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There are three things Lan Sizhui feels like he has always known. The first is that, even if he remembers nothing from before the fever, he is Hanguang-jun’s A-Yuan. This one is the most important, emphasized often in the early days, when other children made him self-conscious about not knowing where he came from. He is a Lan, and Hanguang-jun’s son by adoption. No one can take these things away.
An older Sizhui wonders why Zewu-jun and Hanguang-jun, separately, felt the need to emphasize those points so strongly. How could someone take those things away? Why would anyone want to?
It isn’t the first time he’s wondered where he came from, and why it made the Twin Jades so protective of him.
The second thing is the difference between public and private. Later, he learned that many young children struggle with the concept. With the idea that there are at least two different sets of rules. It should have been difficult, with thousands of rules carved in stone emphasizing that in the Gusu Lan Sect, there should be no inconsistencies in conduct. The absence of an authority figure does not make the rules irrelevant or optional.
Yet he understood quickly why ‘father’ was not a word to be used in public. It isn’t that his father doesn’t love him, or that he didn’t back then. He saw that in soft eyes, and the gentleness in his callused hands. But the sect rules prized impartiality, and derided ‘excessive attachment.’ Even before he’d memorized the rules, Sizhui had heard disciples whispering about his father’s lack of impartiality. How he gave his love where it wasn’t deserved.
He’d been inconsolable the first time he’d heard that, thinking it must be about him. After all, he was adopted. Father had chosen him. Maybe he’d chosen wrong.
Sizhui had sobbed in the rabbit patch, a quivering bundle clutched in his arms until father had found him. He hadn’t wanted to say what was bothering him, but father was patient. Even then he’d known that his father could wait until the mountains wore down to nothing, if necessary.
“Impartiality does not mean ‘do not love,’” his father had said, piling more rabbits onto Sizhui’s lap. “It means, ‘do not let love prevent you from seeing the truth.’ They do not refer to you, A-Yuan.”
This is the last thing he’s always seemed to know: his father is a widower. He wears sadness like another layer of robes, one that he never removes. After the early years, others don’t seem to notice. They say that they had forgotten how cold and distant Hanguang-jun had always been, now that the pain in his eyes is subtle enough for them to miss. But they assume it was always that way.
“His branch of the family is plagued with suicidal romantics,” Sizhui overhears once, a year after his father resumes his full duties within the sect. “It’s a good thing Hanguang-jun finally got over it, unlike his father.”
“Yes,” another disciple agrees. “It was getting difficult to keep up appearances with the other sects.”
It’s a comment Sizhui didn’t fully understand at the time, yet knew better than to repeat where his father can hear. Gossip is forbidden, and repeating gossip is no better. And he knows his father whittled a flute and hid it under the floor. He knows that in the privacy of the Jingshi, his father sometimes ties a red ribbon around his wrist. Against his stark white robes, it looks like blood pouring from an open wound.
His father has never explicitly told him he is a widower. No one ever speaks of a marriage. But marriage is a hazy concept for a small child, even one without a fever obscuring his past. It was obvious that his father had lost someone, and longed to follow. Someone he is not allowed to mourn openly. And from the way the disciples talk, Sizhui learns not to ask about it.
As a young teen, another disciple complains that Jingyi’s taste in books is that of a suicidal romantic, and the memory rushes back. Anger comes with it, urging him to find and fight whoever talked about his father that way. Don’t they know that he hasn’t gotten over it at all, even years after that initial observation? Don’t they see-
But personal fights are forbidden, and his father would be unhappy if he broke the rules. Especially if he broke them for his sake. And he doesn’t even know who said that, all those years ago. So he settles for saying “that’s unkind,” to Lan Bolin, the disciple who insulted Jingyi, and pulls Jingyi out of the fight he’s about to start.
“Of course you’d defend him,” Bolin sneers. He doesn’t seem to notice that Sizhui and Jingyi outnumber him in the empty library.
Sizhui fights to keep his expression calm. “What do you mean?”
“Everyone knows you were raised by Hanguang-jun.”
Jingyi looks at Bolin like he’s never seen a bigger idiot in his life. “Uh, yeah, everyone does know that. What’s that got to do with this?”
Bolin’s expression is almost painfully smug. “My parents told me Hanguang-jun spent three years in isolation for defending the Yiling Patriarch! I guess it runs in the family.”
Sizhui can’t hear over the buzzing in his ears. No one in his generation has ever said a word against Hanguang-jun before; it’s unthinkable. It’s only ever been a senior, someone whose word he has to bow and accept.
Only the other day, they’d learned in classes that the Yiling Patriarch used a flute as a spiritual tool to control the resentful energy he used for his cultivation. A flute not unlike the one he found in his father’s floor years ago.
The Yiling Patriarch is not the only person to ever play such an instrument. The one his father mourns could still be anyone. But the list has narrowed, and the timing!
He can’t rush to conclusions, though. Sect rules caution against coming to conclusions without all of the information. In a night hunt, this can be fatal. His father’s grief is no less sensitive.
Jingyi recovers first. “Are you comparing me to the Yiling Patriarch?” He surges forward, and in his frozen state of shock, Sizhui lets him go.
Sizhui doesn’t stop Jingyi again, which is why when a senior disciple hears the scuffle and comes to investigate, he’s punished too. One copy of the sect rules while doing a handstand is relatively light: Jingyi and Bolin both have to do it three times. If any of them had told their senior what the fight was about, Bolin might have gotten more for gossiping, but they all kept their silence. Once their blood has a chance to cool, they all know that a line was crossed, and they would rather keep that between juniors.
Hanguang-jun finds him about halfway through that day’s portion. Sizhui doesn’t complain. Jingyi does that enough for both of them, and Bolin has been sent elsewhere to do his copying. It’s a larger blessing than he expected to receive.
“Rest a moment,” Hanguang-jun orders.
They both drop immediately with grateful cries of “Thank you, Hanguang-jun!”
His impassive gaze alights on Sizhui, who instantly feels shame replacing his exhaustion. “Sizhui, a word.” Then he sweeps past them, leaving Sizhui to scramble to his feet and follow.
Sizhui fights the urge to explain himself or throw himself on his father’s mercy. Gusu Lan does not believe in excuses, and he doesn’t feel like he’s done something worth defending. It makes no difference that he didn’t throw a punch. He didn’t stop any punches either, and inaction is also against the rules.
Worse, he was even a little happy to let Jingyi do it. A vicious instinct like that deserves punishment.
“I was told none of you would say what the fight was about,” his father says once they’re too far for Jingyi to hear.
“We know better than to make excuses, Hanguang-jun,” Sizhui says, which earns him a long look.
“I have heard many times that you are always the first to stop fights.”
It's the sweat cooling on his skin that’s making him cold. Not the fear that his father knows him too well and is about to crack him like an egg.
He opens his mouth, trying to find some other answer to give. But lying is forbidden, and he has never been good at it. The story spills out in a rush, shame bringing tears to the corners of his eyes, though they don’t fall. “...and I know I should have stopped him, but-”
A raised hand is all it takes to silence him. His father looks… tired. Not angry, or disappointed. Just weighed down, as if his robe of grief has gained a comrade. Sizhui hates that he caused this. His father has enough burdens. If he can endure such comments in silence, Sizhui should be able to as well.
“What have you learned about the Yiling Patriarch?” his father asks, leading him back to Jingyi. Jingyi hears the question and looks up, and Sizhui realizes what’s about to happen: they’re about to get a lesson.
“He developed demonic cultivation, harnessing resentful energy as a weapon,” Sizhui recites dutifully. “He created the Stygian Tiger Amulet and his Ghost General Wen Ning.”
His father waits, as if expecting more, and Jingyi jumps in.
“He was the head disciple of the Yunmeng Jiang sect before being expelled. Supposedly he was amazing with a sword before he switched to demonic cultivation, and handsome too,” Jingyi says, and Sizhui almost buries his face in his hands. “He killed thousands and raised their bodies to fight again, even killing his own brother-in-law.”
Sizhui swallows a sigh. Only Jingyi would throw in a note about the Yiling Patriarch’s looks right before addressing his body count. He’s quite certain Hanguang-jun wasn’t asking about those kinds of details.
His father’s face is unreadable even for him when he says, “Sizhui’s observations are all factually accurate, if limited. Jingyi, we do not speculate without evidence.”
Sizhui bows his head to hide the smile trying to spread across his face. He’d aimed for limited, hoping for more information.
“Hanguang-jun, I’m not speculating,” Jingyi argued. “I heard a senior say that the Yiling Patriarch was good with a sword and handsome, but lacked principles. He said that without principles, none of those other things matter.”
Something flashes across his father’s face too fast to identify.
“It is important to listen to your seniors,” he says, and for the first time, Sizhui thinks his father might be lying. “Do you think Bolin is lying?”
Sizhui and Jingyi both start at the sudden pivot. “Hanguang-jun?” they chorus, confused.
“Lan Bolin said I defended the Yiling Patriarch,” his father reminds them. “Do you believe I would defend someone without principles? Or do you believe Bolin is lying?”
The lesson he is trying to teach them strikes Sizhui like lightning, and it should come as no surprise when their punishment is copying the sect rules. Do not come to a conclusion without all of the facts. Even when it comes to a figure like the Yiling Patriarch, a man so vilified, Sizhui has heard his name invoked to make younger children behave.
His father, he recalls, never did that. Until this moment, he has never mentioned the Yiling Patriarch. At least, not by name or title.
“Hanguang-jun wouldn’t defend someone who had no principles,” Sizhui says, confident of his answer.
His father merely looks at him, as if to say, ‘are you certain?’
But he remembers that early lesson on impartiality, and how it doesn’t mean ‘do not love.’ Those words didn’t come to his father from the air. They are a hard won truth, a principle firmly believed. Could his father have loved the Yiling Patriarch, and seen him as he was?
“I’m sure, Hanguang-jun,” Sizhui says into his father’s expectant silence.
Jingyi nods sharply. “Yeah! Hanguang-jun would never defend someone without principles.”
His father doesn’t tell them if they’re right or wrong, which is typical of his lessons. He prefers to let them experience the consequences for themselves, even when they’re only just being allowed to accompany seniors on night hunts.
Instead, he turns and says, “Resume copying.”
When they finish for the day, Sizhui wanders into the rabbit patch. He lies down, letting the little puffballs jump all over him.
There are rules for everything. So many, that he often feels like he breaks several just by existing. But a part of him has always assumed that it would get easier. That by the time he becomes an adult, or barring that as an elder, the rules will be a part of him, and following them would be as easy as breathing.
But either his father befriended evil, or the seniors have been making judgments without all of the facts. They’ve certainly been gossiping for years. And if they were wrong in their judgments, their faults begin to pile up like Jingyi’s homework. Failure to stop, or even speak against the attacks on the Yiling Patriarch. Punishing Hanguang-jun for trying to rectify that failure. If true, the hypocrisy is staggering. Sizhui has never seen its equal.
Except, he doesn’t have all of the facts. He can’t rush to judgment without becoming a hypocrite too.
He wants to believe in his father. But he doesn’t know if that impulse would make his father happy or sad. A lifetime of evidence saying that his father is upright, just, and good might not matter. The key events happened in the time he lost to the fever.
He knows from the flute hidden in the floor that wanting something often isn’t enough.
“Is that A-Yuan?”
Zewu-jun’s even voice calls him back to the present, startling him into sitting up and scaring the rabbits. They scatter, leaving Sizhui alone with his smiling uncle.
“Zewu-jun,” Sizhui greets him, jumping to his feet for a hasty bow.
His uncle’s smile is as unreadable as the perfect blankness his father has mastered. “I see you still have energy left after handstands and copying.”
“Yes, Zewu-jun.”
His uncle studies his face for a long moment. “A-Yuan, will you tell me what happened today?”
As sect leader, he has the right to know. But if he was asking as the sect leader, he would have said “Sizhui,” not “A-Yuan.”
“Zewu-jun hasn’t heard it from Hanguang-jun?” But it's a pointless question, one he immediately regrets. His uncle wouldn’t be asking if his father had already explained.
His father and uncle are too similar, even if their approaches differ. A still pond and a frozen one are still both ponds that don’t move.
So he tells the story again, including the lesson with his father. His uncle listens without interrupting, but his smile is gone by the time Sizhui finishes.
“The Yiling Patriarch is a sensitive subject, both within the clan and beyond,” Zewu-jun says after another long moment. “It is no exaggeration to say he upended the cultivation world completely.”
But he doesn’t say, “he was evil and your father loved him anyway.”
“You must have learned about the spirit attracting flags in your talisman classes,” Zewu-jun continues. “I imagine their inventor wasn’t mentioned.”
“Isn’t the principle just reversing spirit repelling talismans?” Sizhui asks. Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to him until now that something like that would need an inventor.
His uncle nods. “It is, but until the Yiling Patriarch did it during the Sunshot Campaign, no one had thought to do it before. Yet now they are commonly used to minimize loss of life.”
He doesn’t think his uncle is defending the Yiling Patriarch. Not in the way his father was accused of doing. But he’s added nuance that's absent from their classes, which are apparently content to rewrite history for the comfort of those teaching it. That avoidance feels like it's against several of the rules.
“Why weren’t we taught that?” he asks, and his uncle looks almost embarrassed.
“As I said, the Yiling Patriarch is a sensitive subject. But…” Zewu-jun looks at Sizhui thoughtfully. “It goes against our principles to run from uncomfortable truths. Especially if those truths are causing discord amongst the disciples. I will speak to your instructors.”
The tone in which the Yiling Patriarch’s approved inventions are discussed the next time they come up in class suggests that their talismans teacher thinks even an idiot has one or two good ideas in his lifetime. But the more Sizhui learns, the more convinced he becomes that the Yiling Patriarch was far from that. An unconventional thinker, that’s certain. But not a fool.
It seems like an odd match for his quiet, reserved father. And if his father’s feelings were openly returned, he’s certain he would have heard about it. The forbidden gossip would be about their spotless Hanguang-jun being deflowered by the wicked Yiling Patriarch, instead of endlessly pining.
The first time he wishes he could have met this controversial figure, his heart aches in a way he can’t explain. It feels like trying to find something small in the rain as the ground turns to mud.
“Why does this matter so much?” Jingyi asks one day when he unburdens himself just a little. “He’s dead, and even Hanguang-jun is allowed to have bad taste, I guess.” But Jingyi wrinkles his nose, as if he doesn’t really want to believe it.
And his first reaction was, “You think Hanguang-jun was in love with the Yiling Patriarch?!” spoken loud enough that Sizhui is convinced half of Cloud Recesses could hear.
“Seniors have been whispering about the time Hanguang-jun shamed the sect for as long as I can remember, even though they know as well as we do that it’s wrong to gossip,” Sizhui explains. “Now it’s spreading to people our age, even though it must have been a long time ago. I want to have all of the facts before I decide who is in the right.”
“They’ll forget about it once Hanguang-jun takes us on a night hunt,” Jingyi reasons. “Our seniors a year or so above us only ever talk about how amazing Hanguang-jun is in battle. How he’s a model cultivator, and the older seniors are probably just jealous.”
Sizhui can’t help but think so much speculation is a sign that the entire sect needs to copy down all of the rules again. Slowly.
“It’s not about making them forget it,” he admits. “I just want to know who I can believe.” And whether the principles he’s grown up with are just a show put on for other sects.
Jingyi looks sympathetic, if still uncomfortable with the subject. “Can’t you just ask him about it?”
Sizhui lets his face say what he thinks of that suggestion, and Jingyi grimaces.
“No, I guess you can’t. And you can’t ask anyone else,” he muses, rubbing his chin. “You go to the Jingshi for guqin lessons, don’t you?”
“Yes…” Sizhui confirms hesitantly. When he was younger, he didn’t need an excuse like lessons to go to the Jingshi. He even lived there for a while. But as he matured he started worrying that other disciples would cry favoritism. Sensitive to his father’s reputation, he stopped wandering over whenever he felt like it.
“Then just go early one day and search the place,” Jingyi says as if the suggestion alone doesn’t break at least a dozen rules. “Maybe Hanguang-jun has a love letter, or some forbidden talismans.”
“I can’t do that!” Sizhui protests immediately. “It’s a massive violation of trust. And if I’m caught, it won’t end with copying the sect rules.” Not when he just finished his last punishment. Jingyi still had a long way to go.
“Do you have a better idea? Fretting about it isn’t going to answer any of your questions.”
Sizhui tries imagining whether his father’s sad face at being asked about his lost love or his disappointed face at Sizhui snooping would be worse. To an outsider, there isn’t much difference between these faces and his normal expression, but either would devastate Sizhui.
But all he has to do to avoid either face is not get caught, a voice that sounds like Jingyi urges him traitorously. He needs this information if he’s going to understand the sect, and what place he wants to take in it.
So he goes early to his guqin lesson when he knows that his father is in a meeting. He knocks on the door to the Jingshi just to confirm that it's empty before letting himself in.
The Jingshi is as immaculate as always when he enters, everything in its proper place. He’ll have to make sure to put everything back in exactly the same position. Much harder than searching the junior dorms, where an outer robe can disappear without much notice or any consternation.
He starts with the hidden compartment in the floor. The contents are unchanged from earlier in his childhood: a flute, a red ribbon, and several jars of liquor. He inspects the ribbon more carefully, but there’s no sign of a name or any special pattern so he puts it back. The flute has been carved with flowers, lotus blossoms he thinks, but it hasn’t been given a name.
Sizhui replaces the loose flooring with a sign and heads for the books. The majority are music scores, which he’d expected. There are also a few texts on experimental cultivation techniques based on the work of the Yiling Patriarch, which some rogue cultivators were attempting to continue. The first volume has a note from Sect Leader Nie on the inside, which explained how a book like that made it into Cloud Recesses.
The remaining books have false covers. One claims to be a report on water quality in Caiyi Town, but is actually a biography of the Yiling Patriarch. Like the experimental cultivation texts, it includes a note from Sect Leader Nie, saying he thought Hanguang-jun might prefer this one to some of the others circulating. Heart pounding, Sizhui stows the book in his sleeve.
The other books with disguised covers are his punishment for snooping through his father’s things. Every one of them is a book of cut sleeve pornography. One book even shows a number of creative uses for the Gusu Lan forehead ribbon, which Sizhui suspects will haunt his dreams for some time.
There is something almost nostalgic about finding disguised pornography, but he can’t say why. It certainly isn’t anything he expected his father to do. Even if his father continues to mourn his lost love, it is more comfortable to think of him like the Cold Spring, quenching all fires. Sizhui is barely comfortable with the idea of having those kinds of feelings himself.
It is this book, open to the image of a laughing man with his hands bound being… pleasured by a serious-faced Lan disciple, that his father walks in to him reading. Sizhui freezes, staring up at his father in silent mortification. His father’s gaze flicks first to the book, then to Sizhui’s dawning horror, to both of his hands. As if to confirm- No. He refuses to finish that thought.
“Borrow it if you like,” his father says, a sentence so embarrassing, Sizhui considers drowning himself in the Cold Spring. This is so much worse than being called shameless or being accused of forgetting the rule about lechery. “There are instructional texts in the library. Have your classes…”
His father pauses, and Sizhui realizes he’s stiffer than usual. As if equally at a loss in this situation, but trying to push through. He owes him at least the same.
“A little,” Sizhui says, answering the question he didn’t finish. He bows low to hide his very red face. “I’m sorry to have intruded.” Which is significantly understating the case, but the alternative is confessing, which he is not prepared to do. But somehow the book makes it into his sleeve and leaves the Jingshi with him after the lesson.
The knowledge that he’s carrying HIS FATHER’S PORN IN HIS SLEEVE feels like sticking his hand in an open flame. This is a just punishment for his crimes, one that ensures he will not make the same mistake again.
“I can’t believe you really did it,” Jingyi admits when he reports the results of his snooping. “No, wait. What I can’t believe is that Hanguang-jun hides porn in his room too. Can I see it?”
“No you can’t see it! I don’t even want to see it,” Sizhui insists. Though there’s something oddly appealing about some of the pictures . “I’m going to hold onto it for a few days and then sneak it back into the Jingshi with the biography.”
“Boring,” Jingyi pouts. “But now we know Hanguang-jun was probably in love with a man, at least.”
But at what cost? He knows his father won’t have been satisfied with that conversation. Which means he probably plans to enlist help. For something like this, that means Zewu-jun. Sizhui can think of few people he’d like to discuss his changing body with less than the sect leader. Not least because Zewu-jun has probably never lied to anyone in his life, which makes the idea of lying to him deeply uncomfortable.
It should be uncomfortable. It's against the rules for a reason.
So he makes a point of going to the library when other disciples are guaranteed to be there. He ensures he is seen borrowing the instructional texts his father mentioned, even if it makes him want to drop dead. And he hides the biography of the Yiling Patriarch inside them, ensuring that the other disciples give him a wide, embarrassed berth.
It’s all completely shameless, and the looks he gets say as much. But he can’t afford to be caught with the book he’s really reading, so he resigns himself to developing a thicker face.
His gambit fails to ward off Zewu-jun when he returns from a visit to Carp Tower. His uncle finds him doing homework with Jingyi, which is at least better than being caught reading any of the books hiding in his sleeves.
“Sizhui, Jingyi,” Zewu-jun greets them.
“Zewu-jun,” they both return, standing to bow. Sizhui’s heart seems to have moved into his throat.
“Sizhui, may I have a moment?” As always, his uncle’s smile gives nothing away.
Sizhui tries to match that smile as he says, “Of course, Zewu-jun.” But he’s already mentally cataloguing the ways he can get out of this conversation, sorting them by how long-lasting the embarrassment is likely to be. He follows his uncle to the rabbit patch in silence.
“A-Yuan,” Zewu-jun begins, breaking the silence. “I hope you know that you can come to your father and I if you have any questions.”
‘You don’t have to sneak around’ remains unspoken, but Sizhui isn’t sure he believes it. He remembers his father’s frozen expression. Remembers that “do not lech” is one of the first rules, and the seniors all have different standards for what constitutes lechery. For all that Gusu Lan is built around a blood-related clan, it feels somewhat miraculous that anyone marries or has children.
Maybe they’re all adopted, not just him.
So Sizhui settles for the closest he can come to the truth. “I think Cloud Recesses is not an easy place to talk about this.”
His uncle’s expression softens. “Yes, I think you may be right. Perhaps if it had been otherwise…” But he shakes his head, and doesn’t finish the thought.
Sizhui escapes after a few pleasantries about his uncle’s visit to Carp Tower, without any new sources of humiliation. If he’d followed the advice of the Jingyi in his head, his escape strategy would have involved the pornography book. Probably he would never look his uncle in the face again after something like that.
With the looming threat of Zewu-jun removed, Sizhui studies the biography with renewed fervor. It’s patchy, relying on the accounts of many different people. But even then the anonymous writer notes that some of the more useful witnesses, like the Wen Clan remnants, or Jiang Yanli, were dead. Others, like Sect Leader Jiang, simply refused to help.
The picture painted of the Yiling Patriarch's time at Lotus Pier without any information from his siblings was incomplete then, but suggested someone bright, unconventional and fiercely loyal. Until apparently after the destruction of Lotus Pier, he suddenly wasn’t. Reappearing during the Sunshot Campaign after three months missing, much changed. The author notes that he refused to speak of those lost months, but a handwritten note corrects it.
“He was thrown into the Burial Mounds,” the note reads. “But he refused to say so until he took the Wen remnants there to live.”
Sizhui has heard it grudgingly mentioned before that the Yiling Patriarch slew the Xuanwu of Slaughter, but this section of the book is sparse. A handwritten note in a different hand from the other note asks, “Can you give any details?”
The response is in what he now recognizes as his father's hand, saying, “Wei Ying lured it out of its shell. I strangled it.” Which is so light on detail his father could have dictated it and he still would have recognized it.
Wei Ying? Sizhui’s head spins as the words register. He’s heard people use the Yiling Patriarch’s birth name before, in snide, disrespectful tones. But his father isn’t like that. Sizhui’s birth name is the only one he’s ever heard his father use. This feels like confirmation.
But if his father is making notes to add to the book, he’s going to notice that it’s missing, Sizhui realizes. He’ll want to finish and send it back to Sect Leader Nie. He’s probably already noticed its absence.
Sizhui wrestles with it, but if he’s going to get caught, he should finish the book first. For the sake of getting a complete picture.
He feels an unmistakable twinge when he reads about the Wen remnants moving to the Burial Mounds, and how that ultimately ended. The author makes a point of there being mainly the elderly, or non cultivators, from a clan branch known for being doctors. Sizhui cannot imagine the justifications used to kill such people. He cannot understand why only the Yiling Patriarch was willing to protect them, at the cost of exile from his sect, and later death.
Sizhui has never seen war. He knows now that he doesn’t want to.
But that fact is significant, and stays with him: he wasn’t there. It’s possible that his sect’s decision to stand by and allow this to happen couldn’t be helped. Cloud Recesses had been burned down by the Qishan Wen sect. Lives must have been lost then, and during the Sunshot Campaign. Even the best among them must have had higher priorities at that time than protecting the remnants of their enemy, even if those remnants hadn’t been involved. And being protected by a practitioner of demonic cultivation would not have endeared them to Gusu Lan.
Sizhui finishes the book, and doesn’t know what to think. He feels as though he still doesn’t know enough to decide who was right, who was wrong, and who was merely human. Maybe now, with so many concerned parties dead, it’s impossible to know. And if that means he can never really judge? He’s oddly at peace with that.
There is no denying who his father mourns, though.
“He was farming and raising a child,” his father wrote in one section. “He ate little so that the child wouldn’t go hungry.”
“He owed the Wen remnants a debt,” he wrote somewhere else. “For rescuing Jiang Wanyin during the occupation of Lotus Pier, and sheltering them as he healed.”
There is love in these little statements of fact. But there is no sign in the text that this love was returned. It breaks Sizhui’s heart to think of someone not loving his father, especially when that devotion hasn’t left him.
But there’s nothing he can do except go to the Jingshi, return the books and accept his punishment for the myriad of rules he’d broken.
He hears the flowing notes of the guqin before he sees the Jingshi, the song familiar but not one he’s learned the name of. Sizhui thinks he’s only heard it like this, while approaching. Never inside.
The song ceases the instant he knocks, his father appearing a moment later. He’s removed the silver ornaments from his hair, and shed his outermost layer. He is as relaxed as he gets, and Sizhui regrets disturbing him like this. It would be easier to face a fully armored Hanguang-jun.
Sizhui bows lower than he normally would in private. “Sizhui has come to return books to Hanguang-jun,” he says formally.
His father’s face betrays not a flicker of surprise. He simply nods and lets Sizhui in. He says nothing, settling himself on one side of the table with a graceful flick of his robes that Sizhui envies. At the moment, sitting without falling over feels like the best he can do.
Sizhui removes the books from his sleeve, placing them on the table between them with the disguised biography on top. Then he bows again, which is perhaps cowardice. He cannot see his father’s face like this.
“Sizhui submits himself for punishment.” No explanation. No justifications. He’d known it was wrong when he’d done it, and did it anyway. He doesn’t dare look up.
The silence is long and uncomfortable, but Sizhui does not sit up. He has not earned the comfort of certainty, of knowing any hint of his fate if his father doesn’t choose to give it. This too is his punishment.
“A-Yuan.” His father’s voice betrays no anger. It betrays nothing at all. “What did you think of it?”
Sizhui looks up, startled. “Hanguang-jun?”
His father taps the biography with one finger. “What did you think of it?” he repeats, eyebrows slightly raised.
“It was incomplete,” Sizhui says after a moment. “And may never be otherwise.”
His father nods in acknowledgement. “And your conclusion?”
Sizhui shakes his head. “I can’t make one. Or I won’t. I don’t want to judge without all of the information, and if that’s impossible, better not to judge at all.”
He expects disappointment. After all, the evidence suggests that Wei Wuxian, the Yiling Patriarch, is the man his father is in love with, and Sizhui can’t yet find him innocent of the charges leveled against him. Can’t find his own father innocent in the choices he made years ago.
But his father’s smile is radiant by his standards. As if despite the snooping and theft, Sizhui has made him proud. It’s so much more than what he deserves.
“Is that the principle A-Yuan has taken most to heart?”
“Yes,” Sizhui says with a nod. “That, and not to speak of others behind their backs.” Even if it takes him his whole life just to master these two concepts and fails the others, it will be worth it.
“Mark those words, and hold firm to them,” his father says, still smiling.
Sizhui vows that he will.