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1.
Jiang Cheng, Sandu Shengshou and the sole remaining member of the Jiang clan, is supposed to be rebuilding his sect. There are blueprints to look over, contractors to make backroom deals with in order to get all the defenses built properly, suppliers to contact, and a whole host of other problems that he needs to look over. Like the matter of disciples. Very few seniors survived the massacre at Lotus Pier, and most of them were inexperienced enough that the Wens hadn’t thought to thoroughly ensure they died from the wounds they received. Just the thought of how few people remained after his home burned down makes him clench his fingers around his chopsticks.
Because, of course, he is not looking over blueprints or making backroom deals with contractors. He’s not even out scouting for disciples. Instead, he’s sitting in the informal dining room he’d had hastily built, knelt at a low table with some rogue cultivator brought in with the tide.
The rogue cultivator, if he could even call him that, is tall and well-built. He has dark hair and bright eyes but no true identifying features to speak of—besides oddly prominent canines. However, if Jiang Cheng is being honest, there’s something distinctly catlike about the tilt of his eyes and the edges in his smile. Like he’s accidentally let a feral cat into his home.
“What did you say your name was again?” says Jiang Cheng, picking at his rice. He isn’t really hungry, but he did invite the cultivator in with an offer of food. An offer the cultivator hadn’t been supposed to take, but what’s done is done.
“Xue Yang, courtesy name Chengmei,” says the cultivator. He smiles like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. It’s a very pretty courtesy name, Jiang Cheng supposes, but the effect is ruined by his eyes in the low light—they seem almost luminous, like the eyes of a cat in the night time. Jiang Cheng briefly considers that he’s playing host to a cat demon and that he’ll wake up to all his pillows slashed. Or worse.
Xue Yang continues speaking as he settles in his seat, still smiling. “Thank you for the dinner invitation, Sect Leader Jiang.”
Jiang Cheng makes a rudely noncommittal noise and puts rice in his mouth to occupy it. He’s not particularly interested in playing host to a rogue cultivator, cat demon or otherwise, and so he commits himself to doing the bare minimum. With a harsh sort of feeling, he thinks that his sister would be disappointed in him.
He shoves the thought away.
The rice is bland, he thinks, which only depresses him. He puts more rice in his mouth, thinking it’ll make him reconsider. Instead, he only becomes more sure of it.
“I heard rumors that the Yunmeng Jiang Sect was rebuilding,” says Xue Yang then, and Jiang Cheng is forced to confront the notion that he may need to make conversation with his dinner guest.
“We are,” he says. He regrets swallowing the rice so quickly. If he’d chewed for longer, then he wouldn’t have had to enter a conversation this full of minefields.
“Then I thank you, for taking time out of your busy schedule to offer me a meal,” says Xue Yang, those luminous cat’s eyes flashing in the light of the lamps. He looks distinctly menacing when the shadows flicker briefly over his face. But Jiang Cheng doesn’t think much of it. There are much, much scarier creatures in the world than a cultivator who might be a cat demon in disguise, and Jiang Cheng has already faced them.
“You’re welcome,” says Jiang Cheng. He tries his soup, and then realizes that it’s bland too. Bland rice, bland soup, and a cultivator trying to make conversation with him. The situation is horrifying and he wishes that he’d turned him away.
He knows, logically, that there is no universe where he turned the man away. Xue Yang had floated into Lotus Pier on the tide, somehow not dead despite numerous wounds and injuries. Even now, bandages poke out of the collar of the cultivator’s robes, a bright white against the dark colors he dresses himself in.
A-jie would have his head for ignoring someone in need, even if he had other things to be doing, and Jiang Cheng plans to go to the afterlife with a clear conscience.
Even though, of course, that requires exacting revenge on his brother for the numerous injustices he suffered for Wei Wuxian’s terrible decisions—but one thing at a time.
The two of them eat in silence for several long minutes. Jiang Cheng thinks it’s been at least five or six incense sticks since Xue Yang had brought up the rebuilding of Lotus Cove, and he hopes that he won’t bring it up again. But the universe clearly hates him.
“Do you need any extra hands?” asks Xue Yang. “For the rebuilding effort, and all.”
Jiang Cheng eyes him warily. The answer, of course, is a resounding yes. He is always shorthanded nowadays, and having another cultivator on hand—even if it’s just to supervise the disciples and make sure none of them accidentally qi deviate or something else ridiculous—would be a great help. But he doesn’t say so, and he doesn’t let the desperation show on his face.
“Why do you ask?” he replies.
Xue Yang smiles at him again, and his canines flash in the lamplight. “I simply want to repay your kindness, Sect Leader Jiang.”
Jiang Cheng considers this. It sounds like a genuine offer, and it’s not as if the cultivator seems to have other places he needs to be. But he needs one question answered before he can let him into his sect, desperation or otherwise, and so he puts his chopsticks down to concentrate fully on Xue Yang.
“Answer one question for me,” he says, and Xue Yang tilts his head with a questioning, placid expression.
“Who injured you so badly that you were floating down the river?”
Xue Yang’s smile, of all things, edges into something like delight. “One of Jin Guangyao’s lackeys,” he tells him, utterly nonplussed, and Jiang Cheng straightens in shock. Because he knows who Xue Yang is, now, and he knows that he is supposed to be dead.
“Jin Guangyao said he killed you,” says Jiang Cheng, standing in a single fluid motion. He doesn’t unsheathe Sandu, not yet, and he keeps Zidian in its ring form. But he’s ready to bring them both out at a moment’s notice.
Xue Yang spreads his hands in a dramatic sort of gesture. “As you can see, he decided not to,” Xue Yang tells him. “And I won’t attack you, Sect Leader Jiang. I wouldn’t attack someone who took me in so kindly.”
His fangs flash again in the light, and Jiang Cheng is reminded less of a feral cat and more of a snake. “Not unless they gave me an excuse.”
Jiang Cheng lets the words slide, but he doesn’t take his hand off of the grip of his sword. “Why are you here?” he says, accusatorily.
Xue Yang shrugs. “His lackeys beat me half to death, I stumbled my way into the river, and now I’m here. I was only half-conscious when one of your maids found me and screamed for help, but I assume someone carried me into Lotus Pier and dressed my wounds—which I’m grateful for—but if you want me to leave, I’d understand.” He puts his chopsticks down. “I’m a political ticking time bomb, you see. It can’t get out that I’m alive and decidedly un-executed. Although...the Yunmeng Jiang Sect seems fond of political ticking time bombs, wouldn’t you agree, Sect Leader Jiang?”
Jiang Cheng’s hand clenches around Sandu’s handle, but he wills himself not to unsheathe it. “You’re not making a good case for yourself,” he bites out.
Xue Yang shrugs again and leans back on his hands. It’s the most brazen, unconcerned display of either arrogance or an utter disregard for his own safety that Jiang Cheng has ever seen since—
He grits his teeth.
“You should be in possession of all the facts if I’m to help out at Lotus Pier,” says Xue Yang insouciantly. “Kick me out or try to kill me, though, I won’t blame you.”
“Try to?” says Jiang Cheng, and finally lets the full length of Zidian uncurl in his hand. It sparks bright purple lightning, loud and threatening in the small room, but Xue Yang’s gaze doesn’t waver.
“I won’t just lie down and let you execute me,” he replies, and has the gall to chuckle. “I’ll at least make it difficult.”
Jiang Cheng says nothing.
Xue Yang’s light eyes curl into little crescent moons in a mockery of a smile. “So, what’ll it be, Sect Leader Jiang?”
The two of them stare at each other for a long, tense moment. Jiang Cheng is busy running through scenarios in his mind, weighing pros and cons, andwatching as Xue Yang doesn’t even flinch. He hasn’t even gone for his sword. Jiang Cheng can see it clearly, strapped to the man’s hip—it has a black handle and guard with characters inscribed into the wood. But at this distance, he can’t quite read them.
It’s clear to Jiang Cheng that Xue Yang won’t move until he does. So he sheathes Zidian, letting the room fill with warm yellow light instead of the harsh, violent purple of his mother’s weapon, and sits back down. He makes a disagreeable noise. “Fine, you can help out,” he says.
He’s not actually sure why he’s letting Xue Yang stay. By all rights, he should execute the man on the spot—kick him out, at the very least. If he was feeling particularly devious, he should leverage Xue Yang’s current state of very much not dead in order to put pressure on the Lanling Jin sect. His nephew’s sect or no, it would be the smartest thing to do. The Sect Leader thing to do.
Instead, Jiang Cheng makes the conscious choice to let a feral cat into his home, and he doesn’t particularly understand why. He justifies it with the thought that Xue Yang is a very talented cultivator, if a bit of a wild card with a propensity for causing havoc. And the best thing to do, he thinks, is to have a wild card like that on his side. His sect is still new and he faces enemies on all sides.
And as the rogue cultivator so graciously pointed out, the Jiang Clan has a history of taking in wild cards.
Xue Yang’s delighted little grin spreads a little bit further across his face. “Many thanks, Sect Leader Jiang,” he murmurs, ducking his head. “I’ll be sure not to disappoint.”
2.
The next time he sees Xue Yang, the man is poking at the defense arrays that are being set up around Lotus Pier. Jiang Cheng had made sure to hire the most talented experts in defensive measures, paying them out of pocket and in secret, and he’d taken the extra step of looking over them himself. He’d sworn to himself that he would never have to stand in his home and watch the shields fail, not for a second time, even if it meant overall reconstruction would be delayed.
“You’ve got an exploit here,” says Xue Yang, not even turning around at the sound of Jiang Cheng approaching.
He hurries over. “There’s a what?” he asks sharply, and Xue Yang taps part of the array with a pale finger.
“Right here,” he says, and traces a few characters with the tip of his finger. “I can tell you sacrificed some casting time for shield strength, but whoever designed this didn’t account for the change. If someone were to attack while the defenses were being raised, and they timed it exactly right, they could break through and shatter the whole thing before the shield was up.
Jiang Cheng relaxes. “I was aware of that,” he says, though it’s an uncomfortable thought. And even more uncomfortable that Xue Yang could tell after studying merely one of the anchor points of the array.
Xue Yang frowns at him. “That’s careless of you, Sect Leader Jiang. Why didn’t you patch it?”
Jiang Cheng stiffens at the slight. “The contractors I hired didn’t know how,” he snaps, “so watch your tone.”
Xue Yang’s eyes widen. “Ah. I thought you left it on purpose.” He pointedly doesn’t apologize, instead peering at the array with a contemplative expression. “I can fix it, I think,” he says slowly.
“Can you?” sneers Jiang Cheng, because he’d gotten some of the best contractors money could buy to build this array. He sincerely doubted that a rogue cultivator, even one as talented in slaughter as Xue Yang, could fix something that several experts had looked over and shaken their heads at.
Xue Yang shrugs, which Jiang Cheng suspects is a habit of his. “I’ve broken through arrays like these,” he muses. “It can’t be too hard to construct one.”
Jiang Cheng is determined not to react to the reminder that the man in front of him, half-beaten to death by the Jin Sect and still recovering, had massacred an entire clan. The massacre of the Yueyang Chang Clan, despite Xue Yang having been found innocent in the end, weighs heavily on his mind. And with demonic cultivation, too.
That, more than anything, should have been enough to expel Xue Yang from Lotus Cove. Jiang Cheng still doesn’t know what stays his hand.
“If you figure it out, show it to me first,” he says, rather than ruminating on his terrible life choices. Xue Yang makes a vague, assenting noise, like he isn’t quite paying attention to anything but the array. It’s a familiar enough sight that something in Jiang Cheng’s chest clenches painfully, and he walks away without another word. Surely it’ll take a few days for him to bash his head against the arrays and then admit defeat. Even if he does figure something out, it’ll be a while. Jiang Cheng is sure of it.
Xue Yang wakes him up in the middle of the night and Jiang Cheng regrets everything.
“What the hell,” Jiang Cheng hisses, opening his door to see Xue Yang standing there with a pile of paper in his arms and a devious, delighted grin. He’s wearing light sleeping robes and his hair falls down around his face, so he must look truly disheveled. But Jiang Cheng doesn’t care very much. No, he’s entirely too focused on hanging Xue Yang out to dry for waking him up this early, somehow bypassing all the maids and guards on the way—not that there are many up, but he digresses.
“There had better be a good reason—”
“I figured it out,” says Xue Yang, sounding slightly deranged. He has dark ink streaked across the bridge of his nose and his hair is falling out of his ponytail in wisps. “The array. It’s a little complicated and you’ll have to redraw almost all of it, but you can keep the shield strength as it is, speed up the casting time somewhat, and fix the exploit.”
Jiang Cheng stops the tirade he never properly got the chance to begin and stares at him. “What’s the catch?” he asks suspiciously, because if he’s been taught anything about the cultivation world, there is always a catch.
Sure enough, Xue Yang’s delighted grin dims a little. “You balance the energy cost with resentful energy,” he admits, and Jiang Cheng nearly gives into the urge to kick the man into the opposite wall.
“Out of the question,” he barks, and slams the door shut in Xue Yang’s face.
But even as he ignores the other man’s persistent knocking in order to throw himself back into his bed and under the covers, the thought of the fixed array sticks in his mind. Wouldn’t it be worth it, in order to protect Lotus Pier? In order to make sure nobody can touch his home again? Much less burn it to the ground and slaughter everyone inside. A rock-solid defensive array would mean all of that and more. Protection during natural disasters, a way of flexing the rebuilt Yunmeng Jiang Sect’s might…
Jiang Cheng tosses and turns, sinking into a feverish sort of half-sleep, before the morning sun comes streaming through the window.
When he leaves his room for breakfast, in a worse temper than usual and ready to brutally murder anyone who gets in his way, Xue Yang decides to offer himself up as a sacrifice. He steps out in the hallway, substantially less feral-looking with the ink smudges wiped off of his face and his hair back in a respectable ponytail, and bows slightly to Jiang Cheng. “Sect Leader Jiang,” he greets politely, and Jiang Cheng just stops himself from unsheathing Zidian.
It’s too early for flaying annoying rogue cultivators alive, he reminds himself.
“What,” he snaps. He doesn’t stop walking. Maybe if he walks fast enough, Xue Yang will get tired and leave him alone.
“It was the resentful energy that’s the issue, right?” Xue Yang asks, and, heavens above, Zidian really does have Xue Yang’s name on it today.
“What gave you that impression?” Jiang Cheng shoots back. He’s busy thinking of how he has so many things to do today. Checking over the reconstruction efforts, organizing a trip to town...and there’s a meeting he can’t miss with a neighboring clan that wants to either swear fealty or feel out the competition that afternoon, so he wants to kill something in the meantime. To let off steam, and all that, before he has to make nice with stuffy rich people who kept their heads down during the Sunshot Campaign and while his clan was slaughtered.
Xue Yang ignores the jab, like someone with deplorably functional self-preservation skills. “It really would fix your array problems,” he says instead.
“I’m not using demonic cultivation to protect Lotus Pier,” Jiang Cheng snaps at him. “I’ve done that a grand total of once. I’m not trying it again.”
Xue Yang looks at him sidelong, and there’s a glint in his pale eyes that Jiang Cheng decidedly does not like.
“I didn’t know Sect Leader Jiang of the Three Poisons was scared of demonic cultivation,” he murmurs.
Jiang Cheng really does fling him into a wall then, if softly.
The man makes a startled oof noise but doesn’t quite yell, which would be admirable in any other context. Jiang Cheng has Zidian in its active form already in his hand, and he glares at Xue Yang with all the hatred that bubbles up inside him. “Do not accuse me of things you don’t understand,” he hisses, and strides away without a second thought.
3.
Xue Yang, Jiang Cheng thinks, is a menace.
“What the hell are you doing?” he snaps, striding into the disciple training grounds with Sandu floating at his side. Jiang Cheng has no patience for the rogue cultivator’s antics today. He needs to make sure that the junior disciples have enough wits between them to go on a night hunt hosted by the Lanling Jin sect as a show of strength, and he can’t do that if Xue Yang has decided to distract them.
Xue Yang looks up from where he’s been drawing in the dirt, explaining characters and diagramming out what looks like various arrays, all to an audience of impressionable juniors. “They were wondering what I was doing,” Xue Yang says, his tone innocent.
“Which is?” Jiang Cheng asks bitingly.
Xue Yang shrugs and leans back on his hands in the dirt. “I’m trying to fix the array without resorting to demonic cultivation,” he says, nonchalant and apathetic. “It’s proven to be quite the challenge.”
Jiang Cheng, brought up short by the admission, scowls at him. He tries not to think about how familiar the sight is—a cultivator in dark robes and a ponytail, drawing complex arrays in the dust of the Lotus Pier training grounds and explaining them to excited disciples. It makes something in him ache.
So he compensates as he always does, bringing Sandu to a threatening position at his right shoulder. “So you’re distracting my disciples,” he says.
Xue Yang blinks once. “You could say that.”
The arrogance.
Jiang Cheng suddenly has a horrible idea, and he smiles at Xue Yang, sharp and inviting. “How about we distract them with something constructive?” he asks, and to his credit, the other cultivator understands immediately. He rises from the ground in a single fluid motion and puts his hand on the grip of the sword that always hangs from his hip.
“I’d be honored to spar with you, Sect Leader Jiang,” he demurs, and there’s such sarcasm and anticipation hidden in his words that Jiang Cheng knows that Xue Yang sees the offer for what it is. An opportunity to feel him out, test if he’s worthy of helping to train the Yunmeng Jiang Sect’s disciples. A test of trust. How would Xue Yang fight him, Jiang Cheng wonders? Though he supposes he’ll have his answer before long.
The disciples clear the training ground quickly, lining up behind the flimsy guardrails in order to watch. They’re disciplined, Jiang Cheng thinks with some pride. He keeps Zidian sheathed for now, and walks to the center of the ring with careful, deliberate steps.
“Standard sparring rules?” Xue Yang asks, mirroring him, and Jiang Cheng nods.
“You’ve never said the name of your sword,” he says, and brings Sandu to bear. Xue Yang affects an expression of surprise, though he can tell from the tilt to his smile that he’s anything but surprised.
“Haven’t I?” he asks, and unsheathes it in a single motion.
Jiang Cheng sucks in a breath. It’s devastatingly beautiful for a sword, so dark that it seems to devour the sunlight and wickedly sharp. The jagged, unorthodox edge is just as its user must be—brutal and uncompromising. It has an aura about it, too—something grim, carrying the promise of destruction.
“Jiangzai,” says Xue Yang, rolling the word in his mouth obscenely. “To bring down disaster.”
And with that declaration, the fight is on.
Jiang Cheng notices one thing first about Xue Yang’s style—he fights savagely, like a cornered animal, even during a practice spar. Jiangzai aims for the most disabling targets: the tendons at his ankles, his eyes, his hamstrings. Xue Yang, barred from fighting to kill by the very premise of a practice spar, instead fights to grievously maim.
Jiang Cheng hasn’t had this much fun in years.
He has to dodge Xue Yang’s strikes because, despite their brutality, they’re not wild or uncontrolled. They’re aimed precisely and with nearly too much force behind the blows, and so Jiang Cheng is kept on the tip of his toes, weaving through the barrage of attacks with a careful hand. He bats away the ones that come too close to injuring him but dodges the rest.
Xue Yang looks like he’s enjoying himself too. He has a distinctly amused cant to his mouth, all teeth and savage delight. He whirls and ducks around Jiang Cheng’s answering parries and attacks, rarely blocking them full-on with Jiangzai, and counters with a faster sequence or a sneakier maneuver.
Fighting Xue Yang, Jiang Cheng realizes, must be a lot like fighting him.
Xue Yang’s style is uncompromising. He takes whatever weakness Jiang Cheng shows him and exploits it with ruthless efficiency—even the slightest overbalance or a split second of wandering eyes, and Jiang Cheng has to dodge a secondary attack at some strange angle. It feels like a dangerous tightrope dance.
And through it all, Xue Yang is grinning. His prominent canines flash in the sunlight in the way his sword would if it wasn’t somehow dyed a deep black, and his eyes are fever-bright.
Then the preliminary show of feeling each other out is over, if there was one to begin with, and Jiang Cheng begins to press the offensive in earnest. Through some unspoken agreement, he hasn’t taken out Zidian and Xue Yang hasn’t pulled out whatever demonic cultivation tricks he surely has up his sleeves. The only noise in the area is the sound of their boots scuffing against the ground and the clang of Sandu on Jiangzai, Jiangzai on Sandu, with the occasional murmur from the juniors.
Jiang Cheng makes a split-second decision, one he might regret later, but grabs Sandu from the air to charge in himself. He wants to get up close and personal on this one.
Xue Yang’s pale eyes widen in something like surprise and maybe a bit like respect, and then he summons Jiangzai into his own hand with a motion. In his grasp, the sword seems all the more ominous and deadly—a blade sucking in the sunlight like a tear in the world.
Jiang Cheng lunges forward. His goal is to skim the side of Xue Yang’s torso as a warning shot, but he finds his sword blocked with one of the scooping cut outs in Jiangzai’s unconventional edge. Xue Yang twists, leveraging the catch and grind of Sandu on Jiangzai to press closer to Jiang Cheng. Their swords are locked together at their sides, and Jiang Cheng gets a close-up look at the manic, delighted expression on Xue Yang’s face before he pushes off to disengage.
His eyes, Jiang Cheng thinks. He’d thought they were a particularly light shade of brown. But he’d been wrong—Xue Yang has pale grey eyes like the lake on an overcast day, with surprisingly long lashes for a man.
He shakes the thought out of his head. Combat is not the time, and Xue Yang is already barrelling towards him. He blocks the rogue cultivator’s lazy sideswipe with barely a thought, but then Xue Yang kicks into the air and into a flip, sending Jiangzai rocketing out of his hand. The blade nearly crashes into his shoulder. As it is, Jiang Cheng barely gets Sandu up in time to block, deflecting the other sword to the right. It zips back into Xue Yang’s hand and he’s lunging for him again.
Jiang Cheng, unexpectedly finding himself on the back foot, decides it’s high time to retaliate. Instead of blocking or dodging, he uses a particular flourish he learned from a spar with Jin Zixuan. The Jin Sect, after all, has never been afraid to fight dirty.
He drives his sword down. Sandu’s edge shrieks as it scrapes up against Jiangzai’s, but Jiang Cheng keeps pushing until he has Xue Yang’s crossguard locked with his own. His eyes widen.
Jiang Cheng grins.
He brings his knee up to crack against Xue Yang’s chin, then he plants his boot in his abdomen and shoves him back with a kick, sending him skidding backwards and half-tripping into the dirt. But he doesn’t go on the offensive and press his advantage, not yet. He wants to see what Xue Yang will do.
Xue Yang steadies himself, bringing his free hand to his torso, and lifts his head. He looks half-deranged—and there’s a violent gleam in his eyes that Jiang Cheng should not like, but when has Jiang Cheng’s mind ever been reasonable? All the bastard sons of Jin Guangshan and their miserable wives, he’s in deep water and he’s only just thought to swim.
“Learn that one from the Jin sect?” Xue Yang says, bringing his hand up to swipe at his jaw.
“I’ve sparred with a few of their cultivators,” says Jiang Cheng, not quite an admission but still an acknowledgement.
Xue Yang’s expression comes alive with that twitching, manic energy that Jiang Cheng had seen the night he’d been woken up for his demonic arrays. “Brilliant,” he breathes, and blurs into motion before Jiang Cheng can question it. He’s coming at him again from the front, bring Jiangzai up into a vicious uppercut that Jiang Cheng blocks with Sandu. But Xue Yang doesn’t commit to the blow, switching grips and somehow twisting too fast for Jiang Cheng to catch. The aborted uppercut twists into another lunge, one Jiang Cheng makes to dodge, but Xue Yang catches himself again before he can overcommit.
Suddenly, their faces are close enough together that Jiang Cheng can see a tiny scar at the edge of Xue Yang’s lip, because he’s somehow gotten his hand on Jiang Cheng’s shoulder and kicked upward into a flip behind him.
Jiang Cheng whirls into a defensive stance because if he were Xue Yang, he would have taken that opportunity to go on the offensive. But Xue Yang isn’t lunging towards his unprotected back. Instead, he has his sword in a default stance, ready to engage again but giving him time to turn around.
Xue Yang smirks. “Recognize it?” he asks, and Jiang Cheng finds that he does.
“Jin Guangyao pulled that once, in an exhibition match,” he says, a little wondering and a little impressed. “It works differently when your sword can’t change angles by bending, I see.”
Xue Yang shrugs at him. “His style is too tricky for me to copy properly,” he says dismissively. “All feints and layers of deception. It gets boring.”
And then on some unseen signal, they meet in the middle. The clash of Sandu against Jiangzai echoes throughout the training grounds and Jiang Cheng’s view is, unexpectedly, filled with Xue Yang smiling like he’s never had more fun in his life.
It feels a bit like being stabbed by Jiangzai, and having all the scalloped edges catch on his flesh on the way out—but Jiang Cheng has bigger problems. Like how to end this spar without looking completely idiotic in front of the juniors or actually wounding Xue Yang. That’s what surprises him, really, as he clashes blades with Xue Yang and disengages, clashes blades and disengages, dodges a sweep to the legs and ducks under an overhead swing—that the rogue cultivator, despite his slight build and recent injuries, fights on par with many of those he fought alongside during the Sunshot campaign. He could probably go toe-to-toe with Hanguang-Jun himself and survive it.
But Xue Yang, after another failed attempt at getting past Jiang Cheng’s guard, fixes his problem for him.
“I forfeit,” he says, sheathing Jiangzai, and Jiang Cheng tries not to let the relief on his face show.
They bow to each other after he sheathes Sandu. Then Xue Yang glances at the floor of the arena and frowns. “I rubbed out my array,” he says, somewhat crossly, and Jiang Cheng laughs at him.
“What did you think would happen?” he asks. Xue Yang frowns at him, his expression put out.
“I didn’t think, obviously. Sect Leader Jiang.” He adds the title almost as an afterthought, which gives Jiang Cheng a terrible idea.
He doesn’t know quite what comes over him when he walks over. “Jiang Wanyin,” he says brusquely. “You might as well use it, if you’re going to be helping to train my disciples and fix the defenses around my sect.” Then he glares, only a little seriously. “And consume half your body weight in sugar from the pantries.”
Xue Yang’s expression perks up immediately, and he gets a strange sort of delighted look in his eyes. “Jiang Wanyin,” he says, like he’s feeling the name out with his tongue.
“Don’t get too excited,” he snaps, and strides out of the training grounds without a second thought.
4.
“What are you doing?” Jiang Cheng asks flatly.
Xue Yang looks up from the stove to shoot Jiang Cheng an unrepentant grin. “Making tanghulu,” he says, as if that explains anything, and turns back to stir his pot. He’s wearing his usual dark robes with his hair thrown up into a messy ponytail, something that makes Jiang Cheng twitch slightly. He’s going to get hair in the syrup.
“Why?”
Xue Yang blows his bangs out of his face and continues to stir. “I like sweet things,” he says, then peers at Jiang Cheng. “Why, do you want some?”
Jiang Cheng opens his mouth to pointedly say no, he does not, but then his stomach proves to be a traitor to the Yunmeng Jiang Sect by growling.
Xue Yang’s grin widens slightly. “It’s a good thing I brought out more shānzhā than I thought I needed, then.”
Jiang Cheng doesn’t dignify this with a response. But he does lean against the wall of the small, informal kitchen, because he hasn’t had tanghulu in a while. He just hasn’t asked for it. And while Jiang Cheng doesn’t eat sweets the same way he did when he was younger, he still enjoys them every once in a while.
Xue Yang, he notices, is a quiet cook with deft fingers. He slots the shānzhā onto little skewers with precise, quick movements, and he bathes them in the sugar syrup without much difficulty. Before Jiang Cheng is really aware of what’s happening, a plate is being unceremoniously shoved into his hands. “Here’s your order,” says Xue Yang, grinning at him.
Jiang Cheng holds the plate in his left hand and picks up a stick of shānzhā tanghulu in his right. He glares at it suspiciously. “If you got hair in the syrup, I’m going to push you off a pier,” says Jiang Cheng.
Xue Yang shoots him a dirty look. “I’ve been making tanghulu for years. I wouldn’t get hair in the syrup.” With that, he picks up a skewer of his own and crunches down pointedly.
He mirrors him, putting the fruit between his teeth. When he bites into it, the sugar cracks and snaps around his teeth. It’s sweet in an aggressive sort of way, and the shānzhā is sweet in a quieter sort of way. In his mouth, it tastes like a song.
“You’re good at this,” Jiang Cheng mumbles around the skewer, and while Xue Yang doesn’t reply, he sees the other man’s smile widen. He eats his tanghulu without another word and puts the plate down near the stove.
“Now that I’ve plied you with sweets,” says Xue Yang then, and Jiang Cheng gets a terrible sense of foreboding.
“What is it?” he asks.
Xue Yang’s eyes seem to flash in the low light of the kitchen. “The array. I don’t think I can fix it without counterbalancing with resentful energy. Otherwise, the energy cost is too high.”
Jiang Cheng is glad he put the plate down, otherwise he might have shattered it.
“I won’t use demonic cultivation,” he snaps, and the tentative peace they’d had, eating Xue Yang’s tanghulu, shatters like crystallized sugar.
Xue Yang looks at him impassively. There’s nothing in his expression, only something serious and recalcitrant. “Why not?” he asks, and Jiang Cheng feels the rising tide of anger threaten to swamp him.
“It’s heretical,” says Jiang Cheng. “It’s evil, a corruptive force. I won’t use it, even for Lotus Pier.”
Xue Yang narrows his eyes. “Even if you’re desperate?” he asks, and Jiang Cheng feels the thin leash he has on his self-control snap.
He grabs Xue Yang by the collar of his dark robes and shoves him backwards into the wall. Xue Yang, inexplicably, lets him. The only motion he makes is to flick his gaze to Jiang Cheng’s mouth, an action he notices and ignores.
“And what would you know about desperation?” Jiang Cheng hisses, feeling wild and ragged at the edges. Like he’s unravelling. Like somehow, Xue Yang is taking him apart with his delicate, pale fingers, pulling threads out at the seams.
“I’d know a whole lot,” Xue Yang says quietly. “You can’t be a demonic cultivator without wanting, Jiang Wanyin. Very few things could otherwise push a man down the dark roads I’ve travelled.”
Jiang Cheng searches his face like it holds the answers to all his unasked questions, like Xue Yang is a book in a language he can read if he simply tries hard enough. But his expression is cold and his eyes fever-bright. His mouth is pressed into a firm line and he holds Jiang Cheng’s stare like nothing has ever frightened him less in the world.
Jiang Cheng lets go of his collar and turns away. He’s planning to leave, planning to hole himself up in his room and just stop thinking until the sun rises again. He will have work to do in the morning. Work that cannot wait for him, will not wait for him, and so he has more important things upon which to ruminate than the understanding he sees in Xue Yang’s expression. The empathy, in a man who he knows has very little. Couldn’t he have just eaten the tanghulu and left? Why couldn’t he just leave the array alone?
For the same reasons he couldn’t just kick Xue Yang out of Lotus Pier, maybe, but he doesn’t want to think about that.
Then he feels a hand grip his shoulder in a vice grip. “Don’t walk away from me,” says Xue Yang, and his voice is dangerous. It reminds him, somehow, of the look of the water during the rainy season—a force of nature on the brink of some terrible violence.
Hearing that coloring Xue Yang’s voice does not scare him like it should. But he turns regardless, pushing the hand off his shoulder and glaring. “Who are you to give me orders?” he says, low and fierce with all the offense he feels.
Xue Yang has narrowed his eyes. “No one,” he says. “No one at all. I’m no one important. But desperation is my old friend and confidant, didn’t you know? It walks alongside me and in my shadow. I’m not a sect leader. I don’t know what demons you face. But I could help you fight them if you would just let me.”
You sound like my brother.
But the words stick in Jiang Cheng’s throat and so he lets out an inarticulate sound of frustration. “Demonic cultivation is heresy for a reason,” he snaps instead. “It drives men to madness and ruins them from the inside. I’m sure you know that too, Xue Chengmei, because you are many things—but I didn’t take you for a fool.”
Xue Yang smiles at him, slow and aching. “Of course I know that. But I made that choice for myself a long time ago, didn’t I?” He walks forward until he and Jiang Cheng are mere inches apart.
Jiang Cheng finds that he can’t take a step back, put distance between them to breathe. He feels locked in place. Rigid, like an unbending tree in a storm.
“There are more important things than your demonic cultivation and my wards,” Jiang Cheng says, though it feels more like a whisper rather than a roar. Xue Yang is close to him, close enough to touch if he tilts his head downward slightly. He radiates cold in that same way Wei Wuxian used to after he came back from the Burial Mounds—the chill of something dead, miraculously brought back to life with a single-minded obsession and a soul.
“What under heaven matters more than keeping you and your sect safe?” Xue Yang asks.
Jiang Cheng sucks in a breath. Xue Yang is too close but Jiang Cheng cannot move, only weather the storm as he is.
“You’re not even a member of the Yunmeng Jiang sect,” he snaps. “You’ve been here for a few weeks at most. You don’t even have a clan of your own.”
“No, I don’t,” agrees Xue Yang. “And you’re right. I don’t care about the sect. I don’t care about its defenses. If it was burned to the ground again, I might laugh over the ashes.”
“So why—” Jiang Cheng starts, snarling, because the mention of what had happened to Lotus Pier never fails to set his blood aflame in directionless fury. That terrible night is always lurking in the back of his mind. Just one word can trigger it, replay it in front of him all over again.
Xue Yang tilts his head, catlike smugness in the angle of his jaw and the slant of his mouth. “It would make you unhappy.”
“Unhappy?” Jiang Cheng echoes, suddenly at a loss.
Xue Yang nods. “Unhappy,” he repeats. “And as much as I want to make you miserable, take you apart to see which parts of you scream when I touch them, I find that I can’t. I find that the thought of you in pain is a terrible one.” And then he smiles again at Jiang Cheng, heartbreaking in its falseness. “Jiang Wanyin, I hate you. I think you broke me.”
Jiang Cheng can only gape at him.
Xue Yang looks like he’s searching Jiang Cheng’s face now, his eyes roving over his expression like he’s looking for something in particular. He’s not smiling anymore. Instead, he’s relaxed his jaw, and his mouth is caught somewhere between frowning and smiling.
His eyes look just like the water of Lotus Pier on overcast days. It’s not a new thought to Jiang Cheng, but it strikes him now like it’s never had. Like he’s finally plucked the right note on a guqin and it’s ringing out into the silence.
“Tell me again,” he finds himself saying.
“That I hate you?” Xue Yang asks, amusement twisting his mouth again.
“Tell me again,” Jiang Cheng insists, and Xue Yang’s gaze gets bright again. He shifts just a hair’s breadth closer, so close that Jiang Cheng can feel how Xue Yang isn’t all cold winter breezes and the chill of death. There’s warmth there, only so close to his skin that Jiang Cheng can only just feel it.
“I hate you,” Xue Yang tells him.
It finally clicks.
“You’re lying,” says Jiang Cheng, almost in wonderment, and bridges the gap between them to press his lips to Xue Yang’s clever, lying mouth.
Xue Yang makes a startled little sound, like he hadn’t expected it. Jiang Cheng has a half-second of stillness to thoroughly consider all the decisions that led him up to this point before Xue Yang kisses him back, and kisses him back fiercely. It’s only then that Jiang Cheng understands what the other cultivator meant about desperation being an old friend. Xue Yang kisses like there will never be another chance for either of them because the world may end the next day, like he is a swollen river threatening to overflow its banks and there is only a moment before the flood.
Xue Yang tastes like tanghulu syrup and lies, lies upon beautiful lies and the heresy that breathes in his every word, and Jiang Cheng can’t get enough.
He only breaks the kiss because he’s run out of air, and Xue Yang almost follows him. When Jiang Cheng can see again, he sees those fever-bright eyes of his are half-lidded, almost luminous in the low light of dusk. Somehow, he seems both viciously satisfied and hungry all at once.
Jiang Cheng kisses him again, and again, because he feels that same wildfire hunger in his own bones. He can’t think anymore. There is only Xue Yang’s sugar-sweet mouth, the bite of his sharp canines on Jiang Cheng’s lip, his fingers tilting his jaw to get better access—the thud of his back against the wall, and Jiang Cheng spares a thought to the delicious irony that is the reversing of their positions. At some point, his fingers get themselves tangled in Xue Yang’s ponytail, tugging him closer. He pulls at the strands just to have something to hold onto. He’s drowning, Jiang Cheng is drowning, and there’s no land in sight.
He doesn’t care.
Let me drown, he thinks, the words spiteful. Let me drown.
5.
Xue Yang brings him the corpse of a cultivator and Jiang Cheng wonders, perhaps for the fiftieth time, why he’s let the man stay at Lotus Pier.
“What the hell?” he asks tiredly, because he has had a long day. The appearance of Xue Yang, grinning like the absolute menace he is and with a body slung over his deceptively slender frame, only promises to make his day longer. The man he has slung over his back appears to be very, very dead, judging from the streams of crimson steadily dripping from a gaping wound in his back. It looks a bit like a chunk of flesh was clawed out of him.
That, thinks Jiang Cheng with some consternation, does not look like the work of Jiangzai.
Xue Yang beams at him. “Caught this bastard trying to sneak a peek at the arrays,” he says. “He’s still alive, if you wanted to interrogate him. Just not for much longer.”
Jiang Cheng resists the temptation to scream. Instead, he settles for rubbing his hand across his face. “Alright,” he says, because Xue Yang was right to leave him alive. “Follow me.”
And he takes Xue Yang from the entrance hall to the building they have for interrogating prisoners. It’s out of the way, tucked into a copse of willows and kept far away from the main body of Lotus Pier.
Jiang Cheng opens the door to the main room. It’s small, dimly lit, and there’s only one exit. The walls are painted a plain grey, and the only furnishings are a low table and chair in the corner. Jiang Cheng nods at Xue Yang, who flings the body unceremoniously into the chair.
“I need him conscious,” says Jiang Cheng without much heat.
Xue Yang shrugs at him. There’s blood splashed across the pale skin of his face and he’s grinning a little too manically for comfort, but he looks unhurt. That’s all that Jiang Cheng really cares about in the end. After all, he has a job to do.
The man on the ground moans in pain, and Jiang Cheng uncoils Zidian. The room fills with the purple light of the spiritual weapon and the crackling sound of its lightning. “Let’s begin, shall we?” he asks, and sees Xue Yang duck out of the room with that wide grin still on his face. He turns his gaze down. The man on the ground, dressed in no colors that Jiang Cheng recognizes, is white with blood loss and fear.
Maybe he’ll let himself enjoy this.
Afterward, when he leaves the interrogation room, he runs into Xue Yang. He’s cleaned up since the afternoon and so blood is no longer painted red against his neck and cheek. But the bright, sparking energy he’s gathered around him hasn’t faded. He smiles at Jiang Cheng like he’s hung the moon and stars, and maybe something about that makes Jiang Cheng ache in a way he will never admit out loud.
“He’s part of a rogue faction of cultivators who were allied with the Wens,” Jiang Cheng says, in answer to an unasked question. “They’re planning an assault on Lotus Pier.”
Xue Yang’s lips twist into a moue of distaste. “That can’t be good,” he says, but there’s nothing regretful in the words at all. Instead, he sounds almost gleeful.
“Bloodshed excites you, does it?” Jiang Cheng asks, his voice dry as the desert. Xue Yang cuts pale, feverish eyes at him. “Whatever gave you that idea, Sect Leader Jiang?” he murmurs. The title sounds mocking in Xue Yang’s mouth, even as his tone stays properly respectful. It’s the way he says it, the cadence of the words on his tongue and the way his gaze is half-lidded in the dusky light. He looks like a demon out of folklore.
“Don’t play dumb.”
Xue Yang laughs and it’s the sort of sound that promises any number of dark, terrible things. He steps in front of Jiang Cheng with that same mischievous grin. “I would never,” he says.
Is Jiang Cheng imagining it, or do his eyes flash red in the twilight?
“Liar,” says Jiang Cheng, but it comes out like an endearment instead of an indictment. Xue Yang, he’s learned, lies as he breathes. It’s as much a part of him as the resentful energy that clings to his shadow on some days and the wickedly sharp edge of Jiangzai.
Xue Yang makes an agreeable sort of noise and steps closer. Jiang Cheng takes a step back involuntarily, and feels his back brush against the stone wall of the shed. The sky is getting dark, and the only lights are the faded stars and the dim glow of the lantern—and Xue Yang’s eyes, which are definitely tinted red in the twilight. A side effect of demonic cultivation, Jiang Cheng thinks, and the thought, while uncomfortable, doesn’t shake him as much as it might have before.
“You’ve got blood on your nose,” says Xue Yang. He reaches up with long, pale fingers, and brushes it across Jiang Cheng’s skin. His touch feels hot, like a sickness.
Then he drops his hand and smiles. “Jiang Wanyin,” he says, teasing, “are you scared?”
Yes. But not of you.
“No,” Jiang Cheng snaps, and swallows hard when Xue Yang’s grin widens. “Liar,” he echoes, and tips his head up slightly. His gaze burns.
One breath. Two. A static moment in a sea of stars, and then Xue Yang closes the gap to press his mouth to Jiang Cheng’s. Today he tastes a bit like fear, and a bit like rage. Jiang Cheng cups the back of Xue Yang’s head in one hand and instinctively settles the other on his waist, drawing him closer. He’s never known when to stop pushing. He’s never known when the danger was too much. He’s never known when the storm would capsize his boat at sea and he does not care.
He’s scared. Jiang Cheng is scared of how much he likes this.
Xue Yang breaks the kiss first to smile at him knowingly. “Tomorrow, will you wipe out the rogues?” he asks.
“Probably,” says Jiang Cheng, his head spinning. “I’ll bring a few of the senior disciples.” Do you want to come? sits heavily at the tip of his tongue.
“Do you want me there?” Xue Yang asks, and it’s so utterly out of character for him to even ask that Jiang Cheng blinks at him.
“You’re not going to invite yourself along?” he shoots back, still a little distracted by the reddish cast to Xue Yang’s expression.
Xue Yang shrugs. “Not my sect, not my duty,” he says, and that does answer that question, but Jiang Cheng narrows his eyes at him anyway.
“Come with me,” he says, and doesn’t hesitate. “I want someone I trust to watch my back.”
He hadn’t meant to say that second part. Shit, he hadn’t meant to say the second part. Even if he means it, even though, for reasons he doesn’t understand or can articulate at all, he does trust Xue Yang to watch his back. Maybe it’s because he’s fought him already. Maybe he’s used to fighting alongside demonic cultivators like no one else in the cultivation world is.
Maybe it’s for other reasons he refuses to think about.
Xue Yang looks delighted, and Jiang Cheng suddenly feels as though he’s made a terrible mistake.
“I’ll be there,” he promises.
Jiang Cheng is wary of promises. Xue Yang reminds him of too many things caught up in a web of lies and broken promises and misplaced faith, and something about him makes him think of the Lotus Pier of his childhood burning to the ground. What would his father say, seeing him shacking up with a man who massacred an entire sect for no reason other than a petty grudge? What would his mother say?
Jiang Cheng is wary of promises. A part of him still aches for the future that could have been, had things not gone wrong—the Twin Prides of Yunmeng, a dream that he’s tried too hard to forget but still haunts him in his sleep. But that’s the past. Xue Yang, smiling at him now, is a liar.
And that’s why Jiang Cheng trusts him.
“Good,” is all he says, and starts the walk back to Lotus Pier proper. He’ll have a servant come by to dispose of the body and clean out the room.
Xue Yang walks beside him with that delighted, enthusiastic smile. Something about him positively hums about the prospect of bloodshed. Jiang Cheng sees it in the extra energy put into his step and the way he throws his shoulders back. Is this what demonic cultivators look like, when they’ve been able to use resentful energy?
For the first time, Jiang Cheng considers that Xue Yang looks nothing like Wei Wuxian. Demonic cultivation had drained his martial brother of life, made him cold and thin and made his eyes flash with something like poorly concealed rage.
Wei Wuxian had always been arrogant. But demonic cultivation had made him worse.
But Xue Yang is not Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng thinks, and opens his mouth to make a decision he might regret later.
“You said you can make the arrays better if you balance the energy output with resentful energy?” he asks.
Xue Yang hums for a moment, as if thinking. “They’ll go up faster and be less exploitiable, without compromising the shield strength. But you might attract more fierce corpses.”
Jiang Cheng mulls it over in his head. There’s an obvious solution to the fierce corpse problem. In fact, he’s walking right beside him with his hands in his pockets and practically buzzing with the aftershocks of resentful energy. But that would mean Xue Yang has to stay, and Jiang Cheng doesn’t know if that’s something he’s even capable of. If that’s something Jiang Cheng can even ask.
“That’s a problem,” he says instead.
Xue Yang tilts his head. “How so?” he asks. “Fierce corpses are my specialty.”
But does that mean he’ll stay? Jiang Cheng wants to ask, wants to ask so desperately that he has to shutter his expression entirely for fear he’ll let it slip out into the open air. That’s not something he’s capable of demanding anymore. From anyone.
He doesn’t want to be alone.
Xue Yang tosses his head back. “Are you implying I can’t deal with fierce corpses?” he asks, having the audacity to sound mock-offended.
“You won’t always be here,” Jiang Cheng grits out, and the words hurt like knives coming out of his mouth.
“Maybe not,” says Xue Yang, and Jiang Cheng’s heart sinks.
He’d been a fool to hope.
“Maybe not,” Xue Yang repeats, a little more firmly, “but you’ll manage without me. And I don’t have a reason to leave just yet. I still have to figure out what you did to me.” There’s laughter in his voice, as if he doesn’t really mean that last bit.
It’s not a promise. It’s not even an absolute. It’s a nebulous, hopeful thing, so Jiang Cheng holds onto it with both hands.
Xue Yang promises him nothing but that he’ll be there the next day to watch his back, all flashing grins and the sheen of red in his grey eyes.
It’s enough. For Jiang Cheng, it’s enough.