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I’m not ready for this .
Jin Ling’s hands shake on his bow. Even clenching them so hard they turn white doesn’t stop the tremor. Dafan Mountain looms before him, slopes of green forest interspersed with patches of stony path, disconcertingly lovely in the morning light.
There shouldn’t be much on the mountain. Nothing dangerous, not to him. Jin Ling is pretty good with his sword, and better with his bow, a halfway-decent hunter and a dab hand at talismans. Sure, it will be his first solo night hunt, but he should be able to handle it.
The sturdy wood creaks under his hands. His jiujiu was supposed to be here.
Jin Ling’s waist is bare of the white belt he wore for the worst five months of his life, and it’s strange to say that he misses it. It would be inappropriate for him to remain in mourning, officially. Jiang Wanyin, after all, was only his mother’s brother. Yet, he feels like he hasn’t mourned long enough. Like he’ll spend the rest of his life mourning Jiujiu, and that he should be wearing white the whole time. The gold he wears is pale, but not pale enough.
Perhaps that wasn’t the worst time of his life. The worst time of his life is now, when he’s supposed to be done thinking about the man who raised him, and just go back to his duties. He’s spent the last five months at Lotus Pier. But this last month, with his mourning period complete, he’d returned to Koi Tower, where even Shushu told him to collect himself. The plans for his first solo night hunt had proceeded as usual, like his heart isn’t decaying in a cave beneath Lotus Pier.
Like he didn’t watch his jiujiu die by inches before his eyes, with every physician in the world unable to do a thing but ease his pain. He’d known that, known that there wasn’t anything to be done for him, and so had suffered in silence until things got so bad, he couldn’t keep it to himself anymore.
Grief can do funny things to a body , Jiujiu’s successor, Jiang Anlei whispered while they sat vigil for him. The smell of ash from the joss paper overwhelmed every other sense; the wind, the smell of the lake. Jiujiu died in autumn, while the lotus were still blooming, but it seemed that even the lake mourned his passing, as each one withered in the week following his death. Still, it meant that he died with Lotus Pier at the Peak of its beauty-- lotus flowering on the lake, the sun burning on the water, Jin Ling on one side, and Jiang Anlei on the other. Sometimes, a person gets so sad, parts of them just stop working. The stomach stops being hungry, the lungs stop wanting air, the mind stops wanting sleep. It seems that the golden core is no different. And we all know that your jiujiu never recovered from the loss of his sister.
On his finger, Zidian sparks and Jin Ling yelps. Jerking his head around the mountain path, he finds himself alone. Right. Solo hunt.
If he needs anything, there are Jin disciples coincidentally in the foothills-- Jin Ling knows his shushu, and while he would never step on Jin Ling’s toes on his first solo night hunt, Shushu is protective of him, especially since--
--since Jiujiu.
Jin Ling shakes his hand from Zidian. No wonder Jiujiu was always scowling, if he had to deal with Zidian shocking him all the time. Jin Ling has only had the whip for six months, and he’s starting to develop lightning flowers from her constant… affection.
(So Zidian, as a spiritual weapon of the highest caliber, is mildly sentient and dedicated to keeping Jin Ling’s thoughts on the future. Who knew?)
Down the path, he can hear cries for help. A lot of them, actually, in the same direction where some of the spiritual nets were placed. If these nets are full of idiots, just like the last several sets of them that he checked, he’s going to start hitting things with Zidian.
(Another thing no-one told him about Zidian-- it’s wonderfully cathartic to hit things with her.)
“Jin-gongzi!” the trapped cultivators-- because of course it’s just cultivators-- cry.
“Please, let us down!”
“Have mercy!”
What kind of cultivators let themselves get caught in spirit nets? “If I let you down, you’re just going to wander around and get caught up in my business. There are worse monsters on this mountain than me,” he spits. “I’ll leave you there until I’m done. If I remember you then, I’ll let you down.”
Unbelievable! Who lets these people out of their sect compound? Jiujiu would-- Jiang Anlei would never let a disciple out of the Pier if they were so poor as to let themselves get caught in a stationary spirit net.
As he turns to leave the trapped “cultivators” and go back to his own hunting, he hears a girl, distractedly calling for… a little apple?
From the underbrush, bells jingle and Jin Ling wishes he were making it up, but a donkey breaks out of the greenery and lunges for the girl, some poor bastard in black trailing behind, trying desperately to pull the donkey away.
The donkey wins. Jin Ling watches as the man is thrown to the ground, groaning on his back, while the donkey clops towards the girl, still calling for a little apple.
Basic concern for someone who probably shouldn’t be around an infested mountain drives him to check on the man. But it’s Mo Xuanyu, so he leaves him there. Jin Ling doesn’t know for sure why Mo Xuanyu left Koi Tower-- the harassment the servants talked about never seemed like the type of thing Mo Xuanyu would do to Shushu, seeing as how he respected him too much, though he trusts that whatever the reason Shushu had for kicking him out, it was worth it-- so figures that he’s probably better off being left alone by Lanling Jin.
Especially considering that the man seems to have finally, well-and-truly lost it. He doesn’t even recognise Jin Ling! Sure, Jin Ling spent most of his time with-- at Lotus Pier, but there were enough quiet evenings where they both sat in Shushu’s office, each of the three of them silently doing their own work.
“My uncle was wise to have driven you away,” he concludes. “How dare the Mo allow you to make an appearance?” What kind of clan would let one of their own, so clearly in need of help, out of their compound? It’s nothing short of disgraceful. It’s without patience that he directs the man to leave the mountain. Before he gets himself hurt.
“I can see you’re missing some maternal education,” Mo Xuanyu comments, the words so casual that it almost seems like he hasn’t thought through their meaning. Like he doesn’t know what he’s just said.
Zidian spits on his hand, throwing sparks all the way up to his elbow, but he tamps down the urge to strike with her. He’s been taught restraint by his teachers. But more importantly, he’s been taught to always use the right tool for the job, and so, yeah, he draws Suihua and takes a swing.
It’s only once he’s flat on his face that he has time to wonder when did Mo Xuanyu get so fast? How did he get so fast? “Your cultivation was too weak for that! You’ve turned to dirty tricks, then?” he demands, once Mo Xuanyu has cut down the nets using Suihua and released the idiot cultivators. “Don't you know who’s--”
Don’t you know who was supposed to be here today?
And just like that, Jin Ling wants to cry. Jiujiu .
“Your jiujiu? Why him, and not your father? Who even is your jiujiu?”
Jin Ling curses himself-- of course he’d said it aloud. He closes his eyes and wills the tears-- grief, because Jiujiu has only been dead six months; anger, because... well he has a lot to be angry about, really-- to keep themselves in his eyes. He clenches his fists around nothing, his nails digging into his palms. If he could just stand up, he would have this bastard on the ground in no time flat.
He feels the handle of a whip materializing in his hand, Zidian murmuring poisonous things in the back of his head, sending violet sparks through his blood, and with the barest flick of his wrist, the very tip of the whip burns whatever talisman was set on his back.
Mo Xuanyu, when Jin Ling can see his face, looks like he’s about to piss himself. Good.
“I should break your legs for that insult, Mo Xuanyu.” Zidian’s consciousness has never been louder, never told him anything in such a clear voice-- resentful energy. Demonic cultivation. What would your jiujiu say? “I should do worse. Demonic cultivators belong in little chunks, fed to the dogs!”
Zidian moves, almost without him having to think, without having to move his arm. Fast as the lightning she’s named for, but she never reaches her target. A wave of energy, blue as the sky, pushes Zidian away before she can make contact with Mo Xuanyu, followed a bare instant later by the sound of a guqin.
A sneer leaps to Jin Ling’s face before he even knows it. A guqin? Who else could it be?
“Hanguang-jun,” he says. Having never spoken to Lan Wangji before, this is what he knows of the man: first, that he is the younger brother of Shushu’s sworn brother, which means Jin Ling should be polite, because he’s pretty much extended family.
Second, that when Jiujiu died, clans that Jin Ling had never even heard of managed to send condolences. Three separate letters came from Cloud Recesses-- one from Lan-zongzhu, who served with Jiujiu in the Sunshot Campaign, one from a Lan Qiren, who taught Jiujiu, and a third as a courtesy, from Lan Sizhui, the head disciple of Gusu Lan. But Hanguang-jun, this paragon of virtue, didn’t so much as attach a footnote.
Third, and perhaps the reason why Hanguang-jun was silent on the matter, that he and Jiujiu couldn’t be in the same room without making the temperature drop and leaving Jiujiu storming away with barely a word between them. And if Jiujiu couldn’t stand him, then why should Jin Ling?
“Don’t you have better things to do than interrupt other peoples’ night hunts by defending demonic cultivators?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” one of Hanguang-jun’s disciples calls.
“Jin-gongzi.” Another disciple steps forward. “A night hunt is supposed to be a fair competition. However, you set so many nets that it makes others hardly able to proceed for fear of them. Is this not breaking the rules of the night hunt?”
“Since when have nets been disallowed in night hunts? And since when have I been responsible for those stupid enough to get themselves caught in nets?” He turns away. “I have better things to be doing than listening to you talk about the rules of catching spirits. And tell your pet demonic cultivator to refrain from speaking ill of the dead.”
Hanguang-jun’s eyes flick towards the tree that Mo Xuanyu scurried behind. The second disciple bows, and continues. “This Lan Sizhui apologizes for any offense Mo-gongzi made. And I would like to repeat my condolences for your loss.” Lan Sizhui rises. “Jiang-zongzhu’s passing was a loss for all of the jianghu.”
It was, Jin Ling wants to say, but the words get caught in his throat. Jiujiu yelled a lot, over things that probably weren’t worth yelling over, but he was still the best man in the world. Still the man who rebuilt Lotus Pier with his own two hands. Still the man who rocked Jin Ling to sleep during the summer storms. Still the revered Sandu Shengshou, a peerless cultivator who went after every demonic cultivator like they had personally offended him.
Wei Wuxian was my shixiong, and so he and the fruit that his studies bore are my responsibility, Jiujiu wrote. One of many letters left behind for Jin Ling in his office. Things that, as his health worsened, he would forget to say while he had Jin Ling in front of him, but would remember later. He was the single most astounding cultivator of our generation. A genius in every sense of the word, and despite everything else, someone with truly good intentions. If even he couldn’t be trusted to do good with demonic cultivation, and even he couldn’t control it, then how can I expect it of anyone lesser?
Jiujiu hunted down and squashed demonic cultivators like bugs. If Jin Ling can’t so much as bag a monster on his first solo night hunt, how is he supposed to face his jiujiu in the afterlife?
“Just stay out of my way,” Jin Ling says, hoping that his voice is louder than a whisper, though he can’t hear it over the blood pumping in his ears and the effort it takes to keep himself from crying. He thinks he heard Hanguang-jun issuing orders behind him, but he pays them no attention. Hanguang-jun is welcome to order around his own disciples, but Jin Ling doesn’t have to listen to a word he says. Rather, a word he telepathically communicates to his head disciple to say for him.
There were only ever two men who had the right to boss Jin Ling around. One of them sits in his office in Lanling, probably writing letters. The other sits at the bottom of a lake in Lotus Pier, in a cave alongside Jiang-zongzhus past. Neither of them is with him now.