingjue cast a slightly guilty glance at his cousin, who had apparently been very complimentary, but well, rules were rules for a reason. “While understandable given my age, Fourth Uncle questioned my judgment instead of following orders,” he said. “It wasn’t an issue and I’m sure he wouldn’t have done it if the battle conditions were more imminent, but I would still recommend an evening reflecting on sect discipline.”

Nie Zonghui bowed in acknowledgment; he was grinning for some reason, and his good humor didn’t seem even remotely dented by the prospect. “Of course.”

“Anything else?” his father asked. He looked extremely amused: had he and Nie Zonghui shared some sort of joke? “Zonghui said you had no issues with flying on Baxia, and that you wielded it well; also that you took the center for a three-point array with the two rogue cultivators to drive the demon back towards the large suppression array.”

Nie Mingjue nodded; he’d expected that Nie Zonghui’s report would have included that, so he hadn’t bothered to mention it. Though now that he thought of it, there was something he should share with his father.

“I invited the two rogue cultivators to become guest disciples here, along with their son,” he said. “Daozhang Wei Changze, formerly of Yunmeng Jiang, and his wife Cangse Sanren, disciple of Baoshan Sanren –”

“They want to be guest disciples here? Not Yunmeng Jiang?”

“I didn’t press for details,” Nie MIngjue said, feeling his face flush red again; seeing it, both his father and Nie Zonghui burst out laughing. “Anyway, I said they’d be welcome. I hope I didn’t overstep.”

“Of course they’re welcome,” his father said, wiping his eyes. “They’re very well regarded, even if Sect Leader Jiang will probably find a way to poison my tea at the next discussion conference…you did well, Mingjue. You may have the remainder of the day to your leisure.”

Nie Mingjue nodded and took Nie Huaisang back to his room, which was about as messy as one would expect from a four year old. His little brother was pouting, so he squeezed his hand. “What’s got that look on your face?”

“You did so well, and all you get is half a day off?” Nie Huaisang said, a cute little scowl on his face. “He should’ve said something more.”

Nie Mingjue laughed. “We’ll probably have my favorite dishes for dinner sometime this week,” he predicted. “I don’t need more recognition than that. Now: what do you want to play?”

Nie Huaisang blinked up at him. “But baba said you had the second half of the day to do whatever you like.”

“And what I’d like to do is play with my didi,” Nie Mingjue said firmly: he’d regretted not spending enough time on Nie Huaisang in his past life, too busy with sect matters and his own issues, and he intended to remedy that this time around. He lifted Nie Huaisang and put him on the bed. “Come on, you pick something while I clean up a bit here so we’ll have space to sit.”

Nie Huaisang beamed, chattering at breakneck speed as to the various options of what they could do, while Nie Mingjue picked up the various toys and books lying around.

One of them was even a book of maps, which was far too valuable to be given to a child as young as Nie Huaisang; he tucked that one up high and reminded himself to take it back to the library when they were done playing, no matter if Nie Huaisang protested – if he wanted to look at pretty pictures, he could pick something else.

It wasn’t as if Nie Huaisang had any need to look up cities in Yunmeng, after all.

Though – now that he thought about it, maybe Nie Mingjue should take a look at that book before he returned it. If he remembered correctly, the page it had been open to had shown an image of Yunping City, where he might be able to find Meng Yao…

#mdzs #nie mingjue #nie huaisang #wei changze #cangse sanren #my fic #my fics #time travel nie bros #oneiriad

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queenofmoons67 · 4 years

Note

If you’re still taking prompts “Blankets/Shirt Collar Shifting Just Enough To Have Bandages Peeking Out” for the Nie brothers, preferably if it’s Nie Huaisang that it’s hurt and kinda trying to hide it. Ps: I love your writing and it’s completely okay if u don’t want to write this prompt or if u want to but come with something different :p

thank you so much! i hope you like what i came up with (i’ll admit, the first time i read the prompt, i was so overwhelmed with ideas i had to just. set it aside for a bit, because i couldn’t process them all at once :’) )

Nie Huaisang adjusted his outer robes, making sure they were snug around his torso, and peered around the corner.

He had returned to the Unclean Realm from the Nightless City a scant few days before, and he had been avoiding Da-ge for most of it. Nie Huaisang had had to greet him at the entrance, of course, and Da-ge was also enforcing family meals—but beyond that, if Da-ge could be avoided, then Da-ge was avoided.

Snapping his fan open in front of his face to hide his head shake, Nie Huaisang moved down the corridor. It wasn’t like he didn’t want to be with his da-ge, but it couldn’t be helped.

Nie Mingjue, Leader of the Nie Sect, had sent his heir to be a willing hostage of Wen Ruohan. He had been pressured by Wen Ruohan himself, the Nie elders, and the responsibilities Nie Mingjue held to more than just his own immediate family. But that didn’t mean that Nie Huaisang’s da-ge wouldn’t blame himself if he knew the full truth of what happened in the Nightless City—or rather, just outside of it.

Only the disciples who had accompanied Nie Huaisang there knew that he had been injured while in the cave, tripping headlong into a Wen disciple trying to sneak up on Wei-xiong and taking an arrow through the shoulder. The arrow itself had stemmed the blood flow until they were out of the cave. Worried Nie disciples had been able to bandage it once they were well out of the Nightless City, but it was still deep enough that more than a week later, Nie Huaisang was still healing.

The last thing Nie Huaisang wanted was to be confronted with a Da-ge stumbling around the Unclean Realm, all uncoordinated from guilt like dry, flaky paint. So he swore the Nie disciples to silence, stole medical supplies from the medical room, and avoided Da-ge—

Up until now, that is, Nie Huaisang reflected, staring up at his Da-ge’s pinched brow.

Resisting the urge to snap his fan open and closed again, Nie Huaisang beamed up at his da-ge. “Hello!” he chirped.

“Huaisang,” Da-ge said. His eyes didn’t leave Nie Huaisang’s, and the younger rallied himself with the reminder that at least that meant Da-ge wasn’t looking at Nie Huaisang’s shoulder. Even if he was making him very uncomfortable.

“Can I help you?” he asked, carefully side-stepping around Da-ge and down the hall, till he was still looking back at his da-ge but was also slowly walking backward. “Only, I was about to—”

“What are you up to, Didi?” Da-ge asked, eyes narrowing. “You’ve been avoiding me.”

“Have not!”

“Have to! Didi, you usually can’t leave me alone when we reunite. Now you can’t bear to be around me. Why? Have—is it something I did?”

Nie Huaisang had been about to remind his dear da-ge that he only called him ‘didi’ when he wanted something—and in the process, hopefully remind himself; the technique really was too effective—but when he heard the last question, he stopped.

“I—Da-geee—” he dragged out. “Of course not! You’re Da-ge.”

Da-ge cocked an eyebrow, clearly not believing him, and—Nie Huaisang held back a sigh. Da-ge had started to slump, and he refused to let his da-ge turn into dry, flaky paint.

Desperate times called for desperate measures.

Stepping forward, Nie Huaisang pulled Da-ge into a hug, quickly releasing him so he didn’t get even more suspicious. He felt Da-ge relax for a moment, but then he tensed again as they pulled apart.

“Huaisang…”

“What?” Nie Huaisang blinked innocently at him.

“Why is your shoulder bandaged?”

Nie Huaisang looked down at himself and resisted the urge to curse. His robes had opened just enough to reveal the tell-tale white of bandages. It had probably happened when he hugged Da-ge, too.

Laughing weakly, Nie Huaisang pulled his robes back into place and, widening his eyes up at his da-ge, said, “It’s nothing! I just strained myself earlier trying to climb into a good spot for a new view, that’s all. And as you can see, it’s already been bandaged and—”

Nie Huaisang yelped, twisting to try and avoid grasping hands.

“Da-ge! What are you doing?!”

“Stand—still—” Da-ge grunted, still trying to grab his robes. “I know you’re hiding something, Huaisang! You never climb anywhere, you get someone to fly you up!”

Nie Huaisang darted down the hall and ran smack into something solid. Hands settled on his shoulders, and he looked up with a sigh into the concerned eyes of Nie Zonghui.

“Hi, Da-shixiong,” he said weakly. “How are you today?”

“I’m good,” Nie Zonghui said. His eyes met Nie Huaisang’s for only a moment before they slid over his shoulder, and then back again. “Are you?”

“I—“

“He’s injured,” Da-ge interjected impatiently, stepping up beside them so that together, they hemmed Nie Huaisang in against the wall. “But he won’t admit it.”

“I did too!”

“You lied about the how!”

“You—!” Nie Huaisang’s hands flexed, and he wished he could strangle his stubborn da-ge—but then the flex pulled at his muscles, all the way up his arm to his shoulder, and he groaned, good hand grabbing at his shoulder to massage it before he could think better of the motion.

Now he had Da-ge and Nie Zonghui staring at him, eyebrows furrowed. None of his lessons had ever included anything about how to resist the worried looks of brothers who just want to bury you in blankets, and that was clearly a mistake. He would have to rectify the issue immediately.

Immediately after he dealt with these two, anyway.

“Fine,” Nie Huaisang sighed. He looked away, unwilling to meet Da-ge’s eyes as he hurt him. “I got shot on a night hunt when I was in the Nightless City. But it’s fine, I’ve been taking care of it, and—“

Nie Huaisang cried out, startled, as his da-ge literally swept him off his feet.

“Da-ge!”

“You’re getting seen by our doctors,” Da-ge said, carting him off down the hall. “And you’ll sit still, and you won’t protest. And if they say it’s ok for your to be up and about, then you can be—but if they say bed rest, then you will rest. Understood?”

“Understood,” Nie Huaisang grumped. His da-ge was holding him tight to his chest, with absolutely no wiggle room. Unless Nie Zonghui decided to help him make a break for it—and judging by the amusement on his face when he looked at Nie Huaisang, that wasn’t likely—then Nie Huaisang was going to see a doctor.

He’s already told his da-ge the truth, anyway. Seeing the evidence wouldn’t change anything. Slumping and crossing his arms, Nie Huaisang studied his da-ge. He—he didn’t look too upset? His brow was still furrowed, and his lips were down turned, but he looked like that half the time anyway.

“Da-ge?”

“Hm?”

“Are you—ok?”

Da-ge stopped and finally looked down at him. “Is that why you didn’t tell me?”

Nie Huiasang blinked. “Is what?”

“You didn’t tell me the truth because you thought I wouldn’t be ok?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Nie Huaisang caught Nie Zonghui edging down the hall and out of sight. But—

“I—yes? Da-ge,” Nie Huaisang fumbled, “you have so much going on, and—“

“Huaisang, you’re my didi. I’m upset that you got hurt after I had to send you to be a hostage, but I’m more upset that you weren’t trustful with me. How can I protect you if you don’t tell me things?”

“But Da-ge,” Nie Huaisang cried. “What if that’s the only way for me to protect you?”

“Then you hurt me,” Da-ge said, starting to walk again. “And we get through it, because we’re brothers.”

“But what if it’s not that simple?”

“We’re brothers,” Da-ge repeated. “Whether it’s simple or complicated, we’ll get through it. But you have to trust me, Huaisang.”

“I do, Da-ge,” Nie Huaisang said, blinking back tears. When had he started crying? “I won’t lie to you again.”

Da-ge didn’t say another word the entire way to the doctor—but he did reach up and wipe away Nie Huaisang’s tears, and rubbed his shoulder, and let him hide his face in Da-ge’s robes.

Go here for more hurt/comfort prompts to send me! All I need is at least one prompt selection and two characters!

#nie huaisang #nie mingjue #nie brothers #nie zonghui #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #the untamed #cql #fatal journey #mdzs fanfic #fanfic #mine #My fic #writing prompt #timetomakeanewwish

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