Chapter Text
Jin Ling picked his face off of the ground and brushed at the dust that the fall had shoved up his nose. Suihua crashed uselessly to the ground beside him and he flopped over onto his back, pounding at his chest with a fist until his lungs started working again.
The goose that had risen suddenly above the trees and collided with him honked derisively and flew away. The branches that he’d hit on the way down creaked alarmingly.
Someone nearby was laughing hard enough that their life was in danger.
That someone shoved his beaming face into Jin Ling’s line of sight and the bright red ribbon that he’d spotted from the sky fluttered down, swatting Jin Ling on the cheek. A hand landed on his shoulder and Wei Wuxian asked, in a voice breathless with laughter, “Are you hurt?”
Jin Ling resisted the urge to smack his face away, settling instead for shrugging out of the grip on his shoulder and rolling to his feet as he returned Suihua to its sheath.
Wei Wuxian followed him up, grin disappearing as he bowed, somehow graceful and extremely disrespectful at the same time. “Ah, forgive my manners, Sect Leader Jin, for not greeting you properly,” he said solemnly. “This poor servant merely worried for your health following that shocking assault on your person.”
“Stop.” Jin Ling picked several twigs off himself, dropping them to the ground.
“Sect Leader Jin, allow me to chase down the culprit!” Wei Wuxian’s hands were everywhere, patting Jin Ling down in a search for injuries. Jin Ling tried to dodge, but Wei Wuxian had a tight grip on his belt and wouldn’t let go.
“I’m fine, let go!” he said, finally catching Wei Wuxian’s hand as he reached for Jin Ling’s nose.
Wei Wuxian didn’t struggle, letting Jin Ling detach his hand and step backward. “Why were you flying so low anyway?” he asked. “If you’re headed to the Cloud Recesses, you still have a fair distance to go.” He wandered back to the pond he’d been wading in when Jin Ling had noticed him, untying the string that held his robes up around his knees and picking up his shoes as he mused, “And what a strange coincidence that you just happened to fall right where I was working on my special project, hm?”
Jin Ling flared up with an indignant realization. “Did you throw a goose at me?!”
“Were you trying to sneak up on me?” Wei Wuxian raised an eyebrow, and Jin Ling crossed his arms.
“No!” he lied, rapidly switching to the offensive. “How could you accuse me of that? Do you attack all passing travelers with whatever bird is at hand?!”
Wei Wuxian laughed again, dropping his shoes to ruffle Jin Ling’s hair. “I saw Suihua’s reflection when you passed overhead and circled around me. You’re getting a little better at lying, but your stealth could still use some forethought.”
Jin Ling scowled and ducked away, stopping at the mud by the pond’s edge. “This is your special project?”
He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t forty or so young lotus plants bobbing up and down.
“Ah, yes,” Wei Wuxian said, squelching through the mud with his bare feet. He realized too late that his robes were hanging freely down into the mud, and had to hastily drag them up around his knees. “I just wanted to plant some lotus, but the climate is a bit too cold up at Cloud Recesses and then it took me longer than I thought to find a pond owned by someone who wouldn’t mind me taking it over, so it’s a special project now. I’m sure I’m going to lose most of them to the geese, but maybe if I throw a few more of them at sneaky cultivators they’ll move to a different pond.”
“Unbelievable,” Jin Ling said. “What are you doing gardening? If you want lotus, go to Lotus Pier and get…” He trailed off as Wei Wuxian’s grin turned broader and sharper.
“I don’t want to bother your uncle too badly,” he said dismissively, and his smile turned more natural. “Anyway, it’s nice to do things like this for yourself.” He stooped to wash the bulk of the mud off his feet and hopped back to stand beside Jin Ling. “But I think this isn’t what you came all the way to Gusu for. Unless you’re here just to catch up?”
Jin Ling shook his head and pulled the letter from his sleeve, offering it to Wei Wuxian. “I received this yesterday.”
Wei Wuxian wiped his hands dry on his outer robe and took the letter, scanning through it quickly with a furrowed brow. “This came directly to you?”
“No, it was relayed through the Nie sect.” Wei Wuxian’s eyes narrowed and he read the letter more closely. “Sect Leader Nie-“
“Oh, it’s Sect Leader Nie from you now? What happened to Head Shaker?”
“ Sect Leader Nie ,” Jin Ling repeated through gritted teeth, “sent a message along with it saying that he thought I would be interested.”
“In writing? Do you have it now?”
“No, he sent a messenger.”
“Hm.” Wei Wuxian didn’t say anything else, his expression flattening into an eerie approximation of Hanguang jun’s unreadable face as he folded up the letter and stashed it in his own sleeve. Jin Ling swallowed down the protest. “You’d better come back to Cloud Recesses with me. We can talk on the way.”
At Jin Ling’s nod, Wei Wuxian turned to retrieve his shoes. “What do you think?” he asked.
“The Nie sect has sent you a letter from an unknown person pleading for aid due to some sort of undescribed evil creature lurking in the hills behind a remote town. The town is outside of the borders of both of your sects, and in fact lies within Qishan, deep in the former territory of the Wen Sect.” Wei Wuxian flicked a finger across his nose slowly. “Sect Leader Nie thought you would be interested. Aren’t you?”
Jin Ling followed as Wei Wuxian started down the narrow path towards Caiyi Town. "I suppose so,” he said. "Even if it is all the way in Qishan.”
“Ah, you are? But then, haven’t you started in the wrong direction by coming to Gusu?” Wei Wuxian turned his head to look at Jin Ling, raising an eyebrow.
“Stop pretending you don’t know why I’m here,” Jin Ling demanded. “The letter is too strange, and I don’t trust it.”
“So you brought it to me, as a strange person myself.” Wei Wuxian grinned suddenly, and Jin Ling knew the next thing he would say would be unbearable. “A-Ling, I didn’t-”
“Uncle is too forthright with things like this,” Jin Ling interrupted. “He would storm straight to Qinghe and shake Sect Leader Nie until he explained why he would send on such a vague letter, and then I’d have to deal with all the elders of three sects being outraged, so really I had no other option.”
“How do you know that I won’t do the same?” Wei Wuxian asked. Jin Ling let silence be his response, dragging his eyes from the messy pile of hair on top of Wei Wuxian’s head down to the traces of dirt where he’d touched his face while working, then to his freely swinging empty hands and the muddy bottoms of his robes. Wei Wuxian pouted and said, “Just because I don’t look tough right now, you think I can’t beat up Sect Leader Nie?”
Wei Wuxian could certainly beat up Sect Leader Nie. In ruling out Uncle Jiang, Jin Ling had forgotten to consider that Wei Wuxian didn’t need to act within the constraints of being a Sect Leader but in terms of being impulsive and contrary, he was at least the equal of Uncle Jiang. He was suddenly not sure if he wouldn’t have been better off going to Lotus Pier. “Well, if you do, I’ll- I’ll,” he faltered.
“You’ll beat me up?” Wei Wuxian finished, grinning widely, spinning around to walk backwards and face him. “Sect Leader Jin, I had no idea your fealty to the Nie Sect ran so deep. What a protective spirit you have.”
A branch stuck out in the path, exactly at knee height. Wei Wuxian didn’t turn back around, walking backwards and laughing, and Jin Ling sensed a chance for revenge. He scowled deeply and took a quick step forward, which made Wei Wuxian laugh even harder until the instant that the branch hit the back of his leg and he stumbled. Jin Ling closed the rest of the gap and gave Wei Wuxian a gentle push as he tried to recover his balance, sending him to the ground with an undignified squawk.
“Senior Wei!” Jin Ling said in mock dismay. “Are you alright? Falls at your age can be so dangerous!”
Wei Wuxian’s hair, already precariously tied, had given up and flopped over his face. He sat up and pushed it up to glare balefully at Jin Ling. “You pushed me?”
“I didn’t, I didn’t,” Jin Ling said quickly. “I was trying to help, but you were already falling. Maybe your mind is clouded with age and you mistook my helping hand for a push?”
Wei Wuxian stood up without breaking his glare. Jin Ling stiffened his back and stood his ground, refusing to blink. Just as he started to wonder if he’d gone too far, Wei Wuxian’s face cracked into a smile and he was laughing again. “You’ve grown so much, A-Ling! That was such a dirty, underhanded trick!”
Jin Ling breathed a sigh of relief as Wei Wuxian turned around and started walking again, this time facing properly forward. “Anyway, we’ll get to the bottom of this mysterious letter. Nothing to worry about.”
“I’m not worried,” Jin Ling snapped. “I just thought it might be interesting. For you.”
“You and Sect Leader Nie both, I suspect. But hurry up or we’ll miss curfew. It’s a long, hard walk back to Cloud Recesses.”
Jin Ling’s jaw dropped involuntarily. “You can’t be serious,” he called as Wei Wuxian sped up. “You’re not going to walk all the way back.”
“I walk everywhere! It’s good for the body and strengthens the mind. You should probably walk more often.”
Jin Ling had personally seen Wei Wuxian resort to means as undignified as faking a fainting fit and as smelly as riding his terrible donkey everywhere to avoid having to walk. However, there wasn’t much that he could say to such a dishonest statement that wouldn’t have Wei Wuxian laughing at him again, so he settled for glaring at his back and stalking after him silently.
“Lan Zhan! LAN ZHAN! ”
The sudden shout rudely jerked Jin Ling out of imagining new and inventive ways to get back at Wei Wuxian for a growing list of offenses, including but not limited to: the goose, the slightly too warm day for walking comfortably, the way he’d shoved his damp feet back into his shoes without flinching, and the way that he kept glancing over at Jin Ling with a fond smile. He clapped a hand over his ear to protect his remaining hearing as Wei Wuxian shamelessly waved both arms overhead at a rapidly descending figure dressed entirely in white, black hair blowing out behind him.
“Lan Zhan!” he called again, still waving.
“He’s seen you,” Jin Ling hissed. “You’re being ridiculous.”
“I just wanted to be sure,” Wei Wuxian said. “What if he hadn’t, and he went all the way to the pond to get me and I wasn’t there? He’d be worried.”
“I knew you weren’t going to walk all the way back!” Jin Ling crossed his arms and then had to quickly uncross them when Hanguang-Jun stopped in front of them, dropping lightly to the path as Bichen sheathed itself.
“Wei Ying,” he said. “Sect Leader Jin.”
There had been no semblance of a question on his face or in his words, but Wei Wuxian brightened up like he’d been invited to give a lecture and started talking even while Jin Ling and Hanguang-Jun bowed perfunctorily. “Ah, Lan Zhan, Jin Ling received a very strange letter and brought it to me to ask for guidance.” Jin Ling couldn’t help but bristle slightly at that, even if it was technically true. “Apparently it was sent on to him by Sect Leader Nie, who thought Jin Ling was the person to deal with what appears to be a very serious situation.”
Hanguang-Jun stood there for a moment, and then looked at Jin Ling. “I see.”
“Yes, exactly,” Wei Wuxian replied. Jin Ling wanted to be insulted, but wasn’t sure what he was insulted by. “Jin Ling, show Lan Zhan the letter.”
“You shoved it into your sleeve earlier!”
“Ah, ah, right.” Wei Wuxian dug around in his sleeve, eventually producing the letter with several new wrinkles in it. “Look at this.”
Hanguang-Jun read the letter quickly and looked back up at Wei Wuxian. “Sect Leader Nie sent this?”
“By a messenger rather than writing himself. It’s not really his style, is it?”
“You would know better.”
Wei Wuxian laughed, sounding oddly nervous. “He hasn’t written me that many letters, Lan Zhan. I’m just keeping up with an old friend. Shall we go home? I’ll need to change and pack some things.”
Hanguang-Jun nodded, Bichen sweeping out of its sheath as he wrapped an arm around Wei Wuxian’s waist and they stepped up together onto the sword.
“Come on, Jin Ling,” Wei Wuxian said, wrapping his hand around Hanguang-Jun’s elbow to keep his arm in place around his waist and leaning back against him.
Jin Ling stepped back on to Suihua with relief and followed Hanguang-Jun. Jin Ling hadn’t traveled to Gusu often, not as a child or in his tumultuous year as a Sect Leader, so he amused himself by watching the ground roll by below them until he realized that Wei Wuxian had said that he needed to pack, but not where he would go.
“Wei Wuxian!” he called.
Wei Wuxian twisted in Hanguang-Jun’s grasp, poking his face over his shoulder to face Jin Ling. His arm came up and over Hanguang-Jun’s other shoulder, grasping the fabric on the back of his robes so that they were embracing. Jin Ling resisted the urge to avert his eyes in embarrassment. That was what Wei Wuxian wanted him to do.
Wei Wuxian rested his chin on Hanguang-Jun’s shoulder and Jin Ling found himself searching for the gates of Cloud Recesses. They had to be nearly there.
“Did you have a question?” Wei Wuxian called.
Jin Ling sighed and looked back, keeping his eyes firmly on Wei Wuxian’s face. “Where are you going to go?”
“Where else?” Wei Wuxian fluttered the letter at him. “You’ve received a very suspicious written invitation. Wouldn’t it be rude not to attend?”
“What about the Nie Sect? If they’re being suspicious, shouldn’t we investigate them?”
“You’re already back to storming into the Unclean Realm and shaking answers out of Nie Huaisang? Why do that when we can go right to the source?”
Hanguang-Jun turned his head towards Wei Wuxian enough that Jin Ling could hear him as well. “We’ll take the direct path.”
“As always, right Lan Zhan?” Wei Wuxian lifted his head from Hanguang-Jun’s shoulder, and their faces were abruptly close enough together that Jin Ling found the speed to fly ahead of them and took the lead until they landed at the gates of Cloud Recesses.
Wei Wuxian returned to the subject as they climbed the stone pathway and passed the massive wall of rules. “Anyway I don’t think Sect Leader Nie will know anything about this. If he wanted to lure you out, he wouldn’t do it so obviously.”
“What are you talking about?” Jin Ling asked incredulously. “When would he lure anyone out?”
“Wei Ying, I will inform my brother.”
“Right. Jin Ling, why don’t you go find Sizhui? He said he would be working in the library today.”
“Where are you going?” Jin Ling asked, not excited about being left to his own devices like a child while Zewu-Jun and Hanguang-Jun planned.
Wei Wuxian pointed at his hair, only marginally more tidy after his efforts to re-tie it as they’d walked, and then at his robes, dusty and muddy from the pond and the road. “We’ll find you later. The library’s that way.”
Hanguang-Jun and Wei Wuxian left him there without further discussion, and Jin Ling started down the path, hoping that the library wouldn’t be hard to find.
Despite its nature as a mountain settlement forcing the Lan to build around terrain rather than any sense of order, Cloud Recesses somehow had a natural flow and logic to it. Jin Ling stopped at the top of a sloping path to overlook the buildings. He hadn’t been to the Cloud Recesses as a child or when he was younger and training, something he hadn’t understood the reason for until one day Hanguang-Jun had accompanied Zewu-Jun to Carp Tower. Hanguang-Jun hadn’t looked at anyone, so it wasn’t strange that he hadn’t greeted Uncle Jiang, but Uncle Jiang had looked at him.
Uncle Jiang didn’t get along with most people, so Jin Ling hadn’t thought much of his obvious dislike until he’d seen Hanguang-Jun again at Dafan Mountain. Even then, Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi had spoken for him and he’d refused to make eye contact or acknowledge Uncle Jiang’s presence. Everything else had fallen apart right after that, and he supposed it was better that everything that had happened back then was out in the open, but it was still an immutable fact that Hanguang-Jun hated Uncle Jiang, and that the feeling was mutual.
So that was why Jin Ling had never been to Cloud Recesses as a disciple, and even as Sect Leader he had only barely stepped inside the gates before leaving again. Even now that all the upheaval of the last year was settling down he sometimes felt like one wrong step would ruin everything, and he wasn’t sure how Hanguang-Jun felt about him. He had stabbed Wei Wuxian that one time, after all, and Hanguang-Jun tended to cut off people’s arms when they did things like that. He didn’t want the wrong step that sent the carefully balanced peace of the cultivation world back into chaos to be his accidental disrespect of the laws of Cloud Recesses or the Chief Cultivator.
On top of that, it wasn’t that Jin Ling was willing to admit to anyone that Hanguang-Jun’s face of stone was unnerving or concerning in the least, but he couldn’t help but feel worms writhing in his gut when the man turned his stare on him.
“Sect Leader Jin?”
Lost in thought, Jin Ling hadn’t heard anyone approach. He jerked in surprise, half-unsheathing Suihua, until he abruptly realized that it was Lan Sizhui who had approached him.
“...Sorry,” he mumbled, shoving Suihua back down. “I didn’t hear you.”
“It’s fine,” Lan Sizhui said. “Have you come to visit Senior Wei? He was leaving Cloud Recesses today, but Hanguang-Jun left to bring him back some time ago so he should be back soon.”
“I met him on the way,” Jin Ling said, “Though I’ve already forgotten why I would come to see him instead of someone less annoying.”
Lan Sizhui drew himself up like he wanted going to say something to refute that, but didn’t. “Are you going on a night hunt, then? Uncle Ning isn’t here, and most everyone else is out as well, but I could come along.”
“Why are you here if everyone else is gone?” Jin Ling asked curiously. Lan Sizhui was easily the best of the Lan disciples and could even be called one of the strongest young cultivators without an argument from anyone. It was very strange for him to stay behind in Cloud Recesses when the other juniors were out.
“Ah, I was helping Senior Wei with a project,” Lan Sizhui said. “But it turned out that he didn’t really need help and that he just wanted an excuse to leave Cloud Recesses and return at odd hours, so today I left him to it.”
Jin Ling’s mind failed as he tried to imagine Lan Sizhui in his perfect white robes digging around in a farmer’s pond to plant lotus. “A project? You were helping him with those lotus plants?”
“You saw them?” Lan Sizhui said, smiling. “I didn’t do very much. Senior Wei was having trouble with the geese that live nearby, so I was keeping them away for him.”
“Wei Wuxian couldn’t keep geese away?” Jin Ling asked scornfully. “Are you sure? He seemed to be getting along quite well with them when I arrived.”
“I don’t think that he needed my help at all, really,” Lan Sizhui admitted, “But I was already there, so he had to find something for me to do. What brings you to Cloud Recesses, if not a night-hunt?”
“It might be a night-hunt,” Jin Ling said. “An unsigned letter was sent to me by Sect Leader Nie that claimed that there seemed to be something evil in the hills near a town in Qishan, but it didn’t give any more details than that.”
“That’s strange,” Lan Sizhui said, looking down. “What did Senior Wei say?”
“He wants to go to the town, and Hanguang-Jun is telling Zewu-Jun about it now.”
“Ah, so Senior Wei and Hanguang-Jun will both accompany you?” Sizhui smiled broadly, and Jin Ling realized that he was certainly right. If Wei Wuxian wouldn’t or couldn’t use a sword to travel a short distance from Cloud Recesses, there was no way he could make a much longer trip on his own.
“Lan Sizhui!” he said in sudden desperation. “Please, come with us! Don’t leave me alone with those two!”
Lan Sizhui laughed, sudden and bright, and then gasped and clapped a hand over his mouth to muffle himself. “Making loud noises is prohibited in Cloud Recesses,” he explained in a soft voice. “Of course I’ll come along. Let me gather some things.”
Jin Ling found himself following Lan Sizhui through Cloud Recesses as he quietly narrated what they were passing (“Sect Leader Jiang, Sect Leader Nie, and Senior Wei once got drunk in those dormitories and Hanguang-Jun caught them!” “They did!?” “Yes, and then they were beaten!”). Lan Sizhui was more agreeable than most of their generation, along with having a gentle and upright nature coloured by his odd affection for Wei Wuxian and Hanguang-Jun, respectively the most annoying and most alarming presences in Jin Ling’s life, and Jin Ling found himself enjoying Lan Sizhui’s recitation of all the interesting scandals he knew about Cloud Recesses.
“How do you know all this?” he asked.
“Senior Wei told me. He said that I should remember that even Cloud Recesses isn’t always quiet and perfect, but I think he also wanted to brag about how much trouble he used to get into. He gets in less trouble now.”
“Right!” Jin Ling said, remembering. “He said that he had memorized all the rules of the Lan clan because he had to transcribe them so many times. He wasn’t even ashamed!”
Sizhui laughed, and then gestured to a medium-sized building. “This is the Lanshi, where we have our lessons.” He led Jin Ling up to the building and opened the door to reveal a single large room filled with tables.
The room was not very interesting, just another example of elegant construction among many, but Lan Sizhui was looking at him like he expected a response. “Very nice,” Jin Ling said. When he looked a little closer at the room though, he spotted a large, ugly porcelain turtle sitting among the rest of the delicately crafted ornamentation and couldn’t help but recoil and point at it. “What’s that thing?”
Lan Sizhui laughed, leaving Jin Ling unsure if the joke was on him or not. Since it was Lan Sizhui though, and not Lan Jingyi or Jin Chan or someone worse, he waited for Lan Sizhui to explain. “It just appeared one day, and since Hanguang-Jun didn’t say anything about it or remove it, no one wanted to question it, and now it’s been too long to ask about it! Isn’t it ugly?”
“Very ugly,” Jin Ling agreed. Hanguang-Jun had even stranger tastes than he’d thought.
When they stepped into Lan Sizhui’s room, Jin Ling looked about curiously. The room was small, but perfectly tidy and well ordered. A guqin sat upon a table, and another smaller table held an inkstone and a stack of empty talismans, along with a neat pile of letters.
“Did Senior Wei or Hanguang-Jun say when they planned to leave?” Lan Sizhui asked, opening drawers and pulling robes, papers, and other items with quick and precise movements. He clearly was well-used to preparing to leave on short notice, which Jin Ling thought was only natural given the amount of time he spent with both Wei Wuxian and Lan Jingyi.
“No, but it seemed like it would be as soon as he had changed his clothes.”
“Then it could be anytime from right now to midday tomorrow, depending on how he feels.” Seemingly satisfied with his packing, Lan Sizhui closed his guqin into a qiankun bag and hung it at his waist. “We’ll go to the Jingshi and find out.”
“Did you show me that one?” Jin Ling asked, trying to remember the array of buildings Lan Sizhui had led him past.
“Not yet. The Jingshi is where Hanguang-Jun and Senior Wei live when they’re here.” Lan Sizhui looked around his room one more time and closed the door. “It’s not far.”
“They live in the same place?” Jin Ling asked, surprised enough to ask without thinking about it.
“You thought they wouldn’t?” Lan Sizhui said, his smile slipping a bit but still gentle enough that Jin Ling thought he hadn’t been too offensive.
“I don’t spend a lot of time considering Hanguang-Jun’s sleeping arrangements.” Lan Sizhui was still looking at him a bit strangely, so Jin Ling hurried to add, “It’s their business anyway, isn’t it?”
That seemed to be the right thing to say, or at least enough to make Lan Sizhui move on. He led the way around winding paths to a more isolated area with several large houses behind fences. “That’s the Jingshi,” Lan Sizhui said, indicating to the one set the furthest back from the path. He walked with the confidence of a resident through the gate, but stopped before climbing the steps to enter the building. “Senior Wei? Hanguang-Jun?”
“Is it Sizhui?” Wei Wuxian’s voice drifted lazily out through the door. “You can come in.”
Jin Ling followed Lan Sizhui up the stairs and into the Jingshi, unsure of what to expect. Wei Wuxian was sitting lotus-style on the floor with Hanguang-Jun sitting on the bed behind him, his knees framing Wei Wuxian’s shoulders as he extricated a comb from a tangle of Wei Wuxian’s wet hair and set it on the bed beside him. Jin Ling accidentally caught Hanguang-Jun’s eye when he looked back up and briefly considered if one could suffer a Qi deviation from exposure to someone’s romantic life, or if that was just how everyone felt when Hanguang-Jun looked at them like he dared them to comment.
“Ah, good job, Jin Ling,” Wei Wuxian said as Jin Ling tried to figure out how to break eye contact with Hanguang-Jun without looking cowed. He took the opportunity to look at Wei Wuxian instead, who smiled up at him. “You did find Sizhui. I remembered that you don’t know Cloud Recesses very well and got worried that I’d have to rescue you from some situation or another.”
Wei Wuxian was the picture of calm satisfaction, and Jin Ling found it hard to believe that he had been even slightly concerned. At least he was nearly fully dressed, and after the initial shock of seeing Hanguang-jun wielding a comb instead of a sword or guqin, Jin Ling could see that several qiankun bags were sitting on the bed, waiting to be picked up, while Suibian and Bichen sat in a sword rack nearby. It seemed as if Wei Wuxian had been serious about leaving soon.
“There wasn’t any trouble,” Sizhui said. “Sect Leader Jin said that you were going on a night-hunt?”
“Ah, maybe, maybe,” Wei Wuxian said, leaning forward. "I've been trying to think of what I know about that part of Qishan. It’s a relatively quiet place, as far as I remember. There were no major battles near there in the Sunshot Campaign, right, Lan Zhan?”
“No, and I haven’t heard anything about that area recently, though it is in Qishan,” Hanguang-Jun confirmed. “Brother didn’t know anything about it either.”
“See, if Zewu-Jun and Hanguang-Jun both can’t recall the history of a place, it must be a very boring one,” Wei Wuxian laughed.
“But it’s still in Qishan,” Jin Ling said, taken by surprise. “Of course it’s not boring. Qishan is practically the land of the dead.”
“Ah?” Wei Wuxian said, twisting around to look at Hanguang-Jun. “Did I miss something? It’s been so long since the Sunshot Campaign, did something else happen in Qishan?”
“No, Senior Wei,” Lan Sizhui said, his face solemn. “Qishan is haunted by the unquiet dead of the Sunshot Campaign.”
Wei Wuxian turned back to them just long enough for Jin Ling to see his lips twist into a frown, and then looked silently back at Hanguang-Jun.
“There were too many dead to be easily put to rest in many places,” Hanguang-Jun said. “In Yunmeng, Qinghe, here, nearly everywhere, all sects were busy with their own territories and their own losses.”
“And the Wens were gone,” Wei Wuxian said, a trace of bitterness in his voice. “So the dead of Qishan were left to grow resentful.”
Hanguang-Jun nodded, and Jin Ling found himself holding his breath, waiting for Wei Wuxian to say something more. The Yiling Laozu had made his name in the Sunshot Campaign, raising the dead and tearing through armies with the Stygian Tiger Seal in hand. Now he was sitting on a wooden floor, his face turned away and his hair half combed out, the least outwardly threatening man Jin Ling knew.
The silence seemed to stretch out, and then Lan Sizhui took in a deep breath beside him. “Senior Wei-”
Wei Wuxian turned back quickly, a strained smile back on his face and his eyes dry, and Jin Ling could breathe again. “Anyway, Zewu-Jun will visit the Nie Sect while we travel to investigate,” he said. “He’ll be able to determine if someone is trying to play games with you, Jin Ling.”
Jin Ling nodded, not sure how to deal with the sudden change from melancholy to determined, but that was enough for Wei Wuxian, who stood up and began picking up his belongings, shoving Chenqing into his sash and pulling Suibian from the sword stand. “Actually, I don’t think I need to worry about bringing this, right Lan Zhan?” he said, gently putting the sword back down. “Since you’ll be there.”
The feeling of intruding on a private moment was abrupt, though for once Jin Ling wasn’t sure if Wei Wuxian had done it on purpose. He didn’t like it, and turned on his heel. “I’ll wait outside,” he said.
Lan Sizhui was right behind him, but his footsteps were a little quieter. “I’m sorry,” he said, once they were near the gate.
“What are you sorry for?” Jin Ling said. “It’s not like you had anything to do with Qishan, or Wei Wuxian back then.”
Lan Sizhui didn’t have an answer, and they waited in silence until Hanguang-Jun and Wei Wuxian came out.