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Chapter Text

Wangji was missing.

Wangji was missing, and Lan Qiren was frantic with worry. Lan Wangji had always been a solemn child, perhaps too solemn for a six-year-old, and he had always adhered firmly to routine, the way Lan Qiren did. But now he was nowhere to be found, not in his rooms, not in the classroom, not in the training yards, the Library Pavilion…he was simply gone!

Not that Lan Qiren could blame him for running away.

Not when –

Lan Qiren had to pause in his search through the corners of the Library Pavilion and close his eyes, his chest abruptly too tight for no physical reason at all.

Everything was different now.

The moment it had all changed had been viscerally seared into his brain, every single sensation so clear that Lan Qiren needed only to close his eyes to be back there at once. Had no choice but to be back there, every time he did, whether he wanted to or not. He could feel his shoulders suddenly too-tight and too-heavy, could feel his nose filled with the damp smell of dirt and death that had permeated the room, his throat choked by the stuffy heat of it, all the windows closed…

His ears ringing, his breath too fast. His entire body frozen with sudden inextricable tension.

And the blood, of course.

There had been so much blood.

Wangji had not seen the blood, at least, and for that Lan Qiren was deeply thankful. He could not even imagine his little nephew’s reaction to such a thing – not his Wangji, who had always been so rigid, so formal, so distressed when things did not happen as they should…he’d never been especially good at dealing with change. The Lan sect’s teachings counseled acceptance of change, the recognition that it was inevitable, but Wangji had always been deeply suspicious of it.

In that way, he was…a little too much like his uncle.

Change had never been good for Lan Qiren, either, not in his whole life.

His mother’s too-early death, his father’s decline, his brother’s love and his decision to abandon his duties to save his accused murderess of a wife – it was all the same, all bad, every change a change for the worse. Every time something changed, he was forced to change with it, and never into anything he wanted. He’d been so young, so painfully inexperienced and immature, when he’d been forced to start taking over sect matters, and he hadn’t wanted any of it. He hadn’t wanted to spend his time in the confusing and unpleasant marsh of politics. He hadn’t wanted to become the acting sect leader.

He certainly hadn’t wanted to be a father.

Lan Qiren loved his nephews, he did, but at the same time…no, he hadn’t wanted to be a father.

And that was what he was to them, really, though he’d never been granted the title and had been scrupulous about never doing anything to indicate he might deserve it, even when he felt inside that perhaps he might. As usual, he’d gotten all the duties and none of the benefits, and all the months he’d had of foreknowledge of his nephews’ arrival had somehow still been utterly insufficient to prepare him to take care of two small children.

He’d never wanted any of it.

Lan Qiren hadn’t wanted the years of sleepless nights, using one hand to write out sect correspondence by candlelight and the other to comfort sleeping infants that no one else could settle, that he didn’t dare entrust to anyone else for too long for fear that they would never be returned to him. He hadn’t wanted to be burdened with so much responsibility, always worrying about them, always chasing after them, always thinking of them, having to keep in mind two other schedules other than his own, always having to accommodate them. He hadn’t wanted to endure long and agonizing waits, filled with anxiety – raising children seemed like nothing but waiting, sometimes. First waiting for them to be born from a woman he barely knew, then waiting for them to fall asleep, waiting for them to heal after an illness, waiting for them to grow up…

Lan Qiren hadn’t wanted to have to figure out how to parent a child, two children, when he felt as though he were still barely old enough to figure out how to behave properly himself.

For them, Lan Qiren had had to learn to balance love and discipline, simultaneously worrying that too much kindness and laxity would hurt them in the future and that too much strictness and censure would hurt them in the present. He’d never been sure which one to pick and he had been convinced every time that he’d picked the wrong one. He’d had to try to manage the frustration and self-hatred that came with raising his two nephews, the way he constantly questioned and second-guessed himself, the guilt that came with every decision he made for them because there was no one else available to make them.

He had been constantly dogged with the feeling that he wasn’t enough.

That he could never be enough.

Lan Qiren had at one point found himself regularly waking up in the middle of the night, utterly terrified. Terrified that he was ruining these children – terrified that they would grow up and one day realize that Lan Qiren was not only inept but inadequate, and grow to resent him in the same way that he’d grown to resent his own father, in time.

Lan Qiren’s father had resented him, blaming him for his mother’s death from the complications of childbirth, and Lan Qiren had known it, known it and suffered terribly from it.

He hadn’t wanted to resent his nephews the same way.

He hadn’t – and yet he had, at least a little. How could he help it? Lan Qiren had been a young man when his brother had retreated into seclusion, now going on ten years ago, and in truth, by the standards of his sect elders, he was still a young man. But he’d grown old before his time, trapped at home by duty during the age when most young men went out to travel the world, to do good deeds and earn fame and fall in love. He’d had to give all that up in favor of the soul-crushing drudgery of politics and the day-to-day management of a sect with so many people. He’d had to give up travel in favor of security because the sect couldn’t risk their last remaining heir, give up all thought of devoting himself to something of his own choosing, give up everything in order to fritter away his youth in endless, endless work. He’d had to give up that part of life that should have been marked by independence, autonomy, and agency, a time to learn and to figure out who he was. A time of freedom.

He hadn’t had that chance.

He never would.

From the very first moment that He Kexin’s pregnancy had been disclosed to him, that had been the end of it, the extinguishing of all hope. His nephews had shackled him to the Cloud Recesses more thoroughly than even the sect leader position, and although he loved them, it was because of that love that he was so thoroughly bound in place. He’d adored them from the first moment he’d seen them, loved them more than he loved himself, but he could not say that he had wanted them.

That would be a lie, and the Lan sect rules said: Do not tell lies.

From there came the resentment, from there came the guilt.

He hadn’t wanted them.

He certainly hadn’t wanted the closest adult relationship in his life to be with He Kexin, who he did not like and did not love and who he had certainly never touched – he, who’d never even kissed anyone – and yet he had no choice, for to do anything less would be to deny his nephews access to the mother they loved or He Kexin to the sons she’d birthed. He had had no choice but to see her every month when he took his nephews to see her, and then again even more often to ask her questions or bring her something she wanted.

Lan Qiren had resented her, too, even though he pitied her for her eventual fate, which she had brought upon herself. For his nephew’s sakes he had never said a word against her, keeping silent where he couldn’t say anything good – speak meagerly for too many words bring only harm – but in his heart he could not help but blame her for his predicament, for all the dreams he’d lost, even though he tried not to. The one who was ultimately at fault for ruining Lan Qiren’s innocent dreams of freedom was his brother, not the woman he’d married, but Lan Qiren still couldn’t help thinking that it had been her actions, her decision to kill a Lan sect elder within the Cloud Recesses, that had kicked off that terrible sequence of events.

If only she had never come to the Cloud Recesses.

If only she had chosen another way, any way, to resolve whatever her troubles had been other than murdering their teacher.

If only –

If only his brother hadn’t been so mad for love!

If only they hadn’t been so selfish, both of them - his brother in marrying his love to save her life despite everything she’d done, in declaring he would enter seclusion in penance rather than carry out the duties he’d sworn to uphold…if only they had not had children together, the second time with full knowledge that the child would be given to Lan Qiren as yet another burden he’d had no choice but to accept. They’d made him a father twice over without his consent, and sometimes it bewildered him how much he resented them both for that.

When Lan Qiren was being sensible and reasonable, he knew that his brother and He Kexin hadn’t had children for the purpose of hurting him, but that didn’t make him feel better about it.

He hated her for it.

In truth, he hated him for it.

He didn’t want to admit it – do not, the Lan sect’s rules counseled, do not, do not, do not – but he did, he really, truly did. Lan Qiren hated his brother.

He hated his brother.

As a child, Lan Qiren had adored him. His brother, ten years his elder, had seemed like a giant in Lan Qiren’s eyes, and he had for the longest time disregarded the fact that his brother had always disliked him for reasons that had never wholly made sense to Lan Qiren…but no love could live one-sided forever.

Years and years of crushing duty had curdled whatever love Lan Qiren had had for his brother into disdain and disapproval, a toxic stew made up of all those endless nights of wondering why, if he could sacrifice himself, his brother couldn’t or wouldn’t do the same. All those days of labor, those pointless sessions in front of his brother’s locked door attempting to report to him about matters of the sect that he ought to have cared about and maybe did, and receiving not a single word in response, not once.

Not one single time in all those ten years.

Yes, Lan Qiren hated him.

He hated the great and powerful Qingheng-jun, the man who should have been elder brother and father both, who should have cared for Lan Qiren instead of disdaining him. He hated the man who had been the Lan sect’s prized treasure and hope for the future, once upon a time, before he’d thrown it all away for a love like disaster, a love that no one had wanted, not even his wife.

Especially his wife.

He Kexin…

There had been so much blood.

Lan Qiren had been the one to find her.

Had it really only been four days ago? Only four days, four sleepless nights, and seemingly endless hours, since Lan Qiren had gone to see He Kexin – thankfully without his nephews – to ask her some pointless question he no longer remembered, and had instead found her dead upon the floor of her beautiful prison of gentians?

This will change everything, he’d thought at that moment, staring down at her body, mute with shock. Everything.

He Kexin had been a beautiful woman, a fact that had been unchanged by age or imprisonment, but now – now her beauty had been marred, irreversibly marred. The pool of blood around her, the bloody sword at her side…

Lan Qiren had rushed over at once to try to help, not yet realizing she was dead, not yet realizing what must have happened – what she must have done to herself, since there was no one else around. In his memory, he was still there crouched above her, his fingers still pressed to her neck to seek a pulse that wasn’t there, his other hand still cupped under her nose, trying desperately to feel the warmth of her breath on his palm and finding nothing.

Ironically, between the Cloud Recesses’ strict rules on segregating male and female disciples and how young he’d been when he’d been suddenly forced to become an elder, it was probably the most bodily contact Lan Qiren had ever had with a woman. Even Cangse Sanren, who he’d known for only one brief and bright summer, had had enough propriety to avoid unasked-for contact, or at least she did if one put aside her one late-night adventure in shaving off his beard while he was asleep. It was certainly the most contact he’d had with another adult in years, he who had only his nephews and his work and basically no friends. He was surrounded by family, that was true, but he was not close to any of them. Even the cousin he’d liked most as a child, a boy by the name of Lan Yueheng, had since gone out into the world to seek his fortune, or at least to go get more of those dreadful plants he was so fond of.

(He’d written, at first, but at the time Lan Qiren had been dreadfully jealous of his freedom, so he hadn’t responded. He’d instead let himself sink into the muck and mire of sect business, drowning in it, insensate to and rejecting the rest of the world in his bitterness and resentment, and by the time he’d resurfaced and realized he really did need other people, that relationship and all the others like it had weakened, grown distant. And now he had no one at all.)

Touch had long become something Lan Qiren had grown to deeply crave but didn’t know how to ask for. A friend, a lover, even someone who only wanted his body, a thought he’d initially disliked but in the intervening years had grown more open to…he’d thought to himself that he’d welcome anything, really, as long as it could touch him. And then, in some grim parody of his life so far, instead of what he’d really wanted, he’d ended up instead with a lifeless corpse in his arms.

Change, he’d thought, trapped in that dreadful moment, this means that things will change, and he had been afraid.

Not afraid enough.

He hadn’t thought – he hadn’t realized –

No, Lan Qiren couldn’t blame Wangji for having run away in the face of all the things that had changed, all the things that had happened, all the things that were still to come. These days, Lan Qiren found himself yearning to run away as well.

But empathy aside, Wangji was still missing, Wangji still needed to be found. He was not in the Library Pavilion, not even in the Forbidden Section, and so Lan Qiren left to continue the search.

“Have you seen him?” he demanded when he saw several of the disciples he’d sent out looking for Lan Wangji returning, but they all shook their heads in the negative. “What are you doing back here, then?! There are more places to check! It is winter, cold, and Wangji is young and likely not sufficiently dressed, liable to get sick. We must find him at once. He could be anywhere –”

“Qiren.”

A feeling of icy cold ran down Lan Qiren’s spine, a match for the absolute frozen calm of that voice.

It wasn’t because of the winter weather.

He turned and saluted formally. Too formally, really, given that they were inside the Cloud Recesses, alone among family, but he wasn’t stopped or excused from doing it.

He’d known he wouldn’t be.

“Xiongzhang,” Lan Qiren said, his head bowed down and his eyes fixed firmly on the ground for as long as he could manage before propriety required he look at who he was speaking with. “I did not see that you were there.”

“And yet here I am,” his brother said. He stepped out of the shadows and into the light, the gleaming Qingheng-jun in all his majesty – he looked perfect as always, and standing there in the gently falling snow he looked like some idealized dream of ink given form in real life. Ten years of complete seclusion seemed to have taken no toll on him, and he was as tall and broad-shouldered and beautiful as he had ever been. “Where else would I be?”

Anywhere, Lan Qiren thought, and tasted the bile of his hatred on his tongue. Anywhere but here.

Back in seclusion where you belong, maybe.

When Lan Qiren had found He Kexin’s body, he had known that it meant that things would change. Foolishly, perhaps, he had thought only in terms of the impact it would have on Xichen and Wangji. He had known that it would crush them. They were good boys, loyal and filial, and they loved their mother deeply; it was for that reason that he had tortured himself visiting her so often, despite his resentment of her. He had not known how to make her loss easier for them.

Xichen was old enough to understand death, at least, but Wangji wasn’t, being only six; Lan Qiren had worried about how he would take it. Lan Qiren knew how delicate his younger nephew was, how stiff and strict…how similar to his rigid, rule-bound shufu, to Lan Qiren’s agonized mix of pride and shame. He had worried about him all the more because of that, knowing how badly he himself would have taken such a thing at that same age.

He hadn’t thought to worry about anything else.

He hadn’t thought…

It had been ten years. Ten years that Lan Qiren had borne the weight of his sect on his shoulders, alone, and only a little over nine since Xichen’s birth. Ten years since he had been summoned home from some sect business he’d been sent on because his brother was too busy being in love to do it, the note in his hand speaking only of disaster. Ten years since his brother had married his beloved lady instead of letting her stand trial for murder. Ten years since his brother had declared that he would be entering seclusion to pay for his sins in marrying her.

Sins which, as Lan Qiren belatedly discovered, his brother considered to be paid off by He Kexin’s death.

Lan Qiren had been in a daze after discovering He Kexin’s body – no matter what he felt about her, she had been a reliable constant in his life, and he hated change – and he had been worried for his nephews, putting that fear before everything else. He had mechanically gone through the expected motions, the sort of thing that would happen with any unexpected death in the Cloud Recesses: the servants with access to the house questioned, though as expected all of them had been attending to duties elsewhere at the time, arrangements made for the body to be moved until the funeral, the house cleaned, a musician appointed to play spiritual songs in honor of the deceased, all the usual. Lan Qiren had done everything he needed to do as sect leader, and everything he had needed to do as the closest adult relative of her family as well.

Well.

The closest available adult relative.

Lan Qiren hadn’t thought twice about reporting the fact of He Kexin’s passing to his brother’s door, that useless practice he had maintained less out of conviction than out of habit. He had felt…sorry, he supposed, that he had had to tell his brother that his wife was dead, that the great love he had sacrificed everything for was gone. But at the same time he hadn’t paid very much attention to it, either. It hadn’t seemed all that important at the time, not in comparison with the agony he knew awaited his nephews when he told them the same news.

Lan Qiren hadn’t thought about what it might mean – for his brother, for his sect, for his nephews.

For him.

After all, with his wife, the reason for his seclusion, dead, there was no reason for Qingheng-jun to continue abstaining from the mortal world. He had come out once more, Lan Qiren’s elder brother, and in so doing he had taken back from Lan Qiren all that was rightfully his.

His sect.

His sons.

“There is no reason to waste other people’s time searching for Wangji,” Lan Qiren’s brother said, voice flat and disinterested. “When he is finished with his temper tantrum, he will come out to face punishment for his defiance.”

Lan Qiren’s nails dug into his palms.

Defiance? He wanted to shout. How can you speak of defiance, of punishment – Wangji is six! He is too young for punishment to be a lesson! At his age, he does not yet know how to trace the connection between his actions and their consequences. He is hurting, as anyone could expect; his mother has just died! To punish him now when what he needs is comfort would be worse than pointless. He would learn nothing from it, nothing but that those who he should be able to trust are willing to hurt him.

Don’t you dare, he wanted to scream. Don’t you dare touch him, don’t you dare…

But it was Lan Qiren, now, who could not dare.

He had raised both boys from infancy himself; he had done everything for them, more than a man of his position strictly should have. He had fed them with goat’s milk when the wetnurse the sect had hired couldn’t manage, he had had changed their dirty clothing, he had tucked them into bed, given them baths, wiped away their tears. He had taught them to speak, taught them to walk, taught them the rules, taught them everything he could – but in the end he was still only their uncle, not their father. He wasn’t even their sect leader, with power enough to stop that which he thought was wrong.

He could do nothing.

Lan Qiren had always believed that he did not love power in its own right. He had always been quite proud of it, even, patting himself on the back with the knowledge that he, unlike so many of his fellow sect leaders, had never sought the position, had never loved it for the power it gave him, had never yearned greedily to increase that power and been willing to make compromises in order to do so. It was only now that all power had been stripped away from him, rendering him absolutely helpless to enact his will and leaving him only his useless words that could change nothing, that Lan Qiren realized how accustomed to power he had become.

It was only now that he realized that power was necessary not only for duty’s sake, for tradition and for the sake of his sect, but to let him protect that which he held dear.

“I do not believe Wangji intended to be defiant,” Lan Qiren said, forcing the hatred and bitterness out of his mouth and trying to sound as humble as he could manage. He was still half-bent in the salute, trapped in the posture because his brother and sect leader had not seen fit to give him leave to stand back up; the humiliation was deliberate, the insult pointed, and it burned more than he might have thought it would, if he had ever thought about it. Lan Qiren had grown too arrogant, these past few years of reporting to his brother’s locked door as if to nobody, and his brother had not forgotten nor forgiven it. “I believe he has merely been overwhelmed by all that has been happening around him and fled in order to master himself. He reacts badly to change, and always has…the failure in teaching him is mine.”

“Yes, it is,” Lan Qiren’s brother agreed, and finally waved his hand – twitched his fingers, more like – to allow Lan Qiren to straighten. “They tell me you have made yourself some reputation as a teacher while I was gone, but I must admit I haven’t seen much evidence of it.”

While I was gone, he called it, as if he’d just ducked out for a quick night-hunt or a casual visit to see friends, rather than forcefully reordered the sect for ten years, stolen away Lan Qiren’s life for ten years, while he indulged himself in his sacrificial penance. While I was gone.

Just hearing it phrased like that made Lan Qiren’s blood boil. The rules said Do not succumb to rage, but Lan Qiren’s temper had always been poor, one of his many failings.

And yet he wondered how anyone could not succumb to rage in the face of such provocation.

“I admit to my failings,” Lan Qiren said again, hoping that his self-abnegation would satisfy his brother’s apparent desire to see him torn down. His brother had never liked Lan Qiren, an ancient hatred that had grown to be mutual in time, but seclusion seemed to have sharpened it into something very near to cruelty – it had only been three days since his brother had exited his seclusion, and Lan Qiren had already accumulated enough punishments that the end of the month would see him reporting to the discipline hall to be whipped like an immature boy. He’d already been obligated to spend one long bitter night kneeling outside in the cold winter wind instead of grieving or working; his brother had even come to watch, as if he’d thought Lan Qiren couldn’t be trusted to actually follow through on the assigned discipline.

He had been smiling.

“Still, as the fault is mine, I worry that Wangji may not realize that he has erred,” Lan Qiren said carefully, trying to strike the balance that would let him protect his nephew from a punishment he did not deserve and would not think to expect. “I am certain that he would make amends if he did. If only he can be found, first…”

His brother’s face did not show any sign of yielding, and Lan Qiren’s anxiety spiked. Didn’t he understand?

“It is snowing, Xiongzhang,” he said, stressing the word. “Wangji is still very young, young enough that a fever could be very dangerous to him, and he is likely not sufficiently dressed for the weather. If he isn’t found, he could linger outside and grow ill. If we could only find him…”

“You can do as you like with your own time,” his brother said, and Lan Qiren nearly lost his breath at the sheer dismissiveness of the statement, at how little his brother seemed to appreciate all that Lan Qiren had done in his absence. As if all of Lan Qiren’s sacrifices for the sect had been merely the misbehavior of an unattended child. “But do not waste that of others.”

That was the best he was going to get, Lan Qiren realized, and gritted his teeth in suppressed anger, wondering why his brother didn’t seem to realize, didn’t seem to care, even though Wangji was his son …but such thoughts were meaningless. His brother had decided, and his brother was sect leader, his word as immovable as any of the rules on the Wall of Discipline.

There was nothing to do but accept it.

So Lan Qiren did, nodding stiffly and saluting his brother once more before he turned to go.

“Once you find my son,” Qingheng-jun said from behind him, and Lan Qiren couldn’t help but wonder if he emphasized the words my son just to remind Lan Qiren that his nephews had never truly belonged to him, “you are to return him to his rooms and then report to my rooms at you shi. It is time to discuss your future.”

Lan Qiren swallowed. “My future?”

Change again, he thought, his stomach clenching in terror. Not again –

Although Lan Qiren didn’t turn around, he could feel his brother stepping forward again, coming closer to him.

“I think you’ve done enough here, Qiren,” his brother murmured into his ear, voice low but cold. Always cold. “Don’t you?”

No.

“Don’t be late.”

Lan Qiren nodded once more, stiff now with terror rather than rage, and left as quickly as he could. It was better not to think about it, he told himself. There wasn’t time to worry about himself right now.

He had to find Wangji.

Only…he still had no idea where his nephew could have gone. The Cloud Recesses were large, and Lan Qiren was only one man; he could only cover so much ground. He’d already checked all the usual places: his rooms, Xichen’s rooms, Lan Qiren’s own rooms, the classroom, the library, the discipline hall, the places he was usually assigned to do chores, the garden he preferred to play in. Lan Qiren knew that Wangji took after him, that he was also a creature of habit, that he preferred to walk the same paths whenever he could. And yet he wasn’t in any of his favorite haunts. Where could he be?

Lan Qiren wished he could at least ask Xichen for his insight – his older nephew could read his younger brother like no one else – but Xichen would be at his lessons now, and Lan Qiren had already been instructed not to interrupt or distract him. Xichen was his brother’s eldest son, his heir, and since Lan Qiren’s teachings had already been found to be inadequate, his brother had decreed that it was necessary for him to be thrown into a punishing schedule meant to help him meet his father’s expectations. Lan Qiren hadn’t seen Xichen for nearly two days by this point, and it was probably the longest period of time they had ever spent apart while they were both in the Cloud Recesses.

He hadn’t been allowed to see him.

Lan Qiren’s brother really was treating him as if Lan Qiren were still some stupid child messing around and causing trouble for everyone, rather than a man of thirty. As if Lan Qiren hadn’t led one of the Great Sects for ten years, managing the elders and tricky internal sect strife on one hand and the complex and subtle play of intersect politics on the other, as if he weren’t the man who’d raised his brother’s children for him, who for ten years had done everything for his brother, even tended to his older brother’s own damned wife –

Wait. He Kexin. Of course.

Today was the day of the month when Lan Qiren normally took his nephews to see their mother.

Lan Qiren had explained to his nephews that they wouldn’t be going to visit her this month, or ever again. He’d tried to be kind about it, but still explicit enough to make clear what had happened.

Wangji…Wangji must not have understood.

He had cried, of course, because Xichen had cried, but he hadn’t understood. Lan Qiren had stayed with them all night, first holding them in his arms and then playing them music meant to help them sleep. At the time, he’d planned to try to slowly coax his younger nephew towards some semblance of understanding. He had meant to repeat himself several times, to explain more, to give them both books or stories that would help them understand and come to terms with what had happened, but then the next morning Qingheng-jun had come out of seclusion and everything had so very suddenly changed…

No matter. Lan Qiren hurried his steps towards He Kexin’s house, and was relieved to see a small figure crouched there in the snow in front of the closed door.

“Wangji,” he called, though there was no response. “Wangji, there you are…”

He went over to where Wangji was stubbornly kneeling, red-nosed and red-cheeked from the wind.

“I’m here to see Mother,” Lan Wangji announced before Lan Qiren could say anything. “I’m not going.”

“Wangji…”

What could Lan Qiren say?

Your mother is dead, and you should mourn her. Your father is alive, and you should mourn that, too.

You have already lost so much, and though you do not know it, you have more yet to lose. Death has already taken your mother away, and your father is going to take me away, too. He has already barred me from Xichen, and he will do the same with you, I know it. I should tell you, prepare you for it, but I can barely bring myself to believe it, so how can I explain it to you? I do not know what my brother has planned for me, nor for you both, but I know that there is nothing I can do to stop him.

I do not know how to tell you.

I do not know how to tell you that I have failed you, Wangji. You and Xichen both. That I am not strong or wise enough to defend you.

I do not know how to tell you that things are going to change, change for the worse, and I will not even be able to be there to help you with it.

I have let you down.

You are still so young, Wangji. You probably will not even remember me after a few years, except maybe to hate me for abandoning you. You will not know that I did not do it voluntarily, only that it happened. Only that I did not stop it from happening.

If only I could stop it.

If only –

But there is nothing I can do.

I am useless, I am hopeless, I am worthless, just the way my brother has always thought me to be.

I am sorry, Wangji. I am so very sorry…

“…Shufu?”

Lan Qiren tried to say something.

It probably would have been something inane like The rules say ‘Do not grieve in excess’ – but all of a sudden he couldn’t get the words out of his mouth, all of them congealing abruptly into a sob he could not suppress. And that was even worse, because once there was one, there was another, and another, and then he was kneeling next to Lan Wangji in the snow with his hands futilely cast over his face to hide his disgrace, sobbing pointlessly like the immature child his brother so obviously thought he was.

“Shufu?” Lan Wangji sounded alarmed, as well he should in the face of such a wretched display by someone who ought to be setting a good example for him. “Shufu, don’t cry! I didn’t mean to upset you – I am sorry –”

“It is not your fault,” Lan Qiren choked out. He didn’t really think it was his own fault, either, not really, since he didn’t think he’d ever done anything to earn his brother’s hatred other than being born, but he blamed himself regardless. He blamed himself for Wangji having run away, he blamed himself for He Kexin having killed herself to escape her endless solitude, and he blamed himself for not being able to do anything to stop his brother from stealing away every source of joy he’d ever managed to spare for himself.

Was this the ultimate price of his dreams, he wondered wildly, the price of his secret resentment? Lan Qiren had never wanted to be a father, never wanted to run a sect, hadn’t wanted to be He Kexin’s caretaker – well, here it was, all his stupid selfish wishes finally fulfilled.

He wasn’t any of those anymore.

He wasn’t anything, anymore. In his brother’s eyes, he was scarcely even the second son of the Lan sect.

“It is not your fault,” Lan Qiren said, tears still spilling down his face as he wept, unable to stop himself. Do not grieve in excess, the rules said, but surely this was not excess. Surely this was exactly as much grief as his stricken heart felt fit for the situation. “It is not your fault. It is important that you know that, Wangji. You must listen to me, listen to your shufu. Know that none of this is your fault.”

“Shufu –”

“Listen to me. It is not you, it is not Xichen. You must both know that. None of this is your fault, none of it will ever have been your fault. It is only that – that things have changed, Wangji. Things have changed. They are never going to go back to the way they were.”

He could feel Wangji’s small hand on his arm, patting him lightly, seeking to comfort him.

But there was no comfort to be had.

“We cannot go back to the way things were,” Lan Qiren said again. “Not for your mother –”

And not for me.

Chapter Text

“Enough already,” Wen Ruohan groaned, and ignored with a twinge of irritation how Qing Yu, the man reporting to him, stiffened and looked pale as if he were convinced that he would imminently be dragged off to the Fire Palace.

As if Wen Ruohan would murder one of the top spies in his network simply because he was being boring.

He wasn’t actually insane, thank you, or at least not to that degree.

Appearing to be wildly unpredictable was often a tremendous advantage in dealing with his fellow sects, and even sometimes within his own sect, but genuine instability would be a disaster. Wen Ruohan’s sect was the most powerful by far of all the Great Sects, and he intended to keep it that way – or rather, he intended his power to grow until his Wen sect was as indominable as the sun in the sky and the other so-called “Great Sects” were mere shadows left in his wake.

Which was why he was torturing himself listening to spy reports on the other Great Sects to begin with, Wen Ruohan supposed, and suppressed a sigh. It was the sort of work that he couldn’t entrust to some subordinate, the whole business confidential in the extreme no matter what the content – the mere confirmation that he had spies in the other Great Sects, and that they were successfully obtaining information for him from them, was potentially explosive. But at the same time, the vast majority of the time the information he received was completely lacking in anything usable. Or even mildly interesting!

“I’m not interested in yet another rehashing of the Jiang sect’s internal issues,” he said, because he wasn’t. While it was true that Jiang Fengmian’s marriage troubles were potentially useful as a weak point, ripe for potential exploitation, they were not exactly new. “Tell me something more exciting.”

Qing Yu looked surprised by the question. “More – exciting, Sect Leader?”

Wen Ruohan groped around mentally for a moment for an example, having grown so bored that he couldn’t think of anything at first, and then smirked faintly as something came to him. “Yes. Tell me who’s going to be attending Lan Qiren’s classes this year.”

Now that would at least be interesting.

Wen Ruohan had never paid very much attention to Lan Qiren. Sure, as acting sect leader of the Lan, he headed one of the other main Great Sects and was therefore one of the targets of Wen Ruohan’s illicit information gathering, but the impression Wen Ruohan had gotten from their few interactions at discussion conferences accorded with the information his spies regularly reported concerning his activities at home: Lan Qiren was an unbearably dull human being.

In almost – and that was the critical word, almost – every respect.

Lan Qiren’s interests, insofar as he took time from his sect duties to indulge in them, appeared to be traditional to the point of cliché, consisting of music and study, both philosophy and the analysis of those ridiculous Lan sect rules. He had no notable romantic entanglements to his name, which was the usual way the Lan sect added interest to their lives, though Wen Ruohan supposed in fairness he wouldn’t have had much opportunity for it, having been entrusted with the responsibility of raising his two nephews and by all reports having characteristically taken it overly seriously. In fact, Lan Qiren barely seemed to have any friends, even within his own sect – a cousin or two he spoke to more often than others, perhaps, but little more. Probably he thought it was somehow inappropriate for someone in his position. He had a temper, on rare occasions, but often sought to suppress it: the man was really unbearably fussy about his sect’s rules, pretending and possibly even genuinely seeking to be faithful to them at all times. Even the inconvenient ones like Do not tell lies, which was just insane.

In short: a boring rule-bound prig with as much passion to him as a bowl of tepid milk.

In Wen Ruohan’s opinion, the Lan tended to come in two flavors, hideously boring and terrifyingly obsessed. He’d concluded that Lan Qiren was the former about an incense stick into their first discussion conference together, and as a result, he’d barely paid any attention to reports about him ever since.

That was why he’d almost missed it.

Only almost, which was why Wen Ruohan was the closest thing the cultivation world had to a god.

Not only was he older and more powerful than all the other cultivators, he also didn’t let himself get lulled into a false sense of security. He prided himself on being observant and cautious, albeit sometimes to the point that others called him paranoid. He kept track of everything that might at some point become a threat to his ambitions for the Wen sect. And even then, it had been years before he’d noticed what Lan Qiren was getting up to with that immensely clever little lecture series of his!

That was the “almost” of Lan Qiren, the exception to the rule of how dull he was.

Somehow, Lan Qiren had managed to convince other sects to send him their children to teach.

He’d offered up the Lan sect’s infamously rigid but spectacular education to sects who were nowhere near as well-equipped, and they’d started sending their children to him in droves, particularly once he got a reputation for being able to improve the unruliest of children. It was a little unusual for any sect to make such an offer or for other sects to accept it, given that most sects tended to be possessive and insular, but ultimately it was easy enough to disregard as little more than an extension of the Lan sect’s overweening pride in their scholarly prowess…and by easy to disregard, Wen Ruohan meant easy to overlook.

And overlook it he had: it wasn’t until a small and especially timid sect under Wen Ruohan’s own command had been paranoid enough to see fit to let him know that they were planning to send their own child there, just in case he might have some problem with it – the Pingliang Tang sect leader probably didn’t piss without confirming that it wouldn’t annoy Wen Ruohan – that Wen Ruohan had even realized the potential implications of what Lan Qiren was doing.

A teacher for a day, a father for a lifetime, the saying went, and by the time Wen Ruohan realized what was happening, Lan Qiren, inadvertent father to only nephews, had already seeded the entire cultivation world with students that had recognized him as their teacher. Younger sons, cousins, or branch family members – it might all seem like a lot of nothing, but if one mapped out where they were all from, it was immediately obvious that in another ten or twenty years, Lan Qiren would be able to call upon a vast network of connections, each one bound by their code of honor and cultivation orthodoxy to treat him with respect.

Each one of whom could, without effort, become the perfect spy that no one would ever suspect. Or even more than a spy – even an outright supporter, swaying their sect to follow Lan Qiren’s lead!

No one else had figured it out yet, much to Wen Ruohan’s amusement, not even the year before last when Lan Qiren had finagled Nie Mingjue to be one of his students, presumably trading on his friendship with the current Sect Leader Nie. The Nie sect’s very own sect heir, a Great Sect! That must have been a real coup for Lan Qiren. Not only had it made Lan Qiren’s classes fashionable, a mark of pride for parents who sent their children to them to brag about to each other, it meant that more and more sects were now willing to send their own sect heirs to him, giving him the chance to mold their young, impressionable minds into whatever shape he wished.

Sect heirs! Voluntarily bowing to someone in another sect! To the leader of another sect!

The mere idea of it was enough to make a prospective empire-builder like Wen Ruohan seethe with frustration and envy. No one would ever voluntarily entrust their children to him. If he wanted them, he’d have to force their parents to send them, resistant and rebellious, and it’d have to be outright indoctrination rather than teaching. Far less effective than Lan Qiren’s method.

It was all a stroke of genius, really.

A pity that Lan Qiren had almost certainly done it entirely by accident.

Really, it was almost appalling. How could someone so reserved and, well, boring as the acting head of the Lan sect, with his dull monotone voice and his tendency to talk at great length about exceedingly boring minutiae, have stumbled into such a clever scheme? It required an almost impossible mix of contrary and conflicting elements: the Lan sect’s brilliant reputation for morality and Lan Qiren’s own impeccable (if, again, incredibly boring) reputation as a stern moralist so rigid that suspecting him was essentially pointless, yes, but also persuasion skills sufficient to convince other sects to hand over their precious children, teaching skills sufficient to actually improve those children (presumably all the most troublesome ones their clans had produced, to boot) to such a degree that their parents noticed and appreciated it, sufficient dedication and patience to continue in such unfulfilling work for years and years while knowing that the harvest would not come for decades…

After he’d figured out what Lan Qiren was up to, Wen Ruohan had briefly wondered whether he’d misread the man’s personality. Maybe Lan Qiren was in fact hiding himself in plain sight, a snake in the grass, with all that dull long-windedness actually a deliberate persona designed to divert the attention away from what he was doing. Certainly some of those stupid little exceedingly boring bits of minutiae that he raised during the discussion conferences had ultimately turned out after several years to actually be quite beneficial to the Lan sect…

Unfortunately, that theory had only lasted until the next discussion conference. Lan Qiren was no schemer, Wen Ruohan would bet everything he knew about people on it.

So…fortuitous accident it must be.

It really was a pity. Wen Ruohan hadn’t needed to actually think about any of his fellow sect leaders in ages, most of them being exceptionally predictable, and one really did see it all after a certain point. It would have been rather fun to have a little mystery to slowly unravel, tugging lightly at each thread until he found the loose one that would undo the entire knot.

“Well?” he drawled, suddenly realizing that Qing Yu hadn’t actually answered his question, but had started hemming and hawing in an incredibly irritating sort of fashion instead. “Did you not obtain that information? If so, you’re far better off simply admitting to your failure up front, rather than making me wait…”

“Sect Leader, no!” Qing Yu cried out, his eyes going wide and a little white around the edges, spooked like a nervy overbred stallion. “The information was sought, of course, I would never fail the Sect Leader by letting down his expectations. But there simply wasn’t any to be obtained! As far as we can tell, there haven’t been any invitations sent out at all.”

Wen Ruohan frowned. “No invitations? Why not?”

The weather had already started to turn from winter back into spring. Whatever his other faults, Lan Qiren was invariably meticulous. In previous years, he had always settled all the details of who would be attending later that summer well before the first flowers bloomed, leaving him the entire spring to develop and revise his teaching plans.

A deviation from the norm was invariably worth paying attention to.

Qing Yu looked uncomfortable. “Sect Leader,” he said, “it is my belief that – ah – well, I think it is likely that there aren’t going to be any classes this year at all.”

Wen Ruohan’s eyebrows shot up.

“You may recall,” his spy said delicately, clearly reluctant to remind him lest Wen Ruohan take insult at the suggestion that he’d forgotten something, “the information I passed to you two months ago, about the change in power at the Lan sect…?”

“Yes, yes, Qingheng-jun coming back out of his wretched seclusion, I recall.”

Wen Ruohan hadn’t liked that news one bit. He had never been particularly impressed with the man – his memory of Qingheng-jun was a little less complimentary than that of many of his colleagues – but even he had to admit that Qingheng-jun had always been a talented cultivator.

Before he’d gone away into seclusion, Qingheng-jun had had a great deal of promise as a force to be reckoned with. With his good looks and aloof charms, not to mention his rapidly growing power, he had easily taken and maintained the top place on the cultivation world’s lists of most eligible and well-respected young masters. It was well known that the Lan sect treated him as their precious treasure and saw him as the future of their sect, and even outside his sect he’d been widely regarded as an especially promising young talent. For those like Wen Ruohan who thought of growing their own sect’s power, he had always been regarded as a potential threat.

Admittedly, Wen Ruohan hadn’t thought much of Qingheng-jun’s political sense during those brief few years that he had been in charge of the Lan sect, even accounting for the fact that he was a Lan, who were uniformly not especially good at such things. Rather, he had concluded that Qingheng-jun was at that time a little too arrogant given what he had to back it up – unlike Wen Ruohan himself, who was overweeningly arrogant but who had the personal and political power to justify it – and the years since had largely made him think that the Lan sect had probably traded up when they’d substituted Lan Qiren in instead. Lan Qiren might be boring, but he wasn’t reckless or overweening, and that counted for a surprisingly great deal when it came to politics.

Still, ten years of secluded cultivation wasn’t anything to sneer at, least of all from a man who’d already been a promising talent. As soon as he’d heard of the Qingheng-jun’s reemergence into the world, Wen Ruohan had sent his spies in the Lan sect to check that the other man hadn’t become too powerful, at least in comparison to himself. Upon being reassured that he hadn’t, he’d immediately stopped caring.

“What does that have to do with anything?” he asked, frowning. “If Lan Qiren is no longer serving as acting sect leader, doesn’t that give him more time to devote to his little teaching experiment…? Or has he decided to pack up his guqin and take to the road as a wandering cultivator?”

The idea was a little ridiculous, though not actually out of the question. It was extremely common for young masters to set out on such a journey upon reaching adulthood, hoping to improve their cultivation and win fame and glory, and Lan Qiren was after all still in his twenties, or at minimum early thirties, even if he behaved so much like an old fogey that it was easy to forget it. Wen Ruohan had always instinctively classed him as the same age as his peers among the other Great Sects, but in actual fact Lan Qiren was younger than Jiang Fengmian, otherwise the youngest, by at least seven or eight years.

It was plausible, anyway. Still, Wen Ruohan couldn’t see it. Maybe after a year or two, once Qingheng-jun was firmly settled back into his new position as sect leader, but surely Qingheng-jun wouldn’t so readily give up the invaluable resource that was his younger brother’s ten years of experience…?

“No, Sect Leader, nothing like that,” Qing Yu said respectfully. “My sources in the Lan sect report that Second Master Lan has entered seclusion.”

Wen Ruohan blinked.

“No, that’s wrong,” he said, genuinely startled out of his usual apathy for the first time in – years. “Lan Qiren would never enter seclusion.”

That was something he was quite certain of.

Wen Ruohan might have been taken by surprise by the unexpected inventiveness of that teaching idea, but as a general matter, he still had eyes that he knew how to use. Lan Qiren had never once gone into secluded training in the entire ten years since his brother’s retreat from the world, not even temporarily, not even when the opportunity to utilize the most desirable spots for cultivation was offered for his use during the discussion conferences, as it was on occasion. Further, Lan Qiren hadn’t managed to completely eradicate his tendency to grimace whenever someone even mentioned seclusion, though over the years he’d gotten a little better at suppressing it.

In short, it was quite obvious that he regarded seclusion with the same suspicion as a man who had once bitten into a sour lemon thinking it was candy might regard all fruit.

It was quite a reasonable distaste, given what had happened with his elder brother’s own strict seclusion and the impact it had had on his own life. But that just made it all more unlikely that Lan Qiren had suddenly chosen to give up his beloved classes in favor of a lengthy seclusion. If he had, then Wen Ruohan had wholly misjudged him, and that was a far more serious matter than whatever the man was actually doing.

“The Sect Leader is wise and insightful, with unsurpassed judgment,” Qing Yu said, slavishly complimentary as ever. “Although I only have some whispers to rely upon, it is my understanding that the seclusion is not wholly voluntary on Second Master Lan’s part, but rather undertaken as some sort of penance.”

“Penance,” Wen Ruohan said, now even more bemused. “Lan Qiren.”

The Lan sect was inordinately fond of making all sorts of ridiculous rules, and of punishing themselves for breaking those rules, but – Lan Qiren?

Wen Ruohan was usually the first to believe in his fellow man’s capacity for treachery, which was not to be underestimated, but…still. Lan Qiren? He couldn’t see Lan Qiren having committed any sort of serious offense, let alone one that was sufficiently grievous to justify him being confined against his will. The man had once looked appalled and outraged when Jin Guangshan had casually suggested he wear something that would break a Lan sect rule against waist ornaments. How serious an infraction could he have possibly committed?

“What else do you know about it? I’ll accept rumor if you don’t have anything concrete,” he asked, finding to his amusement that he was fishing for gossip like some sort of fishmonger’s wife. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had such an exciting series of updates. Not even Qingheng-jun’s unexpected reemergence into the cultivation world had moved him this much.

“Rumor has it that it may have something to do with his brother, the now restored Sect Leader Lan,” Qing Yu reported. “There are those in the Cloud Recesses that say that they quarreled – even that they’ve grown to despise each other.”

Wen Ruohan arched his eyebrows and steepled his fingers together in front of his mouth.

Now that was news.

Rumor or no rumor, he’d never heard so much of a hint of it before. Lan Qiren had never said a bad word about his brother within Wen Ruohan’s presence, and the reports his spies had delivered to him indicated that he always dutifully reported to his brother’s door once every five days without fail, to update him about the events happening in the Lan sect. There had never been any hint of trouble there, and the vanishingly rare orders Qingheng-jun had issued from his seclusion, all in writing, had been implemented without the slightest hesitation. Wen Ruohan had never bothered looking into Lan Qiren’s history with his sect, assuming it to be every bit as dull as his present day, but perhaps that had been an oversight, if there was something like this lurking in there.

It seemed that Lan Qiren might have hidden depths after all.

Interesting indeed.

Though…perhaps what was most interesting was instead Wen Ruohan’s own reaction to the news.

Reflecting on the thoughts he’d just had, it was notable that he’d fixated on the part of the rumor focusing on Lan Qiren, rather than his brother. Under normal circumstances, Wen Ruohan really ought to have immediately assumed that the rumor was half-true and half-false, that the hatred was one-sided, that it was only Qingheng-jun who had a problem with Lan Qiren. It’d hardly be surprising if that were the case, really. The man had been in seclusion for ten years; it’d be strange if his mind wasn’t a little twisted after that, and of course any paranoid mind would suspect the person who’d sat in his seat for those ten long years of malicious motives, no matter how superficially innocent and loyal Lan Qiren might seem.

That was by far the more logical conclusion, and yet Wen Ruohan hadn’t gone there.

Instead, he’d immediately accepted what was, after all, only a rumor, and taken it as a complete truth. Was it simply that he was taken by the unlikely notion that Lan Qiren hated his brother in return?

It just seemed so…unlike the man.

Wen Ruohan had never seen a version of Lan Qiren that hated before.

The rare times the man had succumbed to his temper had already been interesting enough, and those instances had involved little more than distaste. How would genuine hatred look on him? Wen Ruohan found himself rather curious.

A thought then occurred to him.

“What about the two boys?” he asked. “Lan Qiren’s nephews. Isn’t he raising them? How could he go into seclusion and leave a duty like that unattended?”

“Yes, Sect Leader, your memory is correct, he was previously involved in the heirs’ upbringing. I believe that Sect Leader Lan has now resumed supervision over their education, as is his right as their father.”

“Father,” Wen Ruohan snorted. “Father indeed. If I recall correctly, Lan Qiren was serving as father and mother both to those children, what with the two of them in seclusion the way they were. Are you saying he’s no longer involved in raising the children? At all?”

“No, Sect Leader.”

Cutting off Lan Qiren’s access to his beloved nephews might be enough to make him hate someone, Wen Ruohan supposed, finding himself unexpectedly appalled by the news. It seemed like a terribly stupid thing to do, and he hadn’t thought that Qingheng-jun was that stupid.

Even if you were jealous of your brother who had (however unwillingly) usurped your authority in your absence, whether as sect leader or as father, even if you longed to have your children back at your side with their attention paid to you rather than to him, to tear apart a close family relationship like that was really a step too far. Even Wen Ruohan wouldn’t do such a thing lightly. He might be power-hungry and cruel, bloodthirsty and sadistic, he could admit all of that, but even he understood the foremost importance of family.

Even if he didn’t, Wen Ruohan wasn’t an idiot: to put a mere brotherly rivalry above sect unity and create internal strife before you had firmly gripped the reins of power once more was stupid to the extreme. Lan Qiren hadn’t been the most popular leader, but he’d still been leader for ten years, and people were creatures of habit – to immediately imprison him in seclusion would be seen as inauspicious, a bad omen. What ambitious man voluntarily brought a cloud like that upon himself when it was infinitely easier to avoid it by doing nothing?

Not to mention the impact on the children themselves! That alone would have been enough to stay Wen Ruohan’s own hand in such circumstances.

Oh, other men might believe that children of nine and six were too young to really remember much, but Wen Ruohan knew better. Take himself as an example: he was the cultivation world’s most ancient monster, having lived for a century or more, and by now the details of many of his older memories had begun to slip through his fingers like grains of sand, faces blurring and details forgotten…but the traumatic events of his own childhood were still shockingly easy to recall.

He’d been, what, six, seven years old when the Lan sect’s last war had started? Eight, perhaps? Certainly no more than that. But Wen Ruohan could still remember those days, when the smell of blood had sunk so deeply into him that he thought it had never really left him since. He could still recall with ease memories of walking through battlefields full of his slaughtered kin, his feet bleeding, his skin burning from the harsh glare of the sun, each and every one of his senses full of the stink of the humid forest, the filth and dirt of the earth. He could still recall how the faces of the Wen sect’s dead were twisted in agony and fear, filled with resentment, but those of the Lan bloodline were quiet and peaceful, as if they had been lulled to sleep with a lullaby…and they had been, an immensely poisonous one, their own sect leader having poured it into their ears long before the battle began to give them the strength of madmen, and the deaths of madmen, too.

Terrifying. Wen Ruohan had never really trusted a Lan since that day.

Wen Ruohan could recall the other lessons he’d learned back then, too. That bitter and bloody war had been the first time his brothers had betrayed him. It had been the first time he had realized that he could rely only upon himself in this world, himself and those who were so deeply dependent upon him that they could see no difference between his interests and theirs. He had grown cold and closed off and self-interested, rejecting all connections other than the ones he himself chose. It hadn’t been until years later, when he himself had inadvertently betrayed his own favorite younger brother, that he’d realized the perils of the path he had set himself on back then, and by then of course it was too late to regret…

Not that Wen Ruohan really regretted having had the last laugh, of course. After all, was he not here, still firmly seated upon the seat of the Wen sect leader a century later, and all those who had once betrayed him now dead and gone, forgotten by all but him?

Surely that must mean that everything had worked out for him, with no room for regret.

Still, the fact remained that the scars of childhood were oftentimes the most lasting, with Wen Ruohan’s own lingering wariness of the seemingly placid Lan sect itself something that could be seen as evidence of that. So if Qingheng-jun intended to use involuntary seclusion as a means to separate Lan Qiren from his sons and return their loyalties to himself, he was making a terrible mistake.

It wasn’t that the goal itself was so bad, really – Wen Ruohan might not be overly attached to his own sons, but he would swiftly murder anyone who tried to take his place with them – but rather the method.

The right way to do it would have been for Qingheng-jun to take advantage of his lengthy absence to re-introduce himself to his sons in a way that would let him sweep them off their feet. It wouldn’t even have been that hard! It wasn’t as if Qingheng-jun were without his good points. He had a reputation as an exceptional swordsman and an outstanding cultivator, of being polished and charming, and of course he was handsome in the way all the Lan main bloodline were, and being handsome was always an advantage.

They were only children. With just a little effort, he could very easily have overwhelmed them.

He could have filled the boys’ eyes with him until they couldn’t see anything else. He could have set himself out as something new and exciting and different, made himself all honey in comparison to their uncle’s strict discipline. Then, once he’d won their trust, it would have been easy enough to drip poison into their ears, easy enough to breed distrust and disdain and dislike of the uncle who had once raised them with love. They were only children. It wouldn’t have been hard at all to lead them by the nose until they’d turned away from Lan Qiren, thinking the entire time that they were acting through their own free will. It would take years for them to uncover the deceit, and by then it would be too late to regret.

Far too late.

In his time, Wen Ruohan had enacted similar plots before on people who weren’t even related to him. To do it to children of his own family would have been as easy as flipping over his hand.

But…this? This way? A forced rupture, a cruelly imposed separation?

It would do nothing but harden everyone’s feelings, solidify their positions. It would brand the boys’ love for Lan Qiren into their heads forever. Even if they never saw him again, they would forever remember the uncle that had faithfully cared for them in their youth, and they would resent their father for having so cruelly taken him away from them. Such a resentment might take years to ferment and grow, and it might never come to anything in the end, but at a minimum there was no way that such a move would aid Qingheng-jun in winning his sons over to his side rather than his brother’s.

It was stupid. Absolutely, colossally stupid.

…too stupid, perhaps?

Wen Ruohan was aware that his peers often jeered at him for being unduly paranoid, but he credited his suspicious instincts at least in part for his success in living as long as he had. Could there be something more to Qingheng-jun’s actions than what appeared on the surface? Or was it really just that seclusion had rotted away his brain?

Qing Yu tried to speak further, possibly to change the subject, but Wen Ruohan waved him silent. There was something in that thought, the feeling of having caught the right scent, of tracking down some hidden hint of truth that he needed to follow to its end lest someone manage to get something by him.

Wen Ruohan did not let people get things by him.

So: let him take as his premise that Qingheng-jun was, while not necessarily smart, at a minimum not completely foolish. His behavior towards his brother was not only malicious, but pointless and counterproductive. He had to have realized that what he was doing would only make his sons dislike him more, especially sons that had been up until now raised with Lan Qiren’s rigid adherence to morality, and yet he had decided to proceed regardless. What, then, could be his real goal? Even sadists like Wen Ruohan typically had a reason behind their cruelty…

Unless the cruelty was the point.

Now that was an interesting thought.

Let Wen Ruohan accept as a premise that Qingheng-jun disliked his brother, having formed a grudge against him, presumably for having enjoyed everything that rightfully belonged to him while he hid away from the world. It would be a foolish sort of grudge, of course, given that he’d voluntarily given it all up, but it was the sort of irrational grudge a petty sort of man might nevertheless foster. Then, taking the next step down that path, could he assume that Qingheng-jun was acting first and foremost on account of that grudge, rather than reason?

Could Qingheng-jun really have grown to hate his younger brother to such a degree that he wanted nothing more than for him to suffer, and knew that he would suffer all the more in his seclusion because he knew that his nephews would also be suffering through missing him?

Interesting indeed.

It certainly fit with what he remembered of Qingheng-jun. He’d been short-sighted, which at the time Wen Ruohan had largely ascribed to his youth, and he had been inclined to play favorites, a contrast to Lan Qiren’s scrupulous even-handedness thereafter. He’d been susceptible to flattery in a way that Wen Ruohan had noted down as a potential future weakness to exploit, the same way he did with Jin Guangshan, and he had been dreadfully petty, remembering grudges but never favors. He’d been young back then, yes, but ten years in seclusion would have calcified and enhanced those traits, not reduced or ameliorated them.

So yes, Qingheng-jun might not be stupid enough to behave in a way that was wholly contrary to his goals, but he might be just stupid enough to prioritize his grudge over other considerations. Even Wen Ruohan would make missteps when he allowed self-indulgence to overwhelm his political sense.

It fit – but not quite.

There was still something there that didn’t quite make sense.

Overall, the logic was sound. If the goal of Qingheng-jun’s actions was to punish Lan Qiren for the perceived slight of having been Sect Leader in Qingheng-jun’s absence – even though it was obvious enough to anyone with eyes that Lan Qiren hadn’t especially wanted to do it and would probably have been delighted to be quit of the role if only the person he was returning the position to was worthy of it – then it was quite reasonable to forcefully tear him away from his nephews as a means of hurting him.

(It was even a little exciting, in its own way. Wen Ruohan could quite reasonably claim to be the cultivation world’s most accomplished torturer, though admittedly one that preferred inflicting physical pain rather than emotional agony, and brutality of this level was piquant even to his long-jaded palate.)

On the other hand, there was surely no lasting joy or victory in such a necessarily temporary set-up.

After all, as long as Lan Qiren remained at the Cloud Recesses, his nephews would have access to him. There was no way around it. Even Qingheng-jun’s wife, who had lived in permanent solitude alongside him, had had some connection with the outside world, however limited. No matter how great the hatred between them – and Wen Ruohan had to remind himself that that hatred was just an assumption on his part – even so, Qingheng-jun couldn’t justify locking Lan Qiren away for good.

No, the Lan sect was the Lan sect in the end, with a reputation for righteousness that was not wholly hollow. They might, in their insularity and joy at the return of a much-beloved and much-missed hero, allow a miscarriage of justice, but it wouldn’t last. Qingheng-jun might be the Lan sect’s darling, a treasure that everyone had thought lost for good, and his reputation would undoubtedly only have benefited from never having to be measured against reality, everyone projecting their own prejudices and ambitions upon his blank slate. But in the end it was still the Lan sect, honorable and rule-bound. Even if Qingheng-jun was universally beloved and Lan Qiren not, which Wen Ruohan doubted, it would still be impossible to imprison him forever.

Lan Qiren would eventually go free. And once free, with the trauma of forced separation between them, his nephews would rush back to him and him to them, wouldn’t they? They would only be closer than ever before. All the suffering they had endured would be wholly eclipsed by the greatness of their joy…

That’s what didn’t work.

Wen Ruohan’s assumption, at the moment, was that Qingheng-jun was a cruel man. Wen Ruohan himself was a cruel man, had been a cruel man for years, and moreover he had been in the position of having felt himself deeply and truly wronged before. Like recognized like. No one knew better than he how a man like that thought – the things he might want, the things he might do.

There was no way that a Qingheng-jun who wanted to be rid of his brother would stop at just seclusion.

And in this situation, that meant…

“What are Qingheng-jun’s plans for Lan Qiren?” Wen Ruohan asked abruptly.

Qing Yu jumped a little. He was easily startled, though presumably paranoia and over-caution was a useful trait in a spy. “His plans, Sect Leader?”

“After the seclusion is complete,” he clarified, waving his hand dismissively. “I’m certain he has some. What do the rumors in the Cloud Recesses say?”

“Ah – Sect Leader – this one failed to anticipate your level of interest – I have not heard of Qingheng-jun having any plans for his younger brother at all –”

Of course. Wen Ruohan nodded sagaciously, realizing that he’d raised the question the wrong way around. Someone as vain as he recalled Qingheng-jun being would never allow others to suspect that he was acting purely out of malice, as that might call his reputation as a perfect gentleman into question.

No, whatever he was going to do to Lan Qiren next would have to be appear to be spontaneous.

The key phrase being, appear to be.

“Tell me then of what the rumors are regarding Lan Qiren’s own plans for the future, once his seclusion has ended,” Wen Ruohan requested. It was unlikely that someone as transparently sincere as Lan Qiren actually had any such plans, which meant that any rumors that existed were probably being spurred on by Qingheng-jun instead. It was the sort of thing Wen Ruohan had seen plenty of in the Lan sect when it had been under the former Sect Leader Lan, their father, and that was the environment Qingheng-jun would have grown up in, much more so than Lan Qiren given the difference in their ages. “There must be something that people are saying, never mind their stupid rule against gossip. If someone is saying something, I wish to hear about it. No matter how outlandish.”

“Sect Leader, this humble one apologizes – I have failed to live up to your expectations – I will go out and seek out an answer at once –”

Wen Ruohan probed a few more times in a few more ways, but without success.

After a while, he gave a faint sigh and lifted his hand again to stop Qing Yu’s endless apologies.

“Enough already,” he said. “I understand already, you have nothing more to say. You’re dismissed…ah, as you go, send in Wang Liu, will you?”

He waited until Qing Yu’s dutiful second-in-command had been summoned and Qing Yu was fully gone before speaking again.

“You are in luck,” he told Wang Liu mildly. “You have an opportunity for advancement.”

The man’s eyes widened – in surprise, yes, but Wen Ruohan could see the light of ambition kindling in his gaze as well.

“It seems that your predecessor is a spy for one of the other sects.” Wen Ruohan smiled at Wang Liu’s obvious shock. “No, don’t deny it. I’m certain you had your suspicions and were keeping them to yourself for the moment, looking for a chance to capitalize on them? No proof, I assume?”

Wang Liu jerked his head in a nod, then bowed deeply.

“The Sect Leader’s wisdom greatly exceeds my own,” he said respectfully. “It has been my belief for some time that Master Qing reported first to Lanling Jin before you. Uncovering a spy in a single conversation…! The Sect Leader is far better at judging men than I could ever dream to be! He never slipped up enough around me for me to confirm anything, and he has always been triply cautious when speaking to you.”

Wen Ruohan snorted. “Stop it with the compliments,” he said dryly. “There’s a difference between respect and blatant flattery, and the latter is an insult to my intelligence. There’s news like this out there and he drones on for half a shichen about Yu Ziyuan’s latest fit of jealousy? He’s either incompetent or a traitor, and I forgive neither.”

It wasn’t worth it to force the answer out of Qing Yu directly, though Wen Ruohan had no doubt he could do so. Why bother? There were far more enjoyable ways to go about it – and indeed, a piece of paper and a flick of his hand sent word to the soldiers that waited outside his door, and they headed off to escort his previous guest down to the Fire Palace. He and Qing Yu could have a much longer, more fruitful, and far more enjoyable conversation down there.

Well, enjoyable for Wen Ruohan, anyway.

Maybe he really would let it get out that he’d done it because the man had bored him. There was value in having the appearance of instability, after all…

“Do you know of any rumors in the Lan sect regarding Lan Qiren’s future plans?” he asked his new top spy for Gusu. “I presume you get the same reports as Qing Yu. There must be something that someone is saying.”

Presumably mindful of the fate of his predecessor, Wang Liu gave the matter some serious thought.

“Nothing concrete or believable, Sect Leader,” he finally said. “Even the most persistent rumor I heard was little more than chattering among the Lan women that now that Lan Qiren was free of the burdens of sect leadership, he might finally go ahead and get married.”

That actually got a real, genuine bark of laughter out of Wen Ruohan.

“Lan Qiren,” he said, unable to contain his glee. “Lan Qiren, married? Can you imagine? The poor woman!”

Wang Liu couldn’t conceal an answering smirk of his own.

“Just imagine it,” Wen Ruohan continued, doing just that, his laughter getting stronger rather than fading. “Listening to him drone on and on about those awful Lan sect rules day and night! It’s probably his idea of convivial dinner table conversation – ah, no, the Lan sect has a rule against speaking while eating, doesn’t it? So it’d be sitting in silence instead, and then the rules would come out –”

Lao Nie, the current Sect Leader Nie, had once told Wen Ruohan that he’d gotten Lan Qiren drunk in some sort of experiment, and that the other man had apparently gone on a full-shichen rant about some arcane nuance of some rule developed four generations earlier. If that was what the man was like when he was drunk, Wen Ruohan couldn’t even imagine the misery of being married to him while he was sober.

He supposed there was the possibility that it might not be quite as bad as he was making it out to be: Lan Qiren was a Lan, in the end. That family had once been infamous for their mad hearts, even the most placid and boring of them a potential minefield – it was really their one bout of unorthodoxy, the way they honored their ancestor’s ceaseless devotion to a single dao companion, for whom they would do anything. Would it be possible for Lan Qiren to change everything about who he was once he’d fallen in love…?

Of course, that assumed he’d marry for love.

Still chuckling, Wen Ruohan dismissed Wang Liu and headed down towards his Fire Palace to entertain himself. He found, to his surprise, that he couldn’t quite get the thought out of his mind. Though perhaps that was understandable: it was a compelling notion! The Lan sect might prefer to marry for love, but they were as deeply mired in the muck of politics as everyone else. While they refrained from arranging betrothals in childhood to allow for the possibility of their disciples falling in love and ruining everything, they were more willing to be practical when it came to older ones, and Lan Qiren must be around thirty by now. It wouldn’t be implausible for him to want to get married…

Or at least agree to it, anyway. After all, Qingheng-jun was new to the scene, coming back to take charge of his sect after ten years of absence; he would need to make some big moves to establish his authority. It would only be beneficial to him if he could arrange some sort of alliance on the basis of Lan Qiren’s marriage, establishing himself as a figure to be reckoned with both internally and in the wider cultivation world, and it would probably tickle his fancy to utilize a brother he despised to do it.

Maybe that really was what Qingheng-jun was planning.

It would even be rather clever, really. A few months of seclusion to remove Lan Qiren from power, then shackling him down with some woman of Qingheng-jun’s selection – and Lan Qiren was a valuable matrimonial prize, as such things went, capable of winning all sorts of benefits for the Lan sect.

Brother of a sect leader, years of service and experience as sect leader himself…the sect that married their daughter to Lan Qiren would probably even think that they’d be getting a direct line to Qingheng-jun – of course, they’d be wrong, if Qingheng-jun really did dislike his brother, but that was the sort of thing an outsider wouldn’t know unless they had access to the types of spies Wen Ruohan had – and also all of those valuable connections Lan Qiren would have spent years building with the other sect leaders. What wouldn’t they trade for such an immense advantage? Qingheng-jun could have his pick of the world!

Of course, such a solution still left the long-term problem.

Wen Ruohan just couldn’t see someone as upright and devoted as Lan Qiren turning away from his nephews simply because he’d married and had his own children. The man’s personality just didn’t seem to be that type, not at all. He was too bull-headedly loyal, too devoted, too true…well, perhaps Qingheng-jun simply didn’t know him well enough. He’d been gone for ten years, after all.

Lan Qiren, a married man with a wife of his own at home, Wen Ruohan thought to himself once more, and shook his head. For some reason, the amusement that he’d initially had at the ridiculousness of the thought had faded away, leaving only a strange sense of dissatisfaction. I just can’t see it.

I can’t see it at all.

Chapter Text

Nearly three months to the day after Lan Qiren’s first conversation with his brother on the subject of his future, the one that saw him locked away in the same house where He Kexin had lived out the remainder of her too-short life, his brother sent word that he would be coming to see him that evening.

Lan Qiren’s first reaction was overwhelming relief, followed immediately by profound self-disgust.

Three months, he thought bitterly to himself. That is a level of seclusion we permit adolescents to engage in without concern, provided they are adequately mature. We let the older ones seclude themselves for a whole year! You do remember that you are a grown man, do you not? How can you have grown so pathetically desperate after so little time?

He couldn’t help it, though. These past three months had been – absolutely miserable, and it didn’t matter one bit that the majority of his torment had come at his own hands. His own mind, rather.

Lan Qiren hated being in seclusion.

No, more than hated. He feared it.

By all rights, Lan Qiren shouldn’t have had such bitter antipathy to seclusion. A certain amount of revulsion was only natural and completely understandable, after what had happened with his brother and He Kexin. In fact, he had always thought secretly to himself that if he were in He Kexin’s place, he would have chosen death over a lifetime of seclusion, as indeed he supposed that she had finally done in the end. But Lan Qiren was not He Kexin, and he had not been permanently imprisoned – he was merely in temporary seclusion, something completely normal. It made no sense at all that he should react so badly to it.

After all, the Lan sect regularly incorporated formal seclusion into their cultivation practices, with his kinsmen and his ancestors having engaged in it for decades if not for centuries. Even Lan Qiren himself had practiced it occasionally as a child, without too much fear or discomfort. He recalled that it had taken him some time to adjust to it each time, to be sure, but that was all. He had always initially been quite distressed by the deviation from his typical routine, having been even more rigid as a child than he was as an adult, and he’d invariably had some sort of meltdown in the first day or two. But after a while, he had always been able to adjust to it. He’d even eventually found the lack of intrusion by people he couldn’t ever quite understand to be somewhat relaxing.

He'd never enjoyed seclusion, not really, but it hadn’t been that bad.

Not – the way it was now.

Now Lan Qiren woke up each morning at the prescribed time and, each morning, was immediately sick to his stomach when he remembered where he was, though thankfully he had stopped actually throwing up sometime after the first half-month. He went to sleep earlier and earlier each night, hoping for some relief, some escape from the misery, but found none: his nights were sleepless, filled with nightmares. He would often wake up shouting, knowing even as he did that no one would hear him through the silencing wards placed on the house, and although he was grateful that no one witnessed his shame, the knowledge made it worse, not better. During the seemingly endless days, he found himself alternatively listless and restless, unable to focus on accomplishing anything and yet desperate to fill the hours with something, anything – desperate to do something of meaning, of value, and yet impeded in doing so by his own wholly unreasonable distress.

He was lonely, yes, agonizingly lonely, but he was also bored, and the boredom was its own torment. For ten years, Lan Qiren’s life had been full of work, endless and grating but important. He had been forced to sacrifice sleep, to curtail his hobbies, to limit even his time with his nephews in favor of the work required to keep the Lan sect running – it had been hard and often thankless work, but someone had needed to do it. He had needed to do it, him and no one else; that was the duty of the main clan, the responsibility they bore in exchange for the privileges they were accorded as the leaders of the sect. To manage the incessant demands being made of him, Lan Qiren had forced himself to develop the habits necessary to maintain that endless, punishing schedule. To wake up ready to work, to start work at once, to keep working long after he was tired and no longer wanted to think.

He still had those habits, only now…now he couldn’t do anything.

Oh, he could play music, he could read books, he could cultivate and meditate to his heart’s content; he was free enough in that way, he supposed. But he wasn’t used to such freedom. The ten days of “seclusion” he had taken each year in his brother’s absence had been invariably interrupted by his work: the pile of correspondence he carried into seclusion with him, the occasional apologetic knock on the door seeking an urgent decision, the written questions that invariably arrived with each meal as if putting it in writing made it not count as an interruption…no longer.

Those messages went to his brother, now, and his brother did not want his help.

(“I think it is time for you to rest,” his brother had told him during that first conversation, his expression seemingly neutral. Surely, Lan Qiren thought to himself, surely he was only imagining the hint of malice in his eyes…? “The sect has burdened you greatly, all these years, but I am here now, and you are not needed.”

Lan Qiren winced, even though something in him told him it was a mistake, like showing weakness in front of a predator. Still, he hadn’t been able to help himself. His brother’s words matched too many of his own secret fears. Not needed, not wanted, not welcome…

“I do not mind the work, Xiongzhang,” he assured him. At the time, he’d still thought there was a chance of talking his way out of it. “If there is anything I can do to aid you –”

“There isn’t.”

Lan Qiren swallowed. His ten years of hard work was nothing in his brother’s eyes, it seemed. “If you are concerned that I will interfere with your authority, I can assure you that I have no such intentions,” he said, near to begging. “You are the sect leader, you have always been; that is unquestionable. I only wish to be of service, to do something helpful…it doesn’t have to be anything important. Even if it is nothing but watching over your sons while you are occupied – ”

That was begging, and they both knew it.

His brother smiled, and Lan Qiren knew then that it was hopeless.)

That just made it all the worse, of course, made it all the more embarrassing that his first reaction was a feeling of welcome and relief at the notion of seeing someone again, finally. It was ridiculous and pointless. Lan Qiren knew exactly how much he had suffered, and he knew the reason why he was suffering – his brother had done this to him, done it purposefully. He had forced him into seclusion even knowing that it would hurt him…no, because it would hurt him.

There was no point in welcoming him now.

It would only demonstrate his weakness yet again.

It would only show his brother that seclusion really was in fact the best way to hurt him.

And yet, it shouldn’t be.

There was nothing wrong with the practice of seclusion itself. Lan Qiren had even, with his own two hands, helped Xichen go into his first secluded training – it had been a joyous affair. Wangji had helped them both with packing up everything Xichen might need, cultivation manuals and musical instruments and (as was the traditional role of a sibling or close friend) “snuck in” a few books for entertainment while Lan Qiren ceremoniously pretended not to notice. Xichen had been giggling in excitement the entire time, visibly proud that he was old enough to do it. Even Wangji had been infected by his enthusiasm and had demanded a chance to go into seclusion as well, pouting when Lan Qiren had explained that he would have to wait another few years before it was his turn.

A first seclusion only lasted for three days, but Lan Qiren had still made Xichen listen to him repeat the final set of warnings a few extra times, emphasizing several times over that he was to break seclusion at once if he felt overwhelmed at any point, that there was no shame in doing so. Xichen was too good a child to laugh him off, but he’d been bouncing on his feet the entire time, too excited to stand still, and Lan Qiren had ended up chuckling helplessly, shaking his head at his own fussiness.

Xichen had been fine, of course.

Xichen – Wangji –

Lan Qiren hoped his nephews were doing well. He hadn’t received any word of them – he hadn’t received word of anyone, of course. His brother had decreed that his seclusion was to be of the strictest type, similar to his own; it was even stricter than the one imposed on He Kexin, who had a set of servants to attend to her and who could theoretically correspond with friends provided the mail was read over first, though she never had. It was strict even compared to the one his brother had imposed upon himself, for his brother, who refused to see any servants, could still, if he so wished, listen to Lan Qiren’s reports at the door every five days, though Lan Qiren had no idea if he ever had.

No one came to report at Lan Qiren’s door.

Lan Qiren didn’t even get to see the disciples who delivered his food at rare intervals, the meals spaced out so as to respect his “decision” to practice inedia, a decision that had been made for him and which he’d only been informed of once he was already confined. The closest he was permitted to come to human contact was in leaving written requests for new books from the library with his dishes outside the door.

It had taken five days for his first request to be answered.

Lan Qiren had grown increasingly more frantic the entire time, nearly injuring himself in his worry. By the time a small book had arrived alongside his dinner, the one he had asked for, he had very nearly convinced himself that he had been completely forgotten, as illogical as such a notion might be. How ridiculous such a notion would be.

Lan Qiren was in the middle of the Cloud Recesses, in the middle of his home, surrounded by his family. They wouldn’t forget about him.

Surely. Not even if his brother wanted them to, surely they wouldn’t…

Well, the book had arrived in the end. Someone still remembered him.

His nephews probably remembered him.

Oh, but Lan Qiren missed his nephews. He missed them so much. He missed them like a missing limb, like a piece of his heart torn out of his chest. He missed them as desperately as a drowning man missed the air.

He hoped they didn’t miss him.

It was better than imagining the alternative, anyway.

That itself was another torment, equally self-imposed and equally inescapable. Lan Qiren was haunted by thoughts of his nephews suffering: of Xichen crying silently or holding himself too stiffly, hurting himself with overelaborate rituals or excessive self-restraint the way he did when he was truly unhappy, of Lan Wangji’s temper tantrums, hurting himself and others in a more outright fashion, biting and kicking and screaming. Lan Qiren knew how to deal with them, each in their own way, but would others? Would whoever his brother had assigned to care for them know to be patient with them? To speak calmly and at length, letting them use the familiar words to center and ground themselves?

Had his nephews tried to come see him? Had they been punished for doing so?

Lan Qiren had no idea. He had no way to know. He was blind and deaf to everything outside his walls, her walls, and the uncertainty tortured him nearly as much as he tortured himself. Tortured himself with thoughts of them being punished, of them being sad, of his nephews that he loved so very much being in pain and suffering simply for loving him.

Better…better that they not miss him. Better that they forget him.

Lan Qiren did not want to hope for it, but he didn’t know what else he had left to hope for.

Perhaps he could hope that his brother wasn’t taking care of them himself. His brother had never had any patience for Lan Qiren’s strange fits of temper as a child, and Lan Wangji in particular was so very much like him in that respect…

(“Surely I have done nothing to deserve this!” Lan Qiren had cried out upon hearing of his brother’s order, at the time more aghast at how badly the conversation had gone than realizing the full horror that awaited him in his near future. “Xiongzhang, you cannot do this!”

“I can,” his brother said. He was still smiling. “More than that, I both can and will. I’m your sect leader, and your elder brother – the head of our sect, the head of our clan, the head of our family. I can do as I like, and you have no choice but to obey. Do not disrespect your elders.”

“Do not take advantage of your position to oppress others!” Lan Qiren snapped back. “Xiongzhang, I do not wish to enter seclusion. You know I don’t!”

“Indeed. That’s why I’m making it an order. Do I need to have it enforced?”

Lan Qiren couldn’t imagine anything more awful than being dragged off by force in front of everyone, losing all face for both himself and his sect, he who was once acting sect leader and responsible for representing all of their sect’s virtues now instead reduced to futile rebellion in defiance of their family rules. He couldn’t imagine how that would look, what people would think. What his nephews would think. Grimacing, he gave in and shook his head.

He wouldn’t resist.

“Will you at least tell me why?” he asked his brother.

“Why what?”

“Why are you doing this to me? Why do you treat me the way you do?”

Why do you hate me?

Was it something I did to you? Something I’ve forgotten? Even if it is, the rules say Do not bear grudges…

“Don’t look so upset, Qiren,” his brother said, not answering the question. “I trust you’ll find seclusion to be quite clarifying – the way I did.”)

That had been the last thing his brother had said to him.

And now his brother was coming to speak with him again.

No, relief wasn’t the right feeling.

Terror was more fitting.

Lan Qiren looked down at the piece of paper announcing his brother’s arrival with unseeing eyes.

Oddly enough, he found that he missed He Kexin.

They’d always disliked each other, never once getting along, the two of them like oil and water, but they’d nevertheless developed something of a begrudging understanding over the years. He knew to always mention the aspects of her sons’ lives she most wanted to hear and he always included an order for her favorite types of tea when he sent out the provision list for the sect; in turn she knew to avoid the subjects he least wanted to discuss and made sure that there was something he liked to eat ready when he brought his nephews to visit. They had mutually conspired to give her some degree of privacy with her sons, who she was supposed to only see under Lan Qiren’s supervision, whether it was by her sending Lan Qiren on endless errands or him making excuse after excuse to go out and fetch things he claimed to have “forgotten.” Later, he eventually just started taking to bringing a book with him when he came, something to let him sit in the next room and pretend to be deaf with while she played with Xichen and teased Wangji.

They had even, despite themselves, started talking with each other.

Back when Xichen and Wangji had been young enough to need regular naps, Lan Qiren had routinely pretended that it was easier on him for them to sleep where they were. This was very nearly a lie – it would probably have been easier to take them back home where they would be more comfortable – but he’d judged it worthwhile, since it allowed He Kexin a little more time to watch over them and them the chance to stay just that little bit longer with their mother, to see her once more when they woke.

The end result of it, however, had been the two of them sitting there in silence with two sleeping boys. It had rapidly become unbearably awkward, so they had started to fill the time with meaningless conversations that had mostly served to establish that they had completely opposite tastes in just about everything.

It had gotten to the point that whenever Lan Qiren read a book and disliked it, he would always set it aside to bring to her as a suggestion – and just as invariably, He Kexin would declare the book charming and wonderful, and that anyone who didn’t like it must have bricks for brains and stone for a soul. Much to his distress, she actually meant it, too, rather than just making a deliberate jab at his expense, though his aesthetic sense might have preferred the jab.

They never discussed his brother.

(That was not entirely true: there was that one highly awkward conversation early on in He Kexin’s imprisonment when Lan Qiren had conveyed to her that nothing about her imprisonment meant that she was required to accept his brother’s intimate company, sect leader or no, feeling it to be his duty in the event no one else had made it clear to her, and furthermore that he would support her if she didn’t want to see him. She’d only looked amused and declined, barely hiding her laughter, and he’d rushed out humiliated. He’d never brought it, or him, up again.)

In truth, they had never discussed much of anything, other than the boys.

They were not close. They did not like each other.

Yet somehow Lan Qiren thought, or at least believed, that He Kexin would have tried to help him out of his present predicament if she had lived. For her sons’ sake, at least, because she knew they loved him, though not for his own – Lan Qiren had never allowed himself any illusions regarding her. Was he not, however unwillingly, one of her jailors…?

Perhaps he was overestimating himself, or her. Perhaps he only thought of her because he was now trapped in these very same rooms that had once trapped her, this place which he had always thought of as hers, surrounded by the gentians she liked best and which he would forever associate with her. Perhaps he only thought of her now that his situation was strangely similar to hers, having been locked away without recourse by the same man…

“Qiren.”

Lan Qiren couldn’t suppress the full-body shudder that passed through him at the sound of his brother’s voice coming from behind him. He could not tell whether the shock was involuntary pleasure at hearing another person speak for the first time in three months, or merely despair that it was his brother he was hearing.

He turned slowly to look. It was indeed his brother, standing there in the front room of his (her) rooms.

A glance at the window showed that the hour was later than he’d realized. He must have lost time again, waiting, and his brother had come to visit him just as he had promised.

Lan Qiren had to clear his throat twice before he could reply, his voice dry and throat painful, but he rose to his feet and saluted his brother appropriately. “Xiongzhang.”

His brother surveyed him thoughtfully. Lan Qiren wondered what he saw.

He probably looked terrible. He’d followed all the usual rules about appearance, of course, and continued his usual training habits as always, but he hadn’t done much more than that, growing quite negligent; it had all felt utterly pointless. He probably should have made more of an effort with his appearance today, at least, knowing that his brother was coming. He’d intended to, only it had ended up being one of his listless days, so he hadn’t managed. And then somehow the afternoon had drifted away from him…he probably looked terrible.

He felt terrible, but that wasn’t anything new.

“Is there anything you want to say to me, Qiren?” his brother asked after a while. “Any questions?”

Lan Qiren stared at his feet. He didn’t know what his brother wanted him to say.

After a while, he asked, “Will you tell me how Xichen and Wangji are faring?”

He Kexin had asked him almost that same question, the first time Lan Qiren had visited her after he’d been given custody of Lan Xichen. He’d told her everything he could think of, no matter how inane or pointless. He’d spoken for nearly a full shichen, growing hoarse, even though Lan Xichen had been only a baby and not capable of very much, and she’d listened the entire time.

“No,” his brother said.

Lan Qiren nodded numbly, having expected as much.

“Then no,” he said. “I have nothing to say.”

That displeased his brother, he could see that, and Lan Qiren felt another full-body shudder come upon him. He didn’t want to displease his brother right now, though he could hardly imagine how his brother could possibly make things worse for him. Even prescribing physical discipline, even severe physical discipline, would be a welcome change from seclusion.

“…I see,” his brother said. He sounded neutral, not disapproving, but Lan Qiren knew it was there. “Very well. I am here to congratulate you.”

Lan Qiren shuddered once again. He felt very cold. This wasn’t going to be anything good. “Congratulate me? On what?”

“Your upcoming marriage.”

Three months ago, Lan Qiren would have thrown a fit at those words. He’d always had a nasty temper, had always been inclined to rage and shout and scold viciously when he was provoked, and no amount of reviewing the foundations of Do not succumb to rage had ever helped. He would have been aghast at the mere suggestion: a Lan of the main family, in an arranged marriage? Marrying for politics rather than love? Him, marrying? A marriage that he wouldn’t get any say in, not even the usual formulaic request for consent?

And again, him, getting married?

Ridiculous.

It wasn’t that Lan Qiren hadn’t thought about getting married before. His peers might mock him for being an old man before his time, but he was in truth relatively young, and he was after all the second son of the main line of a Great Sect; it wasn’t as though he couldn’t have gotten married if he’d wanted to. There were plenty of smaller sects that would have been more than delighted to send him their daughters if he’d only expressed the smallest iota of interest. The majority of the cultivation world saw nothing amiss in arranging marriages to further sect interests – in this, his Lan sect was the exception to the general rule, devoted as they were to their ancestor’s model of passionate love and devotion. They had always been considered a little unorthodox for allowing their disciples to generally pick their own dao companions, the one exception to their otherwise strict conservatism.

Even in the Lan sect, though, it wasn’t exactly unheard of to marry for political reasons, particularly after you were older. And it wasn’t as though Lan Qiren himself was terribly romantic.

Though – that was the problem, he supposed. That had always been what had stopped him: he wasn’t especially romantic, and he wasn’t especially amorous, either. The only person he could say that he’d ever had any sort of feelings for, or at least thought that he’d gotten close enough for it to count, had been Cangse Sanren. And yet even with her, a woman who had been reckoned one of the most beautiful and desirable female cultivators of his generation, Lan Qiren had only ever felt a vague and amorphous fondness, unsure whether he wanted to be by her side or if he just envied how carefree she seemed to be, and even that had only come upon him after months of knowing her. Despite some effort on his part, wistfully wanting to be normal like his peers for once, his feelings for her had never developed any further than friendship.

He certainly had never felt any lust for her.

For that matter, he'd never felt lust upon looking upon any person. No one had ever inspired those feelings within him that seemed to come so naturally to everyone else: he had never leered or yearned for pretty women, the way Jin Guangshan so grossly and obviously did whenever he dragged them all to brothels. He had never compromised his position on a subject for the sake of another person simply because he thought them lovely, the way Lao Nie so cheerfully yielded whenever anyone with especially exceptional martial skills asked him for anything. He didn’t even soften his gaze when looking upon a loved one, the way Jiang Fengmian did whenever he thought Yu Ziyuan wouldn’t notice.

When Lan Qiren was younger, he had thought that such feelings would come with time, but they never had. Whether it was because he had been a late bloomer or because the work of the sect had crushed it out of him, or if he’d simply been born without that internal instinct that other people had, he could never be sure, but in the end it didn’t really matter.

If he couldn’t feel what was necessary for a marriage, then he would not marry.

It had always been as simple as that. Lan Qiren didn’t want to be the next Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan, a partnership turned sour and bitter, and he didn’t want what Jin Guangshan had with his wife, either, nasty and acrimonious. Maybe he could have been happy with something like what Lao Nie had once had, with a bride he’d seemed genuinely delighted with, but…no.

A marriage was once in a lifetime, after all. If all he could offer a potential future bride was his respect but not his love, then by marrying her he was robbing her of the chance to marry someone who could offer her both.

He wouldn’t do that. He refused to do that.

In short, he’d concluded that he was not a man made to marry.

The sect elders had raised the possibility of him marrying a few times, albeit only half-heartedly. They’d worried about the matter of inheritance, of Xichen and Wangji’s right to lead the sect when they reached adulthood, given that back then they had all expected Lan Qiren to continue managing the sect on their behalf until that time. He had rejected them firmly every time.

If it had been three months ago, he would have done the same now.

It wasn’t three months ago.

“Thank you, Xiongzhang,” he said dully. “I appreciate your support.”

Lan Qiren still didn’t want to marry. But if there was one thing he’d learned over the past three months, it was that it didn’t matter what he wanted.

You really are useless, you really are hopeless, he thought to himself, more a flat statement of fact than of anger. Three months, that’s it? You couldn’t manage to stay strong for any longer than that?

He really couldn’t. All the fight had been leeched out of him by his time in seclusion. He had spent everything he had fighting his own demons, and there was nothing left in him for fighting his brother.

And, also, although Lan Qiren was loath to admit it…he was afraid.

He was afraid of what his brother might do if he tried to resist. He was afraid enough not to dare to try.

Have courage, the rules said. Have a strong will and anything can be achieved.

It was probably true, but Lan Qiren was too tired and too weak to do either.

His brother studied him again, then smiled. “You’ve grown remarkably accommodating during your time in here,” he said, seeming suddenly in a much better mood. “Very good. I’d started to worry that you were incapable of learning anything. Any other questions for me now, Qiren?”

Lan Qiren shook his head in the negative at first, not wanting to say anything that might irritate his brother further, but then realized that if he failed to ask any questions at all, his brother might consider the conversation over – his brother might leave, and then Lan Qiren would be all alone again.

However loathsome his brother was, however terrifying, it was still better than being alone.

“When does she arrive?” he asked. That would be something to look forward to, at least – his brother would have to let him out of seclusion to prepare for the marriage, if nothing else. He’d be able to walk through the paths of the Cloud Recesses, to speak with people once more…maybe even see his nephews.

His brother shook his head. “Oh, Qiren, Qiren,” he sighed, though he still sounded amused. “Aren’t you the expert on the rules? Do not make assumptions.”

Lan Qiren lifted his head and looked at him a little more directly, confused. What could his brother mean by that? What assumptions had he made? He purposefully hadn’t asked any question that could be construed as him trying to have a say in who he married, nothing about who her family was or where she came from, her personality or her looks or her skills. He’d only asked about the timing of the marriage, which was something he had to know in order to prepare himself. What else could he have been assuming…?

The answer came to him slowly, as if trekking through mud.

“Oh,” Lan Qiren said softly, a little exhalation of breath that sounded almost as if it had been punched out of him. “Oh, I see. I am…you have decided that I am to marry out, then.”

That would be – incredibly humiliating.

It was already quite rare for a male cultivator to be willing to marry into his wife’s family, knowing that his children would bear his wife’s surname, and among the families of the powerful it was unheard of. Lan Qiren was a Lan, a son of a Great Sect, a member of the main family line, heir to an unbroken tradition that stretched back for generations. Whenever he’d imagined getting married, the few times he had, he had always thought that he’d bring some bride back home to the Cloud Recesses, to live with him in his house and adapt herself to his ways as he made space in his life for hers. It had never even occurred to Lan Qiren that he might be asked to give that up – to give up his home, to give up his family, to give up even the right for his children to be his nephews’ cousins by name and not merely by blood.

He had never thought that he would have to leave.

He never thought his brother would force him to leave.

The worst of it was, everyone would know. There was no woman of sufficient rank that would motivate the Lan sect to willingly give up one of its sons, neither in the cultivation world nor outside of it. Even the Emperor, far away, didn’t have any daughters, and the Lan sect wouldn’t have considered a non-cultivator family as an option anyway.

No: the only possible reason for Lan Qiren to marry out, to become someone’s husband living in their house rather than in his, was because he wasn’t welcome back at home.

Everyone would know. He’d have no face left at all.

Arrogance is forbidden.

He just hoped his brother hadn’t married him to anyone too low-ranking. It was one thing for Lan Qiren’s face to be completely torn away, bitter as the thought might be, but the idea of his sect losing face because of him was even more intolerable.

“Any objections, Qiren?” his brother asked, voice sweet. “Any questions?”

He wanted Lan Qiren to object, Lan Qiren thought fuzzily – all the blood had drained out of his head, and he felt dizzy. The decision had been made, that much was clear, or else his brother wouldn’t have started out by offering his congratulations. There would be no changing the decision now, no affecting it. There would be no mercy or clemency to be had no matter how much he begged for it. His brother only wanted Lan Qiren to try to fight so that he could have the joy of crushing him.

“No, Xiongzhang,” Lan Qiren said softly, instead, and took as his pyrrhic victory his brother’s frown of disappointment. “I will do as you say. You are Sect Leader.”

“As long as you remember that,” his brother said stiffly, and he was scowling now. He must have realized that Lan Qiren’s purposeful submission was an act of hatred and defiance, however petty and pointless. He rose to his feet. “Under the circumstances, we’ve decided on a proxy marriage, after which you’ll go to your new home – you can refresh the vows there, or not, however you like. I’ll leave you to prepare yourself for your wedded life. Perhaps you’d like to review some of the books we have on marital duties in the meantime.”

He paused, but Lan Qiren said nothing. He just bowed his head.

His brother’s lips tightened and he turned, walking towards the door. On the way there, very suddenly, he lashed out and kicked the guqin stand, not even bothering to pretend it was an accident. The force of the blow was sufficient to cause the instrument, tough and hardy as Lan guqins made for night-hunts were all designed to be, to fall down and crack right down the middle, rendering it completely useless.

A very illustrative point.

Lan Qiren still had to bite his tongue to keep from trying to get his brother to stay.

When he was finally sure his brother was completely gone, he sank down to the floor right where he was, uncaring of his dignity. His brother hadn’t even told him when the marriage was going to be, he thought to himself, still numb with despair. He had probably meant to, but then had gotten angry when Lan Qiren hadn’t responded in the way he’d wanted him to. Or maybe he hadn’t meant to tell him at all, hoping that Lan Qiren would live in fear every day until it happened.

He supposed it didn’t really matter. In the end, the result would be the same: he’d be leaving the Cloud Recesses, leaving his home. Worse, he’d be leaving his nephews, who he was starting to think his brother would never let him see again. He’d be going to some strange woman’s house to serve as her husband, bound by oaths he wouldn’t even be making himself, and once it was made known to all the cultivation world, he’d probably die of shame before he ever let himself meet anyone ever again.

All alone, again. Forever, this time.

Lan Qiren touched his face lightly, confirming his suspicion that he’d started crying again. That was how it tended to happen these days, the tears just falling at random intervals without him even really noticing; it was like the patches of lost time that came upon him, the sun traveling across the sky in a blink. It suggested that there was something seriously wrong with his mental state, and probably his qi as well, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to care.

At least when I marry, I will no longer be in seclusion, he tried to tell himself, but the thought of leaving everything he’d ever known behind for good was so miserable that even that notion didn’t make him feel better. Maybe my wife will be understanding, or maybe even kind. Maybe she will let me continue teaching – assuming my brother does not forbid me from doing so once I am out of the sect. Eventually Xichen and Wangji will be old enough to go night-hunting, and then maybe I will be able to arrange to see them. Xichen is already nine; it will only be another five years, maybe even four. Maybe it will not be so bad.

Maybe he should reread the books on marital duties.

Most books of that sort were written for the benefit of women, of course, and Lan Qiren wondered briefly if his brother had forgotten that – his brother certainly wouldn’t have need to review them in his seclusion, and it had been ten years – but surely there would be some pieces in there that would be relevant to a prospective husband.

Anyway, Lan Qiren still didn’t think he could offer his future spouse the sort of love they might be hoping for, but now that marriage had become an inevitability, rather than a decision he could influence, there was nothing for it.

He would simply have to try his best to be as good a husband as he could be.

Yes, that sounded like a plan. Lan Qiren nodded to himself. Surely his brother would send someone to deliver the relevant books to him before he left the sect, and he could look through them to see what he could glean from them. The ones on marital duties, and perhaps others, if he could get someone to deliver them in time. When he had been sect leader, Lan Qiren had always preferred to go into meetings well-prepared, even over-prepared. He would treat this marriage as much the same: an incredibly important, incredibly tricky meeting, in which he had to ensure that he behaved properly and influenced others to act properly in turn.

Well, it would be like a meeting, if the meeting was scheduled to last the rest of his life.

At least it wouldn’t be seclusion.

Yes, he thought again. He would go and start preparing himself, to wait for the books and look to see if there was anything relevant in those he already had. He would start to think and plan and prepare himself. It was the right thing to do, and he would do it. He would.

He just…couldn’t move right now.

Lan Qiren closed his eyes in misery and settled himself into a meditation pose. He suspected that tonight would be yet another one of the nights where he found himself unable to muster up enough energy to make it to his bed, and possibly continue into being one of the mornings where he couldn’t get up, either.

He’d have to hope for something better tomorrow.

It will be better, he promised himself. Even if it does not feel that way right now, it cannot continue to get worse forever. Even if it feels as though nothing will ever be different and that it will be all grey forever, that does not mean that it really will. Not all changes can be for the worse.

You have to keep trying, Qiren.

Be just, be generous, be ethical, be grateful, be loyal.

Be steadfast.

You know the rules. You know what you need to do. You just need to do it. You just need to try.

…tomorrow.

Lan Qiren would try again tomorrow.

Chapter Text

Wen Ruohan was extraordinarily pleased with himself.

He usually was – he hadn’t gotten his reputation for being a self-absorbed tyrant for no reason – but in his defense, he was usually right to be. Was he not the most powerful cultivator in the entire cultivation world? Was his family not by far the most mighty and well-respected, his sect already commanding so many others and forcing them to acknowledge their superiority? Were his feet not firmly placed on the path to divinity and immortality, thereby ensuring that he and his kin would rule the entire cultivation world in time?

He was especially pleased with himself today, though.

Standing in the entrance hall of his Sun Palace to await the arrival of his newest prize, Wen Ruohan congratulated himself yet again on having come up with such a brilliant scheme.

The seed of the idea had been planted in that initial conversation he’d had with his spies in the Lan sect, Wang Liu and what’s-his-name, his predecessor – the twists and turns and surprises of that conversation had been the most exciting thing to happen to Wen Ruohan in quite a while. When one got to be the age he was, time flowed differently: he had already seen everything, or felt as though he had, and he spent an awful lot of his time being tremendously bored. Finding something that didn’t bore him was a rarity.

Presumably that was why he hadn’t been able to get what he’d taken to calling “the Lan Qiren situation” out of his head.

Lan Qiren, a married man – the thought still seemed a little ridiculous to him.

Wen Ruohan simply couldn’t imagine his dull and rule-abiding little colleague of ten years ever marrying an obedient little wife, some timid creature who would willingly stay inside her home and concern herself only with women’s affairs, who would give him children but otherwise never bother him. It was impossible. They’d bore each other to death within a year!

But the other alternative was in no way a solution to the problem. In his own way Lan Qiren was quite proud, with a thin face and a touch of temper and supreme confidence in the superiority of his Lan sect – not unlike Wen Ruohan’s own, and therefore at least somewhat admirable, even if obviously Lan Qiren was mistaken about which sect was the best. With such a character, there was no way he’d be able to tolerate one of the more spirited female cultivators, a fire-breather like Yu Ziyuan or even the carefree Cangse Sanren, who it was said that he’d once liked. Absent some highly unusual mitigating circumstances, such as Lan Qiren falling in love, he’d invariably end up butting heads with such a woman. He’d get upset that she wasn’t obeying his family rules, she’d get resentful and feel confined, and in the end it would all explode in some terrible argument, at which point Lan Qiren would lose his temper, grant her a divorce, and send her back to her family’s house before he even realized what he was doing.

And then he’d remain single forever after, because the Lan sect only married once. Such a waste.

Wen Ruohan had dwelled on the problem for several days, which was far more time and attention than he usually paid to issues that only concerned other sects. Not only had he wasted significant amounts of time on it, he had reached no resolution, and he’d gotten more and more irritated over it. It was a waste, a dreadful waste! Lan Qiren would make a mess of marriage, of that Wen Ruohan was quite certain, and that in turn would mean wasting Lan Qiren’s own talents. Unimaginable waste!

Truly, Qingheng-jun didn’t know the value of the piece he was discarding, letting his emotions get the better of him rather than thinking of the benefits he could obtain, for himself and for his sect.

Hadn’t Wen Ruohan been thinking to himself earlier that Lan Qiren’s scheme of teaching students was a brilliant one? Hadn’t he mentally praised the sect that sent him their daughter, the way that such a match would let them take advantage of the connections Lan Qiren would have made with other sect leaders in his ten years of leadership? Wasn’t Lan Qiren virtually guaranteed to have, in addition to those other traits, the most comprehensive possible understanding of the inner workings of the Lan sect, which no outsider would ever be able to unravel without assistance? Was he not, boring as he might be as a personal matter, a highly talented cultivator – by repute a brilliant musician, by rumor a splendid swordsman, even if he’d never publicly demonstrated his skills in night-hunts or duels? Wen Ruohan himself could confirm the strength of Lan Qiren’s golden core, which, while not the strongest, was nevertheless incredibly bright, suggesting an immensely solid foundation.

It had taken Wen Ruohan several more days of stewing in irritation at Qingheng-jun’s profligacy, and his own unacceptable loss in not having taken advantage of Lan Qiren before it was too late, for the answer to come to him.

The solution.

After all, Wen Ruohan did not lose.

It wasn’t even that unorthodox a solution, not really. Marriage was the problem, and marriage was the answer, too. Most sects weren’t like the Lan sect, squeamish and overly concerned about matters of the heart; the vast majority, including his own, used marriage to resolve political problems. Wen Ruohan himself had married three wives, both his original first wife and now the later two, and each of them had brought his sect tremendous benefits. He’d made similarly smart matches for his sons as well – Wen Xu was fifteen and had already met his future bride, though obviously the woman hadn’t yet been brought back into their household and wouldn’t until he was twenty, and Wen Chao, who was only eight, had an ironclad betrothal contract with one of the daughters of a sect that Wen Ruohan had been eying for some time.

No, it was all clear enough. Why should Wen Ruohan grumble about all the advantages that Lan Qiren brought with him being wasted or at minimum squandered by some unthinking, unworthy lesser sect? Why, when he could instead seize all those benefits for himself, for himself and his Wen sect, and in so doing maximize the gains and minimize the losses?

All good things in the world ought to be his.

Was Wen Ruohan not the shining sun, gazing down at all the world from high above? Did it not make perfect sense that a sun like him could only be accompanied by something equally lofty as the clouds?

Really, sometimes Wen Ruohan astounded himself with his own brilliance.

Once he’d realized that he could capitalize on Qingheng-jun’s missteps to seize Lan Qiren for his own sect, the best of all possible solutions, Wen Ruohan had immediately started to strategize the best means of doing so. Naturally he wouldn’t be content with sending a woman of his family to marry into the Lan sect, what with all the disadvantages he’d already enumerated, but it had occurred to him that Qingheng-jun might, with some convincing, be willing to marry Lan Qiren out.

Typically such a thing would be unthinkable. Giving up one of their sons the way they would a daughter, marrying them out to live elsewhere – with their notoriously idiosyncratic philosophy of devotion, the Lan might, at a very extreme reach, accept it as part of a love match, but when proposed as part of a political match, they would see it as a profound humiliation, just as any other sect would.

The issue was the surname, of course. Given the vast ratio by which male cultivators outnumbered female cultivators, marriages between men were hardly unheard of, but there was always the matter of children. It was easy enough to recruit some concubines for the purpose of having them, but the children themselves could only bear one surname.

As a result, a proud clan would never send away a son of their main line if they could help it, and political marriages between men tended to only involve outside disciples or branch families. Giving up their surname like that would be regarded as horribly embarrassing, a loss of face to the sect, disrespect to the pride of their ancestors, and not to mention personally devastating to the pride of the son who would cut off his future family line. Even minor sects would normally only agree to marriages out involving their sons only if they were suffering from hard times, or were seeking an arrangement with a family far above their own in rank and prestige –  and while of course Wen Ruohan personally believed his Wen sect to be such, the Lan sect was unlikely to agree with that characterization.

A Great Sect like Gusu Lan, marrying a son out? Certainly not. They’d never agree to such a thing…under normal circumstances.

Under the present circumstances, however, things were materially different. If Wen Ruohan was right, Qingheng-jun would see Lan Qiren’s humiliation as a benefit of the match, rather than a disadvantage, and therefore be more inclined to agree.

It might work. No – it could work, it would work.

Furthermore, all of Lan Qiren’s marital disadvantages as head of the household would be completely reversed in that context. Lan Qiren was both fussy and temperamental, reserved and, to judge from his interactions with his sect elders, not particularly assertive in personal settings; he would be unwilling to lead where a wife would follow, a stickler for his family rules and yet not quite cruel enough to forcefully impose them onto others unwilling – well, once he’d entered another person’s household, he wouldn’t be able to impose them. He wouldn’t have the right to blather on endlessly, boring any wife he might have to death, and he wouldn’t have the right to insist on anything, either, which meant he wouldn’t be able to lose his temper and demand a divorce.

Instead, he'd have no choice but to either fall in line with his new sect and seek to do his best within it, the way Madam Jin had, or else retreat to his chambers to recreate a version of his original home, the way Madam Jiang did, which was exactly the sort of behavior that had led to people pointedly calling Yu Ziyuan Madam Yu instead. Either would be perfectly acceptable in terms of keeping him from making trouble.

Not that Wen Ruohan was underestimating Lan Qiren. The man had led his sect for ten years, a Great Sect with all the connotations that came with it, and he’d proven himself to be quite a canny operator in his own way. Wen Ruohan had gone back and painstakingly looked over the notes from previous years’ discussion conferences, and through that tedious task had managed to confirm his suspicions that Lan Qiren was actually much better at the political game than his dull outward demeanor might make him seem to be.

He’d followed the trail of those little bits of minutiae that Lan Qiren had been so insistent on – he’d noticed before that some of them had turned out beneficial to the Lan sect, but to his great annoyance he hadn’t realized how beneficial they were. A ridiculous agreement over river tolls, of all things, which Jiang Fengmian had agreed to more to shut Lan Qiren up than anything else, could be pinpointed as the ultimate cause, four years later, of the defection of the once-prosperous Huangshan Fu sect from Yunmeng Jiang to Gusu Lan. And following the switch, they were now rapidly in the process of recovering their previous prestige and wealth, only now all of that glory and tax went into the Lan sect’s coffers instead…

It was brilliantly done, and so subtly that no one would know who to blame if they did not know where to look. And because Lan Qiren was so seemingly dull, no one ever did look!

Finding out that little fact had convinced Wen Ruohan to amend his initial plan of marrying Lan Qiren into one of his family’s branches. He’d already been having trouble thinking of which one to use – one of his distant nieces, Wen Qing, was technically available, but she was so young as to make the offer a little embarrassing in how obviously political it revealed the match to be – and the realization that he might be handing someone genuinely clever over to his cousins to use in their schemes to undermine his authority had immediately dampened Wen Ruohan’s enthusiasm for the idea.

No: Lan Qiren was clearly too valuable a piece to be given out to anyone else, not even to Wen Ruohan’s kinsmen. All good things should belong to him, after all.

That had led Wen Ruohan to his current plan, which was working splendidly, if he did say so himself.

After all, it didn’t matter what other offers Qingheng-jun might receive for Lan Qiren’s hand – there was no one in the cultivation world who could top the offer of Wen Ruohan himself as bridegroom.

Qingheng-jun had certainly been surprised by his proposal, but he’d been intrigued as well. He’d questioned Wen Ruohan’s motives, as rightfully he should – everyone knew that the Wen sect was traditionally disinterested in alliances with other sects, always preferring to stand alone.

Wen Ruohan had laughed in his face.

“You think I’m seeking an alliance?” he said, chuckling darkly. “Don’t waste my time. Do you think you can fool me? Hostages are only worth taking for what they mean to those they leave behind. Tell me truly: if I were to throw your brother into my Fire Palace the very moment after I married him, you wouldn’t lift a finger to stop it, would you?”

“My Lan sect would never stand for such a thing,” Qingheng-jun said coolly, playing it off well enough, but Wen Ruohan had a century of experience in reading men’s faces – he could see the sudden intensification of interest in the other man’s eyes, the surge of satisfaction that could only be obtained from the thought of hurting someone you wanted to hurt, someone you hated past the point of reason. “If we were to accept your offer, we would require assurances that he would be treated well.”

“Naturally he would be treated well,” Wen Ruohan said smoothly. “Provided he didn’t make any trouble, that is. If that happens, it’s all on his own head. You can’t reasonably expect me to give up the ability to discipline my own household.”

That would be convincing enough, he thought. If Wen Ruohan actually had been treating Lan Qiren as a mere pawn in a game played against Qingheng-jun and the Lan more broadly, rather than what he was actually doing, it made a certain amount of sense to use himself as the groom – only by making the head of household someone truly untouchable would it be possible to make such a show of strength after marriage.

Qingheng-jun took a sip of tea. “If you aren’t trying to establish an alliance, then what are you seeking?” he asked, putting aside the previous point. He couldn’t have more obviously indicated that he would, in fact, be fine with his little brother being tortured if he’d written it into the contract himself. “What benefit would your offer bring to my Lan sect, or to your Wen sect?”

To you, the real benefit is getting rid of your brother for good, ideally in a place that will cause him the most misery and pain possible, Wen Ruohan thought dryly to himself. Qingheng-jun’s political skills had not been improved by those ten years in seclusion.

“Benefits are precisely what I seek to obtain,” he said aloud. “My sect does not and will not shackle ourselves with open-ended obligations like an alliance. But there are any number of concrete advantages that can be contracted for – advantages that can accrue to both our sects.”

Gusu Lan wasn’t the most natural connection for Qishan Wen to make, being on opposite sides of the country, Gusu as close to the sea as Qishan was far inland, but for a prospective empire-builder like Wen Ruohan, that wasn’t necessarily a problem. With Gusu Lan on his side, he could start making serious inroads into the sects that lay between them, up to and including the powerful Yunmeng Jiang to the south, which would soon find itself hemmed in on two sides. His voracious Wen sect would snap up the sects on their northwestern border, while the sects to their east, which had always played Yunmeng Jiang and Gusu Lan against each other for their own purposes, would quickly start to see the advantages of leaning more towards the Lan…

Qingheng-jun could see it, too.

Wen Ruohan could see the calculation on his face. He was undoubtedly also considering the risks involved – both of them knew that Wen Ruohan would happily swallow down Gusu Lan once he was done with Yunmeng Jiang if he could – but it was clear enough that he thought he’d be able to handle that, perhaps by making another alliance with one of the Great Sects in the north, either Qinghe Nie or Lanling Jin. Probably the latter. The arranged marriage between the heir to Lanling Jin and the daughter of Yunmeng Jiang was very far from settled, after all, as those involved were only children. Once the agreement between Qishan Wen and Gusu Lan became known, the fate of Yunmeng Jiang would become clear, and it wouldn’t be that hard to convince Jin Guangshan that he would be able to do better than the Jiang sect’s sinking ship. And Qingheng-jun, demonstrably willing to sell his generation’s second son for benefits, already had a second son of his own available to be sold in the same manner – little Jin Zixuan could find himself with Lan Wangji as a wife and Jiang Yanli as his concubine, in the end, which would greatly appease Jin Guangshan’s ego. And if after that the Lan and Jin banded together against the rest of them…it really wasn’t a bad deal, all things considered.

It had all gone quite smoothly after that.

Wen Ruohan had insisted on a proxy marriage, not wanting to risk Lan Qiren figuring out some way to disrupt or invalidate the marriage ceremony and mindful of Lan Qiren’s thin face and temper. At least part of Wen Ruohan’s plan depended on winning Lan Qiren over and getting him to agree to continue his little teaching scheme from the Nightless City, to use his established reputation as a teacher that could turn even a good-for-nothing into a proper gentleman to lend credibility to a lion’s den that no sane sect leader would otherwise send their sons. That would only be harder to accomplish if Wen Ruohan started out their married life by publicly humiliating the man.

Besides, Wen Ruohan might appreciate the joys of degradation, but a wedding play required two actors, and he had no intention of making himself a figure of ridicule. A nice, quick, quiet proxy ceremony to seal the contract followed by repeating the bows in the Nightless City would be more than sufficient. Lan Qiren was notoriously rule-abiding – once they were married, and once he’d made bows himself, he would feel he had no choice but to cooperate.

Wen Ruohan wasn’t even planning on announcing their marriage to the rest of the cultivation world, or at least not at first. As far as Wen Ruohan was concerned, the rest of them could wait until the next discussion conference to meet his new Madam Wen, Qingheng-jun having had at least enough conscience and good political sense to insist on his brother receiving the position of first wife as a measure of respect due to his family being a Great Sect, which was only reasonable. Reserving such a surprise would make attending the conference all the more fun: it would ensure that the whole cultivation world spoke of nothing else the entire time but him and his Wen sect, whether in disbelief or fear or worry about what he might be planning, and Wen Ruohan could and would take full advantage of that.

It was a great plan.

The only part left was to welcome Lan Qiren to his new home.

Wen Ruohan’s lips curled into a smug smile as he watched the carriage make its way to his door, bathed in the light of the setting sun, before slowly rumbling to a stop before the largely deserted entranceway, the normal guards having been dismissed and none of the other Wen disciples interested in being anywhere near their volatile sect leader when he had that particular smile on his face. Someone had festooned the carriage with auspicious couplets and red ribbons as if to make up for the fact that it was in no way a proper wedding sedan, and judging from their relatively good state they had probably only been applied after they’d entered the Nightless City to avoid losing them on the way.

And inside the carriage…

Well, inside there would be Lan Qiren, who was no doubt stewing miserably, and also properly attired in a festive wedding red.

The Wen sect’s color.

Wen Ruohan couldn’t wait.

He waved his hand and the men on the carriage pulled the door open, and a moment or two later a hand emerged, with the rest of Lan Qiren following shortly thereafter.

He was dressed all in red, red and gold, proper wedding finery – the Lan sect had had a shockingly short amount of time to get ready for the wedding, but they weren’t a Great Sect for nothing. Lan Qiren’s clothes were beautifully embroidered with real gold, with all the auspicious signs included, and the luster and shine of the underlying fabric suggested that the entire thing had been made out of an outrageously expensive cloth that was usually used only for accent. The whole get-up was utterly splendid, and if the haste at which it had been adjusted for Lan Qiren could be detected in the way it didn’t quite fit – it was a few fingers too short at the leg, a bit too long at the arm, and had been made for a man with a thicker waist and broader shoulders than Lan Qiren, perhaps his brother – then at any rate the overall effect of the whole get-up was sufficiently stunning that most people wouldn’t notice.

(If Wen Ruohan hadn’t spent a few years of his early life painting wedding portraits for the undeserving as he night-hunted his way through the lands surrounding the imperial city, he probably wouldn’t have noticed any of the details or gaps himself. Not that it mattered, of course; it wasn’t as if he were bothering to get such a portrait done himself.)

Lan Qiren himself was not as impressive as his clothing, though perhaps that was only Wen Ruohan’s familiarity with the man’s fundamentally boring nature that prejudiced him. He certainly looked a match to them: he was tall and handsome, if perhaps a little slenderer than the current fashion preferred (and perhaps even a little skinnier than he had been in the past…?), and of course he had those gorgeous if astringent Lan features. The small hints of premature stress lines around his eyes only served to give him the look of a stern, mature man, and even the beard worked for him, lending him an air of scholarly authority and making him look at least ten years older than he actually was.

It occurred to Wen Ruohan, to his sudden and most profound amusement, that with his own powerful cultivation keeping his appearance to that of a man in his twenties, he would very shortly look younger than his new spouse, if he didn’t already. Anyone unknowing might look at the two of them and, upon hearing that an old cow was eating young grass, think that it was Lan Qiren who was the elder, rather than being the younger by four or maybe even five times over.

“Welcome,” Wen Ruohan said, smug satisfaction and humor seeping into his tone. “I trust you remember the Nightless City from your last visit.”

Lan Qiren blinked owlishly at him.

That…wasn’t exactly the reaction Wen Ruohan had expected. Yelling, perhaps, if Lan Qiren were still in a temper, or some sort of death glare and a sharp comment about maintaining propriety – that was more in Lan Qiren’s usual line. He could be quite annoying when he wanted to be. And Wen Ruohan had braced himself for something even worse, such as some sort of long speech about the myriad of dull rules and regulations applicable to marriage and how Wen Ruohan had already broken at least four of them…

Certainly not a reaction of blank confusion.

“Sect Leader Wen?” Lan Qiren said, sounding as blank as he looked. His voice was softer than its usual strident tones, almost hoarse, as if he’d recently been sick and not had much cause to use it, or maybe just that he’d lost it through too much shouting already. “I am…at the Nightless City?”

Wen Ruohan’s eyebrows went straight up to his hairline. Had Qingheng-jun really sent his brother here without even telling him what had been agreed?

“But then who am I marrying?” Lan Qiren asked, confirming that Qingheng-jun had really done exactly that, breathtakingly and unbelievably rude as it would be. “You do not have any appropriate or available women in your clan.”

Wen Ruohan was too busy gaping at the sheer level of the insult to respond at once, though he hadn’t yet figured out whether it was an insult to him or to Lan Qiren. He was retrospectively triply glad that he’d insisted on the proxy wedding to avoid having this farcical scene play out in public. What had Qingheng-jun been thinking?!

Lan Qiren didn’t take insult from his silence, though, and had started frowning in thought.

“There is Wen Qing, I suppose, though she is far too young,” he said, his doubtful tone of voice suggesting that he thought it as bad an idea as Wen Ruohan had concluded it to be. “You already finalized an engagement for Wen Xuechun just last year, and Wen Tian, Wen Shi, and Wen Jing are all already wed – I suppose Wen Jing has already been bereaved, rendering her technically available, but she is still in the mourning period, is she not? It would be inappropriate. And Wen Meitan is…simply unthinkable…”

Wen Ruohan nearly shuddered at the idea of marrying anyone of any worth to Wen Meitan. He appreciated his vicious cousin for how well she served his purposes and pursued his sect’s interests, but after she’d murdered her first three husbands, the last of which he’d chosen for her himself, he’d concluded it would be better for her to remain unwed for the rest of her life. Luckily, Wen Meitan had very happily declared herself content in collecting pretty boy playthings from the local populace of commoners. He’d never quite determined whether her voracious appetite was driven by some twisted cultivation technique or simply reflected her personality, and he didn’t actually want to know. He certainly wouldn’t be marrying any more well-born cultivators to her, that was for sure.

On the other hand, Wen Ruohan had to admit he was rather impressed by Lan Qiren’s ability to immediately identify and name all the eligible women in the Wen clan’s extended family from memory, a feat made all the more impressive from the fact that Lan Qiren very clearly hadn’t been given the chance to brush up in advance.

“You were right the first time,” he said, shaking off his brief distraction and focusing on the conversation at hand. “My Wen sect in fact does not have any women appropriate for a man of your standing.”

Lan Qiren caught the emphasis at once and nodded, putting the answer together at once. “A cutsleeve marriage, then? And any children presumably from one of the illegitimate girls of your bloodline?”

It was really quite pleasant to speak with someone quick on the uptake, Wen Ruohan reflected. Lan Qiren might be boring, but he was undeniably smart.

So few of Wen Ruohan’s servants could have the same said of them, and his extended family also rarely lived up to his expectations…it was no surprise, though. No one would be able to last as the leader of a Great Sect if they couldn’t meet sword with sword on a battlefield of wit. Lan Qiren might not be on Wen Ruohan’s level, but he had certainly been an able custodian of his sect’s interests, and that put him a good head and shoulders above most everyone else that Wen Ruohan usually had to put up with.

“Just so,” he confirmed.

“I see,” Lan Qiren said, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “Will you share the contractual provisions that accrue to the benefit of our respective sects upon the marriage? Your Wen sect rather notoriously does not make alliances, so there must be some documentation laying out the exact list, and I would like to know them.”

Maybe he’s too smart, Wen Ruohan thought to himself, though he was still enjoying himself. Asking a question like that! Does he think that he will have equal power here, to act in accordance with his own sect’s interests rather than mine? Or is he indicating his willingness to help my sect further our own interests, signaling that he is willing to be on my side?

Either way…this will be more fun than I thought.

“You’ll have them,” he said, putting his hands behind his back and smirking. “Any other questions?”

For some reason, that got a strange shudder out of Lan Qiren, though he quickly mastered himself.

“Only the first one,” he replied acerbically, as sarcastically as he might have if they were speaking as fellow sect leaders on equal footing. “Which I may remind you that you have yet to answer. Who am I marrying?”

Wen Ruohan let his smirk stretch into a smile full of teeth and threat. “Me.”

“You?” Lan Qiren seemed startled, as Wen Ruohan had intended, but then after a moment he yet again reacted in a way that didn’t accord with Wen Ruohan’s expectations, saying, “Oh. That’s all right then.”

“It…is?” Wen Ruohan arched his eyebrows. “Would you care to explain your thinking?”

Strangely enough, he found himself rather looking forward to Lan Qiren’s reply.

“Marrying a son of the main line out would lose face for my sect if the other party were anyone of lower prestige or rank than myself,” Lan Qiren explained, lapsing into his usual monotone lecturing style, and reflecting exactly the same thoughts that Wen Ruohan had had himself. “Given that I am the second son of a Great Sect, that leaves very few options – but your Wen sect could at least plausibly claim to be one of them, though under normal instances I suspect we would dispute that. Still, of the Great Sects, yours is the most powerful, with the widest influence, exceeding even my Lan sect’s own, and marrying you directly obviates the issue of rank. A second son is in the end only a second son, whereas you are Sect Leader in your own right, so your rank obviously exceeds my own. The story will undoubtedly go around that we are sealing a pact of such incredible moment that it requires the presence of a hostage.”

He paused momentarily, frowning thoughtfully even as Wen Ruohan tamped down his amusement – it wouldn’t do to laugh in Lan Qiren’s face, especially since he was right on all counts.

“Go on,” he prompted. “Keep going.”

Lan Qiren looked a little uncomfortable, though only in the normal way he did whenever Wen Ruohan talked to him during discussion conferences, and cleared his throat before continuing. “Since the only hostage is on your side, it would imply that my Lan sect got the majority of benefits, at least in the short-term,” he said. “Looking at it from the outside, I would assume that the Lan sect sent me to you in exchange for your support in some endeavor, with myself serving as security for their eventual promise of returning the favor...ah. Will there be a war, then?”

Wen Ruohan couldn’t help it: he burst out laughing.

It had taken him a full day of careful nudging to slowly guide Qingheng-jun into reaching the conclusion that a war would be a worthwhile thing to ask the Wen sect for help with, and another day before Wen Ruohan had pretended to permit himself to be convinced to lend his Wen sect’s support for another sect’s war of conquest. And Lan Qiren had figured it out just like that!

And now he’s mine, Wen Ruohan thought gleefully, conveniently forgetting all his earlier complaints about how boring Lan Qiren would be as a spouse. Qingheng-jun will live to regret this agreement of ours, mark my words. All good things belong to me!

“I take it that the answer is yes,” Lan Qiren said with a look of censure. Not entirely a surprise: he would never have agreed to such a proposal from Wen Ruohan. “You can stop laughing at any time. I admit that I may be pointing out the obvious, but you did ask me to explain. Who is the target? Not Moling Tong, they haven’t had a strong sect in years…”

“Quanjiao Liu,” Wen Ruohan said, mastering himself and shaking his head, still chuckling. “A little further away from Gusu, to be sure, but they’re a local powerhouse. If they fall, the area around them will be destabilized, and the remaining sects can then be picked off at leisure.”

“Intelligent, if despicable. I should have thought of that.”

Wen Ruohan let out another chuckle, wholly against his will. “Don’t underestimate yourself. You already figured out the ‘obvious’ fact that there will be a war, while I would wager that the rest of the cultivation world, with the exception of maybe five people, will likely be in for a solid few months of hard thinking before they reach the same conclusion…once they hear about the agreement, anyway.”

“The proxy marriage,” Lan Qiren said, understanding dawning on his face. “To keep it quiet until I arrived, and the deal was sealed.”

He’d misunderstood, but Wen Ruohan was too lazy to correct him. Political motives always sounded better than personal ones.

“Indeed,” he said. “Speaking of which, I’ve arranged for a second ceremony to take place now. Come with me, we have bows to make.”

“A second ceremony?” Lan Qiren frowned. “Is there any reason to doubt the validity of the proxy?”

“None whatsoever,” Wen Ruohan confirmed, amused at what was undoubtedly a flash of disappointment in Lan Qiren’s eyes. “But I intend to see you make your own oaths. I shall expect you to live up to them.”

Lan Qiren pressed his lips together in annoyance, perhaps at the suggestion that he wouldn’t live up to oaths made in his and his sect’s name without personally performing them, but he jerked his head in a tight nod.

When the bows were done, Wen Ruohan led Lan Qiren to the courtyard he’d picked out for him. A relatively isolated but spacious courtyard that someone had, at some point, named the Crescent Moon Courtyard, it wasn’t as glamorous as the one usually given to the first Madam Wen, but Wen Ruohan hadn’t wanted to get into another fight with Lu Qipei – whose position that had previously been, and who was not taking her demotion with particularly good grace – to get her to move out. Anyway, he thought Lan Qiren would prefer the more serene atmosphere.

“You’ve had a long journey,” he said with condescending kindness so patently false that Lan Qiren gave him a withering look for even trying it. “I won’t demand anything more from you tonight.”

But only tonight, he meant, because shocking Lan Qiren’s sensibilities was definitely part of the fun here, and Lan Qiren clearly understood his implication, his expression going sour once more.

But then, upending Wen Ruohan’s expectations yet again in what was starting to get to be a bad habit, Lan Qiren then forced the expression away into something more neutral and cleared his throat once more.

Wen Ruohan patiently waited for him to speak.

“I have never considered myself a man who would marry,” Lan Qiren said, looking at Wen Ruohan’s chin in what was as close as he ever really came to voluntarily initiating direct eye contact. His tone was formal, the words clearly practiced in advance. “But now that matters have reached the present state, I intend to honor my vows and do my best by you. I hope that we will be able to find a way to be happy.”

How charming, Wen Ruohan thought, suppressing a smirk. Charmingly naïve, anyway. Classic Lan sect…

“I look forward to the life we will create together. And I promise you, for my part, I shall endeavor with my best efforts to live up to your expectations of me as your husband.”

And then Lan Qiren reached out and caught Wen Ruohan by the collar, drawing him in and pressing their lips together.

It was a dry, brief press, nothing more, certainly nothing exciting, but any initiation whatsoever was still far beyond what Wen Ruohan had been expecting from someone as prissy and almost certainly virginal as Lan Qiren. On the contrary, he’d been prepared for Lan Qiren to do everything in his power to avoid consummating their relationship. He’d expected to be able to use the suggestion of sex as a means of teasing the other man, or even perhaps of threatening him.

He hadn’t expected Lan Qiren to start something.

Wen Ruohan was still blinking in disbelief when Lan Qiren, ears now bright red, bid him a very stiff good night and disappeared into his courtyard.

How…intriguing.

Wen Ruohan hadn’t been quite so consistently taken by surprise by anyone in years, and it had rather knocked him off his balance. That was the only reason he could possibly give for why he managed to make it almost all the way back to his own quarters before his mind finally caught up with him –

“Wait,” Wen Ruohan said, coming to a dead halt in the middle of the hallway, abruptly appalled. “Did he just say that he was going to be the husband?!”

Chapter Text

Lan Qiren woke up at the usual time for his sect, which was well before most people in the Nightless City were up and about.

Most, though not all, of course. It was said that in the aptly named Nightless City, there were always people awake and about their business no matter what time it might be, its corridors always illuminated until it seemed as though the sun truly never set. Lan Qiren had found that to be true, bright lights and constant activity both, and today the Nightless City was living up to its magnificent reputation. Even now, early in the morning, he could hear the distant sound of footsteps in the corridors outside his courtyard, the distant clatter of things being moved around in preparation for breakfast, the murmur of voices pitched low to avoid disturbing those who were still sleeping.

The ceaseless noise had driven Lan Qiren up the wall the previous times he had visited the Nightless City, but now…now he found himself grateful for it.

At least I know I am not alone.

The feeling of relief probably wouldn’t last more than a month. Indeed, half a month was more likely, since Lan Qiren generally disliked noisiness as a rule…but for the moment it was fine.

He was fine.

Mostly.

Lan Qiren got out of bed and began going through his usual morning routine, or as close as he could get to it in this strange new place. Luckily, he had been a guest in the Nightless City several times before, albeit always previously in the guest quarters, and this meant that he had some notion of where things were placed, rendering the location not as strange as it could have been. In fact, previous visits meant that he had already come up with a modified version of his morning routine that he could feel comfortable with, ensuring that he still had rules to follow and was not completely unmoored. The familiarity was good.

It would be enough to postpone the inevitable meltdown he was going to have once he realized he was trapped here permanently for at least another day or two.

(He would need to make a plan to deal with that. Somehow. Without thinking too much about it, lest he trigger it early – he didn’t want anyone to see him having an undignified emotional fit like that, not if he could prevent it.)

At least everything seemed to have gone well with Wen Ruohan.

Well, as well as he could possibly expect, anyway. It was Wen Ruohan, after all.

Wen Ruohan, who was now his wife.

Lan Qiren had no idea what to do about that.

He was married.

He still couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it.

If Lan Qiren started thinking about it for too long, his brain felt as though it was starting to overheat, so full of thoughts that he couldn’t keep a single one straight in his head – and yet he couldn’t not think of it, either. Multiple attempts to puzzle it through had not helped: he could accept the initial step, could acknowledge his brother’s decision to send him off to marry out as a husband to some other family, but anything beyond that simply refused to process. And yet the facts were what they were, and the truth had to be confronted.

He was married.

He had a wife.

That wife was Wen Ruohan.

How utterly bizarre!

Lan Qiren had not been lying the evening before, when he had told Wen Ruohan that it being him that Lan Qiren was marrying made the whole thing easier. That his brother had somehow managed to convince Wen Ruohan to agree to be his bride – though in retrospect, now that he thought about it, it seemed to him to be more likely that it was Wen Ruohan that had done the convincing, given his penchant for schemes designed to increase his power though obscure means known only to himself – solved any number of Lan Qiren’s most pressing concerns about losing face for his sect, which had been his primary worry. Lan Qiren had never asked for much for himself, but he would not let his sect be shamed by him, and Wen Ruohan had the status, power, and rank to make such a match into something less than hideously embarrassing. After all, a sect leader couldn’t possibly marry out to another sect; that was even more beyond the realm of the possible than the idea of Lan Qiren, a Great Sect’s second son and heir, doing so.

Even Wen Ruohan’s personal reputation for engaging in all types of wicked plots was useful.

Simply because Wen Ruohan was involved, once the news of their marriage spread, people would react to the revelation with suspicion, rather than mockery. Such a marriage proposal was so incredibly unlikely, so incredibly unorthodox, that everyone looking at it would immediately get the wrong idea about it. After all, if Wen Ruohan were involved, it couldn’t be something stupid. No, it had to be something clever, diabolically clever, the way so many of Wen Ruohan’s schemes were – he was always coming up with subtle ploys, the sort of things that could easily be missed, the sort of things that made sect leaders around the world react to everything he did by worrying themselves to death looking for hidden angles. No matter how ridiculous it was, they would always react that way. And that meant that the rest of the world wouldn’t see this marriage as the deliberate humiliation Lan Qiren knew his brother meant it to be, but rather as some sort of insidious political move.

Which, in fairness, it probably was in some way Lan Qiren wasn’t seeing right now.

But that was fine. If he had to pick, Lan Qiren preferred to be thought of as a partner in crime in some terrible conspiracy, rather than embarrass both himself and his sect by admitting that it was all because his brother hated him.

In truth, Lan Qiren still didn’t understand why his brother hated him so much. They had never spoken of his increasing dislike of Lan Qiren in the past, before he had decided to retreat into seclusion. Lan Qiren had been bound by filial duty to respect his older brother like a father and was in no position to raise any questions, while his brother had never chosen to explain. Certainly they’d never spoken after his seclusion, his brother refusing to even speak to him through the door when Lan Qiren made his regular reports on the state of the sect. And once he’d emerged from seclusion…

Lan Qiren had asked, of course.

He’d demanded an explanation during those two terrible times that they had spoken, or tried to, but his brother had never answered. Lan Qiren had asked, even begged, for some small glimmer of understanding, but all of his appeals and questions had been rejected, every one of them met uniformly with deaf ears and utmost disdain.

Disdain, and hatred.

Hatred enough to send Lan Qiren into the power of a man notoriously known for his instability, for his potential insanity, a man known as much as anything for being a would-be conqueror, a merciless tyrant, a sadist and a torturer…

Ironically, none of that took away from Lan Qiren’s profound sense of relief at finding out that the person he would be marrying was Wen Ruohan.

That was something he would not be telling his brother, not now, not ever, Lan Qiren thought, shaking his head a little at his own ridiculousness. His brother wanted him to suffer, he knew that much, but his brother had also never understood how Lan Qiren worked, had never really bothered to try to understand. Above all else, Lan Qiren hated change, unexpected deviations from his routine and from what he understood to be normal. For him, Wen Ruohan was a known quantity, or at least a familiar one, and that made him far, far better from Lan Qiren’s perspective than the alternative of a complete stranger.

Wen Ruohan…Lan Qiren knew him. He knew how to manage him, how to deal with him, or at least at minimum he had already developed a set of strategies for coping with his presence.

He hadn’t really had much choice.

After all, Lan Qiren had been a sect leader, or acting sect leader, of a Great Sect for ten years, and Wen Ruohan, as the sect leader of another Great Sect, had been his peer, one of the few who could stand on equal footing with him. Their status alone meant that they had regularly been required to interact during the discussion conferences. Sure, Wen Ruohan’s personal behavior was regularly reprehensible, rendering the man barely worthy of the begrudging respect to which his position entitled him, but he had been there, consistent, inevitable.

Familiar.

Lan Qiren had invariably been placed side by side with Wen Ruohan during the yearly discussion conferences, given that the standard seating order was Wen, Lan, Jiang, Jin, Nie, reflecting the order in which their clans had achieved prominence as sects in their own right. Lan Qiren couldn’t even escape him later in the evenings, when the seating was traditionally rearranged to reflect commonly understood personal preferences – the Great Sects were still grouped together, because everyone assumed the most powerful would always want to mingle first and foremost with each other.

These days the order for the more informal gatherings was almost always Jiang, Jin, Wen, Nie, Lan, putting Wen Ruohan between the two sects he was least likely to start a war with and pairing up the two sets of allies, Jiang and Jin on one hand and Nie and Lan on the other. It was an arrangement that made logical sense, but which also unfortunately left Lan Qiren no choice but to routinely endure conversations involving Wen Ruohan if he wanted to have the chance to talk with Lao Nie.

Lan Qiren had always liked Lao Nie, and thought that he was liked in return; he had even flattered himself to think that they were friendly beyond the mere politeness required by their sects’ alliance, though he was never entirely sure how much of that was true and how much of it was mere wistful thinking. But Lao Nie also liked Wen Ruohan, and Wen Ruohan had always been possessive of him in return, likely a result of their not-so-secret off-and-on affair that had always seemed highly likely to end in disaster for them both. Every discussion (and every discussion conference, for that matter) had therefore by necessity involved all sorts of interactions with Wen Ruohan, each one carefully judged and thought out in advance to avoid instigating a disaster of Lan Qiren’s own making.

Lan Qiren had never thought there would be a day he would miss such petty political considerations.

Perhaps it was simply that he had not been naturally talented at politics, with his single-mindedness and tendency to take things literally, his inability to read people (at least people above the age of adolescence, after the point where they’d learned, as he never really had, to properly dissemble), and so he had had to work very hard to develop the skills he’d needed just to survive. As much as he’d deplored the circumstances that had forced him to have to learn them, he’d still been proud of those skills. They represented how far he’d gotten through effort and hard work, how thoroughly he’d developed himself, how much he’d grown – it had shown him something of the man he’d made himself to be, that there was something in himself that he could be proud of, no matter how much he’d disliked the actual business of politicking itself. And now, all of a sudden, the reason for having those skills had been taken away from him...

It had been a shock, provoking a feeling of loss, even though it wasn’t something Lan Qiren had wanted in the first place. It was as if a peaceful man who had been forced to take up arms as a soldier was later one day informed that his sword would now be melted down as useless scrap, with all his hard-won achievements tossed aside as if they were little more than worthless rubbish – even if that man had once dreamt of putting down his sword voluntarily, it didn’t make his hands feel any less naked after that sword had been snatched away.

Well, luckily Lan Qiren was not in quite as much of a bind as he might have otherwise have been. Those hard-won political skills of his would still be useful to him here, in the Nightless City. He was married to Wen Ruohan, after all – the man schemed as he breathed, as constant as any rule Lan Qiren had ever known. There was simply no way that Lan Qiren was going to escape from politics here in his new married home…

…he was married.

Married! Him!

Lan Qiren rubbed his temples, shaking his head. He simply could not get over the strangeness of it. He, Lan Qiren, was married, with a wife of his own (albeit a very fearsome one), a household of his own…!

No doubt the very notion of it would make Xichen laugh and Wangji scowl –

Oh.

Oh, no, that hurt.

The mere thought of his nephews hurt, the pain visceral and very real, causing Lan Qiren to curl into himself as if he had just been stabbed through the heart with a dagger.

His boys, his boys – maybe they were not truly his, not his sons in any way respected by the world, but he had raised them himself, not trusting anyone else to help him. He had laughed over them, he had wept over them, he had raged over them; he had been there with them through every twist and turn of their lives to date, experienced with them every joy and every frustration. They had always been in his thoughts, no matter what else he was doing. He had seen Lan Xichen’s first steps and heard Lan Wangji’s first word (which to no one’s surprise had been “no”). He had guided their first steps into the world of cultivation, he had led them in playing their first musical notes, he had walked them through their first sword moves, his hand on theirs as they wielded a slender branch in enthusiasm – they were his boys.

And they were gone.

No, that was an inauspicious thought. They were not gone, they were not dead. They were merely half a world away from him, being kept away from him by his brother’s vicious hatred and society’s rules that gave him, as their father, the power to do as he liked with them.

Lan Qiren missed them like dying.

He’d missed them every single day of his forced seclusion, and he missed them still now. He missed them in every moment, with every breath and every heartbeat, and that he had been able to maintain his composure until now was only through having forced himself to forget, even for a little, that they had been taken from him.

He didn’t even know how they were doing. Xichen, Wangji – were they well? Were they suffering? Did they miss him as well, or had they already started to forget him?

Lan Qiren swallowed hard and opened his eyes, which had at some point closed. He found that he was sitting, without remembering deciding to do so or to make any move to get himself there. At some point he had fallen down onto a bench and curled in on himself, softly making a sort of keening noise, as if he were some wounded animal.

This was not acceptable.

Do not grieve in excess. Do not covet what is others’. Do not be unreasonable.

Lan Qiren felt very much like being unreasonable.

His brother hadn’t even let him bid his nephews farewell before he’d been sent away. He hadn’t even been permitted to see them, not even from a distance..! Before, when he’d been in seclusion, he at least had had the comfort of knowing that they were not far away from him. He could imagine them going about their daily chores along familiar paths, visiting the classroom and the training yard, and knowing his schedule as well as he did, he could even associate the different types of day with when they were doing each activity, and in so doing feel close to them.

He could even, in a moment of weakness, recall the image of Lan Wangji kneeling in the snow outside the very same house that Lan Qiren had later been trapped in, and wonder if Lan Wangji would do the same for his uncle as he had for his mother. The thought had been painfully sweet at the time, though of course once Lan Qiren had realized that he’d almost wished for his nephew’s suffering, however inadvertently, he had felt tremendous guilt and sentenced himself to punishment at once, writing copies of the rules on familial harmony until even his hands had been sore.

Even that cold comfort was gone, now.

Now that Lan Qiren was no longer in the Cloud Recesses, he had no hope of seeing his nephews, not unless he could somehow convince Wen Ruohan to bring him along to the discussion conferences – and even then, who knew when the Lan sect would next be hosting one? Such a thing was at his brother’s discretion, now. There was no longer any opportunity for Lan Qiren to spin futile fantasies of his nephews finding some sort of excuse to make their way to the gentian house, where there would then be some flaw requiring him to end his seclusion early – a fire, perhaps, and in light of the risk to human life he could leave and rush to them, take them into his arms for one last embrace –

Wishful thinking.

Pointless.

Qishan was so very far from Gusu. There was no possibility that Lan Qiren would see his nephews by chance here. He would not see them for a long time – maybe years – maybe never again –

Stop it!

Lan Qiren savagely rapped his hand against the edge of the table, using the pain to distract himself from his terrible thoughts. He could not allow himself to fall into a state of despondence and depression as he had in seclusion, even if that meant he could not permit himself to think about his nephews. He was in the Nightless City, firmly in the grasp of Wen Ruohan, the most dangerous man alive, and Lan Qiren wasn’t stupid enough to think that a mere marriage ceremony made the man any less of a threat.

At least Sect Leader Wen does not appear to have noticed any discrepancies in my behavior that cannot be explained by the fact of our marriage. He must have realized from my behavior that it came to me as a surprise, but at least he seems to be blaming my brother for that...as he should. I should have been told, I should have been given time to prepare..!

There was no point in thinking about it now.

Lan Qiren rubbed once more at his temples. He didn’t actually have a headache, not yet, not the way he usually did after weeping his eyes red as so often happened when he thought about his nephews these days, but it felt almost as though he should.

Do something productive instead of moping, Lan Qiren instructed himself sternly. When you have nothing else, you have your rules and self-regulation. Maintain your own discipline. Remember, diligence is the foundation.

Right. He’d already wasted half the morning doing little more than thinking. He should do – something.

Lan Qiren tried to move on with the next step in getting ready for the day, only to realize he had already finished them all without thinking, even his morning exercise. He was now wholly prepared to get started with his day…only he didn’t actually have anything to do.

When Lan Qiren had last been at the Nightless City, his role as acting sect leader meant that he had had an endless amount of work to stay on top of, between the intricate politics of the discussion conference and the usual day-to-day issues of running a sect. He’d woken up knowing exactly what he needed to do and how little time he had to do it all, and the rest of the day had typically been an extensive exercise in sensitive negotiations, frantic multitasking, and (worst of all) obligatory social events.

But now…

Now Lan Qiren was not a sect leader, acting or otherwise. He wasn’t even a guest.

He was married.

With uncharacteristic hesitancy, Lan Qiren went out of his courtyard, looking for a servant of sufficient rank to speak with. The Nightless City was a little excessive with its hierarchy in that way, he had found, with a convoluted set of internal rules that weren’t written down and weren’t shared with outsiders, leaving the rest of them to merely guess at what might be proper or improper. The Lan sect had servants, of course, and hierarchies within them, but in the Nightless City there was an entire underclass of servant that was under strict orders to be neither seen nor heard by outsiders. Lan Qiren had made the mistake once of trying to ask one of them a question during his earlier years as sect leader, and it had been disastrous. Not only had Lan Qiren not gotten the answers he wanted, the servant having been too terrified to respond, the servant had very nearly ended up getting beaten to death as punishment; it was only Lan Qiren’s intervention and explanation that he had been the one to initiate conversation that had spared him.

Better to avoid such a thing in the future, and instead find someone appropriate.

Ah, there was one, robes marked with the red suns that indicated higher-rank servants.

“Has Sect Leader Wen risen for the day?” he inquired, flagging down the man with a wave. “Will he be requiring my presence for breakfast?”

“Sect Leader Wen always breaks his fast in his rooms,” the servant said, bowing deeply and not quite answering the first question, which meant that Wen Ruohan was probably still asleep and quite likely to be annoyed if anyone else found out that he was still subject to such human requirements. Well, it was still early by the standard of most other sects. “After that, he usually starts his day with sect business, so it is unlikely that he will seek to speak with you before midday. Do you also wish to have breakfast brought to your rooms…?”

“Yes, that would do very well. Bring it to the main room in my courtyard,” Lan Qiren instructed, and retreated back to his courtyard, shaking his head at his own folly. What had he been thinking…? He should have guessed the answer already. Even at the discussion conferences, Wen Ruohan had rarely condescended to do business before mid-morning at the earliest, even when he was the guest. Naturally he wouldn’t bother deviating from his usual schedule here at his home simply because of their marriage.

Though, thinking of the still-unbelievable fact that he was married…

Maybe he should study up on that.

Yes, that would be something to do, something productive. That would be good.

Once he had finished eating his breakfast, Lan Qiren settled down at the writing desk, pulling out some paper and grinding himself some ink. The marriage had been mostly if not wholly settled by the time he had been informed of it and he’d been sent away not long after; he’d barely had time to pack, much less review material on the subject of marriage. His brother had sent him some books on marital duties, eventually, but irritatingly enough the ones that had been delivered with his meal had been exclusively about the role of the woman; someone must have misunderstood. And while he knew the Nightless City had an excellent library, since Wen Ruohan would never allow himself to be embarrassed by not having something that other sects had if he could help it, Lan Qiren also knew that any requests for books that he made would be reported to Wen Ruohan, and he was simply not ready for that level of embarrassment.

No, clearly if Lan Qiren were to be a good husband, he would need to figure out the rules himself.

Pay your wife the respect your wife is due, he wrote first, thinking of the myriad of examples to the contrary he had seen in the cultivation world. Perhaps it was merely the fact that he was a Lan, and therefore raised in a sect considered to be unduly romantic by others, but he could not understand why anyone would marry someone they did not, in some way, respect, and even if they didn’t, why they wouldn’t make an effort to overcome that for the sake of family harmony. The rules said Harmony is the value, and that was doubly true in the context of a marriage as it was in the context of sect or family.

Do not embarrass your wife in public. That one was as much inspired by Jiang Fengmian as it was by the formal rule of Do not argue with family. Jiang Fengmian’s marriage troubles were notorious throughout the cultivation world, and also almost entirely the man’s own fault. He had been so public in his mooning over Cangse Sanren and Wei Changze, even after he had married Yu Ziyuan – surely he must have realized how shameful she would find such a thing, how humiliating. Had he really thought that she would forgive him for that? Had he really thought that a proud woman like Yu Ziyuan would ever tolerate her husband disgracing her in front of outsiders like that?

Actually, that might be the basis for another rule.

After all, Jiang Fengmian wasn’t the only one who routinely embarrassed his wife in public. There was always Jin Guangshan as well, which…hmm. What sort of rule would Madam Jin appreciate?

Do not be alone with other women, perhaps.

Lan Qiren thought about that rule for a while, considering, then crossed it out and replaced it with the somewhat vaguer Do not give your wife reason to doubt your fidelity.

After all, he was in a cutsleeve marriage, and his wife was also a man. Lan Qiren couldn’t reasonably be expected to refrain from all contact with both men and women, and he could imagine perfectly reasonable and even unquestionable circumstances in which he might be alone with a woman, such as a female sect leader or a rogue cultivator like Cangse Sanren. Creating a rule that made generalizations about half the population would create more problems than it would solve. No, Lan Qiren would simply have to behave in a manner that was above reproach, and go from there. It shouldn’t be too difficult: the rules already said Be loyal, as well as Promiscuity is prohibited.

Lan Qiren didn’t have the habit of being lustful anyway. And neither was he inclined to drink, and there was already Alcohol is prohibited, so he didn’t need to add a rule about that.

Hmm. What else?

Appreciate your wife’s efforts and be supportive of your wife’s interests. That seemed like a good one – the rules said Do not flatter, but they also said Have affection and gratitude, as well as Do not criticize. It seemed reasonable that a marriage would call for something a little stronger than that, an affirmative exhortation rather than merely a prohibition. Of course, Wen Ruohan’s interests tended to be things like torture and trying to take over the world, which was problematic when considered alongside Stay away from evil and Honor good people, but, well, Lan Qiren was married now; it was too late to “stay away.”

He would simply have to get over their differences, somehow. Harmony is the value, after all…

(How had he once heard Lao Nie say it – “a happy wife means a happy life”? Of course, as far as Lan Qiren knew, Lao Nie had only married for relatively short periods of time, so maybe he wasn’t exactly the best authority on such things.)

Support your wife’s family, for they are now your own. That one was straightforward, although not easy. Like it or not, Lan Qiren had now married into the Wen sect. Its interests were now his interests, both of them aligned – it didn’t quite sit right with him after ten years of maneuvering against Wen Ruohan and his schemes, but it was what it was. Naturally Wen Ruohan would not be able to depend on Lan Qiren if he had any plans directed against the Lan sect or its interests, but he wouldn’t trust him in such circumstances anyway. Lan Qiren would simply have to do his best to demonstrate his willingness to offer his support in other situations, assuming he could find any in which he would be a help rather than a hinderance.

None came to mind at the moment – useless, hopeless, worthless, his brother’s voice hissed in his head, very unhelpfully – but Lan Qiren hoped that he could eventually demonstrate to Wen Ruohan that he could be of some value for something other than his bloodline.

Eventually. Somehow.

What else?

Under normal circumstances Lan Qiren might have added something to do with money, since he was aware that a good husband allowed his wife to control the household finances, but that didn’t really seem to apply here. The Wen sect was richer than the Lan sect, and wholly under Wen Ruohan’s control in a way that the Lan sect’s finances had never been under Lan Qiren’s; while he would never be a poor man, even if Lan Qiren gave Wen Ruohan everything he had, the sum was unlikely to be large enough for Wen Ruohan to even notice. There was no need to include anything like that.

Maybe he could add a reminder to himself not to cite Being frugal is a virtue and Do not lead a luxurious and dissipated life every time he saw further evidence of Wen sect excess…but that wasn’t a rule, and he was focusing now on rules.

What else?

Lan Qiren stroked his beard, thinking deeply. What did wives typically expect from their husbands?

Children, he supposed, and specifically sons. Wen Ruohan already had two sons, though, and it wasn’t as if Lan Qiren could provide any of Wen Ruohan’s own blood, which of course Wen Ruohan preferred above all else. Eventually he would likely be obligated to produce a child with one of the illegitimate girls of Wen descent, providing Wen Ruohan with a child of the Lan bloodline if he so wanted one, but Lan Qiren didn’t expect the request for that to come any time soon. Wen Ruohan thought himself a god, after all, or near to one; he wasn’t too concerned with succession planning as of yet.

He could certainly help teach Wen Ruohan’s boys, if that was something Wen Ruohan might like for him to do, but that wasn’t a rule, either. That wasn’t a duty of marriage.

Though…while they were on the subject, he supposed that there were marital duties as well, the sort that were usually involved in the creation of a son when the marriage wasn’t between men. And although Lan Qiren personally lacked amorous inclinations, he was well aware that most people considered sex an absolutely critical part of a happy marriage. Why else would there be so many torrid novels about women fighting for their husband’s favor?

Of course, he would need to strike a balance between not being the sort of husband that abandoned his wife, leaving her bed desolate and empty, and also not being the sort that made excessive demands on the marriage bed, which he was given to understand was also bad. While of course Lan Qiren had no personal experience in either direction, as acting sect leader he had been obligated to deal with marital disputes within the Lan sect. He was familiar with female complaints from both sides.

No, sex was important, important enough to be a rule – and Lan Qiren always followed the rules.

Of course, knowing it was one thing, but writing it down was another.

Lan Qiren fought with himself for a while on the subject. On one hand, he was fairly sure it would be inappropriate to put such words on paper, skirting near to a violation of No vulgar language, but on the other, he had always believed it was important for rules to be stated clearly. How else were you supposed to follow them if they weren’t laid out? He’d always disliked unwritten rules…

In the end he gave in and wrote down one more rule: Be attentive to your wife’s needs and diligently perform your duties as husband.

That seemed fair enough, did it not? Neither too explicit nor too subtle – it was clear enough what he meant, but also avoided being unduly crass, or setting out unreasonable expectations.

Now. What else?

What else, what else…had he really already exhausted the examples set for him by the other Great Sect leaders, whether positive or negative? Lan Qiren had already reviewed both Jiang Fengmian’s faults and Jin Guangshan’s. He had never met Lao Nie’s first wife, who was said to be either an unknown genius of the martial arts world or possibly a goddess, depending on how effusive Lao Nie was feeling at any given moment, and while he had briefly met his second wife, it had been only once, and while she was pregnant, so he had not really gotten very much of a distinct sense about her. Anyway, he hadn’t had the chance to observe Lao Nie as a husband, and so could not use him as a standard from which to derive rules. Who else did he know?

Other than his brother.

It wasn’t as though Lan Qiren could write Do not marry your wife to cover up her crimes and then imprison her against her will, forcing her to bear your children and languish in isolation until she kills herself as a rule, no matter how tempted he might be.

As for his brother’s conduct before his marriage…no, that wasn’t useful either. The rules already said Do not harbor doubt and jealousy and Do not take advantage of your position to oppress others. It had been his brother who had violated those rules, not any fault in the rules themselves.

Finally, at the end, Lan Qiren dipped his brush in ink and wrote one more sentence.

Be a partner to your wife, if your wife will be yours.

It wasn’t a rule, not really, though he intended to treat it as one. It was more of an aspiration. A highly unlikely one given who his wife was, Lan Qiren admitted, but what else was a marriage for, if not a lifetime’s aspiration?

Lan Qiren put the page aside to dry. Perhaps he would add more rules later, once he had time to think further on the subject, but seven was a good start. He felt better about the whole situation already, comforted by the mere existence of rules that he could simply apply and abide by. Truly, his ancestors had been wise. Having rules just made life so much easier…

There was a sound at the door.

Lan Qiren rose to see what they wanted.

“Sect Leader Wen has invited you to join him for the midday meal,” a servant announced. Fortified by his morning’s work, Lan Qiren nodded his asset and followed the servant down to a ridiculously lavish dining room that he had not seen before.

Wen Ruohan was already seated at the head of the table. He waved his hand idly at Lan Qiren, clearly excusing him from having to pay any respect.

Lan Qiren nodded to him in greeting. “How many of these do you have?” he asked. “Dining rooms, I mean. I thought I’d already seen them all, but this one is new.”

“This one is for family only,” Wen Ruohan said with teeth in his smile. His posture accorded with those Lan Qiren had previously observed as consistent with a combative mood, though it was not yet clear if he was spoiling for an actual fight or if he was simply out to irritate people. “Though I’m afraid it’s just us today.”

Lan Qiren sat down.

“I heard that you woke up at your usual time,” Wen Ruohan remarked, managing to make it sound vaguely insulting somehow. “The Lan rules, I assume. I trust you weren’t too bored…”

He trailed off in a way that suggested that Lan Qiren should answer him.

“Speaking is prohibited at mealtimes,” Lan Qiren said instead, and was amused when he saw Wen Ruohan’s smirk change into a scowl.

Provoking Wen Ruohan probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but Lan Qiren had as little intention of allowing a precedent that involved Wen Ruohan walking all over him now as he had had when he had been sect leader. That would be a truly intolerable way to live.

Also, when listing Wen Ruohan’s (very few) merits as a spouse earlier, it occurred to him that he had briefly forgotten how annoying the other man could be. The rule Lan Qiren had made said Pay your wife the respect your wife is due, but Wen Ruohan in this sort of trifling mood wasn’t due any.

“That rule doesn’t apply when you’re a guest,” Wen Ruohan said. “I distinctly recall that we had reached an agreement on the subject, some years back – at least seven by now. Are you reneging now?”

“Not at all. The rules remain the same, only I am no longer a guest,” Lan Qiren pointed out. “This is now my home.”

Wen Ruohan stared at him.

Lan Qiren very pointedly served himself some food out of one of the main bowls, signaling the start of the mealtime and, therefore, of silence.

“You know,” Wen Ruohan said thoughtfully. “I think I forgot how annoying you can be.”

Lan Qiren didn’t laugh, though his lips twitched. It was a little funny how their thinking had run in parallel like that.

At least Wen Ruohan knew Lan Qiren well enough to begrudgingly accept that he wasn’t going to be able to convince him to break his sect rules when he found a situation where he believed they applied – they’d settled that discussion seven years ago as well – and they were able to finish the meal with relatively little fanfare.

Afterwards, Wen Ruohan said, “I have several meetings this afternoon which cannot be shifted, but I will be done before early evening. If you are amenable, I can then show you around some of the portions of the Nightless City with which you may be less familiar.”

His tone suggested that Lan Qiren had better be amenable.

“Certainly,” Lan Qiren said. “Indeed, I expect to need several such tours, given the impressive size and grandeur of your Nightless City.”

That got him a beady-eyed look, as if Wen Ruohan suspected him of trying to fit some complaint or criticism into the statement. Lan Qiren met his eyes calmly, having been wholly sincere in his compliment, and eventually Wen Ruohan gave in with a dry chuckle.

“My Nightless City is indeed very impressive,” he said, as usual always willing to compliment himself. “Your belongings will have been delivered to your courtyard by now. As for the servants…”

He trailed off meaningfully once more, looking pointedly at him, but unfortunately for Wen Ruohan, Lan Qiren wasn’t entirely sure what he was trying to get at. Something to do with the distinctions between levels of servant, perhaps?

Abruptly reminded of that disastrous interaction once again, Lan Qiren grimaced and asked, “I assume I’m permitted to speak with all of them, now?”

“Of course.” Wen Ruohan seemed satisfied by that, oddly enough. “In your own time, of course. Under the circumstances, I assume you’d rather start with unpacking.”

Lan Qiren still had no idea what Wen Ruohan thought he was implying, or how their unusual present circumstances – namely, their marriage – would have any impact on his willingness or lack thereof to speak with the servants, but he really did want to go back to his room, so he just nodded and took his leave. Unpacking took the rest of the afternoon, between ordering the servants to rearrange the courtyard to suit Lan Qiren’s preferences and arranging those few items which he did not permit the servants to touch, such as his sword stand or his still-wrapped guqin, now settled on a low table.

He did his best the entire time not to think of the permanency of his new arrangement.

It was difficult, though. When he had visited the Nightless City as a guest in a discussion conference, there had been no need to bring along a copy of the Lan sect rules, much less several copies; this time, he had brought three. There was a formal one, of course, as well as his own much longer version, containing his personal notes and thoughts on the various rules, and lastly there was the one in a childish scrawl that Lan Xichen had presented him with for his last birthday, extraordinarily proud of having completed an entire copy of the whole set of rules. That one had very nearly not made the journey: Lan Qiren’s baggage had been carefully inspected before he left, removing anything to which his brother believed him not to be entitled, and this particular copy had survived only through having been shoved into the middle of a set of extremely dry treatises he’d brought along as camouflage.

(He had been obliged to meditate for a little while after he’d seen it on his bookshelf, just to maintain his self-discipline. He hated his brother, he missed his nephews; he missed his nephews, he hated his brother…but now was not the time to think of either of those. Maintain your own discipline.)

Lan Qiren was back in possession of himself by the time Wen Ruohan appeared at the door to his courtyard to take him on the tour. It was a good thing, too, as Wen Ruohan was now in a mischievous mood – which was annoying as well, though far preferable to the spiteful one from earlier. This mood at least meant that he was more inclined to be simply obnoxious, rather than actively malicious.

Still quite irritating, though.

Lan Qiren managed to maintain his dignity through the first few turns of the conversation, which started with commentary on his clothing and demeanor (according to Wen Ruohan, when they stood together he looked like an old cow eating fresh grass, which was patently ridiculous given that Wen Ruohan was over a hundred years old), touched upon the weather (supposedly better in Qishan than in Gusu, which Lan Qiren personally doubted), briefly became a back-and-forth debate on the merits of particular architectural styles that they had touched upon several times before (neither of them actually cared, but since the Nightless City preferred one style and the Cloud Recesses another, neither was inclined to yield the point), and ultimately concluded with a series of probing questions about Lan Qiren’s classes.

“– yes, they are held every year, and no, I don’t repeat myself,” Lan Qiren said testily. He couldn’t say he was starting to get tired of Wen Ruohan’s company since he’d more or less started off already sick of it. The other man had been so bubbling over with insinuated insults and overly clever little quips that Lan Qiren hadn’t had a chance to actually observe any of the things he was supposedly being shown. He was completely lost, too, and disliked the experience. “The beginning is often similar, given the importance of having a firm foundation, but different students call for a different curriculum, both in terms of cultivation focus and scholarly merits. There are enough rules to be flexible.”

“You can say that again.”

Lan Qiren opened his mouth to repeat it, then bit his tongue: years of politics had taught him the painful lesson that this particular social pattern meant Wen Ruohan was almost certainly not genuinely asking for a repetition.

Wen Ruohan still laughed at him, though, and Lan Qiren scowled at him.

“I nearly forgot how literal you can be.” Wen Ruohan was smirking. “I see that I shall have to be quite clear in my statements and expectations in the future.”

“You will, or else risk being misunderstood,” Lan Qiren agreed, glaring. “I prefer it.”

“Mm, yes, I look forward to taking into account your…preferences. To the extent you have them.”

Lan Qiren frowned at Wen Ruohan, who was doing his insinuation voice again, and decided that he had had enough of this nonsense. It was time to be straightforward himself. “What are you trying to imply this time? Say it flat out.”

Wen Ruohan chuckled and ostentatiously glanced around them, as if confirming where they were, even though it wasn’t anywhere new, having by now returned to Lan Qiren’s courtyard where they’d started.

“Well?” Lan Qiren demanded. “You’ve been dropping hints all day – unsuccessful hints, let it be said, as I haven’t been understanding you. Will you finally just explain yourself?”

Wen Ruohan turned back to him, his smirk widening into an outright leer.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll be blunt, then. A marriage is not considered fully complete until it has been consummated, and I will not allow a technicality to interfere with my plans. We are back at your courtyard, so we might as well get it over with, don’t you think?”

Lan Qiren stared at him, aghast. “In the middle of the afternoon?”

“It’s already early evening.” Wen Ruohan’s smirk was especially smug. “Don’t worry, I don’t expect we’ll miss dinner, and you’ll certainly be in bed by your sect’s little bedtime.”

Lan Qiren’s jaw worked. This was a ploy to get under his skin, he was abruptly certain of that, and possibly a little revenge for Lan Qiren having outmaneuvered Wen Ruohan at lunch. There was no other reason that Wen Ruohan wouldn’t be willing to wait until a normal hour for such a thing, especially given that he was fairly sure the man wasn’t actually all that interested in him.

Well, maybe. How would he know? Wen Ruohan wasn’t like him – he was of an amorous inclination, though thankfully nowhere near as lecherous as Jin Guangshan.

Maybe Wen Ruohan really did think sex was that important.

“Are you nervous?” Wen Ruohan asked with a tone of consideration so fake that it was clearly being put on as a means of being even more obnoxious, making Lan Qiren’s eye twitch in irritation in response. “It being your first time with a man, that is. Or is it your first time at all? It’d be a bit late, given your age, but I know how you Lan are with your rules against promiscuity…you can tell me, you know. I won’t judge.”

He was already judging.

“Remember, do not tell lies is a rule…”

“So is speak meagerly,” Lan Qiren retorted, only to blush when Wen Ruohan laughed in triumph: he’d given himself away there. He ground his teeth for a moment, his temper – never his best trait, even if it had been somewhat deadened recently – fighting to escape, but he reined it in with an effort.

Be attentive to your wife’s needs and diligently perform your duties as husband, he reminded himself. He’d written it himself just this morning. His pride was not worth breaking a rule.

He took a deep breath and held it for a moment, then released it, letting his aggravation go with it.

“Very well, then,” he said, and had at least the pleasure of seeing Wen Ruohan’s eyebrows go up in surprise, having presumably expected Lan Qiren to put up more of a fight than that. “You are not wrong. It will be better to get it over with before anyone raises any questions. Would you like to come inside?”

Now it was Wen Ruohan’s turn to have to take a moment to master himself, though in his case his recovery from his surprise was both quick and extremely smug.

“I think I would, yes,” he said, smiling indolently. “In fact, since you’re being such a good sport about all this, I’ll let you get in as much initial fumbling as you like before we get properly started, how’s that? I won’t lift a finger until you tell me you’re ready to proceed.”

Lan Qiren felt the urge to roll his eyes. He really had married the most obnoxious man in the cultivation world, hadn’t he…? Well, no, that would probably be Lao Nie, who was above all else extraordinarily loud and persistently irritating in a way that belied his seeming affability, but Wen Ruohan was making a solid case for himself being in second place.

(He still wasn’t the worst man in the cultivation world to marry, though. Compared to Lan Qiren’s brother, surely anyone would be better.)

“Very well,” he said again, and stepped forward to scoop Wen Ruohan into his arms, enjoying the squawk of shock and outraged protest – they were both tall men, about the same height, but Lan Qiren had the advantage of surprise. He hadn’t originally had any intention of carrying Wen Ruohan across the threshold, given that they were both adult men, but if Wen Ruohan was determined to be annoying, then Lan Qiren wouldn’t yield, either. “Mark your words.”

“Oh, I’ll mark them all right,” Wen Ruohan said as Lan Qiren carried him in. He looked offended but also disbelievingly amused, as if he couldn’t believe that Lan Qiren was capable of lifting him – or perhaps that he’d dared to. Lan Qiren had the feeling that Wen Ruohan was already planning revenge for this slight as well. “Do your worst.”

Did everything have to be a fight with this man?

“I’ll do my best,” Lan Qiren corrected, putting Wen Ruohan down on the bed and looking down at him thoughtfully.

Wen Ruohan certainly wasn’t what Lan Qiren had expected from marriage, to the extent he’d ever expected anything. But at least he was familiar, even if the act they were about to engage in wasn’t, and Lan Qiren was fairly sure he could count on Wen Ruohan to continue to be annoyingly, irritatingly himself the entire time. That would be immensely helpful in reducing his anxiety about trying something new.

Anyway, Lan Qiren might lack the inclination to be attracted to others, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been at least mildly curious to find out what everyone was always raving on about. He’d read any number of spring books in his time, trying without success to learn attraction the way he’d learned everything else, but maybe it would be more interesting to actually try it with someone else.

Who knew, perhaps it would actually even be enjoyable.

This was, Lan Qiren supposed, his opportunity to find out. Maybe even his only opportunity, given that Wen Ruohan was unlikely to be as cooperative when he wasn’t getting something he wanted out of it – in this case, the legitimacy of their marriage and the opportunity to make fun of Lan Qiren.

He’d have to make the most of it.

Chapter Text

Wen Ruohan was offended.

Deeply, completely, even thoroughly offended.

How dare Lan Qiren be good in bed?!

The other man was clearly a virgin, completely inexperienced. At the beginning he’d been quite clumsy at various points, at times overly considerate and at others overly strong, in any event very clearly working things out as he went along – that much had suited Wen Ruohan’s plans perfectly. He’d intended to lie back and do absolutely nothing to help out, letting Lan Qiren awkwardly flounder around in his own inexperience and ignorance until he was forced to ask for help. That would have been perfect. What was having to endure a few clumsy kisses and maybe some inept petting, perhaps even an inexperienced grab beneath the waist, when he would be able to use Lan Qiren’s failure to grind his face into the dirt, mocking him for months and months to come?

Wen Ruohan had a use for Lan Qiren, after all. He wasn’t going to give up his plans of gaining access to Lan Qiren’s student network simply due to impatience, but utilizing Lan Qiren as a teacher required a delicate balance: Wen Ruohan had to establish control over him, of course, but he also needed the man to maintain full grasp of his faculties. He couldn’t just throw him into the Fire Palace to reeducate him the way he would a normal prisoner, even a hostage. Even if he employed the sorts of tools that didn’t leave any physical marks, leaving Lan Qiren seemingly pristine in the eyes of the rest of the world, those tools still left a different sort of imprint on their victims, rendering them unfit for his present purpose.

No – if Wen Ruohan wanted to crush Lan Qiren in order to mold him into the shape he wanted, he’d have to do it in such a way that would first make Lan Qiren believe that he was participating voluntarily.

It made sense. It was a good plan.

It was just…

Well, Wen Ruohan had always known Lan Qiren was clever.

He appreciated that about him, even. Sure, the man was bizarrely focused on his sect’s rules, excessive even for those of Gusu Lan, but that was only an idiosyncrasy, nothing more. Looking at the broader picture, Lan Qiren had been unexpectedly dropped into the position of sect leader for a Great Sect when he was only a few years into adulthood and lacking in any of the usual training that eldest sons got. Most people in such circumstances would have gotten picked apart by the teeming mass of enemies at their gates – their fellow Great Sects all looking out for their own advantage, their subsidiary sects hungry to win advantages for themselves over others, unaffiliated sects looking for any opportunity to increase their prestige – and failed miserably.

Lan Qiren hadn’t done that.

On the contrary, Lan Qiren had picked up all the skills he’d needed to manage a Great Sect through the intricate dance of intersect rivalries with extraordinary speed. He’d somehow managed to guide the Lan sect well enough to avoid any fatal mistakes in the first year or two, and after that he’d even become what Wen Ruohan would consider to be a worthy adversary – and that was a compliment he gave to very few.

It appeared, to Wen Ruohan’s mixed chagrin and pleasure, that Lan Qiren’s skill in mastering steep learning curves was not limited to the field of politics.

It’d been bad enough that he’d started out by picking Wen Ruohan up, seemingly without the slightest bit of strain. That must have been a lucky guess on his part – naturally, he would have had no idea that Wen Ruohan had always had something of a weakness for partners strong enough to be able to move him without his consent, since only very few had the capacity to do so. Lao Nie could do it with his saber in a proper fight, which was one of the reasons Wen Ruohan had allowed the wretched man into his bed in the first place, but Lan Qiren had done it through nothing but the element of surprise and a frankly absurd degree of arm strength, picking him up in such a smooth gesture that Wen Ruohan hadn’t even realized what he was trying to do until he’d already done it. Even Lao Nie, who was built like a bull, probably would have needed to brace himself briefly if he were thinking of trying a move like that, and Wen Ruohan usually ended up kicking him before he managed to do anything just for daring to think about it.

In this case, however, Wen Ruohan had magnanimously decided to allow Lan Qiren to get away with it just this once. It was his first time, after all.

Of course, Lan Qiren had taken to heart Wen Ruohan’s mostly sarcastic promise that he wouldn’t move until Lan Qiren had finished exploring to his heart’s content, and he’d run with it.

Oh, had he ever run with it.

He’d started by exploring the entirety of Wen Ruohan’s body with his mouth and hands, starting at about the neck and jawline and working his way down. He’d worked very slowly and thoroughly, too, as if he’d assigned himself the task of finding every single one of Wen Ruohan’s sensitive spots and figuring out how to best exploit them, and he’d approached the task with the same single-minded sincerity he applied to contemplating his sect rules.

How did that Lan rule go? Diligence is the root?

Let it not be said that Lan Qiren did not live up to his sect’s expectations.

It was that damned sincerity, in fact, that was the most annoyingly compelling part of it.

Wen Ruohan was neither a Lan nor a prude; unlike Lan Qiren, he’d slept with any number of people, many of them expertly trained whores, though he wasn’t anywhere near as obsessed with them as Jin Guangshan. Speaking generally, courtesans had all the technical skills Lan Qiren so obviously lacked. Even Wen Ruohan’s wives and lovers were better, technically speaking; they knew his personal preferences and were (usually) willing to comply with them in order to get what they wanted. But they weren’t anywhere near as genuine about it as Lan Qiren, who had throughout the entire process maintained an expression of almost…for lack of a better term, Wen Ruohan was almost tempted to call it academic fascination.

Intense fascination.

Even Lao Nie, who was currently Wen Ruohan’s favorite lover, didn’t give him that impression. Oh, sure, Lao Nie was a guaranteed good time, but he was lackadaisical and lazy, even indolent, as self-absorbed in his own way as Wen Ruohan was – he was there to have fun, and as soon as he wasn’t, he was out. He certainly didn’t approach Wen Ruohan’s pleasure as if it were a new cultivation technique that needed to be thoroughly mastered.

With an emphasis on thoroughly.

Lan Qiren had just kept going and going until Wen Ruohan was going completely out of his mind, absolutely wild, and then he’d just kept going. “Are you having trouble with your self-control, Sect Leader Wen? Would it help if I tied you up?” he’d asked without the slightest hint of mockery or judgment in his tone, the way there definitely would have been if it were Lao Nie, and then before Wen Ruohan had been able to catch his breath enough to scold him, he’d gone and done it, too. He'd used that Lan sect ribbon that they all held to be so precious, so sacred, and the sheer taboo of being tied up in something like that had only made Wen Ruohan even wilder. By the time Lan Qiren had finally gotten done with the preliminaries and put it to him, Wen Ruohan simply hadn’t had the presence of mind to quibble over the details of who was doing what and to whom.

Now, it wasn’t as though Wen Ruohan was particularly picky about things like sexual positions in the normal course of things. At his age, he had long ago learned that shame was only a word that people used to deny themselves pleasure, and he applied that lesson to matters of the bedroom as much as he did to all the other social taboos he broke on his quest to become the undisputed master of the cultivation world. He’d certainly allowed Lao Nie to have him a few times – had ordered the man to do it, even – and he’d enjoyed it tremendously every time. But he’d intended to use sex to put Lan Qiren firmly in his place, and getting fucked screaming into next week by the man’s irritatingly impressive stamina did not actually serve that purpose in the slightest.

(Nor was Lan Qiren’s stamina the only thing about him that was irritatingly impressive. Did the Lan sect deliberately breed for that or something? It was extremely rude.)

Anyway, Wen Ruohan was offended. Completely, utterly, thoroughly offended.

He was also completely, utterly, thoroughly fucked out, probably because he had been so absolutely appalled by how good it had been that he’d allowed or possibly insisted that Lan Qiren do it again after dinner, which some excessively clever servant that Wen Ruohan would need to either execute or promote had left outside Lan Qiren’s door, and then yet again in the morning just to be sure.

Which, yes, meant that Wen Ruohan had somehow spent the night in Lan Qiren’s courtyard, an honor he hadn’t granted to any of his other wives until they’d resided in his home for at least three months.

(Lao Nie had never asked him to stay the night, of course. They didn’t have that sort of relationship.)

Perhaps it would have been less offensive if Lan Qiren had shown any sign that he was aware of the honor Wen Ruohan was bestowing upon him. But no: the man had gotten up after the morning round, washed himself with cold water, and was even now going through some morning sword exercises in the yard outside the bedroom, completely dressed. He even had the gall to look perfectly put together, his movements smooth and uninterrupted, even though underneath his pure white robes his back almost certainly looked as though he had just gone several rounds with a wildcat.

…a wildcat with tremendously powerful cultivation, anyway.

Wen Ruohan’s strength was such that he could catch a swinging sword between his fingers without difficulty, and there had been a brief moment the night before when he’d briefly thought that he’d crushed Lan Qiren’s ribs with his thighs – that had been right after Lan Qiren had figured out the best way to use those sharpened guqin-player nails of his. Luckily for Wen Ruohan’s longer term plans, Lan Qiren was an impressive cultivator in his own right, so he hadn’t so much as flinched.

In fact, he had just chuckled, a low sound Wen Ruohan was fairly sure he’d never heard the other man make before, ever, and then he had just kept going, steady and undisturbed, inexorable…

All right, maybe Wen Ruohan wasn’t actually all that offended.

A very good time was had by all, after all, even if he didn’t exactly achieve his objectives. No, Wen Ruohan was really just frustrated that he had somehow, again, completely misjudged Lan Qiren. He’d thought the man to be the most boring person alive, but then he went and pulled out a performance like that…? Who could have possibly expected such a thing?

Perhaps it came from the same part of him that had produced that brilliant teacher plot.

Mm, Lan Qiren as a teacher – Wen Ruohan could certainly see the appeal now, and not just for the political reasons that had initially so attracted him to the idea. There had been a moment the night before, when Wen Ruohan done something, he didn’t even recall exactly what, something designed to get Lan Qiren to hurry up already because he was already absolutely desperate for it, even though by that point in the evening he’d already come at least once, possibly twice.

In response, Lan Qiren had just…stopped.

“You said you would stay still until I was ready to proceed,” the other man reminded him, frowning at him in disappointment in exactly the way he had once done that time he’d figured out that Wen Ruohan was planning to double-cross one of their mutual allies. The reminder had gone straight to Wen Ruohan’s cock – Lan Qiren had responded to the provocation back then with a frankly masterful political maneuver that had undermined the whole scheme, and now all that mastery and cleverness belonged to him and him alone. “I know you can do better than that, Sect Leader Wen.”

At that precise moment in time, Wen Ruohan had longed for nothing more than to twist them both over, throw Lan Qiren down onto the bed and just take what he wanted from him, even though what he wanted by that stage was turning out to be very different from what he’d originally planned. But of course his pride wouldn’t hear of it, and Lan Qiren had known that. No amount of lust would make Wen Ruohan yield in a contest, much less be seen to be backing down from his own given word.

He’d reluctantly backed off.

“Well done. Not much longer now. You can hold on a little longer, can’t you? Just like that…”

It had not been just a ‘little’ longer. But it had been worth it regardless.

Wen Ruohan found to his surprise that he was smiling, or at least smirking with genuine pleasure, even though he hadn’t intended to. He would indeed have to find a way to exploit Lan Qiren’s teaching abilities in a manner he had hitherto not considered, no matter how shocked and appalled the suggestion of engaging in that sort of bedplay would undoubtedly make Lan Qiren.He’d probably puff up and start scolding, scowling and glaring, with his cheeks and the very tips of his ears gone pink in the way they did when he’d been embarrassed by something – because truly, Lan Qiren was, in his heart of hearts, a very boring person.

Well…mostly.

It seemed he had some unexpected surprises in him after all.

“I have ordered the servants to prepare you a bath,” Lan Qiren said, interrupting Wen Ruohan from a very pleasant fantasy that involved the wall of a classroom and a very angry and embarrassed teacher trying to keep them both quiet to avoid alerting his dutiful students in the next room of what they were about. Wen Ruohan looked up at him: Lan Qiren was standing next to the bed, having clearly finished his morning exercises. “It should be ready by now. They said you preferred to use the one in your quarters, so I assume it’s there.”

Wen Ruohan narrowed his eyes, suddenly suspicious. Was Lan Qiren condescending to him? Was he implying or did he think that Wen Ruohan was weak because of what they had done last night…? Quite a few men had certain fixed ideas in their head that what position a man was willing to assume in bed indicated something about them outside of bed, and Wen Ruohan had always taken great pleasure in showing such people the depths of their mistake…

Lan Qiren frowned quizzically at Wen Ruohan when he didn’t respond at once. “Was the order unnecessary? If you would rather bathe in cold water the way I did, I can tell them – ”

“A bath is fine,” Wen Ruohan interrupted, his habitual paranoia fading away as he remembered who he was dealing with. He’d nearly forgotten, again, that Lan Qiren tended to be quite so literal-minded – his statement about a bath was almost certainly just that, a statement about a bath, with no implications or additional context intended. Also, if he didn’t stop the man now, he probably really would go to cancel the bath, as if Wen Ruohan was also an insane Lan ascetic that preferred cold water to hot. “Are you saying I smell?”

“That was not what I intended to say, but as a matter of fact, yes, you do. Also, if you wait any longer, you will likely start sticking, which I would imagine is likely to be uncomfortable.”

Literal-minded, blunt, and tactless. Yes, this was definitely still Lan Qiren.

Wen Ruohan rolled his eyes, but he still got up and went to take the bath before the other man started quoting Change clothing after taking a bath at him or something wretched like that.

He did smirk to himself as he settled in, though, knowing that Lan Qiren had probably not realized what luxurious excess a “bath” constituted for Wen Ruohan – one of his wiser ancestors had built a heated pool off the sect leader’s quarters that used natural hot springs as a means of heating, big enough to fit several people and deep enough to sit comfortably, even meditate. There were ledges built into the bath specifically for the purpose, though they were commonly turned to other purposes as well…there was even a hidden place with a built-in set of manacles, which had always suggested to Wen Ruohan that his proclivity for torture wasn’t anywhere near as idiosyncratic as his critics in the cultivation world tended to suggest it was.

He'd have to convince Lan Qiren to join him in here at some point. Maybe he’d pretend that it was the heated equivalent of the Lan sect’s Cold Spring, available only to members of the Wen sect leader’s family, of which Lan Qiren now counted. And once Lan Qiren was in the bath, it would be only a matter of overpowering him – easy enough, given how powerful Wen Ruohan was – and chaining him to the wall, and then Wen Ruohan could pay him back for yesterday’s offense at his leisure. He’d ride him for hours, taking his own pleasure as many times as he liked, and he wouldn’t let the other man off even once no matter how he begged…

At some point he’d also fuck him, of course, the way he’d originally intended on doing. But now that Wen Ruohan knew what Lan Qiren was capable of, he wasn’t about to ruin it, or him, by going too fast in the other direction and forcing things on him that he didn’t want. He’d be spoiling his own fun if he ruined Lan Qiren now – and Wen Ruohan never denied himself anything.

He might need to work out the details later, but in the end the details were immaterial. Once Wen Ruohan decided on his goal, it would inevitably come to pass…even if that goal was just to ensure that he was taking full and complete advantage of all that Lan Qiren had to offer.

Which he thoroughly intended to do. Thoroughly.

It was a little funny, actually. Just yesterday Wen Ruohan had been entertaining himself by thinking of ways he might be able to torment Lan Qiren without damaging his usefulness as a pawn, ultimately settling on sexual humiliation as a good option, and today he couldn’t stop thinking of ways they could fuck. Which he supposed included finding reasons for Lan Qiren to continue to fuck him, since yesterday’s excuse of ensuring that the marriage was legitimate had started wearing a bit thin around round three…

Wen Ruohan chuckled to himself.

He was in a good mood, and not just because he’d gotten quite so spectacularly laid. He knew himself to be an old monster, who’d long ago seen it all and started forgetting how to care – more than anything, apathy was his greatest opponent these days. His now-deceased nephew, one of the few people who had dared talk back to him, had once told him that if he kept going the way he was, he would do something unbelievably stupid just to alleviate his boredom or else decide to throw everything away on the path of clarity just to stop feeling it, which was much the same. As much as Wen Ruohan hated being criticized over anything, he’d probably had a point. It was getting to be rarer and rarer that Wen Ruohan found something that really caught his attention, or even got him mildly interested, other than torture or conquest…

Though perhaps it wasn’t actually as different as all that. His interest in Lan Qiren could certainly be seen as falling firmly into the category of conquest.

It was still new and exciting, though. How long had it been since he’d bothered fantasizing about something instead of just taking it? It was hard to want something when it was already in your grasp – and Lan Qiren wasn’t, even though technically speaking he was, bound as he was to Wen Ruohan by their marriage. But if Wen Ruohan wanted all of Lan Qiren, including the unexpectedly spirited parts of him, he couldn’t just break his spirit in bed, no more than he could break it on the rack.

And that meant he’d have to be clever about it.

What fun.

He’d never before wanted a Lan for himself. It wasn’t that it had never come up as a possibility, but he’d never been interested. The Lan were too crazy, their hearts too uncontrollable, those Lan who loved like madness, with all that terrifying single-minded focus and devotion – but not Lan Qiren, of course. Lan Qiren was too much a known factor for that to ever be an issue…

There was a very faint sound at the door.

Wen Ruohan turned his head at once, casting aside his train of thought. That sound was one of his servants indicating that they wanted to report to him outside the usual time, which meant that they’d found something they thought he’d find interesting.

Given the consequences of guessing wrong, they were usually right.

He waved his hand, using a tug of spiritual energy to open the door and admit the man outside.

“Sect Leader,” Shen Huiming, one of Wen Ruohan’s more capable subordinates from outside his bloodline, entered and bowed. He was dressed as a servant, as always, even though he was technically part of the military due to his role as one of Wen Ruohan’s spies; perhaps he enjoyed it, or else thought it made him less conspicuous. It didn’t matter one way or another to Wen Ruohan, since they were all his servants at the end of it. “I thought you might be interested in the following document, which was retrieved in copy from the Crescent Moon Courtyard.”

That was Lan Qiren’s courtyard.

Wen Ruohan arched his eyebrows and accepted the piece of paper, which had a few lines in Lan Qiren’s distinctive handwriting. Something his spies thought might be worth bringing to him, already? He’d assumed that Lan Qiren would eventually try to betray him, of course, since everyone always did, but he’d thought he’d wait at least a month to settle in before trying something.

Now, what had he –

Wen Ruohan burst out laughing when he saw what was actually written on the page.

Pay your wife the respect your wife is due…

“He actually used the character for wife,” Wen Ruohan chortled. “For wife!”

How ridiculous, he thought, actually smiling – really smiling – at the piece of paper even as Shen Huiming, obviously realizing his services were no longer needed, bowed and retreated from the room. He was truly a good subordinate. If he kept it up, Wen Ruohan might be inclined to allow him to be Wen Huiming one day. How absolutely ridiculous.

What was it that Lan Qiren had said to him? “I shall endeavor with my best efforts to live up to your expectations of me as your husband”?

It seemed that the man had really meant it, too. And that was even more absurd. Even putting aside the obvious confusion as to which one of them was the wife, why in the world would he?

This was a political marriage. Wen Ruohan wanted Lan Qiren for his utility, not for sentimental reasons, and that hadn’t changed just because he’d figured out that he could use Lan Qiren for sex as well as politics. If anything, it just meant that Lan Qiren would get to enjoy being exploited a lot more than he might have otherwise – Wen Ruohan certainly wasn’t above sending his former lovers to the Fire Palace if they angered him, sometimes even for permanent stays, but he was certainly a lot more inclined to get a few more rounds of fucking in first before he did.

It wasn’t like he minded that Lan Qiren had gotten the wrong idea to such an extent, mixing up love and politics and even getting their respective positions wrong. If Lan Qiren wanted to be sentimental, and in so doing open himself up to vulnerabilities that would allow Wen Ruohan to take advantage of him more easily, then that was on his own head – in the end, all good things would be his, and it was Lan Qiren’s own fault for having been a good thing that came within Wen Ruohan’s sight.

Still chuckling, Wen Ruohan tapped his nails against the part of the list that read diligently perform your duties as husband, thinking to himself that that particular rule would certainly make certain things much easier.

After all, the language might be prim and proper, very Lan Qiren, but the mere fact that it was included at all was rather suggestive. Lan Qiren had always appeared to be above all manners of earthly desire, but that was before last night, when Wen Ruohan had introduced him to how much fun it could be. Surely, if Lan Qiren was anything like his predecessors, his smooth and even façade merely concealed a carefully banked fire just itching to be let out, a fire that Wen Ruohan had undoubtedly just stoked to a frenzy. Surely by now he was desperate for another taste, wanting more, more and often.

If Wen Ruohan recalled correctly, the previous generation’s Lan sect leader had rather infamously disappeared with his wife for nearly two months after getting married – they’d actually been in the midst of a night-hunt when they’d abruptly lost patience with the rest of the world and decided to retreat to some isolated mountaintop cabin for their little fuck-fest. Everyone had briefly thought that they’d died.

Something to look forward to, no doubt.

Wen Ruohan laughed again and rose up from his bath, deliberately selecting one of his more causal outfits to wear in the event that Lan Qiren lost that prized self-possession of his when he took him on yet another tour of the Nightless City today – a tour whose itinerary was swiftly being replaced with a list of places ordered by how much Wen Ruohan would like to fuck in them, excluding only his bedroom because he preferred subtlety over being quite that level of obvious. It was good to know that he wouldn’t need to bother coming up with excuses for Lan Qiren to agree to jump into bed with him the way he’d originally thought he would. He could probably get him begging for it just by dropping a hint!

Later, Wen Ruohan would sourly reflect on his mood from that morning and curse his own optimism. How had he managed to forget, again, that Lan Qiren, when he wasn’t fucking, was one of the most literal minded, oblivious, and boring people in all of existence?

“Are you actually making a recommendation on how I arrange my furniture?” he demanded with a scowl.

“I am,” Lan Qiren replied, seemingly not noticing Wen Ruohan’s rapidly plummeting mood. “I recognize this room – it’s the formal dining room where you receive the other sect leaders during discussion conferences, is it not? It is larger than the one we have in the Cloud Recesses, but the purpose is the same. I had thought several times before that the layout could be improved, though naturally I was never in a position to bring it up before. A very small reorientation of a few of the tables would be sufficient to split up the groups, forcing the relevant sect leaders to need to get up from their seats if they wish to talk to each other, which would in turn assist in reducing the natural tendency towards factionalism – ”

Wen Ruohan’s eyes narrowed.

Irritatingly, it wasn’t actually a bad suggestion, and he could see what Lan Qiren meant. Small sect leaders did tend to form cliques, and forcing them to either get out of their comfort zone or make a deliberate choice to stay in it would reveal a great deal about their characters and allegiances without letting them realize that they had slipped up. Moreover, it was a valuable insight into the way the Lan sect laid out their own public reception area, which meant Wen Ruohan was making progress on his plan to suck Lan Qiren dry of all his knowledge about his sect.

It was all very good – except that Wen Ruohan had made other plans involving sucking Lan Qiren dry today, and Lan Qiren kept talking about the furniture.

“– is, of course, a difference of opinion between those who think that providing guests with comfort is the foremost duty of a host and those who believe that enhancing a feeling of community is paramount. Naturally the political interest of the hosting sect must be considered as well, but – ”

“Would you like to fuck on one of the tables?” Wen Ruohan asked, giving up on subtlety.

Lan Qiren stopped dead in place, which was good.

“Absolutely not,” he said, which was less good. “This is a public area! And it’s the middle of the day!”

“I could order the servants to blockade the doors.”

“I cannot think of anything less sexually motivating than informing a group of wholly unrelated people of what I am planning to do so that they can more efficiently pretend not to know it is happening.”

Well, when he put it like that, it didn’t sound nearly as fun.

“Moreover, it would be immensely rude to your future guests – ”

“That would be the benefit,” Wen Ruohan grumbled, thinking wistfully of Lao Nie’s last visit. He would have fucked him in the dining room, or agreed to get fucked there, and in either case would have laughed in spiteful delight at the idea of the horror on everyone’s faces the entire time.

“The rules say Do not indulge in debauchery. And before you say that my sect’s rules do not apply to you, that is true, but that does not change the logical underpinnings that apply equally to your situation. The first treatise on the subject – ”

Wen Ruohan gave up and headed off in a different direction. Lan Qiren instinctively followed, as he had been doing up until then, though much to Wen Ruohan’s annoyance walking did not in any way impede his continued lecture, which carried on completely unabated right up until they reached their next destination and he noticed where they were.

“Welcome to my Fire Palace,” Wen Ruohan said with a nasty twist to his lips. “You may have heard about it before.”

Lan Qiren’s eye twitched.

“I’d be more than happy to take you on a tour through here, too, if you like,” Wen Ruohan purred, his irritation flowing out of him at the sight of Lan Qiren being abruptly and viscerally reminded of where he was and in whose power, judging by the grimace on the other man’s face. “Only…I worry that you might not enjoy it very much.”

They weren’t even deep enough inside to see any of the victims yet; they were only in the main hall where Wen Ruohan often liked to sit to enjoy the spectacle. But the blood-splattered walls and the instruments that lined them, the various manacles used to chain people down, and the left-over toys from the last time his Fire Palace disciples had entertained him – that should be enough to drive Wen Ruohan’s point home.

To remind Lan Qiren that he should be afraid.

“I doubt that I would, because it is disgusting,” Lan Qiren said, lips pressed tightly together. But then, after a few moments, he added, sounding as if he were forcing himself to speak, “I…assume the disgusting aspect is part of the point. It is well done in that respect.”

Wen Ruohan stared at him.

“Do you actively collect implements of torture?” Lan Qiren asked, bravely forging on – was he really attempting to have a conversation about this? “Or is it more in the nature of collecting experiences? Because if it is the former, you might want to instruct your servants to take a little more care not to leave them lying around. Blood is oxidizing, and can induce rust in a mechanical device as much as in a sword. If your goal is to preserve them, you should take better care of them.”

He was.

He was actually trying to have a conversation about torture.

Lan fucking Qiren was trying to talk to him about torture.

“What are you doing?” Wen Ruohan asked blankly. This was not how people reacted to his Fire Palace – not anyone. Not his wives, not Lao Nie…even his torturers didn’t treat it like this. To the extent anyone spoke positively of it, it was only those madmen that lusted for blood and power over others, longing to have the ability to hurt, and Lan Qiren was not a man like that. Not to mention that Wen Ruohan had just implicitly threatened him with it! “I’m serious. What are you doing?”

Lan Qiren scowled at him.

“I am attempting to take an interest in the things you enjoy doing,” he said stiffly, and abruptly Wen Ruohan remembered Appreciate your wife’s efforts and be supportive of your wife’s interests. He hadn’t realized it went to this extent! “I don’t expect you to understand my passion for contemplating my sect rules, for instance, but it is something important to me, so I expect you to respect it. In turn, I will respect what is important to you, which is apparently this. Is that not the reason why you are showing it to me?”

“…of course,” Wen Ruohan lied, far too bewildered to go back to threats. “It’s…important for married life. To understand each other.”

Lan Qiren nodded as if Wen Ruohan was making complete sense, which he was definitely not.

They stared at each other for several very long moments after that.

“Would you like to show me one of your interests as well?” Wen Ruohan finally asked, resorting to reciprocity out of sheer desperation. He mostly wanted to get them back to somewhere where he would have the upper hand once more – Lan Qiren had managed to win this particular social interaction just by being so incredibly weird about it, but Wen Ruohan didn’t intend to let him win another.

Lan Qiren looked deeply relieved.

They made their way back to Lan Qiren’s courtyard in silence. What Lan Qiren was thinking, Wen Ruohan had no idea, but for himself, Wen Ruohan found himself still floundering in a way he hadn’t for…years. Even Lao Nie, who had a lust for war that rivaled Wen Ruohan’s own and who could be just as vicious and ruthless and bloodthirsty, disapproved of the Fire Palace, even if he didn’t have a good answer for why slaughtering someone in a battlefield was morally superior to slaughtering them in a dungeon. Wen Ruohan’s wives had certainly never gone anywhere near the place, even if they sometimes ordered people they disliked to be sent there; the rest of the time, they just closed eyes and ears to it, pretending it didn’t exist. And the people who did like his Fire Palace, Wen Ruohan didn’t trust one bit.

Lan Qiren…

What was he doing?

What was his angle here? He wasn’t a natural schemer. He was too straightforward for that, too painfully honest, taking that stupid Do not tell lies rule seriously. Even if he was up to something, he wouldn’t be able to hide what he was doing for more than a day or two. What did he get out of wanting to support Wen Ruohan’s interests that wasn’t automatically undermined by his tendency to lecture and scold? If he wanted to convince Wen Ruohan to favor him, or if he’d wanted something specific in return, he should have agreed to have sex when Wen Ruohan had proposed it. Why refuse to do that and then make an effort with the Fire Palace…?

Wen Ruohan hated being confused. He hated being put off his stride. He hated not being in control.

“Let me play you some music,” Lan Qiren said, glancing at him sidelong. “That is one of my interests, and I could play you something…calming, perhaps? You seem uneasy.”

You don’t say, Wen Ruohan sneered in his thoughts, but he waved his hand in agreement regardless, settling down by the table to warm the teapot and make himself tea while Lan Qiren went over to finish preparing his guqin. It must be either new or recently repaired, based on the way that Lan Qiren hadn’t bothered to play it or even unwrap it since his arrival.

Wen Ruohan briefly wondered what had happened to Lan Qiren’s old one, which he had treasured. Had he left it behind? Why would he do something like that? A gift given to his nephews, perhaps, as a keepsake..?

Still, new or otherwise, the guqin was a Lan sect instrument, so there was no need to worry about it falling out of tune. Lan Qiren swiftly finished setting it up and settled down, putting his hands on the instrument and drawing out a single opening chord –

Then he frowned and put his hands aside.

“Hold a moment, please,” he said to Wen Ruohan, who arched his eyebrows. “There’s something wrong with the sound. I think something must have gotten caught inside during our journey here.”

Wen Ruohan watched in mild interest as Lan Qiren lifted the guqin and shook it lightly – there was in fact a rustling sound inside, like paper. Sure enough, that was what it was: Lan Qiren was quickly able to figure out where it was located, reaching in with two fingers to draw the crumpled piece of paper out of the hollow chamber within. He was frowning, as well he should; the Lan sect prided themselves on the care they took of their instruments. How had they allowed such a mistake?

Lan Qiren unfolded the piece of paper and glanced down at it – and his face abruptly went slack.

Wen Ruohan tensed, immediately put on his guard.

He’d never seen such an expression on Lan Qiren’s face before.

It was…absolutely vacant, utterly and completely blank, as if the other man had abruptly lost his soul. But Wen Ruohan’s senses told him that there were no spells in the vicinity other than the ones he already knew, and nothing at all on the piece of paper, so it couldn’t be anything like that. Lan Qiren had not been cursed, possessed or bespelled, and there was no threat in their surroundings that Wen Ruohan could detect. Whatever effect the words on the paper were having on Lan Qiren, they had achieved their result purely through their content.

“Sect Leader Lan?” Wen Ruohan asked, still wary, then remembered that the title was no longer appropriate. “Lan Qiren?”

Lan Qiren did not respond.

He did, however, pick up the guqin, and throw it into the wall.

Wen Ruohan was on his feet in an instant. “Lan Qiren!”

It was as if Lan Qiren couldn’t hear him. He had started methodically lashing out at everything around him, everything up to and including himself – slamming his hands against everything, his own arms and legs and forehead included, knocking over tables and slapping holes into the walls and ripping up the paper windows, rocking back and forth, and when Wen Ruohan took a few steps forward to try to get him to stop, he started screaming.

Not…with words. Just screaming. Screaming of the sort that Wen Ruohan would have expected from his Fire Palace if at all, the sort of animal cry that came from somewhere inside a man’s soul when all veneer of civilization had abandoned him and he found himself utterly bereft.

What was on that paper?!

It was still clenched in Lan Qiren’s fist, being crushed. To get it, Wen Ruohan had get close – Lan Qiren lashed out at him as well, scratching and kicking and punching, but there was no finesse to his strikes, not even qi; he was completely mindless, acting entirely on instinct. While he was, despite that, still frightfully strong, Wen Ruohan with his great cultivation was stronger. He caught Lan Qiren’s hand and forcefully uncurled his fingers, breaking two in the process – Lan Qiren didn’t seem to notice – and yanked the piece of paper free, summoning a trapping array to force Lan Qiren down to the ground as he did.

Ignoring the other man’s despairing wails, he smoothed out the piece of paper.

Shufu we miss you lots, the childish scribble said. Please come back soon!

Chapter Text

Lan Qiren woke up embarrassed.

Well, to be strictly correct, he woke up with pain all over his body, particularly in his right hand, and a considerable amount of confusion, but at that point the memory of previous events returned to him, and then he was embarrassed.

He’d known a meltdown was coming, of course. Lan Qiren had always hated changes to his routine, even small ones, and now he’d been sent out to live far away from home, forever – it was inevitable that the truth of the matter would sink in eventually, at which point it was equally inevitable that he would be completely overwhelmed. If he’d been smarter, perhaps he would have tried to isolate himself in a dimly lit room with minimal objects that could be destroyed or used to hurt himself and tried to just get it over with, but after the horror of his seclusion, he hadn’t quite been able to bring himself to do it.

He probably should have forced himself to endure. It would have been better than melting down in such a spectacular fashion in front of Wen Ruohan.

Lan Qiren didn’t even want to think about the possible consequences of that.

Either way, it was too late to regret it now.

Besides, seeking to avert it probably wouldn’t have worked. Everything had all just piled up, becoming too much: his brother’s hatred, his seclusion, losing his nephews, his exile, his marriage, the danger of dealing with Wen Ruohan, even having sex for the first time – it had certainly been an interesting experience, and not an unenjoyable one, but it had been yet another change, yet another new thing, and he hated change.

And then, when he’d seen it – the note – his nephews –

It had been Lan Xichen’s handwriting, of course. It was unmistakable: still weak, his brush firmer than when he was younger but still lacking a little in confidence, yet still clearly signifying what a beautiful script he’d have when he finally grew into it. Lan Wangji had signed his name at the bottom as well, the characters still thick and blocky…it just reminded Lan Qiren that he was so young.

They were both so young.

They missed him, which he had known to his regret that they would. They loved him, which he had never once doubted.

They still…thought he was going to come back.

Lan Qiren swallowed down his grief once more. There was nothing else he could do.

He opened his eyes.

“Senior Lan, you’re awake!” A man in Wen sect clothing was peering down at him with the squinty-eyed evaluating look Lan Qiren generally associated with doctors. “Good, good. I’ll tell the Sect Leader, he’s been waiting.”

The man scurried off without introducing himself.

Lan Qiren blinked. Surely the man hadn’t really meant that Wen Ruohan was actually waiting, he reasoned, since that seemed just implausible. Perhaps he just meant that Wen Ruohan had asked to be informed of any updates once they were available –

A moment later, though, his expectations were overturned: to his surprise, Wen Ruohan himself swept through the door.

“What is your state?” he asked, frowning down at Lan Qiren, who struggled a little but managed to sit up. “Xianbo said that they wouldn’t be able to tell until you’d woken up.”

That must be the name of the presumed doctor from earlier.

“I am fine, although greatly ashamed,” Lan Qiren said, bringing his hands together to salute. His right hand really hurt – his fingers were splintered together, the two smallest ones having been broken and then reset. “I’ve made a fool of myself, Sect Leader Wen. I trust there wasn’t too much damage – ”

Wen Ruohan sat down on the bed next to him, which made Lan Qiren stop talking and stare.

Was Wen Ruohan…concerned about him? That seemed – out of character.

“Interesting,” Wen Ruohan said, leaning forward until their faces were relatively close. From this distance, it was impossible not to look into his eyes, which were very red. “Xianbo was right. I can’t detect any damage at all.”

Lan Qiren glanced down at his hand.

“Not that,” Wen Ruohan said, sounding amused. “I know what caused that.” He paused, then clarified: “I caused that. Do you remember?”

“I – have not suffered any memory loss, no,” Lan Qiren said with a wince. He almost wished he had, as it would be a tremendously good excuse to get out of this conversation. Sadly, do not tell lies – he had done this to himself, and now he had to face the music. “I assure you, I am primarily suffering from embarrassment.”

“Embarrassment. Is that all?” Wen Ruohan leaned back, looking thoughtful. “Qi deviations are rarely so kind.”

…ah. So this was all a misunderstanding.

Lan Qiren felt his face burning. “That was not a qi deviation.”

“No?”

Lan Qiren offered up his wrist mutely.

Wen Ruohan didn’t bother to politely decline or to call back his sect doctor to come and look at it, but instead took his arm and inspected his pulse himself. That confirmed Lan Qiren’s long-held suspicions that the leader of the Wen sect was just as much a master of his clan’s famed medical skills as he was a fearsome warrior and even more terrifying array master, even if no one currently alive had ever seen him use them. It would have been a victory of information gathering, if only there was anyone that still cared to hear what he had to say.

“You possess a remarkably bright golden core,” Wen Ruohan observed, though he didn’t remove his hand from Lan Qiren’s wrist. “An exceptionally solid foundation. And you’re right, there’s nothing wrong with the flow of your qi. What sort of disorder is it, then?”

“It is – not a disorder,” Lan Qiren said stiffly, wishing he could snatch his hand away. “I merely…dislike change. When faced with too much of it, I can, at times, grow – overwhelmed.”

Wen Ruohan had something of a skeptical expression, which Lan Qiren could understand. It had been a rather dramatic version of a meltdown this time. Lan Qiren had gone completely non-verbal and very nearly feral, wholly unable to control himself or keep himself from lashing out, the fit going on and on until Wen Ruohan had put an abrupt end to it – he could see why Wen Ruohan had thought it was a qi deviation. If Lan Qiren’s spiritual foundation were less solid, it very well could have been, and then he would have done himself very serious damage.

“You did the right thing in restraining me, under the circumstances,” Lan Qiren added after a moment. “Although knocking me out was unnecessary. It passes by itself, in time.”

There were things that could help – a closed door, low light, calming music (not silence) – but Lan Qiren could procure those for himself in the future, along with developing a new settled routine that would help soothe his strained nerves. He’d found a way to manage himself in the Cloud Recesses once he’d realized it was his duty to do so, in order not to reflect badly upon his sect, and it was equally his duty to do so now in the Nightless City.

Besides, if the changes hadn’t been so bad, or so extreme, he would not have reacted so badly, and he could not see how it would be possible for something as bad as all this to happen again.

Surely from this point, it could only get better. Right?

Wen Ruohan still did not seem convinced.

“You say this happens recurrently, but that it’s not a disorder, and not a problem, and that restraining you is an acceptable solution,” he said, voice dry as dust and deeply disapproving. “That sounds familiar. Have you been exchanging notes with Lao Nie?”

“It is not a qi deviation,” Lan Qiren stressed. “If it were, I would not leave it unattended. I am neither suicidal nor a Nie.”

The Qinghe Nie sect’s issue with their sect leaders dying from qi deviations was – well, Lan Qiren could not say it was an open secret, when in fact the Nie guarded it very closely, but it was certainly known to the leaders of the other Great Sects. Lao Nie had been more open with it than most, probably because of his sociable nature; he was friendly with everyone, winning over even Lan Qiren despite his reserve. Wen Ruohan, naturally, had even more reason to know about it, given his close relationship with Lao Nie, and as a result particular reason to resent it, too. In fact, Lan Qiren suspected that that was the real source of his apparent concern, rather than genuine worry for Lan Qiren himself.

Wen Ruohan snorted disdainfully, though he didn’t disagree with Lan Qiren’s assessment. “Well then,” he said. “If it’s not a qi deviation…”

Without so much as another word of warning, he made a seal with his free hand and pointed it at Lan Qiren’s forehead, passing along qi in such a torrent that Lan Qiren, who’d opened his mouth to protest, choked on his words and had to settle into meditation at once to circulate it properly, lest he really did end up in a qi deviation. Wen Ruohan’s spiritual energy was hot, which was unsurprising given his sect’s famously yang-oriented cultivation style, but it was not unpleasant, more like the heat of a warm summer afternoon, and it was ridiculously plentiful. If it had been anyone else, Lan Qiren would have worried that Wen Ruohan was emptying his reserves for him, but given who it was, he knew it was just a measure of how powerful the other man really was.

Contrary to some of the cultivation world’s wildest rumors, there was no taint of demonic cultivation in Wen Ruohan’s spiritual energy. Rather reckless, perhaps, but wholly orthodox. Another bit of useful information he wouldn’t be able to pass along to anyone, Lan Qiren supposed, and felt a distinct burst of irritation and bitterness.

He pulled away both his wrist and his head, and snapped the connection between them by force of will.

“Your assistance, while appreciated, is unnecessary,” he said firmly. “Also, next time, you can ask. I am no longer in distress.”

“Really,” Wen Ruohan drawled. “And here I thought your precious rules said do not tell lies?”

Lan Qiren gritted his teeth. Wen Ruohan was right about his ongoing distress, he supposed, and so he begrudgingly amended, “There is no longer a medical emergency, at any rate.”

“Perhaps we can agree to disagree,” Wen Ruohan said, though Lan Qiren wasn’t sure whether he was referring to the existence of a medical emergency or simply the need to ask for permission before shoving a gigantic amount of qi into another person. “It would not do for you to be injured so soon after our marriage.”

Lan Qiren looked at him suspiciously. “I wasn’t aware that that was a concern of yours.”

Wen Ruohan’s face suddenly stilled, smoothing out into his usual expression of bored indolence. Lan Qiren hadn’t even realized Wen Ruohan had been being more expressive than usual before he saw it disappear under a mask of disinterest. “Oh? Were you expecting something different from me?”

Lan Qiren had the distinct feeling he’d said something wrong, but he had no idea what, or how to make up for his error. He hated the feeling, common as it was.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” he said, unable to keep his irritation fully suppressed. “I expected nothing. I’m only speaking based on the existing evidence provided to me since my recent arrival.”

“That I broke your fingers?”

“I was thinking more about my back, actually,” Lan Qiren said with a faint sigh – he could feel it itching now, in fact, the scabs both forming and fading as his body processed the tremendous amount of spiritual energy and channeled it into helping heal his wounds. “Though I can hardly say that it was unexpected. It would be very foolish to be married to a sadist and not expect some degree of related injury.”

For some reason, that seemed to please Wen Ruohan, his expression relaxing back to what it had been earlier, though now more amused than disdainful.

“That is very true,” he said, starting to faintly smirk. “Perhaps I meant visible injuries.”

That actually made sense, so Lan Qiren nodded. “A reasonable limitation. Given the cultivation world’s predilection for gossip and exaggeration, it would be better to avoid giving them something to talk about. I would appreciate you keeping such injuries under my clothing in the future – my fingers excluded, of course.”

“Mm, I bet you would. You know, I find that I rather like your fingers.”

Lan Qiren stared at him blankly, wondering where in the world that statement had come from. “I’m…glad?”

“Among other parts of you,” Wen Ruohan continued, and now the smirk was becoming more pronounced. “You have a number of body parts that can be said to have merit. As you so ably demonstrated last night.”

Lan Qiren puzzled through that extremely bizarre statement, compared it with other strange comments he’d had explained to him in the past, then hazarded a wild guess: “Are you flirting with me?”

Wen Ruohan seemed to be choking down a laugh. “After a certain level of bluntness, it is no longer considered flirting,” he said dryly, “but rather a proposition.”

“You want to have sex now?”

“Why not? As you so ably pointed out, I am a sadist. Or is sex medically contraindicated after your little – bout of being overwhelmed?”

“I have no idea,” Lan Qiren said blankly. “It never came up before. Are you serious?”

“It seems only right that I have a chance to make you cry,” Wen Ruohan said. He was actually smiling now, which made it even harder to tell if he was being serious – he almost never smiled, except when he was doing something awful, and that smile was a different one than this. This was closer to how he looked when watching Lao Nie’s more ridiculous antics. “We should each get the opportunity to indulge in our own, hm, shall we call them ‘particular interests’? After all, didn’t I let you tie me up?”

“That is not a particular interest,” Lan Qiren protested. “Restraining someone who is having difficulty with their self-control is perfectly normal and ordinary. Stop making it sound strange.”

“Perfectly normal and ordinary?” Wen Ruohan’s shoulders had started shaking with suppressed amusement. “Given that yesterday was your first time, I can only assume that you are basing your assertion on books you have read…what type of spring books do you Lan have?”

“Normal ones!”

Wen Ruohan burst out laughing.

“I am being serious!” Lan Qiren had the feeling he was being ignored. “Stop laughing. I will not be having sex with you if you are laughing at me.”

“Does that mean you will if I stop?”

Lan Qiren examined himself. He was still embarrassed and a little emotionally exhausted, but with the infusion of spiritual energy, the physical pain was much reduced, his body healing at an unusually fast clip. Normally after a meltdown he would prefer to meditate quietly to restore his internal balance, rather than engage in a stressful activity, but on the other hand he had noticed a distinct sense of physical relief, even relaxation, after they’d finished their exertions last night – he’d fallen asleep almost immediately after the second time and slept deeply, without dreams or nightmares. Even in the morning, he had felt unusually energetic when getting up to do his usual morning routine, energized rather than tired out by the morning activity.

Moreover, a distraction would likely keep him from dwelling on the issue of his nephews.

Hmm. Lan Qiren might not have the emotional wherewithal to be particularly flexible or creative at the moment, but he could ask Wen Ruohan to assist with that. Provided that Wen Ruohan cooperated, it wasn’t necessarily the worst idea in the world…

“I retract the request,” Wen Ruohan said before Lan Qiren could reach a conclusion. “I imagine it’d be quite dull if you were distracted the entire time.”

Lan Qiren shook his head. “Give me some time to stabilize my qi first,” he decided. Even if he didn’t strictly need to meditate, it wouldn’t do him any harm. “Also, would you be willing to come up with a list of specific activities you would like me to do that I could use as instruction? Removing the guesswork would reduce the difficulty of the exercise.”

Wen Ruohan’s face was doing something strange. “I can certainly do that,” he said. “Do you enjoy following instructions?”

“…I am, as you so aptly pointed out, a Lan,” Lan Qiren said, mimicking Wen Ruohan’s earlier statement. “Naturally I enjoy following rules. I also enjoy seeing them followed by others, if that helps clarify anything.”

“Surprisingly enough, I think it does,” Wen Ruohan remarked. He looked thoughtful. “A question, then, rather than an immediate request: would you be willing to fuck somewhere other than the bedroom?”

“Not somewhere other people have to eat, no,” Lan Qiren said firmly, because that should be made absolutely clear. “Otherwise, I have no objection on grounds of principle. You ought to see what my Lan sect’s junior disciples get up to in the Cloud Recesses’ gardens.”

“The same thing that my Wen sect’s junior disciples get up to in the Nightless City’s, I expect. What about other locations? My office, for instance?”

“That seems somewhat unsanitary, but if you do not have any concerns about disturbing your paperwork, I see no reason why not.”

“Mm. My Fire Palace?”

Lan Qiren felt a moment of horror. “After it was thoroughly cleansed, I should hope? There were dried bloodstains there. Not to mention who knows how much resentful energy – ”

“The resentment is expunged on a regular basis,” Wen Ruohan said. “We’re still cultivators here, you know. But I suspect I take your point.”

Presumably he really did, too, because the list of instructions he produced later that afternoon was both perfectly reasonable and sufficiently specific that Lan Qiren could relax and simply devote himself to carrying them out, though he did have to scold Wen Ruohan once or twice when he sought to deviate from his own list – the other man had apparently underestimated his own enthusiasm, or possibly Lan Qiren’s arm strength.

“I really do not understand why you are acting so surprised,” he said afterwards. “I gave you an estimate of how long I could continue to hold you up provided a wall was involved.”

“I’d assumed you were exaggerating,” Wen Ruohan said. He looked cheerful despite the earlier scolding Lan Qiren had subjected him to. Possibly because of? He seemed to be oddly amenable to scolding as long as it took place during their marital relations…Lan Qiren had heard of stranger things in his time, he supposed. “Most people do, but not you, it seems. Tell me, do you have anything you’ve been wanting to try out?”

“Not especially, no. Sex was never a great preoccupation of mine.” It occurred to Lan Qiren that that statement might come across as tactless or even rude, given what they’d just finished doing. “Not that it has not been enjoyable so far.”

Wen Ruohan rolled his eyes. It was a gesture Lan Qiren had found, upon closer acquaintance, that he favored, though unlike many of Wen Ruohan’s other gestures, he didn’t make much of a production out of it; it was a mere flicker of the eyes, easy to miss if you weren’t observant.

Lan Qiren wondered if he should try to explain.

He didn’t get a chance. Wen Ruohan chose not to respond directly, and instead said, rather off-handedly, “Some years ago I was gifted with a guqin made of ironwood from the far south. It is said to have a unique tone, though I’ve never had a chance to hear it. You said you would play music for me – come to my office and keep me company.”

Lan Qiren hadn’t been looking forward to returning to his ravaged courtyard, so he happily assented, even though he suspected Wen Ruohan just wanted him close by to more efficiently ask him to repeat the exercise later. He had mentioned his office earlier, after all…

It turned out that Lan Qiren was right about his suspicions, and not just for that afternoon, either.

In fact, the next few days settled into a rather peculiar sort of cadence, in which Lan Qiren successfully avoided his courtyard completely by spending his nights in Wen Ruohan’s bed and his days in his office. He did little other than keep him company, often either playing music or reading the myriad of fascinating texts that Wen Ruohan kept there, punctuated by Wen Ruohan’s occasional requests to pass time together in a more active manner.

For someone like Lan Qiren, falling into a routine was easy enough – what was surprising was the nature of the routine. When left to his own devices, Lan Qiren was inclined to work too hard, regularly growing restless when he did not feel as though he had enough to do, but he had always respected the implicit rules of other sects when he visited them. The Wen sect, following the example of their sect leader, was rather inclined towards indolence, rising late and retiring late and taking their days at their leisure, as if they were already masters of the world. When Lan Qiren had been sect leader, this tendency had driven him up the wall, with matters that in the Lan sect would have been resolved with a solid afternoon’s worth of hard work tending to instead get stretched out over three days of sporadic effort, but he’d forced himself to adapt to their habits whenever he was visiting the Nightless City, filling the spare hours by picking up leisure activities that he normally lacked the time for.

He now had reason to be grateful to his past self for that. It felt positively normal to be wasting time in the Nightless City, in a way it very much had not been back at the Cloud Recesses.

And – keeping busy helped him not think.

The rules mandated being strict on oneself, but Lan Qiren knew himself to need the reprieve, however temporary. The rules also clearly stated Do not be unreasonable. The strain he had suffered ever since He Kexin’s death was simply too much – the loss of everything he had known, even contact with his beloved nephews, was so enormous that he could barely even think of it, much less face it. Trying to tackle it now, before he was ready, would cause him tremendous harm, and the rules…Lan Qiren could not believe the rules would require it of him.

Perhaps that made Lan Qiren a coward, violating the rules on having courage.

Avoiding confrontation as he was could certainly be interpreted as a sign of weakness, indicating a lack of resoluteness that was unbecoming in a cultivator, though notably even Wen Ruohan, who was normally the first to criticize someone, did not say a word about it. Still, Lan Qiren knew what he was doing. He refused to return to his courtyard to face the mess he had made, even though the servants would have undoubtedly tidied it up already, and the reason was that if he did, he would need to confront the fact that somewhere in his courtyard was that crumpled and torn piece of paper, which his nephews had written to him with love.

Eventually, he would need to think about what that meant.

Eventually, Lan Qiren would need to confront all over again his grief at having had his role in his nephew’s lives taken away from him, the demotion from virtual father to uncle having hurt far worse than his demotion from sect leadership. He would need to think of the way that the message had confirmed his worst fears, because he knew Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji, both incredibly stubborn in their own ways. Lan Qiren knew that if they missed him – and he had so hated to have to hope that they didn’t – then they would misbehave, and if they misbehaved, they would be punished.

He could only hope that his brother did not extend his dislike of Lan Qiren to those he had taught.

He hoped his brother did not punish his nephews simply for loving the man who had raised them, but if he let himself linger on it too long, he couldn’t stop imagining it: Wangji submitting a request every morning to see Lan Qiren, or insistently kneeling outside his door regardless of the weather as he had done with his mother, refusing to stop no matter how many refusals he received or how long he was kneeling, or Xichen, less blunt but no less determined, canvassing the Cloud Recesses for assistance, asking question after question that no one would answer. And then, eventually, his brother would find out. He would know he had been defied, and on Lan Qiren’s behalf, and then…

Lan Qiren cut off that line of thinking.

Eventually, he promised himself. But not now.

For now, he contented himself with simple things.

He practiced his swordsmanship in the mornings, before Wen Ruohan willed himself out of bed – the other man actually didn’t sleep that much, but he was amazingly slothful, having once stated to Lan Qiren that after a hundred years he had had sufficient fill of sunrises to last an eternity – and meditated at the height of the afternoon, the best time for it. He spent time cultivating both his mind and body diligently, making up for all the times he’d had no choice but to skip it in favor of work. On occasion, he engaged in spirited conversations with Wen Ruohan that were always at least halfway filled with hidden daggers, which at least made them interesting. Whenever the mood struck him, he picked out new texts to entertain himself with from the shelves of Wen Ruohan’s office and read them for as long as he cared to, without needing to pull himself away to deal with some unexpected emergency. He played music to his heart’s content, with an audience that was, if not actively appreciative, then at least willing.

And there was the sex, of course.

He and Wen Ruohan were certainly having a great deal more of it than Lan Qiren had anticipated when he’d written down the rule, but that was fine. Lan Qiren still didn’t feel any intrinsic urge to have sex, and certainly not at the frequency Wen Ruohan clearly did, but he had always been diligent in fulfilling his duties, never objecting or complaining, and it wasn’t as if this were a particularly unpleasant one. On the contrary, after three months of strict seclusion preceded by years of relative isolation from all but his nephews, Lan Qiren found that he had a certain degree of skin-hunger, which the intimacy of sex seemed to satisfy. When he’d expressed a mild concern about how much of Wen Ruohan’s time he was taking up, Wen Ruohan had reminded him that his own father had disappeared for two solid months following his marriage, undoubtedly doing little else.

It had probably been a statement meant to disturb him, but instead it had given Lan Qiren considerable comfort. Following tradition always did.

“Most people consider such constancy a show of favor,” Wen Ruohan remarked, leaning his face on his hand as he watched Lan Qiren tune the new guqin he’d presented him with that morning – it was a lovely delicate little thing, made of rosewood and clearly crafted by the Lan sect, though the cut suggested it was from at least the time of Lan Qiren’s grandfather, if not further back. It would be an excellent counterpoint to try against the deeper, more aggressive sound of the ironwood one. “Are you grateful?”

“I think you may have that backwards. Is it not me that is the one doing all the work..? And to your specifications, no less…” Lan Qiren tried one of the strings. It wasn’t quite right yet. “Why do you even have this? Though you do not cultivate with music, you at least appreciate it; surely you should know better. To let such a good instrument get so far out of tune is an appalling waste.”

He did not allow himself to think of his old one. Neither the one he’d brought with him and left back in his abandoned courtyard, nor the one he had used for so many years, broken and left behind in the Cloud Recesses.

They weren’t relevant right now.

“It was in the treasury, so I assume I got it as a gift at some point.” Wen Ruohan shrugged, indifferent. “Or possibly it was in the treasure room of some sect I conquered. Who knows?”

“You should know. Provenance is important. What if it was some sort of magical treasure?”

“Is it?”

“Well, no…”

“Probably for the best.” Wen Ruohan smirked. “If either of those instruments had the sentience of a magical treasure, I’m certain that they would be screaming for mercy after the fortieth iteration of Cleansing in a row.”

Lan Qiren glared at him. “You said you would not be disturbed if I repeated myself.”

“And I’m not. Who would have realized how calming it could be to hear the same song over and over again with only minimal variations for an entire afternoon…? It puts me into a surprisingly good mood.”

Lan Qiren snorted. He was pretty sure Wen Ruohan’s good mood had less to do with Lan Qiren’s playing than it did his diligent efforts to satisfy the other man’s seemingly insatiable libido, though listening to spirit-calming songs all day certainly wasn’t doing him any harm.

“Such a good mood, in fact, that I am inclined to rethink the matter with the Yueyang Chang sect that you were making faces about yesterday…”

Lan Qiren was well aware that he was not naturally talented at politics. He’d only escaped being widely judged too straightforward on account of being very reserved, but amongst the leaders of the Great Sects, whose company he had not been able to avoid, he had a reputation for being notoriously tactless and even occasionally oblivious, regularly stepping into certain subjects he shouldn’t and missing the underlying implications in others, no matter how obvious everyone else thought they were being. His success as a sect leader had come primarily by virtue of what Lan Qiren considered to be brute force: reviewing everything he could and memorizing as much of it as he could stand, then using his expansive knowledge base to reason out what was going on around him, even as the exact social nuances passed him by.

It had always been hard work that had seen him through – hard work, observation, deduction, and perhaps most importantly pattern recognition.

Applying that pattern recognition now, for instance, led him to observe that this was not the first time in the past few days that Wen Ruohan had brought up some aspect of inter-sect politics while speaking with Lan Qiren. He had composed letters of significance with Lan Qiren sitting just across the desk, able to clearly see what he was writing. He had voluntarily allowed his subordinates to report to him without sending Lan Qiren out of the room, though Lan Qiren was well aware that there were others who came by only when he was absent.

At first, Lan Qiren had thought that this was merely a matter of convenience. After all, Wen Ruohan was quite politely allowing Lan Qiren to monopolize quite so much of his time and personal space, never complaining about his presence, and where else was he supposed to do his work if not in his office? Lan Qiren had responded with what he thought was equal politeness in trying not to listen, see, or perceive anything that was going on. But it seemed more and more than he might be wrong: the conversations were quite loud, without even the slightest attempts at discretion, and then Wen Ruohan would sometimes bring up the matter again a little later when speaking to Lan Qiren, casually dropping in references to things that had been said as if he expected Lan Qiren to know what he was talking about.

The matter with the Yueyang Chang sect was an excellent example of that. It had come up in the course of the reports from one of Wen Ruohan’s trusted lieutenants, and again in the official correspondence, which Wen Ruohan had read at least in part out loud. The Yueyang Chang sect had gotten into a nasty little fight with two of their neighboring sects and immediately sought to employ a rather nasty little method of winning, namely reaching out to Wen Ruohan to offer him benefits and the opportunity to take over their rivals. It was the sort of offer that Wen Ruohan had historically been quite interested in, and one which Lan Qiren had privately (or so he’d thought) disapproved of.

Though…he supposed that now that he was part of the Wen sect, not the Lan sect, he really ought to be less squeamish on matters of conquest. Or at least, if he was going to be squeamish, he ought not do it where Wen Ruohan could catch him at it!

Not that Wen Ruohan seemed upset about it. On the contrary…

“Are you seeking my opinion on what you plan to do?” Lan Qiren asked.

Wen Ruohan arched his eyebrows. “Am I?”

I see, he is choosing to be difficult about this, Lan Qiren thought to himself with an exasperated sigh. Why do people never just say openly what they want?

He put the guqin aside and turned to look at Wen Ruohan directly, wondering what the best way to phrase what he wanted to say.

“If you ask me for my opinion,” he said slowly, trying to organize his thoughts, “then I will answer.”

Wen Ruohan inclined his head slightly to the side, as if encouraging Lan Qiren to continue.

“We were colleagues for ten years, you and I, as fellow leaders of two of the five Great Sects,” Lan Qiren said. “You are well aware of both my strengths and weaknesses as a sect leader, and during my time in that position, I, though lacking your experience, grew to be aware of yours. If I were still sect leader, anything I said to you would necessarily be suspect, as I would have to consider first and foremost the interests of my own sect, not yours. My words might be genuine or false, and in either case, they might be designed to deceive you and trick you into behaving in a manner that accrued to the benefit of my sect. The same, of course, would be equally true of everything you might say to me.”

Wen Ruohan nodded.

“But – I am not sect leader, acting or otherwise. We are married. More than that, I am married into your family. Absent a divorce, which you are unlikely to ever grant me, I will live here for the rest of my life. My children, should I ever sire any, will bear your surname, not mine. Our interests…I cannot say that they are wholly aligned, for my Lan sect will eventually belong to my nephews, and I will not turn against them. But…”

“But?” Wen Ruohan asked, and now he was leaning forward, his hand dropping down to his desk, his red eyes intent.

“As long as the interests of the Lan sect are not at issue, you may ask me anything you wish,” Lan Qiren concluded. “And I will answer in good faith, using my best efforts to think of the question in my capacity as your spouse, rather than as an outsider.”

Wen Ruohan let out a long breath, as if he’d been holding it in, and leaned back once more. “Interesting,” he said. “Very interesting.”

Now it was Lan Qiren’s turn to arch his eyebrows. “Is it? You cannot genuinely be so surprised. You had me do my bows myself for that very reason, did you not?”

“I did, I did,” Wen Ruohan said. “I am surprised only in how unexpectedly ruthless you are, cutting off all paths you might have for retreat. Your Lan sect will never forgive you if they think you are betraying them by aiding me.”

“How can I betray them? It was my sect that married me to you, and they know what that means. How could they expect me not to cleave to your side, as any married couple would…? That would be absurd. Everyone knows that a child married out is like spilled water.”

Wen Ruohan hummed thoughtfully, and Lan Qiren mentally shook his head – it seemed that he still hadn’t convinced him, though in truth that was not unexpected.

After all, Wen Ruohan was notoriously paranoid. The surprise was more in the fact that he was bothering to extend even as much trust as he was, letting him listen in and testing him constantly to see if he would live up to that trust. If anything, Lan Qiren would have been less surprised if Wen Ruohan had simply ordered him to be confined to his courtyard, with spies to watch him at every moment he wasn’t there (and indeed such orders might have been made, though of course his being in Wen Ruohan’s quarters most of the time had likely rendered them unnecessary).

“What is your objection to the Yueyang Chang sect’s request, then?” Wen Ruohan asked, and Lan Qiren thought the question might be something like a flag of truce, a gift in the same way as the guqins Wen Ruohan was always presenting him with. “Your expression suggested not only disapproval but distaste, which suggests to me that morality of the situation is not your only concern.”

“You are correct about that,” Lan Qiren admitted. “Though the Yueyang Chang sect’s morality in this instance is of course highly questionable. No, what I dislike is how…orchestrated it is.”

“Oh?”

“Well, on the surface, it appears as though they initiated a minor dispute which then grew out of control, leaving them with no choice but to turn to you for aid. But the real reason the fight escalated to such a degree was the rising cost of materials that all three sects use as their financial basis. Cultivation is difficult to accomplish without resources, and the increased cost means that there is only room in that area for at most two sects, or ideally only one.”

“Yes, which is why the other two allied and Yueyang Chang, left alone, reached out to me. You think that the fight was deliberately escalated so that they would have a reason to call me in? Why would they support a ploy that involves their own costs going up? That harms them.”

“Only in the short term. Their rivals are a longer-term problem – their younger generation are of far better quality than Yueyang Chang’s. If they do not get rid of them, then in the next generation, there may not be a Yueyang Chang clan left to support.” Lan Qiren scowled. “Which of course adds to the immorality of their actions, in my opinion. If your junior generation is weak, it is your duty to help them improve themselves, not to eliminate obstacles on their behalf.”

“That’s a matter for debate – though it does not surprise me to find that you, a teacher, have such a view – and one we can pick back up to examine at greater length at a later time,” Wen Ruohan remarked. “For the moment, what’s your theory for how they accomplished raising the prices?”

Lan Qiren shrugged, thinking to himself that that part was obvious enough, but that he was nevertheless happy to explain his thinking if that was what Wen Ruohan required. “Twelve years ago, the Yueyang Chang sect leader married his third daughter to Yingchuan Wang’s second young master, who through the death of his older brother four years ago is now their heir. Yingchuan Wang controls the main road that leads to the Yueyang Chang sect. If they imposed a toll, the cost of the materials would naturally rise as the merchants incorporated the toll into the cost of their goods.”

“Twelve years ago…” Wen Ruohan picked through the papers on his desk, presumably hunting for a genealogical record. “Huh! You’re right, they did marry, so it’s a plausible theory. Still, that’s supposition at best. Do you have a suggestion on how to verify your theory?”

“Sect Leader Wang has a great fondness for concubines, and his concubines tend to give him daughters. He has a surfeit of women in his household,” Lan Qiren said. “Traditionally, they’ve had to buy the cheaper grades of cloth for their household in order to have enough to clothe them all. If Yingchuan Wang has recently imposed a toll…”

“Then his main wife and his current favorite will probably have new clothing.” Wen Ruohan tapped his fingernail on his desk thoughtfully, absently sketching out what looked like an array foundation, though he didn’t put any power into it. “Interesting, interesting. Well. Let us say your theory is correct. What would be your recommendation? Even if the whole thing is a scheme orchestrated by the Yueyang Chang sect, taking over those two sects is still to my benefit.”

You did say that you ought to be less squeamish, Lan Qiren reminded himself, swallowing down his instinctive answer of “rewarding the wicked leads only to bad ends.” The Wen sect favors conquest. You are part of the Wen sect now. Treat your wife’s family as your own – remember your rule.

He took a few moments to think over his answer, trying to put himself in a different mentality than the one he normally used.

“Yueyang Chang put themselves in a tough position in order to reach out to you while having the moral high ground, both by inciting two sects to fight against them and by putting Yingchang Wang on dubious ground, since a toll of that sort can only be maintained with support from their neighbors,” he finally said, reaching up to stroke his beard. “If you agree to their request, you can absorb their two rivals, but under the rules of the cultivation world, chivalry demands that you must leave Yueyang Chang itself alone. To do otherwise would be to cause other sects to refuse to turn to you in the future, even under circumstances of desperation.”

“Which naturally I will not do.”

“Naturally. On the other hand, if you refuse Yueyang Chang’s request, they will seek the aid of another sect, or else get Yingchuan Wang to lift the toll to resolve the issue. But...if you do nothing and string them along, Yueyang Chang will have no choice but to continue fighting, lest it become obvious what their scheme was; it would dishonor them to do any less. And then, in another month or two after all the three sects have weakened each other through their infighting, you can inform the other two sects of what the Yueyang Chang sect did and offer them the opportunity to join you as subsidiary sects in exchange for your aid in crushing both Yueyang Chang and Yingchuan Wang.”

“Thereby taking all four of them into my control, rather than just two. Good, good. Very good!” Wen Ruohan’s eyes were bright in a way that was starting to be familiar, and Lan Qiren resigned himself to the conversation making an imminent turn in the direction of sex. Again. Probably over Wen Ruohan’s desk, given that that was the way he liked it whenever he’d advanced some clever ploy. Again. “I see that having you by my side at the next discussion conference will be an asset in more than just getting people talking.”

“Getting them talking? About what? Our marriage?” Lan Qiren frowned. “Surely they are already – ”

He paused. He had assumed that the proxy marriage had been done for privacy and swiftness, to ensure that no one would interfere or interrupt, and Wen Ruohan hadn’t disagreed with his guess when he had laid it out for him. But what Wen Ruohan was saying now, that could only be true if…

“Are you telling me that no one yet knows that we’re married?!” he shouted, leaping up to his feet. “What is wrong with you and my brother both?!”

Chapter Text

“I still can scarcely bring myself to believe that you have concealed our marriage from the world,” Lan Qiren grumbled, going through his usual evening routine to prepare for bed.

Wen Ruohan sniggered.

“Is that what’s keeping you awake at night?” he asked, pulling out a piece of correspondence from the middle of the pile on his desk without looking at it.

His subordinates in charge of sect matters knew better than to send him anything less than critical, on pain of literal torture – unfortunately, matters pertaining to the running of his own sect or anything relating to the other Great Sects all fell in the category of critical, which meant there was always something to do. Wen Ruohan knew he’d been getting more and more unstable over time, but he wasn’t yet insane enough to totally abandon the business of running his sect to a subordinate. He wasn’t sure even insanity would be enough to make him do that.

Also, he’d noticed that doing his paperwork in anything other than the order it was in drove Lan Qiren out of his mind with annoyance that the other man tried very hard not to show.

Sure enough, there was a brief pause as Lan Qiren wrestled down his irritation at the sheer disorderliness of it all.

(It involved him very obviously reminding himself that it was against the rules to strangle his spouse, with relevant citations. Wen Ruohan enjoyed every moment.)

“I am not being kept awake,” he said testily, as if he wasn’t going to hit the end of xu shi and fall asleep like a stone, sure as clockwork. “It is merely – ”

“That it is completely unbelievable, yes, you’ve already mentioned that several times. Still, I’m a little offended that that was what you found most memorable about this evening…”

Personally, Wen Ruohan was more inclined to give the honor to the absolutely delicious fucking he’d managed to sweet-talk Lan Qiren into, right over his desk the way he liked it. He’d had him give it to him slow and relentless, dragging it out over the course of what felt like a full shichen, and, even better, he’d managed to convince Lan Qiren to continue talking over the situation with the Yueyang Chang clan almost the entire time. There was something particularly enticing about hearing Lan Qiren use the same dull monotone he used to drone on and on about his sect rules to analyze the most efficient means by which Wen Ruohan could and imminently was going to conquer four – four – cultivation sects in a single strike, all while pounding away at him without even the slightest hitch of breath or unsteadiness…

Wen Ruohan would have to see if he could get him to do it again in the morning.

“It would be one thing if I believed you had an actual political purpose behind your actions,” Lan Qiren said, ignoring him in favor of being stuck on a much less interesting part of the evening. He sounded aggrieved. “My brother, for instance, I can understand his motivations in keeping it quiet. He is undoubtedly gathering the resources for the war against Quanjiao Liu, for which he will need to convince the sect elders and any relevant allied sects that he may wish to get involved, and that will be difficult enough without also publicly airing a family issue. Being overlooked for as long as possible can only aid him. But you…you are just keeping it quiet for now so that people will talk about you.”

“And so I can see their faces when they find out,” Wen Ruohan corrected. “That part is key.”

Lan Qiren was far too well-mannered to throw his hands up in frustration, but it was close. In retrospect, Wen Ruohan was amazed that the other man hadn’t thrown something at his head yet. There had been one time when they were rival sect leaders where Wen Ruohan had managed to drive him to it, relatively early on, and it had been so unexpected that no one had believed it had actually happened despite witnessing it with their own eyes. Even Wen Ruohan, normally the first to take offense at a perceived slight, had simply let the whole thing pass by without comment, too taken aback to be angry, and Lan Qiren had never done it again.

Really, he should have known all the way back then that Lan Qiren wasn’t nearly as boring as he appeared on the surface.

“Tell me,” he added, since Lan Qiren was starting to visibly sulk again, “is it my motivation you can’t believe, or the fact that I’ve succeeded in keeping it quiet?”

Lan Qiren paused and thought about it, and then, very begrudgingly, admitted, “The latter.”

Wen Ruohan had thought so.

“The people that drove you here were my subordinates, sworn to silence on pain of being dismissed and sent to the Fire Palace. I’ve found that to be much more effective than imposing a rule against gossip.” Wen Ruohan smirked faintly at the now extremely aggravated but not necessarily disagreeing look on Lan Qiren’s face. “I’ve similarly instructed – ”

“Threatened.”

“ – instructed the servants assigned to attend to you to recall their discretion, and all of them have admirably kept their mouths shut. I admit it might have been a little more difficult to keep it hidden if you’d remained in your own courtyard…”

Or if Lan Qiren hadn’t had that delightful misunderstanding of his own position, which was only getting funnier and funnier as time went on.

A genuine first wife, particularly a new one marrying in later, would have made a point of making herself known to her new household upon her arrival – including, for instance, by summoning all the household servants for review in order to establish her power. When Lan Qiren had first arrived, Wen Ruohan had assumed he’d do the same, though he hadn’t quite decided whether it would be for purposes of espionage or simply for the sake of propriety, going through the motions. Lan Qiren had even asked him something or another about the servants, and he’d thought that was what he had been referring to, though it turned out he’d meant something completely different. In fact, Lan Qiren had instead merely treated himself like a somewhat more honored version of the guest he’d been as acting sect leader and left all matters of the household in the hands of his “wife”…

Wen Ruohan still couldn’t think about it without wanting to laugh.

He was looking forward to enlightening Lan Qiren about his mistake at some point, but he hadn’t figured out how to do so in a way that would maximize both his enjoyment and Lan Qiren’s mortification. At the moment, it was far more fun simply to imagine increasingly outlandish scenarios by which it could happen. Some of them involved women’s dresses…

“Of course me staying here is part of your plan,” Lan Qiren huffed, though very notably he didn’t get up to leave. “And here I was thinking that you had decided to breach propriety and custom by living together simply in order to be more efficient.”

“I breach propriety and custom simply for the pleasure of doing so,” Wen Ruohan said loftily. “But naturally everything I do serves more than one purpose – and having you easily available in the mornings is certainly an immensely pleasurable benefit. In fact, I forbid you to move back until I’m done with you.”

Lan Qiren rolled his eyes.

“Do you have a plan for how you intend to announce it?” he asked, already resigning himself to his fate. “Eventually word will get out, regardless of your threats.”

“I could have you locked up in a place known only by myself and my most trusted subordinates,” Wen Ruohan mused, just to see if Lan Qiren would jump or shudder at the idea of even more involuntary confinement – he didn’t, but he did glare. “That would keep it quiet for quite a long time.”

“I see your spies have told you about the time I spent in seclusion,” Lan Qiren said acidly. “You can stop making jokes at any time, Sect Leader Wen. You are not especially good at them.”

Wen Ruohan put down the letter – a fairly useless one from a relatively important subsidiary sect complaining about some monster or another that they didn’t feel capable of handling, just barely important enough to require the sect leader’s attention – and gave Lan Qiren a thoughtful look.

“What makes you think I’m joking?” he asked, arching his eyebrows. He had been, of course, but Lan Qiren was familiar with his sadism and his Fire Palace. He knew perfectly well that it wasn’t beyond Wen Ruohan to order such a thing without regret. “Do you think I wouldn’t do such a thing to a member of my family?”

He would, of course. There was very little he wouldn’t do to achieve his goals.

“Do not be absurd,” Lan Qiren said impatiently, as if he thought Wen Ruohan was playing coy. “You are cruel, not careless. If you wanted to keep my presence here silent by force, you would have implemented the idea as soon as I arrived, not waited until now.”

Hmm. That was a good point.

“Maybe I wanted to maximize your suffering by letting you enjoy some freedom first. How about that?”

That just got him a full-on scoff.

Wen Ruohan had to fight down his amusement again. Lan Qiren was just as bad at making jokes as he claimed Wen Ruohan to be, but he was quite often inadvertently hilarious.

“Somehow I’m getting the feeling that you’re not enjoying my Nightless City to its fullest capacity,” he drawled. “Have you considered – ”

“If your next suggestion is that you kept me out of a prison cell in order to take advantage of me sexually, I will throw something at you.”

Wen Ruohan choked down an actual laugh this time.

“Now, if it is not too great a strain, Sect Leader Wen, would you answer the question?”

“All right, all right,” Wen Ruohan said, conceding the point, too amused to keep quibbling. “I intend for it to be announced at the next discussion conference, the one being hosted by Yunmeng Jiang.”

Lan Qiren frowned and stroked his beard thoughtfully. “I doubt that Jiang Fengmian will mind being overshadowed. Still, that is a month and a half away. There will be leaks.”

“Leaks, yes, but no confirmation,” Wen Ruohan agreed. “The fact that you were previously in seclusion in the Lan sect is quite useful here – people will doubt any news they hear and seek to confirm it through your sect first, only to fail to find anything there. Even with an extraordinarily effective spy network, there’s no way they’ll be able to know for certain what happened before the discussion conference…and most sects don’t have spy networks like mine. Not even other Great Sects.”

He arched his eyebrows pointedly at Lan Qiren.

“Not all of us are like you,” Lan Qiren said. “My Lan sect does not need them.”

“And yet you always seem to know what’s going on…”

“I understand that the concept may be difficult to understand for so great a personage as yourself, but one of the reasons other sects enter into alliances with each other is to help each other understand what is going on,” Lan Qiren said dryly. “I regularly receive letters from my colleagues with updates – well, I used to receive – ”

“Same thing, different words,” Wen Ruohan said dismissively before Lan Qiren could get upset over his demotion. He had been getting increasingly antsy for lack of real work to do, these past few days; it was clear enough that the appeal of a vacation was already wearing off. Wen Ruohan was planning on holding out to see him squirm a little longer before turning over some of the less critical sect work to him.

(Obviously he wasn’t going to let one of the most talented sect leaders in the cultivation world sit around not doing anything when he could be applying those talents to the betterment of the Wen sect. He wasn’t stupid – and unlike certain other sect leaders, he wasn’t wasteful, either.)

“Having friends is hardly the same thing as having spies. Do you make the same complaints about the Nie sect?”

“No,” Wen Ruohan said, waiting for a half a beat before adding, “because the Nie sect does use spies.”

Not in every generation, of course, and not very often, but Lao Nie certainly wasn’t averse to the practice on moral grounds the way Lan Qiren clearly was. Or perhaps the Nie sect was just better at being realistic.

Lan Qiren rolled his eyes again. He’d started up his evening round of physical activity, which tended to include less sword forms and more alternative forms of exercise – Wen Ruohan’s favorite so far had involved Lan Qiren spending the majority of the evening in a handstand, occasionally shifting over into a one-armed handstand so he could write down rules that he felt he hadn’t properly lived up to. Today wasn’t anything nearly so exciting, just stretches to improve flexibility, though there was a certain appeal in that as well.

“I assume you will want me to make an appearance at the conference?” Lan Qiren asked, as if there was any chance Wen Ruohan wouldn’t. He wasn’t Qingheng-jun, to throw away a valuable asset – Lan Qiren had been able to hold his own politically at the discussion conferences before, and nothing about marriage changed his capabilities. His insights would undoubtedly be valuable, and even more valuable would be the information he’d be able to glean from his connections with sects that would never speak directly with Wen Ruohan. “I will tell you now that I will not sign up to do anything absurd in order to indulge in your penchant for dramatics.”

Wen Ruohan snorted – as if the Lan sect weren’t equally inclined towards dramatic behavior, as long as their hearts were involved! – and looked away from the appealing sight and back at his desk. He glanced over the most recent correspondence he’d picked out, finding upon second glance that it was a letter from one of his subsidiary sects to the south, complaining of an unusual increase in vicious yao; it was the sort of thing he would usually forward on to the Nie sect as an invitation and implicit proposition for their sect leader. He put it aside for the moment and took the next one, a report from one of his spies in the Jin sect about the current health of their finances (still disgustingly healthy despite Jin Guangshan’s increasing mismanagement).

“Nothing absurd, no,” he said, ignoring the way that Lan Qiren immediately grumbled something about the two of them having different definitions of absurd. “You’ll be expected to wear something in my sect’s colors, of course. I suspect that’ll be shocking enough.”

He’d already commissioned something appropriate. Lan Qiren would undoubtedly hate it.

Lan Qiren already looked resigned.

“Additionally,” Wen Ruohan continued, very casually, “I was thinking that we could use the opportunity to revive those summer classes you were always teaching.”

Silence.

Wen Ruohan carefully didn’t look up from the report in his hands, though he wasn’t actually paying it the slightest bit of attention. Getting Lan Qiren to agree to this idea was far more important.

“My…classes?” Lan Qiren sounded – confused. Good, that was a better first reaction than an outright rejection. “What about them?”

“You enjoyed teaching them, didn’t you? I see no reason why you can’t continue.” Wen Ruohan made a show of putting down the report and shrugging. “You’ll have to hold them here, of course, but I can’t see how that would be all too different from what you were doing already. Your students were mostly guest disciples, weren’t they…?”

He allowed himself to look at Lan Qiren, who’d stopped his exercises and was now frowning at him.

“You are up to something once again,” he said flatly. “What is it?”

Wen Ruohan spread his hands. “Is it so difficult to believe that I would want to do something nice for you?”

“Yes.”

Wen Ruohan was surprised into a bark of amusement. Lan Qiren wasn’t out to win his heart through flattery the way his wives had tried to do, that was for sure…but then again, unlike his wives, Lan Qiren had been Wen Ruohan’s political opponent for ten years. He knew him well enough to be skeptical. “Not even as a wedding gift?”

“Even less likely. Try again.”

“We’re going to have to live together for the rest of our lives,” Wen Ruohan said. “It would make my life miserable if you were miserable, which makes it in my own self-interest to make sure you have things to do that you enjoy. Your other hobbies seem to be cultivation with the sword, cultivation with music, and cultivation through meditation and philosophy, absolutely none of which I can do anything about.”

“That’s not true. It’s said that you’re a fine swordsman yourself, is it not? We could spar.”

…that was an excellent idea and now that Lan Qiren had proposed it, Wen Ruohan couldn’t wait to try it out. He hadn’t actually bothered using his sword against anyone in quite a while – his preference in fighting had always been arrays, but he would be embarrassed to call himself an orthodox cultivator if he didn’t know how to use a sword. The last time he’d done so would have had to have been one of his early clashes with Lao Nie, before he’d allowed himself to be convinced to pit his arrays against the other man’s saber…though that actually gave rise to some interesting thoughts itself. Lan Qiren was primarily a musician, not a swordsman; he had to know how to fight offensively with music. It had been even longer since Wen Ruohan had tested himself against a musical cultivator than since he’d picked up a sword…

He dragged his mind back to the topic of discussion. Fighting was only fighting, getting Lan Qiren to buy into his plan to win the hearts and minds of the junior generation of the cultivation world was important.

Power would always be the most important thing to Wen Ruohan.

“We can certainly do that,” he said. “But why not revive your classes as well? Past half-month aside, we’re hardly going to keep each other company forever. It would be good for you to have something productive to do.”

“I am certain you could find something else for me to do if you so wanted,” Lan Qiren said, obviously not convinced. “Were you planning on waiting until I grew so bored that I would be willing to resort to begging before assigning me some duties here?”

No, but now he was sorely tempted. Damn Lan Qiren for being smart.

“Do you not want to teach your classes, then?” Wen Ruohan asked. “You make it sound as though I’m forcing you – ”

“I enjoy my classes, and would be very happy under most circumstances to resume them,” Lan Qiren said. “What I want to know is why you are interested in my resuming them. Nothing you have said so far has been even remotely believable.”

Lan Qiren was, in fact, too smart.

“Fine,” Wen Ruohan said with a huff, rolling his eyes. Perhaps the truth would work where polite fictions had failed, that seemed like a strategy that would work well on Lan Qiren. “I think what you’ve been doing is a fine idea, and I want in on it.”

“In on my classes?” Lan Qiren shook his head. “Why? You have no interest in teaching.”

“It’s not the teaching aspect I care about.”

“Then what?” Lan Qiren frowned. “Surely not the money.”

Wen Ruohan blinked, taken aback. “Money? What money? What are you talking about?”

Now it was Lan Qiren’s turn to look confused. “The classes bring revenue, of course. Only a nominal sum, of course, and we never ask for it, but everyone always insists on paying something to cover their children’s housing and feeding costs. It is almost a little insulting at times, really. As if a Great Sect like ours couldn’t handle a few extra mouths…”

“Wait, wait,” Wen Ruohan said, mind spinning with possibilities. “Are you talking about actual money changing hands? Not just rare treasures and paintings, the sorts of things that get brought as gifts for the teacher?”

“Naturally they also bring those,” Lan Qiren said. “But yes, they insist on paying. I have always assumed it started because some of them wanted to establish a level of distance between our sects, so that they did not feel as though we were looking down at them and doing them a favor for free, and then the rest of them just picked it up in time. Why? Does it matter?”

Your sect literally receives tribute from other sects with whom you are not affiliated! Voluntarily, and without coercion! Of course that matters! Even if they started it as an insult, pretending that they were hiring you like some teacher off the street, they are still doing it, and in doing so have set the precedent to encourage others to do so. It would be one thing if it was just presents, everyone expects that as part of the teaching relationship, but a sect in a lower position giving money to another in a higher position – that’s tribute, not payment.

I can barely get my own subsidiary sects to agree to open their coffers to me because of what that would mean about the relationship between us, setting them as subordinate and me as the master in permanent fashion – and those sects have already sworn loyalty to me!

“I suppose not,” Wen Ruohan said, though judging by the increased suspicion on Lan Qiren’s face he wasn’t doing a very good job of pretending not to be interested. “You’re right, that’s not why I’m interested. But what does my motivation matter? You like your classes, you want to teach them, I’m enabling that. Why be so suspicious?”

“Overly solicitous people hide bad intentions.”

“I already explained – ”

“Sect Leader Wen, please stop treating me as though I were an idiot,” Lan Qiren said firmly. “Anyone else could plausibly say that their own self-interest lies in having a happy household, but not you. If I were making you miserable by being miserable, your answer would be to either eliminate me from your sight or send me to the Fire Palace so that I could know what true misery was.”

Wen Ruohan started laughing.

“Good, good,” he said, finding himself delighted yet again to be so…known. “Fine, have it your way. The truth, then: I think that your classes are the seeds to a ripe harvest.”

“Harvest? Of what?”

“Respect.” Wen Ruohan smirked broadly. “You have dozens of children who have bowed to you as their teacher, promising to be filial to you: a teacher for a day, a father for a lifetime. If you were to ask them for help, they would be honor-bound to at least consider it, if not to affirmatively do it – ”

“Ask them for help? They are children. What could they even do?”

“Having friends is hardly the same thing as having spies,” Wen Ruohan mimicked. “Funny how it ends up reaching the same end, though, doesn’t it? Only no one will ever suspect yours. It’s brilliant, really, and I have no idea how you managed it.”

“You are being ridiculous once more. I have hardly managed anything. You make it sound as though I pulled off some scheme behind the cultivation world’s back – which is not even remotely the case. Anyway, you are simply incorrect. Most of my students do not even like me, much less remember me fondly years later.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that…”

Lan Qiren was shaking his head already, and Wen Ruohan hadn’t even gotten to the bit about how he’d suborned future sect leaders into a position of subservience to him. Not to mention the tribute!

“Ridiculous,” he announced. “Ridiculous and absurd and – ”

He was cut off by a yawn.

Wen Ruohan checked the time and smirked: sure enough, a Lan was better than a clock.

Lan Qiren could stay awake late into the evening, and often had, but it was a matter of willpower and, usually, of getting back up again. Wen Ruohan had found that even on days he’d decided to stay up late, Lan Qiren still usually fell asleep for at least a quarter-hour at his bedtime. On days he hadn’t decided in advance that he had business at night, like tonight, he fell asleep faster than a rock dropped off a cliff falling into the ocean.

“You have completely misunderstood the nature of my classes, and indeed of students. Possibly even children in general,” Lan Qiren said with dignity, pretending his eyes weren’t sliding shut. “We can discuss this further tomorrow.”

Wen Ruohan snorted and looked back down at his paperwork. “We undoubtedly will. I have no doubt that you won’t let me hear the end of this so easily…for the moment, go to sleep. I have more work to do, I’ll come to bed later.”

By the time he’d finished off the next letter, this one marginally more interesting as it dealt with a simmering situation between two sects that he’d been inciting into fighting with each other, and glanced back at Lan Qiren, the other man was fast asleep.

Wen Ruohan stood up and walked over to look down at him.

Lan Qiren had excellent sleeping habits, as one might have expected: he didn’t snore or toss around wildly, not even when he had nightmares, and he didn’t startle awake easily when there were noises or lights around him. Most of the time, he slept deeply, like the dead, and was impressively groggy if forcefully awakened prior to his official waking time.

You could be mine.

It wasn’t the first time Wen Ruohan had thought that.

Mine, really mine –

He couldn’t get the idea out of his head.

It had first come to him when he’d seen the note from Lan Qiren’s nephews, the one that had instigated his little fit of frenzy – one that was however inadvertently so wretchedly, wantonly cruel that it had knocked out even Wen Ruohan’s breath. He’d had the note preserved, of course, and it was even now waiting on the writing desk in Lan Qiren’s quarters for his return.

Naturally, Wen Ruohan was aware that that was the real reason Lan Qiren didn’t return, choosing instead to linger in Wen Ruohan’s rooms like a ghost, but as Lan Qiren had observed, it really did suit any number of his purposes that Lan Qiren stay in his rooms for now, keeping a low profile. It had even ensured that his wives hadn’t been able to cause a fuss, though he was sure that by now they desperately wanted to; he really was being shockingly inappropriate in keeping Lan Qiren with him like this. It was outrageous enough that he was favoring him every night (and sometimes during the day), but sharing a room like this was the sort of thing that only the poor or those madly in love might do.

Not that he cared.

You could be mine.

It had been the note that had revealed to him the depths of Lan Qiren’s suffering.

Wen Ruohan considered himself to be something of an expert on suffering, on the sorts of situations that could drive a man to break and shatter into a thousand pieces, irreparable, and Qingheng-jun in his revenge was clearly intent on achieving just that. He hadn’t just taken away Lan Qiren’s authority, which was always a blow to a man who’d grown accustomed to having it. No – he’d taken away Lan Qiren’s children, children Lan Qiren had raised and loved with all his heart, and based on the content of that note he was treating them without any concern as to their well-being, driving them to desperation.

Qingheng-jun had done it deliberately. Lan Qiren had to know by now that it was deliberate, and that meant that Qingheng-jun had also successfully stolen away Lan Qiren’s sense of security, his serenity, his peace of mind. He’d known that Lan Qiren would torture himself with his worries that his nephews would be suffering from his absence, whether from missing him or being mistreated or even punished, and that was why he’d done it.

And he’d taken even more from Lan Qiren than that.

The seclusion Qingheng-jun had forced Lan Qiren into, the strict seclusion of the type that Wen Ruohan knew Lan Qiren both hated and feared, had wreaked genuine havoc on Lan Qiren’s state of mind. Lan Qiren had tried to conceal it, but it was impossible at such close quarters – close inspection had revealed that he was in fact notably skinnier than he’d been at the last discussion conference, skinnier than he properly should be, and his body was littered with the remnants of old marks, some clearly self-inflicted, and healing slower than they should. Lan Qiren was an exceptional cultivator, but the body followed the mind; he reflected on his skin all of his guilt and sorrow, his grief, his torment, his internal conflict. That the fingers Wen Ruohan had broken had already healed in full while some bruises from months ago remained really said everything that needed to be said about Lan Qiren’s mental state.

Even putting aside his body, there was his behavior, which was equally concerning. There was the way Lan Qiren would at random instances go quiet and distant, as if retreating from the world; the way he would instinctively flinch or shudder at some random turn of phrase; the nightmares he had at night, quiet moans of distress tearing out of him even as he remained immobile, and the way he seemed, upon waking, to find some strange sort of comfort in Wen Ruohan’s own presence there, no matter how subtle he thought he was being about it. Even that meltdown of his, a fit of such violence that Wen Ruohan had initially thought it to be a qi deviation…

That alone was enough to catch the attention of a genuine sadist like Wen Ruohan, but it was the fact that Lan Qiren had suffered all that and gotten up after that had really gotten under his skin. He’d even apologized for the fit, embarrassed, and had continued to try to…to adapt to the new life he’d ended up with. He was as stubborn a man as Wen Ruohan had yet seen, going through all of that trauma and suffering and forcing himself to keep going. To build himself new routines to replace the old ones. To routinely have sex, an activity which he seemed to enjoy well enough but not especially yearn for, with a man he didn’t especially like.

To try to make himself over into a good husband.

Wen Ruohan had to swallow down lust just at the thought of it.

There was something unbelievably compelling about the idea of corrupting someone as pure and intrinsically good as Lan Qiren – no, even better, about making Lan Qiren corrupt himself on Wen Ruohan’s behalf.

Lan Qiren had always possessed an almost astringent purity, unforgiving and inflexible, as immovable as a mountain. It was what had made him so boring, so predictable, in all those years where the only thing he was to Wen Ruohan was a rival and a stumbling block. It was what made him so trustworthy to others, who knew that his rigidity would never let him yield to whim or favor even when it would benefit him to do so. Everyone knew that as long as his rules demanded something, Lan Qiren would do it, and gladly. No matter the cost.

It was his very rigidity meant that Lan Qiren hadn’t even thought of any solution to his present situation other than compliance. It had never occurred to him that he might just try to run away, maybe even return to Gusu to kidnap his nephews and keep them for himself, nor even that he might try to convince Wen Ruohan to take them away from them for him – no, my Lan sect will go to them one day, he’d said, when trying to explain to Wen Ruohan why he couldn’t simply abandon all consideration for the Lan sect in favor of the Wen. The Lan sect was theirs, even if it was no longer his, and therefore he had to do everything he could to support it, and them, and with them being there, even if doing so meant accepting a marriage he did not want.

Even if it meant twisting himself into something new.

Even if it meant accepting that change he so thoroughly hated.

The only thing that could truly tempt Lan Qiren away from his implacable sense of order and rule was that radical Lan heart hiding within his chest. That irrepressible love and concern he had for his nephews, for instance, or the one time he had let slip his disgust for how his sister-in-law had been treated, leading him to vow to never treat his own wife the same.

And at the moment, he believed Wen Ruohan to be his wife.

Wen Ruohan had never had a Lan before. He’d never wanted a Lan before. Those terrifying madmen hiding behind their placid façades had always worried him more than all the other Great Sects put together. To the extent he’d ever considered it, he’d always thought that their insane devotion seemed more like a burden than anything else, something that he’d get tired of and want to shake off in time or which would end up with him waking up with a knife at his throat followed by an attempt at murder-suicide. But in this case, it felt less like a burden and more like…

It felt like power.

Wen Ruohan had always been attracted to power, whether his own or in others. It had been his wives’ cunning that had attracted him to them, an attraction that disappeared as soon as they were no longer able to wield that power except through him; it had been Lao Nie’s martial valor, his ruthlessness and frankly insane recklessness, that had first caught his eye. Lan Qiren had neither skill, being neither a consummate schemer nor an especially merciless warrior. If he was anything, it was only that he was always so genuinely himself: stern, rule-abiding, conservative, moralistic, abhorring any change.

And yet, for Wen Ruohan, Lan Qiren was willing to change. To change himself for him.

Lan Qiren had admitted freely that his first instinct in the Yueyang Chang matter was to think the deal was rotten simply because the Yueyang Chang sect had connived to accomplish their goals through dirty means – that if it were up to him, if the offer had come to the Lan sect, he would have rejected it on moral grounds without thinking twice. He would never have used his astonishing command of the facts or his ability to sort through patterns that others never even noticed to come up with a solution that involved conquest, much less a better solution than the one Wen Ruohan had been considering. A solution that was wholly anathema to his own natural inclinations and priorities.

If Lan Qiren were truly free, he would never have gritted his teeth and tried to find something to compliment in Wen Ruohan’s Fire Palace, which he so obviously despised with everything that he was. That, too, was something he was doing for Wen Ruohan.

All for him. Everything for him.

You could be mine. Really mine, truly mine.  

By robbing Lan Qiren of his sect position, his nephews, and even the Cloud Recesses itself, Qingheng-jun had taken away Lan Qiren’s sense of home.

Wen Ruohan had the chance to give it to him again.

And if he did, if he somehow won that wild and crazy Lan heart for his own…then Lan Qiren really would be his, wholly and utterly, without reserve. That same rigidity that refused to let him do so much as lie even when it was for his own benefit would at once be turned into the most unbending loyalty, unflinching and unimpeachable. He would value Wen Ruohan more than anything, excepting only his nephews, who were the same as his sons, and that was an exception even Wen Ruohan found perfectly reasonable. If he won him over…

If he won him over, Lan Qiren could – he would – be a person that even Wen Ruohan, deeply paranoid and often justified in being so, might be able to trust.

Someone who he could trust to be by his side, rather than beneath his feet.

He’d never had that before. Not really.

When they had lived, his brothers and sisters had all had their own interests, even the ones he’d liked the most. Even today, despite his authority being unquestionable, his kinsmen still schemed against him, scrabbling for little bits of power wherever they could eke it out…it would be one thing if they were just trying to make their own ways in the world instead of just following his, but more often it was nothing more than greed and laziness, a feeling of entitlement to power without the willingness to put in all the work it took to get it.

His wives were untrustworthy and duplicitous, and although he liked that about them, it certainly didn’t allow for much faith in them; they would both happily stab him in the back if it got them what they wanted, just the way his first wife did. And just like the first time around, his children followed their mothers. Wen Xu and Wen Chao were at present too young to really evaluate, but from what he’d seen so far of them, they were simply too weak to really stand up beside him instead of merely cringing before him.

His subordinates and disciples…well, they revered him, as they should, but a sense of overpowering awe did not leave room for equality. They would never match him or challenge him, and neither did he want them to; it would only lead them to act like his kinsmen, seeking to scheme to undermine him for their own purposes.

For the same reason, he did not put any stock in friends or allies – he supposed there was Lao Nie, who as his lover was closer to him than most, but even Lao Nie had his saber and his sect and his own interests that he put above Wen Ruohan, not to mention those two wives of his that he’d married without so much a word of notice.

In fact, Lao Nie was a perfect example. Each instance of Lao Nie’s obvious carelessness had driven Wen Ruohan up the wall, infuriating him, and even now it itched under his skin like a scab not yet healed. How dare the other man treat him like that, disregarding him to the point of not even telling him of what was going on in his life? How dare he act as if it was none of Wen Ruohan’s business what he did? Never mind that they’d both agreed from the start not to take their liaison too seriously, each one there for nothing more than a good time; frivolity and lack of caring was Wen Ruohan’s prerogative, not Lao Nie’s. That was why they’d grown more distant these past few years, their encounters fewer and generally less satisfying, more fraught, even at times contentious. Wen Ruohan deserved his lover’s devotion, true devotion, and yet that was exactly what Lao Nie would never give him…

Lan Qiren, though.

If Wen Ruohan could get him, he could be everything that Lao Nie was not.

He could be mine.

Wen Ruohan wanted that. And what he wanted, he got. Only…how?

How could he convince Lan Qiren to devote himself to him and only him? Did he need to push him harder, make him break under cruelty and humiliation? Send him to the Fire Palace to forcefully remake him in the image he yearned for? Or did he need to take a softer touch, gently coaxing him into a sense of security and slowly, giving him all the things and experiences and maybe even people that he yearned for, but at the same time inexorably moving the pieces out from under his feet until he had no choice but to become what Wen Ruohan wanted him to be?

What was the key that would get it to actually work this time, where it hadn’t with his lost brother, where it hadn’t with his first wife, where it hadn’t with Lao Nie? How could he get what he actually wanted?

All good things ought to belong to him, after all. It was just a matter of figuring out the details and being patient – and Wen Ruohan was good at being patient.

He’d start off with the gentle approach, he thought, and shelve the idea of breaking Lan Qiren for now. Once a man was broken, there was no unbreaking him, but it was always easy enough to pick back up later if he needed to. He’d give Lan Qiren a chance to live up to what he wanted, and if not…well. He had other options.

The Fire Palace was always there.

Wen Ruohan reached out and ran his fingers along Lan Qiren’s forehead ribbon.

Do not allow those without permission to touch your ribbon, which is your self-restraint.

Wen Ruohan smiled.

Chapter Text

Adults, Lan Xichen had learned, generally thought that children were stupid.

And possibly also deaf.

Shufu hadn’t thought that way, but that was one of the many reasons that Shufu was the best.

He always tried to explain things, even several times and in several ways if they didn’t understand it the first time – maybe he wasn’t always the most patient, maybe sometimes he had a bit of a temper and scolded them when they did something wrong, but he didn’t get tired of doing the same thing over and over and he never got really angry, not in a way that might make Lan Xichen worry that he wouldn’t be forgiven. Shufu took things very seriously, always, and if maybe that meant that he only looked confused when Lan Xichen told him the jokes that everyone else laughed at, then it also meant that he didn’t ignore Lan Xichen when he told him things like what made him feel worried and what made him feel sad. No matter how silly Lan Xichen was being, he always listened.

Father…didn’t.

When Father had first come out of seclusion, Lan Xichen had been very excited.

Well, no, that wasn’t quite right. Everyone else had been extremely excited – well, not Wangji, but Wangji never liked anything that was too different, too quickly, and Lan Xichen doubted very much that he would have liked anything at all in the time immediately following their mother’s death. But Lan Xichen was a little less stubborn than Wangji, a little more flexible, and maybe also a little more impressionable, and everyone was just so happy and talking to him as if they expected him to be excited, too.

So, happy to oblige, Lan Xichen really had been excited – though admittedly a little confused as to what exactly his father would be adding to his life. After all, he already had Shufu, who did all the things a father normally would and quite often the things a mother would, too, because their mother couldn’t leave her house and do them herself. Their mother had just died, though, so Lan Xichen had tentatively assumed that maybe their father would be taking up her role in his life: someone Shufu took them to visit once a month, a person who said nice things and played with them, telling jokes and teasing him and Wangji.

Mostly Wangji.

That was fine – well, not really. Not long before his mother died, Lan Xichen had gotten a little sad about how much more attention he felt that she paid to Wangji over him, more than he thought could be entirely justified by Wangji being smaller and younger and in need of more support. He’d started feeling that maybe he was just no longer capable of being the focus of their mother’s attention, maybe because he’d gotten too old for it, somehow, and it had made him quite upset. He’d tried to remind himself that Wangji was the cutest little boy ever and Lan Xichen would prefer playing with him over himself any day, so he could understand her having a preference, but it hadn’t really helped that much.

Shufu had helped. When he’d explained his feelings and his reasoning to Shufu, Shufu frowned and stroked his beard a few times, then he went and had a conversation with Mother that wasn’t anywhere nearly as quiet as he probably thought it was – but she’d gotten so much better after that, spending some of their very limited visiting time focusing on Lan Xichen and making sure he was included when she played with Wangji and sounding really apologetic, like she meant it.

It still wasn’t the same as when he was younger, though.

Before he’d started to look quite so much like Father.

Maybe that was why he wasn’t as sad about Mother dying as everyone seemed to think he should be. Which wasn’t to say that he wasn’t sad at all – Lan Xichen was sad about it, really he was, really sad. He got very sad any time he thought for too long about Mother being really truly gone forever, but most of the time…

Well, most of the time, it just didn’t seem real that she was dead. He only saw Mother once a month anyway, and sometimes he missed a month because he had something else to do or because she was feeling sick, and then it’d be a while before he saw her again. Sometimes even a long while.

It was really easy to pretend that that was what was happening now. Easy to pretend that Mother was still there, at her house just out of sight, and he’d be able to see her next month, maybe.

Wangji had taken it very hard, though. Maybe it was because he was too small to really understand why he couldn’t go see her as he normally did – he’d never missed a day with her, not ever, so he had been very upset about it. It had been the biggest upset of his life…or, well, it had been until Shufu had had to go away, because he’d taken that much worse.

Much, much worse.

It took a while before Lan Xichen was able to figure out that Wangji had initially assumed that Shufu’s absence meant that he’d died as well, and after that he’d had to spend a lot of time calming him down from a panic, explaining that that wasn’t the case. He’d explained that Shufu had just gone away for a little while, a temporary absence, and that soon enough he’d be back and everything would go back to normal.

He felt stupid about it later.

Because later, much later, Lan Xichen realized that this time he’d been the one who hadn’t understood what had happened, what it meant, what was really going on. He’d thought that Shufu had only gone away for a little time, the way he did when he went to discussion conferences or other important missions the sect needed him to do, the way he always did, and so he’d thought Wangji was just overreacting.

He didn’t think he was overreacting anymore, obviously!

In fact, Lan Xichen had figured out that something was wrong really fast – faster than other people in the sect did, even the adults. Even the elders! Maybe they believed that Shufu had gone away for a trip on sect business, the way that Lan Xichen had at first, but Lan Xichen knew that sect business or no sect business, Shufu would never have stayed away from the sect once he’d heard that Wangji was having a meltdown because he missed him.

Not just a meltdown, either, but multiple meltdowns. Full on temper tantrums, kicking and screaming and beating his little fists against the floor, biting anyone who came near him meltdowns. Wangji hadn’t had them as bad as this in years, not since Shufu had taught him all those tricks and breathing exercises and such that helped him maintain his own discipline. It had only gotten worse, too. It was actually starting to get pretty worrying, how bad it was getting…

Anyway, Shufu should’ve come rushing back as soon as he’d gotten the news about them, which naturally he should have gotten right away. But Shufu hadn’t come back.

That was when Lan Xichen decided it was necessary to do some exploring of his own.

Well, first he’d tried to do things the right way, the way he always did. He went and asked questions from his elders, polite but persistent, finding new people to ask and new ways to ask, showing how good he was behaving in hopes of wringing out some concession or indulgence…but it hadn’t worked this time, not one bit. Everyone he asked didn’t seem to know anything, and they didn’t seem to be worried about not knowing, either.

They’d all shook their heads and told him not to worry, instead. They said that everything was going to be fine, really, and then they tried to change the subject to how happy he must be to have his father back. Constantly. It was really unhelpful.

After that he’d decided he needed to figure it out on his own.

Well, on his own, plus Wangji.

Wangji might only be six, but he was very good at finding things out. Probably even better than Lan Xichen was, to be honest, but on the other hand he was also too young to understand what people meant when they weren’t being straightforward. That meant he needed Lan Xichen to interpret for him. Teamwork!

Shufu did always say they were strongest when they worked together.

It had been Wangji who’d first managed to figure out that Shufu had gone into seclusion, mostly through sheer stubbornness and checking every possible place in the Cloud Recesses where Shufu could possibly be, but it had been Lan Xichen who’d figured out that Shufu hadn’t wanted to be in seclusion, not the way their father had. That had come as something of a relief, since both of them had been very confused by the idea of Shufu going into seclusion willingly – Shufu had never gone into seclusion before, not for real, not even for a couple of days the way Lan Xichen had once he’d been old enough.

Certainly neither of them had been able or willing to believe that he would go into seclusion the way Father had just because he was jealous that Father had come out of his, no matter what some of the nastier boys Lan Xichen’s age whispered behind their hands.

(Lan Xichen had gotten into a fight with one of them over that, deciding that the punishment for no fighting without permission was worth it to enforce no talking behind people’s backs, since none of the adults were doing a good job of it. Oddly enough, when he’d gone to report his misbehavior to Father, he hadn’t gotten any further than ‘I decided to punch him’ when Father had absolved him of having to serve any punishment at all. It had been very weird, though in retrospect he was finding it to be completely typical of Father’s usual refusal to listen about anything. In the end, Lan Xichen had gone to the library and looked up the prescribed punishment, then served it quietly by himself, even though no one had told him to. That’s what it meant to maintain your own discipline, after all.)

Anyway, he and Lan Wangji had figured out that Shufu was in seclusion in their mother’s old house, except his was apparently the sort of seclusion where he couldn’t see them at all, not even once a month – that had been what made Lan Xichen really suspicious, because he might be able to believe that Shufu decided to try out seclusion but he wouldn’t ever believe Shufu would lock himself away from them when they needed him. From there, they’d investigated, and in doing so overheard the elders talking about it and that was how they’d found out the truth that he’d been locked away all right, locked away against his will.

Okay, maybe they hadn’t just overheard the elders. It had been Lan Xichen’s idea to sneak into the Hall of Serenity, the place where the elders liked to meet when they were having important discussions, to listen in on them on purpose. They’d used a back entrance Shufu had once shown them when he’d needed them to leave really fast, and then they’d deliberately waited there until the elders showed up and started talking, and then they’d listened to what they were saying before sneaking back out again. So it wasn’t really overhearing but rather eavesdropping, and intentional eavesdropping at that. But even though eavesdropping wasn’t exactly polite, there wasn’t an actual rule against it, either!

…which was why they were back here again, Lan Xichen supposed. But what else were they supposed to do when no one would answer their questions about Shufu?!

“I still find it questionable,” one of the elders said. Lan Xichen couldn’t see him, but he was pretty sure it was one of the ones with the very long white beards, and he was pretty sure he was stroking it the way Shufu often did his own smaller, black one.

“There is no point in treading over old ground, Yiran,” another one snapped. “Haven’t we talked the matter of Qiren’s seclusion to death?”

“Talking things to death is the prerogative of sect elders, is it not? The present Sect Leader Lan’s return was supposed to be a tremendous joy to us all. It was meant to signify a return to order, a return to orthodoxy, the proper path,” Lan Yiran argued. “A return to normality, after everything that happened with his wife back then…”

“Are you suggesting you’re not pleased at the return of the proper Sect Leader, Yiran?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth, Yuanbai. You know that’s not what I meant.”

“I agree with Yiran,” a third voice said. “It is not that any of us are not pleased that the Sect Leader has reentered the world. How could we be anything but overjoyed that he has returned to us, after we had thought him lost forever? Qingheng-jun is not merely the oldest son of the former Sect Leader, our dear friend and cousin, not merely is he the rightful inheritor and leader of Gusu Lan, not merely the father of our two young heirs – don’t forget, he was the pride of his generation! Of all the heroes and stars Gusu Lan produced in those years, he shone the brightest. We are all more than delighted by his return. It is only that…well. It must be admitted that having his first act upon exiting seclusion be to force Qiren to enter a similar seclusion seems a little…inauspicious.”

“Inauspicious! Suiying, you’re talking around the subject again. Can’t you just say what you mean? You’re afraid the Sect Leader lost his mind while in seclusion.”

“And you’re afraid that he’s not going to live up to all those illusions you all made for yourselves about him,” a new voice said, this one even older than the rest, harsh. It was old Lan Jinyan, their granduncle, Lan Xichen thought to himself with surprise: he hadn’t been aware that the old man still attended the meetings of the elders. Most of the time he just sat around in his garden. Shufu had taken them to visit him on a regular basis, saying he needed the company. “That’s what’s really going on in all your heads, isn’t it?”

That got the other elders murmuring objections, but Lan Jinyan wasn’t done yet.

“You all criticized poor Qiren time and time again, always insinuating that his brother would have done a better job, even when there wasn’t any way that things could have gone any better,” he said, sounding grouchy. “All because you lot kept imagining his brother there in his place, doing everything you wanted him to do, play-acting scenarios where everything worked out for the best no matter how implausible that ‘best’ might be, never giving Qiren credit for doing the best he could with the situation he had…but now the Sect Leader is there for real, and things are different than what you’d thought. Quite rude of him to be a real person with actual faults and limitations, wouldn’t you say? Reality’s not quite matching up to your daydreams, is it?”

There was a lot of angry talk after that. Not yelling, exactly, but certainly getting closer to the prohibition on making noise than adults usually did.

Lan Jinyan was the loudest, or maybe just the closest to where Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji were hiding. He kept saying things like “It’s certainly easy to say that one’s better than another when one of them has to deal with real life situations and the other one doesn’t, isn’t it?” and “You know exactly how hard Qiren worked to win that privilege for us, I won’t let you pretend it was nothing,” and “Oh yes, please do tell me, what exactly the Sect Leader would have done in that scenario that Qiren didn’t do? How exactly would it have turned out better than where we ended up? Let’s not leave it vague any longer, so that each of you can come away with a different idea – you want to talk about it, let’s talk about it!”

He also, at one point, loudly made a sound not unlike blowing his nose or sticking out his tongue and said, “Jealous? Qiren? Of all people! Even if he was, which he wasn’t, he would never do a damn thing about it and you know it as well as I do. He’s a better man than half of you lot all put together and he doesn’t deserve this.”

“I’m never going to complain about visiting Granduncle ever again,” Lan Xichen muttered, impressed, to Wangji, who just gave him a dark look and hissed, “Talking behind the backs of others is forbidden.”

Which…that wasn’t even what that rule meant! At all!

Though Wangji was right: if they didn’t want to get caught, Lan Xichen needed to cut the comments.

He patted Wangji’s shoulder apologetically and went back to listening.

“He deserves a chance to make a name for himself as Sect Leader, a chance he didn’t have the first time around,” one of the elders was arguing. “And as our sect leader, he is entitled to insist on doing so without the burden of his younger brother standing in his shadow, particularly a younger brother that has taken for ten years the position that was rightfully his. I think we can all generally agree to concede that Qiren is not the sort of person likely to quibble over power or try to cause trouble because he’s upset about being demoted, no matter what some people have been implying. I am even willing to admit that it makes me personally uncomfortable that he has been sentenced to seclusion against his will, without even a hearing before us elders first. But surely we cannot go so far as to say that the Sect Leader has acted irrationally, or that he has gone too far…?”

“Being wrong isn’t reason enough to criticize someone anymore? Or is it just our dear Sect Leader that is immunized…?” Lan Jinyan huffed. “You’re all being ridiculous. Of course he’s gone too far! Imprisoning a man, his own brother, without a trial, that isn’t enough?”

“Third Uncle, please. You are exaggerating. Hasn’t Qiren always been complaining –”

“If I recall correctly, he was never much for complaining.”

“Fine. Complaining aloud or no, which among us doesn’t know how much of a burden the sect leadership was for Qiren? Perhaps he’s treating it as a vacation.”

Lan Xichen was pretty sure he could hear the sound of Lan Wangji’s teeth grinding. Also, that elder must never have met his shufu even once if he thought that Shufu would treat being away from them as a vacation.

“You’re all making assumptions,” another one said, speaking a little louder to get over the sound of Lan Jinyan’s spluttered protests. “Don’t forget, the Sect Leader is Qiren’s older brother. They’re family. All this talk of resentment between them, of one forcing the other, is purely hypothetical, the stuff of rumors. Do the rules not say Do not argue with family – ”

“Yiran, talk some sense into your twin brother, will you?” someone snapped, interrupting. “Yichi, if you have nothing to add, shutting your mouth is a good first step. Speak meagerly.”

“How dare you! You have no right to speak to me that way.”

“No? Maybe not. But at least I’m not so charmed by our new Sect Leader that I’ve lost touch with reality.”

“I’ve hardly been charmed – ”

“Even if he is, so what? The ability to lead is critical in a sect leader, and one must admit that personal charm is an area in which the Sect Leader vastly exceeds Qiren.”

“Which will make no difference at all if it turns out that he’s lost his mind – ”

“There is no reason to assume such a thing,” someone interrupted, voice cool and unbothered. It must have been someone important, because all the other elders quieted down, even Lan Jinyan. “Our Lan sect is famed for its orthodoxy and conservatism, and justly so. As Suiying has pointed out, according to hierarchy and the rules of inheritance, Qingheng-jun is our rightful Sect Leader. His reemergence into the world is a delicate moment in time for the whole of our Gusu Lan sect – both internally and externally, readjusting to the new balance of power. It is a moment to be cautious, and also a tremendous opportunity.”

Lan Jinyan made a noise of protest, but the other elder ignored him.

“For us elders to oppose him now would seem unfair, breeding discord and discontent internally and making us seem weak externally, wasting this chance to show strength. We cannot do it. Yes, even if that comes at the cost of Qiren staying unjustly in seclusion for a little longer – he is a grown man, after all, and it’s not as if we would permit him to be locked away forever. It’s only seclusion. He’s perfectly capable of being in seclusion without coming to harm, even if he has to stay there a year or more.”

“A year –!”

“Hasn’t it been nearly half a year already?”

“That seems too long…”

“And furthermore,” the new voice said, overriding all the voices once more, “we can afford to be practical. If we later reach the unfortunate conclusion that Qingheng-jun’s seclusion has caused harm to his mentality, we can at that time relieve him of the burdens of sect leadership to give him the opportunity to heal. Qiren would at that point resume his prior duties, which naturally cannot be done from seclusion.”

“Qiren is a member of this family,” Lan Jinyan said coldly. “Not some placeholder you can put on a shelf then take out at will to use as a game piece, Zhengquan.”

“Of course,” Lan Zhengquan said. His voice was smooth and unhurried, unbothered. “But as a member of the family, he can make some small sacrifices for the good of the whole. That hardly seems to be too much to ask of him. Don’t you agree?”

Lan Jinyan disagreed, naturally, but by then most of the murmuring had died down, and soon afterwards someone changed the subject, with all the rest following along, even Lan Jinyan. Lan Xichen, frowning, poked at Wangji, indicating that they should go, as it seemed unlikely that the elders would go back to that subject of discussion. They crawled out of the small space beneath the room and slipped into the gardens, heading back towards their rooms where they were supposed to have been practicing meditation.

Lan Xichen would admit the truth of what they had been doing if anyone asked – the rules said do not tell lies! – but he didn’t think anyone would ask. In fact, he was almost positive: these days, everyone seemed to think that someone else was keeping an eye on him.

(Shufu would’ve asked. Shufu cared what Lan Xichen was doing, what Wangji was doing, and not just for a dry report on their accomplishments once every few days that he didn’t even listen to – unlike him.)

“Xiongzhang,” Lan Wangji said, tugging at Lan Xichen’s sleeve. He was frowning, though on his round little face it came off as more of a pout. “Xiongzhang, do the elders not yet know that Shufu is gone away?”

“I don’t think they do,” Lan Xichen admitted, disappointed. They’d come to eavesdrop on the elders in search of more news about where Shufu had been taken away to, and it turned out they knew even less than they did. “They were talking about Shufu like they thought he was still in seclusion. Though I suppose that it’s not that strange. I mean, it’s not as though there was a big announcement when he left…yes, I think that's right, Wangji. I think that they really don’t know that Shufu’s not in the Cloud Recesses anymore.”

The only reason the two of them knew that their shufu was gone was because of Wangji’s extraordinary diligence. He’d been excused from classes again for excessive biting and hitting – that was the situation more often than not these days, with his teachers clearly torn between wanting to suggest that he take an entire year off to “mature more” before coming back and not wanting to anger Father by suggesting even implicitly that Wangji’s regression had something to do with his return. Thus far, they’d felt strongly enough on the latter to err in favor of simply excusing him from attending class without reporting it to anyone. And, as usual for when Wangji wasn’t in class, he was keeping watch on the house surrounded by gentians that their mother had lived in and where they’d figured out their shufu was being forced to stay.

Lan Xichen was pretty sure that Wangji had been plotting yet another method of trying to break through the arrays that protected the house, even though they were both far too young to be able to do anything like that. Lan Xichen would’ve supported him in whatever he’d been thinking of trying, of course, even if it meant that they’d both be punished when it got found out, but they never had a chance to get that far.

Instead, Wangji had noticed a profusion of boxes piled up at the back of the house and had informed Lan Xichen, wondering if it meant that Shufu was coming out of seclusion soon. Lan Xichen, in turn, had looked at them and realized they were full of clothing, the way they were whenever Shufu needed to go on a long trip. That was when he’d decided it was time to risk sneaking in a note – one of the wrapped-up shapes was very obviously a guqin, though oddly enough not the one Shufu normally liked best. But it was still a guqin, and Shufu would never go very long without playing.

He’d figured that it was the perfect place where no one would think to check.

Lan Xichen hadn’t dared to write anything too suspicious, though, since he wasn’t sure where Shufu was going and who might be there when he finally found the note – after all, he didn’t want to get Shufu in trouble or anything. He kept it simple: just that they missed him, and looked forward to his return.

Shufu would understand what it meant. Lan Xichen was sure of it. As soon as Shufu saw the note, he would know that it meant that they were absolutely miserable without him, not having a good time at all, and then, once he knew that, he’d come back and fix everything.

Or so Lan Xichen hoped, anyway.

He wasn’t…actually sure Shufu could fix things this time. Which was an awful thought.

But – even if Shufu couldn’t fix it – what else could he do about it?

He had to hope for the best.

“Xiongzhang.”

“Yes, Wangji?”

“Should we tell someone?” Lan Xichen blinked at Lan Wangji, who scowled up at him. “About Shufu being gone. Maybe Granduncle? You heard him just now. He likes Shufu.”

It was a compelling thought, but Lan Xichen shook his head. His trust in adults that weren’t his shufu had been deeply damaged these past few months.

“What could we tell him?” he asked skeptically. “We don’t know anything for sure. We didn’t even actually see Shufu leaving, we just saw boxes and assumed he was.”

“Granduncle could insist on checking. He’s an elder. The rules say Do not disrespect your elders.”

Lan Xichen wasn’t entirely sure their father knew that one. Or maybe he just didn’t care – which was wrong. He was the Sect Leader! He should care more about the rules than anyone, the way Shufu did.

“Maybe,” he said, chewing on his lower lip. “But what if he gets talked over again, like he did today? Then nothing would change, only they’d know that we listened to them, and we’d get punished. We wouldn’t be able to do it again. And then where would Shufu be?” Lan Xichen shook his head, deciding. “No. I don’t think we should tell them.”

Lan Wangji nodded solemnly. “Then what do we do, Xiongzhang?”

Lan Xichen hesitated. “Well,” he said slowly, thinking it through. “I mean…if the sect elders don’t know where Shufu went…that doesn’t mean no one knows.”

Lan Wangji looked up at him. “You mean him.”

Lan Xichen swallowed and nodded.

“But how will that help us? He doesn’t talk to us. He doesn’t listen to us.”

“I’m just going to have to make him listen,” Lan Xichen said with confidence he didn’t feel. “It’ll be all right, Wangji. Don’t worry.”

Lan Wangji didn’t look convinced. Lan Xichen couldn’t blame him.

They hadn’t exactly gotten off on the best foot with their father.

Even before Lan Xichen had figured out that it must have been their father that had locked Shufu away – which would have been automatically unforgivable – he’d already started to dislike him. Which seemed like it was a terrible thing to say about one’s father, except that Lan Xichen had a little bit of practice in kinda-sorta-not-really-well-maybe-sometimes-a-little being angry at his mother. And unlike Father, he’d actually seen her and spent time with her before!

(He’d loved her, too. Rather a lot. He still couldn’t believe she was gone…)

His father, though – Lan Xichen had thought that he’d loved him, at least theoretically. All the elders who told him about his father had said that Lan Xichen loved him and that he looked up to him, and it was easier to just agree with them than worry about what it meant that he didn’t.

It was certainly easier to love someone in theory than it was to love them when they were right in front of your face being mean. And maybe Lan Xichen could’ve accepted him being mean – the way Father looked at him with a faint sneer on his face that only turned into a faint smile when someone was watching, the way he ignored everything Lan Xichen had to say in favor of telling him to value being quiet and not-annoying, the way he scoffed at Lan Xichen’s accomplishments and said he’d been better by the same age as if life was a competition which Shufu had always said it wasn’t – and maybe he would have thought that it was just a result of his own failings, except that his father was also mean about Shufu, and that meant he was just plain wrong.

The rules said love all beings, even the ones who were wrong, but it also said steer away from bad men so clearly there were exceptions. At minimum, it meant that simply having love for a particular person’s being didn’t mean you needed to like them or spend time with them or listen to them. That was how the rules interacted with each other!

So after the first few times Lan Xichen met his father, he decided to himself that he didn’t like him.

He’d felt a little guilty about it, at least at first, except then his father kept being dismissive about Lan Wangji without even trying to understand him and saying mean things about Shufu, which made Lan Xichen start feeling less guilty and more justified, and then he’d found out that Shufu wasn’t just gone temporarily on a work trip but was instead in seclusion and that it had been his father that’d made him go. Without even giving him a chance to say goodbye to Lan Xichen, which was just – there was mean, okay, and then there was just being bad. That crossed the line.

(Wangji, looking deeply shaken, said that Shufu had cried right before disappearing into seclusion. That was when Lan Xichen decided he didn’t just dislike his father, he hated him.)

And now Lan Xichen was going to need to go talk to him.

Technically, he saw his father every morning when he went to pay his respects – Wangji was supposed to do that too, except he generally didn’t, and his father didn’t care enough to even impose punishment, appalling as that was – but that was only for a moment or two. He also saw his father whenever he was summoned to report on his accomplishments, which was in reference to the vast amount of schoolwork Lan Xichen had been assigned. Supposedly he had to do all that work to “make up” for his shufu’s bad teaching, which was such an incredibly and unbelievably stupid idea that Lan Xichen assumed he’d misunderstood the first few times he’d heard it, but which his teachers tried to explain away by telling him that it was a father’s right to educate his son the way he preferred.

That didn’t make it any less stupid.

Shufu was a good teacher. Shufu was the best teacher. Everyone knew it!

Except maybe Father.

Father who Lan Xichen only saw when he had to, and who Lan Xichen had never, ever, not even once, gone to talk with voluntarily.

(He missed Shufu so much. Shufu taught him things himself, even when there were other teachers. Every afternoon Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji would come to his rooms and he’d ask them questions about what they’d learned that day and they went over it together until they understood it all. They’d do exercises and sword drills together, or meditate, and in the evening Shufu would play them music or read them stories before bed. And if Lan Xichen had something he wanted to tell his shufu, he knew that he could go to him any time and, as long as he was polite and Shufu wasn’t doing something really important, Shufu would stop and put aside what he was doing in order to listen to him.)

“What do you want?” Father asked. He didn’t even look up from what he was reading. He was marking up a piece of paper the way Shufu often did, except he looked angrier about it – maybe something wasn’t going his way.

Lan Xichen hoped it wasn’t, and he didn’t even feel bad about thinking it.

“I want to know what’s going on,” Lan Xichen said, because that wasn’t a lie.

That got his father’s attention, at least. Lan Xichen wasn’t sure that was better: his father was tall and broad-shouldered, giving off a feeling of being bigger than Shufu, even though he was pretty sure they were actually about the same height. Their faces were similar, and people said Father was more handsome than Shufu, but unlike Shufu his gaze always felt sharp and cold.

“You want to know what’s going on,” Lan Xichen’s father said thoughtfully. “Why should I tell you that?”

“Because I’m your son,” Lan Xichen said – and that wasn’t a lie either, even though these days he often wished it was. He curled his fingers into fists and met his father’s gaze dead on. “If I don’t know what’s going on, I can’t decide what I want to do about it.”

“Is that a sect rule?” his father asked, a strange smile curving his lips. There was a look in his eyes that Lan Xichen didn’t understand, but which he instinctively felt meant danger.

Because of that, even though Lan Xichen could think of several sect rules that could support what he’d just said and which he’d normally cite if he was talking to Shufu, he instead said, “No,” because technically there wasn’t a rule that said exactly what he’d said. And then, in a moment of inspiration, he added, “Not everything in the world is a rule.”

That was something his shufu had once told him and Wangji.

When he’d said it, Shufu had been trying to explain that there were things that they couldn’t control in the world, that sometimes things just happened. That there were disappointments and failures in life, and that those were inevitable, even if they’d done everything right and according to the rules, even if they’d been very good little boys and didn’t deserve for things to go wrong.

It wasn’t actually applicable to anything Lan Xichen was saying right now.

But his father didn’t know that, and his father didn’t need to know that. He didn’t need to know that Lan Xichen was connecting two completely irrelevant (but true) sentences, the way Shufu did when he was being political. His father said that Shufu was boring and uncreative, that he thought the rules were day and night, that he was indifferent to important things because of them – which wasn’t true at all – and that meant, however impossible it might seem for a Gusu Lan sect elder, much less a Gusu Lan sect leader, that maybe the answer Father was looking for was not in the rules.

Sure enough, his father laughed.

It wasn’t a very nice laugh.

“So it seems that at least one of you can learn after all,” he said. “Good, good. But why do you need to make decisions at all? You’re my son. You should trust me.”

Lan Xichen probably should, but he didn’t. Be careful with your words, he reminded himself. He’d seen his shufu apply that rule before when he was talking with people he didn’t like, specifically the variation of the rule that meant that he should pick and choose his words very carefully because sometimes he wanted to give off an impression that he meant something he didn’t mean. Which was getting a little close to lying, but not quite enough to violate the all-important do not tell lies.

“If I don’t know what’s going on, I can’t be helpful,” he said firmly, and deliberately didn’t mention who it was that he wanted to help. And then, because his father had made a jeering statement about at least one of you, he added, “Wangji isn’t being very helpful to you.”

That was true, too. Unrelated, but true. Not a lie.

“I see how it is,” his father said, and his strange smile had turned into a smirk. Still faint, as if his face had forgotten how to make expressions – he could do them just fine in public, but Lan Xichen thought that that might be fake because he didn’t bother when he was in private. At least the smirk seemed a little more natural to his face than the smile did. “You see an opportunity to win my favor. Is that it?”

Do not attach yourself to those in power and influence.

“I just want to be helpful,” Lan Xichen said stubbornly. “I want to do something. But that means I need to know what’s going on, so I don’t make a mistake or get in the way of something important.”

Please work, he mentally begged. Please work.

His father was silent for a while, thinking it over.

“Fine,” he finally said. “I suppose there’s no harm in it…and perhaps even some good. You’re my son, after all. My heir.”

There was something Lan Xichen didn’t like in the way his father emphasized those words, the sounds dropping from his mouth as if they were weapons rather than words. As though they were meant to hurt someone. Someone else. Someone who wasn’t even there.

The terrible thought occurred to Lan Xichen that maybe that someone was his shufu.

“Sit next to me,” his father ordered, and Lan Xichen quickly obeyed. “Let us speak, then, of war.”

Of…war?

Lan Xichen’s stomach twisted. He didn’t like the sound of this.

He continued to not like the sound of it as his father explained, though he mentally chanted speak meagerly for too many words bring only harm, speak meagerly, speak meagerly to himself and forced himself to react only by nodding and making quiet sounds of agreement. Every once in a while, he asked a very technical question to show he was paying attention, usually definitional – “What does an ‘offensive talisman’ do?” and “What’s it called when you divide people into groups before attacking like that?” and “How would you keep the fire from spreading to other buildings if it gets set there?” – and he didn’t say anything at all about whether he thought any of this was a good idea or not.

After a while, his father let him go.

Lan Xichen went to find Wangji.

Well, he wanted to first go find some bushes to throw up in, because he’d been so scared the entire time he was in there with Father, but his father was a really good cultivator, with really good senses, which meant that first he had to go to find Wangji, who was waiting for him in their rooms. Rooms that, critically, had silencing arrays for privacy that Shufu had put up for them himself to show them how they worked and reassure them that they meant that he trusted them, and then he could throw up.

Which he did.

“Did you find out something useful about Shufu?” Wangji wanted to know, patting Lan Xichen sympathetically on the back.

Lan Xichen nodded and wiped his mouth. He’d been so scared. He’d thought his father would figure out what he was doing – but he’d gotten lucky, he supposed. It had become pretty obvious not too far into Father’s recital that he wasn’t telling Lan Xichen about the war because he thought Lan Xichen would be able to help him with anything, but for reasons of his own, reasons Lan Xichen didn’t entirely understand. Reasons that involved telling Lan Xichen about all sorts of gristly possibilities that might not even come to pass, and probably wouldn’t, like some sort of horrible scary story that children told just to scare each other.

Lan Xichen had the sinking suspicion that his father had told him all of that awful stuff less because he wanted Lan Xichen to hear it than because he wanted to tell someone else that he’d told him. Maybe even that he’d scared him with it – or maybe just that Lan Xichen had listened to all of it without complaint. Lan Xichen really hoped he was wrong about the second part, because he didn’t want Shufu to think, even for a second, that he’d liked any of it at all.

In fact, Lan Xichen was pretty sure he was going to have nightmares for at least a few days, if not many days. But it was all worth it, every last bit of it, future nightmares included, because somewhere in the midst of all that horror his father really had told him something useful about Shufu.

“Shufu’s in the Nightless City, where the Qishan Wen sect is,” he said, watching Wangji’s face, and he felt great relief when Wangji only blinked and nodded the way he did when hearing a fact. That meant that Wangji didn’t know about the Fire Palace.

Lan Xichen currently knew way too much about Wen Ruohan’s Fire Palace, because that was apparently where Sect Leader Wen sent prisoners of war when his wars of conquest were done. His father had told him that the Lan sect didn’t have anything similar because they were better than the Wen sect, but he’d said it in a really weird way. Almost – regretful, somehow. Or maybe like he thought it was a funny sort of difference, and that it was too bad for Shufu that he was now in a place where he would have to deal with it.

“Father sent him there because he and Sect Leader Wen agreed to work together,” he explained, “and Sect Leader Wen wanted to make sure that Father didn’t betray him.”

Wangji frowned. “Would he?”

Lan Xichen winced. His father hadn’t said anything like that. And he might not like Shufu, but they were still brothers, weren’t they? Even at the moments when Lan Xichen kind-of-maybe-sort-of disliked Wangji the most, usually right after Wangji had just bitten him for no good reason or when he was being really annoying, he would never want to hurt him, not really. Surely the same applied to his father and his shufu, who were brothers as well.

But…at the same time…

“I don’t think so?” he said, but he wasn’t sure. “The more important thing is that Sect Leader Wen can’t get the impression that Father did.”

“Why?” Wangji wanted to know. “What would happen if he did?”

Lan Xichen swallowed. “Sect Leader Wen might get angry. He might even…he might even try to hurt Shufu over it.”

Wangji looked rightfully appalled by the idea.

“Don’t worry,” Lan Xichen quickly assured him. “That’s good, in a way, right? It means Sect Leader Wen has no reason to hurt Shufu yet. They’re working together, Sect Leader Wen and Father, and that means Shufu’s safe.”

For now.

“What are we going to do?” Wangji asked. There was no hesitation in him, no fear, and for a moment Lan Xichen envied him that confidence – what are we going to do, he said, because in Wangji’s mind there was not a second of doubt that they were going to do something, even though they were only children.

Except somehow Lan Xichen was supposed to figure out what.

Sometimes he hated being the older one.

“We…need to talk to Shufu,” Lan Xichen said, because that was only right. Shufu would know what they needed to do. Shufu would fix things. The only reason he hadn’t come back to fix things already was because of their father, their awful awful father, who probably wasn’t telling him anything he really needed to know, like how much his nephews really, really needed him. That was probably the only reason that Shufu hadn’t come back already. As soon as they got to Shufu and told him about it, he would figure something out. “Yes, that’s right. We need to talk to Shufu about it. And that means that we need to get to Shufu.”

“We should go to the Nightless City,” Wangji said, nodding firmly in agreement. “Right away. How much food should we pack?”

Lan Xichen grimaced. He’d looked at some of the maps in his father’s office while they were discussing the war and the Nightless City looked like it was really far away. Too far to walk, probably, even if they packed food the way they did for a long hike. They hadn’t even been allowed to go down to Caiyi by themselves yet, and that was still in Gusu. How were they supposed to get to the Nightless City…?

Unless someone gave them a ride.

“I have a better idea,” he said, relieved to have thought of something. “There’s a discussion conference coming up soon, hosted by Yunmeng Jiang; I’ve heard all the teachers talking about it. You remember the discussion conferences, when all the sects get together…? We’re going to send a group, a – what’s the word – a delegation, and so will all the other sects. The Wen sect will definitely be there.”

“Will Shufu be there?”

“Maybe? I don’t know for sure. But if we sneak into the luggage that gets packed for our sect and go along, then even if Shufu’s not there, then we can use that opportunity to sneak into the Wen sect’s luggage. As long as they don’t spot us, they’ll carry us all the way back to the Nightless City with them!”

“That’s a good idea,” Wangji decreed solemnly. “Only one problem. How long do we have to wait until the discussion conference? I want to go right away.”

“Another month or so, I think? Maybe a little less. But that’s a good thing, not a problem. We need time to plan out how we’re going to do it, and time to pack what we’ll need to take with us to go, since we’ll be gone for a while. I mean, we can’t just take some snacks and a bunny doll the way you did the last time we went to Caiyi.”

Wangji’s expression suggested that he disagreed, and also that he didn’t see what else they might need. Which was stupid: obviously they also needed clothing, if they were going to stay somewhere else for more than one day.

And probably other things, too, though Lan Xichen couldn’t think of any right then.

“A month isn’t that long,” Lan Xichen said encouragingly, and found himself gaining confidence from trying to convey it. “Just a little longer, okay, Wangji? Just a month, and then we’ll get Shufu back.”

And then everything would be all right again.

He was sure of it.

Chapter Text

It was time, Lan Qiren thought. Time for him to stop lying to himself.

Time to stop pretending that he was doing fine.

He was not doing fine. He was doing terribly.

He’d noticed, of course, that there was a problem with his cultivation – he could hardly miss it, given how much time he spent on contemplation, meditation, and music these days. By all rights, he ought to be seeing tremendous returns on it all by now, with his spiritual power increased, his control strengthened, his abilities grown further than he might have ever dreamed possible.

Instead, he was blocked.

He had been blocked since the moment he first entered seclusion, which was only reasonable. Ever since he’d first rushed home at the news of his brother’s hasty marriage and found out the fate to which his brother had sentenced both himself and his new bride, Lan Qiren had been possessed of an irrational fear of seclusion, and being forcefully sentenced to it had felt like dying every day. It was little surprise that he couldn’t make any progress while in there, alternating between days of profound sorrow, complete listlessness, apathy, and active self-hatred without any relief.

But he wasn’t there any longer.

Even if sometimes it felt like he was…

Though – more rarely than he’d expected.

Ironically enough, Wen Ruohan had been a great comfort to Lan Qiren, which wasn’t exactly a sentence he’d ever thought that he’d think in this life. Wen Ruohan, the tyrant, the madman, the man whose sect slowly but steadily gnawed away at the rest of the cultivation world and who swept into every discussion conference with a palpable sense of superiority that seemed to say that the rest of them were dirt under his feet rather than his equals, the man whose primary hobby appeared to be hurting people…no, Lan Qiren had never thought that he’d ever think a good thing about him, much less find comfort in his presence.

But he did. He had.

Lan Qiren supposed it was somewhat reasonable, or at least not completely unthinkable, that Wen Ruohan might be more considerate to the man he’d married than to a rival sect leader, though admittedly he would have guessed otherwise if he’d been asked. Perhaps it was simply him having not given Wen Ruohan enough credit –

Or perhaps it was merely that Wen Ruohan was preferable to Lan Qiren’s brother.

After all, if Wen Ruohan was occasionally malicious, then at least the malice was mostly generalized, consisting more of an apathetic hatred for the rest of the world at large than a specific and targeted hatred for him specifically.

It wasn’t as though Lan Qiren had entered the marriage with illusions, or anything of that sort. By the time he’d been performing his bows, he’d already resigned himself to a fairly miserable and likely very short future, and everything since then that had gone the other way had come as a pleasant surprise. It had been his good luck when it turned out that the purposes Wen Ruohan intended for him – which, ridiculous as it might seem, appeared to consist primarily of sex and (improbably enough) agreeing to continue teaching students – by definition involved his presence, which in turn provided him with some limited protection from the worst of Wen Ruohan’s temper. Still, Lan Qiren didn’t deceive himself into thinking that anything about their marriage or Wen Ruohan’s plans for him meant that he wasn’t one mistake away from the Fire Palace, if he were lucky, or being buried alive and forgotten, if he wasn’t.

Despite all that, Wen Ruohan was still preferable to Lan Qiren’s brother.

And that was terrible, wasn’t it?

The rules said Be a filial child, and custom said treat your older brother as your father. Lan Qiren…Lan Qiren had tried. From the very first moment he’d learned the rule and even before, he had tried to please his brother. He’d loved his brother, who was so much older than he was, whom everyone always spoke so highly of. His brother the prodigy, his brother the treasure of the Lan sect, his brother as peerless as the finest jade, incomparable, matchless – Lan Qiren had admired him so much. Lan Qiren had been so proud of him. He had been proud to call himself his younger brother.

His brother, as far as Lan Qiren could tell, had never been proud of him.

It had taken many years for Lan Qiren to understand that, and still more to accept it. He had never been good at understanding people, relying more on lessons and pattern recognition than social cues, and for a very long time he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge that his brother’s behavior fell into the pattern that signified people who disliked him. The rules said Do not harbor doubts, and so Lan Qiren had tried, time and time again, to give his brother his trust, his love, his best efforts, hoping that one day his brother would love him in return.

It had been his only hope. His mother had already died, and his teachers had been clear enough with him that his father was unlikely to ever be able to love him properly. They had explained how the death of his wife, Lan Qiren’s mother, had thoroughly broken his heart and with it his ability to love, and that Lan Qiren, whose birth had been the ultimate cause of that death, was too much a terrible reminder of that loss for him to overcome; he would never be able to so much as look at Lan Qiren, much less treat him with affection. It had been a kindness in its way, Lan Qiren supposed, for them to tell him such a thing so early, to try to prepare him or shield him or teach him to shield himself from inevitable disappointment like that. Presumably they had done so in order that he would know not to blame himself and, eventually, after quite a long while, he hadn’t. He’d learned to expect nothing from his father, and therefore to be content when that was precisely what he received.

But his brother…

No one had ever said a bad word about his brother. And so Lan Qiren hadn’t, either.

The rules said Be filial, and Lan Qiren had been filial.

The rules said Be loyal, and Lan Qiren had been loyal.

The rules said Be grateful, and Lan Qiren had been grateful, even though his brother had given him little enough to be grateful about.

Even when his brother had retreated into seclusion, even after everything that that seclusion meant, Lan Qiren had tried to find a way to continue to love him. He’d tried to convince himself to be forgiving for what his brother’s decision had taken away from him, because the rules said Do not hold grudges, and he’d tried, time and time again, to have respect for his brother’s decision, too, though he’d never succeeded. He’d contorted himself for years and years, twisting himself into all sorts of shapes to try to force himself to accept it, merely accept it – he’d practically blinded both his eyes trying to understand it, and yet in the end he never really had.

In the end, Lan Qiren had not even managed to learn to accept it. He had instead grown to resent his brother, even to hate him, a secret sort of hate that he’d never admitted to even himself. He’d lied to himself for years to pretend that he didn’t – less for the sake of the brother he never saw any more, and more to try to pretend to himself that he wasn’t that sort of person. That he wasn’t the sort of person who would turn against his family like that, no matter what the provocation was; that he wasn't the sort of person who would hate like that.

It had been a lie.

Do not tell lies.

Loving his brother – that hadn’t been a lie. Lan Qiren had loved his brother. In truth, he still loved his brother, even if it was mostly theoretical, a love of thought rather than feeling. Even if it was just the love that he felt that he owed to him as a brother, rather than a genuine love.

Lan Qiren knew that despite everything he’d done, despite their dislike, Lan Qiren’s brother was still his family, the fact of it as inescapable for him as it was for his brother. He knew that you were supposed to love your family. You were supposed to love them more than anything else in the world.

And yet…and yet, if given the choice between evils, Lan Qiren would pick Wen Ruohan in a heartbeat.

Wen Ruohan.

It seemed like a betrayal, somehow.

It was true that the Nightless City wasn’t the Cloud Recesses. In the few instances when Lan Qiren had woken up alone, he had known at once that he wasn’t at home, and the continuous background patter of noise, so different from the Cloud Recesses’ serenity, had after some time even made the idea of any degree of isolation return to being mildly pleasant rather than terrifyingly awful. He had no expectations here, and fewer fears. After all, even if Wen Ruohan did eventually force him into seclusion the way his brother had, at least it wouldn’t be in He Kexin’s old house.

But…he hadn’t been forced into seclusion, or tortured, or even harmed in any way (a few scratches and sex-induced bruises aside). Instead, Wen Ruohan had been…almost kind, really, in his own way. He’d let Lan Qiren take up a truly inappropriate amount of his time and space, and if he remained dangerous and unpredictable, then at least the danger was enough to take up virtually all the attention Lan Qiren had to spare at any moment they shared space together, distracting him from all the things he didn’t want to think about.

Somehow, as unbelievable as it might seem, Wen Ruohan’s presence and company had single-handedly made everything bearable again.

Everything.

All the music and the contemplation and the meditation that had been completely useless to Lan Qiren in seclusion, the serenity his brother had robbed him of –

It was his once more, as it always should have been. And it had been Wen Ruohan who had helped him regain it.

Undoubtedly that was why Lan Qiren was having his moment of crisis now, in Wen Ruohan’s temporary absence.

The absence itself wasn’t anything unusual. Wen Ruohan was a sect leader, after all, and no sect leader could escape the burdens of the role. He’d been summoned away two days before, grumbling about some problem with his cousins – ones that shared his surname, and were therefore in his eyes better than normal people, qualified to have a problem that demanded the personal presence of the sect leader to solve.

Lan Qiren had been quietly breaking down ever since.

(Was it merely the change in his routine, however minimal, that he disliked? Or did he genuinely miss Wen Ruohan? He couldn’t be entirely sure. Though perhaps it didn’t make a difference, in the end, whether the problem was the injury originally incurred, bleeding out, or the loss of the crutch that he’d use to support himself…)

He had reverted entirely. He couldn’t sleep properly, he couldn’t meditate properly. He’d more or less had to stop cultivating entirely lest he induce a qi deviation, and precisely at the moment when the century-old master of a sect known for medical marvels wouldn’t be there to save him from it. Of course, if he died, Wen Ruohan would probably assume he’d done it intentionally, paranoiac that he was, as some move made deliberately to spite him. It would infuriate him – he was that sort of person, seeing plots in every shadow and taking any loss far too personally. If Lan Qiren died before he got the use he wanted out of him, he might even blame Lan Qiren’s sect for it, somehow, irrationally, and take it out on them.

Also on Lan Qiren’s brother, which very nearly made the thought a little tempting, but Lan Qiren would never willingly do anything that could harm his nephews even inadvertently. He certainly would never let Wen Ruohan loose like a mad dog in their general direction, not if he could help it.

…and his sect, of course. His nephews and his sect; he was loyal to them both.

His nephews…

Yes, it was time.

Lan Qiren had put off thinking about it for long enough already. He’d steadfastly avoided his courtyard in the Nightless City, the one with the moon name he’d already forgotten because everything in the Nightless City seemed to be named after some celestial body or another, and more importantly, within that courtyard, the note his nephews had sent him that he knew was waiting for him. He’d avoided the note, as if by avoiding the piece of paper he could avoid thinking about what it meant, the grief and sorrow that he suffered and would suffer and which seemed as though it would never end – he’d been ignoring the issue so far, but that was no solution.

Do not grieve in excess.

Some people might have been able to live in denial forever, but not Lan Qiren.

He’d had his fill of closing his eyes and looking away, a lifetime’s worth of it – he hadn’t felt as though he had a choice but to look away, when it came to He Kexin, though he’d hated every moment of it. She hadn’t had a trial, though she should have had a trial. Even if the sentence at the end of that trial would have been death, she was entitled to that much! In their strict sect, death would not have been an unreasonable punishment for the murder of a sect elder inside their own home, without any reason that anyone had ever mentioned, but that punishment, like any punishment, could and should have only been imposed in the right way, or not at all.

Or so Lan Qiren had always thought.

He'd never said it, though. He hadn’t felt like he could.

Lan Qiren hadn’t been there at the time. He hadn’t witnessed the event or the immediate aftermath himself. He’d only seen the later effects, the results, arriving home just in time to learn that his brother, newly married, would be retreating into seclusion while his new bride went into a seclusion of her own alongside him. Because he was late, because he wasn’t there, Lan Qiren had always felt that he had no choice but to accept the answer his sect had settled on: imprisonment for life, without a trial, instead of death following one. It had been a reasonable answer, he supposed, even if it was one that had made no one happy.

It had still gnawed away at him.

Perhaps it was just that he’d been forced to become a part of it. Lan Qiren had had nothing to do with He Kexin before her imprisonment, and it had always seemed incredibly unfair that after it he should be made one of her jailors through no choice of his own. Going there every month, often more than once, seeing her constantly miserable and unable to do anything about it, wanting to do something about it and having to tell himself over and over that it had been her own crimes that had brought her there – probably that was the real reason he hated seclusion as much as he did, as much if not more than anything to do with the brother he’d once loved and now hated. His sect’s rules reminded them all to Uphold the value of justice, and he did, he tried, but He Kexin’s seclusion had terrified him nonetheless.

He…could not say that he missed her, not really. They’d disliked each other, quite thoroughly, and he suspected they would have even if she hadn’t been the woman who’d dragged his brother down and he hadn’t been the brother of the man who’d pursued and married her despite her disinterest. He’d pitied her, she’d resented him; he’d resented her, she’d scorned him. They’d simply had nothing in common…except for Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji.

That had been enough.

Shufu we miss you lots, the note said when he saw it again, neatly placed onto the writing desk in preparation for his visit. Childish, hasty, badly composed – Lan Xichen must have been in quite a hurry when he was writing it. “Lots”, really. He knew better than that!

Please come back soon!

Lan Qiren swallowed.

His grief was as vast and all-encompassing as the sea, and he was drowning. His brother hated him, his sect had left him to rot, his nephews…missed him. His nephews needed him, and he had let them down, and that was the worst of all.

His brother who hated him, he could hate in return, however futilely. His sect that had allowed him to be locked in seclusion, he could understand and maybe even forgive, however much they did or did not need his forgiveness. But his own failure…

He could do nothing about that.

Lan Qiren gently traced the words Xichen had written to him, thumbed Wangji’s blunt signature. He carefully held the page away from himself so that the tears that blinded him did not wet the paper.

He could remember how Wangji’s little hand had felt in his, the first time he had wrapped his little nephew’s fingers around a brush and traced out the characters of his name. He remembered how fascinated Lan Wangji had been by it, how solemn and serious – completely unlike Lan Xichen, who’d giggled and wiggled the entire time it had been him and promptly (somehow) splashed ink into his own face. And yet, somehow, it was Xichen that had grown into an amiable, biddable child, while Wangji, no matter how much he matured, often reverted back to being a vicious little terror…

Lan Qiren hoped Wangji wasn’t biting anyone. Or, well, no one whose cultivation was low enough that they might get hurt.

(No one whose cultivation was high enough that they would hurt him.)

Lan Qiren missed them. He missed them so much. He hated being away from them. He hated being afraid all the time. He hated the way his mind would read out the list of punishments his sect permitted to be meted out to young children, reminding him of everything his nephews could be suffering. He hated the way his memories whispered long-forgotten reminders that his brother had once imposed punishments on him that went beyond those allowed for his age, on the basis that Lan Qiren had been mature enough to take them. He hated the way he obsessively reflected on both Xichen and Wangji to see if they had any traits that might be similar to the ones his brother had so disliked in him. He hated the way that the thought of them going about their daily business the Cloud Recesses was a thing of fear and vain hope, not joy. He missed them, he feared for them, he loved them, and it hurt.

It hurt.

Love hurt. He’d always known it would.

It felt as though everything reminded Lan Qiren of them. His wonderful nephews, who were so good and sometimes bad and who Lan Qiren loved no matter what. Even if they grew up and turned away from him the way his brother had, he would never blame them, never resent them, never hate them – that was the familial love he ought to have had for his brother, he supposed, if only he’d remembered Do not be haughty and complacent or Do not hold others in contempt a little better.

He loved them, he adored them, he connected everything to them. He ran his fingers along Wen Ruohan’s bookshelves and thought Xichen would do well to read this one; he looked out the window to see the gardeners chasing a gopher and thought We must not let Wangji find out or else he will attempt a rescue. He had even started imagining them here in the Nightless City, running down the corridor Lan Qiren trekked down every morning in naughty violation of the rule against running, sitting in the gardens awed by the fireflies that here seemed to be everywhere at night, waving at him from the dinner table with smiles of genuine contentment –

Lan Qiren wasn’t losing his mind, but sometimes he wished he was.

There was no qi deviation waiting for him, filled with inviting illusions, easy to blame for everything. Nothing like that. He was just…suffering. Tired and afraid, painfully often. Helpless to change his fate. Hopeless.

Xichen, Wangji, I’m sorry –

Lan Qiren took a deep breath, held it for a little while, and then exhaled.

It was not hopeless. That was the misery speaking. Lying. Do not tell lies. It was nothing but his irrational fear of seclusion abruptly brought to life, wrapping him in chains until he choked; it was his own overactive imagination, torturing him more effectively than any punishment. Those listless days, grey as dirt and heavy as a mountain; those days where he could do nothing but weep for everything he’d lost. He was doing it to himself.

What use are you being to Xichen and Wangji now?

(What use have you ever been to anyone?)

Once, when Wangji was about nine months old, Xichen had caught a cold. At least, it had seemed like only a cold at first, and Lan Qiren had been fretful, a little worried the way inexperienced parents often were, but not worried enough. Wangji had gotten it almost at once, of course, and his cute little offended face when sneezing almost made up for the way he wailed and cried after he’d woken himself up in the middle of the night. But then the next morning Xichen had woken up with a high fever, and Wangji did, too, and that was when Lan Qiren had become truly afraid. For seven days and nights he had not slept more than a few moments here and there, irrationally terrified that closing his eyes for too long would mean that they’d slip away from him, and on the eighth day when their fevers broke at last, he’d realized that they’d missed their usual appointment with He Kexin by two days.

Bleary with sleeplessness and giddy with relief, Lan Qiren had not immediately gone to rest the way everyone had told him to, but instead dragged himself to He Kexin’s house to tell her that her sons were getting better, hoping to share the joy of it. It was only when he’d gotten there that he’d realized that she hadn’t even known they were sick.

No one had told her.

After all, who would think to bother? Other than her servants, who were under orders not to bother her and whose company she disdained, Lan Qiren was the only one He Kexin ever saw besides her husband, who was even more secluded than she. It was Lan Qiren and only Lan Qiren, her husband’s younger brother who visited her only from a sense of duty, that was her sole connection to the outside world. It had always been so, ever since her imprisonment, but somehow it had never seemed so stark.

What isolation. What misery.

Lan Qiren had been weak. He’d seen himself in her mirror, finding that he looked as if he’d just crawled out of his grave – he was haggard and exhausted, his expression somehow bemused, staring at her with red-rimmed eyes and a mark on his cheek from where he’d leaned against his hand for too long, his clothing crumpled and dirty from not having been changed in too long.

He’d blurted out, “How can you bear it?”

“I wasn’t aware I had a choice,” she sneered at him. “Are you going to give me one?”

“If you want,” he said in return, too tired and lost to think better of it, to remind himself that she was here because of her own actions, her own crimes, her own perfidy. A man was dead because of her, yes, but it had been years and years already, and she’d already borne the Lan sect two boys to replace him, with a husband that to this day Lan Qiren wasn’t sure she very much liked. Surely, surely, it had to have been enough? Surely at some point, the punishment had to end? Even if it meant breaking his sect rules, surely… “Just tell me what you want. Tell me, and I will do it.”

He Kexin had studied him in silence for a while.

“Go home,” she finally said with a faint sigh. “You stupid man.”

He’d gone home.

Lan Qiren wasn’t actually stupid. He knew that his current state was what his brother wanted, his brother who’d so inexplicably disliked him in his childhood, his brother who for no reason at all seemed to hate him in their adulthood. His brother’s goal was Lan Qiren’s suffering. He wanted him to break, and he would find it all the more gratifying if he could do it using the same methods that hadn’t broken He Kexin in all those years – although Lan Qiren supposed it must have, in the end. It must have worn her down slowly, like water on a stone, wearing away at her strength until there was nothing left. Why else would she have killed herself? She, who had always persisted, stubborn to the last, even if only out of sheer spite…

What use are you to Xichen and Wangji now?

Lan Qiren breathed deeply again.

His nephews loved him. His nephews needed him. Right now, he could do nothing for them.

His failure –

No.

Not his failure.

His brother had done this to him. His brother had done this to him purposefully, maliciously. He’d stolen Lan Qiren’s life away not once but twice – he’d taken away Lan Qiren’s dreams of freedom when he’d first entered seclusion, and he’d taken away everything else when he’d left it. He’d stripped Lan Qiren of his sense of purpose. He’d taken the roles Lan Qiren had borne for so long, sect leader and father both, and thrown them around his own shoulders like an ill-fitting cloak. Like being a father was something you could just step into, after so many years of indifferent absence. Like it was something you could take away.

You’re hopeless. A failure. You can’t do anything to help them –

“Fuck you,” Lan Qiren said to the air, to his absent brother. No vulgar language. “I hate you.”

He’d never said it out loud before.

Do not take your words lightly.

“I hate you.”

He meant it.

Another deep breath. Another.

He Kexin hadn’t given up, not until the very end, and neither would Lan Qiren. So what if his brother had taken away his sense of purpose? He would find another.

Please come back soon!

Lan Qiren would likely never return to live in the Cloud Recesses in this lifetime, he knew that. Marriage didn’t work that way. What was sent out was not so easily brought back, not like that, not in the same way it had been before. But…that didn’t mean he was helpless. It didn’t mean he was hopeless. It didn’t mean he had to resign himself.

Be a partner to your wife, if your wife will be yours.

Lan Qiren’s wife…

Lan Qiren’s wife was Wen Ruohan.

Lan Qiren’s wife was the most terrifying man in the world.

He hadn’t planned for that, and he doubted his brother had, either. In fact, he doubted that his brother had thought any more of this marriage than the prospect of the Fire Palace and Lan Qiren’s future torment therein. After Lan Qiren had had some time to reflect on it, this entire marriage had the sight and smell and sound of one of Wen Ruohan’s wilder schemes, the risky ones that failed more often than they succeeded, but which, in the rare times when they did succeed, could shake the world.

One way or another, Lan Qiren was determined to make this time one of the successes.

Perhaps it was true that Lan Qiren was not a man meant for marriage. Perhaps someone who was better suited to it would have already been moved by Wen Ruohan, who had been a comfort to Lan Qiren in his misery, who had, other than a bit of mockery, done nothing bad to Lan Qiren so far, despite having every opportunity to do so. Even if Wen Ruohan couldn’t really be trusted, on account of being an unstable madman with a penchant for hurting people, then at least Lan Qiren had the luck of having something that he wanted, at least for now. There were marriages based on far less than that, real ones, good ones.

But Lan Qiren –

Lan Qiren was not moved. Lan Qiren was not thinking of Wen Ruohan as a man should his wife.

Lan Qiren was thinking of Wen Ruohan as a sword that he could wield.

One of those guqins Wen Ruohan kept pulling out of his treasury, perhaps. Beautiful, deadly, and left too long unused. Out of tune and more than a little broken, dangerous, but also powerful, capable enough in the hands of someone with the will to use it.

Lan Qiren wasn’t going to let his brother break him. No matter what.

No matter what he had to do.

No matter who he had to use to do it.

A breath. An exhale.

A purpose.

Do not fall to evil, the rules said. Do not associate with evil. But they also said, Do not fear. Do not give up. Love and respect yourself.

Have courage and integrity. Do not lose your life’s goal.

Do not break faith.

A breath. An exhale.

Please come back soon! We miss you!                                                                  

Lan Qiren closed his eyes tightly, then forcefully relaxed, releasing the tension within him.

Xichen, Wangji, wait for me, he promised. I will find a way to help you.

He gently folded up the page they had written for him and tucked it within his robes, putting it right over his heart. He left it there for the count of ten, then removed it once more and hid it in his bookshelves, tucking it into Xichen’s copy of the Lan sect rules.

He felt…better, Lan Qiren thought. Lighter.

He hadn’t realized how much his lingering efforts to absolve his brother, by now as much habit as breathing, had been a burden on him, not until he had consciously decided to stop doing it. His brother’s behavior could not be understood, could not be rationalized, could not be forgiven. His brother’s behavior was detestable, as so much of what he had done had been detestable. He was wrong, and always had been wrong, and Lan Qiren would no longer blame himself for what had always been the fault of another. Or, well, he’d try not to, anyway – he really did hate change, even when it was the right sort of change, made for the better.

He was still bleeding, but he’d at least admitted that the wound existed. Now he could break and reset the injury, in order to let it heal…

Wen Ruohan would be appalled if he heard me mangling my medical metaphors in such a way, Lan Qiren thought to himself, suddenly amused, though in a fragile sort of way, not disrupting his overall feeling of solemnity as he walked once more out of his courtyard. Is it a stab wound or a broken bone? Is he a crutch or a bandage? Why would you even need a crutch if you’d been stabbed…?

“Oh, there you are!” a female voice trilled.

Lan Qiren came to a sudden halt as a woman he’d never seen before bustled right up to him and slid her hand into his arm, clinging to him like a limpet. Or possibly like a leech…

“Miss – Madam,” he corrected himself, seeing her hair done up as a married woman. “Can I help you?”

“We’re having tea in the gardens, and you absolutely must join us,” the woman said, shaking his arm purposefully. She jangled as she did: she was wearing an absolutely atrocious amount of jewelry, including a full headpiece set, several necklaces, bangles and bracelets, each and every one made of gold and encrusted with precious jewels. Her underlying outfit was somehow even louder, with multiple shades of bright red in appallingly shiny fabric. Lan Qiren was certain that her outfit constituted overdressing even in sects that didn’t have a rule against more than three adornments.

His eyes hurt just looking at her.

“I won’t take no for an answer,” she said, and started tugging at him as if she intended to drag him off by force. Not that she could. She was around the same age he was, he’d guess, even though her make-up resembled that of a much younger woman, but her cultivation was far lower. “You’ve robbed us of your presence for too long, Lan-gege. How long have you been in the Nightless City without coming to see us…?”

Lan Qiren grimaced.

Tearing his hand away would be rude, he reminded himself dolefully. And the woman, whoever she was, was probably right about how he’d isolated himself since arriving in the Nightless City – which was hardly in line with his rules about supporting his wife’s family and not embarrassing his wife in public. He really should make an effort to be…sociable.

(On second thought, was seclusion really that bad…?)

The woman’s intended destination turned out to be one of the Nightless City’s many gardens, this one with an outdoor pavilion next to a small pond over-filled with water lilies. There was another woman already sitting there waiting next to a table already filled with snacks – also married, older and with features less classically beautiful than the lady that had brought him, though with more presence and grandeur. She was wearing an outfit that was not nearly so appalling, although it was every bit as rich. Still red, but with precious gems instead of gold, using patterned embroidery with (comparatively) demure little rubies twinkling throughout…

“Oh, Shen Mingbi, how wonderful! You found him!” the seated lady called, clapping her hands. “Come sit, come sit, both of you.”

“I did, I did,” the woman who’d dragged him here boasted, beaming. “Lu-jiejie should be proud of me!”

Lan Qiren blinked, a little surprised. Given how they were both dressed head-to-toe in the colors of the Wen sect, he would have assumed that their surnames would be Wen. How had that list he’d gone through at the beginning gone? Wen Tian, Wen Shi, Wen Jing, Wen Meitan…

No, wait a moment.

Lu and Shen – he knew those surnames. He knew those sects, though he hadn’t bothered thinking of them in years, if he’d ever thought of them at all. There hadn’t been any point, not since they’d been wholly gobbled up by the Wen sect following…well, following Wen Ruohan’s very astute political marriages.

These were Wen Ruohan’s wives.

Lan Qiren felt his face and ears start burning hot. He hoped he wasn’t blushing, but he had the distinct suspicion that he was.

“Thank you for inviting me,” he said out of lack of anything better to say.

He was mortified: he should have recognized them at once. Wen Ruohan’s wives had acted as hostesses when the discussion conferences were held at the Nightless City, though Wen Ruohan had generally not invited them to attend or sit beside him during the conferences the way Madam Jin or Yu Ziyuan did when their sects were acting as host. As a result, Lan Qiren had only really seen them at a distance and, being single, had never been forced to actually interact with them or really hear much about them. The job of dealing with them should rightfully have been He Kexin’s, as the sect leader’s wife, but the Lan sect had always pleaded illness for her just as they pleaded seclusion for their sect leader. One of Lan Qiren’s more reliable female cousins had been in charge of dealing with them to the extent it was necessary, and she had not been inclined to gossip.

Somehow, he’d completely forgotten that they existed.

“Nonsense, it’s our pleasure,” Lu Qipei, the previous first Madam Wen, said with a smile. It was a believable one, unlike Shen Mingbi’s expression, which even Lan Qiren could figure out was actually a grimace, a slash of bright red twisted into bared teeth. The Wen sect and its subsidiaries did not believe in the rule against lying. “We’re all one family now, are we not? We should get to know each other. Please sit and drink some tea with us.”

Do not argue with family.

Lan Qiren sat.

“It’s so nice to finally have a chance to speak with you, Lan-gege,” Shen Mingbi said as Lu Qipei passed him a cup. “Our dear husband has been positively inseparable from you since your arrival. We were starting to think that he’d never let you go!”

Lan Qiren choked before he even took a sip of the tea he’d been offered.

“Ah,” he said, and cleared his throat, putting the tea back down on the table. “I – apologize. It had not been my intent to…monopolize.”

Was it too much to ask that the earth open up beneath his feet and swallow him up?

Probably.

Oh, but Lan Qiren wanted to slap himself for his foolishness. What an idiot he was! He knew that not all sects were like the Lan sect, marrying for love and taking only a single dao companion in a lifetime. Most cultivators married only once, yes, but that was largely on account of there being relatively fewer powerful female cultivators in comparison to the men. Certainly most sects were more than comfortable with men marrying more than once, and with the notion of keeping a handful of concubines or raising mistresses on the outside – Lao Nie had had two wives, albeit in succession, and everyone knew about Jin Guangshan’s habits, though Madam Jin had enough power to ensure that he’d never brought any of them home…more embarrassingly, Lan Qiren had known about Wen Ruohan’s previous marriages. Did he not pride himself on how much knowledge he’d accumulated about the cultivation world and how it helped him navigate the murky world of intersect politics? How could he have forgotten about something as obvious as a fellow sect leader’s immediate family, much less one that would be so relevant to him personally…?

How could he have forgotten that he was going to have to share?

“Oh, not to worry, not to worry,” Lu Qipei said, still smiling. Lan Qiren was sure there were daggers in her smile, even if they didn’t show. “We of all people know how our dear husband gets when he’s got some plan in mind. Isn’t that right, Shen-meimei?”

“Absolutely, Lu-jiejie.” Shen Mingbi played with one of her assortment of hair ornaments, jingling a little as she giggled. “But it’s all right, we’re not jealous…or at least not too jealous. There’s no doubt that our dear husband will come back to us soon enough, once he needs something more than mere politics to get him through the night.”

Lan Qiren blinked owlishly at her.

“We are not spending our nights discussing politics,” he said, almost wishing that they did. That at least would be a good excuse. “That was why I was apologizing.”

For some reason, that got both women to stare at him, first in shock and then in dismay, their eyes widening, then narrowing.

“Are you saying you’re actually sleeping together?” Lu Qipei asked, her mask of sweetness abruptly replaced with sternness, and she scowled when Lan Qiren nodded. “How often?”

“I – do not think that is relevant – or – or appropriate – ”

“We’re all married to him,” she reminded him. “Naturally we must know everything about our husband if we are to serve him properly. How many times have you done it so far?”

“…I…have not been…counting…”

No one had told him he had to keep track!

“Are you saying you’ve been doing it every night?” Shen Mingbi’s eye was twitching. “That’s ridiculous. Let’s see, how many days have you been here – ”

Lan Qiren wanted to die. “That calculation method will not work.”

They stared at him, not understanding. He was going to have to explain.

He cleared his throat again. “Sect Leader Wen has occasionally requested – ah, that is – during the day – on occasion – more than once – ”

That was verging on near incoherence, though technically correct, if rather understating the matter. In fact, Lan Qiren had found Wen Ruohan to have a particularly voracious appetite for such things. When the mood struck him, it wasn’t uncommon for him to ask for it twice or even three times in a day. And the mood seemed to strike him quite often…

Lan Qiren trailed off, noticing that the two women were staring at him again, but now they were frowning.

“You call him Sect Leader Wen?” Lu Qipei asked. There was a strange twist to her voice, difficult to interpret. It was not quite the hard edge she’d had when talking about Lan Qiren’s sexual activities but also not the false sweetness she’d pretended to have at the beginning.

“Naturally.” Lan Qiren wasn’t sure what she was getting at. He’d always called Wen Ruohan by his sect title, at least out loud. The man was an ancient monster after all, and as far as Lan Qiren knew he didn’t have a personal title. What else was he supposed to call him? Wen-xiong? Ridiculous.

“Naturally,” Shen Mingbi echoed, and giggled again. That, at least, had a familiar tone: she was mocking him. “Naturally. You’re not really sleeping with him, are you?”

Now it was Lan Qiren’s turn to scowl. “My sect is Gusu Lan,” he said stiffly. “Do not tell lies is a rule.”

“Oh, sure, of course, of course. You’re sleeping with him, but you call him Sect Leader Wen. Tell me, Lan-gege, do you call him that in bed, too?”

Lan Qiren cast his mind back, but the memories that returned were all the same: yes, he did.

It all came out pretty much the same, too: Are you having trouble with your self-control, Sect Leader Wen? Would it help if I tied you up? or Sect Leader Wen, stop wiggling so much! You said you would behave or If you persist in doing what you are doing, Sect Leader Wen, I will not hesitate to thrash you, do not think that I am unwilling or I expected better of you, Sect Leader Wen. Is this really all you can handle…? or I am not certain I heard you, Sect Leader Wen. Is there something you want of me? Speak clearly. No, clearly and precisely – I want you to tell me exactly what it is that you wish me to do to you. In detail. Or what? Or else I will do nothing at all…

Wait. Had he been bullying Wen Ruohan?

Had he been enjoying bullying Wen Ruohan?!

Lan Qiren swallowed down his alarm and tried to figure out how to best answer the question.

“Well?” Shen Mingbi jeered when he didn’t respond right away. “If you’ve done it so many times, you must know by now. Tell me, do you shout out ‘Sect Leader Wen, Sect Leader Wen’ when he’s – ”

“This is nice,” Wen Ruohan said from where he was standing at the entrance to the pavilion, and all three of them startled like chickens discovering a fox had sauntered up to them without their notice. “I’m so glad you’ve gotten a chance to meet.”

Lan Qiren recovered first, or at least spoke first: “You finished the business you had with your cousin already? I thought you said you would be gone at least three days.”

“I got bored,” Wen Ruohan said with an indifferent shrug. And then he smirked, though his eyes remained cold. “Why? Were you making plans without me?”

The slow, lingering emphasis he gave to the word “plans” was suggestive in a way that brought to mind Lan Qiren’s rule about not giving his wife reason to doubt his fidelity. Though surely that was unnecessary in this circumstance, given that the women he was sitting with were Wen Ruohan’s own wives…?

“Not at all,” Lu Qipei said. She looked wary. “We were simply becoming better acquainted.”

“Really,” Wen Ruohan said. “Is that what you were doing…”

Between his emotional turmoil from earlier and the hideous awkwardness of being questioned about his sex life, Lan Qiren had already been developing a headache. To now be faced with Wen Ruohan’s unreasonable paranoia seemed truly unfair.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for him, he took refuge in propriety – and bad temper.

“They were expressing justifiable complaints that I have been monopolizing your time,” Lan Qiren said tartly, and Wen Ruohan looked at him in surprise. “My own rudeness was regrettable enough, but you have no such excuse. What were you thinking?”

Wen Ruohan’s mouth opened and then closed again without any sound. Eventually, he choked out: “What I was…thinking?”

“You have wives! You have a duty to them, just as I do to you. How can you neglect them?” Lan Qiren scolded. “And beyond that, why have you not introduced us? Really, Sect Leader Wen – ”

He abruptly choked, suddenly awkward with the title in a way he’d never been before.

Lu Qipei and Shen Mingbi weren’t wrong, exactly, that the familiar term of address wasn’t quite right anymore – it had been one thing when he’d been Sect Leader Lan, but now he was just Lan Qiren, and moreover he’d married into the Wen sect. At minimum he should just be calling Wen Ruohan “Sect Leader”, the way the Wen sect disciples did, but even that seemed a little distant for a married couple.

…have we really been doing all that without even being on close enough terms to speak informally?

Lan Qiren felt his face heating up again, even worse than before. For some stupid inexplicable reason, he could hear the stentorian voice of one of the teachers from his early adolescence bellowing Promiscuity is forbidden! Do not indulge in a life of pleasure! enthusiastically into his ear the way he used to. Lan Qiren could even see the way that old man would wildly wave his arms in the air while detailing, with no little gusto, all the terrible things that would undoubtedly happen to all of them if they disobeyed those particular rules…

“You know,” Wen Ruohan said after a moment, “I will be extremely annoyed if I went to all that effort to bring Lan Qiren back here only for the two of you to make him die of embarrassment.”

He sounded like he wanted to laugh, though, which was an improvement over his earlier coldness.

“He’s not dying,” Shen Mingbi protested, then frowned, squinting at Lan Qiren. “I think?”

“I am not dying,” Lan Qiren said, willing his heartbeat to slow down and not make a liar out of him.

“He might be dying,” Lu Qipei said with a faint sneer. “Really, husband, where did you find him?”

“Gusu Lan,” Lan Qiren said, incredibly thankful for a question he could actually answer without ripping off the rest of his already too-thin face. “I already told you that earlier, did I not?”

Wen Ruohan coughed in a way that suggested amusement, probably at Lan Qiren’s expense.

“I will introduce you all properly later today, at dinner,” he announced. “For the moment, Lan Qiren, come with me. I require you – ”

“I bet you do,” Lu Qipei said, leaning back in her seat and glaring at Wen Ruohan, who looked briefly surprised once again, this time from being interrupted. “Tell me, do you intend to leave us any face at all? Is it not enough that you’ve stripped us of our positions – ”

“Oh, that again,” Wen Ruohan said, interrupting her with a casual wave of his hand. “Is that all? I don’t care about that. Lan Qiren, with me, now – unless you’d prefer to continue your earlier conversation?”

Lan Qiren had not known that he was a rude and unchivalrous coward until this very moment, but also the thought of continuing to talk to either woman for a single moment longer was completely unbearable.

“I will be going, then,” he told them, and swept after Wen Ruohan with as much dignity as he could piece together.

Once they were safely out of the garden, he glanced sidelong at Wen Ruohan, wondering how much of the earlier conversation he’d heard. Likely most of it. “Sect Leader Wen, on the subject of terms of address – ”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Wen Ruohan interrupted. His eyes were gleaming. “I rather like ‘Sect Leader Wen.’ Unless you’d prefer to use some sort of nickname…?”

Chapter Text

Lan Qiren had done something while he was gone, Wen Ruohan thought to himself, observing the other man as they meandered down the paths of the Nightless City. More than likely he’d gone to confront his demons in the Crescent Moon Courtyard – he’d largely hidden it by the time Wen Ruohan had found him being harassed by Lu Qipei and Shen Mingbi, but his eyes were still a little reddened in a way that suggested he had been crying earlier.

Also, his cultivation had increased. A lot.

Irritatingly, it didn’t seem that Lan Qiren had even noticed it yet. He had a remarkably solid foundation, the sort that you built up over years of effort focused on the basics, and that meant he could amass a rather large amount of spiritual energy without feeling the strain. Presumably, he’d done just that – though it was impossible to tell whether the extent of the sudden increase was from having removed the emotional entanglement that had been tripping him up, a breakthrough on account of enlightenment, or simply, denials aside, having gotten closer to a qi deviation than was strictly healthy.

(Personally, Wen Ruohan suspected that the technique of getting stronger by going a little too close to qi deviations without dying was how the Nie sect had started out, with their wild tempers and vicious sabers that were so intertwined that it was impossible to tell which one had come first. Of course, only someone who subscribed to the Nie sect’s insane belief that fighting evil was more important than living well, or who was already inclined to die of rage, would be willing to deal with the way the technique later backfired. But as a matter of pure efficiency, it was probably second only to outright demonic cultivation as a means of building power…)

The cultivation style of Gusu generally didn’t lend itself to those sorts of sudden increases. Their tradition was the orthodox of the orthodox, all hard work and good living, very focused on slow and steady accumulation, and Lan Qiren was no exception to the rule. As Wen Ruohan had personally observed, Lan Qiren really did meditate and practice his swordsmanship or music every day and, knowing his ridiculous addiction to his sect rules, probably also genuinely tried to honestly love all beings, not be unreasonable, all those sorts of things. In fact, Wen Ruohan had also noticed that his golden core had an unusual purity, shining brighter than others of the same level of power. He hadn’t yet figured out why that might be, though, or if it had any particular effects – perhaps that would be something to look into, eventually?

Wen Ruohan hadn’t bothered with anything medical in literal decades, his sect’s fame in that regard aside. He far preferred arrays, which let him play with power directly, with talismans as a second choice, and only then physical weapons, such as the sword, every cultivator’s standby, or the spear, his long-ago lost brother’s preference; in comparison, needles, medicines, and the finicky human body, at least in its healthy and intact form, were much less interesting to him. He’d only ever bothered to learn medicine in the first place because he distrusted others’ motives in tending to him and wanted to be able to verify that they were doing what they said they were doing, and these days he only exercised that part of his brain when he was keeping people alive to better torment them.

Still, he’d found to his amusement that everything about Lan Qiren interested him these days, even to the point of picking up long-unused skills. For someone like him, who had been bored by everything for so long, that glimmer of interest far outweighed the boredom of medicine…

It was a pity he couldn’t explore Lan Qiren’s fascinating core through dual cultivation instead – which wasn’t a thought Wen Ruohan had ever thought he’d have. Dual cultivation required significant vulnerability from both sides, especially for the weaker party, but unfortunately the benefits usually went to the weaker party, too. Wen Ruohan was much more powerful than his partners, and his cultivation style was too orthodox to use another person as a furnace, so it was inevitable that it would be his partner who got most of the benefits rather than him. And Wen Ruohan was not inclined towards generosity, nor to vulnerability.

With Lan Qiren, though…it could be fun.

Wen Ruohan would be willing to bet that Lan Qiren had never noticed any increase in his cultivation, much less learned to enjoy the rush of power filling your body and going to your head that came with it – it might be enjoyable to give him a bit of a shock. Or at least knock him off balance a little, as Lan Qiren’s ability to keep his composure in bed was one of his most charming and also most irritating traits…

Unfortunately, it was highly unlikely Lan Qiren would ever agree to dual cultivate with him, given how much it would leave him at Wen Ruohan’s mercy. Oh, well.

Wen Ruohan indulged himself by reaching out to put his hand on the back of Lan Qiren’s neck so that his fingertips just rested on the pulse point by his jaw. Perhaps he could satisfy the urge if he evaluated the exact extent of the increased power…

“– are you even listening to me?!”

“Not at all,” Wen Ruohan said cheerfully, not removing his hand. “Were you saying something important?”

Outraged, Lan Qiren opened his mouth.

“Important to me.”

“…well, it should be.” Lan Qiren rolled his eyes at him. “They are your wives, Sect Leader Wen.”

Wen Ruohan attempted to review the last few moments of the conversation, without success. He hadn’t bothered to pay attention to anything about his wives since Shen Mingbi had survived birthing Wen Chao, not even when they were scheming against him. They were predictable to the extreme, and exceptionally boring as a result.

For instance, Lu Qipei was, in his opinion, a vicious backstabbing harridan whose sole weakness was her fondness for being fawned over and admired. He’d married her for her family’s then-notable influence and she’d never once hesitated to lord it over everyone else, even though he’d long since swallowed that family into his own sect. She’d always treated him as if he was a fool, simultaneously scheming to try to make him fall in love with her in order to secure her status as mistress of the Nightless City and yet unable to resist sneaking some of her former admirers into his household as servants, presumably to more efficiently cuckold him after he’d given her the son he’d promised her.

She could mercilessly manipulate people better than half his spies, a trait that Wen Ruohan thoroughly approved of, but despite all her cleverness, it had seemingly never crossed her mind that the reason he didn’t continue to favor her after he’d fulfilled his obligations under their marriage was because he simply didn’t like her, just as she didn’t very much like him. He didn’t mind that she had other lovers – in truth, he’d expected as much, and was unsurprised to have his expectations fulfilled – but he was considerably annoyed by the fact that she continuously tried to hide them from him, as if she thought him stupid enough to remain ignorant despite how obvious she was. She had the position he’d promised her, yet she persisted in feeling as though she were entitled to his affection, and even that she only wanted to better control him; worst of all, she tended to blame her inability to obtain it on the scheming of others and acted accordingly.

Shen Mingbi, in contrast, was a fundamentally stupid woman who could only not be called vicious because it would imply a level of cunning she lacked. To her general misfortune, she was not an especially strong personality, so she followed Lu Qipei’s lead in most things, and never seemed to learn her lesson no matter how many times it blew up in her face. Her primary virtue was her persistence and fearlessness; she’d been the one to crawl into his bed, back when she’d been nothing but an overlooked middle daughter sent to serve as a maid in a greater sect than her own, hoping to improve her personal lot in life even if it meant the eventual downfall of her family. Wen Ruohan could appreciate that level of ruthlessness, and he had – in both of them, really.

They were each of them in their own ways perfectly suited for their positions as his wives, the two of them together keeping a tight grip on the social scene of the Nightless City, queen bees reigning in their hive. They kept the place lively, made the Nightless City a sparkling gem that attracted talent to his side, and ensured that Wen Ruohan didn’t have to worry about being outmatched by other sects. He appreciated them for that. 

But that didn’t make them interesting.

As far as he was concerned, their behavior was as inevitable as the dawn: Lu Qipei, bitter at having been formally demoted from the position of first Madam Wen even though he’d explicitly ensured that she retain all the power of the position and personally reassured her of it to boot, would refuse to believe that Lan Qiren wasn’t out to get the rest of her power, and so first try to bully Lan Qiren; when that failed, she’d probably turn to subversion and then sabotage, neither of which would win her his favor or get Lan Qiren to go away. For her part, Shen Mingbi, who would probably have been content to remain focused on herself and her son if not incited by Lu Qipei, would mock and insult Lan Qiren simply for existing in her vicinity, throwing pointless temper tantrums when he was around as if she inexplicably hoped to be indulged in them, and later would invariably allow herself to be used in one of Lu Qipei’s schemes.

In any event, absolutely nothing of any use would be accomplished.

Wen Ruohan rarely even bothered to undermine their plots anymore. He didn’t even think Lan Qiren would notice most of them…

No, his attention had more or less shut off entirely after they’d finished with the subject of what Lan Qiren was going to call him –

(Feeling contrary, he’d refused to grant Lan Qiren permission to use his name. This had led to a long lecture about inappropriate behavior and quite a few invocations of the fact that they were married, but hilariously enough it turned out that Lan Qiren was too polite to just go ahead and call him by name when explicitly denied the privilege. So they were still at “Sect Leader Wen,” just…notably more sarcastically.)

“Intolerable,” Lan Qiren grumbled, stepping away so that Wen Ruohan’s hand fell back down to his side. “Absolutely intolerable. You were not listening at all, were you? I was saying that I should move out of your courtyard – ”

“Absolutely not.”

Lan Qiren glared. “Then how exactly do you propose to satisfy your duty to your wives? You certainly are not going to be doing it with them whilst I am in the room.”

Wen Ruohan smirked. “Well – ”

His words cut off despite himself. Lan Qiren, ears gone red again, had just used the Lan sect’s silencing spell on him, even though he knew it was the work of only a moment for Wen Ruohan to break it.

The silencing spell. On him. In his own city!

Shen Mingbi wasn’t the only one who was fearless. Only Lan Qiren had every bit of cleverness that she lacked; he knew exactly what he was risking by confronting Wen Ruohan the way he did, and yet he did it anyway, wholly naturally and without hesitation. It was as if he really, truly wasn’t afraid of him…

How novel.

“What is your alternative suggestion, then?” Lan Qiren asked. “Without the innuendo.”

Chuckling, Wen Ruohan shook his head and snapped the spell.

“As a start, if I wanted to,” he said dryly, tucking his hands behind his back as he walked, “I could always go and visit them in their courtyards before returning to you in mine – ”

“The same evening?! That would be unsanitary – ”

“– but I wouldn’t, and it’s irrelevant anyway,” Wen Ruohan continued, overriding Lan Qiren easily. “On account of the fact that I don’t sleep with them.”

Lan Qiren seemed completely taken aback by this statement.

“I agreed with each of them in advance of our marriage that I would give her the power of a position as my wife and a son of her own,” Wen Ruohan explained. “In each case, I’ve done so. The only reason I would have to sleep with them now is if I wanted to, and I don’t want to.”

Certainly any actual interest he’d had in either of his wives hadn’t survived their other lovers.

It wasn’t that he objected to them having other lovers. Wen Ruohan’s ambitions made him a busy man who didn’t have time to lavish attention on others, and that meant he was not the type of man to properly keep a wife. That had been a lesson he’d learned from his first wife, the one who’d died many years ago along with his first family and whose name he had since declared taboo even to himself; she had been the first one to explain to him that wives had high requirements for affection and indulgence and that they would invariably turn elsewhere when he grew too busy for them, no matter what he might try. When he, at the time still young and stupid, had offered to try to do better by her, to slow or divert his plans to make more time for her, she had merely laughed in his face and informed him that she’d already found others that suited her taste more than him, presenting them to him as a fait accompli. At the time, caught up in the battle for succession, he hadn’t had time or energy to fight her on it or divorce her over it – which was, he supposed, her point.

Still…at least she’d had taste. He’d encouraged all his wives to take lovers if they so wished, yes, and was unsurprised when they did, but at the same time, the sort of people his current wives allowed into their beds was simply depressing. If Wen Ruohan ever started feeling inclined towards one or another of them, usually after they’d impressed him with some profoundly wicked bit of scheming, he need only remember that they categorized him with those other idiots and his interest tended to melt away faster than morning dew in midsummer.

“But – ”

“They have other lovers,” Wen Ruohan said, mostly for the pleasure of seeing Lan Qiren shocked and appalled all over again, which he was. “Although we live separate lives, they’re both kept quite satisfied, I assure you.”

Lan Qiren scowled.

They walked together a little longer, Wen Ruohan thinking idly of what else he could say to shock Lan Qiren’s easily troubled sensibilities, and then Lan Qiren managed to shock him by grumbling, “All for the best, I suppose. Scheduling was always my least favorite part of being sect leader.”

Wen Ruohan disguised his bark of amusement as a cough. “Is that your objection? The scheduling?”

“I cannot say that I enjoy the concept of sharing,” Lan Qiren said – he just said it! flat out! and without so much as missing a beat. How utterly shameless of him. “But on the other hand, as I am married to the second most obnoxious man in the world, I assume that at some point I would be likely to enjoy a reprieve.”

What sort of Lan are you? Wen Ruohan thought, finding it harder and harder to keep from outright cackling. As ruthless with your own heart as with anything else – I like it.

“The second most obnoxious man in the world?” he asked, smirking. “I’m offended. Who’s the first?”

“Pretending to be ignorant does not suit you. Your lover, of course.”

“You?”

“Sect Leader Nie.”

And that, too, came as a surprise. Wen Ruohan twisted his head to stare at Lan Qiren: “You know about that?”

Lan Qiren scoffed. “Were you under the impression that the two of you were being subtle? You were so blatant that even I noticed, and everyone knows that understanding social situations is hardly my forte.”

That was true, everyone did know that about Lan Qiren. But what they didn’t know, though, was that Wen Ruohan had been sleeping with Lao Nie for years, almost invariably on account of the fact that anything they saw that suggested it was immediately dismissed out of hand as implausible. Two men who weren’t particularly known for cutting their sleeves, each of whom was powerful enough to find and marry a beautiful female cultivator if they wanted, coming together without any plausible political motivation…no one believed it. Why would they bother with each other when there were other options, easier options? So even when other people saw evidence of it, they assumed it was all a convenient fiction to cover up something else or, at most, a joke being played deliberately, meant to provoke.

Presumably the doubt hadn’t even crossed Lan Qiren’s mind. Of course he would be the one to notice, with his tendency to deduce social situations as if they were logic puzzles and the clear-sightedness that that approach gave him. And just as typical, even though he’d noticed, even though noticing had meant that he’d had tremendous leverage he could have employed over two other Great Sects, he hadn’t done a single thing about it in all these years.

Of course he didn’t. Lan Qiren, a blackmailer? Never!

Wen Ruohan was now grinning outright. Even his bone-deep paranoia was having trouble believing that Lan Qiren would ever genuinely try to manipulate him.

After all, that was just who Lan Qiren was, wasn’t he? It was the same thing as all the rest of him: he really believed in those stupid rules of his and tried to live up to them, no matter how ridiculous. He had morals and principles and he genuinely cared about them for their own sake, for his own sake, regardless of the outside circumstances. He wasn’t going to turn himself into an extortionist, not for anything, no matter what it might get him. The possibility had probably never crossed his mind.

Just as it probably had never occurred to him to scheme for Wen Ruohan’s favor, the way Lu Qipei and Shen Mingbi did, and then immediately turn and throw it away…

“Do you actually call Lao Nie ‘Sect Leader Nie’?” he asked, side-stepping Lan Qiren’s question. “No one does that, not even me.”

“I thought it appropriate, since apparently you are so devoted to sticking with formalities – ”

Wen Ruohan cracked, giving in and starting to laugh. “All right, all right,” he said, feeling refreshed. “Have it your way.”

“It is not a matter of my way or your way,” Lan Qiren said, sounding long-suffering. “It is not about winning. It is about establishing a relationship – ”

“You have my permission to call me by name,” Wen Ruohan interrupted. Personally, he thought it was entirely about winning, and also that Lan Qiren was very clearly signaling that he wasn’t prepared to lose.

“Thank you.”

Wen Ruohan sent a pointed look at Lan Qiren. “Thank you, what?”

Lan Qiren choked on his words again, and that made Wen Ruohan laugh once more. That was the most ridiculous part of this little argument, of course: that this was the thing Lan Qiren was choosing to put his foot down on, his hill to die on, given that it was pretty obviously something he didn’t even especially want.

Wen Ruohan decided, somewhat uncharacteristically, to have mercy. “While you can use my name if you want,” he said generously (and in as pointedly condescending a tone as he could manage), “you can also continue to address me as you always have.”

Lan Qiren looked relieved.

“I merely wished to have the option,” he said stiffly. “Your wives pointed out to me that there are certain circumstances where I might wish to exercise the use of a – ah – a greater level of intimacy – ”

“No, no, that’s not part of the agreement, you definitely have to keep calling me Sect Leader Wen in bed,” Wen Ruohan said, smirking when Lan Qiren gave him an exasperated look. He raised his eyebrows in return, making clear that he wasn’t going to bend on this one – and he really wasn’t, either. There was a certain piquancy to the way Lan Qiren used what ought to be a term of respect when they were in bed together that he was loath to give up. It wasn’t disrespectful, exactly, he’d never tolerate that, but Lan Qiren did have a tendency to invoke it when he was being especially mean. Absolutely delicious, absolutely unexpected of him, and all the more enjoyable for being unexpected.

“…at other times, then,” Lan Qiren conceded with bad grace. “As appropriate.”

“We must certainly always take care to abide by propriety,” Wen Ruohan agreed, ignoring Lan Qiren’s annoyance at his sarcasm. “Isn’t that one of your rules?”

“You are thinking of ‘propriety suggests reciprocity,’” Lan Qiren said in a way that suggested that Wen Ruohan deserved exactly none at the moment. “Although, on that note…”

Rather uncharacteristically, he trailed off.

Wen Ruohan waited for him to complete his thought. There was no point in even bothering to formulate a guess as to what it might be, he thought, quite pleased by the notion. With Lan Qiren, it might be a reversion to his usual type, with more lecturing and invocation of rules, or it could be something completely unexpectedly, completely off the wall –

“I think it would be only right to inform you that I have developed the intention to use you.”

Wen Ruohan blinked.

Somehow, even when he’d braced himself, Lan Qiren found a way to be weirder than he’d anticipated.

“Use me?” he asked, bemused. “How so?”

If it had been Lao Nie, Wen Ruohan would have assumed that he was referring to something sexual, but with Lan Qiren that was highly unlikely. Yet the only other alternative that came to mind was political, and that seemed if anything even more unlikely –

“I haven’t decided yet.” Lan Qiren was looking straight ahead, and his ears had gone red again. “However, propriety demands reciprocity. You have been upfront – well, relatively – with the fact that you intend to use me and my talents to advance your schemes for power. I am informing you that I intend the same.”

Wen Ruohan had no idea what to do with that.

“You,” he said blankly. “You want to scheme for more power?”

Lan Qiren finally turned to look at him, glaring. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped. “I intend to use the fact that you have power in order to find a way to help my nephews.”

That made much more sense. Wen Ruohan relaxed, the world that had threatened to teeter off its axis resuming its regular spin. Lan Qiren was still Lan Qiren.

In fact, now that Wen Ruohan was no longer distracted by shock, his primary feeling on the subject turned out to be…glee.

Incredible, overwhelming, profusive glee.

I did that, Wen Ruohan thought to himself, delighted. That was all me.

Hadn’t he just been thinking earlier that Lan Qiren would never condescend to scheme for his favor? And he wouldn’t, either, because he’d just come out and told Wen Ruohan about his intentions – just as it had never occurred to him to become a blackmailer, it had just as obviously never occurred to Lan Qiren that he could try to manipulate Wen Ruohan into doing what he wanted without telling him in advance. Based on how he’d phrased what he’d just said, he probably thought that merely intending to personally benefit from Wen Ruohan was already some sort of betrayal of the innate concept of marriage that existed only in his head, or maybe in his sect rules.

But he had.

Despite his rules, despite his ideals, I have developed the intention to use you.

That was Qishan Wen ambition, not Gusu Lan restraint.

The rigid and unimpeachable Lan Qiren, whose morals everyone trusted to remain forever pristine…it was almost like watching a fawn take its first few steps, shaky and uncertain.

Wen Ruohan was so proud.

Mostly of himself, of course. Who else could say that they had made inroads into corrupting the incorruptible? Amazing, really; at times, he impressed even himself. Now this was a power rush…

“I know that expression,” Lan Qiren sighed. “The desk again, I assume?”

Wen Ruohan wouldn’t mind getting fucked over his desk some more; it was one of his favorite places for it. But no, this was a personal triumph, not a political one. The bed would do just fine…or maybe he could finally enact that plan he’d made early on and never acted upon.

“I have other plans,” he said. Lan Qiren looked at him suspiciously. “How about a bath before dinner?”

“I mistrust the tone in which you said that, but I also cannot think of how you could pervert the purpose of a bath,” Lan Qiren said, revealing the limits of his experience and imagination. “At any rate, I have been overly active this morning, so I could use one. Very well, lead the way…and in the meantime, you should tell me what it was that you wanted from me when you called me away from your wives. I assume it was not for this.”

It had better not have been for sex, Lan Qiren’s tone suggested, or else Wen Ruohan wasn’t going to be getting any.

“I had a real purpose,” Wen Ruohan protested mildly, still too gleeful and full of himself to mind. “Upon my arrival, my head disciple reminded me that it was time to organize the trip to Yunmeng for the discussion conference. I’ve decided to put you to work.”

Lan Qiren visibly brightened.

The good mood carried him through dinner with Lu Qipei and Shen Mingbi that evening, even though his attempt to use a high collar to conceal the bite marks Wen Ruohan had purposefully littered his neck with was completely unsuccessful – in classic form, the women had conspired to deliberately not bring their sons to the table as an insult, only to be so appalled by the obvious marks of Wen Ruohan’s favor that they could barely bring themselves to speak at all, much less point out the insult to him, and so Lan Qiren blissfully floated through the dinner completely unaware of the snub. Lan Qiren even voluntarily stayed awake past his usual bedtime in order to read up on all the things he felt he needed to know before he spoke with the sect quartermaster about logistics, full of excitement and anticipation.

Really, Wen Ruohan hadn’t even noticed how listless and depressed the man had been until he suddenly wasn’t. It was almost funny – but what was really funny was how, with his improved mood and something useful to do with himself, Lan Qiren’s notoriously finicky temper finally returned in full force.

“You will have to forgive me,” he overheard Lan Qiren saying in a tone that suggested he meant it as an insult. “I have been trying to manage the transportation, feeding, and upkeep of the completely unnecessary full delegation we are apparently sending to Yunmeng at Sect Leader Wen’s insistence and which Wen sect tradition apparently mandates to be at least one and a half times larger and three times fancier than a full delegation from any other sect would be. As you can imagine, I have been quite pressed with everything I have to do. And you want to waste my time by telling me about protocol?”

Wen Ruohan choked back laughter, listening from around the corner as his poor disciple stammered and stuttered in response.

“I – that is – it’s traditional – ”

“I would be more than willing to pause the four urgent tasks I need to accomplish within the next shichen to listen to you, but only if you can explain to me exactly what new information about proper protocol you, a member of the Wen sect, quite possibly the rudest and most arrogant sect in the cultivation world, are going to impart to me, who served Gusu Lan as its sect leader for ten years.”

His disciple looked like he maybe wanted to cry, which was quite notable in a man of at least forty who’d been trained for years to deal with Wen Ruohan’s own very particular temperament.

Wen Ruohan’s ribs were starting to hurt with the effort of keeping silent.

“Is there some unique aspect to protocol in the Wen sect that I am unaware of, perhaps? I must admit I have not observed any in the last few discussion conferences that I personally attended, but if you insist...” Lan Qiren paused, then turned and scowled at where Wen Ruohan was standing. “Do you think I cannot hear you snickering over there? Stop skulking in the shadows. It’s unbecoming of a sect leader.”

“I was not skulking,” Wen Ruohan said, though he did start walking again, turning the corner. “I just happened to overhear you. Have you spoken with the armory yet about which sect flags we’re taking?”

“You have multiple – what am I saying, of course you do.” Lan Qiren huffed. “I’ll go there now.”

Wen Ruohan watched the other man storm off in amusement, then glanced at the disciple next to him. It was a kinsman of his, though he couldn’t remember his name; there were too many of them for that.

“Really,” he said, drawing out the word, and watched the man go pale gratifyingly fast. “He does have a point, you know. Instructing a son of Gusu Lan on propriety? Do you also teach fish to swim in your seemingly plentiful spare time?”

“But it’s traditional!” the man bleated, and Wen Ruohan had to at least give him credit for standing his ground. “There’s always an introduction to protocol before the first public event involving someone who’s just married into the sect, especially if they’re acting in any sort of important position.”

Wen Ruohan was just about to point out that the circumstances were surely materially different if the other person involved was formerly a sect leader of a Great Sect in his own right and therefore painfully familiar with all matters of inane discussion conference protocol when the most beautiful revelation abruptly struck him.

Lan Qiren might know all the protocol, yes, and probably ten times better than Wen Ruohan ever had –  but everything he knew was applicable to him in his role as a sect leader or, at most, sect disciple. Only…he wasn’t attending the conference as either sect leader or sect disciple.

He was attending as Wen Ruohan’s wife.

And as far as Wen Ruohan had determined, Lan Qiren had yet to realize that.

“What are we introducing him as?” he asked, thinking it through himself in sudden delight: wives often helped host discussion conferences held at their homes but rarely traveled to the ones hosted by another sect, although it wasn’t unheard of – for instance, Jiang Fengmian often brought his wife, although everyone not-so-secretly speculated that that was because Yu Ziyuan was afraid that her husband would make a stupid concession if she wasn’t there to help. But that was the exception: sect leaders’ wives would generally not attend the actual conference, politely withdrawing while the sect leaders were talking and rejoining them only later on for the banquets held each evening. “I’ve given instructions that no one leak any information about him until we’re there, of course, but – for the first banquet, they’ll have to introduce us. What will they call him?”

“I…I would imagine they would address him as Madam Wen, Sect Leader? It isn’t as though he has a personal title to use instead, the way Madam Yu – ah, that is, the way Madam Jiang might be called the Violet Spider…”

Wen Ruohan grinned.

(His smile made the other man’s soul seem to flee his body.)

“Don’t tell him,” he instructed. “I want absolutely no one to address him by his title until we’re there, all right? I want it to be a surprise.”

“A – surprise, Sect Leader?”

“I want that banquet to be the first time he’s formally addressed as Madam Wen,” Wen Ruohan clarified, still grinning and entirely unable to stop. “Until then, all the servants and disciples are to address him only as Senior Lan. Pass the word around to everyone, and make sure they know that anyone who errs will be facing my personal displeasure. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Sect Leader! I’ll go at once!”

Wen Ruohan nodded his consent and then resumed his initial path. This discussion conference was going to be hilarious, he thought to himself, still gleeful. Between the other sects finding out about Lan Qiren’s new status and Lan Qiren himself finally figuring out his proper role in their relationship, it was going to be absolutely hilarious. Lao Nie was going to find it hard to stop laughing…assuming he didn’t lose his temper at Wen Ruohan first, of course.

Hmm. It belatedly occurred to Wen Ruohan that Lao Nie might not be as pleased with his brilliant plan as he was – for whatever reason, Lao Nie had always been quite fond of Lan Qiren, and even genuinely, not in the outwardly affable but inwardly scornful way he was with most of his fellow sect leaders. That was quite odd in and of itself, really, since Lao Nie tended to only like people who he thought were dangerous…which was an interesting thought. Maybe there really had always been more to Lan Qiren all along and he’d just missed it.

Annoying, to find an oversight like that. Still, Wen Ruohan had repaired it now, hadn’t he? Lan Qiren was his, and he wasn’t giving him back.

Not even if Lao Nie wanted him to.

Come to think of it, Lao Nie had mentioned Lan Qiren a few times in the rare letter or two he sent to the Nightless City. Complaints that Lan Qiren hadn’t responded to his letters, at first, and later expressing some concern about the notion of Lan Qiren going into seclusion, as if he couldn’t figure out or possibly admit to himself that it had obviously been involuntary. Wen Ruohan hadn’t written back, which wasn’t uncommon, but now that he thought about it, there was in fact a chance that Lao Nie might object, and strenuously, to what he might perceive (not incorrectly) as something being forced onto Lan Qiren against his will…

Anyway, it didn’t matter. Even if Wen Ruohan were inclined to give something up for Lao Nie’s sake, which he didn’t, he couldn’t. A marriage was a marriage. Wen Ruohan wasn’t going to just up and divorce Lan Qiren, giving up all his plans and embarrassing Lan Qiren in the process. Anyway, if he did, that awful brother of his would almost certainly find a far worse fate for him once Lan Qiren was back in his clutches, and Wen Ruohan very much did not appreciate being considered the lesser evil.

Actually, come to think of it, that was another pleasure to be found in the upcoming discussion conference: Qingheng-jun was undoubtedly going to be hideously disappointed to find Lan Qiren whole and intact and even thriving. Maybe Wen Ruohan could find a way to arrange a way for them to meet right after they’d fucked – Lan Qiren didn’t ever really look properly fucked out, or at least Wen Ruohan hadn’t gotten him there yet despite a few half-hearted attempts, but after a particularly enthusiastic session he did have a sort of relaxed glow to him that was rather distinctive. If Qingheng-jun saw it…

Hah!

Wen Ruohan felt, for the first time in a very long while, the distinct urge to hum as he walked. Maybe even whistle, though of course you couldn’t whistle around a Lan, they got jittery with that.

He didn’t give into the unexpectedly childish urge – but he wanted to.

And then, soon enough, the time to set out for the discussion conference was upon them.

Wen Ruohan spent about half the time involved in getting out the door being pleasantly surprised at how smoothly and efficiently everything was working, finding that Lan Qiren was every bit as good at organizing things as Wen Ruohan had expected him to be. Unfortunately, he spent the other half of the time thoroughly appalled that the morning’s work was such an improvement from his sect’s usual efforts, which he’d already considered to be quite efficient. They made it out of the gate of the Nightless City before noon on the first day, which had never happened before even once.

“I can’t believe it took us until midmorning to set out,” Lan Qiren complained when Wen Ruohan finally managed to pull him away from scolding people and back into the carriage they would be sharing for the duration of the trip. “The exit time was set for dawn, yet no one seemed prepared. Some of the disciples weren’t even awake!”

“The exit time is set for dawn because my ancestor said that all important delegations leave at dawn, and we obey it about the same as we do all of his other teachings – which is to say not at all,” Wen Ruohan informed him. Sadly, Lan Qiren did not seem to appreciate that wisdom. When he instead looked inclined to continue to complain, Wen Ruohan opted to distract him by offering him his choice of a blowjob or paperwork on next year’s tax collection.

(Predictably, Lan Qiren picked the paperwork. Wen Ruohan wasn’t even offended by it. He knew Lan Qiren would make it up to him later, and he also had the sneaking suspicion that when Lan Qiren had finished going over their taxes, he’d find that his sect’s income for this year was going to be a significant improvement over the last without anyone being able to pinpoint exactly how.)

“Oh, lest I forget, I overturned one of your decisions yesterday,” Lan Qiren said at one point, finally rousing himself out of his number-induced daze long enough to eat something and interact with another living being. “You are not permitted to torture the seamstresses. They got the robes done in time.”

“In time for our trip, not in time for me to see you in them in advance,” Wen Ruohan groused. “You should be dressed in my colors.”

“White is one of the Wen sect’s colors. I am wearing white.”

“You look like you’re in mourning.”

“No one mourns in this much embroidery,” Lan Qiren said, voice dry as dust. “I shall change when we get there and no sooner.”

Wen Ruohan supposed he’d have to be content with that. But he wasn’t happy about it.

“Are you bored? Is that the problem?” Lan Qiren inquired, then put aside the paperwork with only a mild grumble. “I can return the offer you gave me, if you like.”

“I most certainly would,” Wen Ruohan said, because he wasn’t an idiot. And then, because he was sometimes maybe a bit of an idiot, he added snidely, “Though I thought you intended to finish reviewing the tax collection regulations before evening.”

Lan Qiren looked strangely thoughtful at that.

“…what?”

“It occurs to me,” Lan Qiren said, “that if you can stay still, I can likely multitask.”

And then he did.

Wen Ruohan had a new appreciation for the intricacy of the tax code his ancestors had implemented.

Less so for Lan Qiren’s fastidiousness – change clothing after bathing was a rule, apparently, and bathing after sex was less a rule than an obvious practice – but either way it did pass the time extraordinarily well, and soon enough they were arriving in Yunmeng.

Running late, of course, but that was always Wen Ruohan’s preference. He rarely had any patience for the social mingling that typically preceded the first day’s official meeting. The regular crowd would be gathering and showing off to each other, while the sect leaders would gather for a late morning meeting in order to reach a formal agreement on rules for the conference – the usual sort of reassurances that violence would not be tolerated, no acts of retribution, that sort of thing, always the same every year. It wasn’t until the second day that the discussion conference would be formally opened, with events for the disciples to compete in and time reserved for the important political negotiations.

Arriving late would give Wen Ruohan the perfect opportunity for an impressive entrance, which he always made – and this time, he had something special to show off.

As expected, Lan Qiren looked absolutely splendid in his new robes.

Wen Ruohan had ordered him several new sets, but had agreed, mostly for his own amusement, that the one he would wear for the first day would be the most conservative one, something not entirely dissimilar to Lan Qiren’s old robes, mostly white with a touch of color at the hems and on the inside layer. Except, of course, that the color was red, not blue, and the white was subtly embroidered with suns rather than clouds. Wen Ruohan was sure it would take a little while for people to notice, as most of them didn’t bother to look more closely once they saw the telltale forehead ribbon that denoted a Lan.

Sure enough, when they first walked into the already crowded pavilion at the Lotus Pier, the Jiang sect disciple at the door greeted them with a proper welcome to Wen Ruohan and a somewhat more sincere but significantly more confused “Welcome, Sect Leader Lan! The rest of the Gusu Lan delegation arrived a little earlier – ”

“I am no longer acting as sect leader,” Lan Qiren gently corrected him. “That term of address is no longer appropriate.”

“Oh, right.” The Jiang sect disciple looked embarrassed. “Sorry about that, Teacher Lan. Please come in.”

“One of your former students?” Wen Ruohan asked in a low voice as they went in, and was pleased to see Lan Qiren suppress a sigh and nod. “I see.”

“You act as though you are successfully making some sort of point. I regret to inform you that you are most assuredly not.”

They’d see about that.

Just as they’d see how long it took for anyone to notice that –

“Qiren! There you are!”

It was said that the shout of one of the Qinghe Nie could be heard halfway across the country. Whoever had come up with the saying had known what they were talking about, Wen Ruohan thought as he resisted the urge to rub his ears. That had been deafening.

Lao Nie cheerfully shouldered his way through the stunned and pained-looking crowd, many of whom were now staring at them – specifically at Lan Qiren, standing at Wen Ruohan’s side.

“There you are,” Lao Nie said again, stopping in front of them. “What kept you? I was starting to get worried, I didn’t know what to think when I didn’t see you with the Cloud Recesses delegation earlier. And now you’re coming in with Hanhan – nice to see you too, Hanhan – ”

Wen Ruohan was going to kill Lao Nie if he didn’t stop using that dreadful nickname.

“ – but Qiren, you’re never late. Did something happen? Were you delayed on the road?”

“It is good to see you as well,” Lan Qiren said, greeting the other man with a nod. “And no, I was not delayed. I am not part of the Cloud Recesses’ delegation this time, I am here with the Nightless City.”

The room, already mostly quiet as people blatantly eavesdropped, abruptly went completely silent.

“With…Qishan Wen?” Lao Nie echoed, then stared at him as if actually looking at him for the first time. Taking in the new robes, no doubt, and all the small details that had taken the seamstresses the better part of two months to finalize. Not the sort of thing that could be done overnight. “You’re with Qishan Wen this time? Is that what you said?”

“That’s right,” Wen Ruohan interjected. This was going to be so good. “I married him.”

Silence. Lao Nie looked at Lan Qiren, who nodded in confirmation –

And then the room exploded.

Everyone was talking at once, at exceptionally loud volumes. Shouts, yells, cries, and Wen Ruohan’s name were in everyone’s mouths, including the normally reserved delegation of Gusu Lan, which abandoned their usual grim-faced rectitude to huddle up and hiss at each other like a flock of angry geese. It seemed like Qingheng-jun had successfully hidden Lan Qiren’s marriage even from them.

Wen Ruohan was having such a good time right now.

For his part, Lao Nie just kept staring at the two of them, head revolving back and forth between them. But there was a storm brewing between his brows, that famous Nie temper clearly starting to rear its head, and he was just opening his mouth to say something when a very loud crack silenced the entire hall.

“Honorable guests,” Madam Yu said calmly, as if she hadn’t just cast out that lightning whip of hers in a sizzling arc right over everyone’s heads. “The time for the morning meeting has begun. For those of you who will be attending, please find your seats. The rest of you: kindly leave.”

“We will talk about this later,” Lao Nie said to them in a low voice, then stalked back towards his own sect.

Lan Qiren looked after him with a frown, clearly not sure what the problem was, and glanced back at Wen Ruohan, who responded with a very faint shrug. He knew what Lao Nie’s problem was, of course, even if he didn’t know exactly how the other man would end up expressing it, but at any event now wasn’t the time to talk about it.

Somehow Lan Qiren seemed to understand all of that from the shrug, and he nodded in acknowledgment, the frown disappearing in favor of the more studied neutral expression he usually had at sect conferences. He stepped back and let Wen Ruohan lead the way, settling down in the seat Wen Ruohan indicated for him, immediately to Wen Ruohan’s right. Normally that would be the place for whoever Wen Ruohan had picked to play the role of his head disciple, but there was still space for Wen Yingjiu to sit to his left, and that was sufficient for his purposes. Unlike some other sect leaders, Wen Ruohan rarely resorted to his nominal head disciple for anything other than taking notes, and putting Lan Qiren to his right meant that he could more efficiently look at the rest of the room and Lan Qiren at the same time, which best maximized his view of both everyone’s horrified glances at Lan Qiren and Lan Qiren’s completely unperturbed expression of calm.

Fantastic.

Wen Ruohan was just settling himself in for a gloriously entertaining meeting when someone suddenly said, very loudly, “Senior Lan, is this entirely appropriate?”

The room abruptly went silent.

The speaker was the sect leader of Wangdu Pei – not quite an official subsidiary sect of Lanling Jin, but not far from it. One of Jin Guangshan’s useful idiots, someone he could use to feel out a situation without risking a sect as valuable to him as the likes of Laoling Qin.

If this was going where he thought it was, Wen Ruohan was going to kill Jin Guangshan for daring to question his arrangements in public. Unfortunately, the query had been directed at Lan Qiren, not him, and that meant Lan Qiren had to be the one to respond to it.

Lan Qiren turned his head slowly and met Sect Leader Pei’s gaze.

“What do you mean?” he asked, voice stiff and extremely even, dull as dishwater. Really, it was no wonder that Wen Ruohan had overlooked him for so long, if this was the persona he adopted in public.

Sect Leader Pei looked a little uncomfortable, having presumably assumed that Lan Qiren would understand his implication without him having to make it explicit – more fool he, given that Lan Qiren had never taken a hint once in ten years – but then forged on. “I mean…where you’re sitting.”

“What is wrong with where I am sitting?” Lan Qiren asked. His hands were folded in his lap and his posture was picture-perfect. He couldn’t have looked more like a good proper Lan if he’d tried. “I am here on behalf of Qishan Wen. Naturally I should sit with them. It is not inappropriate.”

“Perhaps it wouldn’t be inappropriate later at the banquet, but now?” Sect Leader Pei said, a sneer twisting his lips. “I’m not sure you’ve noticed, Senior Lan, but this meeting is reserved for sect leaders and their chief advisors only. Wives are not invited.”

Wen Ruohan’s fists clenched on his knees, his nails digging into flesh. How dare this man? He would slaughter this man the first moment he had the chance – he’d slaughter the man’s whole sect, he would eradicate it from the world for daring to insult him like this. For daring to mess with his plans like this! He’d wanted to embarrass Lan Qiren by calling him Madam Wen later, to be sure, but that would be when it would be purely funny and not lose anyone any face. But just as importantly, this discussion conference wouldn’t be any fun without Lan Qiren at his side. He hadn’t expected this to happen – he hadn’t thought anyone would dare to challenge him. Not directly, not like this…

Unexpectedly, Lan Qiren didn’t react to the taunt.

Instead, he just frowned.

“I am not sure what you mean,” he said, seeming genuinely confused, his voice still mild as before. “Wen Ruohan is the sect leader. Surely it would be by far more inappropriate for me to dismiss him from this gathering just for being my wife.”

Silence.

A beat.

And then the room erupted into utter pandemonium.

As for Wen Ruohan…

Wen Ruohan had to bite his lower lip to keep from bursting out laughing.

Before had been good, but this?

This was perfect.

Chapter Text

Eventually, the meeting was canceled.

There were a few efforts to let it continue – Jiang Fengmian tried several times to restore order, without success – but in the end Lao Nie took the initiative to bring it to a decisive close. He did so by following Madam Yu’s lead: he pulled out his saber and smashed a table in half to get everyone’s attention, then elbowed Jiang Fengmian sharply, spurring the other man to announce that they would be resuming the meeting after lunch.

That suited Lan Qiren just fine.

He followed Wen Ruohan out of the room, his head held high. He grimly refused to let himself even glance at the side of the room where Gusu Lan was sitting, no matter how much he wanted to. He didn’t know what he’d do if he did. He had allowed himself a brief look earlier in the main hall, when everyone had been too busy shouting over their initial marriage announcement to notice, but whatever it was he supposed he was looking for, he hadn’t seen it. Only his brother, stone-faced, surrounded by both elders and disciples whispering urgently to him, all of them looking some shade of panicked, upset, furious, or even nauseous – it seemed that Wen Ruohan was correct about his brother not telling anyone anything, not even his own supporters.

Wen Ruohan had counted on it, in fact. He’d wanted his little surprise to the cultivation world to go off without a hitch, which Lan Qiren supposed it had. There had certainly been all the chaos that one could possibly hope for, or even plausibly imagine.

Just as Wen Ruohan had wanted.

“There is no need to strain yourself further,” Lan Qiren said dryly once they reached the rooms they had been assigned. Wen Ruohan was still maintaining the supercilious smirk he usually wore in public but, as Lan Qiren could tell after several months of close acquaintance, he was almost visibly vibrating with the desire to laugh. “We are now alone.”

“It won’t last,” Wen Ruohan said, oddly cryptic, and waved away all the Wen sect disciples, who disappeared with almost alarming alacrity, as if they knew something Lan Qiren didn’t. “That was well done. No one will get one bit of other business done throughout this entire conference.”

Which had been the plan, Lan Qiren knew, though he still didn’t entirely understand what Wen Ruohan was getting out of all this ruckus, other than maybe the pleasure of tripping up other people while also ensuring they would pay attention to him. Of course, Wen Ruohan was an incredible narcissist, so maybe it really was as simple as him just wanting to have a laugh at the expense of the rest of the world.

Well, Lan Qiren had known what he was signing up for, he supposed. Maybe not at first, but later, when he’d decided of his own free will to try to make the best of things, to use Wen Ruohan for his own purposes and allow himself to be similarly used…

“On that note, a question,” he said, reaching up to stroke his beard. “Can you explain what happened at the end there? Everyone became very loud all of a sudden – I understand it must have been in reaction to something I said, but I am not entirely certain what it was. So if you could explain…”

Wen Ruohan could not explain, it turned out, on account of apparently needing to urgently go sit down, put his head in his hands, and shake all over from silent laughter he could only just scarcely hold in.

It was exceedingly annoying.

Particularly since Wen Ruohan had already dismissed all the disciples that might have been able to actually answer Lan Qiren’s question. Wen Yingjiu wasn’t good for much, in Lan Qiren’s opinion – he was an amiable if dull person whose only notable virtue seemed to be his perfect recall, meaning that Wen Ruohan tended to cart him along to meetings such as this as little more than a walking notebook – but he at least had a normal person’s grasp on social situations, which Lan Qiren lacked.

So annoying.

“You are in danger of moving up on my list of ‘most obnoxious person in the cultivation world’,” Lan Qiren informed Wen Ruohan, but this seemed to only drive the other man into further barely-suppressed hysterics. “I understand it is difficult for you, but if you could only exercise some self-restraint and calm down for one moment – ”

The door to their rooms was abruptly thrown open with an incredibly loud bang and rattle.

“What the fuck,” Lao Nie announced himself at top volume. “The fucking fuck did you do, you fucker?”

Lan Qiren shut his eyes tightly.

“Never mind,” he said, pressing his fingers to his temples. “Sect Leader Wen, your second-place position remains safe.”

For whatever reason, that was apparently the final straw that broke Wen Ruohan: he finally gave in to the inevitable and started laughing out loud, that contagious belly-deep sort of laughter that he only brought out on rare occasions.

For some reason, that seemed to stop Lao Nie in his tracks – instead of continuing to rage, he just stood there in the entrance, staring blankly at Wen Ruohan.

“Would you like to come inside?” Lan Qiren asked him acidly. When Lao Nie didn’t show any sign of responding, Lan Qiren huffed and walked around him to close the door behind him, then went to prepare tea at the table where Wen Ruohan was already sitting. Both of the other men were sect leaders and his elders, so it wasn’t inappropriate for him to serve them, but also someone else would have already prepared some for all of them if Wen Ruohan hadn’t dismissed them all…presumably in anticipation of Lao Nie’s arrival, Lan Qiren supposed.

“I do not suppose you know what that fuss was all about at the end,” he said to Lao Nie, who turned his head to him and blinked owlishly. “Sect Leader Wen has been doing that ever since we got here, so I have not been able to get a word out of him. It has been quite frustrating.”

Lao Nie’s mouth moved, but no sound came out. After a moment, though, he came and sat down at the table where Lan Qiren pointed, just across from the still-chuckling Wen Ruohan.

“Now,” Lan Qiren said, handing them both cups of tea. “Are you two done?”

“Not in the slightest,” Wen Ruohan said.

“Qiren, are you all right?” Lao Nie said.

Lan Qiren was going to develop a headache, he could just feel it. “You are both extraordinarily useless.”

Lao Nie coughed down a laugh of his own. “I see why you might say that, but actually I was serious. You’re married? To him?”

Lan Qiren glared at him. “Has Gusu Lan removed Do not tell lies from the Wall of Discipline in the past few months? No? In that case, what reason do you have to question what I have already confirmed?”

Lao Nie flapped his mouth a few more times, then shook his head.

“It’s not your word I doubt, Qiren,” he said wryly. “Merely the situation. It just seems so implausible – for both of you. Hanhan, what were you thinking? I never got the impression you even liked Qiren!”

Wen Ruohan only shrugged.

“I admit my mistake,” he said casually, as if admitting mistakes was something he did on a regular basis rather than something he would and quite literally had gone to war rather than concede. “He’s more interesting than I thought. Anyway, you don’t actually care about my perspective on the subject. You’re here because you think Lan Qiren was forced into this. Which he was – ”

“I knew it!”

“– but not by me.”

Lao Nie frowned. “What?”

“It is a political marriage,” Lan Qiren explained. Wen Ruohan, for reasons of his own, seemed to be determined to make it sound as bad as possible, but Lan Qiren wasn’t about to allow him to sow discord between the Nie and Lan sects. Lao Nie was more than halfway to being an actual friend of Lan Qiren’s, and he likely was genuinely concerned about Lan Qiren’s well-being, but he was first and foremost the sect leader of the Lan sect’s strongest ally. “It came about as part of the agreement between Sect Leader Wen and my brother – ”

“His brother sold him to me for benefits,” Wen Ruohan said with an oily smirk, and Lan Qiren twisted his head to glare at him. “What? It’s true. Just as it’s true that you only agreed to it rather than remain in seclusion any longer.”

Predictably, Lao Nie became enraged at once, jumping to his feet and starting to shout.

That was just too much for Lan Qiren’s already strained nerves. Between having to arm himself up for the awful social interactions inherent in a discussion conference, knowing about and indeed being a key player in Wen Ruohan’s plan to somehow embarrass the entire cultivation world, actually having to endure all the shouting and not understanding it, with no one explaining anything – he’d had enough.

His limited patience snapped completely.

“Sit down this instant!” Lan Qiren roared, smacking the table with his palm.

Wen Ruohan stared. Lao Nie froze.

Lan Qiren pointed at the seat.

Lao Nie sat down.

Wen Ruohan was already seated, but he made a jerky movement as though he were attempting to sit down a second time.

“If you two insist on behaving like children, then I will treat you like children,” Lan Qiren growled, taking his own seat. He was absolutely infuriated by this ridiculous behavior – though not so much that he didn’t make a mental note to himself that he needed, once again, to review the basis of Do not succumb to rage. “You will both sit and drink your tea. During that time, you will behave like men, not animals, and you will answer my questions. If you want to brawl, you can do so after I am through with you. Is that understood?”

They didn’t object, which Lan Qiren chose to take as agreement.

“Now. Let us begin with the most recent events first. If one of you would be so kind, one of you should start by explaining what happened at the meeting.”

Lao Nie reached up and rubbed in the middle of his forehead. “Qiren. I know you’re bad with social cues, but…you just called Wen Ruohan your wife. Your wife. In public. What reaction did you think you were going to get?”

Lan Qiren scowled. “The marriage was already announced,” he pointed out. “You were there, you saw it – everyone started talking and Madam Yu had to put an end to it. Why the second round of shock?”

“Qiren. Qiren.”

Lao Nie had a very bad tendency to assume that everyone saw the world as straightforwardly as he did, and he was not especially good with communicating when they didn’t. In his own particular way, he was also quite rigid in his thinking, though probably not as much as Lan Qiren. It didn’t mean he wasn’t being earnest.

Unfortunately, earnestness did not make his refusal to just explain himself any less annoying.

“Lao Nie, I have no idea what you are trying to convey. If you would stop just repeating my name – ”

“Qiren, you’re the wife.”

Lan Qiren stopped mid-sentence, frowning at him. “What? No. I married in, yes, but – ”

“If you married a woman, you would obviously be marrying in as a husband,” Lao Nie said. “But you married another man. It’s as equally plausible for him to marry you in as a wife as it is for you to marry into his family as a husband.”

Lan Qiren…hadn’t thought about that.

“I mean – Qiren – and I really do mean this quite kindly, but it’s not as if your sect isn’t one of the most conservative, so surely you already know that the balance of power in a marriage is always weighed towards the husband? The husband leads, the wife obeys, that sort of thing? Even in the rare instances where that’s not actually the case, the world tends to act as though it is, looking down at the wife and up at the husband, so it’s highly unlikely that any man would give up the position if they didn’t have to. It’s even more unlikely, in fact, given that the man in question is this old bastard – ”

Lao Nie jerked his head at Wen Ruohan, who merely gave him a dirty look.

“– and doubly so if it was someone else at your sect who arranged the marriage rather than you. What exactly was said at the time? What exactly was agreed?”

Lan Qiren realized that he didn’t know.

He couldn’t know, of course; he hadn’t been there at the negotiation. He hadn’t even been consulted. His brother had locked him into seclusion for three long, horrible uninterrupted months during which Lan Qiren’s mind had turned on him, driving him into despondence and despair, and then he’d been thrown into the carriage heading to the Nightless City without so much as a formal farewell, condemned to spend the entire journey to Qishan still reconciling himself to the fact that it was even happening. And when he’d finally come out on the other side, he’d seen Wen Ruohan and…pieced it all together. Himself.

Because Wen Ruohan hadn’t said anything.

Lan Qiren turned to stare at Wen Ruohan.

Who was smirking.

“You weren’t really paying attention to much of anything that first month,” he said lazily. “And by the time you were thinking clearly again, I didn’t see any reason to correct you.”

…what?

But – but that made no sense. Or rather, it did, it made a terrible amount of logical sense, and Lan Qiren should have realized it, would have realized it if only he hadn’t been quite so rattled by everything that was happening to him and then too rigid to change the thinking patterns he’d locked himself into. But…Lan Qiren, a wife?

He’d only just adjusted to thinking of himself as a husband! That was already more change than he’d ever wanted, and now there was going to be more?!

He didn’t even know what a wife did. Lan Qiren had never given any thought to the position – it wasn’t even a matter of pride, though given his thin face that was probably part of the issue, but he genuinely didn’t know. He’d never had any reason to pay attention to the role of a wife before, since he’d assumed he wouldn’t marry and then assumed he’d be married out as a husband; he’d devoted all his thinking to that, and none to the position of wife. Would he have to run the household? Manage social events? What were a wife’s duties, their obligations, their daily tasks?

He hadn’t – he wasn’t prepared. He hadn’t even done any reading…

“If it makes you feel better, while naturally I retain the final discretion on the organization of my household, your brother did insist that you get the highest honors as a condition of agreeing to the marriage,” Wen Ruohan said unhelpfully. “Which makes you the first Madam Wen, not third. That’s something, isn’t it?”

It did not make Lan Qiren feel better. At all. Though –

“Is that what your wives were so upset about?” he asked blankly. He felt dreadfully light-headed, even dizzy. Possibly nauseous. “I thought it was just the sex.”

(It had of course occurred to him that there would necessarily be some adjustment to Lu Qipei’s role, given his arrival, since the daughter of a now-subsidiary sect was nothing compared to the son of a Great Sect. He just hadn’t given any thought to what that might mean for his position.)

“The what?!” Lao Nie shouted. His saber, Jiwei, suddenly started rattling in her sheath like a wild animal lunging at the bars of their cage; it seemed as though any moment she might fly out and strike someone. “Wen Ruohan, you dare!”

All thoughts of Lan Qiren’s position had to be abruptly shoved aside in the face of the presence of an angry and potentially murderous Nie – particularly one facing an especially insouciant Wen Ruohan, leaning back with a smug but also dangerous expression, deliberately feeding kindling to the flame by drawling, “Me? I dare many things, you’ll have to be more specific…”

“What is wrong with both of you?” Lan Qiren snapped. It was as if they wanted to murder one other – no, as if they wanted to incite the other one to murder them, and were only waiting to see which one of them would break first. “But you in particular, Lao Nie. Calm yourself at once! What exactly is the problem?”

“He took advantage of you!”

There was something fundamentally wrong with Lao Nie’s brain.

“We are married,” Lan Qiren said, exasperated. “As we have just established! Married people have sex. You had two wives and have two sons yourself, Lao Nie. Surely you must be somewhat familiar with the concept?”

“A marriage vow doesn’t give him the right to pressure someone into something they don’t want,” Lao Nie said stubbornly. “Qiren, if he’s hurt you at all – ”

“Sect Leader Wen – ” Hmm, he probably wasn’t helping himself here. “Wen Ruohan has been fine. I do not consider myself harmed by anything we have done together. And even if I did, I wouldn’t need you leaping to my rescue as if I were some kidnapped maiden locked in a tower – ”

“Why not?” Wen Ruohan asked.

Lan Qiren paused.

Wen Ruohan’s voice had taken on a particularly chill cadence, the sort Lan Qiren would normally categorize as the other man being in an extremely dangerous mood. Only…he didn’t understand why.

“If not him, then who?” Wen Ruohan continued, voice still soft and dangerous. “Your sect didn’t save you when you were forced into seclusion, and they won’t save you now. You don’t have any friends. You’re all alone – ”

Oh, it was just this nonsense again.

“I have you,” Lan Qiren reminded him, and that stopped Wen Ruohan’s mouth, making the other man’s eyes go slightly wider as he stared at him. “You remember that, correct? It is rather difficult to consider myself completely desolate and destitute when the most powerful cultivator in the world is my wife – ”

“Husband,” Lao Nie corrected, and Lan Qiren flinched, made suddenly unhappy by the reminder. “You’re the wife, remember? First wife, even.”

“Mm, not quite.” They both looked at Wen Ruohan, who shrugged elaborately. “Do remember that I am Sect Leader, and in my Wen sect, that position is not bound or restrained by sect elders that can tell me what to do. I, and I alone, am in complete control of everything in my Nightless City. I am the final arbitrator of Lan Qiren’s position in my household.”

Lao Nie frowned at him. “Are you seriously suggesting that you’re going to demote him? I will kill you.”

“No comment on his family being the one that should be defending him, I see,” Wen Ruohan said pointedly, and that made Lao Nie frown even more, though Lan Qiren wasn’t entirely sure as to why. “And no, I had something a little…different in mind.”

He reached out his hand and curled his fingers around Lan Qiren’s far shoulder in a languid motion, reeling him in close until he was halfway leaning against Wen Ruohan’s chest. Even as Lan Qiren watched, Wen Ruohan’s lips curled up into a much wider and less dangerous smirk, making him look once more like he was enjoying himself at everyone else’s expense.

“Lan Qiren’s been such a good husband, after all,” he said. “It seems a shame to change that.”

Lan Qiren blinked. What?

“What?” Lao Nie said.

Wen Ruohan looked exceptionally smug. “Lan Qiren will be my husband. I declare it.”

“You…can you do that?” Lao Nie looked at Lan Qiren, who had just been wondering the same thing. “Can he do that?”

It didn’t seem possible. More to the point, it didn’t seem likely – if Lan Qiren really had been married in as a wife, and now that it had been pointed out to him it seemed incredibly obvious that that must have been what happened, then why would Wen Ruohan change that? Lao Nie had been right about the way the cultivation world looked on husband and wives, something else Lan Qiren had forgotten to think about but really should have. There was no reason for Wen Ruohan to declare him the husband. What benefit did doing so get him?

Lan Qiren could understand why Wen Ruohan had hidden the truth from him. He must have thought it would be amusing when it came out and surprised him, just as he had found it amusing to reveal their marriage to the rest of the cultivation world as an unexpected surprise. Lan Qiren wasn’t even offended by the deception; he was familiar enough by now with the unfortunate fact that Wen Ruohan considered himself to be funny. He was wrong, most of the time, but he was very sincere and persistent in his belief.

But that humor could have been satisfied merely with the revelation. So why…?

“Did something about ‘complete control over my sect’ pass the two of you by?” Wen Ruohan rolled his eyes. “I can do anything I want. Anything. Why can’t I decide to marry in a husband?”

“You…do realize that Qiren being the husband makes you the wife,” Lao Nie pointed out, blinking rapidly. “Right?”

“So what? It’s like Lan Qiren said: between the two of us, I’m still the sect leader. What is someone going to do? Make trouble for me? Mock me? Challenge me?” He laughed. “There are easier ways to ask me to take over their sects, but I’m not going to refuse if they insist.”

Lao Nie grimaced in acknowledgement. There was no one in the cultivation world stupid enough to get in Wen Ruohan’s face in a way he’d perceive as a direct challenge – even the foolish Sect Leader Pei had addressed his rude comments to Lan Qiren instead – and few enough willing even whisper behind his back, no matter what he allowed himself to be called.

“In short, I see no issue…” Wen Ruohan glanced at Lan Qiren with an arch look. “Unless you would prefer being the wife yourself?”

“No, I am happy with the way things are,” Lan Qiren said hastily. He still didn’t understand why Wen Ruohan was acting the way he was – the only answer that kept coming to mind was that he wished to mitigate Lan Qiren’s evident distress at the idea, which obviously couldn’t be right – but he wasn’t going to object.

Maybe Wen Ruohan really was just doing it for a laugh.

Anyway, if there was any chance Wen Ruohan would allow Lan Qiren to keep the status quo in place, he’d take it. He really couldn’t handle any more change.

(Not to mention the fact that he still had no idea what a wife was supposed to do…)

“There we are, problem solved,” Wen Ruohan announced. “Though I do like the idea of you being addressed as ‘Madam Wen’…”

“Absolutely not.”

“We’ll discuss it later.” No, they would not! “In the meantime, I have a better question for our friend here. Namely, Lao Nie, how dare you?”

Lao Nie straightened his back and scowled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Only that it is very convenient that you get to pick and choose when you’re feeling ready to play the valiant defender,” Wen Ruohan said. There were daggers in his smile again, and acid in his voice – he was suddenly glaring at Lao Nie as if he wanted to cut off his head, and Lao Nie was glaring back as if he’d encountered some sort of poisonous scorpion hiding in his boot.

Lan Qiren was rather taken aback. This had to be the third or fourth time in the same conversation they had practically cast aside all decency in favor of taking aim at each other. But why did they keep doing that? Weren’t the two of them lovers? Wen Ruohan himself had all but confirmed it to him. But if they were lovers, then why were they acting like – well, like this?

“Are you holding the fact that I didn’t know you’d married him against me?” Lao Nie said with heavy sarcasm. “Perhaps you could have solved that problem earlier by, oh, I don’t know, maybe telling me about it? You had plenty of chances. Maybe you could have mentioned it when I wrote to you and asked if you’d heard anything about him…”

“By the time you wrote that question, he was already with me. He was in seclusion for months before that; you knew it, everyone knew it. You are the Lan sect’s closest ally, you could have demanded to go see him – tell me, why did it have to fall to me to take him away?”

Lao Nie gaped at him. “What?!”

“That is hardly Lao Nie’s fault, and certainly not his responsibility,” Lan Qiren protested, utterly lost at how the conversation had reached this point. “Even the others within my own sect did not protest my seclusion – ”

And hadn’t that hurt to realize.

“– and one can hardly expect an outsider to take action to interfere in the internal affairs of another sect.”

“Oh, Lao Nie doesn’t mind that,” Wen Ruohan said, baring his teeth. It was clearly a reference to something specific, given that Lao Nie only scowled harder rather than looking confused. “He’s a Nie, after all, he doesn’t suffer evil no matter where it lives. No! This isn’t about not wanting to interfere. It’s about the fact that he’s willing to give the benefit of the doubt to everyone – except when it’s me.”

“That’s not true,” Lao Nie protested, but it was a half-beat slow, as if dragged down… presumably by guilt, given the expression on his face, the way he glanced worriedly at Lan Qiren.

“Ah,” Lan Qiren said, comprehension belatedly dawning. “You did not want to upset my brother.”

He could understand that.

Really, he could. Lao Nie was an affable person, sociable; he liked everyone, but he liked ruthless and dangerous people most of all – he liked Lan Qiren’s brother, and always had. They’d been friends first, long before Lao Nie had taken an interest in Lan Qiren. Closer in age to each other than they were to him, the two of them had been peers for real in a way Lan Qiren only technically qualified to be, being so much younger than either of them. In fact, the first few times Lan Qiren had met Lao Nie had been courtesy of his brother, night-hunts where he’d had no choice but to bring him along – that was back when he’d only disliked Lan Qiren, not hated him.

It was quite reasonable that Lao Nie wouldn’t want to think badly of his old friend. It was reasonable for him to hope for the best from his return to the world, reasonable that in light of that hope he would make allowances for his behavior given his ten years of seclusion…just like the Gusu Lan elders had. Just as everyone else in his family and sect had, just as everyone had.

If only their faith and trust hadn’t had to come at Lan Qiren’s expense.

Maybe if it had been someone else that had forced Lan Qiren into seclusion, Lao Nie would have raged against the gate of the Cloud Recesses, demanding to see him, insisting on setting him free. But it hadn’t been someone else. It had been someone Lao Nie trusted.

Someone he felt he had to trust.

But…well, trusting in Lan Qiren’s brother meant trusting that he was doing the right thing. Trusting that he wasn’t acting irrationally or maliciously, even when he obviously was. It meant believing him when he said something unbelievable, such as his claim that Lan Qiren had gone into seclusion voluntarily, or whatever the excuse he’d used was. Perhaps he’d even said that Lan Qiren had fought with him over relinquishing the position of sect leader, which surely anyone who knew Lan Qiren would know was impossible.

But…to doubt Lan Qiren’s brother at this late point in time would be to give up on him, for good. How could those who called themselves his friends do that?

Least of all Lao Nie.

Lao Nie, who lived so far away, who didn’t see what things were like – Lao Nie, who had so recklessly given advice to Lan Qiren’s brother on matters of the heart, himself having just emerged fresh from his own halcyon days of love with a baby by his side. He would have had no reason to expect that his casual words of encouragement, don’t give up, don’t lose hope, just show her that you’re being sincere, would have been taken to such extremes or would have resulted in such a bad outcome.

It had taken Lan Qiren quite some time to forgive Lao Nie his careless words, even though he knew logically that his brother would likely have followed the same path with or without them. And Lao Nie himself had taken it hard, deep and to heart; never after did Lan Qiren ever hear him say a single word about love, not even when he married a second time, nor even when he lost her, too.

Really, it made sense. How could Lao Nie resist hoping that his worst mistake had not been as dire as it had been? How could he not hope that some part of it could finally be reversed? How could he not see Qingheng-jun’s return and celebrate it as his own absolution, even if it meant closing his eyes to the parts of that return that seemed off?

Even if it meant hoping against hope that Lan Qiren really had done what his brother claimed, no matter how much he knew it to be impossible. Even if it meant refusing to dig beneath the surface of what had happened. Even if it meant leaving Lan Qiren where he was, helpless and hopeless, until the most unlikely of people had seen fit to get involved for reasons of his own.

“Qiren…” Lao Nie started to say, looking embarrassed and genuinely regretful. “Qiren, I didn’t – he said – no, that doesn’t matter. I really should have – ”

Lan Qiren waved a hand at him.

“I am not the one you should be apologizing to,” he said, brisk to cover up the hurt that, really, he had no right to feel. How could he hold Lao Nie’s inaction against him when he barely blamed his own sect, his own kinsmen, his friends and allies, for the same? If even Lan Qiren himself hadn’t dared put up any resistance against his brother, struggling for months before coming to terms with the fact that the brother he’d once adored now despised him despite the endless amounts of evidence that he was acting purposefully to harm him, then how could Lan Qiren expect more of anyone else? Much less an outsider like Lao Nie, who had his own reasons to prefer his brother – the way everyone always had. “Do not make assumptions about others. Lao Nie, you were wrong in what you thought about Sect Leader Wen’s behavior. You should apologize.”

Lan Qiren had never understood why Lao Nie would take Wen Ruohan as a lover, given that he was a man he didn’t trust and reasonably speaking shouldn’t trust. Given Wen Ruohan’s narcissism and viciousness, his fondness of torture and his yearning to conquer, Lao Nie would have to be insane to trust him unreservedly and without caution. Lan Qiren certainly didn’t, and they were now lovers as well. But Lao Nie had chosen to take Wen Ruohan to bed entirely of his own free will, without any compulsion, and surely, surely if there was anyone who deserved the benefit of the doubt, it would be your own lover, wouldn’t it?

And yet. And yet.

Lao Nie had seen Lan Qiren at Wen Ruohan’s side, had heard about their marriage, and he’d immediately leaped to all sorts of conclusions in precisely the way he hadn’t with Qingheng-jun.

The contrast was…rather marked.

“Oh?” Lao Nie relaxed. “Don’t worry about that, Qiren. Hanhan doesn’t care about apologies.”

Lan Qiren felt the threat of headache from earlier returning abruptly with full force.

“That is not the point,” he said through gritted teeth. “You are in the wrong. More than that, you have wronged him. It does not matter if he does not care about it. You should still apologize.”

“Maintain your own discipline,” Wen Ruohan put in. He was right, technically, but he was also citing the rules for the specific purpose of being annoying, which detracted from the effect. “You wouldn’t want to face the disappointment of the great Teacher Lan, now would you?”

Lan Qiren automatically reached out and grabbed Wen Ruohan by the hair, giving it a sharp yank – he’d figure out after the first month or so that that was the surefire way to express his displeasure with the other man in a way that actually conveyed the meaning and wouldn’t be objected to. Throwing something at him the way Lan Qiren might with his students was ineffective, Wen Ruohan’s instinctive defense far too powerful, and any sort of slap with a ruler would probably be taken as a mortal insult, but it had turned out that Wen Ruohan liked having his hair pulled. He didn’t take it as an insult, and he recognized it as an implicit reprimand, even if he took it about as seriously as he did any of Lan Qiren’s reprimands, meaning barely at all.

(Naturally, Lan Qiren would never do it in front of outsiders – do not embarrass your wife in public – but as they’d already established, Lao Nie wasn’t an outsider. Not to Wen Ruohan.)

“Do not gloat,” he said sternly, meeting his eyes for a moment, then released him.

Wen Ruohan grinned at him – a grin, not a smirk; it was an important distinction for him. “Oh? Why? Is that a rule?

“I can cite the relevant ones at you if you like, but no, it is merely unseemly. It makes you look like a monkey.”

“A monkey. A monkey! Exactly what part of – ”

“Huh,” Lao Nie said. He was glancing between the two of them and smiling. “This is nice.”

Lan Qiren gave him a suspicious look, noticing as he did that Wen Ruohan was doing the same. “What, exactly?”

“You’re getting along,” Lao Nie proclaimed. “That’s wonderful! I knew you’d like each other once you had a chance to get to know each other.”

Lan Qiren wondered again at Lao Nie’s sanity. A chance to get to know each other? Wouldn’t that have happened during the ten years they’d had to work together?

He glanced at Wen Ruohan, wondering if this was some sort of coded reference he was missing, but Wen Ruohan looked just as nonplussed as he felt.

Maybe Lao Nie really did have something wrong with his brain.

“Anyway, I just came here to make sure everything was all right, and clearly it is,” Lao Nie continued, suddenly brisk himself. “So no need for me anymore. I really ought to go back to my sect; they’ll be wondering where I wandered off to. Shall we plan on meeting again tomorrow? Perhaps for dinner? We can catch up more. I want to hear everything. See you then!”

Lan Qiren blinked at the gap in the room left by Lao Nie’s wake, needing a few moments to process all those words and the swift farewell that followed them.

Then he scowled. “He forgot to apologize!”

Wen Ruohan turned to stare at him for a moment, then chuckled. “You know that he’s right that I don’t actually care, I hope? Apologies are largely meaningless.”

“That remains beside the point! He did something wrong, so he should express his remorse and commit to not doing it again. The apology is a signifier of that.”

“Mm. What happens if he feels no remorse? Should he still apologize then?

“No, in that circumstance he should be punished. Obviously!”

Wen Ruohan chuckled again, shaking his head. “Obviously,” he said mockingly, then finished his cup of tea and stood up. “If I understood our host correctly, we have nothing but free time until midday, do we not? I think I will go for a brief walk – ”

“And conveniently meet with your spies from the other sects in the process, yes, I am not stupid,” Lan Qiren said, and Wen Ruohan grinned at him in silent confirmation. “I will also go for a walk. The Lotus Pier has spectacular views, and there is a particular pier that I have always favored, where ducks and other types of waterfowl gather if you toss them something to eat.”

“I see we’re going on the same type of journey,” Wen Ruohan said dryly. “Only your audience will probably enjoy the crumbs more.”

Lan Qiren chuckled over that imagery all the way to his favorite place. Every once in a while, Wen Ruohan actually was funny – unfortunately, it was usually accidental…

He stepped out onto the dock, and the laughter evaporated from his throat.

Lan Qiren’s brother, standing by the water’s edge, turned to look at him.

“Qiren,” he said.

Lan Qiren’s whole body had gone stiff with tension. His head was ringing, and everything sounded strangely distant. He forced himself to speak anyway.

“Xiongzhang. What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you, of course,” his brother said, voice flat. “This was your favorite place in the Lotus Pier when you were a child. You’d always run here as soon as there was a moment free…the ducks, right?”

Somehow it hurt worse, knowing that he remembered.

As a child, Lan Qiren had wanted to follow his brother everywhere and to take him everywhere with him if he could, even though it had annoyed his brother to no end. He’d chattered endlessly about his likes and dislikes, self-absorbed the way all small children were, wanting desperately to connect somehow with the brother who was so much older and so much more impressive than him. He’d loved him. He’d wanted to make him happy.

He'd wanted to forgive his brother for everything. Time and time again, he tried to find it in his heart to absolve him, and he’d blamed himself for being unable to do so, hated himself, thought himself a failure. He had thought that there was something wrong with him over his inability to understand or forgive, he had tortured himself over it – he’d tried to believe anything, anything at all, rather than accept that his brother was simply wrong.

He’d loved him that much.

That love was gone, now. Only hatred remained.

“What do you want?” Lan Qiren asked, suddenly exhausted. “What do you want from me?”

“I wanted to see how you were faring,” his brother said. Anyone listening might think it the normal sort of query from one family member to another, especially following the latter’s marriage to a dangerous man and doubly so when that marriage was too distant to allow for the traditional visit home after a few days, but Lan Qiren was standing where he could see his brother’s face, twisted into cold displeasure and even disappointment. He knew better.

“I have accepted my new position,” Lan Qiren said, mentally adding and have not been tortured, as you seem to have hoped. “Sect Leader Wen has been generous and kind to me, more than I had expected.”

His brother’s eyes narrowed.

Perhaps it was Wen Ruohan’s contrariness rubbing off on him, but Lan Qiren found himself adding, snidely: “It seems I have you to thank for that. You picked a good person for me to marry.”

His brother didn’t like that, he could tell. But Lan Qiren only had the barest moment to enjoy his victory, because then his brother smiled a horrible nasty smile and said, “Of course I did. How else could I repay you for raising such good sons for me?”

Lan Qiren flinched. He knew he shouldn’t, he knew that showing that his brother had successfully managed to hurt him would only encourage him, but he couldn’t help it.

It hurt too much. It would always hurt, and there would never be anything he could do about it.

Between the two of them, his brother held the upper hand. He would always have the upper hand, as long as he had Lan Qiren’s nephews.

His brother’s smile turned almost genuine upon seeing Lan Qiren’s twisted expression.

“Xichen in particular has been very good,” he said conversationally, and seemed to almost enjoy the way Lan Qiren shuddered. “He came himself to volunteer to help me, saying he wanted to share my burdens – I think he wanted to impress me. Such a good boy. I only fear that I might have scared him a little, telling him about the war.”

Lan Qiren’s fists clenched, with sudden points of pain on his palm as his sharpened nails pieced skin. Xichen, his little Xichen, who was so sensitive, who never wanted anyone to be unhappy, who covered his face during story time when tales of battles long past got too intense..!

His brother would have made it as gory as possible. Even if he hadn’t named Quanjiao Liu as his target, a sect that Lan Xichen would have heard of and had some knowledge of, his brother would still have talked about all the worst parts of war: the clash of sword against sword, cultivator against cultivator, death and dishonor and casualties of all types. War was despicable, even when limited to the minor little squabbles at sect borders, and so Lan Qiren had always rejected the option of conquest out of hand, despite the fact that such things were quite common for Great Sects. His father had once had a few such squabbles of his own, Lao Nie had been steadily expanding his northern border, and that was all without considering Wen Ruohan, for whom conquest was practically a hobby. Lan Qiren would never have agreed to lead the Lan sect into a war of their own without just cause, and even if he had, he would have sought to protect their youngest children from it as much as possible.

“He went dreadfully pale at the part where I told him about how the various sects treat their prisoners of war,” his brother mused, and Lan Qiren’s already straight back somehow went even straighter when he understood what that must mean, that his brother had told Xichen about the Fire Palace. How could he?! Knowing he’d sent Lan Qiren to Wen Ruohan, he’d told Xichen…! “He didn’t say anything about you, though. Perhaps he doesn’t miss you as much as I thought he would.”

We miss you lots! Come back soon!

Lan Qiren’s hands were shaking, he noticed. There was pain in his palms, and also in his mouth – he’d bitten his lip too hard, trying to keep quiet, and from the metallic taste in his mouth he knew he’d drawn blood.

“The same is true for you, I see,” his brother said. “You must not miss them very much. You haven’t even asked any questions.”

Lan Qiren shuddered all over once again. He’d learned to hate that phrase – any questions, his brother liked to say, any other questions for me now? His brother didn’t really want him to ask questions, though. Not the way that Lan Qiren had always understood questions, as a means to gain understanding.

He just wanted Lan Qiren to beg.

He wanted Lan Qiren to plead with him for any scrap of information he saw fit to give him. He wanted Lan Qiren to struggle against the fate he had planned for him like a doomed animal at the end of a hunt, already tied down with nets and still thrashing about seeking freedom it would never find, with only the final execution remaining. He wanted Lan Qiren to ask questions just for the purpose of refusing to answer, or else answering in such a way that would cause him only more pain. He wanted Lan Qiren to have to thank him for causing him that pain.

Lan Qiren did not want to ask any questions. He really, truly didn’t.

And yet –

“You have spoken only of Xichen,” Lan Qiren said, knowing he was putting himself into his brother’s power and seeing his brother smile with that same knowledge, hating him for it and hating himself for being so weak as to walk into the obvious trap. “How is Wangji?”

“Terrible.”

Lan Qiren bit down harder on his lower lip, tasting blood again. Some of it spilled out of the corner of his mouth; he could feel a drop sliding down his jaw.

“I’m afraid you must have truly failed with that one. He’s already six, but he acts half his age: biting and kicking and scratching everyone he meets, like some sort of wild animal. And he cries! He cries all the time, over everything, like some sort of baby. It’s as if he’s never even heard of our sect rules.”

Lan Qiren’s vision was blurring, and he had to swallow repeatedly to keep himself from crying. What had his brother done to his prim and proper little Wangji, who cared so much about appearances that he was embarrassed even to laugh? Who loved their rules and could recite them so well that he could argue even with adults? What had he done to him, for his absence to have wrought such damage?

No. No, it wasn’t Lan Qiren’s fault. It was his brother who had sent him away; it was his fault.

“I have been so busy since resuming my role, I haven’t had time to really pay attention to him,” his brother mused. “That is my fault, of course. I will have to fix it upon my return. I am certain that it is nothing that some time and, hmm, personalized attention won’t fix.”

You mean that you are going to hurt him. You are going to hurt him for making noise, for being angry, for being overwhelmed – that’s wrong, that’s wrong! His behavior is not his fault! He is too young, he cannot control himself; the only punishments he should have to face are the ones that will help him learn. He should be copying lines and reading books, writing essays to explain what exactly he did wrong and why it was wrong and what he would do better next time; he should be practicing meditation to learn grounding techniques and breathing control to help his anxiety; he should be practicing the sword to learn steadiness and self-control. Hurting him will teach him nothing but to be afraid.

But that’s what you want, isn’t it?

“I’ll tell him that you thought of him.” His brother smiled. “I’m sure he’ll thank you for your consideration. Just like Xichen did, when I told him about how integral your contribution to the war was.”

You plan to blame me for the pain you cause them.

Lan Qiren felt blood at the back of his throat. Internal, this time – his qi was rioting from the sheer force of his hatred and his suffering, and he might risk internal injuries if he didn’t go quickly to meditate and stabilize it.

Why? he wanted to ask. Why do you hate me so much? I do not think it was like this before you went into seclusion. You disliked me, yes, but I was an annoying child, so your dislike was at least reasonable. It is not reasonable now. You would hurt your own children just to hurt me – why? What did I do to you?

He didn’t say anything.

He wasn’t going to give his brother the victory of forcing him to ask any more questions.

“I will tell my wife that you are making progress in your agreement with him,” he said instead, and his brother’s smile disappeared.

Good.

Lan Qiren might not know exactly how just yet, but he was going to take every iota of power that Wen Ruohan was willing to give him and he was going to force it down his brother’s throat.

He was going to make his brother regret.

“He will be very pleased to hear it,” he continued. “I know he’s counting on the benefits that will come to him, in time…ah, forgive me, I have misspoken. The benefits that will come to us.”

Lan Qiren lifted his sleeve and wiped away the blood from his lip and chin, then politely inclined his head to his brother – not the proper salute he would have given him before, but then, he wasn’t who he was before. He wasn’t just his brother’s younger brother. He was Wen Ruohan’s husband, part of Wen Ruohan’s family, and the Qishan Wen did not bow to anyone.

“I will take my leave now,” he said coldly, and ignored the way his brother’s eyes glittered with malice and perhaps insanity at his blatant failure to ask for permission. “I am certain you have too much to do to spend your time with the ducks.”

He left with his head held high, his shoulder even, his back straight.

He managed to make it almost all the way back to the rooms they’d been assigned before he spat up blood.

Chapter Text

“When you say gone and missing, what precisely do you mean?” Wen Ruohan asked.

Wang Liu shrugged. “Exactly that, Sect Leader. The two heirs of Gusu Lan were last seen at their lessons, shortly before the delegation left for the Yunmeng, and not since.”

It wasn’t that Wen Ruohan hadn’t understood what his spy meant. It was just that he couldn’t believe it.

“In the sense that they were kidnapped,” he said slowly, “or in the sense that they’ve run away?”

“It is my belief that the latter is more likely. There have been no recent threats, and Gusu Lan’s gate wards remain unbroken – no one without a pass token has entered or exited.”

That was at least something, Wen Ruohan supposed. Still, when Lan Qiren found out…

Wen Ruohan did not want to imagine Lan Qiren’s reaction to finding out that his brother had somehow managed to misplace Lan Qiren’s beloved nephews. Not after all the work he’d put into keeping the man intact for his own purposes! And for that matter, how had Qingheng-jun permitted something like that to happen? He’d only had sole guardianship of the boys for a handful of months! They were his own sons and heirs!

Wen Ruohan was not particularly fond of children, not even his own, and his taste for the pleasures of familial life had largely evaporated after the death of his first family. But he hadn’t gotten to where he was by being careless, and so Wen Ruohan made a point of always knowing where his sons were, what they were doing, and what company they were keeping at any given time. To not know that was to invite disaster, and that was even without behaving in such a way as to make them think running away was a better option!

Currently, Wen Xu, his oldest, was at nearly fifteen finally getting to the point that he was worth talking to. About half a year prior, he’d expressed an interest in the army and Wen Ruohan had happily granted his wish, sending him to train under one of his generals. Lu Qipei had made some token protests about her son leaving her side, but she’d been satisfied enough with the placement. Wen Ruohan suspected she would have preferred that he just give the boy command outright, never mind that he was underage – but as Wen Ruohan had not yet reached that depth of madness, he ignored all her hints and hoped instead that Wen Xu would actually genuinely learn something from the experience. In contrast, Wen Chao was only eight, so he remained in the Nightless City, but his daily life was filled with tutors and friends, overseen by his mother (and Lu Qipei, who often offered her “help”). Wen Ruohan had assigned him Wen Zhuliu, the Core-melting Hand, as a bodyguard and personal servant, ensuring that no one would ever dare challenge or threaten his son.

He certainly had never lost either of them.

Much less both!

Oh, Lan Qiren was definitely going to have another meltdown when he heard the news. Wen Ruohan couldn’t even imagine what that one would be like…and Wen Ruohan did not want him to have another meltdown. He had plans! Plans that involved Lan Qiren being of sound mind!

And now Qingheng-jun was, through sheer negligence, going to mess with those plans.

Wen Ruohan reached up and pressed his forehead above the bridge of his nose in a rare outward concession to his frustration.

“Do the Lan know where their heirs went?” he asked, forcefully restraining his temper. Thoughts of stabbing Qingheng-jun were pleasant, but not productive. However he might feel about the other man at the moment, he was the sect leader of a Great Sect, and not trifled with lightly. “For that matter, if their heirs are missing, why isn’t there more of a frenzy on their side?”

“The Lan sect disciples at the Cloud Recesses are trying to see if they can find the heirs before reporting to Sect Leader Lan on their absence,” Wang Liu reported, which made sense. Better to report that they’d temporarily misplaced the children rather than have to report having lost them, minimizing the fact of their failure by mitigating it in advance. “It was initially believed that they were simply hiding away somewhere in the Cloud Recesses, possibly as some sort of protest, but they’ve since ruled that out. They’ve sent disciples down to Caiyi and are now searching there. If they can’t find them there…”

Then they’d have no choice but to send a message to their sect leader, confessing all.

After all, the boys were only nine and six. They weren’t exactly accustomed to travel. If they weren’t in the Cloud Recesses, and they weren’t in the nearby town, and the only people who’d passed the Lan sect’s gates were those with the approved pass tokens, the only plausible place they could be was...

Here.

“You got the news early?” Wen Ruohan asked, then nodded in approval when Wang Liu confirmed. “Well done.”

“Thank you, Sect Leader. Your grace is immeasurable. Do you want us to start searching Gusu Lan’s baggage for them now? We could find and secure them before the Lan sect admits to themselves that they are lost.”

It was a tempting thought. Wen Ruohan could imagine the scene now: Lan Qiren noticing the increasing hubbub on the Lan sect’s side and growing concerned, eventually (reluctantly) turning to ask Wen Ruohan if he knew anything, Wen Ruohan drawing him off to the side to privately tell him, Lan Qiren’s moment of shock and horror, delicious in its suffering, which then melted away into profound relief and appreciation when Wen Ruohan murmured in his ear that he’d already sent people for them and found them – that they were safe, and secure, and with him –

Wen Ruohan wasn’t sure exactly what would happen after that, but he was certain it wouldn’t be boring.

It was a beautiful image.

Sadly, common sense intervened.

“No need,” Wen Ruohan said. “Let us not risk your cover on such a thing.”

Even if he found the boys first, he wouldn’t be able to take them away without being caught. The Lan sect was on the verge of confessing to their sect leader that the children had been lost. Once they did that, a search would undoubtedly begin at once, and then it would be impossible for him to hide the fact that he’d ordered his men to start the search early. Once that came out, whether or not he’d secured them by then, he would be blamed for having tried to spirit them away – and unfortunately, there were still things Wen Ruohan could not do, lines he could not cross and taboos he could not violate. Neither his power nor his insanity had yet grown to the level where he thought he could get away with stealing the heirs of the other sects.

(Yet. That was what Lan Qiren was for.)

Wang Liu must not have thought of that. Well, he was still relatively new.

“Sect Leader, are you sure?” Wang Liu asked, frowning. “If we miss this chance, it is unlikely we will be able to gain access to the children in the future – ”

“I’m certain,” Wen Ruohan said firmly, making it clear that his patience was starting to slip. He appreciated his spies, but he did not permit anyone to question his decisions. “You’re dismissed.”

Wang Liu saluted respectfully and absented himself very quickly. Presumably he still remembered what happened to people that got on Wen Ruohan’s bad side.

Wen Ruohan forgot about Wang Liu the moment he left, instead opting to look around the room he was in, the one used to store the considerable luggage his sect had brought with them, with a critical eye. After a moment, he pulled out a piece of talisman paper from his sleeve. He hadn’t bothered doing this for himself in ages, but calling for a servant would take both more time and more energy – for the talisman, he just needed a few strokes, a twist of power, a little focus…

The talisman activated in a flash, splitting into four and flying onto all four walls of the room, the pattern on them stretching out until they covered the entirety of the walls, then dissipating. The gentle background sounds of the Lotus Pier went with them, the privacy arrays locking it all down into silence.

“There we go,” Wen Ruohan said, and smirked in triumph. “Would you like to come out now?”

No reaction at all.

“I know you’re there.”

Still nothing.

Fine, then. He’d go for the kill.

“And to think how upset Lan Qiren will be when I tell him that he missed you – ”

Two small heads, adorned with Lan sect ribbons, immediately popped up from one of the larger trunks, right where Wen Ruohan had noticed them earlier. His cultivation was too high for him not to have noticed the presence of two children hiding away close by like that: he’d heard the rustling of their robes, felt the small pulses of spiritual energy, smelled the faint hints of sandalwood from the incense packets hidden in their clothing. He hadn’t especially cared, of course, since they’d been too far away to hear or see him talking with Wang Liu – what did some stowaways matter?

Then he’d found out who they likely were.

After all, just because Wen Ruohan couldn’t search for them and couldn’t take them away didn’t mean there wasn’t an advantage to be had in finding them.

The older boy, who must be Lan Xichen, looked properly appalled, just like Lan Qiren when he was faced by some profound breach of etiquette, though on a far smaller and rounder face; it wasn’t clear whether it was because of Wen Ruohan’s implicit threat or simply the idea of his uncle being upset. The younger one, Lan Wangji, who was even rounder than his big brother and looked even more like a big soft bao, merely looked determined, hopping out of the trunk and marching straight towards Wen Ruohan, his two little fists gripped tightly at his side, teeth bared –

“Wangji, no!” Lan Xichen yelped, throwing himself forward.

Wen Ruohan bemusedly lowered his hand, which had very abruptly flown up to the level of his face – he’d had to withdraw it very quickly in order to keep from being bitten.

Bitten.

By a junior version of Lan Qiren!

“Where is Shufu?” the little boy demanded, heedless of his older brother rushing forward to try to tug him back. “Bring me to him right now!”

Lan Wangji was lucky that Wen Ruohan was too busy trying to imagine what Lan Qiren must have looked like at a similar age to strike him down for his insolence. The effort wasn’t working very well, even though Wen Ruohan assumed that Lan Qiren must have resembled Lan Wangji as he was now – but no, Wen Ruohan really just couldn’t see the other man as anything other than the antique he’d already been by his early twenties.

“Please let me apologize on my brother’s behalf, Senior Wen,” Lan Xichen said urgently. “He’s just very distressed, he doesn’t mean it.”

Wen Ruohan glanced down at him. “Do not tell lies,” he drawled, and Lan Xichen winced and turned red with embarrassment. “He most certainly meant it. And it’s Sect Leader Wen.”

It was only when both boys gasped that he realized that he should have kept his identity a secret. He hadn’t realized that they actually hadn’t recognized him – if he’d realized, he would have kept it back and used it as leverage, played with them until they’d said something particularly dreadful or embarrassing.

It just hadn’t occurred to him that they were being genuinely ignorant rather than just speaking too fast. Everyone recognized him.

But of course it made perfect sense that these little children wouldn’t. Lan Qiren had never allowed a single child of his sect under the age of thirteen anywhere near the discussion conferences, not even the ones his sect had hosted. Once someone had asked about it, more teasing than curious. In return Lan Qiren had given a ponderous frown and started reciting rules of etiquette in his dull monotone until everyone’s ears had started bleeding and the person who’d asked looked as though he regretted being born.

Moreover, these weren’t just any children, but Lan Qiren’s children. They probably even obeyed the rules against gossip…though it was fairly clear from the look of worry on both their faces that they had at least some notion about some of the rumors that accompanied Wen Ruohan’s name.

“You are the one who has Shufu,” Lan Wangji hissed like a little viper. “Give him back!”

“Wangji!”

Lan Xichen had to literally pick up his brother to keep him from lunging forward.

There was something intrinsically funny about the sight of one boy hoisting the other up by the waist to keep him in place, barely able to keep standing steadily given all the wiggling and kicking. Somehow, when Wen Ruohan had heard about Lan Qiren’s two nephews that he had personally raised, it had never occurred to him that the man might have raised one normal child and one absolute hellion.

“Wangji, behave,” Lan Xichen said, and put his brother down. “You won’t get anywhere with Sect Leader Wen by trying to bite him. He’s a very reasonable person. I’m sure he doesn’t want us to cause a fuss, because then people might come here and think he was the one who brought us here.”

Make that two absolute hellions.

Wen Ruohan’s eyebrows arched involuntarily. “Are you trying to blackmail me?” he asked, deeply amused. And also pleased that he’d bothered to take the time to set up the privacy talisman earlier, because Lan Xichen wasn’t wrong. “I’m certain that’s against your sect rules, little Lan.”

Lan Xichen looked up at him with a set face, stubborn determination in every line of him. “Is that so, Sect Leader Wen? Which one? Please educate this junior.”

Lan Qiren had raised these children?

On second thought, of course he had. Who else could take something so fundamentally uninteresting as children, who were boring, needy, and unpleasant until they’d at least completed adolescence, and create such a fascinatingly unpredictable mix of contrasts, cloaked in seemingly implacable Lan sect righteousness?

And if he could do that with his own children…really, Wen Ruohan had already been eager enough to see Lan Qiren teaching when his sole interest had been in hearing Lan Qiren dominate a classroom, but now he was really crawling out of his skin with anticipation. Perhaps he would even send his own sons to him to see if maybe Lan Qiren could somehow salvage the wrecks their insipid personalities and mothers had made of them – after all, they were Wen, and thus deserved the best. And everyone agreed that Lan Qiren was the best.

“My sect also has a list of sayings by which we are to abide,” he said instead. “All left behind by the founder, my ancestor. Do you know which one applies in this situation?”

They both looked uncertain.

“Neither do I. Because under my rule, they have become obsolete.” Wen Ruohan’s lips curled back into a sneer. “I would recommend against underestimating me.”

The intimidation worked beautifully against Lan Xichen, just as intended: the boy paled and looked as though he were reviewing everything he must have heard about Wen Ruohan in his mind all at once, and pairing that with the fact that Wen Ruohan had his beloved uncle within his grasp.

Lan Wangji, in contrast, scrunched up his face angrily, shouted “Arrogance is forbidden!” and smacked Wen Ruohan right in the knee with his little fist.

And then he burst into tears.

“Oh no,” Lan Xichen said, clearly horrified. He tried to reach out to grab his brother once more, only for Lan Wangji to throw himself on the floor and start hitting it with his fists, still sobbing, but with his mouth pursed as if he were trying desperately not to make too much noise during his temper tantrum.

Causing noise is prohibited, if Wen Ruohan had to bet. Those ridiculous Lan sect rules…

He really did look like a little Lan Qiren.

Wen Ruohan crouched down in front of Lan Wangji, wondering briefly if he should restrain him the way he had ultimately restrained Lan Qiren during his own fit – probably not, since Lan Qiren had commented that in the future he would prefer if Wen Ruohan limited his involvement to merely ensuring that there was nothing breakable in the vicinity and keeping other people away. Likely that was the course of action he would recommend to others as well.

It made Wen Ruohan again wonder if this was what Lan Qiren had looked like as a child, all chubby cheeks, red faced and utterly miserable.

No, he still couldn’t imagine it. Given the poor relationship between Lan Qiren and his brother, which must have started in their childhood, he simply could not imagine Lan Qiren being spoiled and beloved and secure enough in himself to have a fit out in the open in front of strangers. Though perhaps he was being unduly dismissive of Lan Wangji – the boy’s life had been through rather a lot of changes recently, all negative, and he’d already seen the impact of a similar thing on the already adult Lan Qiren. Sometimes meltdowns were simply inevitable.

No matter.

“How often do these fits happen?” he asked Lan Xichen, who was wringing his hands and bouncing up and down on his toes in profound distress.

“More often than they used to,” Lan Xichen replied in what was practically a wail. “He used to have much better self-control. That is, before – before Shufu…Wangji doesn’t like change.”

“Mm. Neither does your uncle.”

Lan Xichen glanced at him sidelong, gnawing on his lower lip. “Earlier…I heard…is my Shufu really your wife?”

“I’m his,” Wen Ruohan corrected, then grinned at the sweet memory of the disaster Lan Qiren had caused earlier by publicly calling him his wife. The cultivation world was never going to get over that one. “Tell me, what was your plan, hiding yourselves here? Why didn’t you try to go find your uncle straight away?”

“We didn’t know if he was going to be at the conference,” Lan Xichen said, looking abashed. “But he’d certainly be in the Nightless City, wouldn’t he?”

“I see. And when you were found in my possession? What were you planning to do then?”

“We wouldn’t be found!” At Wen Ruohan’s doubtful look, Lan Xichen puffed out his cheeks and pouted. “We wouldn’t. We weren’t found until now, were we?”

That was only because no one had properly looked.

Wen Ruohan decided to refrain from commenting. He could wait until a more appropriate moment to ruin the boy’s illusions – or at least until he managed to figure out what he intended to do with them. As he’d already determined earlier, there was no way he could smuggle them out of the Lotus Pier and to the Nightless City himself. Once the two children’s escapade was discovered, he and Lan Qiren would be immediate targets for suspicion. Their baggage would be searched, their retinue investigated, no stone left unturned. There was a limit to how clever even he could be, trying to hide something away when the focus of the entire cultivation world was on him.

And yet the other option was even less appealing: to bring Lan Qiren so close to the children he so longed to see, and yet not letting them see one another. Or worse, letting them see each other and then sending the boys back to the Cloud Recesses, thereby delivering the most powerful card over Lan Qiren into the hands of their father, Wen Ruohan’s rival in power.

No, that was intolerable. The boys had to come with him.

As for how – well, he’d think of something.

He was Wen Ruohan, after all. He always got what he wanted, eventually.

“Are you done?” he asked Lan Wangji, who seemed to have exhausted himself.

“I want to see Shufu,” Lan Wangji replied. Stubborn brat. “I want to see Shufu right now.”

“That can be arranged,” Wen Ruohan said. Both boys lit up, as he’d expected them to. Children were painfully easy to manipulate. “What will you give me in exchange?”

They both stared at him, clearly wondering if he was being serious.

Naturally he was. He would never have bothered if they were just two ordinary children, of course, but these were Lan Qiren’s children.

“Do not take advantage of your position to oppress others,” Lan Xichen finally said.

Cute.

“Do not be wasteful,” Wen Ruohan replied, fighting down the amused curl of his lips. He’d gotten pretty good at irritating Lan Qiren with his own sect rules, these past few months. A few children would be nothing.

“Do not build wealth using others,” Lan Wangji volunteered.

“…do you even have any wealth?” Wen Ruohan wondered, abruptly distracted, and tried not to laugh when Lan Xichen dug a single piece of silver out of his sleeve to proudly show off to him. His own little Chao-er had a monthly allowance of ten times that amount, but then again the Wen sect wasn’t nearly as fond of frugality as the Lan. “Don’t be unreasonable. How about a favor? One each.”

“A…favor?”

“Why not? I’m doing you a favor by bringing you to your shufu, aren’t I? Propriety suggests reciprocity.”

The boys looked at each other, clearly wary and searching for a trap, or at least a way out of the one they were in. That alone made them smarter than any number of sect leaders Wen Ruohan had to deal with on a regular basis, many of whom were blindly self-confident even when knowing the caliber of their enemy. In fact, even Lao Nie would generally agree to just about anything rather than owe Wen Ruohan an open-ended favor without limitation – he knew, as all smart people knew, that Wen Ruohan always remembered what he was owed, and that he was more than willing to wait for just the right moment to call it out, even if it took decades.

He had the time.

But in the end, wary as they might be, these were still only children.

“All right,” Lan Xichen finally said, clearly unable to think of another solution that would satisfy the situation and reluctantly accepting it. “One favor each. But nothing bad!”

Wen Ruohan thought about it, then inclined his head in agreement. Vagueness in a contract was beneficial to both sides, and he could go quite far with the wiggle room ‘nothing bad’ offered him.

Lan Xichen looked relieved. For his part, Lan Wangji looked between the two of them and nodded firmly, signaling his own consent to the arrangement. And then, having apparently decided that Wen Ruohan now qualified as a good adult, he held up his arms and said “Up!” to Wen Ruohan in an imperious tone.

“Not a chance,” Wen Ruohan informed him. These two children might be more tolerable than most, but he wasn’t about to start indulging them. “You have two legs, you can walk. Or ask your brother, if your fit earlier has truly incapacitated you.”

He waved away the privacy barrier and began walking back to the rooms he had been assigned, weaving his way through the many bridges and floating platforms of the Lotus Pier. Presumably Lan Qiren would be back from the ducks by now – though Wen Ruohan supposed he was the one who’d ended up being trailed by ducklings.

He found that he was looking forward to presenting his newest prizes to Lan Qiren.

Lan Qiren’s reaction would be amazing. The other man would undoubtedly be quick to realize the same issues with their presence and disposition as Wen Ruohan had, of course, but he was still a Lan; he would be emotional first, rational second. Seeing his nephews for the first time in months would snap that reserve of his in two like a twig, and Wen Ruohan wouldn’t have to suffer that dull-as-dishwater self-effacing persona that Lan Qiren had adopted as soon as they were in public.

Truly, it had been more irritating than Wen Ruohan had realized it would be, seeing Lan Qiren forcefully stuff all of the interesting things about him – his sharp insight, his fiery temper, his well-concealed ruthlessness – back into the perfect model of the navel-gazing scholar, untouched by mortal filth. That might be appropriate for the Lan sect, but Lan Qiren wasn’t here to represent them. He was here for Qishan Wen, as he himself had admitted. Admitted repeatedly, and in public.

The Wen sect did not hide their talents. They didn’t hide that they were better than everyone else.

It was more than that, though. Lan Qiren’s behavior made it painfully clear that he had been brought up to be a proper second son, always staying one step behind and ready to offer support without eclipsing the first son, not as beloved as his brother and excruciatingly aware of it. Given that he was so obviously superior to his brother in every respect, it grated on Wen Ruohan’s nerves to see him act like that.

But all that was in the past, now. He was better than that now.

Husband or not, Lan Qiren was Madam Wen now. He ought to act like it.

Perhaps Wen Ruohan would suggest that Lan Qiren learn a little from Lan Wangji. Now there was a younger son the way a younger son ought to be: deeply beloved and spoiled rotten, utterly certain that he deserved everything good in the world because his family had always strived to give it to him. He certainly didn’t seem to have any trouble being appropriately demanding, assuming other people’s acquiescence to his will as if it were inevitable.

Yes, this was going to be a great deal of fun. Lan Qiren would have his moment with his nephews, emotional as it would undoubtedly be, and then he would master himself and return to Wen Ruohan’s side so that they could plan out how to manage the fall-out when the boys were inevitably discovered.

Really, it was such a pleasure to have someone smart enough to actually keep up with him.

It was a painful rarity, especially when coupled with loyalty or straightforwardness. Most of the people who were actually smart enough to anticipate Wen Ruohan’s plans were too greedy or presumptuous to be tolerated, and the ones who were matchlessly loyal tended to be too stupid to talk to. Wen Ruohan trusted no one, of course, but doubting Lan Qiren was practically pointless, an exercise in futility…

A small hand tugged at his sleeve.

Wen Ruohan looked down.

“Don’t we need to hide?” Lan Xichen whispered loudly to him. “Anyone could see us!”

“Don’t be absurd,” Wen Ruohan said, shaking him loose. “I would be able to tell if anyone were coming long before they got anywhere near.”

“And then we’d hide?” Lan Xichen asked.

“No,” Lan Wangji replied before Wen Ruohan could say anything. “He’d kill them for seeing us.”

“Wangji. Don’t be ridiculous. He wouldn’t!”

“The rule against killing is only in the Cloud Recesses. So why not?”

“Because it would still be wrong! Also, he wouldn’t be able to get away with it. Not in the middle of a discussion conference.”

Sad but true.

Wen Ruohan wondered if Lan Qiren had deliberately trained Lan Xichen to be more practical, a necessity in a sect leader, while Lan Wangji, as a younger son, had the luxury of being intransigent, or if the two boys’ characters had simply ended up that way by chance.

He really would need to give Lan Qiren a chance to make something out of his Xu-er and Chao-er. They weren’t bad boys, as far as Wen Ruohan could tell, and naturally, as his sons, he was proud of them, but just as obviously he wanted them to be outstanding adults, befitting the dignity of his bloodline. And even he could tell that the present difference between his Chao-er and Lan Xichen, or even Lan Wangji, was quite wide…

“He’d probably just hit them really hard on the head instead,” Lan Xichen concluded. “At most.”

“Mm. That would work.”

Very cute.

There was no point in telling the boys that Wen Ruohan was both so powerful that he could easily sense and avoid anyone coming their way and also a master of arrays, including those that were more than capable of hiding two children. It would be much funnier if he told Lan Qiren later about how they had plotted for him to incapacitate any enemy that came across their path. Lan Qiren would make such a face…

Ah, and just as he thought of him, Wen Ruohan turned a corner and there was the man himself, standing right outside the entrance to their rooms. He was unmistakable in his white-and-red robes and Lan sect forehead ribbon, his back straight and his face turned away from where Wen Ruohan was standing.

He was not alone.

He was talking with a woman – or perhaps more accurately, a woman was talking to him. She was tall for a woman, dressed in clothing of a rogue cultivator with no clan insignia, though there was a horsetail whip tucked into her belt alongside her sword. She moved one of her hands as she spoke, almost as though she were signing what she was saying.

The nails of the hand she was waving around were lacquered a very dark red, and very sharp. Not just the ones for playing guqin, either, but all five. Her other hand –

Her other hand was wrapped around Lan Qiren’s wrist.

And Lan Qiren was letting her.

Wen Ruohan stopped, knowing that the two boys were too small to see as far as he did, and glanced around – ah, there was another set of rooms here. Probably one of his subordinate sects, since no one else would agree to be placed so close to his Qishan Wen. The entryway was locked, but he forced it easily with a palm and held it open for the children.

“Your uncle is not far,” he told them, observing the way their faces both took on a hungry cast, as if they could think of nothing that they longed for more than the sight of Lan Qiren. “But he is not alone. Wait here until you hear me call.”

They went in obediently, although Lan Wangji had to put his clenched fist to his mouth and bite it in order to motivate himself to do so – he clearly wanted more than anything to run straight to his beloved uncle, as if simply being in his presence would cure all previous ills.

Ah, the stupidity of youth. Was I ever that young?

Perhaps once. He’d learned better quickly enough – betrayal had a way of doing that.

He didn’t bother applying another privacy talisman, knowing that the flare of spiritual energy would be enough to draw the attention of other cultivators, particularly one as sharp as Lan Qiren. The children would be fine without it, and if they weren’t…well, that wasn’t really his concern, in the end. What did he care?

They were just Lan Qiren’s nephews, not his.

Moreover, Wen Ruohan wanted to maintain the element of surprise. He wanted to see Lan Qiren’s face when he tried to explain what exactly he was doing, as if he’d completely forgotten that he’d written Do not give your wife reason to doubt your fidelity with his own hand on his own list of personal rules on how to be a good and worthy husband. Rules he was meant to follow.

Had that one been included as a trick? It only said “do not give reason to doubt” – could that be the loophole, that it focused more on Wen Ruohan’s doubt than Lan Qiren’s own fidelity…?

“I am fairly certain that cannot be accurate,” Lan Qiren was saying as Wen Ruohan stalked closer. He sounded somewhere between appalled and resigned, as far as Wen Ruohan could tell; it was sometimes difficult to determine given his general inclination towards monotone. “Why in the world – no, on second thought, please do not explain. I have no desire to hear any more.”

“Don’t give up on learning,” the woman said, her voice surprisingly deep, lively and cheerful. Was this the type Lan Qiren liked? She had a certain wild beauty about her, barely tamed, and even her hair was set in something that was neither the style of a maiden nor that of a married woman, more like that of a man at leisure. She was powerful, much more so than he would have expected of a woman her age. Nowhere near Wen Ruohan’s own strength, but he supposed that meant that at least Lan Qiren’s taste in partners had that much in common. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten your family rules so quickly after marriage. Your memory isn’t supposed to be one of the things you give up when you make your marriage vows – you should pick something less necessary. Like freedom, or blood.”

Wen Ruohan paused. What?

“I…do not think you are supposed to give up your blood,” Lan Qiren said slowly, although he was oddly hesitant. Possibly he was simply wary of upsetting an obviously crazy person. “Or that such a thing is – possible.”

“You’ve been talking with the wrong people, then,” the woman said, brisk but cheerful. “Or thinking too narrowly, which you have a bad tendency to do. You and all the other Lan, always thinking straight! You should look around more – to look down more. Being in the Wen sect will be good for you. It’ll broaden your horizons.”

Then she giggled.

“Get it?” she said. “Horizons?”

Lan Qiren was visibly staring at her. Maybe she really was crazy. Maybe she’d been the one to grab onto him, and he’d only refused to shake her off because he feared what she might do.

“…no,” he said. “I do not ‘get it’. At all.”

“I think it’s especially apt now that you’re married! If there’s one thing I’ve found about getting married, it’s that it means you spend a lot more time being horizontal – ”

“Cangse Sanren!” Lan Qiren shouted, having clearly ‘gotten it’ this time.

Wen Ruohan’s eyebrows arched up immediately. He knew that name: Cangse Sanren was the immortal Baoshan Sanren’s disciple, who had descended from the celestial mountain. It would certainly explain how powerful she was, the spiritual energy coiled within her and glowing with strength.

Wen Ruohan had seen her once before, shortly after her descent from the immortal’s mountain. He’d been as curious as the rest of them, possibly more so given his own personal quest for immortality, but he hadn’t managed to make many inroads – she’d been quite fiercely protected by Jiang Fengmian at the time, the young man nominating himself to act as her escort and guardian as she traveled through the cultivation world to visit various sects. He’d been right to be so protective, of course, since at the time, it seemed as though half the world had been in love with her. It was no wonder Wen Ruohan hadn’t recognized her; it had been quite a few years since then, and she was no longer the young girl she had once been. He’d heard that she’d become a rogue cultivator after marrying Jiang Fengmian’s servant rather than the man himself – perhaps that was why she was here to visit him during the discussion conference, when the publicity would help quell the inevitability of gossip, rather than in private.

If Wen Ruohan recalled correctly, Lan Qiren had been acquainted with her back in their youth as well; they were of an age with each other, and would have been peers. She had spent a summer in the Cloud Recesses. In fact, from what Wen Ruohan had heard, while Lan Qiren had not been one of the many suitors that had proposed marriage to her, he was said to have liked her a great deal…

Wen Ruohan’s anger, which had been temporarily dampened by confusion, rekindled.

“I suspect the joke may relate to me,” he said as he came up to them, voice intentionally chilly, reflecting his displeasure. Oddly enough, Lan Qiren didn’t jump or try to hide away from him, which meant that he was either a better actor than Wen Ruohan had assumed or perhaps that he genuinely possessed no feelings of guilt. “The midday sun faces no horizon and looks down upon all the earth.”

“That’s the one,” Cangse Sanren said agreeably. She didn’t seem bothered by his presence either, and rudely pointed to him with those sharp red nails of hers – though interestingly now that he was close by, he couldn’t smell any lacquer or powdered herbs on them. Surely they weren’t that color naturally…? “That’s the joke. But also the Wen sect are all a bunch of arrogant – ”

“Cangse Sanren,” Lan Qiren hissed. “Do not use vulgar language!”

“I was going to say surgeons!” Cangse Sanren turned to look at Wen Ruohan, fixing him with an unexpected glare. “You’ve got medical skills, don’t you? You took long enough to get here. Fix him.”

She nodded at Lan Qiren.

Wen Ruohan frowned and turned to follow her gaze to Lan Qiren – who looked awful, now that he was actually looking at him. His lips were thin, pressed tight from tension, and all the skin of his face unusually pale, his lips unusually red. There was a smear of blood at the corner of his mouth that hadn’t been wiped off properly, and a matching stain on his sleeve.

He’d been coughing up blood.

“Didn’t you go to feed ducks?” Wen Ruohan asked, the chill that had filled him abruptly melting away in the heat of his irritation. He grabbed Lan Qiren’s other wrist to check his pulse – weak, miserable, distressed – and immediately started transferring over spiritual energy to stabilize him. As Cangse Sanren had been doing through his other wrist, he could now see. “How did you manage to get into a state like this? Did a particularly violent goose break one of your sect rules?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lan Qiren said, equally irritated. Wen Ruohan was pleased to note that he immediately shook off Cangse Sanren’s hand as soon as he was in possession of superior assistance. “It seems that I am too regular with my habits. My brother was waiting for me there.”

Wen Ruohan’s eyes narrowed.

He’d known, of course, that Qingheng-jun wouldn’t take well to seeing Lan Qiren well and whole and intact – that had been part of the fun he’d been expected – but he hadn’t anticipated that the man would actually take action against Lan Qiren. He knew he hated him, of course, he’d based his entire strategy in making the marriage offer to Qingheng-jun on that fact. But even putting aside the taboo of injuring your own blood kin, surely the man didn’t hate his own brother enough to waste the benefits he’d managed to use Lan Qiren to obtain for his sect, and certainly particularly not before he’d actually had the chance to seize them…? After all, Qingheng-jun was a sect leader, however long he had lapsed in the position, and for a sect leader, the sect always came first.

But if, despite all that, Qingheng-jun had still raised his hand against someone wearing Wen Ruohan's colors –

"He didn't do anything to me," Lan Qiren added sourly, presumably picking up on Wen Ruohan's murderous expression. "I did it to myself."

"To yourself?" Cangse Sanren echoed. She sounded suitably skeptical. "How, exactly? Walked into a post hard enough to cause internal injuries, did you?"

"I really did walk into a post that time," Lan Qiren informed her, confirming Wen Ruohan’s sudden seething suspicion that it had been a reference to some shared past event. "But no. Nothing so crude. He baited me with words, not even objectionable words, and I fell for it. I allowed him to get to me to such a point that I grew unbearably angry – to the point that I nearly died of rage like…like some sort of Nie!"

Wen Ruohan choked. That might be the rudest thing he’d ever heard Lan Qiren say, scornful and definitely violating the rules against sneering and contempt.

(Wen Ruohan was such a bad influence on Lan Qiren. He gloried in it.)

“I don’t think we can go that far,” Cangse Sanren said, unmoved. Presumably she didn’t realize what a momentous event Lan Qiren coming anywhere near the vicinity of a pejorative was. “I’m no doctor, I’ve got no medical skills, but I’m pretty sure your current state can’t be diagnosed as ‘dying’.”

Lan Qiren glanced warily at Wen Ruohan.

“It’s not,” Wen Ruohan confirmed with a scoff. “You’re hardier than you think you are.”

It was that pure and shining golden core of his again, keeping him stable and helping him swiftly recover his equilibrium. Absent some truly tremendous trauma, some deeply intimate betrayal, Lan Qiren would be a hard man to break.

“See?” Cangse Sanren said haughtily. “Nothing but exaggeration. You’re worse than my son, and he’ll complain just to hear the sound of his own voice.”

“I recall hearing that you have a son,” Lan Qiren said. “Around the same age as my younger nephew, I believe? I never had the chance to offer you and Wei Changze my congratulations.”

Wen Ruohan glanced at him, wondering if that was sarcasm or jealousy, but he seemed genuine.

“My news is old news,” Cangse Sanren said dismissively, waving a hand. “Yours, on the other hand, is far more interesting. Why are you wearing Qishan Wen’s suns?”

“Yes, Lan Qiren,” Wen Ruohan drawled. “Why don’t you introduce us?”

Lan Qiren blanched, clearly realizing how rude he’d been. For her part, Cangse Sanren laughed at him and made a gesture that appeared to be mimicking stroking a fake beard, intoning, “No improper behavior” in a deliberately exaggerated manner.

“Sect Leader Wen, Cangse Sanren, disciple of the immortal Baoshan Sanren,” Lan Qiren said stiffly, not paying her any attention. It was near enough to his usual behavior that it was hard to tell whether he felt anything more for her than others, but then it would, wouldn’t it? “Cangse Sanren, Qishan Wen sect’s Sect Leader Wen, Wen Ruohan. We were married a few months ago.”

“You got married? To him?” Cangse Sanren grinned widely, showing off some rather sharp tiger teeth. “Wow, Qiren-gege, who would’ve thought you’d like – ”

“If you insult my wife, this conversation is over,” Lan Qiren snapped, causing both Cangse Sanren and Wen Ruohan’s eyebrows to jump up in surprise.

“I wasn’t going to,” she said primly, obviously lying, but then she smirked. “Is that why you were asking about a wife’s duties?”

“No!” Lan Qiren exclaimed, abruptly flushing red. That was good, it meant he had enough blood to spare for his face now. “I was merely – a suggestion had been raised earlier, and I found myself unprepared – I mean, I know they manage the household, but – and – I was only making conversation! And it’s not as if you had anything useful to say, anyway!”

Wen Ruohan felt his lips twisting involuntarily up in amusement as Cangse Sanren outright guffawed.

“Of course what I said wasn’t useful,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You were coughing up blood. I would have said anything that kept you talking, or else otherwise I’d be worried that you’d faint.”

Lan Qiren spluttered, but Wen Ruohan was already nodding in approval. Judging the moment right, given Lan Qiren’s improved appearance, he took the opportunity to stop transferring energy, though he kept his fingers curled loosely around Lan Qiren’s wrist.

Perhaps he really had misjudged the situation between the two of them, he reflected, his mood vastly improved for whatever reason. Lan Qiren was precisely the sort of tactless person that would on first meeting ask an old acquaintance for advice on his personal life, provided that he perceived them to be a potential expert on the subject, and for her part Cangse Sanren seemed a practical sort of person, familiar enough with basic first aid to realize that the damage would have been worse if Lan Qiren had lost consciousness or kept stewing.

“What did your brother say to you to get such a result?” he asked. Not that he couldn’t guess, but he wanted to see a little of the rage that Qingheng-jun had inspired.

Sure enough, Lan Qiren’s face soured, his lips pressing together once more and his eyes narrowing. “Nothing that anyone could object to,” he said. “He updated me about – about my nephews.”

Wen Ruohan nodded, feeling his own smirk start to grow. He noticed Cangse Sanren’s eyes flickering between them, frowning, but he ignored her. This was going to be fun.

“There is no point in dwelling on it,” Lan Qiren said, clearly trying to convince himself more than anyone else. “There is nothing I can do about it, far away as I now am. And after all, they are his sons.”

The way he said it sounded not unlike a man stabbing a knife repeatedly into his own chest.

“On that subject,” Wen Ruohan began, figuring now would be the best time to strike, “regarding your nephews – ”

Sadly, he never had the chance to finish his sentence: it seemed that he had delayed too long, outlasting childish patience. A small quavering voice interrupted him, shouting, “Shufu!”

Lan Qiren nearly jumped out of his own skin, then twisted around, gaping as two small bundles of white hurried down the floating walkway towards him. “Wangji…? Wangji! Xichen!”

He fell to his knees with an almost audible crack, holding out his arms, and the two boys rushed into them, both children sobbing so hard that they seemed scarcely able to breathe, let alone talk.

Emotional, just as Wen Ruohan predicted.

It was a pity that they’d come out so early, Wen Ruohan thought to himself, since he probably could have extracted some fun concessions from Lan Qiren before revealing them. Still, he didn’t mind it as much as he might have otherwise. Lan Qiren would know that it was his doing regardless, and he would find a way to make it up to him. He was good for that, dependable.

“You seem improved from when I last laid eyes on you, Sect Leader Wen,” Cangse Sanren commented, crossing to his side of the walkway and idly pulling herself up to perch on the railing like some sort of monkey or bird. “Less maliciously destructive, which I assume means less bored. Could it be that married life suits you?”

“My wives would likely dispute that claim,” Wen Ruohan said dryly. “At present I have two which preceded him, and neither reported any such improvement.”

“Ah, but now you have Lan Qiren. That’s different!” She grinned and tapped the side of her nose knowingly. “They say one mountain can’t hold two tigers, but that doesn’t apply if they’re one family. Put a tiger in a cage with nothing to do, they’ll destroy everything and then themselves…sometimes you need two.”

Wen Ruohan shrugged, not disagreeing. Lan Qiren was certainly far more tiger than either of his wives had ever been – and he himself was indeed a great deal less bored.

“It’s good, though,” Cangse Sanren chattered. “I haven’t spent any serious time with Lan Qiren since I was sixteen, and I’ve been meaning to make that up…anyway, it means I can stop avoiding the Nightless City, and just in time. I was going to go over to Xixiang to check out the rumors about that old mine, but after that, my little A-Ying has been begging me to take him somewhere new.”

“Naturally he has, if he hasn’t been to my Nightless City,” Wen Ruohan said, practically on automatic. “You will find nowhere finer in the cultivation world…”

He paused, the idea coming to him in a beautiful burst of light. No one ever paid attention to rogue cultivators, who came and went wherever they willed – and Baoshan Sanren’s wild disciple more than most.

“Cangse Sanren,” he said, and she turned to look at him, a questioning expression on her face. “Your son is about the same age as Lan Qiren’s youngest nephew, is he not?”

At her nod, he smiled with teeth.

“I think it is an excellent idea for you to bring him to visit my Nightless City once you are done with your next night-hunt,” he said. “And, perhaps, you could see your way to also bringing along a few small traveling companions…?”

Cangse Sanren’s eyes followed Wen Ruohan’s to look at the two young Lan boys, talking excitedly with Lan Qiren, all three of them smiling with faces wet with tears.

Her answering smile had just as many teeth as his.

Chapter Text

“Do you think something unfortunate happened between Cangse Sanren and Jiang Fengmian?” Lan Qiren asked Wen Ruohan, who just stared blankly at him. “Do not think that I am complaining, given how much it accrues to my benefit. It is only that I really cannot imagine doing a thing that would cause that much internal strife to a person I consider to be my friend.”

Despite his reluctance to ever let his two nephews out of his sight again now that he’d seen them again, Lan Qiren had quickly approved Wen Ruohan’s proposed plan to have Cangse Sanren smuggle Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji out of the Lotus Pier, taking advantage of the fact that as a rogue cultivator she could leave early and with relatively little suspicion.

He knew, just as Wen Ruohan knew, that the two of them would be the prime suspects in the disappearance when it was inevitably discovered and reported – it was inevitable, given Lan Qiren’s role in his nephews’ lives up until this point, and the rumors of discord between him and his brother. No matter what they did, it would be impossible to conceal Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji well enough to keep them from being found and returned to their father and sect. And, once returned…

Well, Lan Qiren’s brother had been clear enough about what would happen to them, and that had been before Xichen and Wangji had flagrantly violated Lan sect custom (although not the rules, strictly speaking) in a manner that displayed their preference for Lan Qiren over their father.

(Lan Qiren wished that he could trust his brother to be fair and impartial in imposing punishment, limiting himself only to the rules the boys had actually broken – but his trust in his brother had disappeared long before his love for him had gone. Even in his youth when his brother had only disliked him, Lan Qiren had found his brother to be rather petty on the subject of punishment.)

Lan Qiren thought that Wen Ruohan had been surprised by how swiftly he had agreed with the plan, which he’d done more or less immediately after he’d finished wiping the tears from his nephews’ eyes. Neither Xichen nor Wangji had wanted to leave him, with Wangji being especially distraught, but Lan Qiren had explained the issue to them to the best of his abilities, sticking as much as possible to his desire to see them again rather than expressly stating or even implying any insult to their father. He’d then set rules for their upcoming trip, cautioning and scolding them in exactly the way he would if the trip were merely to go down to Caiyi with their cousins to buy sweets, and he’d seen with satisfaction the way they had both relaxed as soon as the sense of familiarity settled in. He hoped it would help, particularly with Wangji, who was so very clearly suffering greatly from all the changes and the lack of the set schedule Lan Qiren had so painstakingly helped him put together…

No, Lan Qiren couldn’t think of that. Not that, nor of how nervous and burdened Xichen looked, weighed down by responsibility years before it should have fallen upon him. It would only cause himself pointless distress, when he should instead spend his time thinking of the future and what he could do to abate their distress going forward.

(“I thought you’d object,” Wen Ruohan remarked to him in an undertone while Cangse Sanren had been very colorfully introducing herself to the boys, both of whom seemed somewhat doubtful and possibly mildly disapproving in a way that suggested they were in the process of being thoroughly charmed. Cangse Sanren had a very particular way about her of doing that. “Or at least that you would need some convincing that it wasn’t necessary to send them back to the Cloud Recesses where they belong, rather than let them come into my grasp.”

“I told you before that I intended to use you,” Lan Qiren replied, cognizant of but not entirely understanding the flash of delight on Wen Ruohan’s face at his words. “They will return to the Cloud Recesses only once their well-being has been secured to my satisfaction, which I expect will require, at minimum, negotiations with my sect elders. Until that time they must be in a safe place that can resist the disapproval of even the entire cultivation world. Other than your Nightless City, I can think of nowhere else that would do, short of barricading myself in some unpleasant locale naturally inclined towards defense. You will simply have to suffer their presence until then.”

“After hearing the way you used your sect rules to justify keeping them, I doubt I will be suffering,” Wen Ruohan said, voice droll. “Your Xichen in particular has picked up your fondness for loopholes.”

“They are not loopholes. The rules are complex and require tailoring to the present circumstances – ”

“They can keep company with my Chao-er,” Wen Ruohan interrupted. He’d been smirking. “Perhaps they can improve him.”)

In short, Lan Qiren had been quite satisfied with Wen Ruohan’s proposed plan. What he hadn’t expected was that Cangse Sanren would take the initiative to add her own twist, which she did by walking straight up to Jiang Fengmian and asking for permission to take his children on a trip through the cultivation world. She’d claimed that the idea had come upon her abruptly and that she hoped that it would build better ties between their families – to allow her Wei Ying and his Jiang Cheng to grow naturally into friends, the way Jiang Fengmian had with her husband Wei Changze, who had not attended the conference.

That absence seemed slightly odd to Lan Qiren, given that Wei Changze had been the one who’d grown up in the Lotus Pier to start with, but he hadn’t had time to question Cangse Sanren on the subject – assuming he even could, given that in truth they were not particularly well-acquainted. One summer’s worth of something combative that could barely be termed friendship, if one squinted, and a few casual greetings in passing since then, an unreturned letter or two…

Lan Qiren’s life had not left him much room for friends, which he now regretted. There were so many times he had let a relationship that seemed ready to grow wither away instead – Lan Yueheng, Cangse Sanren, Lao Nie… He would have to do better in the future. Perhaps this escapade would allow him to regain something of the acquaintance he had once shared with Cangse Sanren, and then he would be able to ask her questions directly, rather than needing to inquire with Wen Ruohan.

At any rate, Cangse Sanren had made the request, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Jiang Fengmian had agreed. Cangse Sanren had then very enthusiastically and very quickly wrangled up both Jiang Yanli and Jiang Cheng, commandeered a carriage, and driven away from the Lotus Pier without so much as a backwards glance – or any indication that the carriage contained two sets of children, one sitting on the seats and the other hidden in the interior compartments, wrapped in sheets and pretending to be pillows. Her statement to the door guards, that she was traveling with some children entrusted to her, would have made any Lan sect politician proud, being both completely truthful and absolutely unhelpful.

It was only after they’d all already left that it had come out that Jiang Fengmian had agreed to Cangse Sanren’s proposal without consulting or even telling his fearsome wife…and she was not happy about it.

Politeness dictated that, as guests of the Lotus Pier, everyone attending the discussion conference should respect their hosts’ privacy. And they were, even if that meant pretending not to hear the shouting and crashing of items being thrown – but their hosts were certainly not making it easy.

Surely at some point they’d think to put up a privacy screen of some sort…

“I do think that she did it deliberately,” Lan Qiren continued, thinking aloud. “Not just in terms of what she asked to do, but in then leaving without confirming the request with Yu Ziyuan, though she must have known that it would cause Jiang Fengmian no end of trouble. I even understand the logic – the fight between the two of them, which they seem to incorrectly think we cannot hear or perceive, has captivated the attention of the cultivation world. The information about my nephews’ disappearance has thus been held back a little longer. But it seems…not cruel, precisely. But certainly it seems rather cutthroat a move to pull on someone close to you. Wouldn’t you agree?”

When Wen Ruohan didn’t respond, Lan Qiren shrugged.

“I thought you might have some insight,” he explained. “You and Lao Nie – you have something similar, do you not? You are lovers, but I noticed that you are also often at each other’s throats, and not in a way that could be explained through mutually consensual sadism. In fact, that is another thing I would like to understand. Is there some new cause for that? I had not seen you two interact for a while, but I recall that you did not behave like that with each other before – ”

“Could we not discuss this right now?” Wen Ruohan interrupted. His voice sounded strained. “Perhaps – later…?”

“Ah, of course, of course,” Lan Qiren said, nodding in apology, though his remorse was not as genuine as it probably should be. He had been doing it on purpose. “This is supposed to be for you, after all. I should focus my attention more thoroughly. Would you like to finish again?”

“No,” Wen Ruohan said fervently. “Four in one night is enough, thank you.”

“I think you can manage once more,” Lan Qiren said encouragingly, making Wen Ruohan whine and dig his nails into Lan Qiren’s sides in an encouraging way that was far from consistent with his words of denial. “You were the one who wanted me to…hmm, what was the phrase you used – ”

“Your sect has to have some sort of rule against this,” Wen Ruohan complained insincerely. “When I said I wanted you to fuck me into next week, this is not what I meant.”

He would probably try to take Lan Qiren’s head off if he actually tried to stop.

“Do not tell lies,” Lan Qiren reminded him virtuously, then added, perhaps a little maliciously: “But you are correct, there is an applicable rule, I suppose. How does Sect Leader Wen feel about Do not bully the weak…?”

Predictably, Wen Ruohan growled at the suggestion that he was weak, and yet again at Lan Qiren’s suggestion that he really could just stop what he was doing if it was getting to be too much for him. Lan Qiren did put a pause on the conversation after that, at least – he knew that Wen Ruohan enjoyed listening to him talk, which was probably the first time anyone had ever paid him that particular compliment, but also that after a certain amount of exertion and pleasure he found it increasingly difficult to keep up with the strategic analysis that he most liked hearing. It would be discourteous to abuse that knowledge.

Well, more than he already was, anyway.

Lan Qiren hadn’t been lying about wanting to do something for Wen Ruohan. He was grateful, overwhelmingly grateful, grateful enough that it was almost frightening. Wen Ruohan might not have arranged his nephews’ departure from the Cloud Recesses, they had done that themselves – and the mere thought of it was enough to make Lan Qiren’s heart freeze in his chest in terror – but he had found them, and he had swiftly taken action to help Lan Qiren keep them. Even if he was acting in part due to his own motives, which Lan Qiren never doubted, he had still done it, and in so doing, had saved his nephews from whatever foul plan their father had in mind for them.

The rules said Have affection and gratitude, and Lan Qiren would do his best.

“Fuck,” Wen Ruohan said when Lan Qiren coaxed him to finish yet again, his entire body gone utterly limp and relaxed. “Fuck, that was – good. Painfully good. How are you not done yet?”

“I am using my spiritual energy to improve my stamina,” Lan Qiren said. He’d thought it was pretty obvious, but Wen Ruohan gave him a look that suggested he thought Lan Qiren was the insane one of the pair of them.

“That phrasing suggests that in previous incidents you didn’t – ”

Lan Qiren hadn’t thought it was necessary before.

“– and also, stamina is only stamina, even when backed with spiritual energy. You still need willpower to direct your actions without being distracted or overwhelmed by pleasure.”

“Willpower is something I am not short of,” Lan Qiren said dryly, enjoying the way the words made Wen Ruohan’s throat work as he swallowed, shifting uncomfortably in a way that suggested that the mind was still willing even if the body was no longer able. “As for the question I believe actually you meant to ask – namely why I haven’t finished yet – I thought you might enjoy it if I kept going after you passed out. If I were to use you for my own purposes and my own pleasure at a time when you were no longer able to resist.”

“…fuck,” Wen Ruohan said, and shut his eyes. “Yes, do that.”

Lan Qiren obliged him.

When he was done, he got up to engage in the necessary clean-up, which included applying healing salve to the myriad of little injuries Wen Ruohan invariably left on him. The other man was unquestionably a sadist, with strong fondness for physical pain – he liked the scratches and bruises he left littered on Lan Qiren’s body, liked inflicting them and liked seeing them later so that he could smirk in reminiscence of having caused them. Mindful of that, and of his gratitude, Lan Qiren purposefully did not seek to fully heal the marks Wen Ruohan had left on his neck, each one purposefully high so that the edges would show even if he wore his most concealing high-collared robes, while being just barely low enough that Wen Ruohan could claim that he’d done it unintentionally.

Normally, it would annoy Lan Qiren, but – well, he was grateful. Let Wen Ruohan have his fun.

The next morning, he rose at his usual time and instructed the servants at the door not to wake Wen Ruohan until he rose naturally. The whole cultivation world had tacitly agreed to jointly pretend that the original postponement of the usual morning meeting to lunchtime had always been meant as a postponement until lunchtime the next day, so as to avoid embarrassing their hosts more than they were already embarrassing themselves and also to provide the Jiang sect disciple scrambling to fix things with a little more breathing room. That meant there was no point in making Wen Ruohan drag himself out of bed early for socialization he already had little to no interest in.

Instead, when his morning routine was done, Lan Qiren dressed himself in the most atrocious of the robes Wen Ruohan had had prepared for him – the ones streaked with bright red suns, similar to the ones the main Wen clan wore, and completed with an embroidered belt in which the subdued black-on-black pattern of clouds was eclipsed by the gold and ruby of the sun used as the clasp in what must be the most unsubtle of metaphors – and went out himself. In truth, he hated the social aspects of the discussion conferences just as much, if not more, than Wen Ruohan did, since Wen Ruohan only disliked making time for those he perceived to be his social inferiors or his competition, while Lan Qiren could have done very well without seeing any of them at all.

But as all sect leaders eventually learned, dislike of an act could not mean disregarding it.

Lan Qiren might not like socializing, no, but he could do it, and he could do it well. He had ten years of knowledge at his fingertips, enabling him to personalize his interactions with each sect leader he met – he knew which ones had recently had children and which ones had married, which ones had had recent success in night-hunts and which ones had had embarrassing failures, knew when to offer congratulations and when not to. He knew to always compliment Sect Leader Huang on his wife and ask Sect Leader Ouyang about his only son, knew to avoid mentioning Tingshan He to Huaitang Wu while always doing so the other way around, knew that a casual reference to the fierce ladies of Chenwei Zhao would make the sect leader of Songdian Zhao panic and yield under almost any circumstances…

Do not embarrass your wife in public, he had written to himself, setting it as a rule and thinking of Jiang Fengmian, and he’d been right, hadn’t he? Support your wife’s family, for they are now your own.

And Lan Qiren…Lan Qiren was grateful.

So he ignored his dislike and even his dignity, and made the informal rounds of visits to the other cultivation sects, greeting who he should greet and snubbing no one he shouldn’t snub. He let them look at him in his Wen sect clothing, Wen Ruohan’s blatant symbol of possession, and equally he let them smirk at the marks on his neck, revealed by the low collar of the robes he’d picked out. He was polite and…well, not charming, he didn’t think he could manage charming, toneless and tactless as he was.

But he could certainly manage to be compelling, implying without saying that Wen Ruohan had made significant plans and that he was aware of them while refusing to share any details. For some sect leaders he put on a concerned look, suggesting that he disapproved of what he had heard but was helpless to do anything about it, while for others he permitted himself an expression of mild satisfaction, as though he had succeeded in convincing Wen Ruohan to do something out of his usual line. In each case, he left the sect leader he spoke with something to think about, something that they would turn over and over again in their minds until they could think of nothing else, until they wanted nothing more than to meet up in groups to speculate with each other about the Wen sect’s next move.

Anyone else seeking to accomplish something at this discussion conference would be hard-pressed to get in a word. Even the return of his brother, which would have otherwise been the main subject of the day, was cast aside as old news, unable to make a dent in the furor.

Because Lan Qiren was grateful, but also because he was spiteful, too.

“I like the outfit,” Lao Nie said to him, eyes curved with glee, when Lan Qiren visited the portion of the main dining hall typically (if informally) set aside for the Great Sect leaders. Lan Qiren’s brother was standing by his side, stonily mute once more. “Very…colorful.”

He was making a comment on the mauled state of Lan Qiren’s neck, Lan Qiren surmised. He had heard similar comments all morning, some far less subtle than others.

“Thank you,” he replied politely. “All credit goes to my wife.”

If he put a mild stress on the word wife, or allowed his voice to be louder than usual so that it would carry, causing the rest of the room to burst out in whispered speculation at the fact that Lan Qiren had said it not once but twice, then it was only a matter of good politics. Everyone would wonder at Wen Ruohan’s intentions, worry about the possible results of his schemes. Their minds and mouths would be filled with nothing but him – just as Wen Ruohan had wanted.

Be your wife’s partner, after all.

And if those very same acts of good politics also happened to make Lan Qiren’s brother’s eyes fill with anger at the reminder that Lan Qiren had taken the insult he’d intended to degrade him and turned it into a source of power instead…well. Lan Qiren had promised himself that he would make his brother live in regret, and he intended to do it.

There would be consequences to his current display, Lan Qiren knew. His brother was quite capable of disregarding their sect’s rule against bearing grudges, and he was both powerful and clever in his own right, however out of practice he might be at the moment. He had been raised by their father to play the political game in ways Lan Qiren had never been, and he had been good at it, those few years he had managed the sect before he had gone into seclusion. He would be thoughtful, and he would be vengeful, and Lan Qiren had relatively little power to resist any retaliation his brother might wish to take in revenge for this slight. Lan Qiren knew too well, as most of the other sect leaders did not, that his relationship with Wen Ruohan was a delicate one, born of cooperation held together solely by mutual interest; he wasn’t anywhere near as favored or as influential as he was pretending to be, and his brother would eventually learn that, even if he didn’t know it yet. There would be consequences.

But now that Lan Qiren knew that those consequences would not fall on his nephews, he didn’t care.

Do not be haughty and complacent, the rules said. He was knowingly breaking that rule, and to knowingly break a rule was worse than an accidental violation – he would require a more severe punishment to correct his future behavior. Possibly even to the point of needing physical discipline, rather than merely reviewing the basis of the rule or copying it out.

(Perhaps Wen Ruohan would enjoy administering it? That seemed likely. And Lan Qiren was grateful…)

“Oh, that reminds me,” Lao Nie said with a smirk that suggested mischief. “Your secret marriage meant that I didn’t get a chance to send a wedding present. Naturally I will have to make up for that. Do you have anything in mind? Or should I just dig through my treasury?”

Lan Qiren grimaced at the thought of yet more priceless items ending up unused in Wen Ruohan’s treasure rooms, swords left to rust and instruments gone out of tune.

“I suspect my new household already has everything that it needs,” he said, then added, dryly, “Though I understand that my wife has always appreciated having a little more land.”

Lao Nie cackled. “Not a chance, my friend. Not a chance.”

“In that case, we will be satisfied with no gifts at all, and your presence at dinner some time.” Lan Qiren glanced sidelong at his brother and added, a little colder and much less sincere, “Naturally, Xiongzhang should also come to visit us when it suits him best.”

His brother smiled thinly. “I would be more than delighted to visit, of course, when you have a chance to settle down. I know how…busy…you’ve been, in the service of your new family.”

Lan Qiren wasn’t sure what his brother meant to imply by that, but it made the smile on Lao Nie’s face fade away into a mild frown, which meant it was probably some sort of subtle insult.

“Half the people I spoke to this morning said that you’d already been to visit them,” his brother continued in seeming explanation, and Lao Nie’s expression cleared up, though Lan Qiren was sure that his brother had actually meant whatever insult he’d initially implied. “Don’t let yourself get worked over too hard, Qiren.”

There was another insult there, which again Lan Qiren couldn’t figure out, but he was more interested in the fact that his brother had also been making the informal rounds of socialization. He didn’t know his brother well enough anymore to be able to determine if he’d done it because he’d had a specific goal, or merely as a means of reintroducing himself to the cultivation world, or else simply because he enjoyed socializing more than Lan Qiren ever had. If his brother had been anyone else, and Lan Qiren still in his position as sect leader, he would have made a point of trying to find out – and he still could, he supposed, though he would have to do it through Wen Ruohan’s means rather than his own. Still, it would mean losing face, having to ask someone else a question about his own brother…

“Sect Leader!” someone called, and multiple heads turned, but it was a Lan sect disciple who was calling. An older one, one of the ones that had never liked Lan Qiren, and he looked worried, rushing forward at an unusual speed to whisper into Lan Qiren’s brother’s ear.

Ah. It is time, then.

Lan Qiren inclined his head to Lao Nie and started making his way away from them. It would be better to appear that he had no idea what was being said before the news came out, if only because his brother would eventually find a way to confront him, presumably in private –

“Qiren, stop.”

His brother’s voice cracked like a whip, drawing attention from the room at large. Lan Qiren pressed his lips together in irritation, wondering if his brother had no care for their sect’s face. Was he really going to confront him here and now, in front of everyone?

Nevertheless, he turned back. “Yes, Xiongzhang?”

“My sons have gone missing from the Cloud Recesses,” his brother said, watching him with a cold expression, and Lan Qiren pressed his lips together further: it seemed that his brother did, in fact, intend to do this here and now. “Do you know where they might be?”

On the road to Xixiang, Lan Qiren thought to himself. Cangse Sanren had mentioned hearing rumors of something there that might be worth night-hunting, a matter of some urgency – it was one of those no-man’s-land regions that lacked a local cultivation sect and therefore relied on the kindness of rogue cultivators like her and her husband. Critically, it was not too far from the Lan sect’s outer borders, meaning that Cangse Sanren would have a plausible (though not especially believable) place where she could have run into Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji that didn’t involve stealing them away from their rightful home, and from there she would make her way towards the Nightless City.

“I do not know where they are right now,” he said, careful to be precise: he didn’t know where on the road they might be, whether they’d gone fast enough to be past the nearest town by now or if they had taken a longer, more circuitous route. With Cangse Sanren involved, it could be anything. For all he knew, she could have decided to go backwards. “Do you mean to say you do not know? Is there any risk that they have been kidnapped?”

Lan Qiren rarely had reason to be thankful for his natural lack of affect, which made others perceive him as being dull and uninteresting, but it was helpful now – he was a poor actor, but no one would question his relative calm or use it as a reason to doubt his sincerity. His brother would suspect him even more, knowing as he did of Lan Qiren’s meltdowns, his fears, his recent emotional instability, but he couldn’t mention any of those, not without explaining why he might think such a reaction was likely. That wouldn’t leave either of them with any face, and his brother cared deeply for his face, even if he sometimes seemed to forget that his sect also had face that he should concern himself with.

That left him helpless – unless he could force Lan Qiren to admit to something.

“Do not tell lies,” his brother said.

“I am not lying,” Lan Qiren said, forcing himself to look at his brother directly, or at least as close as he could tolerate. “Xiongzhang, you know that I would never risk letting my nephews come to harm.”

Even if the harm comes from you.

His brother’s eyes narrowed. He understood the implied message – that Lan Qiren did know where the boys were. More: that his strongest leverage against Lan Qiren had disappeared along with them.

“Qiren – ”

“I think that is enough,” Wen Ruohan said, his powerful voice carrying through the room. Lan Qiren glanced over to look at him: he was standing at the door, with his hands clasped behind his back and that cruel smile he used in public. He’d timed his entrance well, with the late morning sun glittering off the water to frame him and his incredibly strong cultivation was rolling off of him in waves, a display and reminder that he was so much more powerful than the rest of them. “He has already said he didn’t know, and we all know Lan Qiren doesn’t lie. I will not permit one of my people to be baselessly questioned any further.”

He strolled forward, ignoring the way they all gawked at him.

“I assume you will nevertheless want to check my Wen sect’s rooms…?” he said mildly, stopping only when he was standing by Lan Qiren’s side. “You are welcome to do so. You will find no lost children there, but by all means, go ahead and waste your time.”

“I thank Sect Leader Wen for his courtesy,” Lan Qiren’s brother said smoothly, jerking his head in the briefest of inclines before sweeping out the door.

Lao Nie glanced at the two of them with a brief frown of his own, but then opted to head out as well, undoubtedly off to offer his assistance with the search. That was the Nie sect: always willing to fight evil no matter where it might be.

Once they were gone, the room quickly lit up in gossip, everyone immediately seeking out someone else with whom they could discuss this newest twist. And to think that when they’d arrived, they probably thought that they would spend the entire conference talking about the return of Lan Qiren’s brother…

“I heard that you had a busy morning,” Wen Ruohan murmured in Lan Qiren’s ear. When Lan Qiren looked at him, his eyes were shining with barely restrained excitement. “You look – ravishing.”

Lan Qiren rolled his eyes. “I’m sure. Tell me, is it the outfit that stakes your claim or the chaos I caused in your name that does it for you?”

“Can’t it be both? Surely I’ve demonstrated the genuine nature of my interest in you by now.”

Lan Qiren snorted. He was quite certain that Wen Ruohan would happily drag him into a convenient bedroom and demand service at this very moment if he thought they could get away with it.

“It was the least I could do,” he said instead. “Have affection and gratitude. You should make the rounds yourself, while you can – if things keep going the way they are, this entire conference will end up getting canceled.”

“Mm, a good point.” A smirk played around his lips. “Perhaps I’ll go check in on Sect Leader Chang to see how Yueyang Chang is settling in. It is their first discussion conference as a subordinate clan of the Wen sect.”

Lan Qiren rolled his eyes at the other man’s smugness. The plan had worked out just as Lan Qiren had proposed, much to Wen Ruohan’s evident delight, though if he kept tormenting Sect Leader Chang with how badly his scheme to defeat his neighbors had gone, the man was likely to work himself into an aneurysm. Which would make him much less useful to Wen Ruohan!

“What about you?” Wen Ruohan asked. “Do you have more people you want to see?”

“‘Want’ is not the word I would select in this context,” Lan Qiren said with a faint sigh. “And no, not quite. At any rate, it would be inappropriate for me to continue socializing while my nephews are missing, even if, as a member of another sect, it is equally inappropriate for me to assist in the search without permission. However, I am certain that if I remain here unattended any number of my peers will come to express their best wishes on my nephews’ swift return.”

“Your analysis is shrewd as ever, Lan Qiren, but for one thing: you have no peer.” Wen Ruohan’s icy smile briefly curled up into something a little more genuine. “Other than me, of course.”

Of course you would think that, self-absorbed narcissist that you are, Lan Qiren thought to himself, but perhaps a little more fondly than before. Self-absorbed or not, Wen Ruohan had helped him when he had needed it most, and not only once. Have affection and gratitude indeed…

The first few people who approached Lan Qiren only came to fish for gossip, but he repelled them easily enough. The next two after that actually had something interesting to say, though whether they meant to have said it Lan Qiren could not be sure. Potential allies or enemies, in any event, and he noted down their names to share with Wen Ruohan afterwards.

The one after that, though, had a different goal entirely.

“It’s just, you see, you did such a good job with A-Ling,” Sect Leader Xie said apologetically. He was the head of a small independent sect loosely allied with the Lan, but he’d only made a cursory attempt to comfort Lan Qiren over the disappearance of his nephews, focusing instead on his own concerns. “Everything about him has improved: his conduct, his temperament, even his martial skills and cultivation. A-Yi has been immensely jealous, and we’ve been promising him all year that he would get the chance to attend your classes once he was old enough…”

“I intend to resume my classes,” Lan Qiren reassured him. “They will need to be held in the Nightless City, as I now reside there, and as a result I expect to start later in the season than usual, but they will still be taking place.”

Indeed, Wen Ruohan was likely to insist on it.

“The Nightless City,” Sect Leader Xie repeated, shifting uncomfortably. “I don’t mean to be rude, Teacher Lan, but…”

“Naturally anyone who comes to my classes will have my personal guarantee of safe passage, as well as the same guarantee from Sect Leader Wen,” Lan Qiren said firmly. He would insist on it, and he thought he was likely to get it – it wasn’t as though Wen Ruohan could run the classes without him. Anyway, Wen Ruohan saw the classes (however incorrectly) as planting seeds for the future, a long-term investment, so he was highly unlikely to risk that future by acting against any of Lan Qiren’s students in the present. “If anything ever happens that makes me doubt that guarantee, I will cancel rather than risk any student that is entrusted to me.”

“Oh, that’s good, that’s good. Very good! As always, Teacher Lan, you are the most reliable!”

Lan Qiren inclined his head and watched with no little bemusement as Sect Leader Xie bustled away back to his preferred clique, saying some words to them that made them all perk their heads up and look over at him like a gaggle of meerkats from some distant foreign land. He was aware, of course, that he had developed something of a reputation as a teacher, but it was rather gratifying to see other people so enthusiastic about the notion of sending him their children…

Lan Qiren shook his head and turned his attention back to politics.

Another five visitors later, his enthusiasm was starting to flag, as he would have expected. The process of politics was seemingly interminable, and the amount of time and effort it took to deal with people was simply exhausting. He was just thinking that he should find his way to a slightly more obscure corner –

“Murder!”

Lan Qiren startled, as did everyone around him, each of them falling silent and wondering if they’d misheard.

“Murder!” someone shouted. It was a panting, panicked disciple in nondescript colors that had clearly just run into the main hall, chest heaving and eyes wide as saucers. “Help, please! Someone’s been murdered!”

Lan Qiren started making his way forward at once, his fingers immediately itching for either his sword or his guqin, but found that he was making no headway. Everyone else was still staring at the disciple blankly, as if trying to understand how something like that could have happened here, amongst all of the cultivators, and when all of them were unarmed, too.

“I’m telling you, someone’s been murdered…!”

Lan Qiren gave up on subtlety and started forcing his way through the people in his way. It was rude, but it worked: the crowd parted before him as soon as they noticed him, the smaller sect leaders instinctively deferring to a Great Sect leader, even though he wasn’t one any longer.

“Who has been injured?” he said sharply to the panicked disciple, and when that didn’t work, added, “Show me. Where are they?”

The disciple led the way outside, where a number of people were already gathering, muttering to each other. There was the smell of blood in the air, mixing unpleasantly with the flowers and water, and when Lan Qiren finally made it through the crowd, he found that its source was a middle-aged man in a green robe, splayed out on his belly in a puddle of his own blood, half-in and half-out of one of the Lotus Pier’s many pavilions. Several people were already kneeling next to him, helping turn him over.

He looked – familiar.

“It’s Sect Leader Pei!” someone shouted, recognizing the man at exactly the same moment Lan Qiren did. “Wangdu Pei!”

Sect Leader Pei? Why is that name familiar – Oh no.

Oh no.

“But who would want to hurt him?” The whispers had already started. “He didn’t have any enemies. Wangdu Pei is a subsidiary sect of Lanling Jin. Who would dare?”

And then, inevitably, as Lan Qiren had already known they would –

“Didn’t Sect Leader Pei get into a dispute with Sect Leader Wen? He did, didn’t he? Yesterday, at the morning meeting, he called out the former Sect Leader Lan for where he was sitting. Sect Leader Wen was angry, you saw him, you saw his face. He wanted to hurt him…he wanted to kill him…”

Lan Qiren gritted his teeth and ignored the whispers, kneeling beside the body and pressing one hand to the man’s neck, the other to his nose, seeking breath. Abruptly, he flashed back to being in a similar position with He Kexin’s body, all her once-prodigious beauty rendered abruptly hollow, spelling the beginning of so much horrible change.

For a moment he found it hard to breathe.

And then he felt something under his fingertips, something that had been absent with He Kexin, and that brought him back to himself.

“He’s not dead,” Lan Qiren said. No one heard him, they were too busy gossiping. This was why his sect had set Talking behind others’ backs is prohibited as a rule. He raised his voice to his best schoolteacher’s bellow: “Listen to me!”

Everyone fell silent and looked at him.

“Sect Leader Pei is not dead,” Lan Qiren said firmly. “There is still a pulse, and breath. Someone go fetch a doctor at once.”

No one moved.

“Is he really not dead?” Someone unseen hissed. “Or is Teacher Lan just covering up for his lover…?”

Lan Qiren was about to retort that Wen Ruohan was his lawfully married wife, not a lover, when he was interrupted once more.

This time, though, it wasn’t a verbal interruption. Rather, a sudden sense of tremendous pressure suddenly came crashing down on him, on all of them, knocking half the sect leaders still standing down to their knees and making the rest stagger. It felt as though the weight of a mountain had abruptly settled down on their shoulders. The force of it curved their shoulders from the strain, crushing their chests and lungs, making it impossible to draw air –

“I would offer my own services,” Wen Ruohan said pleasantly from the doorway to the main hall, looking out at all of them in the reverse image of how he had entered the same hall not long before. “But for whatever reason I don’t think they would be properly appreciated, despite my sect’s fame in medicine.”

He had his fingers up in a gesture not unlike a pinch, with a small round fleck of black smaller than a grain of rice rotating rapidly in place like a spinning marble, held between his thumb and middle finger.

Lan Qiren had never seen anything like it before. What was that…?

Wen Ruohan pinched his fingers a little closer together, causing the immense pressure to momentarily tighten – Lan Qiren felt as though he were drowning – and then brought them together in a swift snap that shattered the sense of heaviness all at once, freeing them from the terrible weight.

Lan Qiren inhaled sharply, drawing in air to fill his screaming lungs once more, and he wasn’t the only one to do so. He still didn’t know what it was that Wen Ruohan had just done, but he was tremendously grateful that it was over…and also, retroactively, that none of them had actually managed to succeed in truly angering Wen Ruohan, that ancient monster of the cultivation world.

He turned his head to catch Wen Ruohan’s gaze and nodded at him in thanks, as that had been a very efficient – if perhaps excessive – way of getting everyone to stop gossiping. Wen Ruohan smirked in response, inclining his head and spreading his hands by his sides in a subtle silent bow as if he were a performer that had just finished pulling off a particularly magnificent stunt of sleight-of-hand.

Ridiculous man.

“There must be a doctor somewhere,” Lan Qiren said loudly, trying to focus on what was important. Human life takes precedence. “Yunmeng Jiang must have some on retainer. Has someone sent a disciple to summon them?”

Luckily, it turned out someone had, and a few moments later three of them arrived, each one holding their medical kits. With Lan Qiren and Wen Ruohan both glowering at everyone, a path was swiftly opened up for them, and soon enough they were crouched around Sect Leader Pei, wielding acupuncture needles and bitter-smelling poultices and bandages and the like.

Lan Qiren took the opportunity to retreat, heading back to Wen Ruohan’s side. He had to speak with him as soon as possible – and privately, if they could manage it.

Unfortunately, that would be difficult, given all the people around them, many of whom were still eyeing them both suspiciously. But it was necessary, and urgent. He had to tell Wen Ruohan what people had thought when they’d seen Sect Leader Pei lying there, what they had suspected, who they had suspected…

Only Lan Qiren wasn’t quite sure how to manage it.

Leaving the scene together would only be deemed even more suspicious, and at precisely a moment in which it was absolutely vital for them to avoid increasing the already tense atmosphere; it was impossible. But neither was there some easy way to simply draw Wen Ruohan aside for a quiet word. It wasn’t as though Lan Qiren could just walk up to him and whisper in his ear…

Ah, no, wait. They were married. There was no reason he couldn’t.

Lan Qiren matched action to thought at once, arriving at Wen Ruohan’s side and leaning his head in close as if he were trying to kiss him on the cheek. Wen Ruohan reacted at once, reaching out one hand to wrap around him and pull him in closer, as if into an embrace, his second hand reaching up to cup the back of Lan Qiren’s head and draw him in close the way a man might to comfort a shaken loved one, cooperating with the illusion almost as if he knew what Lan Qiren were trying to do.

“Someone is trying to frame you,” Lan Qiren hissed into his ear.

To his surprise, Wen Ruohan snorted.

“Do not laugh. This is serious, take it seriously. I am entirely in earnest.”

“You always are,” Wen Ruohan murmured back, voice low. “But to jump immediately to framing…you recall that you haven’t seen me all morning, do you not? Who’s to say I wasn’t the one who did it…?”

Lan Qiren pulled his head back and gave Wen Ruohan his best glare, though he kept his voice quiet. “I told you to be serious. Naturally you did not do it! Others may doubt it, more fool they, but I know that you are neither insane nor an idiot. Even if you did intend to kill him, why would you do it now, when it serves none of your interests and would only harm your sect’s reputation if it were known?”

“An excellent point,” Wen Ruohan said. He was smiling, his eyes curved with good humor rather than dead and cold. “You’re entirely correct, as usual. I did not kill him, and I am being framed.”

“I know that. I said that. That is how I started this conversation. The question is what to do about it – ”

“Sect Leader Wen.”

Lan Qiren turned, drawing away from Wen Ruohan as he did. It was Jiang Fengmian who had called, a look of solemn neutrality on his face. Behind him were Lan Qiren’s brother and Jin Guangshan, the latter tapping his fan against his palm, and a few steps behind them was Lao Nie, lingering by the pavilion with Sect Leader Pei with a frown on his face and his hand resting on the hilt of his famous saber Jiwei.

Four Great Sects, joined together to face down the Wen, which as always stood alone.

Well, not quite alone, Lan Qiren amended. He put his hands behind his back, grounding his stance and making it quite clear from his posture that he had no intention of going anywhere.

Jiang Fengmian drew to a halt in front of where Wen Ruohan and Lan Qiren were standing.

“Sect Leader Wen,” he repeated, and raised his hands to salute respectfully. “There have been certain questions raised that I request that you answer, if you are willing. If you would come with me…?”

There was a dangerous smile playing at Wen Ruohan’s lips, though for once Lan Qiren could not sense his usual rage at anything even remotely suggestive of a challenge to his authority – on the contrary, he seemed to be in an extraordinarily good mood. Lan Qiren had no idea why that might be, given that he was blatantly being schemed against.

Though perhaps that was it. Lao Nie had once remarked to Lan Qiren that Wen Ruohan did not seem to overly mind betrayals provided that they were conducted with sufficient style, evaluating them the way an aesthete would fine art. Lan Qiren had found the notion strangely sad, which Lao Nie had not understood and which he had never been able to explain, not even to himself.

“I would be more than happy to accompany my gracious host and provide whatever assistance I can,” Wen Ruohan said smoothly, causing a good three quarters of the room to exhale in relief at the realization that no wars would be starting today. “Lead the way, Sect Leader Jiang.”

Jiang Fengmian bowed a little and turned, with Jin Guangshan and Lan Qiren’s brother both stepping to the side to allow him to pass.

Lan Qiren glanced at them, wondering if he should go as well, but Wen Ruohan caught his eye and shook his head lightly in refusal. Lan Qiren inclined his head back and left him to follow Jiang Fengmian alone, although as they entered the pavilion Lao Nie turned and joined them – a little shameless of him, but then again he was notoriously shameless. Not to mention quixotic enough that no one would be able to guess whether he’d joined in order to be on Wen Ruohan’s side or against him.

Perhaps that was why Wen Ruohan hadn’t wanted Lan Qiren to come along. If he had, it would have given his brother the opportunity to do the same, and they knew that he wasn’t on their side.

Though, now that Lan Qiren thought about it, it was something of a surprise that Jin Guangshan hadn’t insisted on joining the interrogation himself. Wasn’t Wangdu Pei one of Lanling Jin’s subordinate sects…? Surely he would have a vested interest, and even if he didn’t care about his own subordinate sect, he certainly could have plausibly claimed to –

“I wouldn’t have expected such an unseemly display from you, Qiren.”

Lan Qiren stiffened when his brother came to stand next to him. “I am not sure I know what you mean.”

His brother hummed, though it was barely audible, the room having erupted into conversation once more, everyone rushing over to talk with their friends and allies and occasionally even enemies if they thought they might have something worth saying. Jin Guangshan in particular was standing at the center of a large circle of people, fielding questions with his usual slimy smile. Presumably that was a greater draw than the interrogation.

“Only that you have always seemed so detached from worldly pleasures. Who would think that once you were married, you would be shamelessly hanging all over another in public…” Lan Qiren stiffened in outrage, and his brother chuckled in a low voice. “Ah, but you are the expert on the rules! Naturally I don’t need to remind you. Though perhaps a refresher would be in order on Do not be promiscuous…”

“We are married,” Lan Qiren said through gritted teeth, instead of objecting the way he would like to the lurid mischaracterization of his actions, which were nowhere near to what his brother seemed to be implying. It was pointless, and would only make his brother laugh at him even more. “I am certain I do not need to remind you that it is a husband’s duty to ensure his wife is satisfied – ”

He choked at the sudden burst of pain in his abdomen, staggering back in surprise. He stared up at his brother in shock: had he just hit him?

His brother was looking down at him, unconcealed wrath twisting his features into something ugly. He stepped closer, lifting his hand once more…

There was a burst of laughter from the door, deep and compelling and distinctive, immediately identifiable to Lan Qiren despite how rarely he heard it. Everyone else seemed primarily confused, perhaps wondering who would be laughing at a time like this, and all together turned to stare at Wen Ruohan, who was leaning against the railing of the walkway next to the pavilion and laughing loudly with his head thrown back.

“No, no,” he said, lazily waving his hand at Jiang Fengmian. “Please go on! Tell me more! Yes, of course, when you put it that way, it couldn’t have been anyone but me, could it? Everyone knows that I am hot-headed and passionate, always the first one to act irrationally for the sake of…what was it again…”

“Love, I think,” Lao Nie drawled. He was visibly rolling his eyes.

“Oh, yes, of course. That.”

Lan Qiren would be amused by the sheer dripping disdain in Wen Ruohan’s voice – certainly it was doing an excellent job of getting the rest of the room to abruptly realize that they’d been too caught up in the moment to actually think about how unlikely it was that Wen Ruohan, of all people, would be sufficiently moved to action by an insult to Lan Qiren – but his brother had caught him by the wrist and was squeezing tightly enough that it felt as though his bones were grinding together.

“How very shameless you are, Qiren,” his brother hissed, and Lan Qiren had to bite his tongue to keep from making a sound of pain when he felt something give way in his arm. “Shameless and spoiled, with your so-inflexible righteousness scarcely hiding the rot of your hypocrisy. How many losses will your lover be willing to bear, do you think, before the cost of you begins to outweigh the benefit…?”

Lan Qiren stared at his brother, realizing what that must mean. “Do you mean you were the one who – ”

“I didn’t do it!” someone cried out, yet again drawing the attention of the gathered group to where the investigation was continuing. It was poor Sect Leader Xie, that little rabbit of a man that had promised his A-Yi the chance to attend Lan Qiren’s classes. “I mean – I know – I was there, yes, but I didn’t do it! I didn’t even see anything!”

“That’s a little implausible,” Lao Nie pointed out reasonably. He’d obviously stepped forward to be the lead investigator for the matter. “You’re saying a man was attacked only a few steps away from you and you missed it? Because you were, what, looking the wrong way?”

“But I was!”

Lan Qiren tore his arm away from his brother, mind working furiously to try to find a way out of the present crisis. His brother had all but admitted to him that he had been the one to orchestrate the framing, but no one else had been paying attention, and he was unlikely to be willing to admit it where anyone else could hear it.

His aim had undoubtedly been to create trouble for Wen Ruohan, and Lan Qiren could see how it would. Even if Wen Ruohan managed to deflect actual blame for the attack, as he was so ably doing, people would still associate the incident with him later, upon retelling, and the Wen sect was not yet so powerful that it could afford to ignore public opinion completely. It made sense, as a countermove: Lan Qiren had been flaunting Wen Ruohan’s power, so his brother attacked and diminished that power…

Worse – it would cost his brother nothing he deemed of value to cover up his own involvement.

Only a single small independent sect, not even a subsidiary, set up to be the perfect scapegoat.

And Wen Ruohan would take the bait and accept that conclusion, of course. Why wouldn’t he? Even if Lan Qiren could get to him in time to tell him who had actually committed the crime, having someone conveniently there to take the blame would minimize the harm that any rumors would do to the Wen sect’s standing or to Wen Ruohan’s own reputation. People would be more inclined to talk about who’d actually done the crime than who had been merely suspected of it, whereas if the culprit were not found, Wen Ruohan would remain the likeliest option. Forcing Sect Leader Xie to bear the blame instead, regardless of whether he was genuinely guilty or innocent, was the obvious next step – it made perfect logical sense, perfect political sense.

It was wrong, against all principles and morality, but since when did Wen Ruohan care about that?

“Lao Nie,” Wen Ruohan suddenly spoke, his powerful voice easily overriding Sect Leader Xie’s sobs. “Be careful. You are on the verge of insulting me.”

Lao Nie blinked, clearly taken aback by the unexpected interruption. “What? How’s that?”

“Sect Leader Jiang, our gracious host, has already said that he believed it was me at fault.” Wen Ruohan shrugged in a grandiose fashion and smirked. “And didn’t I already admit it? Turning around and accusing another like this…it’s almost as if you doubt my word.”

“Hanhan, you were being sarcastic.”

“Says who?” Wen Ruohan waved his hand. “You have as little evidence that it was him as you do that it was me. Anyway, Sect Leader Pei isn’t even dead. Just call it a friendly accident and let us move on – surely we have better things to do. We haven’t even had lunch.”

Lao Nie protested, but Jiang Fengmian was already nodding in agreement, clearly all too happy to wash his hands of the entire incident, and there were fervent murmurs of agreement already rippling through the crowd. It seemed that all of them had had enough excitement for the day.

Sect Leader Xie even stopped crying, seemingly realizing that he was being spared. He looked poleaxed, as if he didn’t understand exactly what was happening but nonetheless overwhelmingly grateful for the unexpected reprieve.

For his part, Lan Qiren stared at Wen Ruohan, wondering what in the world had gotten into him.

There was no benefit to Wen Ruohan in speaking up to spare Sect Leader Xie, nothing at all; it was pure loss for him, for both him personally and his sect more generally. A small loss, to be sure, but a loss nonetheless, and a loss that could be laid squarely at Lan Qiren’s feet – moreover, it was a loss Wen Ruohan could have reduced to almost nothing, effortlessly, and yet chose not to. Why…?

Wen Ruohan turned and caught Lan Qiren’s gaze from across the room. His cold smirk widened, very briefly, into a smile, and he winked, startling Lan Qiren and making him stare even more blatantly. And then, once he was sure he had Lan Qiren’s attention, Wen Ruohan once again inclined his head and very subtly spread his hands out beside him in the most minute of gestures – the same gesture he had made earlier, a silent bow, smug, like a performer having done a trick he thought the audience would like.

He’d done it…for Lan Qiren?

Not for his own benefit, not for any calculation, but rather just…just to please him.

Because he’d noticed Lan Qiren’s distress at the wrong person carrying the blame for something they did not do. Because even if Wen Ruohan didn’t care about what was good and what was right and certainly not about someone as irrelevant as Sect Leader Xie, Lan Qiren did.

And Wen Ruohan, it appeared, cared about that.

…oh, Lan Qiren thought, unsure of why his stomach suddenly felt beset by butterflies, a strange anxiety he hadn’t felt even when his brother had been threatening him – and then abruptly not unsure at all. Oh, no.

He knew exactly why he felt the way he did.

Chapter Text

“At least your catering was excellent,” Wen Ruohan said to the Jiang sect disciple showing them out the door, purposefully snide.

The discussion conference had been canceled, of course, or at least postponed by at least half a year, having never actually gotten properly started in the first place. It was a tremendous embarrassment to the Jiang sect, though most of it wasn’t even their fault – the Lan sect needed to go search for their missing heirs, the Wen sect had just shocked the world with their sect leader’s marriage, and then there was the assault of a sect leader that fell under the Jin sect’s purview…all the Jiang disciples looked on the verge of tears, seeing the results of what was undoubtedly months of effort disappear in a flash.

“I agree,” Lan Qiren said from his side, voice much less sarcastic. “It is a credit to your sect that you were able to stand together and maintain your sect’s dignity under such trying circumstances. As always, it can be seen that each of you strives to live up to your sect’s motto: achieve the impossible.”

The Jiang sect disciples at the door brightened under Lan Qiren’s praise, however measured. “Thank you, Teacher Lan! Have a good trip!”

Lan Qiren nodded at them and continued on his way with his hands tucked behind his back, Wen Ruohan easily keeping pace beside him.

“I did mean that as an insult, to be clear,” he remarked.

“To be clear, I do not care,” Lan Qiren replied, utterly at peace. “It is not their fault that Jiang Fengmian lacks the spine to get the sects back in line even within his own home.”

Wen Ruohan snickered, too delighted by Lan Qiren’s relatively unusual cattiness to complain further.

“How many people do you think have guessed by now that we know where your nephews are?” he asked. “And how many think they’re with us right now, despite all of our possessions having been searched three times over?”

They’d even dug into Lan Qiren’s clothing, tossing it this way and that, in what was very obviously meant to be an insult – it wasn’t as though two children could plausibly be hidden in a few bags’ worth of folded fabric, and the searchers had deliberately left everything a mess. Wen Ruohan had enthusiastically suggested that Lan Qiren consider simply forgoing clothing entirely rather than wear something stained with others’ fingers, but tragically the Jiang sect had been able to provide them with swift laundry service.

A pity, really. Wen Ruohan would have been more than happy to keep Lan Qiren company for as long as it took to find new clothing, and probably even longer. Especially after the display Lan Qiren had put on, draping himself in Wen sect colors and fashions and playing politics with all the skill of ten years’ able expertise, all of it for him…

The mere thought of it was driving Wen Ruohan insane.

He couldn’t stop thinking about it. From the first moment he had woken up and heard about it from his subordinates, to when he’d made his way around the Lotus Pier eavesdropping on the chaos Lan Qiren had left in his wake, the deliberate chaos that had left everyone with the Wen name on their tongues, to when he’d walked into the main hall and seen Lan Qiren standing there, proud and untouchable as any immortal. Lan Qiren, wearing his Wen colors and a low collar that hid nothing and instead proclaimed that the untouchable had been touched, and by the only man who deserved the honor…

The entire thing went round and round in Wen Ruohan’s mind, inflaming his desire until he was very nearly in pain with it.

Truly, sometimes he envied Lan Qiren’s lack of innate sexual impulse. It certainly seemed to make his life a great deal easier! It must be much more straightforward, not constantly feeling the rushing heat of yearning desire in reaction to sight and sound and thought…and it wasn’t as though the lack of impulse impacted Lan Qiren’s ability to perform or enjoy the act in any way, in much the same way a man accustomed to inedia could still enjoy food. It was only the irrepressible need for it that he lacked.

“Many will guess the truth,” Lan Qiren replied, and Wen Ruohan had to tear his mind out of the gutter and return it to the conversation they were having. “And the rest will figure it out once they have conferred with their wiser fellows. It is not that difficult to deduce that we must have had something to do with it, or at least it will not be once they are no longer distracted by constant twists and turns.”

“It was a shocking discussion conference-that-wasn’t, wasn’t it?”

“Mm.” Lan Qiren climbed into the carriage that would take them back to the Nightless City. When they were both seated, he said, very abruptly, “I want to compose something. For you.”

Wen Ruohan arched his eyebrows at the change in subject. “I have no objections. Some music would alleviate the boredom of a long journey quite well.”

Lan Qiren glared at him as if he were missing something. Wen Ruohan thought that that reaction was rather uncalled for, given that his suggestion would have been to see if they could fuck the entire way back. Wasn’t that what enclosed carriages were for?

(All right, it was to travel in comfort while allowing a large delegation to keep pace with each other for a lengthy journey; such a thing would be impossible with all of them on swords, so going by carriage was necessary to avoid embarrassing the weak and unnecessarily exhausting the strong. That wasn’t the point. The point was that they could, if they wanted to.)

After a moment, Lan Qiren seemed to realize his ire was misdirected and deflated somewhat, though he still looked grumpy. “Perhaps later,” he said with a faint sigh. “In the meantime, a gift to keep you occupied.”

He shook out his sleeves and put his left hand into Wen Ruohan’s lap. Not in any sexy way, either: his palm was facing upwards, his fingers lightly curled, the whole limb at rest, all white and red and pink and – black?

That wasn’t right.

Wen Ruohan frowned and peeled back Lan Qiren’s long undersleeve, revealing the purpling flesh of a particularly nasty bruise around his wrist. There were several indentations that were worse than the rest, visibly forming the shape of fingers – someone had grabbed Lan Qiren by the wrist and held him hard enough to bruise, hard enough to damage the muscle and grind the bone, to cause injury that Lan Qiren’s high cultivation was still working to fix it.

Someone had hurt Lan Qiren. How dare they?!

“Who…?”

“Your anger was not the purpose of the gift,” Lan Qiren said firmly before Wen Ruohan could really kick off into a rage – not least of all because it was evident that Lan Qiren had purposefully waited until they were on their way out of the Lotus Pier to reveal it to him, thereby robbing Wen Ruohan of the chance to find and destroy the person who’d dared to lay a finger on him. “Do not succumb to rage.”

“Oh?” Wen Ruohan said snidely. “Then what is its purpose?”

Lan Qiren sighed again, as if Wen Ruohan were the one being deliberately obtuse, and reached over to wrap Wen Ruohan’s fingers around his wrist. “I dislike bearing the marks of others, and I would have you fix the issue. And no, before you ask, I am not referring to your sect’s famed medical skills.”

Fix the issue? Without using medical skills, how was he supposed to fix –

Oh.

Wen Ruohan’s tongue darted out to lick his lips, his rage abruptly forgotten and his whole body suddenly aflame once more. “You would permit me to hurt you? To mark you anew, so that the only thing left on your body is me?”

Lan Qiren arched his eyebrows at him. “I would not offer if I did not permit,” he said dryly. “And we are in an enclosed carriage, are we not?”

People did say that couples grew to resemble each other once they married, Wen Ruohan reflected as he pounced, sliding himself into Lan Qiren’s lap and pinning the other man’s injured wrist above his head to watch him wince. He’d never noticed that before with any of his wives, not even the first, but he thought he might be starting to see some aspects of it now.

Ah, but it was such an incredible rush, the power of knowing that he had lured Lan Qiren onto this path of darkness along with him. A rush to know, too, that they were walking the path together, walking side-by-side, Lan Qiren his equal in a way no one else was, the way no one else could be. The power of knowing that he’d had a hand in reshaping this rigid and implacable man, recasting him in a mold of his own making, taking all that he was and adding in Wen sect arrogance and reckless disregard, the sun so far above the rest as to leave them all behind. Even if Lan Qiren maintained his scholarly reserve, his insistence on abiding with his sect’s strict rules, his bone-deep commitment to his principles of justice and chivalry…well, that just made it all the sweeter when the fire Wen Ruohan had stoked beneath his cold stoicism flared out.

When he finally acted as though he understood what a treasure he was. As he should.

Even if other people still didn’t see it.

Wen Ruohan wondered idly if Lan Qiren knew that everyone in the cultivation world thought that he was the one receiving when they were in bed together. Jin Guangshan had made a few comments along those lines in his hearing, since he incorrectly viewed himself as being Wen Ruohan’s friend; he had been smirking and condescending, laughing as if he thought that Wen Ruohan were only fucking Lan Qiren in order to break him – which had admittedly been his initial aim, though now in retrospect Wen Ruohan was pleased not to have been so predictable. Qingheng-jun had said something disapproving about it, something which most people would take as mere Lan sect prudery and which Wen Ruohan knew to be instead genuine upset at the fact that Lan Qiren wasn’t suffering as much as he might have hoped. And based on his reaction, it was clear that Lao Nie, who really ought to have known better than to make assumptions one way or the other, had also thought (initially, anyway) that Wen Ruohan was the one forcing the issue, so to speak, rather than the other way around.

They weren’t the only ones, either.

With Wen Ruohan’s cultivation, he could hear the speculation and whispers from all around, and at least a few of them had torn themselves away from politics to wonder about Lan Qiren’s performance in bed. Most of them were hilariously wrong, thinking of Lan Qiren as some ravished maiden from a bad opera, although a few of them, mostly the ones who’d sent him students, correctly identified him as someone who would incline towards being dominating in bed – though those few had then incorrectly assumed that Wen Ruohan would have crushed such rebellious behavior at once. All of them fools, all of them thinking that a sexual position or inclination said anything about a person…

Of course, even if Lan Qiren knew, it was unlikely that he would care. Wen Ruohan certainly didn’t, not when he could have Lan Qiren wincing under his hands, voluntarily submitting to his cruelty, letting him twist flesh between his fingers and dig furrows in with his nails –

“I broke a rule at the discussion conference,” Lan Qiren panted. His lower lip was still a little raw from where he had bitten it during his confrontation with his brother; Wen Ruohan swept down to replace the mark with one from his own teeth, kissing him so thoroughly that he nearly forgot what he was saying. “Not just – a casual rule. An important one, and I broke it knowingly. I thought to myself as I did it that I would need to impose punishment upon myself, physical discipline, and that you might – mm – that you might enjoy being the one to administer it – ”

“I would indeed,” Wen Ruohan purred. “Do you have something in mind? Do you want me to beat you? I know the Lan sect uses wooden disciplinary rods, but with my cultivation I could do the same degree of damage with my palms alone. I could turn you over my lap and spank you until you scream.”

That sounded good. Very good.

“I would not scream. Discipline is meant to be taken with dignity – and spanking is a punishment for children.”

“Mm, yes, and humiliation is meant to hurt, so as to better seal in the memory. I find myself rather taken with the idea of beating your ass until it is red, and then having you fuck me against a wall again, knowing that every little move you make makes it ache and burn.”

“I think we have gotten rather far away from the subject of discipline. But if it makes you happy…”

“It does.” Wen Ruohan ground himself down into Lan Qiren’s lap. “You’d do it for me, wouldn’t you?”

He was mostly joking, not really meaning it, but Lan Qiren nodded.

“I would,” he affirmed verbally, as if it were that easy, as if he could just say something like that. “I would do many things for you.”

Wen Ruohan grinned triumphantly.

“And the next time you break a rule, I would return the favor twofold,” Lan Qiren continued, voice steady and unmoved, giving Wen Ruohan pause. “I do not think that I have the strength to actually harm you in that manner, of course. But perhaps I could make the experience enjoyable for you nonetheless – each strike driving you further into my lap until you are little more than a dog, shameless in your wretched display.”

Wen Ruohan glared at him. He was not going to let Lan Qiren thrash him!

Lan Qiren arched his eyebrows at him. “Humiliation seals in the memory, does it not?”

“…point taken,” Wen Ruohan conceded. “Perhaps we’ll limit it to strikes with the rod after all.”

At least to start.

Lan Qiren looked pleased – or he did until Wen Ruohan dug his nails into his already battered wrist, making him hiss and squirm beneath him as if trying to escape. Only he wasn’t, not really, because if he had truly wanted to get out, he would have found a way already.

“You’ll still have to kneel before me, though,” Wen Ruohan said, already imagining it. He used the friction between them to please himself as he did, rubbing himself against Lan Qiren. “Even in your sect, strikes are taken kneeling. I’m going to make you hurt – I’m going to make you bleed – ”

He stared at Lan Qiren’s face, avid, watching for fear, waiting for it…

“In that case, I think that I shall take the punishment in one of my newer outfits,” Lan Qiren said thoughtfully. “It will both increase your enjoyment and avoid ruining one of the ones I actually like.”

…and never getting it.

You are all alone, Wen Ruohan had told Lan Qiren. You have no one who would help you.

I have you, Lan Qiren replied straightforwardly. He had been so sure of it.

Even now, with Wen Ruohan hurting him, that certainty did not break.

How had Lan Qiren put it? Mutually consensual sadism?

Ah, truly, but it was so good that Wen Ruohan was a genius! To think, if he wasn’t so brilliant, he might have missed this chance to claim the treasure that was Lan Qiren for himself and for his sect. If he had done nothing but stood aside, someone else would have had this man, this man who was so obviously perfectly suited for Wen Ruohan and no one else, and then inevitably Wen Ruohan would have had no choice but to start a war just to get him.

Because he really truly had to have him. He had to have him in every way, in every manner, anything he could get –

“I want to dual cultivate with you,” he said without thinking, and then winced.

He regretted saying anything, of course. Even if he did want it, and he did, suddenly, want it desperately, Wen Ruohan still knew better than to bring it up just like that, suddenly and without preparation – dual cultivation was dangerous, particularly when there was such a difference in cultivation levels between the two partners.

Despite Lan Qiren’s talent, Wen Ruohan was by far the more powerful. If Lan Qiren lowered his defenses and yielded control over his qi to him, he would be helpless in the face of any decision Wen Ruohan chose to make. If he so wished, he could drain Lan Qiren dry, using him as a cultivation furnace to empower himself, sucking out years of painstakingly acquired spiritual energy from that beautiful golden core of his, so pure and shining bright. He could leave him as little more than the husks Wen Zhuliu’s core-melting technique left behind. He would not be wholly crippled the way they were, since he would still have his golden core and meridians intact, but assuming he survived the process, his power would be greatly damaged, requiring years if not decades of hard work to rebuild.

Sure, Lan Qiren could try to do the same to him, stealing what he could, but Wen Ruohan had more than enough power to spare. No matter what Lan Qiren did, he would survive the experience, however unpleasant it might be, and then he would kill Lan Qiren after. But Lan Qiren was unlikely to do something like that, being infamously virtuous and principled, whereas Wen Ruohan was a well-known madman – no, the risks here were all on Lan Qiren’s side.

Real dual cultivation required trust, the sort of trust that needed more than just a few bows and a vow to create. Not all married couples did it. Even those that did love each other, as Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan did in their strange, tempestuous way, might not be willing to allow their partner that level of intimacy, that level of vulnerability. And Wen Ruohan, who himself trusted no one, knew that he of all people was the last on the list of people that could be trusted –

“Very well.”

Wen Ruohan stilled and stared down at Lan Qiren, who frowned and amended his words: “Not in a carriage. I have standards.”

“You understand that I mean actual dual cultivation, correct?” Wen Ruohan said, feeling a little blank inside – not the usual sort of benumbed apathy that often came upon him and drove him to the Fire Palace to seek out any sort of feeling he could get, but a weird floaty sort of blank, like the type that preceded the mind-clearing lucidity of a really good orgasm. “Not the type you hear about in badly written erotic stories where it’s nothing but a thinly disguised excuse for sex, but the sort where both partners genuinely merge spiritual energy, share qi for qi, letting our golden cores resound and fill with each other.”

Lan Qiren blinked at him, as if puzzling through what he meant, and after a moment, his brows unfurrowed as he reached a conclusion that satisfied him. “Ah, of course,” he said, nodding judiciously. “Forgive me: obviously you would also not do something like that in a carriage, so my statement was unnecessary. I did not mean to imply that you lacked standards.”

Wen Ruohan did lack standards. He was the terrifying tyrant of the cultivation world, the unstable madman who lusted only for power and dreamt of standing above all the other sects as their master, and he knew it. He knew it was all true, what they said about him. There was little enough he would not do to achieve his goals, whether lying, cheating, stealing, murder or worse, and if he did not typically employ the most wretched of methods, such as human furnaces, that was not because of any scruple. His cultivation path was still an orthodox one, and so engaging in that behavior would likely harm him more than it helped; that was the only reason he hadn’t done the worst of the worst, the only reason. And yet, in the face of all that, Lan Qiren was still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt – to rely on him, to trust him.

Lan Qiren, Wen Ruohan decided in a moment of clarity, must be insane.

Luckily, it was the sort of insanity that went in Wen Ruohan’s favor, so he wasn’t going to complain.

Instead, he leaned down and kissed Lan Qiren again, using the hand that wasn’t busy digging new bruises into Lan Qiren’s already injured wrist to reach down and get himself off as efficiently as possible – which didn’t take long, as close to the edge as Wen Ruohan already was.

“Do you need something on your side?” he asked, after. “Or are you content to wait until later?”

“Later will do just fine,” Lan Qiren said, though he wrinkled his nose as he looked down at the mess on his bare abdomen. His slightly bruised abdomen, in fact, which Wen Ruohan noted in his heart as something else he’d have to pay back to someone someday. “A bath would be too much to ask for, I suppose, but some water…?”

Wen Ruohan moved back to his seat, allowing Lan Qiren to clean himself up and taking the time to simply luxuriate in the languor that followed release. When Lan Qiren returned to his seat, he took the other man’s wrist into his lap once more, this time to apply a few acupuncture needles to encourage swifter healing, then when that was done to smooth on some salve and wrap it in a bandage. And then, because he could, because no one would ever dare tell him not to, he slid down to his knees on the floor of the carriage and took Lan Qiren into his mouth.

“You are insatiable,” Lan Qiren said, though he sounded fond rather than complaining. Very few men would complain in such a circumstance, though Wen Ruohan suspected Lan Qiren might be one of them, if he were sufficiently motivated – though he didn’t seem to be now, based on the way he reached down with his injured hand to slide his fingers to rest in Wen Ruohan’s hair. “But if this is meant to be for me, then we shall do it my way, you understand?”

Wen Ruohan hummed in reply.

“Good. Just stay still, then…yes, just as you are, just like that. You may meditate or daydream, as you prefer – I do not require your attention – but do not move until I grant you permission. You can do that for me, can you not?”

He could, and quite happily, too. Wen Ruohan hadn’t kneeled in penance for a long time, though he still remembered that type of discipline from his childhood. Though shortly enough he discovered that this didn’t feel like penance or punishment – Lan Qiren would have made it clear if that was what he expected Wen Ruohan to get out of the act, and this wasn’t that. It wasn’t even meant to be humiliating.

No, it was more just…

A way to pass the time.

After a little while, Lan Qiren summoned his guqin, plucking at some song or another – not one Wen Ruohan recognized, so perhaps the one he had said earlier that he wanted to compose – while Wen Ruohan enjoyed himself. It was strangely meditative, in its way, and after a while it started to feel almost competitive, a race to see which one of them would break first: Wen Ruohan’s pride and paranoia against Lan Qiren’s stubbornness and stamina.

And Wen Ruohan did not lose.

Luckily, Lan Qiren might seem to have the endless patience of a block of granite, the way the Lan rules seemed to advise, but in the end he was still human. Eventually he gave in and let Wen Ruohan suck him off properly – and that, too, was a pleasure, and not just because it represented victory.

Wen Ruohan was in a very good mood.

That good mood persisted all the way through the long carriage ride back to the Nightless City, and even after, when Lan Qiren disappeared in the direction of their shared rooms with his guqin and a distracted air that suggested he was likely to forget to eat dinner that night in favor of playing music. Wen Ruohan saw him off with a smirk before heading towards the main hall: tragically, even though the time he’d been gone for the discussion conference that wasn’t had been shorter than expected, the never-ending work of a sect leader still beckoned.

Surely even those annoyances couldn’t dampen his mood…though they certainly seemed to be trying their best.

“Sect Leader, I swear to you, that is the rumor,” the reporting disciple bowed deeply. “They claim that our Wen sect cleared the area only through driving the monsters to the next region – that we are not only dishonest and untrustworthy, betraying the rules of the night-hunt, but that our great forces are only there to hide our weakness.”

Above all things, Wen Ruohan hated being laughed at the most. Normally, he would retaliate against such an insult by destroying anyone who dared make it, regardless of the truth of the matter – the truth didn’t really matter, after all. History was written by the victors, and the offense of insulting his Wen sect was far greater than whatever petty crimes his subordinates might or might not have committed. A subordinate could be punished, a scapegoat could be blamed, but someone who dared insult him…?

Perform acts of chivalry, have courtesy and integrity, take wins and losses…

Ugh, he could hear Lan Qiren earnestly chirping those stupid Lan sect rules even now.

Wen Ruohan rolled his eyes. Such a thing definitely wasn’t worth ruining his good mood over.

“Send a secondary squad to investigate what happened, both the initial squad’s behavior and the rumors,” he ordered, waving his hand dismissively. “If the crime has been committed, report to me for further instruction. If it has not, and the existence of false rumors is verified, then both squads may join hands and make clear our Wen sect’s displeasure.”

The Lan might preach If others lose to you, do not look down upon them, but the Wen had always felt differently. Even Wen Ruohan’s ancestor Wen Mao, who’d left his descendants with a whole list of seemingly altruistic sayings to make himself feel better about the vicious conquest he’d enacted to raise his clan up to the skies, had never included anything about having mercy on those that wronged you.

Even Lan Qiren wouldn’t be able to complain.

The subordinate bowed and retreated, shouting, “Sect Leader’s wisdom is infinite!” as he did.

The next petitioner stepped up – based on his clothing, he was one of the disciples surnamed Wen, a kinsman whether born or adopted, rather than merely an outer disciple.

“A report from the army, Sect Leader,” he said crisply, as professional and intimidating as expected from someone who bore their surname, and presented Wen Ruohan with a missive.

Wen Ruohan scanned it over for any unusual elements. It was mostly the usual, though naturally Wen Ruohan would never ignore something from his army – he was the only one with a sect large enough to even have an army, the only one bold enough to force lower-level cultivators into the sort of discipline required to call them an actual militia rather than merely wielding the fighting force of his sect disciples the way other sects did. Not that he could underestimate that: Qinghe Nie, for instance, had made its way into the Great Sects on account of their disciples’ outsized strength in arms.

“What’s this about us sending a squad to deal with a matter near Jiujiang?” he asked, tapping one part of the report. “That’s in the area between Gusu Lan and Yunmeng Jiang, it’s not our responsibility.”

More to the point, it was perilously close to the Quanjiao Liu sect, the target of Qingheng-jun’s upcoming war of conquest. Not to mention only a stone’s throw from Xixiang, where Cangse Sanren was currently heading with Lan Qiren’s precious nephews…

“We received word of a large group of hauntings all in one place,” the Wen disciple said, saluting. “It seemed perfect for a training exercise on a large scale. Permission was received from the local sect that manages the area.”

Wen Ruohan grunted. That was normal enough, he supposed. “What sect?”

“Yuexi Xu.”

He’d never heard of them. A small sect, then, with nothing but their clan to back them up – even with paranoia as acute as his, Wen Ruohan had to admit that the chances of them being up to something that could harm his great Wen sect was relatively low. Still, wading into another Great Sect’s territory was always fraught with risk. It tended to make people nervous, and that nervousness was particularly acute when it was his Wen sect, given the reputation Wen Ruohan had for conquest. Was all that trouble really worth it for a mere night-hunt…?

“Is the prey particularly notable?” he asked. “Something that would gain our Wen sect great fame?”

“No, Sect Leader. However, the general was convinced that the opportunity was worth taking in order to ensure that the army had experience outside of drilling, in facing up against real opponents. In particular, he wishes to develop his protégé…”

Wen Ruohan relaxed. Now that made sense. He’d almost forgotten that he’d sent Wen Xu to be tutored by one of his generals, but naturally they’d want to flatter him by finding a way to show off to his son.

“Naturally my Xu-er must have many opportunities if he is to win fame for himself,” he said indulgently. “Very well, approved, provided they’re quick in handling it and getting out again. I don’t want to run into any trouble. Do you have any verbal reports to add?”

“Only that the general observed a number of sects in the area of Jiujiang making movements of their own recently, in their own names. He thought it unusual, given that they were not chasing the hauntings he was targeting, and thought to inform the Sect Leader of it in the event they were preparing for war.”

Now that would be bad timing, Wen Ruohan reflected. Mostly for Qingheng-jun – if the local sects in the area were gearing up to go against each other, the Lan sect’s little war of conquest risked escalating out of control as other sects leaped into the fray in order to win themselves some advantage over their neighbors. Starting a war to win some land was nothing, everyone would accept that, but kicking off a big clash like that? That would bring down censure and draw criticism from the entire cultivation world on any sect that dared, even if they were as renowned for integrity as the Lan sect. Even his own Wen sect would need to think very carefully before getting involved with anything like that.

Well, it wasn’t his problem if Qingheng-jun would need to delay his war. Wen Ruohan might have carefully negotiated a contract that gave his sect’s tacit support to the Lan sect’s war in exchange for support further down the line to eat away at the Jiang sect’s other subordinate sects, and certainly he wanted to take advantage of the benefits he’d negotiated for, but his real goal of obtaining Lan Qiren had already been fulfilled.

Lan Qiren was his, now, and by the Lan sect’s own traditions, he would never be anyone else’s.

“So noted,” he said, smiling faintly to himself and ignoring the way that it made the disciple in front of him blanch in terror. “Dismissed. Pass my regards to Xu-er, and tell him to plan to return to the Nightless City for a visit when he’s finished with this night-hunt.”

It was really past time for Lan Qiren to meet his children. The only reason he hadn’t met them already was because Wen Xu, who was promising, was far away, and Wen Chao, who was close by, was spoiled and arrogant and more than a little silly. He’d initially planned to wait until Lan Qiren had settled plans for his future classes to introduce Wen Chao, asking him to act as personal tutor in advance, but now it seemed better that he wait until Lan Qiren’s nephews arrived. His younger son had always yearned for the acceptance of his peers, and once they were all in the Nightless City, in Wen Ruohan’s grasp, it would be easy enough to ensure that they got along.

The next report involved even more rumors, this time in a different area – and even more impudent.

“They really said that my Wen sect is only a paper tiger, with nothing but empty roars and past glory to back us up? And they said it in public, to others?” Wen Ruohan laughed in anger. “Do they not want to live any longer? Ridiculous.”

“Should we take action against them, Sect Leader?”

“No, of course not. No one would dare say something like that – ”

And if anyone really was that daring, they certainly wouldn’t be after the discussion conference.

“– which means there’s the chance that someone is spreading the rumor on purpose, to use us as a weapon against their enemies. Do they think our Wen sect is so easily manipulated? Have it investigated.”

“At once, Sect Leader!”

Wen Ruohan shook his head. So many rumors, all at once, and not the ones he’d wanted or expected to hear after the success of the discussion conference. How irritating! It stunk of some sort of plot.

He raised his voice and addressed the room at large. “Has anyone else got any unusual rumors to report?”

Silence, with most people exchanging glances. After a few moments, one of his subordinates, relatively far back in the crowd, stepped forward.

“Reporting to the Sect Leader,” he said, saluting. “I heard some unusual rumors in the vicinity of Yueyang Chang, but was reluctant to share them, absent any corroboration.”

Wen Ruohan raised his eyebrows. Yueyang Chang was the sect he’d absorbed with Lan Qiren’s advice, and which had been suffering from – should he call them growing pains? To go from independence to subservience required an adjustment period, but that wasn’t anything he would call ‘unusual’. “Speak.”

“Sect Leader Chang was overheard complaining by those who I trust, who reported back to me. He claimed he had been tricked – that he was pushed to go out on a limb by someone who knew the branch would not hold his weight.” The subordinate hesitated. “He said that he would never have instigated the fight in the first place if he hadn’t received encouragement from the Lan sect.”

“From the Lan sect? Gusu Lan?” Wen Ruohan was confused. What did the Lan sect have to do with Yueyang Chang? It wasn’t located in their territory. Moreover, the Lan did not have a habit of messing around with other sects, they tended to treat themselves as being better than that. “What was he promised?”

“He did not say. Only that he greatly regrets his actions…the usual sort of thing. It was only the reference to the Lan sect that was unusual.”

That was unusual. Wen Ruohan didn’t like things that were unusual, particularly in politics. Too often, something unusual was an early sign that something was about to go wrong.

“You did well to report it,” he said, frowning. “Anything to do with the other Great Sects is worthy of my attention.”

That got the attention of yet another of his servants, this one right next to the last, and made him step forward eagerly. “Sect Leader, I also heard something unusual,” he volunteered. “Lanling Jin sect sent out many messages in recent days, and I intercepted several. It appears they are contracting rogue cultivators, experienced ones.”

Another surprise. Wen Ruohan was starting to get tired of them. “Mercenaries?”

“Yes, Sect Leader.”

“You said ‘in recent days.’ Do you know when they started? Before or after the discussion conference?”

“After, Sect Leader.”

Wen Ruohan scoffed. Qingheng-jun must have overplayed his hand, then – Lanling Jin was a Great Sect, but not especially known for its military talents. They rarely spent money on arms when they could instead use it on frivolities, like even more gold leaf for their ridiculously luxurious accommodations. The only reason Jin Guangshan would be reaching out to mercenaries was because he’d managed to figure out that the Lan sect was going to go to war, and he wanted to see what advantage he could get for his sect by fishing in troubled waters.

“Good to know,” he said. “Though hardly what I would describe as ‘unusual.’”

“It’s not that, Sect Leader – it was Yueyang Chang, that was what reminded me! One of the mercenaries the Jin sect reached out to was formerly part of the Chang clan, disowned by the last sect leader, so he’s formally unaffiliated with them, though I believe he’s still on good terms with his kinsmen. He wrote back to confirm that he would participate, saying he knew that it was coming, because – ”

The subordinate abruptly stopped, having clearly not meant to say as much as he was.

Or perhaps regretting what he had been on the verge of revealing.

Wen Ruohan’s frown deepened. “Speak. I will not punish you.”

“This – I – I can only report what I have read, Sect Leader, without judgment as to whether it is true or false. I have not had time to take any steps to verify…”

“Speak.”

“...yes, Sect Leader. The Chang mercenary stated that he knew trouble was coming because he had seen both Lan sect leaders in the environs of his natal sect not long before.”

Wen Ruohan blinked, for a moment not understanding. Both Lan sect leaders? There could only ever be one at a time, and Lan Qiren’s father was long dead. The only way such a thing would be possible was if the man was claiming to have seen Lan Qiren and Qingheng-jun together – together, and near Yueyang, which was nowhere near Gusu.

“Impossible,” he said firmly, ignoring the way his stomach started churning and bile rushed to the back of his throat as his paranoia tried to wake up with a vengeance. “Lan Qiren and his brother despise each other, I have seen it myself. They would never willingly spend time in each other’s company. The Chang mercenary must have been mistaken.”

Surely he must have been mistaken. Lan tended to all look quite similar from a distance, with their pale robes and strong family features and identical forehead ribbons. There was no reason to think that it really had been Lan Qiren.

It couldn’t have been, anyway. From the time Qingheng-jun had left seclusion to Lan Qiren’s marriage with Wen Ruohan and after, all of Lan Qiren’s time was accounted for.

Unless he was lying about being in seclusion, his paranoia whispered. The churning in Wen Ruohan’s stomach got worse. No one saw him. Everyone knows how much he dislikes seclusion. And the Lan sect were all so surprised to see him at the conference, weren’t they? Even his own sect…

But there’s no reason for him to lie, Wen Ruohan argued back. And anyway, he’s Lan Qiren. Do not tell lies, remember? He wouldn’t.

He wouldn’t. Not to me.

Wen Ruohan shook his head and stood up. “That’s enough for today,” he said sharply, watching as his subordinates all knelt and bowed before him. “Dismissed.”

That done, he rose and headed out of the main room, still feeling uneasy. He knew better than to listen to the words of some random rogue cultivator who might not know anything, or who might be lying for purposes of his own – and anyway, it wasn’t the first time he’d doubted Lan Qiren, only to see the error of his doubt. Even as far back as the first time he figured out the extent of Lan Qiren’s growing influence as a teacher, he had wondered if it was some sort of ploy, only to conclude it wasn’t.

It was surely the same now.

“ – of course Lan Qiren wouldn’t be concerned! Why would he? He’s got our dear husband wrapped around his little finger.”

Wen Ruohan paused, hearing Lu Qipei’s strident, scathing tones from the next corridor over, echoing loudly against the walls. She was talking with Shen Mingbi, or rather at her, as usual, with Shen Mingbi hurrying to keep up with her pace.

“You won’t believe what I’ve heard about the discussion conference,” Lu Qipei continued, her voice querulous. “The things that man said – and in public – ! He’s far more shameless than I ever imagined. To put such things out in front of the world as if he wanted us to be seen as some sort of farce, the dignity of our great Wen sect reduced to nothing – he’s laughing at us all, I’m telling you, and our husband not the least of it.”

“I don’t think he laughs,” Shen Mingbi said doubtfully. “Not in general, I mean. Not at all.”

“Oh, he laughs all right,” Lu Qipei said with a sneer. “I’ve heard him. Even today! He was looking at our husband from a distance, and he chuckled – laughing at him behind his back, I’m telling you. He’s nothing more than a shameless hussy whose plans are working out just as he intended – ”

Her voice faded away as she passed into the next room, Shen Mingbi’s hurrying footsteps fading away soon after, and all that was left was Wen Ruohan, standing there, feeling cold.

He hated being laughed at.

He’d never tolerated it, not even in his youth, not even with his brothers and sisters – not even the ones he liked. Mockery had always been his reverse scale; once he’d become the Sect Leader of the Wen sect, that great and glorious position, he had finally been in a place to ensure that no one would ever mock him again. He’d wreaked havoc on the cultivation world to ensure it, time and time again. He had always preferred that everyone think him a madman or a tyrant rather than allow them to think him weak.

Lan Qiren wouldn’t, he insisted to himself. He wouldn’t.

Certainly not now. Surely not now, not just after Wen Ruohan had just humbled himself before him, when Wen Ruohan had asked him to dual cultivate with him. He’d asked Lan Qiren to trust him and Lan Qiren had agreed, and Wen Ruohan had been happy, because at last, at last, he had someone who would give him the benefit of the doubt, someone who looked to him first, someone who trusted him who he could trust in return –

He could trust Lan Qiren in return. Couldn’t he?

Surely he could. Lan Qiren was…he was Lan Qiren. For all the (admittedly) quixotic fascination Wen Ruohan had for him, Lan Qiren was still so boring, so dull, so pedantic when he wanted to be – the passion that moved him was only his rules, which he followed with alacrity, and his loved ones, like any proper Lan. His nephews, of course, and…and his spouse, surely. Wen Ruohan, for whom he had promised to be a good husband, for whom he had written his own rules and tried his best to abide by them. He might not yearn for the sex they had, but neither was he repulsed by it, and he’d offered Wen Ruohan gifts, his own pain, given freely.

Surely Lan Qiren wasn’t going to betray him now.

It was odd how much it mattered, Wen Ruohan reflected as he walked towards the rooms he and Lan Qiren had shared since their marriage. He’d always prided himself on betrayal not mattering to him. He’d told Lao Nie himself that he didn’t really mind it when people betrayed him, as long as they did it with style, and he’d meant it, too. He was so powerful, so beyond all the rest, that no one could really hope to harm him, so what did their pathetic little plots mean to him? Let them squirm and scheme; what did he care? At most, all their connivance would do quite well to amuse him, like watching a play in which he was meant to be a character, a small break in the dull apathy of daily life.

He liked watching people plot against him. He liked crushing them in the end, too, when he was done being amused.

He didn’t like this.

Wen Ruohan knew himself to be paranoid, fearful and wary well beyond the normal bounds of men, but he also knew that his paranoia was well-earned. Who in his life had not betrayed him? In his childhood, it had always been that way: his father had been indifferent, his mother had preferred his older and younger siblings, his brothers and sisters saw him as an impediment to their goals. Even his sense of security in the world had abandoned him, courtesy of the supposedly peaceful Lan sect’s great war, where his mother and brothers had left him behind to die.

Nor had it changed as he’d gotten older. His younger brother whom he liked best had had his own interests, separate and apart from his own, and although Wen Ruohan’s own betrayal of Wen Ruoyu had been by far the worse, it wasn’t as though he had been incited to action out of nothing; it had been those cracks between them, the little evasions that chipped away at trust, that had allowed for Wen Ruohan to be deceived into turning against him. And his wives – ah, the less said of them, the better. It had been his first wife, who’d sworn an oath to be loyal only to him, that had first introduced him to the notion of adultery, blatantly telling him that she would take others to her bed to make up for what he did not give her. Only she hadn’t really ever wanted anything he could give, always laughing at him, never appreciating him, never trusting in him or his potential. He had still been weak when he’d married her, and so she had always looked down on him, sneered at him, thinking to herself that she could have and maybe should have done better for herself than settling for the likes of him. It was only later, much later, that she regretted her cruelty and selfishness, only when unexpectedly he really did begin to achieve all of his ambitions and gain the power that was rightfully his.

Of course by then it was too late. Too late for her to win his affection, because by then he knew the truth that she’d only ever wanted him for his power, and he’d hated her for that. And the two wives that came after her…he had long ago found them to be the same as her.

His children, of course, all tended towards their mothers, following in their footsteps. They all wanted his seat, wanted his power – perhaps Wen Xu and Wen Chao were too young to really scheme, but their mothers weren’t, and they’d grow to follow their long-dead older brothers’ footsteps one day, he had no doubt. One day they, too, would turn against him, inevitable and unstoppable, and there was no point in even hoping for more.

Even his lovers were the same! No matter how sweet their words, they all betrayed him in the end, one way or another. Even Lao Nie, who had been so gallant at the start – he’d taken one wife, which Wen Ruohan could understand given the need for descendants, and then another, which he couldn’t. And even now, with both wives gone, he’d turned quarrelsome and suspicious, always the first to think the worst of Wen Ruohan. No, Lao Nie had never been fool enough to think that simply sharing Wen Ruohan’s bed meant that he could trust him…

But Lan Qiren is different.

Lan Qiren trusts me. He doesn’t fear me. He would give me everything, and happily. He’s a Lan! The Lan love deeply, love madly, love only one – it is what they are all like, as characteristic of them as their ridiculous rules. No Lan would ever betray their beloved. It’s impossible!

…though that assumes that I am Lan Qiren’s beloved. Not just simply the one he married.

Wen Ruohan growled in frustration and threw open the door to his rooms.

Lan Qiren wasn’t there.

He should have been there, shouldn’t he? He’d said he was going to go play music for a while. His guqin was there, sitting on the low table he preferred to use when playing, and that meant Lan Qiren should have been there, too. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t here –

“Sect Leader, your lowly subordinate greets you. Forgive my impudence in coming here unannounced!”

Wen Ruohan turned, surprised. It was Wang Liu, his spy from the Lan sect, and he was kneeling.

“You,” he said blankly. “What are you doing here?”

It was impudence to come to Wen Ruohan’s rooms without being sent for. If Wang Liu had wanted to report to him, he should have gone through the usual channels – Wen Ruohan would have summoned him when he was ready and not a moment before, or else gone to meet him somewhere private. Even if it was urgent, there were ways in place that Wang Liu could have made that known.

Ways that didn’t involve bothering Wen Ruohan when all he wanted was to find Lan Qiren.

“I apologize, Sect Leader, but it was a matter that could not wait. It has to do with your marriage.”

Wen Ruohan’s eyes narrowed. His marriage?

“What is it?” he demanded. “Tell me now.”

Wang Liu hesitated, but then squared his shoulders. “Sect Leader, the news I have may be unpleasant – ”

“Did I ask you to equivocate?! Tell me what you came here to say.”

Wang Liu still hesitated.

“Enough of this,” Wen Ruohan said angrily. “Tell me this instant – ”

“It’s all a joke!”

Wen Ruohan took an actual step back. Something was wrong with his balance. “What?”

“Forgive me, Sect Leader,” Wang Liu saluted deeply. “I have discovered that – that earlier reports regarding the dislike between Lan Qiren and Sect Leader Lan were erroneous. There is no such great hatred between them…or rather, the hatred we had observed was all manufactured. It was deliberate.”

There was a roaring sound in Wen Ruohan’s ears.

“It was all planned out from the start,” Wang Liu said. “They worked together on a plan that would allow them to best improve the Lan sect’s future, now that Qingheng-jun was out of seclusion. It was all part and parcel to it: Lan Qiren pretended to retreat into seclusion while his brother established himself, using the time to go look into the various weak points the sect had developed the past ten years. Refreshing alliances with some sects, identifying others as budding threats – Yueyang Chang and Yingping Wang, for instance – ”

“Those sects are nowhere near Gusu,” Wen Ruohan said. His voice sounded dull to his own ears. Shocked. Betrayed. Pathetic. “Why would the Lan sect care about their fate?”

“It is not those sects directly, Sect Leader, but their alliances. They were providing support to certain of the subordinate sects that fall under Gusu Lan, but now that they have themselves become subordinates of the Wen sect, that link is broken, and Gusu Lan’s control is now firmer than ever. I can show you evidence of letters, Sect Leader.”

He fumbled at his sleeve, pulling out some letters and unfolding them – Wen Ruohan could tell at a glance that the writing on them was Lan Qiren’s, even if he couldn’t make out exactly what was written on them. Beautiful but rigid, inflexible, uncompromising…

Not the sort of person who would decide to make the best of things in an unwanted marriage.

Lan Qiren had given in rather quickly, hadn’t he? I will be a good husband to you, he’d said the very first night, and Wen Ruohan had found it funny. He hadn’t complained or yelled or thrown a fit – not until later, not until he’d found the note from his nephews and had that terrible meltdown, which had been so severe that Wen Ruohan had first thought he was having a qi deviation. But when he’d checked him later, Lan Qiren’s qi had been just fine…could he have been faking it?

No, that was impossible. Surely it had to be impossible.

He laughs at him behind his back, Lu Qipei had said. I saw him, just today, looking at him and chuckling.

The mercenary from the Chang clan said he saw both Lan sect leaders in that area, together.

Do not tell lies, Lan Qiren said, and then looked his brother right in the face and claimed, I do not know where your children are right now.

“There’s more, Sect Leader.”

Wen Ruohan turned his head slowly to look at Wang Liu, who looked…apologetic, almost. Like he was pitying him. Looking down at him, the way everyone always looked down at men who had their heads turned by a pretty face, men who let themselves be led around by their lower halves. Men who let themselves be fooled and tricked into doing stupid things because they thought they were in – that they were in –

Wen Ruohan didn’t trust anyone. He certainly didn’t love anyone.

“What more?” he asked.

“Your former spy, Qing Yu. As you suspected, he was a spy for another sect…and he knew.”

Wen Ruohan’s hand shook. “He knew? That – that was months ago!”

At the time he’d had Qing Yu thrown into the Fire Palace, the idea of marrying Lan Qiren hadn’t even occurred to him yet. But it was that conversation that had sparked it, hadn’t it? It had been long enough ago that he couldn’t remember exactly what it was that had given rise to the idea, remembering only that long and circuitous discussion that had first led him to suspect Qing Yu, but…it had been then that the seed had been planted, his idea to marry Lan Qiren for himself, to take him into the Wen sect.

The Lan sect didn’t use spies. But they might suborn one, if they thought of it.

Had it all been planned? Had Lan Qiren and his brother been playing him all along? Him, the great Wen Ruohan?

Had they been laughing at him?

Every time he’d let Lan Qiren have his way – when he’d allowed him to be the one on top, when he’d acted against his own inclinations to indulge him, when he’d taken a loss rather than see his distress…when he’d let Lan Qiren call him his wife in front of the whole cultivation world, and even thought that he was enjoying it. Had that all been a joke to Lan Qiren? A humiliation?

“That was why I couldn’t wait to call on you, Sect Leader,” Wang Liu said, wringing his hands. “I got word that Lan Qiren was going to take action now.”

“Action?”

“Yes, Sect Leader. My men intercepted word that he sent back to his sect, saying that he thought you were sufficiently distracted that he would be able to go rescue Qing Yu from the Fire Palace – ”

Wen Ruohan held up a hand, cutting Wang Liu off.

He was seeing red.

How dare he? How dare he – how dare Lan Qiren laugh at me? How dare he take my goodwill, my sincerity, and throw it back into my face? How dare he think that he can take advantage of me?!

Wen Ruohan was nobody’s fool. He was nobody’s plaything, to be manipulated and used and then discarded – and he was sick and tired of being betrayed.

(Maybe it’s a mistake, something deep inside him whispered, soft and flat and monotone the way Lan Qiren’s voice tended to be. Maybe Wang Liu is wrong?

But how could Wang Liu, who had so much evidence, be wrong?)

“I will deal with this myself,” he said coldly, and swept out of his rooms, heading straight for the Fire Palace.

The walls warped around him as he strode forward, walking as fast as he could without breaking into an undignified run – he was losing control over his power, letting it leak loose in a way he hadn’t in ages. He didn’t care, just as he didn’t care about the way the servants who saw him recoiled and cowered at the sight of him, the way they used to before he had relaxed these past few months. He barely even noticed.

His attention was too caught up in the war inside his head, the roaring that still filled his ears.

Half of him, the paranoid old monster that he was, was screaming in wretched miserable vindication – I knew he was too good to be true, I knew better than to trust him, I should never trust anyone at all! – while the other half was thrashing around in denial, shouting No, no, there must be something wrong, something is wrong with this, Lan Qiren wouldn’t, he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t, not to me, he wouldn’t –

Wen Ruohan threw open the doors of his Fire Palace.

Lan Qiren was there. He was deep inside, but instantly visible, in his pale robes with white clouds and red suns, immediately recognizable, with that so-distinctive forehead ribbon fluttering behind him.

He was standing next to the cell Qing Yu had been consigned to.

He turned to look at Wen Ruohan and somehow, impossibly, began to smile –

“How dare you!” Wen Ruohan screamed, his voice cracking as he did. He watched in sick joy as Lan Qiren’s eyes went wide and he took a step back. “How – how dare – you betrayed me – ”

Lan Qiren was already shaking his head, trying to deny it, but it was too late, too late. Why else would he be here, if not for the reason Wang Liu had said? He didn’t love the pain of the Fire Palace.

He only liked the pain that Wen Ruohan gave him.

Or so he’d said.

So he’d lied – and all without saying a single untrue word.

“You want to make me a gift of your pain, do you?” Wen Ruohan said, his lips peeling back from his teeth as he snarled. “Very well, let me give you a gift back. My Fire Palace has all the pain you could possibly want and more. I will let you have your fill of it!”

Lan Qiren reached out to him. “Sect Leader Wen,” he said, his toneless voice as urgent as he could make it. “Wen Ruohan…!”

Wen Ruohan would have none of it. No more lies, no more mockery.

He turned his back on Lan Qiren.

“Guards!” he called, and his men appeared quickly, always at his beck and call. He smiled grimly at them, and they quailed back before him, afraid, terrified as they watched his rage-reddened eyes resume the dead look that he had worn for so long. The one that had protected him for so long, and it was only that he had let himself forget that, for a little while. A mistake, it seemed. “Lan Qiren will be staying as a guest of the Fire Palace from this moment on. Please make sure that he gets only the best of our Wen sect’s hospitality…and no matter what he says, don’t let him leave.”

“Wen Ruohan!”

Wen Ruohan left.

Chapter Text

“Come on kids!” Cangse Sanren called. “Dinner time!”

Jiang Cheng was learning to be very wary of those words.

He hadn’t thought that was possible. It was just dinner, right? Dinner was a good thing, a normal thing. You went, you sat, you ate. No big deal.

Well.

That was before Jiang Cheng started having dinner with Cangse Sanren, her husband Wei Cangze, their son Wei Ying, and the two Lan heirs, Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji.

(And Jiejie, of course, but she didn’t count. Jiang Cheng was used to her being around! She was always there for dinner back at home…and also, unlike everyone else, she was normal.)

They’d been on the road together for a whole bunch of days, maybe six or seven, and they’d already had multiple showdowns over dinner. Unnecessarily dramatic showdowns, in Jiang Cheng’s personal never-spoken-aloud but fervently held opinion.

The first time, the showdown had been the evening after they’d met up with Wei Changze and Wei Ying. Cangse Sanren had decided, as a celebration of their first night on the road with everyone all together, to serve them all dessert for dinner. Wei Ying (who was pretty cool) had been thrilled, Jiejie had been smiling politely the way she usually did when she found things funny but a little silly, Lan Xichen had exactly the same type of smile (maybe it was an older sibling thing), and even Jiang Cheng thought it was pretty cool, actually; he’d never before had a grown-up be the one to suggest, much less implement, dessert for dinner. To be honest, he thought that most of what Cangse Sanren and Wei Changze did was incredibly cool – not that he’d ever admit it. He certainly wouldn’t admit to being a little jealous of Wei Ying, who got to be with two such cool people all the time.

(Two cool people that actually seemed to like each other, no less, the way married couples did in stories. The way Jiang Cheng was pretty sure married couples were supposed to like each other, rather than the way his parents did, or thought they did, or pretended they did, but didn’t really seem to.

Except he was never going to admit any of that either. Ever. To anyone!)

Unfortunately, Lan Wangji did not think it was cool.

“Dinner is dinner,” he insisted, his round little face creased with a great big scowl and his hands clenched into fists. “Not dessert. You cannot have dessert for dinner! It’s against the rules!”

It had been the most he’d said all day. All trip, at that point.

Cangse Sanren had tried to talk him into it, but he’d stubbornly refused, and whenever anyone else tried to reach for their bowl he glared death at them until they stopped. Not that his glares were all that scary – nothing was scary when your face was that round, as Jiang Cheng knew to his own regret, because certainly any time he tried it everyone older than him would just pat his cheeks and make little cooing sounds at him, even Jiejie – but by this point Lan Wangji had already had three giant screaming temper tantrums because things had changed too quickly, so no one wanted to risk triggering another one.

Also, he bit people. Mercilessly.

(Lan Xichen said that Lan Wangji had been having a very hard time of it recently and that they should please try to take it easy on him. Jiang Cheng hadn’t entirely understood what he meant, but Lan Xichen had looked so tired and sad while he said it that he couldn’t bring himself to ask.)

“I’m pretty sure your rules only say that you can’t eat more than three bowls,” Cangse Sanren eventually said, throwing up her hands into the air. This turned out to be a tactical mistake, because Lan Wangji’s face lit up and he started very enthusiastically reciting a whole bunch of rules right back at her.

This had gone on for nearly an incense stick, when finally Cangse Sanren said with a faint sigh and a smile that seemed genuinely fond, “You know, you remind me of your shufu when he was younger.”

That had shut Lan Wangji right up. He’d blinked at her owlishly.

“…really?” he said. “You mean it?”

He looked pleased.

(“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone get Wangji to stop reciting rules in under a half-shichen before, not once he really gets into the swing of things,” Lan Xichen had remarked later, looking impressed, which was…a little worrying. To Jiang Cheng, anyway, everyone else just sort of nodded along and then tried their best not to mention the Lan sect rules anymore.)

Eventually Cangse Sanren had yielded the argument and given them all plain buns to have for actual dinner first, which they all had to eat before they started in on their dessert – Lan Wangji meticulously checked each of their plates to be sure – but after that he’d given in, however begrudgingly, and they could eat.

That had only been the first notable dinner.

The next time had involved them stopping at an inn, with Wei Changze clapping his hands together in excitement and announcing to all of them that they’d found a place that did real Yunmeng food, nice and spicy. Jiang Cheng had been glad to hear it, since he was starting to get tired of travel food even if it had only been a couple of days, and also because discussion conferences held at the Lotus Pier apparently meant that all the food for everyone got really boring for a couple of days as a courtesy to their guests, some of whom apparently lacked tastebuds. Jiejie had cheered outright, clapping her hands, and Wei Ying had been over the moon, turning cartwheels on the grass.

Lan Xichen had, very politely, asked, “What does it mean that the food is ‘spicy’?”

Jiang Cheng had thought he was joking.

Lan Xichen was not joking.

Also, neither he nor Lan Wangji had any spice tolerance.

On the very first bite, they both turned as red as chili sauce, even though they’d ordered the mildest possible dish with only a few chilis peeking through. Poor Lan Xichen been crying, or maybe not since he kept denying it, though he’d certainly been sniffling very hard and wiping at his eyes a lot. Jiang Cheng had felt so absolutely awful about it that he couldn’t even enjoy his own food properly, though Wei Ying hadn’t had that issue. He’d been sympathetic, but he’s still continued munching along rather mindlessly while watching the two Lan boys shovel plain food into their mouths in a desperate effort to make it stop burning.

Jiang Cheng wished he could be that cool.

And then, the time after that, they’d shared a campfire with a nice traveling family that said they were from the far northwest. They’d shared some of their home-cooking, with recipes and ingredients all brought straight from their homeland.

It was delicious, but Jiang Cheng turned out to be allergic. Or, well, not quite allergic, but he’d spent the rest of the evening in the dug-out privy next to the nearby river and everyone had to wait for him before hitting the road again and it had been the most humiliating event of his life.

In short: he was not looking forward to dinner. Even if he was a little bit hungry, it just wasn’t worth it!

“Normal dinner!” Cangse Sanren chirped when no one came running over, not even Wei Ying. “I swear!”

“I’m not sure I believe her,” Jiejie said to Lan Xichen, who hid his smile behind his sleeve.

Jiang Cheng hadn’t quite decided what he’d thought of the two adults that were supposedly taking care of them, but he thought Lan Xichen must be pretty nice, especially since Jiejie seemed to like him. They’d bonded over being ancient (they were both nine years old, so they’d had to do some comparisons to see who was technically older – it turned out that Jiejie was born in the spring and Lan Xichen only in the fall, so she was the older one, so hah!) and over having cute little brothers, which meant that both Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji had had to put up with listening to them tell all the horrible embarrassing stories that they could think of about them. Lan Wangji had very properly covered his face with his hands, his cheeks bright red, and Jiang Cheng had thought that was a very good idea and promptly joined him in doing so. Oddly enough, Wei Ying had spent the whole humiliating experience looking on longingly and complaining that it wasn’t fair that he didn’t have a big sibling of his own to do the same, but that was because Wei Ying was a complete weirdo.

Jiang Cheng was pretty sure he and Lan Wangji agreed on that much, at least. Sure, Wei Ying was now their weirdo, and he was a really cool weirdo, but he was definitely a weirdo.

Lan Xichen and Jiejie also talked about other stuff, though that was only late at night when everyone was supposed to be asleep except for whoever was driving the carriage. Jiang Cheng had woken up once when they’d driven over a hole in the road, and he’d heard them whispering to each other. They’d been talking about their parents, of all strange things.

(“I know that you’re supposed to honor and respect them. They just make it hard, sometimes. I love them! I do! But they fight, and they’re angry, and sometimes it just makes me want to scream…”

“I know what you mean. I never saw my father at all before recently. He was in seclusion…I think I wish he’d stayed in seclusion. Is that a terrible thing to say?”

“Not so terrible. You still honor the one who raised you, though, don’t you? Your shufu? That counts.”

“Thank you.”

“What about your mother?”

“We only saw her once a month…she was always very kind to Wangji, always trying to be cheerful.”

“To Wangji? What about you?”

“…well, she used to be. But about a year ago, she stopped looking at me because I looked too much like my father. Then Shufu yelled at her, and she got better about it, but I was still…I was upset with her about it for a while. Or, not a while, since she’s dead… I guess I understand why it was a problem, though, now that I’ve met him. I do look a lot like him. What if I turn out to be like him?”

“You won’t. You won’t, because you know you don’t want to. That’s all you need in order to be different…I mean, look at me. I’m not going to be anything like either of my parents. Attempt the impossible!”)

“Oh come on,” Cangse Sanren complained, though she had started giggling. “It’s just dinner. Don’t any of you trust me? Little monkey, how about you?”

“Sorry, a-Niang,” Wei Ying said solemnly. “Lan Zhan says I can’t commit to dinner until we know what’s in it.”

Jiang Cheng looked at Lan Wangji, who hadn’t said anything, but who nodded firmly.

Lan Wangji, to be clear, was also a weirdo. Unlike Wei Ying, who was the liveliest person Jiang Cheng had ever met – he was always talking, or bouncing around, or doing something, it was like he never got tired – Lan Wangji was usually pretty quiet, except of course for the times when he wasn’t. Those times included, firstly, any time someone asked him about the rules (he wouldn’t stop talking), and secondly, any time he got overwhelmed, because then he would throw himself to the ground and start screaming and kicking and punching. It had been a little scary at first, but then Lan Xichen explained that Lan Wangji couldn’t help himself and they could best help him by keeping him safe until he managed to get himself back under control. Wei Ying had immediately declared himself and Jiang Cheng to be Lan Wangji’s protectors, which Jiang Cheng thought sounded pretty cool, so that made it all right.

Also, on the first day of the trip when Jiang Cheng had been the one getting overwhelmed (because he’d noticed, a little belatedly, that their mother hadn’t been there to see them off, and he’d known there would be trouble as a result) and Cangse Sanren had tried to pat him on the head to tell him not to worry, Lan Wangji had tried to bite her in Jiang Cheng’s defense.

No one had ever tried to bite someone in Jiang Cheng’s defense before.

That meant Lan Wangji was cool, end of story.

Not as cool as Wei Ying, of course. Wei Ying was basically a dog in human form, always running up to everyone and absolutely certain that they were going to be best friends, all three of them, and not taking no for an answer. And since dogs were the best, that meant that Wei Ying was the best, too. Jiang Cheng had always had trouble connecting with other kids his own age, mostly because of his tendency to overthink everything, and Wei Ying just skated right on past that and declared them to be friends. And now they were friends! All three of them!

So Wei Ying was cool, too, and more than likely the coolest out of all three of them. Even if he was a weirdo, and tended to live almost entirely in his own imagination.

(“Now that we’re friends, we can be sworn brothers and defend the cultivation world together! We’re all going to be rogue cultivators, traveling with only a donkey and sword to our names – ”

“We can’t all be rogue cultivators,” Jiang Cheng pointed out. “I’m the heir of a Great Sect. I’m going to be a Great Sect leader in the future.”

“That’s fine! We’ll all be great sect leaders in the future!”

“That’s not what that means…”

“I will not be a sect leader,” Lan Wangji interjected, very firmly. “Xiongzhang gets the sect.”

“You two are no fun sometimes!” Wei Ying complained. “Fine! We’ll all go to my mother’s master’s celestial mountain and be immortals!”

“No. Shufu would miss me.”

“Yeah, my parents would be really angry…”

“Jiang Cheng! Lan Zhan! Work with me here!”

Lan Wangji reached out and patted him on the shoulder sympathetically. “We can still night-hunt together.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right!” Wei Ying beamed, immediately appeased. “Let’s do that, then!”)

Back on the subject of dinner, Cangse Sanren decided that the best way to deal with their resistance was to throw herself dramatically at her husband, who caught her, laughing.

“No one loves me,” she lamented. She was still giggling. “Nobody wants the food I worked so hard on, the food I slaved over – ”

“She bought noodles down in the town,” Wei Changze told the rest of them. “Totally normal noodles with a little meat in it, completely standard. But as you can see, it was very hard, bringing them all the way back here, it being such a long and hard way – ”

It wasn’t long and hard at all. The town wasn’t far away at all.

“– and after all that effort she put in, now none of you want any?”

“I could eat noodles,” Jiang Cheng said, deeply relieved. “Normal noodles, you said?”

The noodles were fine, to everyone’s profound relief.

Cangse Sanren made a few more jokes over dinner, eliciting mostly groans, and then Wei Changze decided to have mercy on them all by telling them a long and complicated anecdote that had them all laughing to the point of tears. They were both extraordinarily charming, though Jiang Cheng sometimes felt weird about liking them so much and thinking they were so cool – maybe because he knew that his own parents weren’t like that, not even when they were alone. He knew Jiejie also seemed to feel weird about it, or at least she did with Cangse Sanren, since she seemed to like Wei Changze even if she did seem to blush a lot when she was around him, but he had a feeling that her reasoning was somehow different from his.

(“So you’re that woman,” she’d said when they first drove away from the Lotus Pier, before they’d even found out about Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji hiding in the storage compartments. “I’ve heard about you.”

“Terrible things, I hope,” Cangse Sanren replied, making a strange sort of grimace. “And…from your mother? Please tell me you’ve heard about me from your mother.”

“Does it make a difference?”

“It does to me.” A long sigh. “I like having friends. Changze does, too…especially poor Changze. He grew up with your father, you know.”

“…yes, I know.” Jiejie had been silent for a moment, then asked, hesitantly, “Does – is that why you never come to visit the Lotus Pier together?”

Jiang Cheng hadn’t understood why she’d asked that, or what relevance it had. But Cangse Sanren seemed to get it.

“Oh, no, we’re not afraid or anything,” she said with a laugh. “Your father’s a sweetheart, and we’re as daring as you can get! But our little Wei Ying doesn’t deserve to be stuck having to deal with all that awkwardness. All those endless expectations… You’re a good girl. Thank you for coming on the trip, even if you won’t ever like me.”

“Who says I did it for you?” Jiejie said mysteriously, with a somewhat sad smile. “Maybe I just wanted to see the world.”)

When dinner was done, Wei Changze cleared his throat.

“Children,” he said, and they all looked at him. “We’re going night-hunting this evening.”

“Are you leaving us here?” Wei Ying pouted at once. He was apparently used to things like that. “Couldn’t we have at least stayed at the inn in town, then? Or maybe somewhere back next to the reservoir? I don’t want to wait by a campfire…”

“We’re not leaving you at a campfire next to a potentially haunted mine, little monkey,” Cangse Sanren said, ruffling his hair. “We’re taking you with us!”

Jiang Cheng’s mouth dropped open. “You are? Is that – a good idea?”

It didn’t sound like a good idea. They didn’t even have swords!

“It’s the best idea!” Wei Ying shouted, jumping up and down in his excitement. Sometimes Jiang Cheng could really tell where the “little monkey” nickname had come from. He grabbed a branch from the ground and started waving it around. “We’re going to get them like this and like that and we’re going to blow them all up into a thousand pieces – ka-boom – ”

“What have you been telling our son about night-hunting?” Wei Changze asked his wife, his cheeks quivering with suppressed laughter.

“Nothing inaccurate,” Cangse Sanren replied, looking equally amused. “I am a paragon of honesty and straightforwardness.”

“Mm, yes. I remember how straightforward you were when you went out for ‘a quick look around’ and came back from the Lotus Pier with the Jiang children.”

“I was straightforward! I told you right off that I needed them for a cover-up!”

“Yes, to cover up your kidnapping of the Lan children.”

“Lan Qiren said it was all right.”

“Well, if Lan Qiren said it was all right.” Wei Changze rolled his eyes and kissed her on the temple. “You really can’t use a man you’ve barely met since you were sixteen as your moral guide to the world, you know.”

“Yes, she can,” Lan Xichen interjected. “If it’s Shufu, that is.”

Both adults startled and nearly jumped, as if they’d forgotten that any of the children were even there – they did that, sometimes. Usually when they were talking with each other.

They talked with each other a lot.

(“I’m just worried that my dad didn’t tell my mom about where we were going,” Jiang Cheng explained to Wei Ying back on that first day. “And then she’ll be angry. At him, but maybe also at us, and I don’t want her to be mad at us.”

“Why wouldn’t he tell her?” Wei Ying asked, wrinkling his nose. “My parents tell each other everything. And I mean everything. Sometimes they don’t stop talking for days and days – ”

“I can hear you back there, little monkey!” his mother shouted from the front of the carriage.

“You’re supposed to!” he shouted back, grinning, and that was why Wei Ying was the coolest, even cooler than Lan Wangji. Jiang Cheng would never in a million years talk back to his mother like that. “You can tell me if I’m wrong, though!”

“…scram, you brat!”

Wei Ying giggled.)

“Are you really taking us night-hunting?” Jiang Cheng asked, shaking his head and trying to focus. He often got distracted thinking too much about things – his head was always full of things, most of which were usually worries – which Lan Xichen said was a little bit similar to Lan Wangji, just not as bad and a little sideways. Jiang Cheng wasn’t sure about that, but he’d tried out a few of the routines Lan Wangji used to focus and calm down and they weren’t bad. “Isn’t that really dangerous?”

“Not…really dangerous,” Cangse Sanren said, glancing over at her husband with a frown. “Within normal human levels of danger. I think?”

(“What does she mean, ‘human’?” Jiejie asked Lan Xichen in an undertone, but he just shrugged.)

“That’s a very good question, Jiang Cheng,” Wei Changze said, seemingly ignoring the strange half-question his wife had just lobbed at him. “You’re right: night-hunts are dangerous. But the rumors here are pretty mild – just a few specters sighted around the mine, nothing that’s actually gone and hurt anyone yet, maybe one person who thinks they might’ve seen a fierce corpse…really, it’s no big deal. Cangse and I are experienced; we could do a case like this with our eyes closed. So there’s no need to worry.”

Jiang Cheng took comfort from the confidence in his tone.

He took a lot less comfort from the way both Wei Changze and Cangse Sanren stopped dead about five steps into the spooky old former mine, which had been boarded up with creaky old boards before Wei Changze had knocked it down with his sword so that they could go inside with only some lanterns and the evening sun to light up the place.

“Huh,” Wei Changze said.

“That’s interesting,” Cangse Sanren said.

“Yeah. Interesting. That’s the word.”

“I mean, it is interesting. Wouldn’t you say?”

“I’d say…unexpected.”

“Oh, it’s that, too. No denying it.”

“No, indeed you can’t. How many do you think there are?”

“We can feel it all the way out here by the entrance. How many do you think?”

“Hmm.”

“Yeah, about that many.” Cangse Sanren pulled out her horsetail whisk and drew her sword. “This is going to be fun!”

“Jiejie,” Jiang Cheng hissed, tugging on his sister’s sleeve urgently. “I think when she says fun, she really means dangerous.”

Jiejie patted him on the head. “Senior Wei?” she said, raising her voice a little and reaching out to grab Wei Ying by the collar before he threw himself any further into the mine. Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji were both politely waiting for permission to go forward, of course, so there was no need to worry about them. “What exactly have you noticed? Something unusual?”

“Lesson time,” Wei Changze announced. “I want all of you to try to perceive spiritual energy. Can you do that?”

Of course they could do that. They weren’t babies, and perceiving spiritual energy was practically the first thing you learned when you were going to be a cultivator. It would have been pretty hard to cultivate if you couldn’t even sense things that had spiritual energy!

Jiang Cheng obediently closed his eyes and tried it out, then frowned, opening his eyes. There was something weird.

“What’s that noise?” Wei Ying asked, cracking open his own eyes. “Can anyone else hear it? It’s like…buzzing.”

“I can hear it,” Lan Xichen said, and Jiang Yanli nodded as well. “What is it?”

“That’s the sound – or rather, the feeling, which sometimes comes across as a sound – of spiritual energy laid down in a series of arrays,” Wei Changze said. He hadn’t drawn his sword the way Cangse Sanren had, but he had his hand on the hilt. “A great deal of spiritual energy.”

“In a great deal of arrays,” Cangse Sanren murmured. “Husband mine, you don’t put down this sort of thing for a few specters and a handful of hopping corpses, do you?”

Hopping corpses? Jiang Cheng was appalled. They hadn’t said anything about there being bloodsucking jiangshi here!

“No, you don’t,” Wei Changze replied, then turned back to them. “All right, children, do any of you know the situations where a cultivator would put down a lot of arrays in a single location?”

Yeah, sure, Jiang Cheng thought bitterly to himself. A really bad one!

Not that anyone else would admit that, since that would mean defying the adults.

“A really bad one!” Wei Ying announced. Jiang Cheng turned to stare at him.

“That’s right, little monkey,” Cangse Sanren said, patting his head.

Jiang Cheng pouted. He’d thought it first!

“It is likely to be in a place where a great number of people died under unjust circumstances,” Lan Xichen volunteered. “Any place with a great deal of death will generate resentful energy and draw in evil, but in most cases, cultivators will seek to liberate rather than suppress. Only where a great injustice has occurred, without plausible remedy, will it be necessary to implement long-lasting suppression arrays on a large scale.”

“It’s not just death, though, is it?” Jiejie asked. “Can’t it be any type of injustice?”

“Well, yes, but typically there is more resentful energy released upon death than upon suffering absent death – ”

“Also, we’re in a mine,” Jiejie interrupted. “Couldn’t the resentment just come from them having died at all? They could have been unwilling to go – say, if there was a mine collapse – ”

“If it was a mine collapse, you wouldn’t need what must have been an entire clan setting up arrays,” Lan Xichen said, his face going fixed and neutrally pleasant in a way that everyone had by now learned meant that he was getting annoyed but trying his absolute best not to show it. “Not to mention just leaving them here for ages and ages – ”

“You’re both right,” Wei Changze interrupted. “Jiang Yanli is right that particularly sudden mine collapse could generate the necessary resentful energy, if there were enough people – ”

Jiejie beamed.

“– but also Lan Xichen is right that the number of people that would have needed to be involved in a mine collapse on the scale that might justify suppression arrays of this magnitude is much, much greater. It wouldn’t just be the mine, it would probably have to encompass several of the towns at the base of the mountain, and maybe some further out that draw on the local reservoir, too – far, far too massive to be overlooked. No, it’s far more likely that Lan Xichen’s initial deduction is correct: this is more than likely the site of a massacre.”

“How did you know that the arrays have been here for ages?” Wei Ying asked Lan Xichen, who blinked. “My dad just said that there were a lot of them, not that they were old.”

Lan Xichen looked flustered. “I…I mean…actually…”

“Xiongzhang is right,” Lan Wangji announced, breaking his usual silence in defense of his brother. “It sounds like when they patched up the back gate at home.”

“He is right,” Cangse Sanren told Wei Changze. She was examining one of the walls of the mine with a frown. “He’s got good instincts, which is of course no surprise given who raised him. Not just about the age of the arrays – this sort of thing really does look a lot more like the concerted effort of an established cultivation clan layering arrays on top of each other than, say, the work of a passing rogue cultivator or even a whole mob of rogue cultivators. And it hasn’t been maintained for a while. Here, look.”

She pointed at the wall she’d been looking at, twisting her fingers into a hand seal. The array hidden there slowly lit up with a slightly eerie silvery light, rather than the usual gold that Jiang Cheng was used to seeing. It was a very large circle, with the usual sorts of inscriptions all around the edges, and there were five smaller circles layered on top of it in each of the cardinal directions and the center, each of them rotating slowly – and there might even be more circles layered onto the smaller circles, but Jiang Cheng couldn’t quite tell. It was very impressive.

“See? At least ten years old, and not one bit of upkeep since then. Look how ragged the edges are getting..!” She shook her head. “Why would a clan powerful enough to put down all of the arrays here in the first place not make a practice of coming back to check on it? It’s irresponsible.”

“Perhaps they moved?” Wei Changze suggested, though he seemed doubtful. “Or a tragedy, perhaps…either way, something must have happened to prevent their return.”

“No, I don’t think so. There are so many arrays here, and they’re so powerful! You’d be covered even if the entire mine had collapsed on an entire village’s worth of people – this is the result of painstaking effort. And for something to involve an entire cultivation clan…”

“Maybe it’s just a bunch of really powerful ones!” Wei Ying giggled. “Boom! Boom! Boom! Arrays everywhere!”

“That’s a good point,” Wei Changze said encouragingly, then glanced at Cangse Sanren. “It could be a smaller set of people if they were exceptionally powerful. A set of sect elders, for instance.”

“Maybe for one of the larger sects, I suppose.” Cangse Sanren didn’t seem convinced. “You’d still need a fair number of people involved. But then in that case, wouldn’t you be even more likely to see signs of maintenance? If there’s one thing I’ve figured out about sect elders, it’s that they love ordering other people around. They would have assigned some juniors to come back here to keep an eye on it.”

“Maybe they just didn’t want to come back,” Jiejie suggested. “Wouldn’t that explain the very large amount of power involved? If they knew at the beginning that they didn’t want to come back.”

“Hmm, another good point,” Cangse Sanren said, and Jiang Cheng pouted even more. Now he was the only one who hadn’t made a good point! He was falling behind! Even Lan Wangji had been right about something! “That could be it. Maybe it was a smaller group of people, putting in an extra-large amount of power because they know they’re not going to be maintaining it, or else finding a reason to want to not think about it after that. I still think it’s negligence, though.”

“There’s enough power here to last more than ten years without consistent repair,” Wei Changze disagreed. “That’s not negligence. Ten years is enough time to dissipate most of the things you encounter during a standard night-hunt.”

“If that was the case, we wouldn’t be here,” Cangse Sanren pointed out. “The townspeople wouldn’t be complaining about gui and worse haunting the hills. The only reason they’re complaining is because the suppression arrays are starting to fail to keep whatever is in here, here.”

Jiang Cheng wracked his brain to think of something clever to add in. He didn’t want to be the only one not contributing to the conversation. Everyone else had said something right – but if he opened his mouth and said something, he might be wrong, and then he’d be the only one who was wrong, and people would be disappointed in him and think he was stupid, and then they wouldn’t like him or want to be friends with him, and – and –

He was doing the bad thinking again, Jiang Cheng reminded himself. The bad thinking led to the screaming, or at least it did with Lan Wangji, and if he didn’t want to end up with the screaming, which he didn’t, he needed to pause, take a breath, and tell himself not to do the bad thinking if he could. It wasn’t a problem if he was wrong.

Anyway, he’d been right earlier, about the bad thing. Wei Ying had said exactly what he’d been thinking, and if he’d been the one to speak first, he would have been right.

He just needed to say something.

“Maybe it’s because of the door,” he blurted out. Everyone blinked at him. “I mean – we needed to use a sword to get in here – so – ”

What am I saying? Gui can go through doors, you idiot!

“You know, I didn’t think about that,” Wei Changze said slowly. “But you make an interesting point, Jiang Cheng.”

Jiang Cheng blinked. He had?

“Why was the mine boarded up?” he continued, turning to Cangse Sanren, who frowned. “Wouldn’t you want the local town to come here to leave offerings for their kinsmen? That would help alleviate their grievances and help liberate them faster, dissipate the resentful energy faster. Why keep them away?”

“Good question,” Lan Xichen whispered to Jiang Cheng, who felt his cheeks go hot and probably red. Jiejie nudged him and nodded at him approvingly, too, and even Wei Ying made a gesture of approval. So Jiang Cheng had been right, after all.

So cool.

“The town didn’t mention anything about doing rituals here,” Cangse Sanren said thoughtfully. “I wonder why – they just said there was a mine. Nothing about a massacre. A purposeful omission?”

“Not necessarily.”

“We should find out.”

“We should figure out what the arrays are doing and if there’s any chance they’ll break down,” Wei Changze objected. “If whatever is suppressed here hasn’t dissipated, then it could be a catastrophe if they ever got loose.”

“We won’t be able to figure that out if we don’t know what happened here originally,” Cangse Sanren replied, and – wait. Were they arguing?

It sort of looked like they were arguing, but it wasn’t the way Jiang Cheng’s parents argued. No yelling, no one was throwing anything, no glaring or angry gestures…

Jiang Cheng had thought that Wei Changze and Cangse Sanren were a perfect storybook couple, the type that really liked each other and were happy all the time and that meant that they didn’t fight. But apparently he was wrong, and they did fight? It was just that their type of fighting was…weird. Almost…cheerful. Friendly.

So weird.

“…I’ll take the older two to town to ask around,” Wei Changze finally conceded. “You stay here with the younger kids and investigate the arrays?”

Cangse Sanren kissed him on the cheek. “Have fun!”

“It’s not fair that the older kids get to do all the interesting things,” Wei Ying sulked to Jiang Cheng after Wei Changze had left with Lan Xichen and Jiejie, who both had looked very excited to have the chance to go question villagers rather than sit around and watch Cangse Sanren poke at the array on the wall with her really sharp and oddly red fingernails until it crackled with spiritual energy, which made her frown and poke some more. It had been interesting at first, but had lost its appeal quite a long while ago. It had already been ages and ages! Maybe even half a shichen! Or more! Yeah, lots more! “This can take all day, you know.”

Jiang Cheng made a face.

“It’s not fair, you know. I want to explore! I want to help!” Wei Ying complained with what Jiang Cheng personally considered to be a substantial exaggeration of his own abilities. “I could be so helpful!”

Make that a vast exaggeration.

“Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying turned to his faithful white shadow. “Can you convince my mom to let us go explore? You’re good at tricking people, aren’t you?”

Was he?

Lan Wangji thought about it for a couple of moments, then nodded. He climbed to his feet and walked over to where Cangse Sanren was still poking at the wall and mumbling to herself.

“Senior,” he said, sounding as serious as he ever did. “I have a question.”

He waited a few moments, then reached out and tugged her sleeve.

“Ah -? Oh, Lan Zhan, right, right,” Cangse Sanren said, and smiled down at him. “Did you say you had a question? What’s your question?”

Lan Wangji looked up at her and, with a completely straight face and big wide innocent eyes, said, “What’s a massacre?”

What a scammer.

Jiang Cheng was impressed.

Cangse Sanren’s face froze. “Uh,” she said. “What?”

“Senior Wei mentioned it earlier…? When Xiongzhang was talking about what happened here. I was hoping Senior could explain.”

“Oh, sure,” she said, reaching up and tapping her nails against her cheekbone. “I can explain, sure. Sure, sure.”

“Good,” Lan Wangji said peaceably. “Like Shufu says, never stop learning.”

“…on second thought, maybe you should go play,” Cangse Sanren said, wrinkling her nose. “Your shufu might want to explain big words like massacre using, uh, his own words, you know. Hey! Little monkey! Can you take Lan Zhan to go play?”

Wei Ying leaped to his feet like he’d been waiting his whole life for the chance. Jiang Cheng climbed up and brushed the dust off his butt, shaking his head in disbelief.

Were all grownups so easy to manipulate? Why hadn’t he known that?

(Also, for some reason, Cangse Sanren hid a laugh in her sleeve as she turned back to the array. What was that about?)

“Have fun, kids,” she said, already focused back on her array. “Don’t go far.”

“Sure, of course,” Wei Ying said, and promptly took off running in the other direction. Jiang Cheng followed him, happy to have a distraction – he’d stopped being afraid of the mine and started being bored quite a while back at this point. Anyway, there weren’t that many places to go in here, what with the entrance to the deeper parts of the mine thoroughly blocked off by a rockfall that Cangse Sanren had deemed to be caused by cultivator swords and everything else mostly just being a few twists and turns and big stalagmites, all of which eventually led back to the main area where Cangse Sanren was standing.

Wei Ying didn’t seem to care about any of that, though. He charged forward happily, leading them this way and that, nattering on and on about how he was going to fight any ghosts he met because he was such a great cultivator, and also how they could make friends with them, too, because he was so nice, and how they would show them where there was a great big old treasure…

“I’m pretty sure the only treasure in this mine is whatever they were mining,” Jiang Cheng said doubtfully. “Or maybe the arrays? I don’t know. Are arrays valuable?”

“Long term arrays are often anchored in place with treasures,” Lan Wangji volunteered, and just like that, it was decided: they were going on a treasure hunt.

Wei Ying provided the background music himself, as if they were in an opera. Sometimes it even had lyrics. Unfortunately.

“Anyway, Jiang Cheng, I was thinking,” he said cheerfully as they checked behind yet another stalagmite without success. “What if your big sister marries Lan Zhan’s big brother? Then you’d be brothers – ”

“No,” Lan Wangji said. “No marriage.”

“Your brother has to get married eventually – ”

“No more change.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jiang Cheng interjected. “Jiejie’s already engaged, so it wouldn’t work.”

“Oh, well. Don’t worry, Lan Zhan, it was just a thought.”

“Watch where you are going,” Lan Wangji said, which Jiang Cheng made a lot of sense – Wei Ying had turned around and was walking backwards so that he could talk to them.

“Don’t worry, Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying said with all of his parents’ confidence. “Even if I walk into something, the worst that’ll happen is that I’ll trip and – ”

He tripped and fell.

“Wei Ying!”

“I’m okay, I’m okay!” Wei Ying waved them away. He did in fact seem to be okay. “I told you, it wouldn’t be that…”

His voice trailed away as the ground under all their feet started glowing.

“Mm,” Lan Wangji said, voice still calm. “We seem to have found another array.”

“Not just that,” Jiang Cheng said, watching a hazy mostly see-through figure that rose up from the ground through the very thin crack in the array that had been created when Wei Ying’s foot had hit the rock that he’d tripped over. “I think we found a ghost. Run!”

“Ghoooooooost!” Wei Ying hollered, and they all bolted.

Jiang Cheng looked over his shoulder: the ghost seemed disoriented at first, but then shook itself, solidified a bit, and then….started chasing them.

“Oh no,” he said, horrified. This was why kids their age shouldn’t night-hunt! “Split up, split up!”

They split up.

The ghost veered off to go after Lan Wangji, which was pretty lucky – Lan Wangji was probably the most agile of the whole lot of them, as they’d determined through a series of races much earlier. Wei Ying was technically faster, but he could also be a little clumsy; sometimes he ran into things, or bounced off things, and that slowed him down. Lan Wangji, on the other hand, had the sort of footwork that came from having sincerely done his training twice a day every day for years and years, and he demonstrated it now.

“Let’s go distract it and give Lan Zhan a break,” Wei Ying said, and Jiang Cheng nodded. “Me first, then you?”

“No, you go second,” Jiang Cheng said, even though his heart was in his mouth. He didn’t want to get captured by the ghost, but he didn’t want Lan Wangji to get captured, either. Anyway, in all the stories, things like this always turned out fine for the heroes, so he was…probably going to be fine. “You’re faster, you’ll be able to keep away longer. All right – three, two, one – go!”

He dashed forward, barreling forward until he passed right in front of the ghost, intent on getting its attention and drawing it away from where it was chasing Lan Wangji round and round the bottom of a set of very pointy stalactites.

Jiang Cheng did manage to get the ghost’s attention successfully, but the rest of the plan didn’t work.

The ghost stopped for a moment before shaking itself and chasing Lan Wangji again.

“My turn!” Wei Ying shouted, and threw himself forward – way closer to the ghost than Jiang Cheng had dared to go, which probably made sense. That would work better!

It didn’t.

“Okay, this isn’t fair,” Wei Ying said, except he wasn’t complaining; he was biting his lower lip in worry. Lan Wangji was starting to breathe hard and he was still running. “We need to stop that ghost before it gets Lan Zhan! Maybe we try to attack it?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“What else can we do?”

Jiang Cheng wasn’t sure. “Maybe we could – ”

“Call for help?”

“No, I don’t think that would work,” Jiang Cheng said, shaking his head.

“Yeah, I don’t think so either,” Wei Ying agreed.

Jiang Cheng was about to say something, then paused. If he hadn’t made the suggestion, and Wei Ying hadn’t made the suggestion, so that meant…behind…

He slowly turned around.

Cangse Sanren, standing behind them, cleared her throat pointedly. “No, I’m pre-tty sure that calling for help would’ve been the right choice here,” she said wryly, and waved her horsetail whisk at the ghost, which wailed as soft beams of spiritual energy wrapped around it and yanked it back away from Lan Wangji, then proceeded to pull tighter and tighter until the ghost just…disappeared.

“Good timing, Mom!”

“Thank you for your assistance, Senior,” Lan Wangji panted.

“We were doing fine,” Jiang Cheng mumbled, cheeks still red with embarrassment. “And – and anyway, you shouldn’t have brought us here in the first place! What were you thinking?! We nearly got eaten!”

“A little danger is good for the growing soul,” Cangse Sanren said dismissively. “But also you boys have definitely lost ‘going out to play’ privileges. Time to come back.”

Jiang Cheng sighed. Mostly with relief.

“It was so stupid! It was such a scary ghost, I can’t believe you let it anywhere near us,” he complained bitterly. “It was – it was fast! And it was going to eat Lan Wangji!”

“Pretty small, though,” Wei Ying said. “It was barely bigger than your jiejie, and she’s the tallest. Well, tallest among us kids, anyway.”

“That’s stupid, too,” Jiang Cheng grumbled, secretly relieved that everyone seemed to be just as accepting of his nervous scolding as they were of Lan Wangji’s temper tantrums. “Why would there be such a short ghost? It wasn’t very smart, either. It just kept chasing Lan Wangji by going straight after him, when it could go through rock – ”

“Ghosts resemble their former selves in life,” Cangse Sanren interjected. She was scowling, but in a thoughtful sort of way. “It’s quite common for gui to forget that they can go through walls now, particularly if they’ve lost their minds the way that ghost had.”

“Was it an especially short ghost in life, then?” Wei Ying wanted to know. “If it was resembling its former self…”

“Very short,” Cangse Sanren said. Her voice was very stiff for some reason. “But, you know, there’s a big variety in humans…oh, look at that, little monkey! Your father’s back! Just in time!”

“Just in time for what?” Wei Changze asked, blinking as he walked in, followed by Jiejie and Lan Xichen.

“Awkward question avoidance time! How was your trip to the village, husband mine? Successful?”

“No,” Jiejie said, pouting. “Nobody knew anything about the mine.”

“We asked lots of people,” Lan Xichen agreed. “Other than the fact that there is one, they didn’t know anything at all. None of their kinsmen worked here, nothing like that.”

“…well, isn’t that sure something,” Cangse Sanren said, with what seemed like an almost unusually wide smile. “As it happens, we’ve had some interesting developments here, too.”

“Oh?”

“Lan Wangji nearly got eaten by a really short ghost,” Jiang Cheng announced.

“He what?! Wangji!” Lan Xichen hurried forward to start checking Lan Wangji over, which Lan Wangji submitted to with an air of someone doing another person a tremendous favor.

“You nearly let one of the children get eaten by a ghost?” Wei Changze asked Cangse Sanren, arching his eyebrows. “I was gone for one shichen, and you nearly let someone get eaten?”

“They weren’t nearly eaten. Also, what our darling little Jiang Cheng actually means is that the very short, very crazy ghost went only after Lan Wangji.”

Cangse Sanren was stressing certain words very strangely.

Wei Changze frowned. “Only after Lan Wangji?”

“Yeah!” Wei Ying chimed in. “It was totally not fair. Even when Jiang Cheng and I jumped right front of it, it just kept chasing Lan Zhan – it didn’t pay attention to us at all!”

“…you’re right, little monkey. That seems very unfair.” Wei Changze nodded. “Very, very unfair. Normally you wouldn’t see that sort of single-mindedness in a ghost that’s lost its wits unless there were a very particular set of circumstances…like, say, a very deep grudge.”

“Yeah, how weird is that?” Cangse Sanren said brightly. “Especially with all of these very complicated arrays that must have been set up by some very powerful people from a very large cultivator clan. A very large, very nearby cultivation clan capable of sending a small group of people able to do something like this, because we know it couldn’t have been a whole clan working on it, not without the town having known about it. Since they apparently didn’t know anything. So weird!”

“…how short did you say the ghost was, dearest wife of mine?”

“She didn’t,” Jiang Cheng said with a huff. Were they flirting? Was that why they were being so weird? “And it was huge!”

“About the size of our little monkey, I’d say.”

“No, that’s wrong, it was at least as tall as Jiejie! Anyway, why do you ask? Does it matter?”

“I’m just wondering why a ghost of that age – uh, I mean, a ghost of that size would bear an implacable grudge like that.”

“Aren’t implacable grudges usually because the ghost is hunting down whoever murdered them?” Lan Xichen asked, wrinkling his nose. “But Wangji’s only six. It couldn’t be aimed at him. Didn’t you say the ghosts have been sealed here for at least ten years?”

“It’s possible that it just thought that your brother resembled the people it was actually looking for,” Wei Changze explained. “For instance, if he had something in common with them – the shape of his face, perhaps, or his white clothing – ”

“Or his bloodline,” Cangse Sanren muttered.

“It could be anything at all, really,” Wei Changze said loudly, and elbowed her. “Anyway, have you considered how lucky you are? You’re from Gusu Lan, that’s one of the most upstanding of sects, practically a byword for conservatism and orthodoxy – isn’t that right, my dear Cangse? Practically unquestionable, aren’t they…?”

“I said Lan Qiren was unquestionable. That’s not the same thing and you know it.”

“Anyway, you kids should be very relieved. Being raised in a big sect like that means that you’ll definitely have gotten all the soul-calming rituals that will make sure that you don’t get possessed. Isn’t that great?”

“Possessed!” Lan Xichen yelped. “Wangji!”

“I am fine,” Lan Wangji reminded his brother.

“Are you sure? Weren’t you scared?”

“It was fine,” Lan Wangji said firmly. “Shufu said I needed to get life experiences outside the Lan sect and then learn from them. He made it a rule, remember? This was a life experience. I am learning.”

“Uh-huh. And what exactly are you learning?”

“…mm. That adults can be very weird.”

“That’s what you learned?” Cangse Sanren said indignantly. “Don’t tell me you blame me for letting the ghost chase you a little! It was character-building!”

(“Since when does Wangji use the word ‘weird’?” Lan Xichen asked, though he didn’t seem to want an answer.)

“It was character-building,” Lan Wangji agreed. “But also irresponsible. Just like the time you tried to eat dessert before dinner.”

“Oh come on – ”

“Those aren’t exactly comparable circumstances, you know – ”

“Wangji…”

Lan Wangi didn’t seem convinced.

“Maybe we can have the tenth iteration of this argument somewhere else,” Wei Changze said, reaching out to put his hand on Lan Xichen’s shoulder and squeezing his shoulder. He was smiling. “Cangse, what do you think?”

“You make an excellent point, husband mine. All right, kids, everyone back outside where none of you are going to be prime targets for ghosts for as-of-yet unknown but probably highly suspect reasons that I am extremely sure that a particular stick-in-the-mud of our mutual acquaintance absolutely definitely didn’t know about and will probably be highly upset to find out about!”

“…see?” Lan Wangji said to Lan Xichen. “I told you adults were weird.”

Jiang Cheng found that he had to agree.

Chapter Text

The worst of it was how little it changed anything.

Lan Qiren had always been afraid – justly, in his view – of matters of the heart. Even before his brother’s mad infatuation with He Kexin, which had ruined so many things, Lan Qiren had read the stories of his sect founder’s great love with trepidation rather than anticipation. And later, when his brother had seemingly lost his mind in pursuit of love, all his old fears had been confirmed. He had at times woken at night in a sweat, shaking off dreams of being endlessly chased by the strange madness called love that seemed to possess those of his family.

Avoiding that insanity, that dire fate, had been the only relief to the disappointing and often unfulfilling emptiness of the life he’d ended up with: a lonely life, with scarcely any friends and certainly nothing more, giving all his love to his sect and then to his nephews. It was no less consuming a love, of course, but it felt a little more abstract, a little more normal.

A little more head and a little less heart… It had seemed safer, somehow.

Well, that great curse and blessing of the Gusu Lan bloodline might have taken its time, might have dawdled and dragged its feet and taken the long way around, but it had found its way to Lan Qiren at last. At long last, he could stand side-by-side with his brother and his father and his ancestors, know that awful truth they had each discovered in their own way, in their own time.

It was a terrible thing to be in love.

Lan Qiren burned.

He was angry, of course. How could he not be angry? He had only just discovered who his heart belonged to, then immediately after learned that his affection was not returned in equal measure: his love had betrayed him, his lover had demanded his pain and misery, his beloved had not even given him a chance to explain – and all over what must surely have been some sort of misunderstanding! All Lan Qiren had done since their return to the Nightless City was go to his room to wash and change his clothes, settle down to play a few notes, and then get called away by a message asking him to meet Wen Ruohan down in the Fire Palace, which he had assumed was for some variation on the usual reason. There simply wasn’t any time for him to have done something deserving of such a rebuke. Assuming there was anything he could have done that could justify ordering him to be tortured, which he doubted.

Of course Lan Qiren was angry.

He just wished he was only angry.

What does he think that I did? he wondered, again and again. He was unable to stop picking at the thought like a child would a scab, his usual serenity and self-possession nowhere in evidence. What is it that put that look on his face, that sound in his voice? Wen Ruohan thinks himself above matters like pain, yet someone has hurt him, and worse, hurt him through me.

Someone did this to him – and I cannot warn him of the danger!

Lan Qiren wasn’t stupid. He had received a message asking him to come down to the Fire Palace, a message which to all appearances had come from Wen Ruohan, and yet moments after he had arrived Wen Ruohan had found him there and been aghast, very obviously having been primed to make some sort of deduction that Lan Qiren couldn’t begin to guess… It was obviously a set-up. Someone had played them both, taking advantage of the fact that they felt safe enough inside the Nightless City to let down their guard, and used the chance to deliberately sow discord between them.

Lan Qiren could even guess at the source: it was his brother, of course.

It was almost appallingly repetitive of what he’d tried his hand at when they were at the Lotus Pier, which suggested that he’d already had the idea of framing someone for something on his mind at the time. And if that was the case, then it was plain enough to see that this stratagem must be his handiwork. Anyway, looking at it from his brother’s perspective, why not frame Lan Qiren? He still did not know why his brother hated him so much, but it was clear that he did. Hated him enough that he would never be able to tolerate seeing him happy…

But that wasn’t what worried Lan Qiren. Instead, what concerned him was figuring out the means his brother had used to convince Wen Ruohan that Lan Qiren had betrayed him, figuring out how long the plan had been in place and above all, most critically, the final goal that his brother was working towards.

The exact mechanics of what must have happened were not difficult to deduce. It was obvious that some spy must be involved, probably even multiple spies, feeding in incorrect information at exactly the right time, each one compounding on the other in quick succession, quickly enough to make mere supposition seem like unshakeable fact to the fevered and distressed mind. Yet that was precisely the problem! The Lan sect, under Lan Qiren’s guidance, had not used spies. Even if his brother took a different approach, there were none available for him to utilize, and a few months was far too quick to place them effectively. How could he have managed to extend his influence so deep into the Nightless City within such a short time?

Wen Ruohan was a notorious paranoiac, who trusted no one – for him to believe some lie, it must have come from someone with whom he was familiar, someone who had been with him for long enough and who had sufficient devotion (or at minimum coordinated self-interest) that he would not automatically question their word the way he did just about everyone else’s. If there was a spy involved, they must have been very deeply planted.

But that only raised more concerns: even if Lan Qiren’s brother had managed to buy a spy off of someone else – Jin Guangshan, perhaps, given the strangeness of his behavior at the discussion conference – then why would he choose to burn such a valuable spy so quickly? For surely it was inevitable that Wen Ruohan would eventually discover the lie, even if he might not figure it out soon enough to save Lan Qiren, and once he did, that would be the end of all peace. Wen Ruohan would retaliate, as sure as the sun rose up in the sky every day, and his retaliation would be devastating; his pride would permit nothing less. And in any true contest between the Wen sect and the Lan sect, the Lan sect would invariably come out the loser…

Why would Lan Qiren’s brother risk such a thing? What purpose could possibly justify such a risk? And of course, what would the possible consequences be to Wen Ruohan?

There was a certain indignity about being unable to stop worrying about Wen Ruohan when the man had literally just given the order to have him tortured, yet Lan Qiren couldn’t seem to stop.

Being sent to the Fire Palace was not enough to make him stop. It was a disappointment, of course, but not, Lan Qiren acknowledged wryly to himself, entirely a surprise. He had known what he was getting into, after all, when he had made his vows to a man known for both his tyranny and his love of torture, and decided to keep those vows in his heart as well as his head.

It was not unlike a man making a pet of a tiger, for a tiger no matter how seemingly docile it grew would always be wild, always a tiger rather than a cat – if the man then gathered the tiger into his arms, he could not then expect to complain if and when the tiger inevitably bit him. Lan Qiren was precisely that man, and yet…yet he did not regret it. It had not been his choice to marry Wen Ruohan in the first place, and certainly falling in love with him had been unintentional. But he had married, and he had fallen, and there wasn’t a single one of his actions that he would have done differently. And that meant that there was no point in complaining.

Perhaps that was why his primary worry was not for himself, since he was confident in his ability to endure until Wen Ruohan escaped the trap that had been set for him, but for Wen Ruohan.

And oh, but he was worried.

This trap was too well-designed, too well-thought-out! The true target of the trap could not have been Lan Qiren’s life, or his happiness, or anything of the sort; the true target must have been Wen Ruohan, with his arrogance and his well-known paranoia. The pieces must have been put into place long before; Lan Qiren had likely become the focus of the plot after his importance to Wen Ruohan had become apparent, but the plan must have existed first.

That meant the goal could not merely be Lan Qiren’s pain, but some other consequence.

He kept turning it over and over in his mind, wracking his brain to try to figure out what it could be. Political consequences, perhaps, or personal consequences – though an attempt on Wen Ruohan’s life was surely improbable, given how ridiculously powerful he was – and perhaps even emotional consequences…though maybe that last one was just Lan Qiren flattering himself, thinking that Wen Ruohan’s obvious agony and over-the-top reaction to Lan Qiren’s perceived betrayal might suggest that his affections were in fact in some way requited, though likely in some unconscious and even unwilling manner.

But if it were true…if Wen Ruohan really did love him back…

If that were the case, Lan Qiren’s injury or even death in the Fire Palace, upon Wen Ruohan’s orders, before Wen Ruohan had the chance to find out that he had been deceived – it would devastate him.

Also, Lan Qiren would be dead, which seemed also relevant but somehow less important.

Being in love was ridiculous.

(Lan Qiren burned.)

Falling in love had come upon him abruptly and found him unprepared. Oddly enough, it was not entirely unlike the experience of becoming a parent, or at least the way it had happened to Lan Qiren, suddenly and without notice. All at once he found himself burdened with an inseverable connection to another human being, burdened with the need to care for them and worry for them, and burdened above all with a wide array of confusing and conflicting feelings about the whole business. Joy and pain were intermingled, fear and anticipation equivalent…and the most horrifying bit about it was that Lan Qiren knew that, for him, it was permanent.

His love had always been wholly irreversible, wholly unconditional.

That was just the way their Lan sect was, he supposed, each of them cursed with a sense of devotion that bordered on the obsessive. From the very first moment he’d realized that what he felt for Wen Ruohan was love, he’d known that he would love Wen Ruohan for the rest of his life.

It was one thing to know that he would never marry another, which Lan Qiren had accepted when he voluntarily took his bows to Wen Ruohan. He might have told himself that it would be better to try to fall in love with him lest he yield up the chance for love in this lifetime, but he hadn’t really meant it, not really. Lan Qiren had planned to make the best of things, hoped to reach a reasonable détente and assumed, once that was obtained, that it was all that he would be able to get. He’d thought that he had been content with that, that he would remain content with that.

He hadn’t been prepared to actually fall in love.

He hadn’t been prepared for the way his whole world had shifted on its axis to accommodate another point of orbit, the way it had for each of his nephews. He hadn’t been prepared for the fact that now that it had happened, it meant that no matter how Wen Ruohan disappointed him, whether now or in the future, he was in Lan Qiren’s heart, and there he would remain, forever.

Even if one day Lan Qiren stopped liking the man – and when he had started liking him, he had no idea, could not name the exact moment when Wen Ruohan’s arrogance and narcissism and, yes, even bloodthirstiness had stopped generating feelings of revulsion and started generating feelings of resigned fondness – even then, the love would still be there. Even if Wen Ruohan one day became something that Lan Qiren could not forgive, even if he continued down the dark and dangerous path he was walking and lost himself, becoming in truth the monstrous madman he so often liked to pretend to the world that he already was, the one he so obviously feared becoming in truth…even then, Lan Qiren would still love the man that had once existed, if only in his memories.

Even now, after what he’d done.

Even here.

The guards that had surrounded Lan Qiren at Wen Ruohan’s order had at least spared him the mortification of being immediately seized and dragged off unwillingly. If anything, they had looked dreadfully awkward, torn between their duty to follow their sect leader’s orders and their quite evident conviction, shared by Lan Qiren, that Wen Ruohan was eventually going to regret giving those orders and seek vengeance against those that actually did what he’d told them to do. In deference to the situation and to spare them the trouble, Lan Qiren had indicated that he would go along willingly.

He was starting to regret that.

The two torturers that entered the room once he’d been tied down to an ominous-looking chair had also been conflicted, albeit in a different fashion. One wrinkled his nose as if smelling something foul and said, “This is exactly the sort of thing that old bastard He Zhong is always complaining about. He’ll probably say it’s more trouble than it’s worth to ply our trade on the sect leader’s wife.”

“His husband,” Lan Qiren corrected him.

They ignored him.

The second man grinned a nasty sort of grin. “That’s true. And he’s probably right. On the other hand: when’s the next time we’ll get a chance to play with someone that recently graced our sect leader’s bed? It’s a far way to fall, going straight from heaven to hell.”

After a moment of thought, the first man, with eyes hungry like a wolf, had agreed.

The next interlude of time was one that Lan Qiren would have very much liked to erase from his memories.

Given the strict discipline of the Lan sect, he’d thought himself relatively inured to pain, and perhaps somewhat more than that. Certainly he had been confident enough in his resistance to offer himself up to Wen Ruohan, and he would be lying if he tried to claim that he’d done it exclusively for the joy it had brought Wen Ruohan, though that had been the primary reason. Wen Ruohan had hurt him, yes, but he’d soothed him after, too, a careful balance of intense sensation and emotional satiation, and that had made it enjoyable enough in and of itself, a pleasant self-discovery. Before the two torturers began their work, Lan Qiren had even, in what was retrospectively a breach of Do not be arrogant and complacent, been briefly worried that his memory of that event, mutually enjoyable, would be tainted by this travesty.

As it turned out, he needn’t have worried. The experiences were in no way comparable.

Lan Qiren spent what time of it that he could in contemplation, seeking as much as possible to divorce the turmoil of his mind from the pain of his body. It would have been easier if he could have spent the entire time cursing Wen Ruohan’s name for what was being done to him, but no, he was apparently too foolish for that. Perhaps it was just that he had so quickly realized that Wen Ruohan had been tricked, or perhaps it was his conviction, however absurd, that Wen Ruohan would quickly grow to regret what he had done once he'd realized what had happened…

Or maybe he really had simply lost his mind along with his heart, doomed by his inheritance of the immovable Lan sect love, the blessing of constancy in good times and the curse of obsession in bad.

He will regret this, he thought to himself when they tore off the nails from the two smallest fingers of one hand. His regret will break through that shell of apathy and indifference he wraps around himself as a shield, and once broken, he will hate himself for what he has done, for he will be able to blame no other. But his self-absorption cannot permit self-hatred, so he will reject that feeling and turn further towards indifference, seeking oblivion as a remedy, when in fact it is only a poison that will drive him further into madness…I wonder if that was what went wrong between him and Lao Nie? If so, it is good that they have not yet reached the point of no return.

Ah, Qiren, do not lie to yourself. That is good for you, too, is it not? Now that you yourself have reached that point of no return, you are equally uninclined to share what is yours.

Even when it burns you.

And that was the real problem, wasn’t it?

Lan Qiren had always been so steady, so unmoved, in comparison to all his peers. All his innate inclinations tended naturally towards the ascetic, even before you added in his lack of instinctive lust towards others. He had never really struggled with the temptations that bothered many of his kinsmen; he was neither gluttonous nor greedy, treating food as a fuel and power as a burden, and although he appreciated beautiful things, his dislike of change meant that he was content with what he already had. Even his longing for freedom had been only a dream denied.

No longer.

For the first time, Lan Qiren burned.

His love for Wen Ruohan was like an ember still hot from the flame, and yet Lan Qiren cradled it within his hands, willingly letting himself be scorched if only he could hold it a little while longer. He feared death more for what it would do to those he loved, his nephews as well as his beloved, than for his own sake, and he spent his time in foolish worries about what his brother had planned, what it would cost Wen Ruohan, how it would damage his nephews, rather than concerning himself over what cost might be extracted from him in the process.

It was in some ways exactly what he had feared most after everything that had happened with his brother and his own doomed love…and yet in other ways it was not similar at all. Lan Qiren had seen his brother’s self-destruction and feared losing himself to his love, treating it like a wild fever that would burn out all the things he cared about most. He’d feared becoming only a shell that bore his name, a man with nothing in his heart but another person’s name, willing to look the other way over anything at all, no matter how wrong, as long as it was his beloved.

It wasn’t like that, though.

Wen Ruohan had wronged him, yes, but Lan Qiren understood what had happened, this time, and that understanding dampened his anger. He knew that he had been framed; he knew that he had not been believed, even where he would have extended Wen Ruohan the same grace – had extended it, when it had been Wen Ruohan who had been questioned and suspected. But he also knew that Wen Ruohan was far more wary than he was, that he had been betrayed time and time again until he had wrongly thought himself numb to it, and he understood why Wen Ruohan might not yet be able to trust him in return. Under the circumstances, provided that Wen Ruohan realized his error and was willing to repent, he would be willing to forgive…eventually, anyway. Lan Qiren followed his sect in believing that punishment was as essential to the resolution of an issue as acknowledgment of wrongdoing.

More critically, though, was that Wen Ruohan had wronged only him, not others, and that meant it was in Lan Qiren’s hands to decide how he felt and what he did about it. But when he thought matters over, seeking solace in reflection as a means of escape from the hands of his torturers, he found that he still had lines that he would not permit to be crossed. There were things he could not imagine doing, things he would not do, unshaken principles and rules that were as essential to the being he was as the breath that filled his lungs. And there were things that he could imagine Wen Ruohan doing, some that were even quite plausible and realistic, that would be that step too far, things that Lan Qiren knew in his heart that he would not be able to forgive.

If Wen Ruohan ever did something Lan Qiren could not understand, if he ever wronged the world or acted in a manner that was wholly and indefensibly malicious, then Lan Qiren would be the first to condemn him, no matter how much pain it caused him. His love for Wen Ruohan might lead him to try to blunt the worst of the punishment that would be due for whatever act it was, but Lan Qiren was simply too rigid, too inflexible, too tied to his rules and beliefs as to what made a good person – if he believed Wen Ruohan was in the wrong, truly in the wrong, he would never be willing to stand aside and look the other way.

Just as he wouldn’t look away if it was his nephews that did wrong, no matter how it broke his heart.

Just as he wouldn’t if it was his sect, if it came to that.

Lan Qiren was still himself. He was just in love.

The realization was like a sudden wash of clarity, as brisk and shocking as the ice water his torturers held his head under – far from the worst thing, for a Lan accustomed to cultivating in the Cold Spring, though done in a manner that rendered it both humiliating and grotesquely unpleasant – and the shock of the sudden understanding stunned him. Because if Lan Qiren was in love, as deeply and passionately as any Lan that came before him, and yet retained the essential nature of who he was and what he stood for, that meant that the same must be true for his brother.

Lan Qiren had spent so long being afraid of love because he blamed it for what his brother had done. But it wasn’t love. It wasn’t even He Kexin.

It was his brother.

Every single choice his brother had ever made had been his own.

It wasn’t as though Lan Qiren hadn’t already hated his brother – he’d given up on denying that already – but it still came as a relief to have it reconfirmed that he had been right. He’d been right when he’d been angry, when he’d thought his brother selfish, when he’d blamed him for all his decisions. For so long he had tried to blame He Kexin instead, because it was easier than admitting the truth, but even then he’d known in his heart that it was really his brother’s fault. Whether it had been at the start, when he'd stutteringly offered to bar his brother from He Kexin’s door, forcefully parting husband from wife in a manner that would have been scandalous in any sect and was far more so in the Lan sect with its heavy-handed conservatism and passionate devotion both, or later, when his frustration with her endless punishment had led him to offer to break his sect rules to see her free, an offer no less sincere for the fact that she had refused it…

Truly, if there was one thing Lan Qiren regretted, it was that he could not have done more for He Kexin. He didn’t know what more he could have done, but she’d deserved better than the ending she’d gotten, dying alone like that, at her own hand, her body left on the floor for him to find.

He should have realized, somehow, that she was reaching her limit, that seclusion had become too much for her…it was no excuse to tell himself that she hadn’t shown any signs in those last few months that might have given him notice, even though it was true. She’d been neither happier nor sadder than usual, with no words that in hindsight turned out to be meaningful, nothing like that. Their last conversation on a subject other than his nephews had been about a book of trite poetry that he’d thought was absolutely ghastly and which she’d informed him, with a smirk, that she’d found delightfully charming. He couldn’t have guessed that she would take her own life, but he still felt that he should have guessed – that he should have stopped it, somehow.

Somehow.

Perhaps it was only that Lan Qiren was reviving all his old ghosts, both ancient and new, as a means of distracting himself, but it just so happened that he was thinking about He Kexin when a man he did not recognize but who had a face that strongly resembled hers threw open the door to the room he was in and stormed in, glaring. “What are you doing?” he snapped, and the nasal twang of his accent was similar to hers, too. “Stop this instant! The Sect Leader will have your heads for what you’ve done!”

“We’re the ones following instructions, He Zhong, not you,” one of the torturers said snidely. “The Sect Leader was the one who gave the order – ”

“Duan Rong, you think the rest of us are willing to suffer just because you can’t control your thirst for blood?” the man, He Zhong, roared. “We all know Wu Zuo’s a lost cause, but you know better. Haven’t you ever heard of a marital dispute? You know, the sort that gets resolved after a bit of shouting? When the Sect Leader finds out that you took him seriously…ah, look at what you’ve done! Couldn’t you bastards at least have taken it easy on him?!”

“We did take it easy,” the second torturer, presumably Wu Zuo, said. “He’s barely even screamed.”

He sounded petulant about it, as if Lan Qiren had wronged him.

“Get him out of that damn machine this instant,” He Zhong said, and Lan Qiren couldn’t help but exhale sobbingly in relief when Duan Rong begrudgingly released the cords that were currently binding his ankle. He hadn’t quite been able to tell through the white-hot sear of agony exactly what the machine had been doing, only that it had been highly unpleasant, sending wave after wave of pain radiating through his entire body, and also that he would more than likely need some time before he could once again balance his weight on that foot. “Now get out.”

They got out.

Lan Qiren watched the entire thing happen with a sense of unreality. He’d disconnected so much from his body that he couldn’t get back in tune with it right away; everything seemed distant and fake, as if it were happening to someone else through a thick screen that muted both sound and sensation.

He Zhong stomped over to where he was tied down, muttering curses to himself as he undid the shackles and not-so-gently pulled Lan Qiren back to a sitting position, which at least helped bring Lan Qiren a little back to himself.

“Not good, but could be worse, I suppose,” he grumbled, examining him. “No missing bits, as far as I can tell, your face is mostly untouched, and at least they didn’t cut your hair. Did they break anything while they were beating you?”

Lan Qiren automatically shook his head, winced at how dizzy the motion made him, then hesitated, thinking back. They’d started out by what they called “softening him up”, by which they meant hitting him all over, in all the soft spots that were easy to damage. “Perhaps a cracked rib, and maybe two of my fingers,” he said after a brief review. “But the latter were broken only a few months ago, so for them to break again is not a surprise.”

He Zhong grunted, then pointed to his wrist. “How’d they manage that one? That’s the only bit worth noting, everything else is as unimaginative as you can get.”

“…that was with me when I arrived.”

“Typical.”

Lan Qiren decided not to comment. “I am also unsure of what they did to my ankle.”

“You don’t want to know.” That was unhelpful. “Get up, I’ll help you walk over to a cell where you can rest. Wu Zuo and those other bastards won’t dare pester you while I’m on duty.”

He held out his hands, but Lan Qiren didn’t take him up on the offer.

Instead, he asked, as politely as he could, “The others called you He Zhong, did they not? Are you by any chance acquainted with a lady by the name of He Kexin?”

He Zhong froze.

He had already been scowling, but now the scowl deepened.

Lan Qiren decided that that probably meant yes. “I was under the impression that she had no living family,” he explained, “but your face strongly resembles – ”

“The fact that I don’t want the Sect Leader to come fuck us all up for laying a hand on you doesn’t mean you’re immune from being hurt,” He Zhong interrupted, his voice hard, and aggressively put his face in front of Lan Qiren’s to try to force the direct eye contact that Lan Qiren avoided out of habit. “Duan Rong, Wu Zuo, they’re idiots. You don’t need pain to hurt a Lan… I strongly suggest you shut up.”

He pointedly put his hand right over Lan Qiren’s face, hovering over his forehead ribbon with only a small space separating them. Lan Qiren instinctively recoiled from the implication that someone foreign to him might touch it – which, he supposed, proved He Zhong’s point.

Nevertheless, he gritted his teeth and persisted, having failed He Kexin enough in life that he wasn’t inclined to do so now in death. “He Kexin died recently. Her family should have the right to give offerings – ”

He Zhong tore off Lan Qiren’s forehead ribbon.

Lan Qiren had one moment of severe light-headedness, his ears suddenly ringing with some sort of high-pitched noise – that’s wrong, that’s against the rules, you can’t do that, it’s not allowed! – and then he blinked, finding that he somehow had his forehead ribbon back in his hands and was already going through the usual motions of putting it back into place on his head. Also, his forehead hurt, and He Zhong was sitting on the floor clutching his now-bleeding nose.

“You just bashed your skull against my face, if that confused look of yours means you were wondering,” He Zhong said conversationally, pinching his nose shut. He didn’t seem any angrier than he had been before, and possibly even a little less. “Must admit, I didn’t see that one coming. Why isn’t your cultivation sealed? Didn’t the guards do it when bringing you here?”

“No one said it was necessary,” Lan Qiren said hesitantly, abruptly swamped by that too-familiar feeling of having made some sort of social misstep. Had he somehow managed to mess up being tortured? Was such a thing even possible? “And no, the guards simply escorted me.”

“Escorted you. Are you saying you just walked into the Fire Palace of your own volition? And then, what, you sat down and let them tie you up?”

That made it sound stupid.

“The guards were only following orders,” Lan Qiren said defensively. “They did not deserve to end up in trouble due to my actions. You pointed it out yourself, Wen Ruohan will likely be angry later, should he come to regret what happened, and when he does, he is likely to act irrationally. Why risk the suffering of innocent bystanders in the inevitable temper tantrum?”

He Zhong stared at him silently for a long few moments.

“All right,” he said eventually. “Fine. He Kexin was my cousin.”

Lan Qiren stared at him blankly for a moment, his brain a bit too tired to follow the twists and turns of the conversation, but after a little while He Zhong’s words finally landed and he stumbled up to his feet to try to salute the other man. Only he hadn’t reckoned with his ankle, which gave out at once, and he stumbled again before finally righting himself on the other one with a force of will.

“Then you and I are kin through marriage,” he said, bowing and wincing when he noticed how bloody his fingers were. He hoped he hadn’t inadvertently left fingermarks on his forehead ribbon, there was a punishment for dirtying it. “He Kexin was my sister-in-law.”

“Sit down before you do something even worse to that foot of yours,” He Zhong said grumpily. “I’m still processing you daring to say that the Sect Leader was going to have a temper tantrum, I can’t handle the idea of being related to him, even indirectly.”

That sounded reasonable. Lan Qiren considered his options for sitting – the chair he’d been being tortured in and the floor – and opted for the latter.

By which he meant that he untensed a tiny bit and abruptly collapsed in an ungainly heap, as if he were a puppet whose strings had all been cut. Everything hurt, and not in the pleasantly righteous sort of way that it did after he’d completed discipline according to his sect rules.

“She told me there was no one in her family still alive,” he said, and was embarrassed when it came out sounding plaintive. “I had not realized she lied.”

He supposed he’d thought that He Kexin wouldn’t lie to him. Stupid, of course. Who wouldn’t lie to their jailor?

Well, Lan Qiren wouldn’t, but that was because do not tell lies was a rule. And rules, like Lan Qiren, did not change under different circumstances.

He Zhong grunted uncomfortably. “Pretty sure she probably thought I really was dead, and even if she knew I wasn’t, it wouldn’t have changed anything. I wasn’t going to go visit her.”

“I would have permitted it, if you had.”

Maybe He Kexin wouldn’t have killed herself if she’d still had family around, or someone she could actually consider family. Lan Qiren certainly didn’t consider himself to qualify, for all that they’d eventually started treating each other in a manner not dissimilar to those cousins at family festivals that you didn’t especially like but had no choice but to tolerate.

(As a member of a Great Sect, and one who’d temporarily held the post of Sect Leader, Lan Qiren had a great many of those, all of whom wanted for one reason or another of their own to talk to him. Not having to deal with those gatherings was certainly one advantage about the Nightless City, he supposed – though perhaps it was debatable whether having an excuse to escape social torture was enough to outweigh the risk of literal torture.)

“Doesn’t change the fact that I wasn’t going to go.” He Zhong shrugged. “We parted on bad terms. I told her she wasn’t any family of mine, that I never wanted to see her face again, and that I hoped she’d be found dead in a ditch somewhere.”

Lan Qiren gaped, aghast, but that only made He Zhong laugh.

“I meant it, too,” he said, unexpectedly in a better mood than before. “She fucked up everything for me when she took that job…though I admit you saying she married a Lan was pretty unexpected. Gusu Lan, really? He Kexin?”

“Yes, she married my brother. It was not widely publicized, but – ” Lan Qiren frowned, abruptly distracted by something unusual He Zhong had said. “Job? He Kexin took some sort of job? What job? Are you referring to a night-hunt?”

“A night-hunt? No, of course not.” Now it was He Zhong who was frowning at him. “Why would you think she was night-hunting?”

After a lifetime of badly stunted social skills and ten years of having no choice but to play politics, Lan Qiren had painstakingly developed the ability to detect when he’d missed or misread something, or alternatively when he had been deceived. Every single one of those internal alarms was now singing at full volume.

“I had been informed that she was a rogue cultivator,” he said, very carefully. “And that my brother had met her while she was night-hunting in the Chuzhou region with some friends. However, it is possible that I heard – incorrectly. Or perhaps that assumptions were made that should not have been made.”

Lan Qiren was not unaware that his sect placed great weight on matters of ancestry and propriety. To put it in simpler terms, they were all tremendous snobs.

He had run into that trouble himself when he’d first started welcoming outsiders to his classes, with the sect elders lecturing him for days the first time he’d brought in someone from a sect they considered too minor to be worthy of attention, or the few times he’d agreed to take an especially promising outside disciple (or worse, a servant’s son) as one of his students. And if that snobbery applied to Lan Qiren’s classes, which were considered little more than a bizarre but ultimately insignificant hobby, then it was triply true when it came to matters of marriage. His brother had faced an uphill battle over his courtship of He Kexin with the sect elders to begin with – some of them had been extremely against it – and that had been when he’d said that she was a rogue cultivator that was night-hunting for fun, implying without saying that she was both well-born and well-off. Lan Qiren couldn’t even begin to imagine the trouble he might have had if he’d admitted she was anything else.

“I’m pretty sure the only friends Kexin had in that area were the bastards that got her the job in the first place, and you’re better off dead than with friends like that,” He Zhong remarked. “The rest of our family got executed years ago for supporting the wrong side in some internal strife, so it was just her and me left over, but we both still had that bad luck sticking to us. Kexin had more of it than me, though. She always did have a way of attracting and then encouraging the notice of bad people.”

Lan Qiren grimaced, wondering if his brother counted in that category or if he was just being prejudiced.

“Did she really die?” He Zhong asked. He seemed only mildly curious at best, which was a bit disappointing, but then again Lan Qiren supposed they had been genuinely estranged. “I always thought she’d find a way to survive no matter what.”

Lan Qiren privately agreed. Right up until the moment he had found her dead, he would have confidently asserted that He Kexin was stubborn enough to outlast granite.

(He’d always maintained that Wangji took after her in that respect, and she’d always retorted that he was the one Wangji resembled there. Neither of them had ever conceded so much as a hair on the subject, which…probably said something about both of them. At minimum, it suggested that Xichen’s peaceful and conciliatory tendencies must have come from a different place than either of them.)

Lan Qiren sighed and scrubbed his face with his hands, then remembered a moment too late that his hands were still sticky with blood, pulling them away again quickly. He wasn’t sure at this point if the blood was from his fingers or from his head or from somewhere else.

“All right, time to go to your cell,” He Zhong said, standing up and pulling Lan Qiren with him. “You’ll be able to wash your hands and your face, though I’m afraid a bath is out of the question.”

“I cannot take a bath,” Lan Qiren agreed regretfully. “I do not have any clothing to change into, and change clothes after bathing is a rule.”

He Zhong gave him a strange look. Lan Qiren conceded after a moment of reflection that perhaps he was still a little dizzy and disoriented, and that it was out of place to have mentioned such a thing. The rule about bathing was only a minor rule, after all, with any number of exceptions that might be relevant in a situation like this…

“Tell me more about He Kexin,” he said, trying to avoid falling into a lecture about the rules. Lan Qiren hadn’t realized until he’d started working on Wangji’s issues how often he himself would go into a state of fixation when he was distressed, since talking about the rules was generally an acceptable topic in the Lan sect, but once he’d realized he’d started trying not to do it so often. He had to be a good role model for Wangji, after all. “She never spoke of her life before, and I – I admittedly did not ask. It seems I knew her less well than I had thought.”

“You probably knew her about as well as anyone, given that she never said anything to anyone about anything,” He Zhong snorted. “Were you as charmed by her as everyone else?”

“…no. We did not get along,” Lan Qiren admitted. “There was scarcely a single subject on which we agreed. I found her taste in poetry appalling, her preference in paintings trite, her taste in music…”

He shuddered. Some things were just unspeakable.

A moment later, he realized that He Zhong’s shoulders were also shaking, although in suppressed laughter.

“I take it back,” he said, voice gruffer than before. “Maybe you did know her better than most. Certainly I never talked about poetry with her.”

“We didn’t have anything else to talk about,” Lan Qiren said, a little puzzled. “She was decent enough with the sword, I suppose, and she had a real talent for cultivation, but both subjects bored her to tears. She liked fine clothing and make-up, but I proved a poor audience in that respect.”

He’d tried, when she’d asked his opinion, but women’s outfits all looked about the same to him. He Kexin had declared him hopeless, blaming it on the Lan sect’s separation of men and women, though he suspected it might just be him. Certainly Wen Ruohan seemed to be much more attached to putting him in particular outfits than he was about wearing any of them, as long as they were comfortable.

“Now that sounds more like her,” He Zhong said. “She didn’t try to seduce you?”

“…I proved a poor audience on that subject as well.” It had only happened the one time, after her imprisonment; it had been half-hearted, and Lan Qiren hadn’t held it against her – he’d understood that she was just desperate, and by silent unspoken agreement they never brought it up again, lest Lan Qiren not be able to visit any longer.

He Zhong snorted. “I can believe that.”

They made it to the cell, which gave Lan Qiren a chance to splash water on his face and sober up a little. Once he did, he recalled that there had been something He Zhong had mentioned that had caught his attention, something that he had wanted to know more about. “What was that you said earlier about a job she had taken, the one that caused your estrangement? Could you tell me more about that?”

“Why do you want to know about that?” He Zhong crossed his arms. “If you have some picture in your head about her, that she’s some innocent saintly lady – ”

“I assure you that is not the case.” Lan Qiren hesitated there, accustomed from years of covering up his sect’s secrets to always obfuscating all matters related to He Kexin. Still, this was her relative, surely he at least deserved the truth. “In fact, when I first met her, she had just been accused of murder.”

Accused, though not tried, and that was forever a thorn in Lan Qiren’s side. Couldn’t his brother have waited until after she’d had a proper trial to marry her? Couldn’t the elders have waited? Sometimes Lan Qiren wished he had not been away on sect business when the issue of his brother’s life matter had come to a climax – he had heard of He Kexin before that, of course, and been disturbed by the extent of his brother’s adoration for a woman who by all reports did not much care about him, but his brother hadn’t wanted them to meet. He hadn’t yet become actively hateful towards Lan Qiren, but he still hadn’t wanted to bother his already impatient lady-love with an annoying younger brother…

“Her, murdering someone?” He Zhong frowned. “I don’t have a high opinion of her, but that’s not her usual line. Her problem was always that she looked the other way about things she shouldn’t, ignored anything that didn’t affect her directly, no matter what. Not that she did the bad things herself.”

“Perhaps she made an exception?” Lan Qiren suggested hesitantly. Come to think of it, he didn’t actually know very much about the circumstances of He Kexin’s murder of a sect elder, only that by the time he’d arrived back from his trip the elder was unquestionably dead and she was universally considered to be unquestionably guilty. She’d certainly never disputed the issue, after, and so he’d assumed it was as simple as that…though perhaps he shouldn’t have. Do not make assumptions about others. “Was that what she did that caused you such difficulties? Look the other way?”

“Difficulties! Difficulties! That – ” He Zhong paused, presumably to account for Lan Qiren’s sensibilities, since he’d already established that he himself didn’t follow a rule similar to No vulgar language. “My cousin ruined my life. I’d finally found a place to settle down, after everything – a new sect willing to take me as an outer disciple, a house of my own, even a sweetheart, one of the other outer disciple girls. It might not have been as fine as where we came from, but it was safe, and stable, and mine. And then, just over ten years ago, maybe eleven now, Kexin swans back into my life after more than two or three years gone, wearing a dress worth an entire year of my wages, and suddenly everyone’s wondering how she got it.”

Lan Qiren nodded. Working with smaller sects had given him something of an insight into such matters, which he’d previously lacked, since, awkward and disliked or no, he’d still grown up a young master of a Great Sect, and matters of money had puzzled him for far longer than socially acceptable. “I understand their suspicion,” he said. “Such an outsized reward would be available only when the work is highly risky or else highly dubious.”

“The latter, in this case. She was working with a dodgy merchant house – technically a sect, but not exactly one that focused on cultivation. They’d had a client come into possession of an iron mine filled with spiritual energy. They wanted it taken out as fast as possible, and they didn’t care how it was done, so the merchant house had every reason to maximize profits.”

Lan Qiren frowned. “Profits from mining spiritual metal? That’s a very tricky business. It’s very valuable once extracted, of course, but the process of extracting it is unbearably expensive, both because the metal flees the person mining it and because it must be mined only by cultivators. And of course most cultivators won’t do such dangerous and low-status work absent any other options. There’s rarely any profit in it at all.”

“Hah! Only if you actually pay for the labor.”

“Forced labor? Of cultivators?” Lan Qiren scowled. “That’s unconscionable.”

It wasn’t wholly without precedent, but it was only barely deemed acceptable in some very limited cases – the punishment of a sect that had committed some dire sort of crime, for instance, and even then Lan Qiren had always disapproved. It had happened only once during his tenure as sect leader, very early on, with one of the Jin sect subsidiaries seeking to take advantage of another and blaming them for a small skirmish gone wrong, a crime which was in no way severe enough to justify being sentenced even to temporary slavery.

Lan Qiren had spoken out against it at great length and with great vitriol, even overriding those of his sect elders that cautioned him against taking such a hardline position – the first time he had ever done so, in fact. It had been less than a year after the matters with his brother and He Kexin, and he’d been especially sensitive to the notion of any punishment involving involuntary confinement. The other Great Sects hadn’t really taken a stance on it in either direction, but he’d kicked up enough of a fuss to make the Jin sect feel the need to step in and stop it from happening for fear of losing face due to the actions of their subsidiary.

“Like I said, Kexin had a bad habit of trusting her friends and a worse habit of closing both eyes and ears to anything that seemed unpleasant.” He Zhong shook his head. “She probably never asked why they were paying her so much money to travel the countryside looking for small sects or cultivator families that no one would miss.”

“That’s appalling.”

“Yeah, it is,” He Zhong said grimly. “That’s why my new sect kicked me out. That’s why my sweetheart broke it off with me, and why I was chased out, again, forced to start over from nothing, again, because no one wanted to be associated with a family that did things like that!”

Lan Qiren could understand that.

Trafficking in human lives, kidnapping and enslaving her fellow cultivators – it was genuinely terrible, perhaps even unforgivable. Even if He Kexin did nothing but close her eyes to it, she was still culpable, and it was always possible, albeit out of keeping with her character as he knew it, that she had done more than just that.

And with that, Lan Qiren supposed, he had his answer as to why He Kexin had never mentioned her past life to him. She would have known that he would never approve – not that he would add anything onto her already dire punishment, of course, but it would certainly have poisoned their relationship. At a minimum, he would have pulled back to the stiff formality of the early days, when he’d been hurt and bewildered and angry with her as if she had caused it all by herself, because to do otherwise would be to question his brother’s at-the-time unimpeachable position in his heart…but even that distance, he thought, would likely have been too much for her to bear.

After all, through no fault of his own, he was her only real connection to the outside world.

Once, when he’d been particularly tired from all of his various duties, Lan Qiren had suggested that she try to strike up an acquaintanceship with some of her servants, but He Kexin had scornfully refused, saying that she was not a woman who enjoyed the company of other women, and women who were her social inferiors even less. Lan Qiren hadn’t really understood the logic, but he’d accepted it, not wanting to annoy her further, and so he’d forced himself past his exhaustion to come to see her every time.

Every single time.

No matter how angry he was, no matter how tired, no matter…anything.

Constant and reliable, the way he wished other people would be for him.

And if she feared that knowing the truth would make him stop –

Under the circumstances, he could see why she wouldn’t dare risk telling him.

Lan Qiren was abruptly reminded of his earlier musings about Wen Ruohan, who had been unable to risk trusting him. He Kexin’s prison had been genuine, while Wen Ruohan’s was self-made, a prison of his own paranoia – but perhaps Lan Qiren was only seeing a parallel there because he already wanted to forgive Wen Ruohan’s betrayal, and therefore felt he had no choice but to forgive He Kexin’s.

Or perhaps he just wanted to forgive her, too.

They hadn’t liked each other, to be sure, but they’d both loved Xichen and Wangji, and they’d respected each other for that. Her presence had been a constant in his life, and her death had destroyed his world. He thought he might even miss her.

He certainly regretted her death. He wished she hadn’t –

“Lan Qiren!”

Both Lan Qiren and He Zhong startled.

“Is that First Madam Wen?” He Zhong asked, clearly taken aback. “She never comes down here!”

Lan Qiren resisted the urge to explain that technically she was no longer First Madam Wen on account of having been demoted thanks to his presence, as he did not want to accidentally give He Zhong the impression that he was ‘Madam Wen’ anything. He was a husband, not a wife; Wen Ruohan had agreed. Throwing him into the Fire Palace did not invalidate that agreement.

“Lan Qiren – where is that man – you, guard, show him to me this instant – ”

Lan Qiren grabbed He Zhong’s arm and pulled himself into a standing position, balanced on the foot that he could still use. He’d met enough people like Lu Qipei to know that he would rather not demonstrate weakness in front of her, or at least as little weakness as possible.

She appeared a moment later, sweeping in front of his cell with Shen Mingbi dogging her footsteps like a shadow as always.

“What did you do?” she demanded. “You bastard, what did you do?”

Lan Qiren arched his eyebrows at her rudeness (and inaccuracy: his parents had been married long before his birth) and decided to forgo the usual courtesies in return. Propriety demands reciprocation went both ways, after all. “You will need to be more specific.”

“Our husband threw you into the Fire Palace and stormed out without any warning!” She jabbed a finger at him. “He stormed out. He doesn’t do that! If I’d known he was going to react like that, I would never have let him overhear me slandering you –”

Of course she had. Lan Qiren wasn’t even surprised.

“And anyway, it was only with some random rumors I heard about the discussion conference. It shouldn’t have had this effect! Nothing should have had this effect! It must have been you. Something you said…” She shook her head furiously, her jewelry flashing as she did. “You need to tell me what you said to him. You’re new, you don’t know him like we do – he’s capable of anything. That motherless dog-fucking bastard…”

“That seems uncalled for.”

Lu Qupei looked at him as if he’d gone insane.

Lan Qiren could understand why – he was trapped in the Fire Palace at the moment, which was not exactly conducive to making a plausible defense of Wen Ruohan’s actions – but there were no exceptions to the rules regarding supporting one’s wife. At any rate, while he could certainly think of certain appropriate ways to describe Wen Ruohan at the moment, he still did not think that those particular adjectives applied.

“Wait,” Shen Mingbi said, frowning. “If he’s a dog-fucking bastard and we’re his wives, does that make us the -”

“Shut up!” Lu Qupei shouted at her, then turned to glare at Lan Qiren. “You don’t understand. He’s gone to the army – that’s where my Xu-er is. My Xu-er! Tell me what you said to him. Tell me what you did to him. Right now.”

The army? That seemed strange. Why in the world would Wen Ruohan go to visit his army, of all places? Even if he wanted to flee the Nightless City to escape Lan Qiren’s presence, he had the entire world open to him. Why there?

“I did not say anything to him,” Lan Qiren said, because it was true. His mind was racing: the Wen sect was the only one with an army, which naturally required regular maintenance, but surely that was too unusual a destination for a spontaneous visit. Perhaps it was something to do with the spy that had set Lan Qiren up? Was this the next part of the plan? Was there trouble brewing? “Where is the Wen sect’s army located right now?”

“Does it matter?”

“Near Jiujiang,” Shen Mingbi volunteered unexpectedly, just before Lan Qiren lost his temper and started shouting. “The local sect there asked for help with a large-scale haunting, I think.”

“Jiujiang?” Lan Qiren scowled. “That’s – surely not! That territory belongs to Quanjiao Liu, or rather the sect immediately adjacent to them, the Xu sect in Yuexi, which is so miniscule as to not be worth mentioning. Either way, the Wen sect’s army cannot be there.”

Quanjiao Liu was the proposed target of the Lan sect’s future war. If they attacked while the Wen sect was in the area – much less if Wen Ruohan himself was in the area – then every sect in the vicinity would immediately assume that he was there on some scheme to steal some benefits for his own sect. The war would immediately spiral out of control, and everyone would think it was Wen Ruohan’s fault!

Framing again.

Lan Qiren’s brother!

“What is my brother doing?” he demanded. “Gusu Lan – what is the Lan sect doing?”

“Your brother? Who cares?” Lu Qipei sneered. “He’s on the warpath, I suppose. Isn’t that what Gusu Lan does?”

It was most certainly not what Gusu Lan did. Or, well, in fairness, if Lan Qiren thought about his sect’s history, it wasn’t what they did unless there was a broken heart involved –

Oh no.

His brother. He Kexin.

Who had –

No. No.

What if she hadn’t – or at least he thought that she hadn’t, or that she’d been deliberately incited –

But then –

But who –?

“I have no insight for you,” Lan Qiren informed Lu Qipei abruptly. “Also, I would like you to leave. At once.”

She gaped at him. “Are you – are you trying to kick me out of here? You can’t do that!”

“I outrank you,” he reminded her. “As per the terms of the marriage agreement struck between my brother and Wen Ruohan, my wife has given me authority over the Nightless City second only to his, and that means that I can banish you from any particular part of the Nightless City that I choose.”

“…you’re locked in the Fire Palace!”

“For now.”

He let her weigh the odds of Wen Ruohan regretting his choices later in time, and unsurprisingly Lu Qipei scowled, finding just as everyone before her that Lan Qiren had the odds largely in his favor. She hissed an especially nasty word at him and turned on her heel, storming out.

Shen Mingbi lingered behind. “Uh, Lan-gege,” she said, looking awkward. “I know you’re in the Fire Palace and all, but our husband said something about you teaching the kids, including my Chao-er. Are you still planning on doing that…?”

“…provided I am not in the Fire Palace at the time, then yes,” Lan Qiren said, biting back a sigh. He sincerely hoped that her son had inherited at least some part of Wen Ruohan’s intellect, or else his next set of classes were going to be unbearable. “We can discuss it once I am no longer confined. But for the moment, if you could also…?”

“Oh, no, that’s all I wanted. Thanks!” she said hastily, picking up her skirts and hurrying out.

Lan Qiren huffed a sigh of relief and turned to He Zhong – who was gaping at him.

Unhelpful.

“There’s no time for you to make faces at me,” Lan Qiren said firmly. “I need to go to one of the records rooms. And before you complain, my wife only ordered me confined to the Fire Palace, and the records I need are likely to be stored in the Fire Palace as well. You will not be violating his orders by taking me there.”

Lan Qiren had expressed some surprise the first time he had asked to borrow a particular record and Wen Ruohan had sent a servant to the Fire Palace to fetch it. Apparently, records storage had been the original purpose of the Fire Palace, long before it had been converted by a previous Wen leader into a pleasure palace and, later, into Wen Ruohan’s hall of tortures, and it was still used for its original purpose in many instances. The idea, Wen Ruohan had explained with a smirk, was that no one who made their way into their sect illicitly would ever think to look there, and any invading army would probably proceed straight to burning it down, thereby robbing themselves of all that information…it made a certain amount of sense, albeit through an irritatingly twisted sort of logic.

“Your wife ordered you…?” He Zhong squeaked. “I thought – aren’t you the Sect Leader’s wife?”

“I am his husband.” Lan Qiren was starting to get a little annoyed. “He is obviously better fit to manage the household, wouldn’t you say…? Anyway, please, there is no time, we must go at once. I require the records room where the Wen sect stores the land surveys it collects. I need to find out who owned the mine you mentioned, the one who hired the merchant firm that employed He Kexin in the first place.”

“Huh?” He Zhong frowned. “What? The mine? Why? What does it matter?”

“If He Kexin took her own life because she lost hope, it does not matter at all,” Lan Qiren said. “But knowing her character, neither you nor I would think such a thing is likely, and I suspect my brother feels the same. If instead she took her own life for another reason, if she was incited to do so – or even if she wasn’t, but there was some reason to think she might have been – if there was someone to blame, and my brother found out about it…”

Their Lan sect loved like madness, after all.

And love, Lan Qiren now knew to his sorrow, could make you burn.

“I need to know who he blames,” he said, shaking his head. This was no time to be distracted by self-immolation, either his own or his brother’s. “Whether he is right or wrong in doing so is irrelevant. My brother’s behavior since leaving seclusion has been irrational, with the risks he is taking being far too great for the possible reward that he might obtain. It only makes sense if he is not acting for objective reasons, but for subjective ones – if he is looking for revenge.”

He Zhong still did not understand, but in the face of Lan Qiren’s frantic appeals he agreed to take him to the records room, with Lan Qiren hobbling forward at full tilt to try to urge them to move faster.

It must be the Wen sect, he thought to himself as they went. It has to be – something unethical like that, not paying attention to where their labor was coming from, that could be any sect, but it is more likely to be them, and my brother has been aiming at them this entire time. I thought he was aiming at me, because he hates me for whatever reason, but it was Wen Ruohan that he framed in the discussion conference, not me. I thought it was meant to be pointed at me, but maybe not…even now, my being sent to the Fire Palace could have been a strike aimed at Wen Ruohan as well, through me, though the logic there is less certain.

Perhaps the marriage between us was just meant to lull Wen Ruohan into a false sense of security, or perhaps just as a means of getting to him. Perhaps he knew he was going against Wen Ruohan and decided to throw me to the wolves in the process, just because he could. Perhaps…

What if it is Wen Ruohan?

What do I do then? What if this ends up being my brother’s love against my own?

He hoped it wasn’t the Wen sect. Or at least, he hoped that it was a subsidiary sect, or something like that, something that they could offer up to appease his brother’s anger – it was a selfish thought, a ruthless one, but Lan Qiren couldn’t help it. The same horrible mixture of rage and sorrow that he had felt when he’d thought about the spy that had deceived Wen Ruohan, the one that had used him to genuinely hurt Wen Ruohan…his brother was feeling that way right now, Lan Qiren was sure of it.

Only He Kexin was dead, gone forever, and he had found someone to blame, and even though it was little more than intuition that told Lan Qiren that it had something to do with what had happened all those years ago, he was nevertheless sure of it.

After all, just as Lan Qiren hadn’t done anything since the time he’d arrived back to the Nightless City to cause Wen Ruohan to doubt him, He Kexin hadn’t done anything since her arrival at the Cloud Recesses that could cause her to doubt herself in such a way. It had to be related to what had happened before she was locked away.

It had to be related to the mine.

And that meant, whatever sect had owned the mine – that was the sect his brother blamed.

That was the sect his brother was going to destroy.

Nothing else would be enough. If it had been Wen Ruohan who’d died unjustly –

Lan Qiren refused to consider that, his heart hurting within his chest at the mere thought. Wen Ruohan was the closest thing the cultivation world had to a god; he was not going to die.

No matter what his brother might intend.

“Here it is,” He Zhong said. He’d made Lan Qiren sit down at one of the tables while he scurried around looking through the various shelves; given his physical state, Lan Qiren hadn’t objected. He came back now, putting the relevant pile of books down in front of Lan Qiren. “Are you sure you know how to find what it is you’re looking for?”

“I am certain. The Wen sect keeps better records of land surveys and ownership lists than anyone else in the cultivation world – it is in the nature of their interest, given that they hope to rule over it all one day. Ten years ago is not that long, for Wen Ruohan, and so this book should be based on the same model as the current version, which I consulted in advance of the discussion conference. Now, where did you say the mine was? Chuzhou? Do you recall where in the Chuzhou region exactly?”

“Uh, sure. It was in Xixiang.”

“All right, Xixiang, let me look – ” Lan Qiren paused, even as his hands already started turning through the pile to get to the right book. “Did you say Xixiang?”

Wasn’t that where Cangse Sanren said she was going…?

Xixiang wasn’t far from Jiujiang, either, which in turn was not far from Quanjiao, all three of them closely clustered as such things went…had Xixiang been Lan Qiren’s brother’s target all along? Were his nephews and Cangse Sanren about to find themselves in the middle of a war zone, inside a trap set up by a grieving madman intent on revenging himself on the sect he thought had caused the death of his wife, in the place she had done the things that had later led to her suicide?

The book fell open in Lan Qiren’s hands.

He looked down.

“Oh,” he said, and suddenly his ears were doing the same high-pitched ringing they had when He Zhong had snatched away his forehead ribbon, violating every rule that Lan Qiren held dear.

“What is it?” He Zhong asked. He’d gotten into the spirit of things by now, and he was eager to find out the truth. “Is it the Wen sect? Were they the ones that owned that mine?”

“No,” Lan Qiren said. “No. No, it is – it – ”

He trailed off, unable to say the words, unable to even process them, to think about what those words actually meant, so instead he merely pointed mutely at the book. At the damning words on the page, written ten years ago by some scribe in clear black and white.

He Zhong looked, and then frowned.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” he said, puzzled. “If that’s right, and what you were saying was right, then your brother isn’t aiming to destroy the Qishan Wen sect at all. The sect he really wants to destroy is – ”

“Gusu Lan,” Lan Qiren said numbly, staring at the damning words. “He wants to destroy Gusu Lan.”

Chapter Text

Wen Ruohan wanted to destroy something, or kill someone, or both.

This by itself was not uncommon, for him. Violence had long been the answer to virtually all of his problems, even the ones where it had initially not seemed a likely solution – it was perfectly reasonable for violence to solve the problem of the Wen sect’s contested succession, for instance, but it had come as somewhat of a surprise to find that pain and torment seemed to be the only things still capable of rousing him from his ever-increasing apathy.

Not the only things.

Wen Ruohan was not thinking about that.

He had other issues to concern himself with, and not least among them was the fact that there wasn’t anyone he could kill in his immediate vicinity, or at least not reasonably. He was surrounded by his own sect’s disciples, the army he had painstakingly trained into a force to be reckoned with, and while he supposed he could kill one or two of them to sate his bloodlust, it would be both a waste of resources and an indication that he had completely lost his mind. Which he hadn’t. Yet.

What you just did –

Wen Ruohan was not thinking about that.

He had come out here to join his army on an impulse, or at least he had thought it was merely an impulse at the time. It had been a matter of venting his rage. He had needed an outlet, and he’d wanted to go away, and he hadn’t been thinking, and someone had suggested night-hunting and the army had been night-hunting and Wen Ruohan hadn’t been thinking –

He wanted to destroy something, or kill someone, or both.

Normally, when he was in such a mood and there was nothing in his immediate vicinity that he could exercise the feeling upon, he would return to his Nightless City and pick out a likely target from his Fire Palace, but he couldn’t do that now. The Fire Palace –

He’s there, you sent him there –

Wen Ruohan was not thinking about that.

Unfortunately, leaving was not currently an option. His arrival had been badly timed, even for him, and it had not taken long to realize that he had been lured into coming here intentionally. It was an excellent plan, in fact: a well-designed and elegant masterpiece of backstabbing and betrayal.

Wen Ruohan was almost inclined to commend Qingheng-jun for having played his hand so beautifully.

When he had first heard that the sects in the area that Qingheng-jun planned to attack were starting to take up arms, Wen Ruohan had thought only that Qingheng-jun was unfortunate. He had assumed, quite reasonably, that Qingheng-jun would need to delay his war for fear of causing an escalation, the conversion of a small border skirmish into a massive war between a multitude of sects. He had thought, in what later turned out to be an erroneous assumption, that Qingheng-jun would want to avoid this outcome, since such a war would draw down the condemnation of the cultivation world and cause a great deal of death and misery besides.

It had not occurred to him that Qingheng-jun might have tried to stir the sects up deliberately.

Why would it have? Wen Ruohan was the veteran of any number of wars of conquest, and he knew, as everyone who was about that sort of business knew, that the key to achieving your goals of conquest while escaping any serious censure from the rest of the cultivation world was to keep the situation small and contained – something that other sects could call deplorable while feeling morally superior, but which did not affect their personal interests enough to actually stir them to action. No one whose goal was to enhance the power of their sect through expansion would ever risk setting off a spark that would light a wildfire, a war that would spread like contagion until no one could escape joining in.

Not even Wen Ruohan would dare. The sect that started such a war would invariably become the target of the entire cultivation world, all the rest of them immediately putting aside their usual disputes in order to stand together to cast down the enemy, and even he, in his great arrogance, did not believe his sect had the strength to stand alone against them all.

Not yet, anyway.

Qingheng-jun would have to be a fool to attack in such a moment, and Wen Ruohan had known that Qingheng-jun was not a fool. He was quite clever.

Unfortunately, he’d underestimated exactly how clever.

War was, after all, quite confusing. Facts could get distorted, the truth cast aside, and scurrilous rumor would rule the day, turning supposition into reality if only enough people believed in it. And in the end it didn’t really matter if you were the sect that had actually started the war, as long as it was another sect that took the blame for starting it. And between the Lan sect, whose reputation for cautious conservatism and unimpeachable virtue had reached its apex under Lan Qiren, and Wen Ruohan, whose taste for conquest and desire to become the master of the whole cultivation world was well known…well, it was pretty obvious which one everyone was going to blame.

It was all very clever, in fact. Wen Ruohan’s army had arrived to deal with a large-scaled haunting, which turned out to never have existed, and the nothing no-name sect that had issued the invitation for his Wen sect to night-hunt in the area, Yuexi Xu, was now frantically denying they’d ever done anything of the sort. His generals had just been in the middle of trying to figure out what had happened and extract themselves from the situation when Wen Ruohan himself had arrived, and that had destroyed all hope of claiming that their presence there was simply due to a misunderstanding.

After all, why would Wen Ruohan, with all his power and all his bloodlust and all his apathy, stir himself to join a mere night-hunt, and in another sect’s territory, no less…? With his personality, when would he ever lower himself to do such a thing? Was it not far more likely that this was all a devious plot of the sort that Wen Ruohan was famous for, a dodge designed to conceal the arrival of his forces until the last possible moment, and from there to be perfectly positioned to start a war…?

He'd been framed, of course.

But it was a very good framing. Wen Ruohan was a known liar, willing to say or do anything as long as it advanced his goals. This sort of thing was exactly in line with the sorts of things he had done in the past, and therefore seemed completely in line with the sorts of things he might be willing to do in the future. With everything so perfectly set up to appear as though it was part of one of his plans, he wouldn’t be able to wash himself clean even if he jumped into the Yellow River. No one would ever believe in his innocence…

That’s a lie.

Do not tell lies.

Wen Ruohan flinched involuntarily. The chair that he’d been slowly ripping to shreds using his cultivation – he’d been holding it in the air through force of will alone and unfurling it into its component parts, coiled up thread and wood peeling off like the skin of an apple, picking at it the way a lesser man might at his fingernails or an irritating scab – abruptly exploded into a shower of splinters. Irritated, he waved his hand, summoning flame to burn all the splinters into ash before any of them damaged the tent he was sitting in, waiting for news updates from his scouts.

He hadn’t meant to lose control of his power like that. He hated losing control like that, hated losing control generally. He’d already decided not to think about it –

You know it’s true, though. Lan Qiren would have believed you. He did believe you, back at the discussion conference, and that was even likelier to be you than this.

Wen Ruohan wasn’t thinking about it!

He believed you without you even needing to say a word, his mind continued on, heedless of his will, marching forward as brutally and ruthlessly as Wen Ruohan had ever done anything. Without proof, without explanation, and although he claimed he had used logic, there wasn’t enough time for that; that was obviously a backwards justification. It wasn’t that he found a reason to trust you – he trusted you first, and then found a reason to justify his faith.

And you just threw him into the Fire Palace over a mistake.

And that was the difficulty, wasn’t it? Wen Ruohan did not make mistakes. He was great and terrible, an ancient monster whose power dwarfed everyone around him and whose cunning struck fear into the hearts of the entire cultivation world. He was vain and arrogant, yet in so many cases his arrogance was completely justified: he was, in fact, better than so many of the others around him. Better, smarter, more powerful…Wen Ruohan was not a man who was easily played for a fool, and even when he was, he rarely admitted it, choosing instead to use his power to make himself retrospectively right. He was not a man who cared what wrongs he did as long as it got him what he wanted.

He did not make mistakes.

He did not make mistakes, he did not apologize, he did not –

Lan Qiren had trusted him. Lan Qiren had not feared him. Lan Qiren had been loyal to him from the very first moment they had taken their vows together, though he hadn’t needed to be, though Wen Ruohan hadn’t really expected him to be, all talk aside. Lan Qiren had allowed Wen Ruohan to reshape him, growing less rigid and more arrogant, more reckless, more free; more than that, Lan Qiren had reshaped himself, going out of his way to find things that would please Wen Ruohan and doing them for no purpose other than that.

Lan Qiren might even, one day, have been amenable to – to loving him, with a heart that contained both the implacable constancy of the Lan and the insatiable appetite of the Wen.

And Wen Ruohan…

Wen Ruohan had thrown him into the Fire Palace.

Wen Ruohan had made a mistake.

Wen Ruohan had been tricked, and not by Lan Qiren. It was Wang Liu that was the real traitor, with Qingheng-jun as his backing, and their betrayal had been meticulous. It was Qingheng-jun, not Lan Qiren, who had had the time to make inroads into other sects, using the months of Lan Qiren’s seclusion to set people up to spread rumors – with Wang Liu feeding him information as to who Wen Ruohan’s spies were, it would have been easy enough to do. Just as it would have been easy enough to get Sect Leader Chang, who resented being conquered, to cooperate with his kinsman to spread the false rumor of seeing Lan Qiren and his brother together, and to share the letter with one of the more ambitious-but-thoughtless of Wen Ruohan’s subordinates, one of the ones so eager to get credit for having done a good job that they didn’t think to check if they were being fooled.

The rumors had done their work, priming Wen Ruohan to begin to doubt, and from there…well, as everyone said, three men make a tiger; anything confirmed by enough separate sources seemed like the truth. Setting Lu Qupei off would hardly have been difficult, and luring Lan Qiren away likely not much more so. Wang Liu had then used his access to Wen Ruohan’s quarters to get Lan Qiren’s letters in order to take advantage of that doubt, putting his life on the line to play the trick, risking everything on the chance for success. And the gamble had paid off. It had worked splendidly: Wen Ruohan, who was famously paranoid, had fallen for their incitement, and lashed out irrationally, allowing himself to be led into an even more grievous error.

Anything could have served as the inciting incident – but they had chosen Lan Qiren.

That had probably pleased Qingheng-jun to no end.

The rest had followed from there. While Wen Ruohan was hurt and raging, Wang Liu had given him the push he’d needed. Not only to cast Lan Qiren aside, but to convince Wen Ruohan to go to see his army, and in doing so had set him up to bear the blame for a senseless war before the entire cultivation world.

The entire cultivation world.

For instance, he’d just received word from one of his scouts that Jin Guangshan was on the move with those mercenaries he’d just purchased. Wen Ruohan had initially thought that was a mistake as well, had thought that that was Qingheng-jun somehow slipping up and revealing his plans too early, but now he realized that it had been deliberate. The Lan sect didn’t use spies, which meant that Wang Liu was probably one of Lanling Jin’s, just the way Wang Liu had claimed his predecessor Qing Yu had been; Qingheng-jun had probably bought the spy off of Jin Guangshan in exchange for giving Lanling Jin the perfect excuse to gather the whole world together to attack Wen Ruohan in a moment when he appeared to do something unquestionably wrong. Jin Guangshan wouldn’t have been able to resist the idea of tearing some strips off of Qishan Wen’s greatness for his very own.

Clever. Clever, clever, clever…

Wen Ruohan was already receiving message after message from those of his people he’d sent out to get information, each one with worse news than the last: Gusu Lan had already moved their forces into Quanjiao, but they were claiming that the move had been made from necessity, that they were only there to defend the area from Wen Ruohan’s purported rampage. With Lanling Jin backing them up, the local sects had overlooked the implausibility of Gusu Lan being there so soon and had gone into a frenzy, each one certain that they were his real target…

The rest of the cultivation world wouldn’t be far behind. Yunmeng Jiang would be alarmed by the notion of a war just off their northern border, even if they hadn’t already worrying about the consequences of the agreement between Qishan Wen and Gusu Lan; they would have no choice but to start mobilizing, and the only question was how long it would take them, whether they would act with speed suggestive of Yu Ziyuan’s decisive command or sluggishness suggestive of Jiang Fengmian’s inclination towards peace at all costs. And then there would be three Great Sects all moving together, against his one – and there remained the open question of what Qinghe Nie, with its abnormally powerful and warlike disciples, would choose to do.

Wen Ruohan didn’t think the odds were very good there.

It really was a very good plan. Wen Ruohan would have liked it a great deal if he wasn’t its target.

Even the involvement of a no-name sect like Yuexi Xu was a brilliant move. It hadn’t occurred to Wen Ruohan back in the Nightless City, but the frantic digging of his disciples had revealed they had been the sect that had provided Sect Leader Wang, of Yingchuan Wang, with his much-beleaguered first wife. That meant that Qingheng-jun had used them twice over in his trickery, first as one of the quasi-subsidiary sects with ties to the Lan sect that had caused Wen Ruohan to doubt Lan Qiren and second to set the bait for this trap, presumably by making all sorts of promises – it was the sort of thing Lan Qiren would have figured out at once, with his brilliant recall of how all the small sects were connected to each other. He would have spotted the trap if Wen Ruohan had only had the chance to talk to him about it.

If Wen Ruohan had only managed to control himself long enough to talk to him.

And that, of course, was at least part of the reason Qingheng-jun had had to ensure that the two of them were divided. Only part, since the greater part of the reason was undoubtedly Qingheng-jun’s blinding hatred of Lan Qiren, the way he so obviously longed to see his own little brother hurt or in pain or even dead –

You threw him into the Fire Palace! You did that. You, you and no other!

Wen Ruohan’s fists clenched, his nails digging into his flesh, drawing blood.

Surely his disciples were smart enough to realize that he hadn’t – that he hadn’t meant it, that he would regret it later – or failing that, maybe they would be smart enough to think that he might want to see Lan Qiren’s agony himself, surely, the way he sometimes did when there was someone worthy of his attention in the Fire Palace. Surely they wouldn’t have dared to kill him, not even dared to have hurt him…or at least not hurt him too much…surely…maybe…

He couldn’t even convince himself.

Who was he trying to fool? Wen Ruohan knew better than most what type of monsters he’d filled his Fire Palace with, an even split between the desperate who had nowhere else to go and the bloodthirsty who genuinely wanted to be there. There were enough of the latter that they wouldn’t be able to resist the opportunity to hurt whoever had come into their grasp, and it was all the more likely because Lan Qiren was someone important, someone for whom the fall would hurt more. And that meant that they were hurting Lan Qiren right now, hurting him in Wen Ruohan’s name, with the machines he’d obtained for that purpose being used in ways he did not want.

Lan Qiren was probably cursing his name this very instant, just like Wen Ruoyu had all those years ago, was probably screaming, and Wen Ruohan couldn’t do a single thing to stop it because if he left Jiujiang at this moment in time, when everything was blowing up politically, he risked losing his entire sect.

They’re hurting him. They’re hurting him for you, because of you, because you told them to. It’s your fault, and he is never going to trust you again.

He’s never going to love you.

Wen Ruohan wanted to destroy something, or kill someone, or both. And right at this exact moment, the only person who seemed like a worthwhile target was himself.

He wanted to claw his own skin off. He wanted to summon his strongest power and lay waste to the entire landscape around him until it was unrecognizable and barren, needing a generation or more to recover. He wanted to disregard everything to fly back to the Fire Palace and beg Lan Qiren for forgiveness. He wanted to tear the Fire Palace itself apart brick-by-brick. He wanted to cut out his own tongue so that he’d never give such an order ever again. He wanted to destroy the whole world so that no one would ever need to know that he had erred, and erred badly, and more than likely lost out on the treasure of a lifetime as a result.

“Sect Leader, bad news!” Another scout rushed in, with the general that normally led the army right at his heels, grim expressions on both their faces. “It’s Qinghe Nie! They’ve started to move. They’re against us!”

Wen Ruohan closed his eyes briefly, forcing down his power before it could rip out of him and lash out blindly. Power, or a scream, or both…it didn’t matter. “I see. What is their stated reason?”

“Lanling Jin and Gusu Lan are both saying that you’ve gone mad, Sect Leader,” the scout reported, stone-faced. “With your personal presence here, they are saying that it indicates that this is not merely a skirmish but the first step in a war against the entire cultivation world.”

Wen Ruohan’s plan to dominate the cultivation world would eventually require such a war, and everyone knew it, including him. But his Wen sect was at least ten and probably twenty years away from being ready for a move like that – for him to start the war now would truly be a sign that he had succumbed to madness.

And Qinghe Nie…well, Qinghe Nie was more prone than most to believe in madness, what with their history of sect leaders succumbing to qi deviations. Lao Nie probably thought that he was doing Wen Ruohan a favor by taking arms against him, and if Wen Ruohan really had lost his mind, he probably would have been. Only the victors determined the spoils, after all, and Lao Nie, at least, would seek to ensure that Wen Xu inherited what was left of the Wen sect after Wen Ruohan died, minus the pieces here and there that would be peeled off to assuage the other sects’ anger and ensure they didn’t question the arrangement.

It barely even counted as a betrayal, really. Lao Nie had never actually trusted Wen Ruohan.

(Wen Ruohan had always said to himself that Lao Nie was right not to, telling himself that he would have betrayed the other man in a heartbeat if he could have grabbed some of his mighty sect for his own. But upon reflection, there had been dozens of instances when he could have done more to undermine Qinghe Nie than he had, little squabbles that meant nothing individually but could have meant something collectively, and in each case he’d thought to himself that it simply wasn’t worth the bother, wasn’t worth the inevitable argument, wasn’t worth risking Lao Nie’s rage and the potential loss of his already inconstant affections…which meant that perhaps Wen Ruohan was not so inured to betrayal as he had once thought. Not even his own.)

“Sect Leader, what do we do?” his general asked, his expression ugly. He was one of Wen Ruohan’s more trusted subordinates, of long standing; he had been the one Wen Ruohan had entrusted with the education of Wen Xu.

They’d already sent Wen Xu away, of course. They had made smuggling him out the very first priority. Even though everyone would know that that was what they were doing, Wen Ruohan hadn’t wanted to risk anyone capturing his son to try to use him against him. He’d sent him out with a few Wen disciples from his close kin, ones he knew Lu Qipei had used considerable efforts to win over, ones whose self-interests were wholly aligned with his own and which could therefore be trusted as much as anyone could be – he’d known that they had had only one shot at getting him out, at getting anything out, before the attention of the cultivation world had locked into place, and they had taken it. But it had worked: they’d gotten word back only a little while earlier that Wen Xu was successfully back within Qishan’s area of influence, safely heading to ground with his maternal Lu family.

“Sect Leader, we need to act,” his general urged. “Many of the small sects in the area have already activated their defenses. If we want to make a move, we will need to do it soon.”

Wen Ruohan was aware of that. Now was the time for decisive action, not to be worrying about the wellbeing of a man he couldn’t help – a man you hurt, a mistake you made – and as sect leader, the duty to make the decision fell to him.

With the Great Sects on the move, his options were limited. His sect could either attack or defend, and with only a single battalion of his army having come here for what they thought was a low-stakes night-hunt, they didn’t have much in the way of major armaments or cultivation treasures to support them, much less the sort of infrastructure that was preferable to have when playing defense. The only real weapon they had to hand was Wen Ruohan himself, with his incredible power and knowledge of all sorts of arrays – for most situations that would have been more than enough, but a full-scale war might be pushing it. Realistically, the best option would be for him to strike at the small sects around him now, absorb as many as he could in the short amount of time he had, then use their own defenses as the foundation to protect his army from the other Great Sects when they arrived.

But that would be playing into Qingheng-jun’s plan, taking on the role of the villain that had been set aside for him, and Wen Ruohan didn’t really want to do that.

Lan Qiren wouldn’t have wanted him to do that.

But what was the alternative?

If Wen Ruohan wasn’t here, he could order his sect to start loudly claiming that it had all been a misunderstanding (which had the unusual virtue of being true). The resulting confusion would buy him a little extra time, maybe another day or two, just enough for him to gather the rest of his army and come demanding some sort of peace on equal terms. But Wen Ruohan was too powerful, his own presence equal to three battalions or maybe more – with him here, no one would dare give him the benefit of the doubt. Yet neither could he plausibly sneak away, the way he’d sent Wen Xu away: there were too many eyes watching, no available paths he could take, and his own overweening vanity would not permit him to be seen running away with his tail between his legs. And that was assuming that anyone would believe his retreat was genuinely meant to avoid a war rather than a strategic retreat to set up a further attack, which they wouldn’t…

“Motherfucker, I’m telling you, your precious Sect Leader is going to want to see me! Yes, right now!” a sharp female voice shouted from right outside his door. “Don’t let my colors mislead you, I’m working for him!”

Wen Ruohan blinked, and rose to his feet.

“That’s Cangse Sanren,” he said, mentally mapping out the local surroundings – yes, it made sense, or at least it wasn’t wholly implausible for her to be here. She’d said that she was heading to Xixiang with the children, and that wasn’t too far from where his army was. “Send her in.”

Cangse Sanren didn’t so much get shown in as she did elbow her way in. She managed to get his general right in the gut, too, hard enough that he choked and staggered. Wen Ruohan decided not to question it – it was probably vengeance for how hard it had been for her to get through his sentries.

“Hi there!” she chirped, ire fading into cheerfulness the moment she laid eyes on Wen Ruohan himself. “I hear you’ve got yourself a problem.”

Wen Ruohan raised his eyebrows. He’d only had the one short conversation with Cangse Sanren back at the Lotus Pier, but he thought he’d gotten a decent enough sense of her character at the time.

“From your tone of voice, I suspect you’re here to offer a solution,” he drawled, scarcely daring to hope that she really did have one. “Would you care to share?”

“You’re exactly like Lan Qiren, you know?” she said carelessly, and Wen Ruohan somehow managed not to wince. “Neither of you are any fun at all – you could at least have let me be the one to say it. Anyway: there’s an old mine in Xixiang.”

“I recall. You said there was a suspected haunting there, I believe…?”

“Mm, let’s move that from ‘suspected’ to ‘confirmed,’ but also it’s completely abandoned and has tunnels that lead for hundreds if not thousands of li in every direction.”

Wen Ruohan’s eyebrows somehow managed to go further up than they were already. “Thousands of li of tunnels? What in the world were they mining?”

“Spiritual iron, I think. You know how you need to chase the energy before it slips away to make sure you get the best stuff.”

That made sense. Spiritual iron also meant that the people doing the mining had to be cultivators, making the whole process a lot faster – they were stronger, faster, less in need of sleep, capable of using talismans and arrays and treasures that could eat through dirt like a mole. It was certainly an efficient type of work, if humiliating.

“One of the entrances is near here?” Wen Ruohan asked, though he’d already put the rest of it together: an abandoned tunnel from an abandoned mine would be the perfect way for him to sneak out without being spotted. And once he wasn’t here, his army could play for time while he returned to the Nightless City, just as he’d already thought. Once he returned with the rest of his army and the claim that he’d been unjustly slandered, he’d have a fairer playing field and a better hand to play. “You’re welcome to answer that question, if you like.”

“Now it just feels like you’re being condescending. Are you coming?”

“Naturally.”

Other people might have used the opportunity to say something about owing Cangse Sanren a favor, but Wen Ruohan was above such things. If she wanted something from him, she could ask, and when she did he would remember this moment, but his Wen sect did not owe anyone anything, and Wen Ruohan himself least of all.

He took a moment to give his general and the highest-ranking local disciples their orders, as well as to draw out a few extremely powerful talismans for them to use – to maximize confusion, there had to be a plausible reason for both the Lan and Jin sects to believe that Wen Ruohan had been there in person, believable enough to create doubt in the eyewitness accounts of his arrival – and then he headed out, following behind Cangse Sanren’s sure-footed stride.

It wasn’t until Wen Ruohan was already outside the borders of his army’s encampment that it occurred to him that this, too, could be a betrayal.

At her encouragement, he had left his army behind. That could very easily be the opening move of a trap – he did not know Cangse Sanren, after all, and he certainly didn’t trust her. Her arrival had been suspiciously timely and her solution suspiciously convenient, like much-needed coal in a winter blizzard. Was it not entirely possible that this was another very clever ploy, this time to isolate and murder him? Why in the world had Wen Ruohan believed her? Much less believed her enough to follow her all on his own, without even a single guard to defend him?

It had been instinctive on his part. The trust was less his own than it was Lan Qiren’s, Wen Ruohan having automatically reasoned that surely anyone who Lan Qiren would entrust with his nephews would not be the sort of person to turn around and stab him in the back. But could he really trust that? Was he willing to trust in Lan Qiren like that?

It seemed that he was, without ever having made the decision to do so. And yet – and yet –

“Here we are!” Cangse Sanren announced just as Wen Ruohan was on the verge of succumbing to his paranoia and turning back. “See, there’s the entrance to the tunnel, right over there. I have to admit now that I omitted some critical information: you’re going to have to crawl through the first bit. Very undignified, which is why I didn’t tell you until now. Sorry-not-sorry!”

Wen Ruohan sighed.

Of course Lan Qiren wouldn’t trust someone unworthy. Irritating, yes, but not unworthy.

Probably for the best he hadn’t brought any guards, though.

There was a very brief interlude of considerable indignity – Cangse Sanren went first, which meant that Wen Ruohan’s embarrassment was at a minimum not witnessed by anyone – and then the tunnel got larger and more spacious, allowing them both to stand and walk, and then later to ride their swords if they kept them low enough to the ground.

“Why did you come help me?” Wen Ruohan asked as they flew, his voice deliberately mild. He wished in retrospect that he’d taken Lan Qiren up on the offer to learn the arrays that kept the Lan sect clothing so clean, so as to be able to erase the evidence of dirt on his knees. At the time, he’d thought it beneath him, but that was before he’d learned how low he had yet to go. “You are aware that it was a war zone, correct?”

“And that’s why I didn’t bring the children with me,” Cangse Sanren replied. “I’m not stupid, you know.”

“I didn't mean to suggest that you were. It is only that your intervention was rather timely, shall we say – particularly given that Yunmeng Jiang had already started to move against me.”

“And that’s why I didn’t bring Changze, either. He was raised a servant at the Lotus Pier, so no matter what, he’d feel guilty about doing something that would be seen as undermining them. Not a problem for me! My master doesn’t have any ties in the current cultivation world, so I don’t care.”

Wen Ruohan knew that, too.

Irritated, he decided to be blunt: “If you don’t care, why take action at all? You could have done nothing, which would have been considerably easier, and not to mention less risky.”

“Well, I didn’t have a choice, did I? I promised my little monkey that he could see the Nightless City in all its glory. He’d be terribly disappointed if something happened to diminish that glory before he even had the chance to get there…”

“Are you ever serious?” Wen Ruohan snapped.

Cangse Sanren laughed, which suggested that the answer was no. “Stop glaring, you big bully. Isn’t it obvious? Obviously I didn’t come to stick my nose in this mess for your sake. I did it for Lan Qiren.”

“That still seems like a great deal of effort to go to for a man that I was under the impression you hadn’t seen since you were sixteen,” Wen Ruohan said, since the alternative would have been to say something stupid like Why do you think helping me would help Lan Qiren.

Or, worse, If you knew what I just did to him, you wouldn’t be helping me any longer, you’d leave me in the lurch and say that he’s better off without me…

Wen Ruohan would be forced to murder her if she said that. She might be right, but that was irrelevant. Betrayal or no, even if all hope of something better was gone, he’d still kill anyone who suggested Lan Qiren shouldn’t belong to him.

“Besides, Lan Qiren would do quite well if I died,” he added bitterly. “Xu-er is only fifteen. Lan Qiren would have the right to manage the Nightless City in his stead as my widow.”

“Are you always this prone to dramatics?” Cangse Sanren asked, sounding amused. “I wish I’d known sooner. I would have come to the Nightless City much earlier if I’d known you were funny.”

Wen Ruohan scowled. “That is still not an answer.”

He wasn’t expecting Cangse Sanren to suddenly turn on her sword, cutting off his path and making him have to come to a hasty stop to avoid crashing into her.

“Fine,” she said, hands on her hips. “Fine, you want an answer? Lan Qiren was the first person in the whole cultivation world that didn’t want anything from me when I came down from the mountain, and the only one who took the time to explain to me what human morality meant in a way I could actually understand. He drew me diagrams! Hundreds of them, laying out all sorts of different situations, explaining what the right and wrong response to each one would be.”

Wen Ruohan stared at her.

“It took him months. And you know what? I don’t think he even remembers doing it. Because it wasn’t anything special for him, just another day, just another month, just another year, just the sort of thing he thinks anyone should do or would do. Because that is what Lan Qiren is to me, and what he always will be – forget fifteen years, it would be the same even if we haven’t seen each other in a hundred! And as for you…”

Cangse Sanren shook her head.

“When I saw Lan Qiren again for the first time in years, in years, he was in a terrible state, like I’ve never seen him before,” she said, her voice as practical as ever, though very far from devoid of emotion. “His qi was rioting and he was bleeding internally and he was a lot closer to a qi deviation than either of us wants to admit. You were there, you know as well as I do that if he didn’t have as good a foundation as he does, he would’ve been in serious trouble. And you know what the first thing he said to me was? The very first thing? He asked me to help him hide it because he didn’t want to worry you.”

Wen Ruohan reared back as if Cangse Sanren had just slapped him.

He might have preferred it if she’d slapped him.

“You see, he was concerned that you’d be angry enough to do something irrational if he didn’t have time to explain first – ”

Forget slapping. Stabbing would have been preferable.

“– and, you see, he didn’t want to cause you trouble. And just when I was starting to worry that he was afraid of you, he got distracted and asked me what a wife’s duties were.” She snorted. “He was deeply relieved that you let him be the husband, you know. Personally, I think he’s just got a rich boy’s mortal fear of household chores.”

Wen Ruohan had the distinct feeling of not knowing whether laughter or rage was more appropriate. “He does know that a wife in a large sect wouldn’t do those things themselves, does he not?”

“Oh, sure. But you know how Lan Qiren is – he hates change, especially once he’s finally gotten comfortable with something.”

And now they were back to the feeling of stabbing, because Wen Ruohan did know.

Lan Qiren was a creature of habit, as rigid in his personal life as he was in his perspective on virtue; he preferred things to be predictable, or at least occurring within an expected range. He had spent a great deal of time in the months he’d spent in the Nightless City building up a routine that suited him, and he had been so pleased the first time he had managed to go through an entire week without any surprises…

That was probably ruined, now. Was Lan Qiren supposed to continue taking his daily morning exercises in a courtyard from which one could faintly view the outline of the Fire Palace? Could they really continue to take the stroll through the Nightless City that they had started taking after dinner, the one that according to Lan Qiren both aided in digestion and helped establish a boundary to keep work from seeping too much into the realm of the personal, while from Wen Ruohan’s perspective serving as good time to get in all the conversation they didn’t have over dinner, given that Lan Qiren still practiced the Lan sect rule against speaking while eating? Sending Lan Qiren a note to get him to come meet somewhere or another for what Lan Qiren had snidely taken to calling “the usual reason” was one of Wen Ruohan’s more enjoyable pastimes, whether or not Lan Qiren agreed to actually do it, but if that was the way he’d been lured away this time, would he ever respond to another?

Even if Wen Ruohan pulled Lan Qiren out of the Fire Palace now, would Lan Qiren be willing to continue any of those routines that had previously given him such joy? Or would they become simply yet another torment, a miserable farce that he would need to force himself to endure in order to appease the man who could with a single word have him taken back there…?

“So, obviously, I had to come help out if I could,” Cangse Sanren said, turning herself back and starting to fly forward once more. A moment later, Wen Ruohan forced himself to start moving forward again as well, catching up easily and sliding smoothly into place beside her. “I mean, really, if he’s already put all that work into getting used to you, it seems rude to get in his way and cause him distress – ”

“Stop,” Wen Ruohan said, unable to endure any longer. “No more.”

Cangse Sanren glanced over at him, gaze sharp for a moment. But only for a moment – an instant later, she grinned.

“Oooh,” she said in a tone of outrageous delight that seemed rather inappropriate. “Did you fuck up? Are you going to have to grovel?”

“I don’t grovel!”

“Not yet you don’t, you mean.” She sniggered. “Welcome to married life. Real married life, not whatever you were doing with those wives of yours… Hey, listen, if it makes you feel better, just remember that you’re the most powerful man in the entire cultivation world. You have the capacity to make the biggest please-forgive-me gesture of all time!”

Oddly enough, that did make Wen Ruohan feel better.

It was a bit like his announcement that he’d be taking the role of wife to Lan Qiren’s husband. He knew perfectly well that most people would find it a humiliation, just the way they would see playing the receiving role in sex as a dishonor. They might think it meant something about their dignity as men, might think that it would make them a target for mockery. But Wen Ruohan was so powerful that he did not need to concern himself with what others thought: he knew that they would just see it as further evidence of his instability, another sign of his terrifying unpredictability, his capacity to do anything. What was shameful to other people was only self-indulgent eccentricity to those like him whose actions could not safely be questioned. No matter what he did, it would just mean that the rest of the world would worry about him all the more, would think about him all the more.

Wen Ruohan liked being thought about. He liked being talked about, whether for good or for evil.

“I assume that when we get to the other side of this tunnel, you’re going to go straight to the Nightless City, right?”

“Of course,” Wen Ruohan said, shaking off his reverie – and his trepidation as to what he might find waiting for him there. He had to get there as soon as possible to order Lan Qiren’s release, no matter what. “The rest of my army is there, and all of my sect’s treasures as well.”

Lan Qiren is there. And he is far from the least of my Wen sect’s treasures…

“I don’t actually care about your little war problem,” Cangse Sanren reminded him. “I only wanted to make sure you didn’t get yourself killed… Anyway, I’m coming with you, I want to talk to Lan Qiren anyway. And with two Lan, two Jiang, and one little monkey surnamed Wei, we have too many kids for Changze and I to carry on our swords, especially for any sort of long distance. Have you ever held a child before?”

“I have two sons.”

He’d had more, before. But he didn’t like to think about his first family.

“Yeah, I know. The question still stands. You wouldn’t believe how many men would be completely lost.”

Wen Ruohan rolled his eyes. “I know how to hold children.”

Though admittedly it had been a while since he’d practiced such a skill. He’d mostly given up on bothering with children after his first ones had turned against him at their mother’s instigation, back before she’d turned against them in turn, taking their lives in her increasing madness… The deaths of his first family were old wounds, long since scarred over, but they would pain him for the rest of his life. He hadn’t had reason to think of them in a long while.

“You can carry the Lan boys, then,” Cangse Sanren said practically. “Maybe you can ask them for tips on how to get their shufu to forgive you.”

That sounded reasonable enough.

Unfortunately, reality was not to live up to Wen Ruohan’s expectations.

“When Shufu is angry at me, I write him an essay explaining what I did wrong and why I won’t ever do it again,” Lan Xichen said. He was completely in earnest, so it was impossible to even be annoyed at him. “Sometimes, if it was really serious, I propose a punishment for me to fulfill. Discipline is important!”

That was a little more promising an avenue, Wen Ruohan supposed, though he was dubious. No one in the Fire Palace would dare lay their hands on their own sect leader, not even if he ordered them to do it, so it wasn’t as if he could offer to take Lan Qiren’s place for a time. Nor was there anything he could do to change the balance of power between them. They lived in his Qishan Wen: he was always going to be the sect leader, and even if he said that he’d never send Lan Qiren to the Fire Palace again, there was nothing keeping him from changing his mind later.

Frustrating.

“What about you?” he asked Lan Wangji, who was scowling. Or possibly pouting. It was hard to tell. “What do you do? Much the same, I assume?”

Lan Wangji shook his head.

“Oh? Something different, then?”

Lan Xichen cleared his throat, looking embarrassed. Nearly as embarrassed as he’d looked when Wen Ruohan had first hoisted him up in one arm, ignoring his offers to try to stand on the sword himself, though he’d dropped his complaints quickly enough when they were in the air, kicking his legs with badly concealed glee as they flew. “Uh, Wangji hasn’t – he hasn’t really mastered the whole ‘admitting he was wrong’ thing yet – ”

Wen Ruohan snorted. “Then we have that in common,” he informed Lan Wangji, who he was holding in his other arm. “I am also never wrong.”

With one exception.

Wen Ruohan was not thinking about that. Now was not the time, and anyway, he was already doing everything he could by heading back to the Nightless City with Lan Qiren’s precious nephews in tow. There was no point in thinking any further than that.

Lan Wangji looked thoughtful. After a few moments, he said, “You could write him a song.”

“Wangji,” Lan Xichen gasped, sounding almost scandalized. “You can’t just tell people to compose a song for someone!”

Wen Ruohan’s eyebrows went up a little at that.

“They are married,” Lan Wangji reminded his brother. “It is appropriate.”

“Not to interrupt this fascinating interrogation of Gusu Lan courting techniques – ” Wen Ruohan was now incredibly curious about why Lan Qiren had felt it appropriate to ask to compose a song for him, but he had the feeling that pursuing that line of inquiry with the children would only incite Lan Qiren’s ire, which was exactly what he was trying to avoid at the moment. “– but I have little talent for musical composition.”

Both Lan boys scowled at him as if he had just admitted to some serious moral failing.

“Fine,” Lan Wangji said after a little pause, though it didn’t actually sound as though he actually thought it was fine. Were musical cultivators just born like this? Or did Gusu Lan teach musical snobbery from birth? “Can you paint?”

Wen Ruohan nearly stopped flying in surprise. “Paint?”

“Sometimes, when I want Shufu to feel better, I draw him a picture,” Lan Wangji explained, his little voice very serious. “He always says that it makes him happy.”

In his youth, Wen Ruohan had been widely considered to be one of the finest painters of his generation, and naturally he had considered himself the finest. It was through that skill that he had made his name, in fact, that long-forgotten title by which much of the world had referred to him before he’d won the seat of the Wen sect leader and taken on that title as his own instead.

He hadn’t painted in…years. Decades. Longer than Lan Qiren had been alive, most likely.

He still remembered the moment he’d stopped. It had been like the aftermath of breaking a bone in battle, when adrenaline had carried you as far as it could and finally could no more, and all the pain came upon you all at once – he’d started on a great big painting, as ambitious in art as he was in all things, and when he had begun it he’d had a wife that he liked well enough, children he was proud of, a younger brother he adored, and a heart full of ambition and hope for the future, his eyes fixed firmly on the position of sect leader. He’d stopped painting in order to settle the matter of the succession, not realizing at the time that it would take quite so long to do.

When he’d come back to the painting, he had become sect leader, but he’d lost all the rest.

Holding the brush, he couldn’t even remember who the person who’d started the painting had been.

The pain had come, then, the broken bone, all his nerves at once alight with agony. He’d snapped all his brushes and set every painting of his that he could see on fire, and he’d never picked up a brush for the foolish, idle purpose of art ever again.

Of course, he didn’t think there was anything he could do that would make Lan Qiren happy with him again, either – he certainly wouldn’t be able to stomach such a betrayal – and yet that was what he was trying to do now. So maybe it wasn’t as ridiculous a suggestion as all that.

“…I’ll keep that idea in mind,” Wen Ruohan said, with some difficulty. “Perhaps. At any rate, I don’t think it’d really have the same impact coming from me as it would from one of you.”

Lan Xichen reached over and patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he said encouragingly, having apparently completely misinterpreted Wen Ruohan’s refusal. “You’re his wife! I’m sure he’d like it very much even if it wasn’t very good.”

“It would be excellent,” Wen Ruohan informed him testily. He disliked having his abilities questioned, even by children. “I am an accomplished painter, I have the ability. I just don’t.”

“Uh-huh. Is that in the same way that I can eat spicy food, it just makes me get all teary and have to drink lots and lots of milk to make the burning stop?”

Lan Qiren would probably be angry at him if he dropped his nephews from a height, Wen Ruohan reflected. Angrier than he already was. Maybe that had been Cangse Sanren’s clever plan all along – he might not have been able to resist the temptation if it had been the Jiang children he’d been holding.

He gave up on the boys as a lost cause and instead maneuvered his sword over to where Cangse Sanren was wrangling her wiggling son, who had by now lost interest in the novelty of traveling by sword and was instead complaining about having temporarily left their family’s donkey behind in Xixiang.

Really, Wen Ruohan was doing her a favor by bringing her some adult conversation.

“What was going on with the arrays laid down in the mine?” he asked, flying close enough that little Wei Ying forgot what he was saying and clambered over to Cangse Sanren’s left side, reaching out to hold hands with Lan Wangji, who Wen Ruohan was holding in his right arm. Lan Wangji accepted the hand with an air of someone accepting their rightful due.

Charming child.

“You noticed that, huh?” Cangse Sanren shook her head. “Whoever was laying them down never heard of overkill, did they? How many suppression arrays could one place possibly need?”

“The ghosts were still not dispelled despite all the arrays present, so presumably they in fact needed more than they put down,” Wen Ruohan said dryly. “But also that was not what I meant. The top-most layer of arrays were not suppression arrays at all.”

“Huh? They weren’t? They looked like they were…”

“That was likely intentional. They were enhancement arrays. There are a wide range of options that fulfill that purpose, and I suspect whoever laid down the new set picked one that was similar to the existing ones in order to disguise their presence – ”

“Wait, wait,” Wei Changze said from his other side, flying up from beneath. He had Jiang Cheng on his shoulders and Jiang Yanli standing by his side with her arms around his waist for stability, and to Wen Ruohan’s ongoing amusement he’d been very valiantly ignoring the way the girl’s cheeks were red from more than just the cold wind. Being crushed on by a nine-year-old girl, how embarrassing. “What’s this about a new set of arrays? I thought they were all from ten years ago?”

“There is a more recent set of arrays laid upon the rest, no older than a few months, if that. Their addition is likely what disturbed the older set enough to let a few spirits leak through, enough to create rumors of a haunting – what type of creatures did you say were there? Just ghosts?”

“Yeah, a few ghosts, that’s all.”

“You said there were jiangshi,” Jiang Cheng piped up, looking cross. He had his hands firmly wedged into Wei Changze’s hair and seemed to be occasionally tugging at him, as if trying to direct him the way one would a horse. “Well, first you said there were just specters, back before we went, and then you said there were hopping corpses, and that was after we’d already gotten there!”

Wen Ruohan smirked when Cangse Sanren winced, clearly having not intended to be called out.

“I see the next generation of the Jiang sect will be a fearsome one once more,” he remarked, amused. For some reason, the innocuous statement made the Jiang boy twist his head to gape at him. “I’ll keep that in mind the next time we need to negotiate one of our longer lasting treaties.”

“Jiang Cheng is very fierce,” Wei Ying said, sounding quite fierce himself. “He’s going to be a great sect leader.”

The Jiang boy’s expression of shock immediately twisted into annoyance. “That’s not what it means! It’s a Great Sect, not a sect that’s great!”

“I’m sure A-Ying meant that you would be an excellent Yunmeng Jiang sect leader,” Wei Changze put in. “Which I have no doubt you will be. Trust me, I was raised there.”

“Forget him, trust me. I’ve suffered through three generations of Yunmeng Jiang, I’m practically an expert,” Wen Ruohan said, voice dry as dust. “Can we get back to the subject of the arrays? Ghosts and jiangshi are an interesting combination.”

“I thought so, too,” Cangse Sanren said. “Aren’t jiangshi usually warriors that died far from home?”

“Not always.”

“Well, no, but still, often enough. If you have warriors, why would you also have – uh, short ghosts?”

Wen Ruohan gave her a strange look. Short ghosts?

Cangse Sanren meaningfully flicked her eyes at her son, and then at Lan Wangji and Lan Xichen…oh, child ghosts. That made – actually, no, she was right, that made no sense. A mine of spiritual iron called for cultivators, so the presence of some warriors could be easily understood, martial cultivators being recruited to do the work and then dying there. But why would there be children there? Especially given that it was likely that all the spirits in the mine were the victims of a massacre, based on the signs in the mine, what were the circumstances that gave rise to such an event…?

“What do enhancement arrays do?” Lan Xichen asked, looking at Cangse Sanren, who shrugged, and then Wei Changze, who shook his head. “Sect Leader Wen?”

“You should be calling him Shumu! He’s your father’s younger brother’s wife, isn’t he?” Cangse Sanren said at once. Wen Ruohan glared at her and she grinned at him, unrepentant. “Either way, you’re definitely asking the right person. Sect Leader Wen is the cultivation world’s foremost expert on arrays.”

“He is? Wow!” Lan Xichen looked impressed. All the children did, actually.

“There is no need for flattery,” Wen Ruohan informed Cangse Sanren, but decided to be gracious and answer the question anyway. “Enhancement arrays are exactly what they sound like: they enhance the effects of an original ‘core’ array. It’s a method of extending the effect of a single array over a broader area. You’d be most familiar with the version of it that forms the basis of the gate arrays used by every sect, such that external defenses can be raised from a single initiation point deep within the sect.”

“So the enhancement arrays here were just strengthening the suppression?” Wei Changze asked.

“No, these ones weren’t tied to the suppression arrays, just layered on top of them.” Wen Ruohan shrugged. “I did not see the core array at any point that we passed, but it seems clear enough that the intention behind those enhancement arrays is completely different from the original goal of suppression. They almost looked like redirection arrays, the sort you use when trying to dam up a river, but there’s no point in putting that sort of thing in a mine. Perhaps if I’d had a little more time to look at them…”

He trailed off, his sharp sight landing on the distant horizon where the Nightless City waited.

“Oh, hey, kids, look ahead! Guess what that is – yes, Jiang Cheng, you’re right, it’s the Nightless City – ” Cangse Sanren was talking, but Wen Ruohan had stopped listening. With his cultivation, he could see far better than most, especially if he tried, and his vision had been drawn almost against his will to the dark hulking mass of the Fire Palace.

Right in front of it, there was the smallest speck of white shining against the darkness, a barely visible silhouette of someone standing in front of the entryway.

Not someone.

Lan Qiren.

Wen Ruohan would know him anywhere.

He instinctively picked up speed, his sword suddenly rushing forward at a speed Cangse Sanren and Wei Changze couldn’t match – he left them all behind, heedless of anything but reaching his destination.

He didn’t even know what he’d do when he got there. He just – he had to be there. He had to see him, he had to talk to him –

“That was so much fun,” Lan Xichen said in his ear as Wen Ruohan brought his sword to a stop only a few steps in front of where Lan Qiren was standing. “Can we do it again sometime?”

Wen Ruohan could barely hear him, his whole attention focused on Lan Qiren.

Lan Qiren, who looked…tired.

Tired, his face pale – his hair was arranged properly and his clothing was fresh, but he somehow gave off the air of having been run ragged regardless. And there were – there were bloody fingerprints on his forehead ribbon –

“Welcome home,” Lan Qiren said, for once ignoring the presence of his nephews. His voice was completely neutral, void of any emotion. “We need to talk.”

Chapter Text

Maintain your own discipline.

Be hard on yourself, be easy on others.

Lan Qiren’s foundation had always been his sect rules. They had been his refuge as a child, when he had had such difficulty in connecting with or even understanding his peers or his seniors, and they remained his reliance as an adult, particularly in times of stress. In every step he had taken in his life, the rules had been with him, providing guidance and support – a source of strength, a source of serenity, a source of unshakable stability.

He was not going to let anything, or anyone, take that away from him.

“Xichen, Wangji,” he said once his nephews were both on the ground, keeping his tone as even as possible. Have affection and gratitude. “It is good to see you.”

“They’re safe and wholly intact,” Cangse Sanren said proudly. She’d arrived not long after Wen Ruohan, hopping off her own sword with a brief stutter in her legs that suggested she had been going a little faster than she was entirely comfortable with. “Just as promised. We even got them out of an active war zone! Uh, not that we knew it was going to be a war zone when we were heading there, in my defense. Actually, we were just doing a spot of night-hunting with them – I mean, nothing serious, just a few jiangshi, a couple of small ghosts…”

She looked hopefully at him.

“Thank you for bringing them back to me,” Lan Qiren said politely. Have courtesy and integrity. Be grateful. No improper behavior. “I appreciate your efforts and your care.”

For some reason, Cangse Sanren’s face fell.

“Oh, he is so mad,” she muttered to Wen Ruohan, who had been completely silent since landing, which was unusual for him. He also hadn’t taken his eyes off of Lan Qiren, which…probably meant something? Hopefully not that he was angry that Lan Qiren had demanded that He Zhong help get him released from the cells of the Fire Palace to await his return. “He’s really mad. You didn’t say he was this mad.”

The rules said Do not succumb to rage.

On the other hand, they also said Be genuine and unedited.

“Shufu isn’t mad,” Lan Xichen piped up before Lan Qiren could say anything. “He’s disappointed.”

Lan Qiren shook his head. Do not tell lies.

“No, Xichen,” he said, voice still completely even. Calm. Factual. “This time, I am mad.”

“…oh.”

“Not at you, nor at Wangji,” he clarified. “I am very pleased to see that you are both well, and that you have made it here without coming to harm. I am equally pleased that you have made friends. I regret that I do not have time to properly meet them now. Rooms will be prepared for all the children so that you can go to rest – ”

He paused briefly to allow for interruption, but when Wen Ruohan said nothing, decided to continue. He was being a little presumptuous, both in cutting the introduction so short and in taking on the role of host, which rightfully belonged to Wen Ruohan as the master of the Nightless City. Technically, it belonged to him as well, as Wen Ruohan’s husband, but they hadn’t had to deal with any guests of consequence during the past few months and the subject of hosting duties had never come up.

No matter.

“When you are recovered, I believe there was a suggestion that you would be introduced to Wen Chao, Wen-er-gongzi. Please make every effort to get along with him.”

“Because he is our shumu’s son?” Lan Wangji asked.

Lan Qiren blinked, having for whatever reason not expected his nephews to use such an intimate term of address for Wen Ruohan. It caused the smallest hairline fracture in his composure – no.

Maintain your own discipline. Maintain. Maintain.

If Lan Qiren relaxed his vigilance long enough to have emotions of any sort, positive or negative, he was going to shatter. He was barely holding it together as it was. If he shattered now, he would immediately have a meltdown, and afterwards he would be useless for some time. If that happened, he would not be able to convey the vital information he had obtained, and he had to convey it. Everyone and everything was depending on him.

His nephews, his sect, even his beloved – he was not about to let them down. He wasn’t.

Lan Qiren had already had one fit shortly after learning what he had, and it had greatly impeded his efforts to get out of the Fire Palace and to a place where he could be of actual use. He Zhong had needed to be convinced that giving Lan Qiren time to rest and recover was not the right approach – calling a doctor was out of the question, of course, since providing medical care to someone officially imprisoned in the Fire Palace without first obtaining permission was a surefire way to get in trouble, no matter their rank. Under the circumstances, despite everyone’s general agreement that Wen Ruohan would regret his actions eventually, no one wanted to risk violating protocol in the event of him still being angry when he returned.

Lan Qiren understood, he supposed, but he also found it to be unbelievably inconvenient.

In the end, it had taken him an unconscionably long time to convince He Zhong that enforced rest would be counterproductive, and that he should instead simply provide him with enough cold water to rinse himself properly, a change of clothing from his quarters, and something he could use to brace his ankle, as well as some freedom of movement. It had then taken even longer for He Zhong to actually accomplish those tasks, since a mere guard from the Fire Palace, particularly one who did not have the Wen surname, was not considered especially high ranking.

In the end, He Zhong had only succeeded because he’d happened to think of approaching Shen Mingbi to petition for her assistance, presumably based on her somewhat more cooperative behavior during the wives’ visit to the Fire Palace. Lan Qiren would not have thought that an effective stratagem, given Shen Mingbi’s general antipathy towards him, but it had worked, and according to He Zhong the only price she had set on her assistance was his promise to join her for dinner – which was where he was right now, in fact.

(The whole thing was utterly inexplicable to Lan Qiren. Perhaps she lacked friends?)

The whole thing had taken far too long. The delay had led Lan Qiren into another fit, this time one of panic, generated by all the ghastly things he could imagine were happening in the outside world to everyone he loved at that very moment, but of course that second fit in turn only delayed him still more. 

A third delay, at this point, would be both unhelpful and extremely distressing.

“I’ll escort the children to their rooms,” Wei Changze volunteered, giving his wife and Wen Ruohan a meaningful look that escaped Lan Qiren completely. “You should probably go…talk. Good luck.” A brief pause, and then he said to Wen Ruohan, a little diffidently, “It was nice knowing you.”

That was a little odd: Lan Qiren hadn’t been aware that Wei Changze was on such good terms with Wen Ruohan. Perhaps they had had an opportunity to bond during their journey to the Nightless City?

No matter.

Lan Qiren watched the children go for perhaps an additional moment longer than he should have – another hairline fracture in his brutal self-control, this one larger, still unacceptable. As soon as he noticed, he reined himself in at once.

“As I said,” he resumed, “we have much to discuss – ”

“Inside,” Wen Ruohan said abruptly, practically biting off the word. “Now.”

Lan Qiren considered and then nodded. He hadn’t been thinking straight, trying to have a discussion like this out here – the Nightless City was not safe, it was full of potential traitors, like the one who had tricked Wen Ruohan. Far better that they retreat to Wen Ruohan’s study, where privacy arrays could be set up in relatively short order. They could all go there, the two of them and Cangse Sanren, who seemed disinclined to leave and who Lan Qiren knew from experience was very difficult to dissuade once she’d decided to stay; once there, they could have the critical discussion they needed to have.

Oddly enough, Wen Ruohan did not lead the way to his main study.

Instead, he led them to his bedroom, or rather to their bedroom, the one they shared, and once they’d arrived, he snapped, “Sit on the bed,” at Lan Qiren, who frowned disapprovingly at him.

“Now is not the time. There are more important things – ” he started to say, but Wen Ruohan interrupted him once more.

“Sit. Down.”

He was practically growling. Perhaps he was angry that Lan Qiren had left the Fire Palace without permission.

“Maybe you should sit,” Cangse Sanren said, which Lan Qiren had not been expecting. “It won’t delay the conversation, Qiren-gege, I promise. I’ll put up privacy talismans, all right? You sit.”

Lan Qiren reluctantly sat down. He was then surprised all over again – no, not surprised, he couldn’t be surprised, he couldn’t be anything, he couldn’t feel anything, he had to stay composed, he had to tell them – when Wen Ruohan did not sit down next to him, or at the desk, or anywhere reasonable, but instead lowered himself down onto the floor next to the bed.

It wasn’t until Wen Ruohan reached out with surprisingly gentle hands to take his injured ankle into his lap and started unwrapping the hastily patched-together brace that Lan Qiren realized what was going on.

“I do not require medical assistance,” he said impatiently. “I have to tell you – I found – there is – ”

To his horror, Lan Qiren found his voice cracking as he tried to put into words what he had discovered.

No, he thought frantically, no, not now. I will not succumb now. I will not fail them.

I will not!

He forced himself back to steadiness, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. Wen Ruohan was watching him with a dark expression on his face, stormy, almost malevolent. It was as if he were angry, though the anger was not quite the same as any Lan Qiren had seen on him before. It did not seem to be directed at Lan Qiren, though he couldn’t imagine who else might be the subject of it at the moment.

No matter.

At a minimum, Wen Ruohan’s rage did not slow the steady and sure movement of his hands in treating Lan Qiren’s ankle, nor diminish the quality of his medical skills, and most importantly it did not seem to be impeding his willingness to listen to what Lan Qiren had to say. That was what mattered. He was here, he was listening, and Lan Qiren could tell him what he needed to know.

Now Lan Qiren just needed – he needed to actually say it.

After a moment, Lan Qiren cleared his throat and started again. “Cangse Sanren, you mentioned that you were going to go explore rumored hauntings in a mine in the vicinity of Xixiang, did you not?”

“I did,” Cangse Sanren confirmed, looking puzzled. Presumably she had not thought that he was going to start there. “It’s definitely haunted. Fixing it is…still an ongoing project, let’s say. We passed by it on the way here. Why? Is it important?”

“Immensely so,” Lan Qiren admitted, and felt bile rise up in the back of his throat the way it had been doing on a regular basis since he had realized what must have happened. That someone in his Gusu Lan sect, his sect that so prided itself on virtue and righteousness, had gotten involved in such a vile and disgusting thing, carelessly pursuing greed, closing their eyes to the evil they themselves were causing, and that evil compounding to such a degree that it was now causing hauntings, in direct violation to their duties as cultivators – it was almost unspeakable, particularly for someone like Lan Qiren, who loved his sect and his sect’s rules as much as he did. He felt nauseated every time he thought of it. “I believe…I have recently discovered some information that gives me reason to believe that what happened in that mine has something to do with – ”

With my brother’s madness.

“– with my Gusu Lan sect,” he concluded, finding himself unable to say the words directly. “Or, rather, with someone in my Gusu Lan sect.”

“Gusu Lan?” Wen Ruohan said, his voice sharp. “You’re thinking of Gusu Lan right now?”

“That makes sense, actually,” Cangse Sanren said, only a beat later. “That explains why the ghosts there bear a grudge against the Gusu Lan bloodline.”

“They what?” Wen Ruohan twisted to scowl at her. “You never mentioned that to me.”

“It didn’t seem like a you problem. It’s Lan Qiren’s family, not yours.”

“He is my – ” Wen Ruohan cut himself off, somewhat uncharacteristically. His scowl did not abate. “That would have been useful information. I would have expected you to share it."

“I don’t actually work for you, remember? Anyway, I didn't want to go into my theories about the massacre around the children, so I thought - Qiren! Are you all right?"

Lan Qiren's vision had temporarily gone hazy, with black spots around the edges as he fought down a wave of intense nausea, the burning bile in the back of his throat changing to something fishy and metallic. He’d known that there were hauntings there, but he had not realized, had not fully accepted, had not let himself think of what that might mean; he had hoped, he supposed, that it was just a matter of resentment accumulating, of evil acts drawing down their just rewards. But ghosts with a bloodline grudge – that meant that they blamed his sect, his family, for their unjust deaths. Add to that what Cangse Sanren had said regarding there being evidence of a massacre...

There could really only be one conclusion. A massacre at a mine owned in the name of Gusu Lan, a massacre which had left behind ghosts hungry for vengeance against Gusu Lan – yes, there could be only one reason for that.

Someone had done this.

Someone had done this in his sect’s name.

Someone had taken cultivators from their homes, likely entire families, and forced them to work in their mines in order to extract valuable ore while eking out a profit. Someone had then killed those people, though whether it was related to the work itself or as part of some sort of cover-up remained to be discovered. That didn’t change the fact that it had happened, and happened because of Gusu Lan.

Whoever had done this, anyone that had even contributed to this, anyone in his sect who was involved in it in any way, they all had to be punished. They had to be, due punishment and due justice, or else – or else what was the point –

Wen Ruohan abruptly rose up onto his knees and slammed his palm straight into Lan Qiren’s midsection, knocking all the air right out of him. Lan Qiren was taken completely by surprise, unable to put up any defense or resistance; he had no choice but to simply take the blow, spitting out the mouthful of blood that had already pooled in his mouth, and then brace himself for the pain –

There wasn’t any pain.

He blinked, and looked down.

Wen Ruohan’s palm was pressed firmly against his lower abdomen, right over his dantian, and he was transferring him spiritual energy. Though perhaps transferring was the wrong word: it was if he had merely opened the floodgates and was simply pouring his power into Lan Qiren directly, the spiritual energy filling him up as if he were a too-small container, the pulsing warmth of Wen Ruohan’s yang-based cultivation style heating Lan Qiren’s blood as it did, warming him from the top of his head to the tips of his toes.

He hadn’t even realized he’d been so cold.

“Congratulations,” Wen Ruohan said, voice immensely flat. He was angry once more. “You just came within a hair’s breadth of a qi deviation. Genuinely, this time. Never do that again.”

Lan Qiren felt embarrassed. The warmth of Wen Ruohan’s power was rapidly clearing his head, allowing some space for something other than panic and mortification and despair.

He took another deep breath, this time using it to circulate his own spiritual energy in a cleansing, spirit-settling routine, and when he finally felt calm enough to continue, shook his head.

“Forgive me. I will try to control myself better in the future,” he said, and did not understand why both Wen Ruohan and Cangse Sanren scowled at him as if he had said something wrong. “It is not important at the moment – ”

“Not important –!” “How can you say –?!”

“It is not,” Lan Qiren stressed. “The matter of the mine is of utmost importance, and not merely as a historical note or part of the resolution of an ongoing night-hunt. I believe that it can explain the way my brother has been behaving.”

“Your brother?” Wen Ruohan said, sounding surprised. “Do you even know what your brother is currently doing? He’s trying to destroy my sect.”

Lan Qiren winced.

“Don’t listen to him, he’s exaggerating,” Cangse Sanren said at once.

“Exaggerating?! He’s set me up as having started an insane war against the entire world, he’s gotten the other Great Sects to take up arms against me – ”

“And now that you’re not there, they won’t have an excuse to do anything,” she said tartly. “You’ll go back with the rest of your army, claim it was nothing but a mistake, and scare them all into agreeing to a ceasefire. You might take a loss, to be sure, and it might be embarrassing, but Qingheng-jun would have to be dreaming if he thought that something like this would be enough to destroy either you or your sect.”

“I agree,” Lan Qiren said quietly. “I am afraid that the impact on the Wen sect is only incidental to my brother’s real intention.”

They both stared at him. After a moment, Wen Ruohan pulled his hand away and rose to sit on the bed beside Lan Qiren, while Cangse Sanren pulled up a stool and sat in front of him.

“Let’s do this chronologically, the way we would when solving a night-hunt,” she said firmly, and Wen Ruohan inclined his head in silent agreement with her approach. “All right, Qiren, tell me: what happened with the mine? Ten years ago was around the start of your brother’s seclusion, and what happened with the mine must have happened a little bit before that. Was he involved?”

“Not that I know of. But He Kexin was.” He shut his eyes for a moment. The context was necessary, he knew, but he had spent so long keeping his sect’s secrets, his brother’s secrets, that it still felt like a betrayal when he haltingly explained: “She was his wife. She was a rogue cultivator, or said she was, and while he was still courting her, she – she went inside the Cloud Recesses and murdered one of our sect elders. One of our teachers. The evidence was clearly against her, but there was never any trial.”

He swallowed.

“Rather than let her face justice and be executed, my brother married her, and they both entered seclusion as penance. Permanent seclusion, particularly for her.”

Neither Wen Ruohan nor Cangse Sanren said anything. Lan Qiren was grateful.

“She died recently,” he continued. His lips and tongue felt strangely numb, reciting the facts of it as if he were a junior disciple reporting on a night-hunt, telling the tales of other people’s tragedies. Only this time, the tragedy was his own. “It was by her own hand; I was the one who found her body. That was the inciting incident that led my brother to return to the world.”

“You think there was something suspicious about her death?” Cangse Sanren asked, her hands folded together in her lap, her too-sharp fingernails vivid against the backs of her hands, her thumbs rubbing together as she listened. “That maybe it wasn’t suicide?”

“No, I was her sole connection to the outside world, it couldn’t have been anything else. Her sword was beside her, still wet with –” He broke off, unable to complete the sentence; he instead resumed at a different point. “At any rate, there was no indication from her that such an action was coming, in terms of depression or otherwise. It only recently occurred to me that she could have been incited to do it, goaded into it or even forced into it, perhaps through a letter containing threats or something of the sort. Anyway, it does not matter what actually happened. What matters is what my brother believes happened, and who he blames for it. And…what he intends to do to the ones he blames.”

“Annihilation,” Wen Ruohan said, his voice uncharacteristically soft and distant. He was staring off into space, seemingly consumed by some ancient memory. “Complete destruction, without mercy or regret. A broken-hearted Lan on the path of just revenge will not rest until they have obliterated the cause of their grief.”

As I would for you, if it were you, Lan Qiren thought painfully. Though you would not believe me.

“I have no direct evidence for it, but my intuition tells me that it is all somehow related to what happened in that mine,” he said, focusing on the current situation. “He Kexin’s death…in fact, I have even started to wonder whether the murder she committed, or perhaps more correctly was accused of committing, if that could somehow also be related to the crimes being perpetrated at the mine. I was not present at the time – I had gone away on business for the sect, some ridiculous negotiation or something; I don’t remember exactly what. It was all over by the time I returned, and the result of that whole affair was a matter that caused me great pain, so I never sought out or learned the details. That is my failing. But it seems to me that my brother’s plans all center around the area near the Xixiang mine: Quanjiao, Jiujiang…”

“Yuexi as well,” Wen Ruohan supplied grimly, nodding. “I was the one who suggested that we reach an agreement for support in a war of conquest, but Qingheng-jun was the one who suggested Quanjiao Liu as his target. Given the natural land formations in the area and where the Quanjiao Liu sect resides, when the Lan sect forces come down from Gusu, they will be the first to reach Xixiang. It’s a natural resting point on the way.”

Lan Qiren nodded. “And once there…”

“Wait, wait, how would this all work?” Cangse Sanren asked, looking between the two of them. “According to what Qiren has said, Quanjiao Liu isn’t the sect that was implicated in the mine, or in He Kexin’s eventual death as a consequence of it; Gusu Lan is. Qingheng-jun is Gusu Lan’s sect leader. Even if he wanted to revenge himself on those involved with the mine, he doesn’t need to go to such lengths! Can’t he just order the execution of whoever it was that did it?”

“That assumes he blames only the individuals involved,” Wen Ruohan said. “If I were in that situation, I would hardly limit myself to that. I can see the argument now: Gusu Lan speaks of virtue in the day yet acts corruptly in the dark, condemns his wife for the crimes she committed but permits those that put her into the situation to get away cleanly – the situation they put her and him into, since as a devoted lover and a Lan he would feel he had no choice but to rescue his love even at such a high cost. And yet, not satisfied with permitting the one great injustice, they came once more, this time to violate their peaceful seclusion and rob his beloved not only of her freedom but now even of her very life…” He shook his head. “Hypocrisy is always the more bitter when it comes from those that you hold in high esteem.”

Lan Qiren bowed his head. That was also the conclusion he had reached.

His brother not only wanted him dead, whether because he had been the leader of the sect in all those years yet never remedied their fault or for other reasons of his own, but had aimed his ire against their sect – and not merely the wrongdoers, which would have been understandable, but against the entirety of their sect.

Their Gusu Lan sect.

His Gusu Lan sect.

“That all seems rather extreme,” Cangse Sanren objected. “To blame his own sect…to seek to harm his own sect…!”

“Ten years is a great deal of time to be alone and stewing upon all your wrongs. Madness and heartbreak can lead a man to contemplate acts of great cruelty.” Wen Ruohan’s lips curled up, though he wasn’t really smiling. “Trust me.”

Lan Qiren’s heart throbbed in his chest. He did. No one else might, and he might be a fool for doing so, yet another madman in love, but he did. He trusted Wen Ruohan, even though his body still bore the marks of Wen Ruohan’s distrust of him.

Cangse Sanren scowled again. “I understand what you mean, but still…”

“I agree with Lan Qiren,” Wen Ruohan overrode Cangse Sanren easily. “Qingheng-jun’s war strategy makes little sense if he were not trying to cause harm to the Lan sect. He deliberately released information to the local sects to initiate a war that would draw the attention of the entire cultivation world – even putting aside the fact that I will accuse him of slander and trickery, it would be remarkably foolish for him to kick up a fuss in that precise area, especially right after there were rumors of hauntings, if he did not intend for the world to uncover what is there. It does not seem to matter overmuch to him that such a revelation would be a tremendous loss of face for Gusu Lan.”

That struck a chord in Lan Qiren’s memory.

“That is not the only time,” he murmured. “Much of his behavior recently has been – foolish, if you think of it from the perspective of someone who should be guarding the best interests of the Gusu Lan sect. So many of the things he has done have risked losing face for the sect. Marrying me out, not warning the sect about what he did, accusing me in public of taking his children…”

Wen Ruohan made a strangled noise deep in the back of his throat.

“That damn Wang Liu,” he spat out when they looked askance at him. His hands had tightened into fists, and he was glaring into the air, his gaze murderous. “He was the spy that – he was a traitor in my ranks, seemingly spying for me on Gusu Lan but in fact spying on me. Probably for Lanling Jin, though I believe now on behalf of Qingheng-jun.”

He was the one that had tricked Wen Ruohan into believing the worst about Lan Qiren, Lan Qiren assumed, and presumably also the one who had gotten Wen Ruohan to go to Jiujiang to set off the trap his brother had laid for him. One of Wen Ruohan’s own spies…yes, that tracked; they were the ones Wen Ruohan trusted the most. It seemed almost unbelievable that his brother would destroy such a valuable asset just to set up this trap, particularly given that Wen Ruohan seemed to have slipped out of the worst part of it with relative ease.

No, it was unbelievable. Lan Qiren’s brother was not a fool, except perhaps when it came to love. If he had done something, there was a reason – they just hadn’t figured out what that reason was yet.

“I was particularly reminded just now of a fact that appears in retrospect to be very unusual,” Wen Ruohan said. “At the Lotus Pier, during the discussion conference, it was Wang Liu who first informed me that the Lan sect heirs could not be found in the Cloud Recesses.”

Lan Qiren’s head jerked up.

“Are you saying he gave Xichen and Wangji to you deliberately? To you?” he exclaimed. “It is one thing to send me here, accepting or perhaps even hoping that I would end my days in your Fire Palace, but those are his sons – not only his sons, but the sect heirs! The next generation!”

Wen Ruohan’s face had spasmed as Lan Qiren spoke, and he looked down at his still-clenched fists with a grimace, looking as though he’d bitten into something bitter.

“Uh, Qiren-gege,” Cangse Sanren said, sounding amused. “You asked me to bring them here, too, remember? Anyway, I hate to poke a hole in the excellent theory the two of you are drawing up, but you’ve forgotten one thing: your brother is still Gusu Lan’s sect leader. If he really wanted to obliterate the sect, he has any number of far easier options he could take – I mean, just in terms of pure practicality, he could just poison your water source, couldn’t he?”

Lan Qiren scowled at her. “Thank you for that gruesome image, Cangse Sanren.”

The thought of everyone he loved choking to death, faces gone purple and foam on their lips – the bodies falling where they lay along the serene paths of the Cloud Recesses – no one left to bury the bodies, drawing in flies as the rot set in – the beauty of the place forever marred –

Cangse Sanren winced, looking embarrassed and, for once, a little ashamed of herself. “Yes, well, you know. Always a pleasure to trouble you, Qiren-gege.”

“Water source,” Wen Ruohan suddenly said. He was staring out into space again. “Water source. Redirection. The enhancement arrays!”

Lan Qiren frowned at him, not understanding. “Arrays? What are you talking about?”

He reached up to stroke his beard.

Cangse Sanren gave him a sharp look, and he abruptly remembered that he had been hiding that hand on purpose – it was the one missing the two smallest nails. He glanced at Wen Ruohan, who was still distracted by whatever revelation he was having, carefully completed the action to avoid drawing his attention, then tucked his hand back into his sleeve, giving Cangse Sanren a pointed look that encouraged her to disregard what she had noticed.

“I snuck Sect Leader Wen out of Jiujiang through the furthest tunnels left by the mine,” Cangse Sanren explained, clearly deciding not to ask any questions for the time being, though the set of her jaw suggested she was definitely going to bring it up again later on. “Spiritual iron, you know how it is; the tunnels go on for quite a while. While we were passing through, he noticed that some of the arrays in the mine weren’t suppression arrays – wait, did I mention the suppression arrays? The whole mine was full of them.”

Lan Qiren grimaced. Enough arrays to constitute a mine “full” of them suggested that it was more than merely a single person involved on the part of Gusu Lan, led by someone quite high-ranking.

Probably a sect elder, though he hadn’t had the time or resources to figure out who. No one else would have been able to get away with using the name of the sect rather than their own in purchasing the mine. Certainly no one else would have been able to conceal such a big matter from Lan Qiren when he had had the role of sect leader, and yet conceal it they had…

“Anyway, on top of the suppression arrays, all of which were at least ten years old, there were apparently a bunch of new arrays, these ones only a few months old at most. Sect Leader Wen said that they were enhancement arrays, the sort that you use to set up gate wards so that you can direct them from the inside, and…uh…something about water? For damming rivers?”

“Redirection arrays,” Wen Ruohan corrected her. He looked somewhere between appalled and begrudgingly impressed, which meant whatever he’d figured out was probably an utter atrocity on a scale that Lan Qiren could scarcely begin to contemplate – he had that sort of personality. “You use them for redirecting rivers, particularly when there’s a risk of flood, or when you’re trying to build up a dam. They’re exceptionally effective, if very much a blunt instrument, with no flexibility. However, you would never use them in a mine.”

Lan Qiren didn’t understand.

Judging from her face, neither did Cangse Sanren.

“There’s a reservoir not far from the mountain with the mine?” she offered. “Is that relevant?”

The expression on Wen Ruohan’s face shifted a little bit further towards “begrudgingly impressed.”

“Whatever the plan is, it is apparently even more unconscionable than we’d previously imagined,” Lan Qiren observed, suddenly and rather inappropriately touched by that dreadful feeling of mixed chagrin and fondness that he had developed when faced with Wen Ruohan’s ridiculousness. He brutally suppressed the feeling at once: even if it were not horribly inappropriate given the serious subject of their conversation, he suspected that Wen Ruohan would not be open to receiving any indications of his regard at the moment. If his reasoning regarding the motivation behind Wen Ruohan’s reaction was correct, his feelings were likely to be a sensitive subject. “I assume these redirection arrays are going to be used for something other than their intended purpose? Why would they not be used in a mine?”

Wen Ruohan’s lips twitched. “Consider the power required to redirect or dam up a river – to take all of that force of rushing water and change the direction in which it flows. Now imagine instead that you apply that force and power to the earth, which is far less flexible than water. Earth will not flow. It will break.”

“Uh-huh,” Cangse Sanren said. “So, what happens next? An earthquake or something?”

She paused, her lazy expression freezing and shifting into horror as she absorbed the implications of what she had just said. Lan Qiren was right there alongside her.

The mental image coming to mind was as bad as the one he’d had about the poison.

“An earthquake,” Wen Ruohan confirmed with macabre relish. “Even merely painting the new arrays will have knocked some of the original suppression arrays loose. Initial activation of the new arrays, filling them up with power to make them ready to use, would knock all the old ones down, dismantling them all in a single sweep, every single one of those arrays lined up along all those unstable tunnels. Full activation would try to twist those tunnels as if they were a riverbed – the whole mountain would start to tear in two, creating avalanches and landslides, churning up mud and rocks like water in the rapids, sending them down upon the local populace like the sudden onset of a flood. Add to that the presence of a reservoir, and you don’t just have a local catastrophe, but one capable of tainting the water for the entire area all around…!” He shook his head. “Nature itself would have trouble conceiving of a more calamitous disaster.”

“But why?” Lan Qiren cried out, trying to stand up – unsuccessfully, as Wen Ruohan caught him by the shoulders and Cangse Sanren reached out to press down on his knees, both of them holding him down. “Why would he do such a thing? Why – those are innocent lives in the valley! They’re not even cultivators! They have nothing to do with He Kexin, nothing to do with Gusu Lan – why would he harm them?”

“He’s mad. What other reason does he need?” was Wen Ruohan’s cynical answer.

“Ghosts,” Cangse Sanren said.

“…that is not a traditional reason for murder,” Wen Ruohan said, voice droll. “Rather the opposite; it’s usually more of a consequence. Ghosts?”

“No, not that, ghosts. The ghosts.” Cangse Sanren pulled back her hands and pressed the heels of both palms against her eyes as if it would help her think better. “The ghosts in the mine! They have a grudge against the Lan bloodline!”

“So you mentioned,” Lan Qiren said, feeling sick all over again. Who even knew how many were there? And all of them aimed at his sect, at his family, and with justice on their side, which automatically weakened the spells his Lan sect would use against them, stripping his kinsmen of their defenses without their knowing… “We all know what such a thing must signify, of course – ”

Cangse Sanren waved her hands in front of him, forcing him into silence, and leaped to her feet, starting to pace frantically, incoherently mumbling to herself at top speed as she worked out whatever idea she’d gotten.

(“Why does she get to pace and I don’t?” Lan Qiren asked Wen Ruohan, only half-serious.

“Shut up,” Wen Ruohan said.

“It seems unfair – ”

“People who nearly suffered qi deviation do not get a say.”)

Finally Cangse Sanren came to a halt, turning to look down at them both.

“Maybe you’re right,” she said. “Both of you, maybe you’re right. Maybe Qingheng-jun, that jerk, really does want to destroy Gusu Lan. Madness is as madness does, after all. But let’s take Sect Leader Wen as an example: being cruel or being mad doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy being in power, right?”

“Power is very nice, yes,” Wen Ruohan said, voice extremely dry.

She ignored him. “For Qingheng-jun, destroying Gusu Lan means destroying his own power base, just when he’d finally gotten it back. Isn’t that a pity? Isn’t that a waste?”

“If he is intent on revenge, he may not care for such considerations,” Lan Qiren pointed out.

“That’s true. But what if he did? What if there was a way to achieve both goals: to destroy the sect but still keep his power?”

“How?” Lan Qiren asked.

She pointed at his face, apparently uncaring of how extremely rude such a gesture was. “You nearly had a qi deviation just now, Qiren-gege,” she said. “Why? What were you thinking?”

Lan Qiren blinked, having not expected the question.

“I – I was thinking of justice,” he said, and shrugged helplessly. “Only that my sect must find whoever from Gusu Lan was involved in the tragedy at the mine and punish them. We must. Or else…I mean…what would be the point? Our rules are clear. They say – ”

Cangse Sanren held up her hand again, once more calling for silence.

“That’s it,” she announced. “That’s how you do it.”

Lan Qiren stared at her blankly.

“I understand,” Wen Ruohan said, which was good because Lan Qiren most certainly did not. He was frowning again. “Qingheng-jun does intend to obliterate Gusu Lan, only his intention is not to do so through the loss of its reputation or the rampant murder of its disciples. He intends to destroy its heart.”

“Its heart?” Lan Qiren asked.

Wen Ruohan’s eyes flickered over to him. He pressed his lips together tightly, his jaw working; he did not answer the question.

“The rules, Lan Qiren,” Cangse Sanren said, her voice as gentle as it ever got. “Your Lan sect rules.”

Lan Qiren opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

“We’re all orthodox cultivators, but your family rules are what makes your Gusu Lan sect unique,” she continued. “That’s what makes you you. And you, you of all Lan, are the exemplar of what it means to be devoted to those rules, the quintessential example of what it means to be a Lan of Gusu Lan.”

Maybe that’s why he hates you so much, she meant, and Lan Qiren – understood.

Now it was his turn to clench his hands into fists.

“I see,” he said, striving for calm – and getting it, but only because Wen Ruohan reached for his wrist and started transferring spiritual energy to him once more without saying a word. “I see. But I do not understand. The rules…the rules are merely principles. Even if our Wall of Discipline was destroyed, even if all of our most precious books were burned, the rules would still exist as long as there was someone left upon the earth that remembered them. How could he destroy them?”

“That’s the really nasty bit,” Cangse Sanren said, as if a plot that involved deliberately causing an earthquake had not yet reached the pinnacle of its evil. “The ghosts in the mine, and their bloodline grudge: that’s how it’ll happen. Initial activation to damage the suppression arrays, full activation to cause a landslide…”

She shook her head.

“I’m going out of order. Take a step back: look at it how an outsider would. Gusu Lan starts a war of conquest – sure, they try to blame Qishan Wen for it at first, but eventually the truth comes out, they were the ones that started it. They arrive in full force in Xixiang, a natural resting point. While they’re there, some ghosts start attacking them. That part’s not hard, the ones that already escaped from the suppression arrays won’t be able to resist the presence of that much Lan blood; they’ll be driven by their bloodline grudge to attack at once. Naturally, like any good cultivators, the Lan sect will respond at once to the presence of evil, initiating a counterattack.”

Lan Qiren nodded, following along.

“Only then, by apparent coincidence, something goes wrong. A minor earthquake, or so it seems. The suppression arrays, which they don’t know exist, are destroyed. Suddenly, for no reason they know of, all the ghosts get loose. All the ghosts attack. The Lan are taken by surprise by an offensive force far beyond their expectations, one that bears a grudge against them specifically. They have no choice but to counterattack with bigger moves, formations, arrays…”

“And then a major earthquake hits, seemingly in response to their actions.” Lan Qiren squeezed his eyes shut as hard as he could, causing himself pain in his temples. “The effects are devastating: destruction of human life in the local vicinity, death and misery in countless number, and on top of that the poisoning of the reservoir, promising years of hardship for all those that survive…it would seem as if it were their fault. They would think it was their fault.”

“What’s the point, otherwise?” Cangse Sanren echoed his earlier words. “Without justice, without honor, what’s the point of having all those rules? What’s the point of all that restriction and restraint, all those instructions designed to show you how to be righteous and virtuous, to show you how to be a good person, if in the end you still cause such atrocities with your own two hands…?”

Lan Qiren wanted to throw up.

It was – it was unthinkable. The guilt his Lan sect disciples would feel at what they thought they’d caused, the blame – and then, if his brother chose that moment, that moment, to reveal the truth of what had happened in the mine, to place the blame even more firmly on the corruption he believed underlaid the principles of Gusu Lan…

How had his brother put it, back in the Lotus Pier, when he had been enraged beyond reason, hurling accusations at Lan Qiren? Shameless and spoiled, he’d called him. Your so-inflexible righteousness scarcely hiding the rot of your hypocrisy…

Lan Qiren had had nearly three meltdowns simply after having found out about what some rotten apple in his sect had done in his sect’s name, and he had the assurance of knowing that he was not personally complicit in that crime. If he had thought that he was complicit, that he had contributed to it – he wasn’t sure he’d be able to live with himself.

The lonely mountains amidst the clouds, the mellow lake with the sweet calls of birds, that beautiful scenery of Gusu. Who could lay eyes upon such a scene and retain their serenity if they believed that their sins had split stone and poisoned water? Which among them would ever be able to go home again?

“It’s really very clever,” Wen Ruohan remarked. “The Lan sect would be decimated. Those who are like Lan Qiren here would likely die rather than give up on their rules or internal sense of order, and it doesn’t really matter whether they’d die directly through the shock of qi deviation or merely through suicide. But most of the rest of them would survive, broken-hearted and numb, and in so doing they would be the perfect captive audience for a charismatic sect leader. Pair that with a timely ‘discovery’ of what happened in the mine, which he could use as an excuse to execute any of the sect elders that do not stand with him, whether they were involved or not, and then there’s no one left to stop him. Unencumbered by the past or any restraint, Qingheng-jun would then be free to lead the whole Lan sect into a brand-new era, shaping them all in his own image and to his own liking…no, it really is very clever.”

He chuckled to himself, not noticing the appalled expression Cangse Sanren sent his way.

“You know what’s really well done? He even accounted for the fact that such a decimation would weaken his sect’s strength,” he said, waving a hand as he sketched it out. “This whole war business, getting me trapped in Jiujiang, setting me up…I’d wondered why he would be willing to burn such a valuable spy for a plan that wouldn’t work to destroy me, but this? This makes it all make sense. If everything had worked the way he planned, it might have been worth it. If I hadn’t been able to retreat through the mine, if I’d had no other choice but to start the war in reality, if I’d gone ahead and attacked the other sects to use their defenses as my own –”

Wait, had he really been considering that as an option?!

No, wait, he was Wen Ruohan. Of course he had. If anything, it was more a surprise that he’d refrained.

“ – if I’d done that, acted the way I always act, the way everyone expects me to act, then the other Great Sects wouldn’t have been able to pull back without killing me, or at least making a solid effort at doing so. A war between us at this stage would have no real victors. Whether or not the other sects did manage to take me down, it would have caused significant casualties on all sides. And then all five of the Great Sects would be weakened at once – the Lan through internal devastation, the others through war – so no one is left to take advantage of Gusu Lan’s weakness. Clever! Very clever. Very, very clever.”

“Are you finding this funny?” Cangse Sanren asked, then turned to Lan Qiren. “Is he finding this funny?”

Her tone suggested that she had more questions about Lan Qiren’s taste than anything else.

Lan Qiren had been asking himself the very same question. Unfortunately the answer seemed to be that it was a little like watching a cat enthusiastically batting at a toy mouse, rolling around in ecstatic murderous bliss – horrifying in its implication, watching a creature relishing its own potential cruelty to another living being, but somehow in its own way also strangely endearing.

He shrugged apologetically at her. As long as Wen Ruohan wasn’t getting any ideas of his own from this debacle…

“I have always appreciated art,” Wen Ruohan said haughtily, finally noticing their expressions. “Even when I am its target. Regardless of its vile aims, you must admit that the plan is skillfully made.”

“Well, I’d hope so, given that Qingheng-jun seems to have spent quite a few years of his seclusion doing little else but thinking of it.” Cangse Sanren rolled her eyes and tossed herself back onto her stool. “All right. Enough speculation. Even if this isn’t his plan, the potential consequences of us being right about it are so dire that we have no choice but to act as if it is. So the next question is, how do we stop it?”

“Our priority must be to prevent the disaster,” Lan Qiren said at once. “Even putting aside the psychological impact on my Gusu Lan sect, the loss of innocent life alone is unthinkable, and one cannot stop a landslide once it has begun. Preserving innocent lives must always come first.”

“That’s easier said than done, though,” Wen Ruohan pointed out. “Enhancement arrays are used to set up gate wards for good reason: the core array could be located anywhere, and only by stopping the core array will you be able to guarantee that it will not go off. Otherwise, the only way to stop the disaster is to dismantle each of the enhancement arrays individually, which is an extremely time-consuming process for most people.”

Cangse Sanren rolled her eyes. “Not for you, I assume.”

“What can I say? I am exceptionally powerful and exceedingly talented…though admittedly that many arrays would take quite a bit of time even for me. Anyway, my point is, we can’t just go around trying to break a bunch of arrays in the middle of a war zone. We would be set upon at once. The disaster cannot be our priority; stopping the war must take precedence.”

“Don’t forget the ghosts,” Cangse Sanren said with a frown. “If it’s a massacre of cultivators, especially the types of cultivators that are rogue cultivators or from small sects without soul-calming treasures or rituals, that means there are a lot of ghosts, and powerful ghosts, too. Even if we managed to stop the impending natural disaster, those ghosts being released would be a calamity in and of itself – and we’re all cultivators, aren’t we? Fighting evil takes precedence even over war.”

“Not if the war is itself perceived as fighting evil,” Wen Ruohan objected. “It’s not as if we’re still talking about a war of conquest here. And let us not forget, my Wen sect’s army is still there. Without my presence, they can stir up confusion and buy time, but eventually they will be overrun and taken prisoner, and I will have to buy them back at great cost.”

“That’s not the priority.”

“It is a priority,” Lan Qiren interjected, voice firm. “The Wen sect cultivators are innocent lives as well, Cangse Sanren. It is not their fault that my brother has decided to use them as a pawn in his strategy.”

She shrugged carelessly. “No, but it’s not the fault of those small sects in the area either, is it? They’re all probably burning through their family treasures at this very instant, trying to defend themselves from the Wen sect and its very deserved reputation – and it’ll be much worse when the other Great Sects get there. It always is, for the small sects. We have to move fast.”

“There’s a limit to how fast we can go. I can and will summon the rest of my army, but gathering and moving them will take some time.”

“We may not have the time. How long before the Lan sect forces reach Xixiang and trigger the first step in the trap…? They may be there already, even as we speak.” Lan Qiren shook his head, putting it all together in his head. There was only one solution he could devise to their situation, but Wen Ruohan and Cangse Sanren were not going to like it…

No matter.

He would convince them. He had to.

“The real issue here is not any one of the ones we have identified,” he said, “but rather the combination of all of them. It is that interconnectivity that makes my brother’s plan so difficult to oppose: we have too many problems to face, each of them equally important. We are all right, and all wrong – there is no precedence here, no order or hierarchy that can be established.”

He paused briefly.

“That means that the appropriate solution is – ”

“Absolutely not.”

Lan Qiren sighed as Wen Ruohan sat up straight and glared balefully at him. He had expected this.

Cangse Sanren looked between the two of them, and scowled. “What is it? What’s his suggestion?”

“He is suggesting that we split our forces,” Wen Ruohan spat out.

She blinked. “That seems…reasonable enough? When you’ve got both multiple problems and multiple problem-solvers…?”

“Oh yes, it’s very reasonable,” Wen Ruohan said. “Extremely reasonable. So reasonable, in fact, that there is no reason not to make the suggestion straightforwardly – and even someone as pedantic as our Lan Qiren does not talk in circles for no reason. Which means that there is a reason, and the reason is that he thinks that we’re going to dislike the split he is going to propose. And that means…”

“Lan Qiren,” Cangse Sanren exclaimed. “You cannot possibly be thinking of going somewhere by yourself!”

“It is the only logical conclusion,” Lan Qiren said firmly. “Between the two of you, you can sort out the main problems we are facing: the war, the arrays, the disaster, the ghosts. That leaves us with only one problem that you have not yet accounted for. The problem that lies behind all the others.”

“…your brother.”

“My brother,” Lan Qiren agreed.

They sat there in silence for a little while, Lan Qiren mentally going over his arguments as Wen Ruohan and Cangse Sanren both visibly seethed.

“I see your logic,” Cangse Sanren finally said, the words bitten out through her teeth. “He hates you, doesn’t he? I haven’t seen that much of it directly myself, only what I’ve heard and pieced together, but that type of hatred – that’s irrational. That’s what you’re going for, isn’t it?”

“It is irrational,” Wen Ruohan confirmed, though his lips were twisted into a grimace. “Qingheng-jun’s actions against Lan Qiren specifically have consistently gone beyond what might be expected from a sane man, much less as part of a strategic plot. I relied upon that tendency of his myself when I negotiated our marriage, and again later on; it appears to be as reliable as the sunrise. I agree that it is unquestionable that if there is anyone he will deviate from his plan for, it is Lan Qiren.”

Good. “Then you see – ”

“That does not mean that I agree that you should go confront him. Where would you even go? He is undoubtedly in the midst of the Lan sect encampment, and, surname aside, you are no longer a Lan. You belong to my Wen sect, and our sects are currently at war.” Wen Ruohan shook his head firmly. “If you try to go talk to him, he will simply have his disciples take you prisoner and use you as a hostage against me.”

Lan Qiren was distracted for a brief moment, wondering if such a ploy would work. More than likely, Wen Ruohan would just laugh in the messenger’s face at their gall in thinking they had a handle on him…no, he was being too cruel, both to himself and to Wen Ruohan. He personally thought it plausible that Wen Ruohan felt something for him, though he was likely in firm denial about it, but even if he didn’t, his overweening pride would never permit him to tolerate an insult to someone he had publicly claimed as one of his own.

“He will not be in the encampment,” he said instead. “He will be on his own, just as I will be.”

“What makes you so sure?” Cangse Sanren asked.

“Because this is his revenge. Because even in the Lotus Pier, he did not give an order, he took action himself, and knowing what I now know, I would expect nothing less.” Lan Qiren did not look at Wen Ruohan, not wanting to give himself away. “Nothing else would be enough.”

He had not had the leisure, if one could call it that, in the panicked interval between his discovery and the arrival of Wen Ruohan and Cangse Sanren and the rest to really sit down and imagine what it would be like for him if Wen Ruohan died. Even though he had heard the rumors that were currently flying through the Nightless City with abandon about what was going on in Jiujiang, the incipient war, the movement of all the Great Sects, the possible consequences, he had always remained confident that Wen Ruohan, at least, would remain untouched – he knew that the man was not mad, after all, and between his personal power and his paranoia, Wen Ruohan would be hard to pin down. He was practically a god, or at least he was always saying he was, and he unquestionably was the most powerful man in the cultivation world. What could harm him? What could possibly kill him, other than a clever betrayal such as this?

To think of it…

Lan Qiren did not want to think of it.

It was like thinking of something happening to one of his nephews, unthinkable and gut-wrenching.

It was also not helpful.

“That is why I must go face him alone,” he said, forcing himself to resume the conversation at hand. “Wen Ruohan correctly identified that the ideal approach to settling this issue without bloodshed would be to stop my brother from activating the core array in the first place. He will not go anywhere near that array if he believes he is being watched – under such circumstances, when faced with the choice between doing it personally or having it not be done at all, he would resort to ordering someone else to do it. But if the only one watching him is me…”

“Madness is as madness does,” Wen Ruohan said. “Cruelty is as cruelty does, too. If it’s you, he wouldn’t stop. On the contrary, he would probably take you there himself just for the pleasure of seeing the look on your face while he does it.”

Lan Qiren swallowed.

“Yes,” he said, and the voice inside his head that was still the child that had looked up to his distant but glorious elder brother cried out Why do you hate me so? “Yes, I agree. And that will give me the opportunity to find the core array, and, if I can, a way to stop him from activating it.”

“Qiren, I hate to remind you, but you didn’t exactly come out on top the last time you and your brother had a conversation, and that was when he was making an effort not to reveal himself as being completely insane,” Cangse Sanren said. She was nervously gnawing on her lower lip with her teeth. “I’m not even talking about the fact that he’s supposed to be this amazing swordsman that can put you to shame without blinking twice even before he went into seclusion to do nothing but focus on his cultivation for ten years, I mean that you ended up with internal injuries over a chat. And you’re in worse shape now than you were then – don’t think I didn’t see what happened to your hand!”

“Your hand?” Wen Ruohan said sharply, immediately reaching up to grab Lan Qiren’s arms and pulling them out in front of him, revealing his mangled fingers. “What happened – ”

“You do not get a say on this,” Lan Qiren informed him. “For what I think should be obvious reasons.”

Wen Ruohan’s face paled, but to give him credit for stubbornness, he carried on regardless. “They should not have touched you – ”

“You are not going to punish them for doing what you ordered them to do.” It was those poor seamstresses all over again. “The problem is not that people you have assigned a given task have carried out that task, even if the task happens to be torture. The problem is that you have a place devoted specifically to torturing people.”

“Wait, the Fire Palace?” Cangse Sanren said. “Are we talking about the Fire Palace? He put you in the Fire Palace?! Qiren – ”

“Please do not intervene in my marital affairs, Cangse Sanren.”

“This isn’t a marital affair, this is bullshit – ”

“Cangse Sanren, no vulgar language!”

“Yes, keep your nose and your mouth out of this,” Wen Ruohan said. “It’s none of your business – ”

“Qiren is my friend – ”

“Will you both be quiet?!” Lan Qiren shouted at the top of his lungs. “Now is not the time!”

Reluctantly, both Wen Ruohan and Cangse Sanren shut their mouths, though they looked unresigned.

Lan Qiren glared at them both.

After a little while, when they finally started to look a little more sheepish than angry, he finally spoke.

“He is my brother,” he said. “It is my sect he is seeking to destroy. My rules. Both of you know me well. You must know what it means to me, what he is doing. What it means to me personally.”

They knew. He could see it on their faces – they knew.

“You want to hold me back because you care for me. I understand that. But sending me against him is our best chance at stopping what is going to happen, and stopping what is going to happen is the most important thing right now. If my brother succeeds…if he breaks my sect…”

He pressed his lips together. He did not want to say it.

Not because it wasn’t true – do not tell lies – but because he knew it would hurt them both, these two people who, other than his nephews, at times seemed to be the only people left in the world who whole-heartedly cared for him.

But it was true.

“If my brother destroys my Gusu Lan sect, he will destroy me, too.”

It was just as Wen Ruohan had said: once the Lan sect’s heart was gone, once the rules were gone, those people like Lan Qiren would not be able to survive. Whether through qi deviation or by turning their swords against themselves, just as He Kexin had done… Lan Qiren had been sect leader. Sect leader, and for ten years – his sect had been more than merely his home, more than merely his family. It had been his constant companion, always in his thoughts; it had been as close to him as any wife or husband could ever be.

He had given his sect his entire life.

How could he do any less now?

“Fine,” Wen Ruohan said. His hands were fists again. “Fine. Have it your way. We’ll handle the rest of it, while you go to confront your brother.”

“Thank you,” Lan Qiren said, bowing his head.

And only then did he let himself begin to feel afraid.

Chapter Text

If there was one thing Wen Ruohan understood, it was patience.

After a hundred years and more, such a thing was inevitable. When he’d been young, he had been more impetuous, full of his Wen sect’s reckless arrogance, but even then he had been a little different from his brothers, who always rushed around from here to there, from secret plot to clever stratagem and back again without rest. Perhaps it had been the oddity of his earliest life experience that had first taught him the value of waiting, his family’s betrayal in the face of the Lan sect’s wrath having forced him to learn to rely only on himself to survive, and with that the painstaking slowness that came with doing things on his own. That lesson had been reinforced over the years, as his enemies had faded and he had not, as he outlasted first his own generation and then the next.

He'd never liked it, though.

He liked it still less now, when the waiting felt less like anticipation and more like helplessness.

That was simply contrary to the way the world was supposed to work. He was Wen Ruohan, the nearest thing the cultivation world had to a god, capable of moving armies with a flick of his sleeve; he was never helpless. Even when he faced a reversal of fortune, it was only ever temporary, a momentary upset, something to be incorporated into his schemes and paid back out later with interest. He was so incredibly powerful, both personally and politically – who or what in this world would dare to cause him to feel incapable of doing anything but worrying…?

Lan Qiren, of course. Who else?

That, he supposed bitterly, was the downside of having someone that he – that he cared for. It hadn’t really occurred to him before. He’d been too distracted by his pleasure at the notion of a genuine equal, someone who he could trust and be trusted by in turn, someone who would, as Lan Qiren had once so quaintly put it in his rules, be a partner to his wife, as his wife would be his…

No, it had been if, hadn’t it? If your wife will be yours.

Wen Ruohan hadn’t exactly been a very good partner to Lan Qiren.

Really, the only thing he disliked more than waiting and helplessness was guilt. There was a reason Wen Ruohan generally held himself above such petty emotions, and also, if he were willing to admit it to himself, a reason he’d reacted quite so badly to the notion that he had erred and erred so badly. His vanity generally did not permit him to dwell too long on such things, preferring to reorder the universe into one where everything was acceptable and nothing was actually his fault. It was just that, in the present situation, his conduct had been quite so egregiously wrong that it was making it a little more difficult than usual to readjust his perspective.

Wen Ruohan chuckled humorlessly.

No, he had to admit it: he was wrong, he had been wrong, and now, as a result of his own actions, he was forced to stand aside and wait while Lan Qiren, unsteady and already shaken, went on alone to face a man he had lost to in every prior encounter. The plan they had put together was completely reasonable, absolutely the most optimal way of countering everything Qingheng-jun had put together against them, but that didn’t mean Wen Ruohan liked it.

Just like he hadn’t liked it when he’d seen Lan Qiren like that.

Normally, Wen Ruohan enjoyed torture. He would hardly have refashioned the Fire Palace as he had if he didn’t – pain excited him, intrigued him, pulled him out of the dull boredom of the everyday and made him feel alive again. He enjoyed the sight of mangled flesh, enjoyed the workings of his clever machines, enjoyed the humiliation and enjoyed the screams. He enjoyed the way that those that survived were transformed by the experience, learning the meaning of fear and the meaning of shame, cringing away from this and from that, the monkey having been bitten by the snake learning to fear the rope…

Seeing the same in Lan Qiren made him want to obliterate the Fire Palace.

Lan Qiren’s torment hadn’t been as bad as it could have been, at least, and Wen Ruohan hated that he had to be thankful to his own subordinates’ disobedience for that. Lan Qiren hadn’t been maimed or crippled in any permanent way, hadn’t been shamed in some unspeakable fashion, hadn’t been broken – but he hadn’t been all right, either. When Wen Ruohan had returned to the Nightless City to see Lan Qiren standing there, expression as blank as a featureless stone, with circles under his reddened eyes and fingerprints of blood on his forehead ribbon, marked by what he later discovered were his own still-bleeding fingers…

It was as if all that beautiful arrogance that Wen Ruohan had spent so long helping Lan Qiren build up had been washed away, leaving nothing behind but the dull façade that he had been deceived by for so many years. It was a waste; it was a shame; It was – it was appalling.

Seeing it, Wen Ruohan had felt no pleasure, the way he usually did from seeing others hurting. There was no enjoyment to be had in Lan Qiren’s pain, no feeling of achievement, just – just –

(He gave his sons to you? Lan Qiren cried out, the memory playing again and again. To you?)

Just the knowledge that whatever benefit of the doubt Lan Qiren had previously extended to Wen Ruohan on account of their marriage was gone, he supposed. That whatever hope Wen Ruohan might have had of something better than he’d ever had before, a hope he might not even have wholly realized or acknowledged that he’d had, had been killed and buried with his own two hands.

And now, rather than try to repair it, rather than apologize or grovel or demand or explain or beg or do anything that he could think of to try to make it up somehow, he was here.

Waiting.

Their plan was sound, if risky. The lynchpin of Qingheng-jun’s plan as they had deduced it was the natural disaster, without which he could not drag the Lan sect into complicity and destructive guilt, but reasonably speaking they wouldn’t be able to stop the disaster without finding the core array, which could be anywhere – only Qingheng-jun knew where. Therefore, Lan Qiren would go to find his brother and try to convince him to take him along, counting on Qingheng-jun’s cruelty and hatred of him to overwhelm his good sense; once he had found the core array, he would set off a flare as a signal, and Wen Ruohan would come to his side at once, both to destroy the array and to prevent Qingheng-jun from attacking Lan Qiren. Even if he no longer trusted the word of his Lan sect spies, Wen Ruohan was still confident that he would easily be able to defeat Qingheng-jun in battle, even after the man’s ten years of secluded cultivation.

It was a good plan, a sound plan, and indeed the only possible plan. Lan Qiren had even agreed that he would try to let off the flare early if he thought Qingheng-jun posed a danger to his life or well-being, even if he hadn’t found the core array yet.

Wen Ruohan had pretended to believe him.

Of course, they weren’t foolish enough to rely entirely on Lan Qiren’s chance of success.

Cangse Sanren had headed off to Xixiang, planning to take advantage of Qingheng-jun’s hoped-for absence – and his distraction by Lan Qiren, if all went as they hoped – to try to convince the Lan sect to move their encampment away from the area near the mine. She’d reasoned, quite correctly, that if the Lan sect weren’t there, they would be less likely to be attacked by the ghosts in the mine and therefore less likely to blame themselves even if the mountain collapsed. Lan Qiren had initially objected to her focusing her efforts there on the grounds that it would do nothing to reduce the loss of innocent life from the disaster, but he’d yielded quickly enough when she’d pointed out that it would at a minimum prevent additional loss of life among the equally innocent Gusu Lan disciples through guilt and devastation.

Personally, Wen Ruohan thought it was an ingenious counterplay, threatening to rip out the heart of Qingheng-jun’s real goal. More importantly, if Cangse Sanren could pull it off, it would save Lan Qiren’s sect - which was Lan Qiren’s primary goal - and in so doing save Lan Qiren himself. As long as that was done and Lan Qiren’s safety was assured, who cared about the disaster…? Natural disasters happened, people died, it wasn’t their problem.

As for how Cangse Sanren planned to get the Lan sect to get up and leave…

(“Oh, please,” Cangse Sanren chuckled. “This is Gusu Lan we’re talking about, the sect of Do not tell lies. Tricking them will be a snap, easier than catching fish in a barrel… No, don’t glare at me like that, Qiren-gege, you know it’s true.”

“Moving an entire encampment is hardly a small undertaking,” Wen Ruohan pointed out. “They won’t do something like that just because someone asks politely. What is your actual plan?”

“Oh, I’ll think of something.” She grinned. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll tell them that they need to move as soon as possible because my master, Baoshan Sanren, is planning to park her celestial mountain there.”

A few moments of silence.

“No one would believe that,” Lan Qiren said flatly. “Or if they did, it would rapidly be disproven.”

“I don’t need them to believe me for very long,” Cangse Sanren said, unruffled. “I just need them to believe me long enough to move. We can worry about the rest later.”)

Indeed, We can worry about the rest later made up a considerable portion of their plan.

For his part, Wen Ruohan had assigned himself two tasks in addition to waiting for Lan Qiren’s signal.

First, there was the matter of the brewing war – while dealing with the disaster and the threat to the Lan sect was of necessity their first goal, they wouldn’t be able to act freely in the region if there was a war being fought at the same time. Not to mention the likely risk posed to any cultivators who were in the midst of battle when the disaster struck, especially if they weren’t good at or even incapable of flying away on their swords; Wen Ruohan might not care too much about the impact on his enemies, but he certainly cared about his soldiers, and Lan Qiren and Cangse Sanren were concerned about anyone innocent who might be in harm’s way.

That meant, of course, that they had to find a way to stop the war.

Since they’d decided that they couldn’t risk waiting for the rest of Wen Ruohan’s army to finish mobilizing, choosing instead to rush back towards Xixiang with the hope that the army would not take too long to catch up, Wen Ruohan had, on the way there, devised a plan to put an end to the war using only the single battalion he already had in place.

It was, he could say without false modesty, an absolutely brilliant plan. Moreover, it was a plan that was very characteristic of him, and something only he and his Wen sect could pull off.

When he’d explained, it had made Lan Qiren sigh loudly in exasperation and Cangse Sanren laugh so hard that she’d needed to sit down on her sword.

The plan consisted of dividing his battalion into small squadrons, each one led by a single captain, each captain entrusted with a special mission. The squadrons would all scatter throughout the area, using the cover of night and the forested hills to disguise their actions. Each one would separately and simultaneously approach one of the local sects, forgoing all subtlety. In each instance, the squadron captain would swagger up to the local sect’s front gate, shameless and arrogant in the inimitable style of the Wen sect, introduce themselves as the head of the entire Wen battalion, and offer the local sect the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to join Qishan Wen in a temporary alliance to overcome and conquer all the other sects in the area.

Which was to say – the chance to effectively stab all of their most annoying neighbors in the back.

(“And because each of them will think that my entire battalion is sitting on their doorstep, none of them will dare refuse outright, even if they don’t want to accept the offer,” he explained. Cangse Sanren had been hooting like an owl by that point, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes, while Lan Qiren had put one hand up to cover his eyes as soon as he’d first figured out where Wen Ruohan was going with his proposal and not removed it since – he seemed to be pretending that he couldn’t hear him, or perhaps that he didn’t know him. “In any event, they will have to stop taking any other action until they figure out their next move. Which will involve summoning and conferring with their elders, reaching a decision, planning a negotiation strategy…”

“And if no one makes any moves because your captains are all stalling them to the best of their ability, then there is functionally speaking no war for us to worry about,” Lan Qiren agreed. His voice was extremely dry. “At least until the other Great Sects’ forces arrive. Or until someone gets the bright idea of checking to see what everyone else is doing.”

“But no one will doubt the offer long enough to check,” Cangse Sanren hiccupped. “After all, no one can match the Wen sect for sincerity when it comes to treachery. Amazing!”)

Wen Ruohan had already accomplished that part of his plan. They had split up as soon as they’d arrived back in the area – Lan Qiren had already been gone for some time, Cangse Sanren for only a little less time than that, but army discipline meant that Wen Ruohan had been able to summon the captains and give them the necessary instructions relatively quickly. He had done so, and they had scattered at once, and although he’d had no time or to receive reports on their progress, he still had eyes. Around half a shichen ago, he’d started to observe significantly fewer visible movements in the surrounding area – no more sects activating their defenses, no squadrons of sect cultivators flying from place to place, and certainly no more skirmishes. Even straining his ears, he could not hear the clash of sword upon sword from anywhere in the region.

That was that for the war, at least for now.

As Lan Qiren had correctly noted, the stratagem only bought them time, since Wen Ruohan would not be able to similarly trick the other Great Sects, and no matter how much his captains tried to draw out negotiations – asking to be treated to dinner, insisting on looking over the local sect’s fighting strength, nitpicking a potential agreement, that sort of thing – eventually one of the local sects would choose to either agree or reject the offer. At that point, the bluff would be revealed, and the war would be back on, with his Wen sect very much in the middle of it all.

We can worry about the rest later, as Cangse Sanren had put it. Wen Ruohan could only hope that the rest of his army would arrive by then. He’d told them to hurry.

At any rate, once he’d completed that first task, Wen Ruohan had gone to ground at the edges of the mine at the base of the mountain, careful to avoid encountering anyone else. He’d followed the lengthy and irrationally laid out tunnels until he was as close as possible to the water – the poisoning of the local water source being by far the biggest threat from the disaster – then started walking slowly along the shoreline, breaking the enhancement arrays beneath his feet as he went, at all times still keeping an eye on the horizon for any sign of Lan Qiren’s signal flare. That was his second self-assigned task: to destroy as many of the arrays as possible in advance, so that should Lan Qiren fail in his mission, the effects of the disaster would be minimized.

(Lan Qiren had smiled when Wen Ruohan had announced that part of his plan. It had been very brief, the slightest curve appearing and then gone, easily missed, but it had been there.)

Unfortunately, the work was about what Wen Ruohan had expected: exceedingly tedious and exceptionally futile. He was both extraordinarily powerful and a master of arrays, able to interpret and pinpoint weaknesses in the ones he saw almost immediately and to act upon those weaknesses nearly as quickly – he could break three or even four in the time it took to drink a cup of tea, a truly staggering rate. Most cultivators that boasted themselves array masters would take that entire time to break just one, and a cultivator unfamiliar with arrays would need even longer.

Despite that, his progress was painfully slow. Qingheng-jun had had months to prepare, and it seemed that he had made full use of that time – there were hundreds of enhancement arrays in place, many generated through the application of talismans that he’d undoubtedly had his Lan sect disciples create, and any number of them had been cleverly supplied with alarms designed to alert the maker should there be any tampering. Naturally Wen Ruohan did not allow such a thing, disabling the alarm first and then the array, but that took even more time. And while he had had the wisdom not to mention it to the others, he knew that merely breaking the arrays was only an act of hope, not necessarily a surefire means of reducing the damage.

The real damage would be caused by the breaking of the suppression arrays through the initial activation and, eventually, by the landslide that would be caused by full activation – and neither of those relied on every single one of the arrays being intact, the way a large-scale spell might. Even if only a small handful of arrays remained, provided that they were in the right places, both effects could still be triggered…

No, truly preventing the disaster depended entirely on Lan Qiren.

On whether he could stop his brother – whether he could stop any of it.

Of course, there was also the problem of what to do with the mine and the ghosts, which they hadn’t fully settled. Lan Qiren had been adamant that whoever was involved in the Lan sect needed to face punishment, a notion to which Wen Ruohan hardly objected, but they had all agreed that to the extent it was possible to restrict knowledge of that punishment and the cause of it to the Lan sect, that would be preferable. Each sect had its own dirty laundry – and, yes, the Wen sect more than most, Wen Ruohan had to concede that undeniable truth – and there was simply nothing good about establishing a precedent of airing it for public consumption. There was still the Lan sect’s dignity to consider, not to mention the inheritance of Lan Qiren’s nephews, who were now also his nephews. It wasn’t just the Lan sect, either, but all the Great Sects: Wen Ruohan was as invested as anyone in making sure that the small sects did not band together in opposition and condemnation of their more powerful brethren.

Unfortunately, whether it would be possible to convince Qingheng-jun to keep quiet about the mine was very much an open question. For that matter, whether it would be possible to keep the ghosts from spilling the beans was equally in question – as Lan Qiren himself so often taught, the orthodox approach was for cultivators to first question and seek to liberate, and only later to suppress and eradicate. While the method practiced varied from sect to sect, every cultivator worth their salt had some means of communicating with upset spirits.

Well, again: worry about the rest later.

Wen Ruohan was considering proposing that Lan Qiren adopt that as a new rule for his collection. It’d probably make the other man make a face at him – which at least would be some sort of reaction –

Where was Lan Qiren, anyway? The core array could be anywhere within a very large space, to be sure, but there were still limits, and anyway Qingheng-jun couldn’t just up and abandon his sect in the middle of an offensive war he himself had proposed, planned, and launched. The array had to be somewhere nearby. Lan Qiren should have found him by now.

Lan Qiren should have signaled by now.

Wen Ruohan scowled and snapped the next array with somewhat more violence than strictly required.

It was rather maddening, all these thoughts and feelings. He had long ago started wondering if he would not be better off without them entirely – there were books he had found, ancient forbidden texts that detailed the heartless way, cutting off your emotions and achieving perfect clarity of purpose. It was said that being bound to worldly matters dragged you down, so theoretically if he followed that way and severed his emotions, he might grow even more powerful than he was now. He might even at last take that final half-step and achieve divinity, his long-sought-after dream, second only to his desire to master the cultivation world. Certainly he would never again be tied down by this – this dreadful feeling, this weakness, this sensation of his well-being being bound to another person against his will, of it being dependent on another person…

On the other hand, he would also probably have to give up sex, and he liked sex.

He liked Lan Qiren, too.

It was so frustrating. Lan Qiren was an endless mix of contradictions, confusing in the extreme: he was boring and he was fascinating, dull and brilliant in equal measure. He had a strange sense of humor beneath his severity, and he was wholly sincere in his pedantry. He was naturally ascetic, but still stubbornly refused to give up on that which he enjoyed, with duty being the only thing that would stop him. He genuinely sought to hold himself to each and every one of those ridiculous sect rules that he valued so highly, and by and large he succeeded, though there were certainly some he adhered to better than others – do not succumb to rage came to mind as a notable exception. And yet he also possessed certain wicked qualities that his sect would likely not approve of: he had not been playing the martyr when he had offered Wen Ruohan his pain, had enjoyed every moment, and he had been equally serious about his offer to pay Wen Ruohan’s threats back in kind, taking visible delight in tormenting Wen Ruohan in turn; he had called it mutually consensual sadism, and Wen Ruohan had to admit that the term seemed to fit.

Lan Qiren loved order, hated change, but willingly wielded chaos like a weapon.

He lacked social graces, lacked understanding of others, but had learned to play politics with the best.

He, like everyone, knew better than to trust Wen Ruohan. He’d chosen to do so anyway.

He had turned Wen Ruohan’s world upside down.

And Wen Ruohan…Wen Ruohan had made a mistake in choosing not to trust him in turn.

That was the real mistake he’d made, the one that no amount of face-saving explanations or distortions could dismiss. Anyone could be fooled by a good trick or an excellent spy, but Wen Ruohan could have foiled all their tricks if only he had been willing to hear Lan Qiren out. If only he had truly been as indifferent to betrayal as he’d taken himself to be…or if, given that he could not be indifferent where Lan Qiren was concerned, he had at least decided to take a chance on Lan Qiren’s good faith, which had never failed him yet. But he hadn’t. He hadn’t done that.

He had been wrong.

Simply, truly, unquestionably wrong.

And perhaps he really had ruined everything. Perhaps Lan Qiren really would now forever react to him with fear rather than joy, with suspicion rather than trust; perhaps there was nothing that could ever be done to fix it. Perhaps instead of living in the palace of heaven, he would live only in its ruins, seeing at every moment the shape of what could have been and the disappointing reality that remained in its place – and know that it was his fault that it was that way.

Well, if so, so be it. He was Wen Ruohan, was he not?

He had achieved things that others only dreamed of. He had outlived his brothers, taken his sect’s seat of power, conquered half the cultivation world – he had lived beyond a single human lifetime, breaking the shackles of time and seizing eternity in the palm of his hand, bending it to his will. There were things he could do that others couldn’t, but there wasn’t anything others could do that he could not.

Other people had survived a self-inflicted broken heart. So would he.

Especially since unlike most of them, he still had Lan Qiren. Lan Qiren was his. Lan Qiren had sworn it, had given him his oath and his vows, and Lan Qiren did not tell lies.

Wen Ruohan was going to find a way to fix things between them, or at least improve them, no matter what it took.

He was going to…

He was going to go kill someone if Lan Qiren didn’t use his fucking flare already.

It should have come by now. He should have seen it by now. They had been concerned that Qingheng-jun would find a way to disable the flare if he saw it, so Lan Qiren had both a primary and a back-up; the flares were resistant to damage, spiritual energy, and even water. Wen Ruohan had checked their solidity himself, and in cultivation, at least, he did not make mistakes.

Something was wrong.

If Qingheng-jun dared to lay a hand on Lan Qiren…

There was an extremely faint crackling sound, paper and powder whispering as it lit up in flame, the recognizable sound of a flare about to go off – at last! Wen Ruohan turned his head at once, eyes eagerly scanning the horizon, looking, hoping…but no.

It was a flare, but it was Gusu Lan’s cloud sigil, not his Wen sect’s sun. That was Cangse Sanren’s signal, as she’d promised, coming from well across the valley – she’d gotten the Lan sect to move, then, somehow. Hopefully they hadn’t actually fallen for her nonsense about the celestial mountain, as that would be just too ridiculous…

Still, that was good.

With the Lan sect out of the way, a core part of Qingheng-jun’s plan would not be able to come to fruition. If the Lan sect wasn’t there, the ghastly morality play Qingheng-jun had concocted wouldn’t be able to move ahead: the ghosts would not attack them, they would not counter-attack the ghosts, and they would not find themselves seemingly at fault for a great disaster.

Lan Qiren’s unstated threat would not come to pass.

He hadn’t meant it as a threat, Wen Ruohan knew. He had intended for it to be merely a statement of fact, but it was a threat nonetheless, and Wen Ruohan always took threats seriously. He wasn’t going to let Lan Qiren out of his grasp by any means, by any method, and he certainly wasn’t about to let the man die of grief or suicide because his sect had been destroyed.

No – it was good that Cangse Sanren had succeeded. It meant that their plan was working.

Only…if she’d succeeded, that meant Qingheng-jun definitely couldn’t be with the Lan sect now. And that meant that he had to be somewhere else. Presumably by the core array. Presumably with Lan Qiren. Who still hadn’t given out the signal –

What if something really had gone wrong? What if Lan Qiren wasn’t sending the flare because he couldn’t, because Qingheng-jun had somehow immobilized him or hurt him or driven him to that qi deviation he had been narrowly avoiding? What if Qingheng-jun became angry upon finding out that the Lan sect was no longer where he needed it to be and tried to take it out on him? What if…

Wen Ruohan’s ears were extraordinarily sensitive.

All of his senses were. His high level of cultivation had sharpened them to an extreme, to the point that he often spent a fair amount of passive strength just to dull them back to something normal lest he lose his mind. He had deliberately lifted his efforts at suppression now in his attempt to spot the signal he was waiting for as quickly as possible, using the eyes of an eagle and the ears of a bat to track all the elements of his surroundings – or, well, at least the specific sounds he was looking for, since trying to listen to something more general, like human speech or even familiar human speech, would be liable to deafen him. In this case he was listening for a flare, or something like it, and that had been the reason he had been able to identify Cangse Sanren’s signal from the infinitesimal sound of its ignition, well before the light of the firework had even started to spread out into the characteristic cloud shape.

He heard something now.

It was an even smaller sound than the flare. It was not unlike the sound of a small bit of gravel hitting the ground – quieter than a whisper, softer even than the faint sound of wind gently brushing over the grass. It was so quiet, so faint, that most people wouldn’t have heard it, and so innocuous that most people wouldn’t pay it any mind even if they did hear it.

But Wen Ruohan was not most people. He knew that sound.

It was the sound of an array activating.

And it wasn’t just the sound of initial activation, the moment an array began to fill with spiritual energy in order to prime it for later work. It was full activation: spiritual energy starting to flood through each of the enhancement arrays simultaneously, causing the complex machinery of the array to start to work at once, kicking off the spell that underlaid its workings, the array inexorably pushing forward to fulfill its purpose – like setting a great wheel rolling downhill.

Like setting off an unstoppable avalanche.

Qingheng-jun had activated the core array, just as they’d feared. Only, presumably realizing that his plan to destroy the Lan sect’s heart was no longer viable, he hadn’t chosen to activate it in two parts, but rather, all at once.

Wen Ruohan looked up at the mountain.

Before his eyes, the mountain shook.

The redirection arrays tried their utmost to twist the pathways of the tunnels within the mine the way they might twist a riverbed. The mountain, made of stone rather than silt, began, with a terrible grinding sound that grew into an even more terrible roar, to shift upon its base.

The tunnels within the mine began to collapse. Stone fell, destabilizing other stone, which in turn fell on top of it to take its place. The heavens themselves seemed to shudder as the mountain swayed, seeking to regain its stable footing…and then the grinding sound, which had come from deep within the tunnels below, faded, only to be replaced by a sound that was far more terrifying: the cracking sound of rocks splitting, coming from above.

The mountain’s summit was coming apart.

A landslide was about to begin.

Wen Ruohan was at that precise moment standing at the base of the mountain, right in the path of the upcoming destruction. He was no longer especially close to the reservoir, his winding walk along the tunnels having taken him further away from there. It seemed that he had destroyed enough of the arrays near there that the effects of activation were slightly muted, as he had barely dared to hope – the cracks in the summit were mostly focused on the other side of the mountain, such that the landslide would come tumbling down directly upon the prosperous little towns at the base of the mountain rather than falling into the reservoir that they relied upon.

That was good. The loss of life in the towns would be considerable, yes, but there would be no taint to the water supply, provided that the corpses from the town were cleaned up with relative swiftness. Assuming the common people here were supplied with sufficient silver in recompense, the local county would be able to rebuild itself within a few years, rather than having to wait a decade or more until the water was clear once again.

It wasn’t what they’d hoped for, especially Lan Qiren, but it was at least something, wasn’t it?

Wen Ruohan had done his best. It was not his fault that Lan Qiren had failed in his mission – he had succeeded in his own, both in averting the war to remove any innocent cultivators from the area and in destroying enough of the arrays to minimize the damage caused by the landslide. He had done what he had promised to do. He needed only to take to the air on his sword and he could watch the destruction from a place of safety, satisfied in having done what he could.

He could even use the time to go searching for Lan Qiren, who was undoubtedly even now in dire straits. Lan Qiren cared so much about righteousness and the preservation of innocent life, no matter the cost; he would never have willingly allowed Qingheng-jun to set off the array.

That was what Wen Ruohan should do.

That was not what Wen Ruohan did do.

Instead, he lifted up his hands and summoned every iota of spiritual energy he had ever possessed, pulling it all into the space between his palms and using it to call forth the most terrible weapon he had ever invented.

Wen Ruohan had discovered it decades before in a moment of idle experimentation, and he had nearly killed himself in the process. He’d noticed that his arrays were invariably less powerful the greater the area he tried to spread them over, so he’d started playing around in the other direction, miniaturizing his arrays, trying to see how small and pinpoint an area he could affect with any level of precision, and then going beyond even that. In fact, he had been right: making something smaller made it more powerful, and by an exponential degree, and when you then pulled the smaller out to become larger once more, all sorts of strange effects took place. Delighted by his discovery, he’d gone further and further and further, until he had discovered this.

He called it the black sun.

It wasn’t, of course. If anything, it was the opposite of a sun, a great gaping void of nothing but yin energy, cold and ruthless, sucking everything into its immeasurable belly, endlessly insatiable; if his own cultivation style hadn’t been so heavily yang, merely being in contact with it would have done him permanent damage. It was this power that warped his surroundings whenever he let even a little bit of it loose – he had never before brought it out in public as anything larger than the smallest grain of rice, and even just that had been enough to knock half the cultivators in the cultivation world to their knees back at the Lotus Pier, a magnificent display of his power.

He summoned more than that now. He needed more than that, now, if he was going to do this thing.

This incredibly stupid thing.

What are you doing, he raged at himself even as he pulled forth the black sun, first as a grain of rice, then as a grain of barley, then slowly, painfully, growing it to the size of a cherry, the sheer impossible force of maintaining it wracking his body with agony. You could just fly away! Why have you chosen instead to do the impossible, like some madman surnamed Jiang? No man can fight a mountain and win!

That was inescapably true.

But he might be able to fight it just long enough to keep the worst of the landslide from hitting the towns.

There was really no point to what he was doing. The people in the towns beneath the mountain weren’t cultivators, unless some unfortunate soul had decided to go to ground there to wait out the war. It certainly didn’t contain any member of his Wen sect, which he cared about, and he’d already seen Cangse Sanren’s confirmation that the Lan sect, which Lan Qiren cared about, was no longer anywhere in the vicinity. That meant that there was no benefit to saving the town, no gain, nothing he’d get out of it. It wasn’t a night-hunt and he wasn’t fighting evil, so he wouldn’t even win fame, except perhaps for being even more insane than he was already said to be.

There was no point.

There was no reason for him to do what he was doing.

Except only that Lan Qiren would want him to.

Wen Ruohan gritted his teeth as the first massive chunks of rock began to tumble down the mountainside, only to be obliterated by his black sun – not even ripped into pieces, but ripped apart, utterly destroyed, turning at once into dust that floated away with the wind. The earth under his feet was being warped by the pressure that wrapped all around him, the wind starting to scream loudly as it passed him by, being sucked into the black sun in his hands.

More and more rocks began to slide down.

A cherry would not be enough. He drew in more power, pushing the boundaries further than he had ever taken them before, not even in his most private and carefully guarded experiments.

The wind around him screamed.

The warping effect was getting larger: the earth beneath him was hollowing out, a sunken crater steadily forming around him as the sheer weight pulled him down, and above him the very clouds were bending their heads towards him as if to salute his achievement. Mist began to fill the valley as their vapor slithered downwards, drawn in by the force of his power.

The black sun was now the size of an unripe plum.

Wen Ruohan’s body felt as though it, too, were trying to rip itself apart, trying to disintegrate just as the rocks ahead of him were. His spiritual energy streamed out of him as if from a full barrel of water that had suddenly sprung a leak, gushing out freely, and he could no longer control how much or from where he was summoning that power, whether from his own reserves or from his very life force. He had truly committed himself now.

Out of the corner of his eye, he distantly noted the appearance of a familiar flag in the air, the fearsome beast that proclaimed the arrival of Qinghe Nie. For a moment he wondered if something had changed, if Lao Nie had done something different, made another choice – but no, it wasn’t just them. There was Lanling Jin’s peony as well, being held in front of a crowd of yellow-clad cultivators, and beside them was Yunmeng Jiang’s lotus and Gusu Lan’s cloud, each represented in turn. And in the air with all of them, in smaller numbers, were cultivators in dozens of different outfits, the representatives of all the local small sects.

The Great Sects had arrived.

And just when Wen Ruohan was starting to think that that was going to be an issue, that the war had somehow despite his best efforts kicked off in earnest, he saw his own Wen sect’s flag in the air as well, the blazing red sun right there along with the others, his red-and-white clad cultivators standing on their swords right beside the rest without any apparent rancor.

He couldn’t hear anything over the sound of the wind in his ears, couldn’t devote very much time or effort to thinking about anything other than the rocks and mud rolling down before him, but he thought he saw pointing – arms waving, sleeves flapping in the wind – the familiar sight of arrays flickering into the air…liberation arrays, backed with suppression and eradication, the sort used in night-hunts.

The sort used to fight ghosts.

Oh, well, that’s good then, Wen Ruohan thought absently to himself as he used a very small portion of his attention to watch the forces of the Five Great Sects, plus a bunch of smaller sects, descend all together against the wailing flood of ghosts and specters and jiangshi that were streaming out of the base of the mountain. This way they won’t have time to ask them any questions.

The activation of the redirection arrays had essentially destroyed the mine, as Qingheng-jun had no doubt intended – he wouldn’t have wanted people to figure out his involvement in what had happened, covering up his deliberate initiation of the disaster. But without the initial set-up, without the theater, there wasn’t any reason that anyone would ascribe the ghosts here to a single massacre, nor connect that massacre to the Lan. This was a whole mountain, after all, and who could tell at first view how old the ghosts and jiangshi and whatnot were? For all anyone knew, these spirits could be the accumulation of decades or centuries, victims of landslides and robbers and all the rest.

Best of all, it wasn’t just the Lan sect fighting them. The Lan sect was unknowingly hobbled by the circumstances: the ghosts from the mine massacre, strengthened by having justice on their side, would be twice as powerful when fighting against those they correctly blamed, and the Lan sect’s spells would in turn be only half as effective against them. This would have been noticeable at once if the Lan had been the only ones fighting them, but they weren’t. Now they were just part of a crowd, and the ghosts had no special advantages against the Nie, or the Jiang, or the Jin, or even his Wen. If perhaps the Lan sect would in the final count be found to have made somewhat fewer contributions in this battle than they typically did, then that could easily be overlooked, and perhaps blamed on their new leadership…

Yes, this was good.

A stray pebble shot past his face, the sheer speed of it cutting a gash into his cheek, and Wen Ruohan scowled, returning his full focus to the battle he was at that moment fighting. He’d gotten most of the bigger rocks by now, he thought, and stopped them early enough that they hadn’t been able to kick up too much mud and trees, nor to tear up the landscape as they fell and cause a real full-scale mudslide. Now it was the smaller bits that were coming down, inescapable, destructive but not necessarily deadly.

Good.

Now came the hard part.

Wen Ruohan very carefully began to close his hands. The black sun within his palms resisted him, not wanting to close. It was as insatiably hungry as his Wen sect’s ambition, an endless sucking mouth that consumed all it touched, even light; it was so cold that it burned him, leaving searing marks on his palms as he forced it down, bending it to his will. Forcing it to his will.

Smaller, smaller – it was back to a cherry now, but it was resisting him even more. It knew that he wanted to fold it up and put it away, cut it free so that it could not touch the world again without an explicit summons, and it did not want to be banished. It wanted to stay, and eat, and destroy all that there was, and it wanted to eat up Wen Ruohan not least of all, greedily drinking in all the spiritual energy that he was using to control it, sucking the qi right out of his meridians like water pouring down a open drain.

But it was not the master here.

A thousand arrays appeared between Wen Ruohan’s hands, woven into a complex matrix of overlapping lines, multiplied a hundred times over. Smaller, smaller, smallest – each array was built on ten others, which were built on ten more, and ten more besides; some of them, the littlest ones, were so small that even he with his tremendously sensitive vision could not see them, but that was inconsequential. They were all in his mind, drawn out in perfect detail, a thousand points of starlight blazing bright, and through his power were made real.

He pushed the black sun smaller.

Smaller. Smaller.

The black sun was the size of a grain of rice once more, spinning in place like a marble. The wind was starting to return to normal speeds, and the sky above him was starting to clear – despite summoning the clouds and rain, he had managed not to call down any sort of heavenly tribulation onto his head. This meant that he was not yet a god, but still only a half-step removed. He had more to do in order to achieve divinity.

But not now.

For now, he had done enough.

With one last great effort, Wen Ruohan brought his palms together, and the black sun disappeared.

With it, the wind died away entirely, leaving his ears strangely ringing from the sudden onset of silence. The crater he was standing in had grown very large, extending outwards all around him, and it was by now deep enough that, with his feet on the ground, the top of his head was still beneath the level of the ground outside the crater. He could no longer clearly see the horizon around him, but could only look up, instead.

Up at the sky – at the clouds that now drifted peacefully through the air, heedless of all cares beneath them, and, above even them, the blazing sun in the midday sky. That was good, too: Wen Ruohan’s cultivation style was classic Wen, yang-based to the extreme, and that meant his power was at its apex at midday.

Perhaps, if it had been any other time of day, he would not have been able to do what he had done.

What he had done…

Wen Ruohan blinked at the mountain, watching as the rolling wave of dirt and rocks – smaller than the ones from before but still considerable, with the biggest of the bunch being as large as his fist or even his head – rushed down towards him. He felt almost as if he should do something. Only at this moment he couldn’t quite think of what, exactly, that might be…

A pair of hands grabbed him by the waist and pulled, and then he was aloft on someone’s sword, flying above the pandemonium that rumbled beneath his feet.

“Forgot how to fly, did you?” Cangse Sanren asked in his ear, her voice warm and amused. “Come on, Sect Leader Wen, remember your dignity – summon your sword.”

Right. His sword. Flying.

He knew how to do that.

Only it was oddly harder than usual, calling for his sword from the pouch he kept in his sleeve, and it jerked around awkwardly when he stepped on it, letting it bear his weight. Cangse Sanren was right. He did not want to be carted around like some small child in need of rescue, not when he could make his way on his own, mindful of his pride.

His pride did not, however, object to Cangse Sanren guiding him in the direction she wanted him to go, taking him over to one of the nearby hills where the remaining remnants of the landslide would not hit. Even if it had, he would have been hard pressed to reject her – he was suddenly aware that everything hurt, pain radiating through his body in a way that suggested he was going to be very sore for quite a long while. It was a sensation he hadn’t had in at least a few decades, and he wasn’t remembering it very fondly now. Worse, though, was that his mind seemed unstable, genuinely unstable, as though his brain were slipping around inside his skull, unable to seize a firm foothold.

Speaking of which, the way he stumbled off of his sword and onto the hilltop was well nigh embarrassing. Any further and he’d have fallen flat on his face – he didn’t actually, of course, but he nearly did, or at least felt strongly like he might rather like to.

“You know, I think you’ve blown out all your spiritual energy,” Cangse Sanren observed. “I didn’t even know that was something someone could do if they had as much power as you…but apparently I was being too narrow-minded. And I suppose you’ve always been an overachiever. Don’t worry, it’s only temporary – you just overextended yourself, the way children do when they try to tackle too much. A bit of rest and you’ll be right as rain. Nothing to worry about.”

Wen Ruohan hadn’t been worried. Contrary to what Cangse Sanren might suggest, he was rather familiar with the feeling of overdoing it – what was experimenting for if not to do too much? But he did have to admit that it had been rather a long while since he had needed to use up quite so much qi…

Wait.

“Lan Qiren,” he said, noticing to his disapproval that he was slurring. “Lan Qiren – with Qingheng-jun. Where…?”

“Oh, you’re adorable,” Cangse Sanren said in what seemed to be a complete non sequitur. “I’ll tell him your first thought was of him, he’ll like that. Don’t worry, Lan Qiren is tougher than he looks.”

She wasn’t getting it. Wen Ruohan scowled at her.

Maybe Cangse Sanren didn’t realize to what degree Lan Qiren’s brother hated him. Sure, there was the taboo against harming blood relatives, but they’d already determined that Qingheng-jun was insane. Who knew how much he wanted Lan Qiren hurt right now? How much he wanted him dead? He could be hurting him right now. And yes, Wen Ruohan was aware that he wasn’t exactly speaking from a high moral ground here, but that didn’t change the facts – Lan Qiren could be in danger at this very moment, and someone needed to find him right away.

“I’ve got a whole bunch of people looking for him,” Cangse Sanren told him, as if reading his mind. “A bunch of Lan, trustworthy ones that like him and miss him – and a bunch of your Wen, too. And the word’s gotten out among the other sects, too, the smaller ones…did you know that he taught an awful lot of them, these past ten years? There’s a whole bunch of angry young masters that won’t stop chattering about their old Teacher Lan. They’ve volunteered to help search for him, and they’re not taking no for an answer, not even from their own sect leaders.”

Hah. Wen Ruohan had known that Lan Qiren’s teaching was going to bear fruit one day – and it seemed that that was already starting. He couldn’t wait to finally start harnessing that power for his own sect…

Hmm.

The world was starting to go black around the edges. He was fairly sure it wasn’t supposed to do that.

“You rest,” Cangse Sanren said, waving at someone who was flying rapidly towards them – oh, Wen Ruohan recognized that figure: it was his general, the one he’d entrusted Wen Xu to and who had been lured here right alongside him. He was the one Cangse Sanren had elbowed in the stomach. “Hey, did you hear me? You rest. I’ll stick around, make sure no one does anything untoward. Not that that’ll be hard, given that the rest of your army just showed up…”

That was good.

And…yes, rest sounded good, too. Very good, even. Cangse Sanren would handle finding Lan Qiren, and Qingheng-jun, and – and the rest of it. Wen Ruohan’s army was staffed by subordinates that he trusted not to screw things up, ones capable of independent thought and action, and they all knew what he would do to them if they embarrassed him. They wouldn’t double-cross him, either, because they knew what would happen to them if they did. And better yet, they could also join the search for Lan Qiren if need be…

Somewhere between one thought and the other, Wen Ruohan felt himself slip into unconsciousness.

He hoped Cangse Sanren had the sense to catch him.

Chapter Text

As a child, Lan Qiren had followed his brother everywhere.

In retrospect, he could see how this could have been annoying, particularly to someone more than ten years older than him, nearly a man. But as a child Lan Qiren had not known it. He had only wanted to be closer to that magnificent figure, to his glorious brother who everyone praised and everyone loved and everyone admired – and Lan Qiren had admired him, too.

He’d been proud to be the younger brother of such a person, a distant but awe-inspiring figure, and he had basked in the reflection of his brother’s splendor. It had been the primary source of affection he had had, given his mother’s early death and his father’s subsequent disconnect from the world, and even his teachers, well-meaning, had often laced their praise with comparisons between them, absent-mindedly promising Lan Qiren that he would one day match his brother’s peerless example.

Naturally he had been unable to stay away.

His brother at the time had not been so disdainful of Lan Qiren as he later would become, and back then the Lan sect rules had been important to him, too, though perhaps not to the degree they had mattered to Lan Qiren even in childhood. The rules praised chivalry, courtesy, and generosity, and his brother had always wanted to be seen as a perfect gentleman – he had been so proud when people had first started calling him Qingheng-jun, respect and praise in one. Naturally he had not been willing to be so churlish as to be seen brushing off an unwanted much-younger brother, even one whose birth had led to his previously tranquil life falling apart, and so he’d put up with Lan Qiren trailing after him throughout the Cloud Recesses.

To and fro, wherever he went, asking all sorts of questions and trying to get his brother’s attention, unsuccessfully aping his mannerisms and his habits –

Yes, Lan Qiren supposed he had been very annoying.

Eventually his brother had gotten tired of being harassed and had in fact chased him away, at first only occasionally and then consistently, and by the time he had met He Kexin, he was accustomed to telling Lan Qiren to get lost and meaning it. There was a reason Lan Qiren had not really met He Kexin in any substantive capacity until it was too late.

But it did mean that Lan Qiren was very familiar with his brother’s habits.

People, Lan Qiren had found, were in many ways like rules: they did not change very readily, except from within. The passage of time could weather the Wall of Discipline, but regular repetition carved furrows into people as deep as the regular re-inscription of the rules did to the stone – people remembered, and people did, and did again, and habits once formed were difficult to get rid of even when you tried. And if those habits had been entrenched deeply enough, even ten years without would not rid you of them.

His brother would not be the exception.

Lan Qiren slowly made his way around the edges of the Lan sect camp, keeping an eye out for the sorts of places that his brother preferred – high places, with good vantage points, but still comfortable, with enough trees to shade him from the sun and wind. He was not overly subtle with his search, and his apparent nonchalance was enough to make the few Lan sect sentries who seemed to catch a glimpse of him look away once more. It was a breach of discipline, and foolish, for them to dismiss him as a threat simply because of the Lan sect ribbon that fluttered behind him as he went, and Lan Qiren had to swallow down the instinct to go over to scold them for it, reminding himself that he was no longer sect leader, no longer entitled to do that.

He was only checking the fourth such place when he was caught.

“Figured it out, did you?”

A cold feeling went down Lan Qiren’s spine.

“Xiongzhang,” he said, turning to look at his brother – who was alone, as Lan Qiren had expected. He was standing under a tree, gazing out at the world with his hands behind his back, the very picture of a handsome scholar, aloof from the world.

“How did you manage that?” his brother continued, ignoring the greeting. Perhaps he was still annoyed by the fact that Lan Qiren was no longer obligated to salute him, or by the fact that he chose not to. “I’m quite sure I left no signs.”

No time for pleasantries, then.

“Intuition,” Lan Qiren said. “I guessed.”

“Intuition,” his brother mused. “I wouldn’t have expected that. You were always so literal – as a child, if someone told you that you couldn’t do something, you never would, and if they told you could, you’d try, even if it was obvious to anyone with a brain that it was impossible. And if they told you must, you did, even at injury to yourself.”

That was true.

“I resented you back then, you know.”

Lan Qiren blinked. He had not known. He hadn’t had even the slightest idea.

“You and your devotion,” his brother said. “You always seemed to find everything so straightforward. Good was good, bad was bad, the rules were always right. You never doubted, never wavered, never suffered…it was as if you were a statute of marble, rather than flesh.”

“Never suffered?” Lan Qiren demanded, goaded out of his silence against his will – which was probably his brother’s intention. Lan Qiren had known from the beginning that he would never be able to win against his brother, neither in cultivation, nor fighting, nor even in words. He had come regardless. “You think I never suffered? How? Simply because I did not demonstrate it the same way you did, the way you expected me to?”

His brother shrugged.

“It dissatisfied me even then, though I did not understand why,” he said, because of course he was only ever focused on the impact Lan Qiren’s life had had on him. In his own way, Lan Qiren’s brother was as narcissistic as Wen Ruohan, though in a manner Lan Qiren found far less charming. “Why should you get to be tranquil and serene, sure of who you were and what you stood for? Only because of who and what you were: a younger son, free of expectations and free of burdens, with no cares…”

“I was alone. Our father cared only for you, our teachers prioritized you, our sect followed your lead, while I was too young, too awkward, not sufficiently talented, and you made it clear to anyone with eyes that you did not like me. Amidst our entire clan, in a place filled with people, I had nobody. Do you truly think I had no cares?”

“Perhaps you had complaints,” his brother said, dismissive as ever, “but you never complained. You never rebelled. Even your voice has always been even, unbothered, as lacking in passion as it is in despair. The perfect little Gusu Lan disciple. You never turned your back on the rules, not once, not ever. It never even occurred to you to do so.”

“Of course not! They were all I had – that one piece of the world that was equally mine as it was anyone else’s, the one clear guide to behavior that could show me how to win praise and avoid scorn. And the one time in my life I tried to go beyond them, to go out and seek my freedom and see who I was or could be outside the boundaries of the Cloud Recesses, I was forced to give up because of you.”

“Then why are you back now? I got you out, in the end. You should thank me.”

Lan Qiren choked. “You sent me to the Fire Palace!”

“You got out of it. Mostly intact, as far as I can see.” His brother shook his head. “At times I feel as though I should admire you, Qiren. Even the fearsome Wen Ruohan stands no chance against you…tell me, what is your plan, here and now? I see no one around, and you cannot possibly hope to stop me yourself. You don’t even know where to go, much less how to stop what is going to happen.”

Lan Qiren steeled himself.

“No,” he agreed. “I can neither defeat you, nor stop you, and I do not know where to go. I came here so that you would take me there yourself.”

“Take you there?” His brother sneered. “So you can try to get in my way? Why would I do a foolish thing like that?”

“Because I would suffer more if I saw you do it,” Lan Qiren said honestly. “Because although I hate you, I still find it difficult to believe that you would purposefully carry through with such a terrible thing – and I believe that you hate me enough to want to see me suffer through the realization that you would.”

His brother was silent for a moment.

And then, terribly, he laughed.

“Very well,” he said, his eyes curved into a faint smile, as if Lan Qiren had said something funny. “Very well. Why not? It’s not as though you could stop me even if you’re there.”

Lan Qiren felt his hands curl up into fists. It was one thing to know his brother hated him, hated him enough to want him to suffer in seclusion and then to die in torment and pain in the Fire Palace, and yet another to have it so blatantly reconfirmed to his face like this.

Was it really so bad, in his brother’s eyes, to love the rules that their ancestors had given them? Or was it merely his fate of being a younger son, never meant and never expected to inherit, that his brother hated so much? His tonelessness, his awkwardness…what part of himself would Lan Qiren have had to eviscerate to win his brother’s love? Or had it never been possible at all?

“First you will have to throw away whatever signal you brought, of course,” his brother added, still smiling faintly. “I’m not inclined to deal with Wen Ruohan in the middle of carrying out my plan.”

Lan Qiren obediently pulled out the flare Wen Ruohan had given to him and tossed it aside.

“Mm. And now any other flares, as well as other means of communication or any other components of any other plans you have put together either in the past or present to contact anyone else about where we are or what we are doing.” His brother chuckled. “Remember that your Speak meagerly tricks will not work on me, Qiren.”

Lan Qiren hadn’t really expected them to, but he’d promised Wen Ruohan that he would try his best.

He wasn’t sure this really qualified, but…it was his sect at risk. His sect, his rules, all those innocent lives - he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he didn’t try everything he could.

As he rid himself of the back-up flare as well, and handed his brother the qiankun pouch containing his sword and his guqin, which his brother promptly left at the base of the tree, rendering Lan Qiren disarmed and helpless, he comforted himself with the reassurance that he had not really broken his promise. After all, he wasn’t really in fear of his life. He might hate his brother, but he was not afraid: that one burst of rage at the Lotus Pier aside, his brother had shown no inclination to violate the prohibition against harming one’s kin. At least, not directly, not by his own hands, and that meant that, disarmed or not, Lan Qiren had a chance, however minimal, to stop him before he set off the disaster.

He would simply have to improvise once they reached the core array.

He was – not very good at improvisation.

Once Lan Qiren disarmed, they left that place, the two of them flying together on his brother’s sword, which marked the first time they’d ridden on a single sword together since before Lan Qiren had reached the age of ten. His brother’s hand was cold where it touched Lan Qiren’s side, keeping him from falling.

The location his brother had chosen to set the core array was not far. It was a small cave hidden in the side of one of the many tall hills in the area, completely nondescript and difficult to spot even if you knew it was there – Wen Ruohan had been right that they would never have been able to find it any other way.

Cangse Sanren had been right, too. Lan Qiren wasn’t doing very well against his brother.

He’d lost control twice now, letting his brother lead the conversation, letting his brother set the terms of their engagement and yielding to him in all instances, following him as if he were still that small child that had so adored him. At least he hadn’t actually hurt himself this time, though that was likely only a matter of time.

Lan Qiren stepped down from the sword and away from his brother, putting some distance between them. There was nothing of note in the cave, nothing he could use to summon Wen Ruohan as he had hoped against hope there might be – even the core array, meticulously painted onto the floor of the cavern, was difficult to see.

He looked around, then pursed his lips. “You have a good view of the mountain from here.”

He wouldn’t have thought so. It was one thing to include the deaths of thousands in your plans, terrible as that was, but surely another entirely to want to watch…?

“Is that disapproval I hear?” His brother chuckled. “This is the place that destroyed her – that destroyed us. Do you think that I would not enjoy every last aspect of my revenge?”

Lan Qiren pressed his lips together more, wanting to say something censorious, but then he paused.

He thought again about Wen Ruohan. This was his first conversation with his brother since the moment he’d realized that he’d fallen in love with Wen Ruohan – and surely that made a difference, did it not?

In the past, he had only been standing on the sidelines, a cold and unbothered observer the way his brother had always mocked him for being – with his own problems, yes, but not the same ones, not those ones. But now he was right there alongside his brother, in the same boat, both of them seized by the same curse, that same terrible Lan heart that was birthright to them both. He, too, had someone in his heart, someone he could not bear to see harmed, someone for whom he would seek revenge, should it come to that.

Yes, Lan Qiren could empathize with his brother now, or at least he could to some extent. While Lan Qiren was certain that he would never carry out or even contemplate such an outrageously vile scheme as the one his brother had concocted, he could still feel the same rage and misery and pain at the thought of something happening to his beloved. Just the thought of that spy that had tricked Wen Ruohan, that Wang Liu that had goaded him into reliving his worst fears and preyed on his insecurities to get him to act as he wished, made Lan Qiren want to hit something, to hurt someone, in a way he had never felt before…

“No, I understand,” he said quietly. The realization almost made him feel a little happy, in a strange way. After so long, he finally had something that connected him with his brother again, as terrible as that connection might be, as terrible as the circumstances were. It had been so many years since he’d understood even a little of what his brother was thinking that it was almost a relief to be on the same page once more.

For some reason, his brother frowned. “You understand? What does that mean?”

“Merely that and nothing more.” Lan Qiren shook his head and straightened his shoulders. “Since the last time we spoke, I have gained new insight into your perspective. Naturally I cannot endorse your actions, particularly in this – I find the mere idea of harming innocent people as part of even a scheme of revenge fundamentally appalling, and I disagree with your decision to blame our entire sect rather than specific people for what happened – and I will of course make every effort to try to stop you, as you already know. But at a minimum I can understand the way you must be feeling.”

“Oh. Can you.”

“I have also fallen in love,” Lan Qiren explained, unsure of why his brother’s expression seemed to be getting worse and worse every passing moment. “I know now, as I did not before, the way that it burns you, the way it compels you. I know how it can drive you to new extremes of feeling and action. To lose the one you love…you must be in such terrible pain.”

His brother was gritting his teeth. He took a step forward, his hands curling into fists, his brows furrowing in irritation. “Whatever you think you’re doing, stop it. It won’t work.”

Lan Qiren blinked at him. “I am not doing anything.”

Did his brother think that Lan Qiren’s sympathy was insincere, perhaps part of some sort of ploy to get him to lower his guard? Was that why he seemed to be getting angrier and angrier? It really wasn’t…

Still, Lan Qiren wasn’t going to object to somehow having managed, for once, to seize the higher ground in the conversation…though he didn’t entirely know how he’d gotten there nor, now that he was here, what he was supposed to do with it.

“I do not have any illusions that I will be able to talk you out of what you plan to do,” he said, though in fact he hadn’t completely eradicated that last little bit of hope left in his heart. Realistically, he knew that the only way he was going to be able to stop his brother was to somehow find a way to signal Wen Ruohan – he had a few half-baked ideas going, but nothing solid as of yet – but he still wished that somehow a miracle would take place and his brother would decide to give it up of his own free will. “I just wanted you to know that I understand where you are coming from, that I can follow your line of thinking.”

“You know nothing of what I’m thinking!”

“Only what I can extrapolate, of course. You can correct me, but…you hate our sect and our rules because you feel like they were not enough to save her, is that right? Because our sect permitted such an atrocity to happen and even used her to accomplish it, yet turned around to condemn her in turn – you see it as hypocrisy. You see all our rules as hypocrisy.” Lan Qiren couldn’t imagine how miserable it must have been to start to hate everything you were raised with, and to such a degree as his brother hated. Even if he couldn’t forgive his brother for everything else he had done, he could at least pity him for having to go through that. “Though I do wish to emphasize that even in the most extreme situation, our sect cannot be held to blame for everything. In the end, He Kexin made her own choices – ”

Lan Qiren saw when his brother moved, but that was about all. He was not slow by any means – he was a perfectly adequate swordsman, with the reflexes that came with it – but he was nowhere near his brother’s level. He hadn’t been able to match him before his brother’s retreat into seclusion, and after…his brother had emerged even more powerful, unimaginably so, leaving him even further behind. When he acted, there was nothing Lan Qiren could do to stop him. Before he could react in any way, his brother’s fist had already made contact with his cheekbone.

The next thing Lan Qiren knew, he was on the ground, with the whole side of his face alight with pain.

“How dare you,” his brother hissed. “How dare you – you of all people – to say that about her –”

“I did not say anything wrong,” Lan Qiren protested, too startled to even to suffer, his hands rising up to protectively cradle his face. “She did make her own choices! Even putting aside the murder of which she was accused, she was involved in the business of the spiritual iron mine in Xixiang. She helped seek out cultivators to force into labor – ”

“The mine was their business,” his brother said coldly. “Or do you think I was such a poor sect leader that I willingly let Lan Muzhi speculate with our sect money and our sect’s name in such a grotesque fashion?”

Lan Qiren froze.

Lan Muzhi? The sect elder that had come up with the mine project had been Lan Muzhi?

“But – Lan Muzhi was the one He Kexin killed,” he said blankly. He needed to think about what this meant, but his brain simply refused to respond, too shocked to move. “Are you saying the mine was Lan Muzhi’s project? And then He Kexin killed him? But then – what happened with the rest of it?”

Such a death would almost seem fitting, the heavens meting out their own form of ironic justice in having the man who orchestrated the terrible project be killed by the woman who’d gotten dragged into it through her own willful blindness. Only…the pieces didn’t add up. If Lan Muzhi had been the person behind the mine project, and he had been killed by He Kexin, then who had killed all those people in the mine? Who had put in place all those suppression arrays to cover up the ghosts of the resentful dead? Fellow conspirators? Someone else?

And it still didn’t answer the most fundamental questions: Why had she killed him? Had she killed him?

Lan Qiren was suddenly aware that his brother was laughing again, jagged and bitter to the point of pain.

“You don’t know!” he crowed. “You don’t – you really don’t know, do you? They’ve been lying to you all these years, every last one of them…amazing. I thought for sure you must have figured it out by now, that you knew, but apparently I was overestimating you. You’re just the same as you were as a child, Qiren, just the same: slow and stupid and far too trusting. Stupider than even I thought, it seems.”

“What do you mean?” Lan Qiren demanded as he scrambled to his feet, ignoring the insults. “Who was lying to me? Why? What happened back then?”

“Oh, only what you’d expect,” his brother sneered. “The sect elders, of course! Or do you think those suppression arrays got laid down by themselves?”

“I know that,” Lan Qiren said with frustration. “But which ones? And what does that have to do with Lan Muzhi’s murder? Was someone else involved…?”

“They were all involved.”

“Impossible.”

“Is it?”

“It is,” Lan Qiren insisted. “That is going too far, it cannot be believed. Xiongzhang, you keep telling me I am stupid, that I do not understand. Fine, I accept it, I admit it! I am too stupid to figure it out on my own. So tell me. Tell me what I’m missing.”

He could figure out the basics from what his brother had said so far. Lan Muzhi must have gotten involved with the mine and used the sect’s name to claim it, probably with the aid of some of his allies – not the whole set of sect elders the way his brother claimed, because at least some of them were constitutionally incapable of doing such an underhanded thing, some too moral and others too stupid. But certainly he had involved at least another person or two, enough to help him cover his tracks, at least at first. Only he hadn’t covered it up well enough, because Lan Qiren’s brother had found out what he’d been doing and gone to investigate…only, while he was there, he had presumably met He Kexin and been distracted by falling in love.

No wonder the sect elders had been so against his courtship of He Kexin! Lan Muzhi and his group must have been frantic, knowing that she knew their secret, and it wouldn’t have been too difficult for them to play on the innate snobbery of any number of the other elders to get them on board in resisting the match. But the more they opposed it, the more determined Lan Qiren’s brother became. There was nothing like opposition to encourage a forbidden romance, let alone opposition you suspected to have self-involved motives; nothing would more inflame the heart.

And He Kexin…ah, He Kexin! To her endless misfortune, she simply hadn’t liked Lan Qiren’s brother, or at least she hadn’t liked him as much as he liked her. The highest compliment Lan Qiren had ever heard her give her husband was that he was “a bit all right sometimes,” along with a handful of completely unnecessary comments about how good he was in bed; that, at least, had been a subject on which she had been highly complimentary, even if Lan Qiren sometimes suspected her of mentioning it just to discomfit him. If only she had been a bit more mercenary – if she had been truly wicked rather than merely lacking in scruples – she could have convinced him to ignore the elders, married him for the protection of the position of Madam Lan, and done her best to fight Lan Muzhi from there.

But she hadn’t. She hadn’t wanted to marry Lan Qiren’s brother at all.

And then Lan Muzhi had died, and she’d been accused, and she hadn’t had any other choice.

Something must have gone wrong, for all of them. Lan Muzhi undoubtedly didn’t want to die, He Kexin didn’t want to marry, and Lan Qiren’s brother didn’t want to go into seclusion –

Something must have gone wrong.

But what?

“Perhaps I will,” his brother said, his lips twisted into a grimace. “You’d deserve it, you rotten hypocrite.”

Lan Qiren glared at him, too angry for fear. “Do you want me to beg? Is that it? Is that what it would take?”

“No need. You’ll be begging before the end either way,” his brother said, and Lan Qiren felt a sudden chill go through his body – what did his brother mean by that? “But fine, have it your way, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything…”

“Start with what happened to Lan Muzhi, please,” Lan Qiren said, and then only belatedly recalled himself enough to try to keep the request a petition rather than the habitual demand it tried to come out as; he had become too accustomed to receiving reports as sect leader, but it wouldn’t do to try to demand anything now. His brother wouldn’t react well to a demand. “Did He Kexin kill him? And if she didn’t, why didn’t she say so?”

“Oh, that. It would have been quite difficult for her to argue that she didn’t kill him, given that she was the only person in the room with him when he died,” Lan Qiren’s brother said. “But no, as a matter of fact, she didn’t. He died of a qi deviation.”

He laughed coldly at Lan Qiren’s blank stare.

“Yes, a qi deviation,” he said with a sneer. “You see, he was having problems of conscience regarding what was going on in the mine. Of all ridiculous things… He tried as hard as he could to be willfully blind to what was happening, but as the leader of the project he was too close to the ground to really manage it. He knew that the go-betweens he’d hired were using forced labor, even if he lied to himself and pretended he didn’t. The emotional turmoil caused his qi to start to deviate, but when the first signs started to appear, he was already in too deep – he couldn’t go to get treatment because then he would have to explain what he’d done that had led him to such a state. And then, because of your precious sect rules, he’d have to be punished.”

“As he should have been,” Lan Qiren said, then immediately bit his tongue: he hadn’t meant to interrupt.

Luckily, his brother was too invested in his story to be distracted.

“She was arguing with him about marrying me,” he said dreamily. “I’d offered for her by then, no matter how many elders opposed it. She didn’t want to, not with such a secret between us, but he wanted her to accept my suit – rather a reversal from his usual position, I know! He’d spent so long trying to keep us apart, but by then he knew that I was getting closer every day to finding out the full truth of what he was up to. He needed to keep me distracted while he cleaned things up.”

Lan Qiren involuntarily hissed. He’d been a sect leader: he’d been on night-hunts, he’d seen the nastiest of inter-sect disputes, he’d read reports by the dozen. He knew about the massacre.

He knew what “cleaned things up” must mean in this context.

“Oh yes,” his brother said, with macabre relish no less than Wen Ruohan’s. “The mine had to be stopped. By that point he’d already given the order and sent his brother to do the business.”

“Lan Zhengquan?” Lan Qiren blurted out, interrupting again, horrified. He’d worked with Lan Zhengquan, for a given value of the word – he’d been one of Lan Qiren’s bitterest opponents during his entirety of his stint as acting sect leader. Lan Zhengquan was a staunch old conservative, with the ability to be incredibly stubborn and inflexible once he’d dug his heels in, and Lan Qiren had had to fight hard to get any number of proposals around his disapproval. It wasn’t always war between them – Lan Qiren was also one to value tradition – and they had collaborated on any number of initiatives in the rare instances when they could reach agreement on what would be the right way forward for the good of the sect.

For reasons Lan Qiren had never been able to entirely determine, Lan Zhengquan was one of the most influential elders in the sect, well-respected if not necessarily well-liked, the sort of person who could make other people go quiet and listen just by showing up. He had a knack for coming up with clever proposals and stratagems to get around their sect’s opponents, though often they were more ruthless than Lan Qiren felt entirely comfortable with. In truth, Lan Zhengquan would have been a brilliant politician and diplomat, an immense asset to their sect, but for his sole idiosyncrasy, which was that despite being hale in both mind and body, he never left the Cloud Recesses for any reason.

“Lan Zhengquan,” his brother confirmed. “Oh, how it made me laugh, all those years, every time you complained about him…he played you for a fool, just as Lan Muzhi wanted to play me. The way he tried to play my Kexin, but she was too strong for him. She wouldn’t have it. And so they were arguing, and that’s when she told him that the forced labor he’d looked the other way on hadn’t just been rogue cultivators, but whole families. Mothers, fathers…children.”

I didn’t want to go into my theories about the massacre around the children, Cangse Sanren had said.

A couple of small ghosts, she’d said.

A short ghost chased Wangji, but he’s all right, Lan Xichen had said, when Lan Qiren had gone to visit them briefly before leaving, as much an aid in gathering his own strength as it was to comfort and reassure them, emotional fortitude being just as important as physical ability. The grown-ups said a few times that the ghost was short. Is that important, Shufu?

At the time, Lan Qiren hadn’t known what Lan Xichen was referring to, so he’d temporized, saying that each night-hunt was different and that it was important not to overlook even minor details as they could be important to solving the ghosts’ resentment and liberating their spirits. He hadn’t realized…

“That was the final straw for Lan Muzhi, it seemed,” his brother continued on, as if it didn’t matter that the woman he’d married, the mother of his children, had looked the other way and in doing so enabled the kidnapping and enslavement of children. Perhaps it didn’t, to him. “To know that his too-ruthless brother was out there cleaning up his mess, and to know what the mess involved, to finally be confronted with the truth of it all – he keeled over right away, and dramatically enough that it stirred up a whole hornet’s nest of accusations. It’s a little ironic, actually: I expect Lan Zhengquan hadn’t been planning to massacre all of them in the mine, just to threaten them, maybe kill one or two of the troublemakers as an example for the rest so they’d keep their mouths shut. But then Lan Muzhi died and Lan Zhengquan had to rush away to deal with it, and from what I understand the people he’d had already there decided in his absence to just keep killing. And then what was there to do but keep covering it up…?”

“That was far from the only option,” Lan Qiren interrupted again, unable to hold himself back. “He could have confessed to his crimes and faced the justice of the sect, as he should have.”

The smile his brother turned onto him was positively ghoulish.

“Of course you would say that,” he said, voice strangely gentle. “Of course you would think that. That’s why no one ever told you.”

Lan Qiren felt cold again.

“You say that it’s impossible that they all knew. You really think that it’s impossible that they all knew. Because our sect elders are not immoral. Because they are not all cruel or wicked, not all selfish and short-sighted – the only thing they have in common, really, is how much they care for the sect, for our sect, for our sect and our family and our face. And that’s enough, isn’t it?”

“No,” Lan Qiren said, but he shuddered. “No. It is not. It cannot be.”

“It is. That’s how complicity works. That’s what got my Kexin, and it’s going to be what gets the rest of the sect, too.” His brother was still smiling. His brother was still smiling. “Everything’s easy if you do it piece by piece, one step at a time. First you tell them that Lan Muzhi borrowed the sect name to make an investment – well, that’s wrong, yes, but it’s not a very big wrong, especially when it turns out that he was using the investment to get valuable spiritual iron that the sect needs and would otherwise have to buy at a high price. Then you mention that he used sect money without permission – still wrong, yes, a little worse than using the name alone, but again, forgivable, understandable. He’s an elder after all, and they have more latitude than most…

“And once you’ve gotten them to agree with that, to start nodding along, only then do you mention, in passing, that he’d let the third party he worked with be the one responsible for getting the labor to work the mine, which is more than a little neglectful but really, as long as it’s now repaired, no real problem. No problem at all, right? Only then, later, it turns out – how terrible! It turns out, who knew, to be forced labor, slavery, and that’s horrifying, of course. But can you really say it was his fault…? Surely not, or so you tell yourself. He is your respected elder, your good friend, your ally of many years – surely it must simply be a mistake, an oversight, a dreadful accident. Right up until he tells you that yes, he knew, and he looked the other way, and then – and then – and then – ”

He laughed.

“And by then it’s too late. Just like it was too late for all those sect elders who were innocent enough of the mine but who got caught up in accusing my Kexin of a murder she did not commit but also could not deny. Just like it was too late for all the ones that Lan Zhengquan convinced to come help him lay down suppression arrays, a normal bit of night-hunting but complex enough to justify an elder’s presence, many of them unaware of why they were having such difficulty in putting it all in place – he only told them after, you see, and by then everything had already happened. By then, their hands were already dirtied, their names already stained by association with such an event, the whole sect at risk of being stained if anyone found out what had happened. Were they supposed to let the sect lose face by revealing all?”

“Yes!”

Lan Qiren’s brother startled, as if he’d almost forgotten that Lan Qiren was there.

“The sect elders themselves are nothing, the sect itself is everything,” Lan Qiren said. His fingernails had dug so far into his fists that his palms were bleeding. “For the sake of the juniors, if nothing else, they should have said something, they should have done something. If they did wrong, they should have been punished. Even if imposing that punishment risked revealing the shame of our sect to the world, even if it lost us face, it would have been worth it. The rules say uphold the value of justice, shoulder the weight of morality, not – not – do whatever is least uncomfortable!”

“Do not forget the grace of your forefathers.”

“Morality is the priority,” Lan Qiren retorted. “Be ethical. No dishonest practices.”

“Honor your teacher.”

“Stay on the righteous path. Do not associate with evil!”

“I should have known better than to debate the rules with you,” Lan Qiren’s brother said, the seemingly complimentary words accompanied by a disdainful sneer. “You, who never bend and never yield…tell me, did it ever occur to you to let me out?”

Lan Qiren paused, all his righteous anger dissipating in his confusion at the sudden change in subject. “Let you out of where?”

“Don’t play the fool! Out of seclusion.”

“What?” Lan Qiren was completely lost now. “Of course not. You said you were going into permanent seclusion to save He Kexin’s life despite her crime and repent for your sins in marrying the woman who committed such a crime. I heard you declare it myself.”

“And did it ever occur to you that I might regret such a decision?”

“All the time,” Lan Qiren said, bewildered. “I certainly would have, in your place. But what does that have to do with anything? You had already done it. It was too late. What could I have done?”

His brother was silent.

“Stupid,” he finally said. “Do you think I am stupid, Qiren, is that it? Or both of us? You, for your unbelievable claim that you do not understand the way the world works – you, who had all the power in the world as sect leader in my absence? Perhaps I really was stupid, for having ever believed in your stupidity, in your innocent façade. If it’s not against the rules, it’s fine, is that it? Is that how you draw the line?”

He took a step forward, his eyes malevolent, and suddenly Lan Qiren was afraid.

He could feel the force of his brother’s spiritual energy, just the way he sometimes did Wen Ruohan’s when the other man wasn’t paying attention – when he was upset or distracted or unbelievably angry. But unlike Wen Ruohan, whose spiritual energy was as hot as the sun, his brother’s power was cold, almost bitingly so. Lan Qiren could feel the frost of it on his shoulders, like the first dusting of winter snow; he could feel the force of it pressing him down, commanding him to kneel.

If he hadn’t been used to Wen Ruohan, he might have had no choice but to yield.

“What are you accusing me of?” he asked, fighting the urge to take a step back. His brother was being intimidating for a reason, though he didn’t understand what that reason might be. “Is that why you hate me so much? Because I – because I did not violate your orders and let you out?”

It seemed almost beyond belief. How could Lan Qiren have done such a thing? Even if it had occurred to him to break the rules, which it had not, there was still filial piety binding his actions. He had to respect his older brother, who was his elder, who was the rightful sect leader, who had made a vow, a public vow…!

And, well, yes, he had offered He Kexin the option to leave, had offered to break the rules for her, but that had been different. His brother had entered seclusion by his own choice, while she’d been a prisoner from the beginning, trapped in a life she did not want. Her punishment had seemed so entirely outsized for the crime that he believed she had committed…

Lan Qiren wondered, suddenly, if that was why she had refused.

He Kexin had known all along that the crime for which she was imprisoned was not the crime she had committed. She’d known, but she’d never told him, and when he’d made the offer to release her, she must have known that he didn’t know what she’d really done. Perhaps she had even known how horrible he would feel if he had released her and only later discovered the truth of it, known that he would feel that he had inadvertently made himself complicit in it, however tangentially. Perhaps she’d known that he, unlike so many others of his sect, would never have forgiven himself for it.

Perhaps that was why she had willingly stayed in her prison.

He’d never know, now. She was gone.

His brother was still advancing upon him.

Lan Qiren gave in and took a step back, but it didn’t help – his brother just kept coming at him, step by slow, purposeful step.

“You know what I’m accusing you of,” his brother said, his voice very soft. “You know that’s not it. You know what you did, Qiren. You know. You wouldn’t look so nervous if you didn’t.”

I look nervous because you’re radiating killing intent at me!

“What do you intend?” Lan Qiren asked, taking another step back. “Xiongzhang…”

“I think you know that, too,” his brother said, and smiled. “Don’t worry, Qiren. You’ll still be around to see the mountain fall and our sect crumble. You were right, earlier: I wouldn’t let you miss that. You’ll just be…hmmm…a few pieces short, that’s all.”

You’ll be begging before the end either way, his brother had said earlier, casual and unruffled.

It seemed that Lan Qiren had, once again, vastly underestimated how much his brother hated him.

“Maybe I’ll say you came out of the Fire Palace that way,” his brother added, and all at once Lan Qiren wasn’t afraid.

He was furious.

“Do not dare,” he snapped, and for some reason that was what got his brother to stop advancing and to look at Lan Qiren thoughtfully instead. “Have you not framed Wen Ruohan for enough already? No matter what you do, it will all blow up or come to nothing, just like every other one of your attempts to harm him.”

His brother sneered. “Is this you trying once again to convince me that you can empathize with my perspective because you’ve supposedly fallen in love? It won’t work, you know.”

“I was being serious,” Lan Qiren said stiffly, more than a little wounded. He’d been acting in good faith…as ever a mistake with his brother, it seemed. “Do not tell lies.”

“Ridiculous,” his brother scoffed, and reached for his sword.

Lan Qiren was unarmed, lacking either sword or instrument. He was barely standing in the face of the pressure of his brother’s spiritual energy bearing down upon him, and he was already weak, still hurt from his time in the Fire Palace even though he’d done everything he could to heal before coming here. But even if he hadn’t been, even if he had been armed and in peak condition, he still wouldn’t have been able to defeat his brother.

He’d promised Wen Ruohan that he would try to protect his life. He’d promised.

If Wen Ruohan found out that Lan Qiren had been hurt in some serious fashion, in this way, in violation of his given word, he would be hurt once again, and this time it would in some part be Lan Qiren’s fault…no!

“I have not finished,” he blurted out, voice shrill with desperation. “I am not yet done.”

His brother paused. “Done with what?”

Lan Qiren resisted the urge to lick his lips, which suddenly felt very dry. He was only going to have one shot at this.

“Asking questions, Xiongzhang,” he said, and bowed his head obediently, like a school child. “Just like you are always encouraging me to ask.”

There was a moment of silence, and Lan Qiren hoped – he hoped –

His brother laughed.

“All right,” he said, sounding cheerful again. Still angry, that wasn’t gone, but cheerful. “I suppose I can answer a few more of your questions. But only if you remember to ask with the proper level of respect.”

Lan Qiren knew what his brother wanted.

Do you have any questions for me? his brother had mocked him, every time they’d met, every single time since he had emerged from seclusion. You haven’t even asked any questions. Are you sure you don’t have any other questions for me now?

Mocking his ignorance. Glorying in his power over him.

Wanting him to beg, and to suffer, and to thank him for his suffering.

Lan Qiren knelt.

His brother smiled to see him on his knees, but gestured for him to continue.

Lan Qiren bowed his head until it touched the floor.

He didn’t care about the shame of it, insofar as bowing to his older brother, however hated, could ever be a shame. It didn’t matter, it was unimportant next to what he needed to accomplish.

He needed to stay alive and intact. He needed to find a way out of this situation.

He needed to stall long enough for Cangse Sanren, at least, to finish her work and get the Lan sect out of the way, a ploy that he’d been very carefully avoiding even thinking about lest he accidentally slip up and give her away. That had been the second part of their plan, one that assumed that even if Lan Qiren couldn’t actually find a way to stop his brother, which they’d admitted was likely, then at a minimum he would be able to distract him, to play for time and keep him here, far away from the rest of the Lan sect, away from his place of power and all his intended victims, away from where he could see her and realize what she was doing and stop her.

Lan Qiren had to do anything he could to buy more time. He had to wait and he had to hold out, because he had faith in Cangse Sanren. She would manage to convince his sect to move, saving their lives and their souls in ways they would never and could never know of, and when she did, she would send the signal…and as soon as her flare went off, his brother would know that he’d been tricked.

He would know that his brilliant plan of revenge would never be able to work as intended.

It shouldn’t be long now.

Lan Qiren hoped.

“Very good,” his brother said, good humor restored. “Ask your questions.”

Lan Qiren didn’t actually care about anything his brother had to say at this point, having heard more than enough to make him want to throw up and maybe scream, but he had always been a good student. If his brother wanted him to ask questions, he would find questions to ask.

“Were you always planning on targeting the Wen sect?” he asked. “Wen Ruohan made it sound as though his proposal of marriage to me came to you as a surprise.”

“It was a surprise. Though I suppose in retrospect that perhaps it shouldn’t have been. I just never picked you for one to violate Do not attach yourself to those in power and influence.” A chuckle. “I hadn’t been planning on involving the Wen sect at all. You can lay full blame for that on yourself. Such a wonderful dowry you brought your lover, Qiren!”

Lan Qiren pressed his lips together, but did not protest. His role here was to suffer.

“How would it work without them?” he asked instead. “What was your plan for me then?”

“I was going to marry you to Liu Xuesong, the daughter of Quanjiao Liu. Even if they weren’t one of the ones that initially offered for you, it wouldn’t have been hard to convince them. And then, once you were married, I was going to frame her for attacking you, execute her as an assassin, and go to war against them in your honor.”

In his honor? Lan Qiren felt sick, his belly roiling: if his brother’s plan had succeeded, the Lan sect’s disgrace and dishonor would have been ascribed to him. For all the rest of its history, his sect would have remembered him only as the inciting cause for such a disaster.

How much do you hate me?

“Though that’s not strictly true, actually. I was going to give you the opportunity to enter permanent seclusion with her to preserve her life, just like I did. It seemed fitting. Seclusion or the destruction of an innocent life – I was curious to know what you’d choose.”

Lan Qiren shuddered.

He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know.

“When Wen Ruohan made his offer for you, he made it sound as though he was just taking advantage of the opportunity,” his brother mused. “I thought for sure that he would throw you into the Fire Palace as soon as you arrived at the Nightless City, or fairly shortly thereafter once he’d finished having his fun with you. And then I was going to involve the Wen sect in my war, but only indirectly – we’d still be going to war in your honor, of course, but I could play it off later as some sort of misunderstanding. I’d blame someone else for it, some other sect, and we could make peace between our sects by picking their bones clean together.”

Another chuckle.

“A tyrant like Wen Ruohan can be appeased easily enough by giving him more of the power he hungers for. What’s a plaything in comparison to that? He would have been a good ally for the sect to have, at least in the short term; between his sect’s might and his own terrible reputation, he would have been quite useful. Besides, a continued war would give me time and room to grow and be something to keep everyone busy with after we’d abandoned the old ways… It was a good plan. I’d worked on my original one for so long, but this was better. It was worth adjusting to accommodate it.”

Lan Qiren felt pressure at the back of his head.

It was his brother’s bootheel, pressing his face further down into the dirt of the cave floor.

“And you just had to ruin it.”

Lan Qiren choked a little as the pressure increased, twisting his head so that it was facing the side – the one his brother hadn’t struck earlier. His cheekbone dug painfully into the dirt, but at least he wasn’t at risk of getting a mouthful of soil and being unable to breathe.

“Xiongzhang…”

“You just had to go and seduce Wen Ruohan,” his brother said. His voice seemed calm, but it was obviously fake: he was furious. “I had to figure out a way to fight the most powerful man in the entire cultivation world because of your wantonness.”

Wantonness? What in the world was his brother talking about?

His brother had accused him of something like that before, too, back at the Lotus Pier. He’d sneered at Lan Qiren for having whispered in Wen Ruohan’s ear, accusing him of having violated -

“Promiscuity is forbidden,” Lan Qiren said.

His brother grabbed him by the collar and threw him against the far wall.

Lan Qiren managed to catch himself and land on his feet instead, but just barely. His still injured ankle screamed in agony.

“How dare you!” his brother howled. His face was fully red, suddenly, as if he’d completely lost his mind – as if he were suffering from the early signs of qi deviation himself. Or perhaps not so early…he really had gone mad, hadn’t he? “How dare you taunt me with what you’ve done!”

“What are you talking about?!” Lan Qiren shouted back. “Why are you so fixated on this? Why do you care so much that I slept with Wen Ruohan?”

“I don’t care that you slept with Wen Ruohan! I care about the fact that you slept with my wife!”

Time seemed to stop.

“…what?” Lan Qiren choked out. “Me? With – with He Kexin? I would rather die!”

His brother thought…

That he’d –

With his –

With her?!

“Don’t lie,” his brother hissed. “I know it all. I know what you did behind my back, while I was locked away. It wasn’t enough that you helped yourself to my position, not enough that you won the loyalty of my friends and raised my children as your own, not enough that you were somehow able to seduce the king of torture to your side – you had to take her, too?!”

“But…I did not do that,” Lan Qiren said, still numb with shock. “It never even crossed my mind. Xiongzhang, I swear I never touched her like that! I went to my marriage without having ever even kissed anyone else! Do not tell lies!”

His brother was beyond reason. He drew his sword.

“Xiongzhang, please…!”

A flare went off in the distance, catching both their attention.

It was in the colors of Gusu Lan, and far away from the place in Xixiang where they should have been.

Cangse Sanren had succeeded!

Lan Qiren unwisely exhaled in relief, his shoulders relaxing by the barest fraction, but that was already more of a mistake than he could afford to make with his brother, who lunged at him.

Lan Qiren managed to dodge the strike by a hair, his brother’s sword going into the wall beside him. The shockwave full of power and flung-out gravel from the strike still stung.

“You think this means you’ve won?” his brother snarled. His eyes were red with fury. “You think you’ve won, do you, you bastard – you haven’t won anything. I’ll show you!”

He made a hand seal with his free hand, and suddenly the array on the floor beneath them activated, glowing bright with spiritual energy. Not just initial activation, either, but full activation.

“No!” Lan Qiren cried out. “The mountain!”

But it was too late.

The array beneath him was fully active, having roared to life under the command of his brother’s powerful cultivation. Already the signals were being sent out to the connected arrays, the power rippling out in steady stream, the tunnels starting to twist and the earth starting to break – the landslide was coming, and there could surely be no force powerful enough to hold it back.

All those innocent lives…!

Lan Qiren temporarily lost his head and lunged at his brother, trying to grab the sword away from him, though he did not know for what purpose, whether he meant to try to attack his brother with it or simply to try to use it to fly back to the mountain as fast as he could, to offer what little help he could, to save even a single life…

“You’re so desperate to save them,” his brother said mockingly, effortlessly knocking him back and to the ground. “So desperate for them, but not for her. Did you even care about her, my Kexin? Or was she merely a plaything to you?”

“She was nothing to me!” Lan Qiren realized almost immediately that he’d misspoken. “Xiongzhang, I did not sleep with her.”

“Lies,” his brother spat, and tried to strike him again. Lan Qiren threw himself to the side as fast as he could, and even so the blow still nearly caught his shoulder, leaving a painful cut in its wake. “Lies upon lies, hypocrisy of the highest order – I’ve never met anyone as shameless as you!”

He scarcely seemed to care about his plan failing, not when Lan Qiren was in front of him, the target of all his irrational hatred.

“Xiongxhang, please,” Lan Qiren said, holding out his hands in front of him, trying to ward his brother off. “What makes you think I slept with her? Who told you such a thing?”

“She did,” his brother said. “She said it herself! When I came to her and told her all my plans, my wonderful plans that were going to revenge us on all those that wronged us and kept us apart for all these years – the ones that she should have loved, the ones that should have made her as happy as they made me, because she always understood me, better than anyone. My Kexin. She understood me and I understood her; we were perfect for each other, we always had been. We could have been so happy, we should have been so happy – but no. We couldn’t. It was all ruined. Because of you!”

Lan Qiren had been backing off again, but now he stopped.

His ears had started ringing again. That high-pitched ringing of shock and horror –

Surely not.

Surely not.

“Do you know what she told me? She said that she would never agree to such a plan. She would never agree, not even if I was the last and only person left in the world that she could see. And then – and then – she said – ”

He laughed. The laugh was insane.

“She said that I wasn’t the only person she had left. And between the two of us, she liked you better!”

“Xiongzhang,” Lan Qiren whispered. “Xiongzhang, no.”

He had forgotten.

It had been such a long time: Lan Qiren had forgotten.

He wasn’t the only person with access to He Kexin’s chambers. Yes, he was her only contact with the outside world, but…there wasn’t only an outside world for her. There was also a further in.

His brother had had access to her rooms the entire time.

He was her husband. Although the strictness of his seclusion meant that he could not visit her too often, could not live together with her the way Lan Qiren and Wen Ruohan had (rather shockingly) settled themselves into, he was still entitled to visit her at least once a month. It was through those visits that Lan Qiren’s nephews had been conceived.

Lan Qiren had once offered to He Kexin the right to block her husband from her door, but she’d declined, laughing at him and making a joke about sex that had made his ears turn hot and red. He’d never offered again.

She’d never asked.

His brother had access to He Kexin’s rooms.

To He Kexin, who had never shown any sign of wanting to kill herself.

“Xiongzhang,” Lan Qiren said, voice trembling. “When He Kexin said that to you…what did you do? What did you do to her?”

“Only what you made me do,” his brother said. “Only what you made me do, Qiren. You took her away from me!”

Lan Qiren shook his head. His whole body was shaking now, violently, as if he had suddenly been overtaken by a freezing blizzard, one that sucked all the warmth out of his body all at once.

“How could you?” he asked. No, he demanded. “How could you? She was your wife! How could you kill your own wife?”

That seemed to penetrate his brother’s madness. He faltered.

He stared at Lan Qiren, still holding his sword, pointing it at him.

“You did it,” he said, but – more hesitantly. “Not me. It was you.”

“Do not tell lies, Xiongzhang,” Lan Qiren said. “I am not lying now. I am not lying: I did not have sex with He Kexin. Not once. I never took her to bed, I never kissed her, I never touched her with that sort of intent. Whatever you think I did with her, I did not do.”

His brother stared at him.

His eyes were very wide. He’d heard what Lan Qiren had said this time.

He’d heard, and he was starting to believe.

“I visited He Kexin regularly to discuss the status of her children, my nephews,” Lan Qiren explained. “It was my duty as the one raising them. At times, when etiquette required me to stay and there was nothing else to do, we would discuss – irrelevant things. Poetry, painting. That sort of thing. Passing the time. That is all, Xiongzhang. That’s all she was referring to. She…”

Liked me better than you.

“…may have been trying to get a rise out of you, with what she said.”

That was true, too. He Kexin had always enjoyed teasing people: sometimes gently, as with Lan Wangji, and sometimes more harshly, as she did during the times she was irritated with Lan Qiren.

Speak meagerly, for too many words bring only harm.

“No,” his brother said. “No. You have to be – you must have – ”

But his denials were already faltering on their own. Just as Lan Qiren knew his brother, his brother knew him: he knew that Lan Qiren would not lie. He knew that Lan Qiren couldn’t lie, not believably.

He was starting, at long last, to realize the real truth of what he had done.

To realize that he had killed his own beloved. That he had struck her down with his own hands.

That her life was gone, that He Kexin was gone, and it was all because of him.

For someone of their family, their Lan sect with their implacable hearts…there was really only one way this could now go.

Lan Qiren’s brother was already holding his sword. It wouldn’t take much to lift it to his own neck and draw it across, a clean slice, the same as the one he’d given He Kexin.

It was the only way this could end.

Lan Qiren resigned himself to have to serve as witness.

Sure enough, after a few more moments had passed, as the realization sunk in fully, his brother lifted his sword.

He put it to his own neck.

He –

“No!”

He turned and ran away.

Lan Qiren stared after him, watching as his brother took flight on his sword and disappeared into the wind.

Somehow, that was more shocking to him than anything else that had already happened.

Wasn’t his brother a Lan? Didn’t he love like a Lan, with that wild heart that burned all in its path? Shouldn’t he have been burned in turn upon realizing that he had destroyed his own heart?

Lan Qiren had always measured love by his brother’s standard.

If what his brother felt for He Kexin wasn’t love…then what was?

Chapter Text

Wen Ruohan woke up groggy and disoriented.

This did not come as a surprise, as it was not particularly unusual for him: a hundred years and more, infinitely powerful cultivation, and somehow he’d still never quite gotten the hang of mornings. Once he’d become accustomed to sharing his bed with Lan Qiren, who like the rest of his sect preferred to rise at inhumane hours, the other man had routinely been able to get up, go about his morning ablutions, go outside to train, and come back to bed before Wen Ruohan even twitched his fingers in the direction of his clothing.

Not that he usually needed to get up early, of course. That was one of the many benefits of power: the Nightless City might never sleep, but it only really got going when he did. Lan Qiren had remarked several times that he found it unusual that the quietest hours in the day were the early morning, as those were often the hours most generally preferred for chores, until eventually Wen Ruohan had taken pity on him and explained that his servants and disciples had judged it better to do their chores at an hour before they risked waking up their irritable sect leader.

(“Ah, yes,” Lan Qiren had said, nodding. “I had a similar experience when my nephews were toddlers.”

“…toddlers.”

“Yes, they got terribly cranky when anything disturbed their naps. I would always refrain from doing anything too loud during that time of the day.”

“I don’t think I appreciate your comparison.”

“Comparison? I was conveying that I understood – ”

“That was a comparison, and you know it.”

“...perhaps. Truly a strange and inexplicable parallel. Perhaps even an opportunity for you to learn some form of lesson…?”

“Not in the slightest. Clearly I’ll just have to put more effort into making sure you don’t see me as a child. Perhaps something more adult instead.…?”

“Again? Already? It’s not that I object, of course, but sometimes you genuinely make me wonder: do you have no other hobbies?”)

The memory made Wen Ruohan want to laugh.

He opened his eyes, and found, to his puzzlement, that he was not in his own bed, neither alone nor (preferably) with a warm and energetic Lan Qiren coming in straight after his exercise, but rather in his favorite sickroom.

Most people would not be able to say that they had a particular preference in sickrooms, but in this, as in many ways, his Qishan Wen sect was different. His sect had been founded by a surgeon (who’d also been an assassin and a warlord, as the situation required – those needles of Wen Mao’s had been put to any number of purposes, a practicality his descendants had whole-heartedly embraced), and as a result, they had always prided themselves on their medical skills. Naturally, the Nightless City’s sickrooms ought to reflect that pride, which they did in both quality and in sheer multitudinous quantity.

The rooms were always well-equipped, well-staffed, and well-tended to, as befit a sect with their inheritance. His Wen sect disciples had even taken to dividing them up by type of illness: one reserved for people suffering from physical harms such as broken bones or sword cuts, another specializing in treating diseases, a third for cultivation problems…

Wen Ruohan was currently in the one fondly and universally known as the “you fucked up” room.

It was a large room, having at some point in the past been meant to be a warehouse, but it had been filled with room dividers to create the illusion of smaller spaces. Each little nook was supplied with a standard-issue cot, a blanket enhanced with warming talismans and a pillow similarly made to be cooling, a slate at the end of the bed for doctors’ instructions, and little else. This room specialized neither in a particular type of injury nor a particular type of cure, and neither did it make any differentiation between injuries unique to cultivators or more commonplace sorts that anyone could suffer.

It had a singular focus, which was to say, it catered exclusively to people who’d caused their own malady through stupidity.

To be more specific, it was reserved for people who’d hurt themselves through excessive over-exertion, which was commonly regarded as an offshoot of idiocy. Strained muscles, overworked meridians, twisted ankles, emptied dantians…even those scholars who developed headaches from reading too much in poor light, it didn’t matter; they all ended up here. A doctor would look them over, snort in disdain (a requisite and much-enjoyed part of the treatment), and order them to stay, rest, and recuperate, which usually translated to being confined to rest for a given length of time, typically marked out in chalk on the slate that hung over their cot. The room was patrolled by junior disciples still learning the way of medicine, most of them at the stage where they had more enthusiasm than skill, and they were all licensed to meet any attempts to escape prematurely with paralyzing needles, jabbed in as hard as their black little hearts desired.

Wen Ruohan remembered the place fondly.

He’d once been a very frequent visitor, in fact, back when he’d been constantly experimenting – he couldn’t quite now remember when he’d stopped, or why, but it had always been enjoyable. After he’d become sect leader, the senior doctors had used his visits as a means of teasing their juniors. They would archly insist that there was no choice but to follow the iron-clad traditions of the room, without exception, even if the patient was their terrifying sect leader, and eventually one unlucky or suicidally brave junior would be tasked with placing and enforcing the chalk marker beside his bed. Not that Wen Ruohan ever listened, of course, since naturally very few of them really dared to try to jab him (and he just shrugged off the few that did). As fun as tormenting the junior generation was, he simply had too much to do…

Ugh, speaking of which, he was probably falling behind even now. Wen Ruohan squeezed his eyes shut with a groan. He didn’t even remember what he’d been experimenting with to cause him to end up here, but it didn’t really matter. He couldn’t linger. He was the sect leader, there was always something to do.

He mentally reached for the running list of tasks he invariably kept in the back of his head – and then frowned, coming up empty. He couldn’t think of what he had planned to do today. Had his secretaries failed to bring him his schedule the night before? Had he injured himself sufficiently badly that he’d simply forgotten it all, somehow?

What had he been doing last that had led him to come here, anyway…?

Wen Ruohan’s eyes abruptly flew open: Xixiang. The mountain. Lan Qiren!

He sat up in the bed at once, ignoring the sudden rush of vertigo with an effort of will. He remembered Cangse Sanren standing beside him, telling him that he’d blown out all his spiritual energy, but also that she was having people search for Lan Qiren, who had last been seen going to see his brother – had they been found? What state was he in?

Wen Ruohan was in his favorite sickroom, which meant he was in the Nightless City. Hadn’t he last been in Xixiang? How had he even gotten here?

How long had he been unconscious?!

The chalk marker in the room was unhelpfully blank, and the room itself was oddly empty, so there was no one to ask. Overusing one’s qi didn’t usually result in unconsciousness that lasted longer than a few days at most, but Wen Ruohan had always been extraordinary, so he didn’t dare make any assumptions. He got up out of bed – then staggered, unhelpfully, but righted himself with an effort and a hand on the wall – and made his way to the main door of the sickroom, pushing it open to break the binding of the sound-proofing spell so that he could try to find Lan Qiren by listening for the sound of his voice, however futile –

Oh.

There he was.

“How can that possibly be your first solution to the problem?!” Lan Qiren was saying…no, that wasn’t quite right. He was bellowing, in fact, and from somewhere not far away; Wen Ruohan thought he might have been able to hear it even without sharpening his hearing to try to find him. Lan Qiren’s voice rang loud and clear, immediately identifiable, as welcome as the sound of a rooster crowing in the dawn after a night-hunt gone wrong.

He sounded fine.

He might not be fine – as if being “fine” were possible, given that Lan Qiren had successively suffered the Fire Palace, the shock of realizing what his brother was doing, and then his brother himself – but he sounded fine, or at least uninjured, unharmed, alive…

Wen Ruohan arranged his clothing and ignored how sore he somehow still was in favor of following the sound of yelling.

“I cannot believe that any reasonable person would think that to be an appropriate proposal. It doesn’t even fix the actual underlying issue. It barely even postpones it! I cannot believe…no. No, no, no. Simply no. Denied.”

A fainter murmur, some unimportant person that Wen Ruohan didn’t care about saying something in response.

“This is me trying to keep an open mind!”

The noise turned out to be coming from the Wen sect’s receiving hall, where Wen Ruohan usually sat in the main seat and received petitioners, including his subordinates, or else visitors. It was used exclusively for sect business. It seemed to be full, which puzzled Wen Ruohan briefly: what sect business could there possibly be happening right now, with him not there…?

He let himself in through the back, managing to avoid notice only by virtue of the fact that everyone inside the room was looking at Lan Qiren.

Wen Ruohan was looking, too. Lan Qiren – one side of his face was badly bruised, with a black eye that definitely hadn’t been there before, and a bandage was tied high on one of his arms, binding both upper arm and shoulder. As injuries went, it wasn’t too bad, and the colors on his face suggested that he was already well along the path of healing, that extremely pure golden core of his already ameliorating the worst of it. It certainly didn’t seem to be slowing him down in any way.

On the contrary, Lan Qiren seemed to be in particularly fine form today, with an especially fierce scowl and face red enough that he looked on the verge of trying to breathe fire. Oddly enough, he was seated on the main seat, where Wen Ruohan usually sat, glaring down at the usual run of petitioners and high-ranking Wen sect subordinates as if he wanted to order them all away – wait.

Wait.

Was Lan Qiren attempting to deal with sect business? With Wen sect business? Was that what was going on now?

It was.

Wen Ruohan felt a sudden surge of tremendous fondness fill his chest, making him feel warm. He could see Cangse Sanren perched on the floor next to the main seat with a gigantic shit-eating grin on her face, looking for all the world like a vulture watching its next meal struggling to its death right in front of its eyes for its amusement, dinner and a show combined. That explained an awful lot: Wen Ruohan distinctly remembered having mentioned to her, in a fit of bitter pique, that in the event of his untimely death, Lan Qiren’s status entitled him to the right to rule the Wen sect as his widow.

Cangse Sanren was the sort of person to find the idea sufficiently funny that she’d encourage Lan Qiren to do it while Wen Ruohan was merely incapacitated, and Lan Qiren sufficiently duty-abiding that he’d assume he had no choice but to agree, even if he didn’t think himself fit for the role. And thus, presumably, they had ended up here.

Wen Ruohan couldn’t blame Cangse Sanren one bit, though. This was hilarious.

Poor Lan Qiren. Ten years of leading the virtuous (or, well, mostly virtuous) Lan sect had clearly not prepared him in the slightest for what he was dealing with in the Nightless City.

Not that he was doing badly.

In fact, he’d even apparently somehow managed to deal with Wen Ruohan’s wives, which in the normal run of things Wen Ruohan would have assumed to be his biggest problems. However, instead of jockeying for position or fighting Lan Qiren for the right to lead, they were contentedly in their usual positions for the rare times they attended to matters of sect management.

Practically, this meant that Lu Qipei was putting on a show of pretending to supervise but mostly just displaying herself to best effect to win the admiration or envy of the female disciples in the audience, wearing something that was no doubt going to be the peak of fashion in another month or two once everyone copied her look, while Shen Mingbi…well, Shen Mingbi was currently preoccupied smiling at a man wearing the insignia of a Fire Palace guard and a face that for whatever reason vaguely reminded Wen Ruohan of Lan Xichen, while he in turn ignored the ongoing proceedings in favor of smiling back.

Ugh. Not another one! How had Wen Ruohan managed to marry women with such poor taste?

At least Lan Qiren didn’t have that problem.

“Go back and think once more on the issue and how to solve it, then bring me a proposal that does not include threats, blackmail or gross negligence of your duty as a cultivator and, for that matter, as a human being,” Lan Qiren said crossly to one of Wen Ruohan’s lieutenants, who looked abashed. He was presumably the one who’d presented the idea that had so raised Lan Qiren’s ire. “In deference to the customs of your sect, I am not excluding the options of using bribery, petty theft, and crimes at around that level – ”

Wen Ruohan choked down another laugh.

This was amazing. He’d have to find a way to reward Cangse Sanren for having thought of it.

“ – but you have to at least start with something remotely palatable. To human beings. Yes, even human beings of the Qishan Wen sect. Am I understood?”

He was.

“Good. Dismissed. Who’s next?”

There was then a brief silence, during which Wen Ruohan’s very brave Wen sect disciples looked at each other with expressions suggesting that they’d rather volunteer for the Fire Palace than volunteer to become the target of Lan Qiren’s attention and Wen Ruohan himself continued to try his absolute best not to laugh audibly. This was far too funny to interrupt.

Eventually, someone cleared their throat and stepped forward – it was Wen Yingjiu, Wen Ruohan’s hapless nominal head disciple. Presumably he’d been pushed forward as a sacrificial lamb by his peers.

“A gift has arrived for Sect Leader Wen from Lanling Jin.”

Oddly enough, that made Lan Qiren snort in what sounded like audible disdain.

“I see,” he said, with what sounded almost like a sneer. “I take it that Sect Leader Jin has received my letter indicating my displeasure regarding his sect’s participation in framing our Wen sect and that he is now trying to go above my head. Is that it?”

Our Wen sect.

Wen Ruohan felt a delightful little shiver of pleasure to hear Lan Qiren call it that. That was as it ought to be, of course – they were married, and Lan Qiren’s marriage vows meant that he rightfully ought to treat his new sect as if it were his own – and of course Lan Qiren was never improper in public, not even when Wen Ruohan occasionally wanted him to be.

He wasn’t foolish enough to think that it meant that Lan Qiren had forgiven Wen Ruohan, or that he was willing to stay voluntarily, or really anything at all. It didn’t signify anything other than the fact that Lan Qiren had good manners and an overactive sense of duty and the sense to preserve face. And yet – and still –

Our Wen sect.

Wen Ruohan liked that.

“I cannot say, Senior Lan. But it is a princely gift: a rare saber from the northwest region,” Wen Yingjiu said, his tone appropriately respectful. Presumably he’d decided to err against calling Lan Qiren “Madam Wen”, which was probably the right move, even if the alternative would have been much funnier. Wen Yingjiu had always had a decent sense of self-preservation, one that outweighed even ambition. “The messenger who delivered it insisted that the Sect Leader would enjoy having it in his possession. The saber is said to be of surpassingly fine quality, beyond anything that can be made in our present cultivation world.”

“Is it really?” Wen Ruohan said, unable to keep from speaking up. He’d always enjoyed receiving high-quality gifts, even when they were obviously meant to be bribes – all good things ought to belong to him, after all, and he wasn’t too picky about how he got them. So what if it was a bribe? Even if he accepted it, nothing was stopping him from betraying the person who’d sent it later on. And since both he and the person trying to bribe him knew that, one could scarcely even call it unethical. “I’m not sure what the Nie sect would have to say about that. How does it compare to theirs?”

The sound of his voice was like dropping a rock into a still pond, the effects of it rippling outwards in waves: everyone turned at once to look at him once they heard it, rows of heads all moving one after the other. Even Lan Qiren, seated up at the main seat, twisted himself to look in Wen Ruohan’s direction, and as he did some strange emotion flickered over his face, only visible for a moment. Wen Ruohan couldn’t quite distinguish what it meant.

“I cannot say, Sect Leader,” Wen Yingjiu said, saluting him at once. He seemed relieved to see him, which said something either about his loyalty or, more likely, Lan Qiren’s ferocity. “The messenger from Lanling Jin sang its praises, and from my humble appraisal, I would agree that it seems to be exceedingly well-made.”

Wen Yingjiu was head disciple of the Wen sect and possessed perfect recall, which meant that he had a pretty good sense of judgment as to what made a good weapon. That meant the saber probably really was exceptional – one of those wonders that were sufficiently impressive that even the ridiculously wealthy Lanling Jin thought them worth keeping in their treasure room. It had probably pained Jin Guangshan immensely to part with it.

“How nice,” Wen Ruohan said, smirk curving his lips as he thought about Jin Guangshan squirming in discomfort but ultimately giving in to reality, knowing that he needed to appease Wen Ruohan’s anger. “Perhaps we should invite Lao Nie over to see which one is the better.”

He was only speaking lightly, thoughtlessly saying what he would have normally said as if nothing had changed, but he had reason to regret it the second it came out of his mouth: the room went completely silent, and Lan Qiren’s face abruptly froze over into complete neutrality.

Wen Ruohan wanted to smack himself. Was he some novice at politics, not to realize that he’d inadvertently implied that he might be willing to accept Jin Guangshan’s bribe and override the expression of disapproval that Lan Qiren had sent out in their sect’s name, in his name? Accepting the gift suggested that he would be willing to cast aside Lan Qiren’s hard work on his behalf, to put someone else’s word over his yet again – a subtle but effective way to put Lan Qiren back in his place, as Jin Guangshan had laughed to him during the discussion conference.

It was certainly not a good way to start making things up with Lan Qiren.

Wen Ruohan immediately wanted to take back his words, but he didn’t know how. Showing weakness in front of so many of his subordinates was impossible, especially when he genuinely felt weak – humor aside, his body felt immensely sore and somehow also too light, as if the usual heavy cloak of power he usually carried with him everywhere was gone. Anyway, it would be inappropriate to admit that he was wrong, because that would be admitting too much. He hadn’t actually said anything out of place or inaccurate, merely a little tone-deaf.

And yet, having Lan Qiren think that Wen Ruohan valued Jin Guangshan over him…

“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard,” Cangse Sanren said helpfully, if by helpfully one meant it in the sense of throwing fuel onto an already blazing fire. “I mean, really, Sect Leader Wen! You just fought a mountain. Is it really still necessary for you to argue with Sect Leader Nie about who’s got the bigger dick?”

The tension in the room shattered.

Lan Qiren slumped in the main seat with a groan, putting his hands over his face, while the petitioners all burst out in choked-off guffaws and sniggers, some notably less choked-off than others.

Wen Ruohan smirked.

“Well,” he drawled. “Actually – ”

“No,” Lan Qiren said firmly. “Absolutely not. This conversation is not going there.”

Wen Ruohan shrugged, putting aside the uncalled-for burst of relief he was currently feeling. It was only natural that he would find a way to salvage the situation, even if it was with assistance.

“Very well, have it your way,” he said, purposefully casual, as if his comment earlier had merely been meant as a joke. “I suppose Cangse Sanren has a point. There’s no point in comparing anyone to me, now, is there? Yingjiu, under the circumstances I think you’d better send the saber back. We wouldn’t want Jin Guangshan to get the wrong idea.”

“Yes, Sect Leader! At once!”

Lan Qiren looked begrudgingly appeased, and the rest of the room looked profoundly impressed. There, that ought to do it: he’d erased the implication of his earlier statement, and publicly reaffirmed his support for Lan Qiren’s disapproval of Lanling Jin. Now that would make Jin Guangshan really squirm…as was only right. What had the man been thinking, joining forces with Qingheng-jun to scheme against Wen Ruohan and his sect like that?

If it had been Wen Ruohan up in that seat right now, he wouldn’t have limited himself to a mere letter of disapproval. At a minimum he would have demanded a whole cartful of treasures, or maybe even some land, a subordinate sect or two sacrificed to his ambitions…Jin Guangshan ought to count himself lucky!

“Should you be here?” Lan Qiren abruptly asked, frowning at Wen Ruohan. “I thought the doctor said that he intended for you to rest for a while longer? Someone said something about a chalk marker…?”

Wen Ruohan smirked at the idea that someone had had to explain the rules of the “you fucked up” room to Lan Qiren, hopefully in terms as colorful as the way he’d always heard it – though actually, now that he thought about it, he did rather feel as though he might want to go back to bed relatively soon. What was wrong with him? He’d never been this weak after exerting himself.

Though he supposed it had been rather a long time since he’d done himself in this badly…

“Enjoying your new work so much that you’ve decided to get rid of me?” he drawled.

Lan Qiren didn’t rise to the bait. “If that were my intention, I would tell you in advance.”

He probably would, the ridiculous man. Wen Ruohan could imagine it now: Lan Qiren all puffed up like a albino bird of paradise, solemnly stating that he regretted to inform him that he had decided he had no choice but to kill him and that he would appreciate it if Wen Ruohan would be so kind as to make himself ready for the attempt.

It was an oddly comforting thought.

“However, assuming you have just violated the doctors’ directives, I suggest you return to your sickbed, or at a minimum to your room, to continue resting,” Lan Qiren continued, looking annoyed. Or possibly concerned? It was hard to tell with him, sometimes – and for whatever reason, Wen Ruohan had the sudden feeling that Lan Qiren was being deliberately dismissive of him, almost performatively so. “Unless you want to take over managing sect business…?”

Wen Ruohan looked at his subordinates, who looked at him hopefully.

“No, I think I’m enjoying this too much,” he said thoughtfully, and smirked when their faces all fell.

“Well done, Sect Leader Wen!” Cangse Sanren cackled. “Milk that invalid status for all that it’s worth! At least one more day, please. You see, you just missed Qiren-gege threatening everyone to start the morning session at yin shi – ”

“At chen shi, not yin shi! A shichen after dawn, not before!”

“Was that it? I couldn’t tell from the way everyone looked like you’d threatened to murder their first-born sons. Remember, it’s only called the Nightless City because they’re all insomniacs!”

“Oh?” Wen Ruohan said, arching his eyebrows and allowing his tone to become a little dangerous, just for fun. “Is that what someone has told you…?”

The entire room full of petitioners took a step back away from him.

Lan Qiren’s eye twitched.

He turned to Cangse Sanren and said: “Take him away before I throw something at his head.”

And then, to Wen Ruohan: “Take her away before I strangle her.”

“Shall we?” Wen Ruohan asked, offering her his arm. She jumped up and trotted over to take it.

“We shall,” she said with a grin. “You promised me a tour.”

Wen Ruohan was fairly sure he had done no such thing. And, indeed, the moment they had left the main room behind by some distance, Cangse Sanren said, quite casually, “The tour can wait. I want to yell at you. Where’s a good place for that?”

Wen Ruohan opted to lead them both back to his bedroom, since it would be private and he was certain that Lan Qiren, unlike his wives, would think nothing of him taking a woman there to talk. Also because he was feeling increasingly dizzy, and he preferred to be weak somewhere he had protected with many, many layers of protective arrays. Technically the sickrooms were similarly protected, but he had no interest in returning there – someone would undoubtedly come to find him there now that he was awake, and he wasn’t in the mood to listen to complaints.

“How long was I out?” he asked as they walked.

“It’s been a few days,” she said promptly. “Not too long, really quite usual. We had the senior doctor that Qiren said looked least likely to gossip examine you – Wen Dairong, I think his name was – ”

That was fine. Wen Dairong usually preferred research to patients, but he’d kept his hand in with doing the rounds in the sickrooms enough that his skills hadn’t deteriorated, and he was notoriously close-mouthed. Best of all, he was one of Wen Ruohan’s more trustworthy cousins, having always very obviously set supporting his beloved research as the price of his loyalty, and no one could meet that price better than Wen Ruohan.

He wondered if Lan Qiren had been worried when he found out that Wen Ruohan was unconscious. He was fairly sure that Cangse Sanren wouldn’t tell him even if he had.

“Anyway, he confirmed that there’s nothing seriously the matter with you – well, nothing the matter with your health – other than qi exhaustion. Well, other than extremely severe qi exhaustion.” She glanced at him sidelong and waited until they were in his room, with its privacy arrays activated, before she bluntly added, “You completely emptied not only your active supply of spiritual energy but also your reserves, and you dipped pretty heavily into your life force, too. Nothing that will cause long-term damage, but I’m telling you, you were dry. No matter how ridiculously quickly you accumulate more through cultivating – I’ve seen the charts, by the way, so well done there – there’s simply no way you’re getting back to normal until at least a few months have passed, if not more. Welcome to the world of us mere mortals.”

Wen Ruohan scowled.

Unfortunately, after he sat at his desk and took a moment to examine himself, he was forced to conclude that Wen Dairong was right. He didn’t just feel weak, he was weak – not quite down to the level of a common person, but certainly around the level of a common (if still very talented) cultivator. He had woken up too quickly and without guidance, and hadn’t realized the level of his weakness when he’d headed out. No wonder Lan Qiren had made such an effort to get him out of the receiving hall, with Cangse Sanren playing along to make it seem as though neither of them had any concerns for Wen Ruohan’s health or strength.

The information would get out eventually, of course. But their apparent dismissiveness would deceive people for just long enough – long enough to give Wen Ruohan a little more time to decide how to best control the narrative, to ensure that the rest of the cultivation world remembered that while he was weakened, he would only be weakened for a short while, and that in the interval he still had his army and nearly half of the cultivation world at his beck and call.

And also to remind them that when he returned to normal, he would be even more powerful – and extremely vengeful against anyone who dared to try anything in the interim.

“What happened with Qingheng-jun?” he asked Cangse Sanren, who had seemingly forgotten her plan to yell at him in favor of poking around the bedroom with an expression of profound interest. At the moment she was perusing one of Lan Qiren’s annotated copies of the Lan sect rules, which had been carelessly left on the bedside table after Wen Ruohan had grabbed it for a (purposefully rather ostentatious) consult during one of their more contentious bits of bed-play.

That had been a good day. Lan Qiren had been so incredibly annoyed to have lost the argument, and Wen Ruohan had enjoyed every moment of it – as well as every moment of Lan Qiren taking it back out on him later on.

“Qingheng-jun? He’s missing,” Cangse Sanren said, turning back to look at him. “Possibly after having some sort of nervous breakdown? It wasn’t entirely clear. Lan Qiren only saw him leave, and since then he hasn’t been seen anywhere, not even by his own sect, which is starting to be more than a little nervous about it…to make what is undoubtedly a long story short, I’d say our Qiren won that encounter hands down.”

“He hurt him. Lan Qiren’s face – ”

“There’s nothing we can do about that right now, so stop thinking about it. Between you and Qingheng-jun, which one of you just fought a mountain again…?”

Wen Ruohan rolled his eyes.

“The whole world saw you do that, you know. It’s going to have some interesting consequences.”

“Let it,” Wen Ruohan said dismissively. “How is Lan Qiren doing?”

Cangse Sanren gave him a look.

“Oh, yes, please, let’s talk about that,” she said acidly. “The Fire Palace? Really?”

“I concede that I erred,” Wen Ruohan said stiffly, not appreciating her insolence. How dare she think she had any right to scold him? “Also, this is a discussion I will be having with Lan Qiren, not you.”

She arched her eyebrows. “You don’t want advice on how to make up with him?”

On second thought, Wen Ruohan was a practical man from a practical sect; he knew how to be flexible when necessary. With someone as complicated and rigid as Lan Qiren…he could probably use all the help he could get.

He gestured for her to sit.

Cangse Sanren perched herself on his chair, once again resembling nothing more than an over-large bird, probably of a corvid or a vulture. She tapped her distinctive fingernails on his desk, drawing his attention.

“All right,” she said. “You’ve already gotten to the point of admitting that you fucked up, that’s better than I expected. It’s still not going to help you. You really fucked up.”

Wen Ruohan was aware.

“So what’s your plan? You have to apologize.”

Wen Ruohan grimaced.

“Apologize and be punished,” she clarified mercilessly. “The Lan are big on exacting justice.”

Wen Ruohan was aware. Unfortunately, he still wasn’t sure what type of punishment he could offer up that would actually mean anything to Lan Qiren.

“…Lan Xichen suggested I write an essay,” he finally said, all too aware of how pathetic the suggestion sounded. “Laying out what I did wrong and explaining that I wouldn’t do it again.”

“That’s not actually that bad of an idea. He’d probably find it charming,” Cangse Sanren said, to Wen Ruohan’s surprise, but then almost immediately afterwards she made a face. “Well, assuming you were actually willing to do it properly. What’s your proposal for the ‘never doing it again’ bit?”

That had also been the part that had tripped up Wen Ruohan. He was always going to be sect leader and Lan Qiren was always going to be just the sect leader’s spouse – even if one accounted for the unique husband and wife dynamic they’d chosen, there was always going to be an imbalance between them.

Wen Ruohan was always going to have more power.

“Become omnipotent and therefore no longer make mistakes?” he offered, only half-joking – he knew it was unrealistic, but the thought was so very appealing. He was already so powerful, surely if he only tried a little harder, he would finally get to the level where all his problems would be solved. Right?

Cangse Sanren groaned. “Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say. No essay. It’ll just make it worse.”

“I’m open to alternate suggestions.”

“Nice try. He’d know if it came from me rather than you, and I’m not the one you want him to forgive.”

That was extraordinarily unhelpful.

She hummed. “You are at least aware that at least one part of the problem is that you even have a torture palace to begin with, right?”

Wen Ruohan scowled at her.

“I’m just saying, it’s a lot harder to throw people into your torture palace if you don’t have a torture palace,” Cangse Sanren said with a smirk. “Also, have you ever considered knitting? Or embroidery?”

Wen Ruohan stared at her.

“You know, because you like stabbing things…?”

“Out,” Wen Ruohan said flatly. “Now.”

“Listen, if you would just get another hobby – ”

“Out.”

After Cangse Sanren left, Wen Ruohan opened a drawer in his desk and dug around until he found a very old set of acupuncture needles that he hadn’t used in any number of years, then got up and went to the garden to find a sunny spot to meditate. It had been quite a long time since he’d needed to cultivate the old-fashioned way, but he still remembered the tricks he’d used to do it faster than his peers. Though technically speaking, jabbing yourself with acupuncture needles to help you process spiritual energy faster wasn’t so much a trick as it was an incredibly unwise medical procedure. But that was only if you didn’t know what you were doing…

(He refused to consider if this counted as part of a hobby of “stabbing things.”)

He'd only been meditating for half a shichen when a noise pulled him out of it.

Several noises.

“Are you sure we’re allowed in here?”

“No one’s ever here during the middle of the day, it’s fine.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“Don’t be a spoilsport.”

“Is this really where Shufu lives now? It’s so big!”

Wen Ruohan opened his eyes and watched bemusedly as a small troop of children marched right into his quarters, with his own little Chao-er leading the way, looking pleased as punch with himself.

For a moment, Wen Ruohan felt rage swelling in his heart, the urge to lash out growing. How dare these children invade his quarters without permission? How insolent they were! He was busy. Didn’t they realize that he had to regain his strength, and quickly? If he didn’t, who would be left to defend his home and his sect –

Well, technically there was now Lan Qiren to do that.

Hmm.

There was something appealing about that.

He took another moment to observe the children, who hadn’t yet noticed him sitting in the corner of the garden. They were sticking mostly to the inside rooms, avidly exploring the various surfaces – the Lan boys were very proudly pointing out everything that visibly belonged to Lan Qiren, no matter how inane, while the other children oohed and aahed appreciatively, and Wen Chao was bouncing around and pointing out things that were characteristic of the Wen sect to equal appreciation.

Interestingly, Wen Chao seemed more comfortable with the younger boys, most particularly the Jiang heir, who he seemed especially eager to impress. It was an interesting choice, given the availability of the seemingly more charismatic Wei boy or the more mature Lan Xichen…or even Jiang Yanli, who was following the others with a surprisingly mischievous smile.

And speaking of smiling, Wen Chao was doing a surprising amount of it, almost to the point that Wen Ruohan briefly doubted that that was his son he was looking at. As far as he was aware, Wen Chao always looked either bitter or resentful, sulking like the spoiled princeling he was whenever Wen Ruohan wasn’t around and cringing and cowering whenever he was. He’d unfortunately inherited a solid portion of his mother’s stupidity, being both gullible and easily manipulated, and those traits in combination with Wen Ruohan’s prickly pride had led him to form grudges against virtually all of his peers in the Nightless City, many of whom had undoubtedly been given ulterior motives by their parents. It wasn’t a bad thing, necessarily, to learn to detect that early on. But unfortunately the result had been to leave him alone, making him a lonely and unpleasant child, willing to lie to get his way but not quite cunning enough to pull it off.

None of that was presently in evidence. Wen Chao looked happy.

How strange. Wen Ruohan had mostly written off his second son, figuring that children mostly resembled their mothers in childhood and their fathers in adulthood, that Wen Chao would therefore improve and acquire more of Wen Ruohan’s own traits as he got older and that there was therefore no point in bothering with him until then. But looking at him now – well, either Wen Chao had very abruptly matured overnight, which seemed highly unlikely, or else the presence of a group of his peers that were not only willing to spend time with him but actively intended to incorporate him into their group for reasons other than their parents’ selfish schemes was doing wonders for his personality.

Wen Chao was practically shining with delight, and with pride. For once, the habitual arrogance of the Wen sect sat upon him naturally rather than hanging off of him like an ill-fitting coat.

Much more like Wen Ruohan than his mother. Good, good. About time!

(Really, if this was the result of Lan Qiren’s casual instruction to his nephews to befriend his son, who by that point he’d barely even met, Wen Ruohan couldn’t wait to see how much active instruction by the man would benefit his son further.)

No, it was better not to interrupt. He wouldn’t want to ruin Wen Chao’s big moment, after all.

“What are these swords doing on the wall?” Wei Ying asked. “They seem pretty nice.”

“They’re treasure swords!” Wen Chao chirped. “Each one of them has a name and a history, a reputation – they’re all famous, every one of them.”

“Isn’t it dangerous to have swords on your wall, though?” Jiang Cheng sounded doubtful. “What if they fall off? Or what if someone comes in and grabs them in the middle of a fight…?”

“My father would grab them first,” Wen Chao said. “And then he’d kill them.”

Good boy.

“It would be awesome,” he added proudly.

Wen Ruohan smirked.

“But why so many?” Wei Ying wanted to know. “Don’t most people only have the one spiritual sword that they cultivate with…? Does your father have a favorite, or – ”

“Children!” Lan Qiren’s voice cracked out like a whip, making them all jump and scatter like a flock of startled pheasants. “What are you doing in here?”

“We were looking around, Shufu,” Lan Xichen said respectfully.

“We weren’t bothering anyone, Teacher Lan,” Jiang Yanli said, and Jiang Cheng and Wei Ying nodded furiously in agreement with her. “We didn’t disturb anything in here, either.”

“We just wanted to see where Shufu lived,” Lan Wangji explained.

“I told them you lived with my father,” Wen Chao put in, very proud. “They didn’t believe me at first, but now they do.”

From where Wen Ruohan was sitting, and because he knew to look, he could tell that Lan Qiren’s ears had gone pink. It was perhaps a little strange for a married couple with separate courtyards available to choose to share one instead – verging on shameless, really, since what it usually meant was that they couldn’t keep their hands off each other.

Hopefully none of the children had picked up on that. Lan Qiren might die of embarrassment.

Also, if he didn’t stop blushing, Wen Ruohan was going to start laughing.

“You still should not have entered these rooms without permission,” Lan Qiren said firmly. “These are Wen Ruohan’s private living quarters. What if he objected to your intrusion?”

“That’s why we came now,” Wei Ying explained. “So he wouldn’t be bothered! He can’t be bothered if he’s not here!”

The children all nodded in agreement.

Lan Qiren blinked owlishly at them with a frown. “What do you mean ‘he’s not here’? He’s right over there, in the garden.”

“He’s what?!” Wen Chao shrieked.

Wen Ruohan smiled with teeth when the children finally looked over at him.

The next ke or so was spent in childish pandemonium – and Wen Ruohan trying and failing not to laugh – until Lan Qiren got tired of it all and ordered them all (excluding Wen Ruohan) to leave.

“And each of you will copy lines for half a shichen this evening,” he added sternly. “Xichen, you will be in charge of selecting which lines, but I expect you to pick something appropriate regarding respecting one’s elders and the privacy of others. Understood?”

“Yes, Shufu! Understood, Shufu!”

“Jiang Yanli, as the eldest, I expect you to both supervise and lead by example.”

“Yes, Teacher Lan. Understood, Teacher Lan.”

“Good. Dismissed.”

Wen Ruohan watched them go with amusement. “You speak to the children in the same tone you use for my lieutenants,” he remarked once the children were gone. “Or should that be the other way around…?”

Lan Qiren glanced at him only briefly, then turned away. “Get those needles out of your wrists. Words will not be able to encompass my displeasure if you manage to further hurt yourself in an effort to recover your power faster.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Wen Ruohan said, though he did remove the needles and get up to come back into the room. Why wasn’t Lan Qiren looking at him? Was this the result of the Fire Palace, now that Lan Qiren had had some time to think about it…? “Why are you here?”

Lan Qiren stiffened. “I live here. Am I unwelcome?”

Wen Ruohan hated the ungainly awkwardness that seemed to have suddenly sprung up between them. It had never existed before, not even right after they had first married – Lan Qiren had been earnest, then, and sincere, even though he’d also been recently traumatized. There hadn’t been any of this…prickliness.

This – wariness.

Wen Ruohan hated it, but he knew he had only himself to blame.

“Not at all,” he said, keeping his voice deliberately light, smooth. “I only meant that I would have expected you to continue to receive petitioners until later in the afternoon. They’re usually especially needy immediately after some major event.”

“I dismissed them early. I wanted to find you to discuss an important matter – we’ve received an invitation to go to the Lotus Pier.”

Wen Ruohan arched his eyebrows. That was unexpected. “What reason does the Jiang sect have to invite us?”

“Not just us,” Lan Qiren explained. “The entire cultivation world. They are holding a celebration…ah, no, let me explain from the beginning. It is about what happened in Xixiang.”

“…they’re throwing a party over it?”

Lan Qiren had the world’s most tired and long-suffering expression. “The cultivation world has unanimously decided that they did not, in fact, nearly go to war, but rather that everyone had merely gathered together to tackle the ghosts of Xixiang.”

Wen Ruohan felt a sudden headache. “Are you joking?”

“I am not. Everyone worked quite collaboratively against the spirits that emerged from the mountain. It is being hailed as an example of the cultivation world overcoming obstacles to unite against evil.”

“That is the most transparent face-saving lie I have ever heard in my life,” Wen Ruohan marveled. “My very, very long life.”

That got a faint smile out of Lan Qiren.

It faded quickly, though.

“Transparent or not, everyone has an interest in maintaining it,” he said briskly, shifting back to impassively discussing politics. “No one had time to question the ghosts, so the secret of the mine remains intact, and the excuse of a night hunt in the area happens to match perfectly with the lie that drew your army there – a large-scale haunting, which they were invited to help eradicate. The aggressive moves by Gusu Lan and Lanling Jin can then be explained away as mere over-enthusiasm and the result of unfortunate misunderstandings, particularly as both sect leaders retreated or left relatively early in the proceedings – ”

Wen Ruohan was deeply unsurprised to hear that Jin Guangshan had gotten spooked by seeing a display of what real power was capable of and ran away, leaving his forces to face the music without him. He’d probably spent the time comforting himself with his current mistresses and putting together a plan regarding who he was going to blame for having gotten involved in the first place. Maybe he’d even re-use Wang Liu, who had undoubtedly outlived his usefulness. Certainly that pathetic display earlier suggested that Jin Guangshan was absolutely desperate to get back into Wen Ruohan’s good graces…

“I have even heard,” and now Lan Qiren’s face was set in deeply disapproving stone, “that some people appear to be trying to claim that the misunderstanding was originally caused by an illusion array, possibly a ghost wall of some unprecedented type – ”

Wen Ruohan snorted in disgust. That sounded like the Jin sect all right. “Face-saving all around, then.”

“Yes, exactly.” Lan Qiren sighed. “The Jiang sect, for its part, wants no one to pay attention to the fact that a war was nearly started with an independent sect so close to their border, particularly since it quite evidently happened without their knowledge. Moreover, they are also using this party as an opportunity to make up for the discussion conference that was canceled…”

Wen Ruohan snorted a second time, this time in amusement. That wasn’t going to happen.

Lan Qiren hummed in agreement. “Unfortunately, this situation presents us with two issues. The first is that we do not know where my brother has gone or what he might do. Putting aside his future actions in their own right, he is still capable of sharing the details of what happened in the mine, which would by itself be devastating – he is the last remaining witness to the actual events of the mine, excluding the Gusu Lan sect elders involved.”

“I assume from that statement that you’ve confirmed that the merchant house that committed most of the massacre was put to the sword in turn?”

Lan Qiren scowled. “None of your record keepers were able to find any trace of them after that time, so I would assume so. Likely in the name of ‘justice,’ as we are dealing with hypocrites.”

Lan Qiren was still furious at his sect elders, it seemed. Quite reasonable.

At least he was displaying some emotion. Wen Ruohan was growing increasingly displeased with the neutral expression Lan Qiren sometimes put on, finding it far more hateful than his unvarnished rage. Now that he had seen Lan Qiren use that deadened face in public meetings with his political enemies, he no longer wanted to see it when they were alone.

“What’s the second problem?” he asked.

Lan Qiren glanced at him again – another fleeting look, there and then gone. “You have been invited as the guest of honor, on account of your heroism in defending the common people of Xixiang. It would be impolitic to refuse.”

Now it was Wen Ruohan’s turn to feel prickly. “Why should we refuse? Are you suggesting that I would be unable to attend? You think I am too weak, perhaps? Or merely untrustworthy…?”

“Ridiculous,” Lan Qiren snapped. “I had only thought that you might not wish to appear in public until you had had more of a chance to recover.”

Wen Ruohan sneered. “Yes, you’re just being considerate, of course. How could I doubt it? When you won’t even look at me – ”

Lan Qiren’s jaw tightened, and Wen Ruohan cut himself off. What was he doing? This wasn’t what he’d wanted at all.

He’d wanted…

“Cangse Sanren said that I shouldn’t write you an essay,” he blurted out.

That got a reaction, at least: Lan Qiren turned to stare at him. “An essay?”

“I asked your nephews how I could make you stop being angry at me after I – after a misstep,” Wen Ruohan explained. “Lan Xichen explained that if it was him, he would write an essay explaining what he had done wrong and expressing that he wouldn’t do it again, as well as proposing appropriate discipline to be imposed. But I could not think of what discipline would be appropriate, and Cangse Sanren said that offering to become omnipotent as a solution was likely to backfire, so – ”

He stopped again, but this time it was because Lan Qiren was laughing.

At first it was only a little, an incredulous little chuckle, but then it got stronger and stronger until Lan Qiren’s shoulders were shaking with the force of his laughter.

“Is this,” he wheezed, “your idea of an apology?”

“It’s not exactly an area in which I have a great deal of experience,” Wen Ruohan said, watching Lan Qiren’s face, all crinkled-up with good humor, and wanting desperately to kiss him. “On account of the fact that I am so rarely wrong.”

That just made Lan Qiren laugh harder.

Eventually he needed to sit down, which he did on the bed – quite promising, really. Wen Ruohan went and sat next to him.

“Tell me,” he said. “Have I beaten out Lao Nie?”

“Beaten…? Oh, you mean in being the most obnoxious man in the world?” Lan Qiren wiped his eyes. “Do not tell me you have gotten competitive over that. It is hardly a title anyone would want.”

“Perhaps I simply wish to be first in your thoughts.”

“Me and the rest of the world,” Lan Qiren said dryly. “I am well aware of your narcissism.”

Wen Ruohan had meant his statement to be romantic, but he had to concede that Lan Qiren had a good point. Also, he’d forgotten that there was no point in romantic subtleties with Lan Qiren; the man was too blunt and literal for that.

He’d have to be equally blunt in turn.

“Your sect believes in punishment that ends and absolves the error,” he said, because he still couldn’t bring himself to force the words I was wrong and I regret what I’ve done through his lips. “Is there something that would be appropriate here? I am willing.”

Lan Qiren’s humor slowly faded away, and he sighed.

“I do not think that it would be appropriate for me to suggest a punishment in this circumstance,” he said. “The purpose of punishment is twofold: deterrence and remediation. Deterrence applies both to the community at large, to show them what is wrong and what is right, and to the individual, so that they never again do what they know to be wrong. Remediation is a matter of balancing the scales of justice, repairing the harm committed so that the victim is appeased and peace restored. While punishment can be imposed and often is – discipline is generic, even-handed, applicable to all, a way to teach and to remind those who err of the importance of the rules that underwrite the basis of our community – it is a little different when punishment is being used as a means of penance. In those cases, voluntary accedence is the most effective.”

Wen Ruohan frowned. “What does that mean?”

“It means that you will need to determine for yourself what the appropriate punishment will be. As the victim, I can absolve you of the harm you caused, if I wish, but that is only half of what you must do: there is still the question of deterrence. Only you can determine what you must do now to show your sincerity – what sacrifice you will make that would serve as both payment for the past and a promise to the future.”

Wen Ruohan scowled.

“There are any number of punishments that you can choose from. There are punishments of pain, where you show your sincerity through suffering the pain that you caused others or to use the pain to burn in the lesson to be learned; there are punishments of time, where you devote yourself to writing lines or essays or some other form of contemplation that encourages you to truly think about what you have done wrong. There are even punishments which consist merely of loss – loss of advantage, loss of privileges, or even loss of freedom…though I will say that I would greatly disapprove if you chose seclusion as a punishment.”

“Absolutely not,” Wen Ruohan assured him. “As a general rule, I try not to lock myself alone with my paranoia. It only makes it worse.”

Lan Qiren’s eyes curved in another smile. A lingering one, this time.

“Explain to me what this means,” Wen Ruohan said. “You won’t impose a punishment until I select one that is appropriate? Does that mean we are at odds until then?”

“No, merely that your punishment is not fully complete until you yourself determine that you have completed it. For the half that involves seeking to remedy the harm…” He paused briefly, then shook his head. “There is no need. I am willing to accept your apology and forgive you.”

Wen Ruohan stared.

“You were tricked,” Lan Qiren pointed out. “Anyone can be tricked. I understood at once what must have happened.”

“You were tortured,” Wen Ruohan said. “On my order. You shouldn’t forgive me just like that!”

“And that is why punishment is required,” Lan Qiren said patiently. “You cannot force me to forgive you, but you also cannot force me not to. It is wholly up to me whether I wish to bear a grudge, and I do not. But only punishment will adequately serve to make you believe it.”

That was true in one respect: Wen Ruohan didn’t believe it.

Or, rather, he supposed he did believe it, but it wasn’t what he wanted. He didn’t want Lan Qiren to forgive him because the Lan sect rules said Do not bear grudges. He wanted something else. Something better.

He wanted Lan Qiren to trust him again. He wanted Lan Qiren to love him.

And that meant, he supposed, that that was what the punishment was really for: to show Lan Qiren that Wen Ruohan meant what he said. That Wen Ruohan was serious, that he really was sorry, that he really wouldn’t do it again.

Only then would Lan Qiren be able to really forgive him in his heart, rather than merely forgiving him in his head.

“I’ll think of something,” he said, and for the first time really meant it, rather than a half-hearted attempt to patch over the consequences of his actions. “Give me some time, and I’ll come up with a suitable punishment. One that even you won’t be able to say is inappropriate.”

“Do not underestimate yourself,” Lan Qiren said, sounding amused. “You excel above all others.”

Wen Ruohan should not have felt complimented by what was obviously an insult. He was, though. Just a bit.

“Though, on that note, I feel that we should discuss what you did with the mountain.”

Wen Ruohan arched his eyebrows. “I suppose, like Cangse Sanren, you wish to scold me for overexerting my strength and making a spectacle of myself?”

“On the contrary. I wish to praise you. You did a very good thing, saving the common people, and you did it at great cost to yourself.” Lan Qiren shifted a little, and Wen Ruohan noted that his ears had gone red once more. “Perhaps it is arrogance on my part, but I flatter myself to think that I played some role in your decision to do what you did – ”

“It’s not arrogance when it’s true,” Wen Ruohan said. “You’re right. I did it for you. Or – not for you. Because you would have wanted me to.”

Lan Qiren looked at him, and there was that strange emotion on his face again, the strangest mix of pain and fondness.

“That pleases me more than I can say,” he said, and Wen Ruohan smirked proudly. “Well, let it not be said that the rules are not fair. Just as they demand punishment for wrongdoing, so too do they demand that rewards be given for exceptional behavior.”

Reward?

Wen Ruohan brightened. A reward sounded good.

“Of course, we must account for the fact that you have been injured and rendered vulnerable,” Lan Qiren mused. “I would not want to cause you to feel any sense of threat from me, and also we must avoid causing you greater harm…I have been giving the matter some serious thought, and I think I have found a method that would work well.”

This sounded very good.

“Of course, it would require you to consent to being tied up – ”

Forget very good. This was going to be great.

Chapter Text

Lan Qiren was starting to wonder whether paranoia was communicable.

Everyone knew Wen Ruohan was paranoid, of course. He was practically infamous for it, and justly so, with his long record of acting in accordance with it; he was even self-aware enough to make jokes on the subject. Whereas, in contrast, Lan Qiren had always thought himself level-headed and a relatively good judge of risk – yes, he’d made a mistake in underestimating the danger to himself during that last confrontation with his brother, but in fairness to him there was no way he could have plausibly imagined that his brother blamed him for…with He Kexin…

No, he still couldn’t even think about that.

Lan Qiren hadn’t told anyone about his brother’s accusation. He was well aware that withholding information from his allies was a stupid decision, and potentially a risky one, even highly risky, with unknown consequences, but telling someone would involve having to think about it, and he refused to do that. It seemed to be almost an insult to He Kexin’s memory, to the genuine love and affection she bore her sons, to the strange begrudging companionship, if not friendship, that she had established with Lan Qiren himself. He Kexin was – well, she was quite evidently a rather bad person, given what she’d participated in, but her indifference and willful blindness were nothing compared to what the elders of Lan Qiren’s own sect had done, and unlike them, she’d actually paid for it. Ten years’ seclusion…in principle it might not be inappropriate as a punishment for her actions, for what she had done to all those families she had so neglectfully identified, but it nevertheless seemed all the more unfair now that Lan Qiren knew that his sect elders had made He Kexin pay for her culpability when they had not paid for their own.

(These past few days, alone and worrying endlessly and fruitlessly about Wen Ruohan’s persistent unconsciousness no matter how others reassured him, Lan Qiren had had occasion in his darkest moments to wonder whether his sect elders had ever considered telling him what had happened with the mine, drawing him into their complicity. If he hadn’t made such a fuss over the improper exploitation of that one subsidiary sect whose name had long since drifted out of his memory, if he hadn’t demonstrated himself to be quite so rigid and inflexible, maybe they would have.

He wondered what he would have done if they did.

He should like to think that he would have had the strength to go against the might of his sect for the sake of doing what was right, but he was painfully aware that he’d been little more than a boy at the time, a young man with no experience of the world. Would stubbornness and moral certainty be enough to overcome the pressure of his elders’ expectations, of his family’s expectations? It was always easier to be righteous when your opponents were the world, rather than your closest kin, your beloved ones, those to whom you owed everything, those who had themselves taught you right from wrong. It was easier to recklessly gamble when your own life was on the line than it was to put at risk your sect or your family. Faced with the opposition of his sect, with the risk of his sect’s disgrace, would Lan Qiren have had the spine to remember that Be virtuous and Stay on the righteous path outweighed Do not disrespect your elders and Remember the grace of your ancestors? Or would he have convinced himself that he must be missing something even when he knew he had not, that his elders knew better than he and that it was better to just obey, that it was better and easier to just look away and not think about it…?

He did not know. Shamefully, he was happy never to have had to find out.)

Regardless of his mistakes, though, Lan Qiren still had a decent regard for his own judgment. He didn’t think he was the sort of person to be unduly paranoid.

And yet. And yet, and yet…

Perhaps it was simply that he’d allowed himself to fall too much into the habit of worrying?

Certainly he knew that his fears, at the moment, were irrational. Not even Wen Ruohan was especially concerned right now, and given the other man’s ability to see a threat in every stratagem, that was saying something. In fact, Lan Qiren couldn’t even put his finger exactly on what it was that he was afraid of.

They were at the Lotus Pier, after all. They were at a party!

Other than the misery of unwanted social interaction, there was nothing to be afraid of. And even if his nameless fears were validated and something did happen, how bad could it be?

At first Lan Qiren had worried that his brother would find some way to come there to confront them, capitalizing on Wen Ruohan’s temporary weakness to try to launch some type of attack. His brother had always been an exceptional swordsman, an exceptional cultivator, and having fought him – or, more accurately, tried to evade him – Lan Qiren could confirm that his ten years in seclusion had only made him more formidable. There was likely no one else in the cultivation world who could match him one-on-one, excluding only perhaps Lao Nie…though when he’d expressed the concern to Wen Ruohan, the other man had only laughed, pointing out that if Lan Qiren’s brother showed up to the Lotus Pier, it wouldn’t be a one-on-one fight, but rather one-against-many.

Lan Qiren’s brother wasn’t exactly very popular right now.

He was still the Sect Leader of the Lan sect, of course, and due respect for that alone, but his disappearance after the events in Xixiang had bewildered people, and the inevitable revelation that he had moved the Lan sect in an offensive manner, rather than defensive, had generated a certain amount of disapproval. Wars of conquest were only admirable when they were successful. When one coupled together somehow managing to lose such a war despite having every conceivable advantage over the small sect he’d been aiming at (even if the loss occurred for completely justifiable and unexpected external reasons) along with his strange disappearance both during and after the fight against the ghosts…it wasn’t that people had formed bad opinions of him, necessarily, but they certainly had questions they would very much like him to answer.

No, Lan Qiren’s brother wouldn’t show up. He had run away to lick his wounds in private, or so Lan Qiren presumed, and he would stay there, doing that. He was too smart to try to launch an attack somewhere where he would face so much opposition, and he valued his face too much to otherwise allow himself to appear here, where he’d risk becoming the target of other people’s scorn. He would not show up.

Or, well, so Lan Qiren thought, anyway. At this point, he’d given up trying to understand his brother.

But if Lan Qiren’s brother wasn’t going to show up – and since they’d been here a day and half already without any incident, it seemed likely that he wasn’t – then there was nothing for Lan Qiren to fear.

Who would he be afraid of even if he had the inclination, anyway? Jiang Fengmian, spineless puppy that he was, looking pleased as anything by the peaceful gathering he was hosting and not even bothering to bring up that awkward little business of a war being started on his outside border? Yu Ziyuan, presiding over the event with an iron fist, so busy that she could barely even blink? Jin Guangshan, who’d seemingly taken the censure he’d received from the Wen sect seriously enough to be avoiding them, but who was making up for it by being excessively sociable with everyone else – he’d even had his sect create commemorative coins celebrating the defeat of the Xixiang ghosts and was handing them out to everyone who’d take them, presumably trying to gloss over his own hasty exit following the appearance of the ghosts. Not that it would change the fact that everyone knew he was both an opportunist and a coward, but with the receipt of Jin sect gold, they at least wouldn’t be talking about it in public.

Perhaps what Lan Qiren ought to be worrying about was Lao Nie, who rather uncharacteristically still had a stormy scowl on his face instead of his regular carefree smirk, and who was being unusually standoffish, completely contrary to his usual self. He’d brought his eldest son, Nie Mingjue, to the party with him, and it was Nie Mingjue who was doing most of the work of greeting people – not an unreasonable task, given that he was his father’s heir, but he was too young for it.

Most people might interpret Nie Mingjue’s rather impressive height, already starting to inch up to nearly match his father’s, as suggesting that he was in his late adolescence, nearly a full man. This was a reasonable assumption, in fairness, since given Qinghe Nie’s habitual reticence with personal details, that strange quirk that meant that they shared neither their childhood name nor their age nor anything about themselves until they reached the point of arranging a marriage, it was impossible to be sure that he wasn’t. But Lan Qiren had taught Nie Mingjue for a whole summer, and he was experienced with teaching boys, experienced enough to be able to tell the gradations of different ages between them. He, at least, knew that the boy, however tall, was likely only thirteen or fourteen at the oldest. And that meant, even as training, it was far too early to make him have to carry the weight of these horrible social events!

But with Lao Nie’s temper, and the deeply forbidding expression on his face at present, it was probably unwise to go over and say as much. To do so would undoubtedly do nothing but invite his anger.

Of course, what really worried Lan Qiren about Lao Nie wasn’t actually the other man’s anger, since that was something he had dealt with many times before. Lao Nie was, at heart, a Nie: angry, yes, but straightforward in the extreme; when pressed, he would either confess what was bothering him or realize that there was no point in taking it out on Lan Qiren and they’d be able to move past it. No, what was keeping Lan Qiren away from confronting Lao Nie was his own newly born fears – not about Lao Nie, but about Wen Ruohan.

After all, Lao Nie was Wen Ruohan’s lover, and not just a lover, but a long-standing lover who had been by his side since before Lan Qiren had even become acting sect leader. Wen Ruohan had admitted to the relationship and never disclaimed it, and as far as Lan Qiren knew, neither had Lao Nie. However twisted their relationship might have gotten, however much they might seem to be at each other’s throats, it was still there, still important, still meaningful.

And that was good, or so Lan Qiren tried unsuccessfully to convince himself. Good relationships between sects, especially the Great Sects, were always a good thing, and of course it was beneficial to Wen Ruohan to have as many meaningful connections with others as he could get, on a personal basis. It wouldn’t be appropriate for Lan Qiren to interfere with that, not without due cause. And certainly not because of – because of some ridiculous impulse to try to monopolize Wen Ruohan’s time like some sort of jealous concubine…

He wasn’t even sure it was appropriate to want to interfere, no matter what he felt about the man.

In fact, the subject of love had been causing Lan Qiren no end of distress recently.

For better or for worse, he had always taken his brother as his model, even when he wasn’t aware that he was doing it. In particular, he had always viewed his brother, however tragic his fate, as the exemplar of what it meant to be a Lan of the Gusu Lan in love, the epitome of what it meant. But in the end his brother’s behavior hadn’t accorded with what Lan Qiren believed love to be. He had turned against his own beloved, committed violence against her, hurt her, killed her, and hadn’t had the nerve to take responsibility for what he had done, even after he’d realized it.

That wasn’t love as Lan Qiren understood it.

Not that he expected everyone in love to commit suicide over their wrongs, of course. But surely it wasn’t too much to expect some genuine regret? To assume that his brother would conduct some introspection, demonstrate some intent to present himself for punishment for the unforgivable crime he had committed against the one he claimed to love the most? Something to mark the fact that his brother had murdered his own wife, rather than this endless non-appearance, as if by hiding away his brother could undo the fact of it…?!

No, that wasn’t love. Not as Lan Qiren understood it.

Though…he was now wondering if he did understand it. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he’d been misunderstanding love this entire time, led astray by his brother’s example.

But if Lan Qiren didn’t understand love, then what if that meant… Well, what if he was wrong?

It would hardly be the first time Lan Qiren had erred in interpersonal matters, though the magnitude of the error in this case would be frankly horrifying. But what if he had?

What if his feelings for Wen Ruohan, strong and burning and all-consuming as they still were, weren’t what most people felt when they spoke of being in love? He’d fallen so hard, so fast, so irrevocably – what if love like that wasn’t merely a quirk of being one of Gusu Lan, the way he’d thought it to be, but yet another oddity that was just him? What if what he felt was too strong for regular people to tolerate?

What if it was too much for Wen Ruohan to tolerate?

Lan Qiren had convinced himself that Wen Ruohan liked him, and maybe, if he was lucky, that he felt more than that for him, however in denial he might be. It was, admittedly, a deduction about another person’s hidden motives, which was something Lan Qiren had historically been fairly bad at, but he’d tried to analyze the situation as if he were analyzing a rule or some piece of poetry, and he thought he had the right of it. He’d even concluded that the fact that Wen Ruohan hadn’t trusted him suggested that Wen Ruohan might not know of his own feelings, or at least might not be ready to face up to a realization of those types of feelings, might not be ready to admit the reality of them. At first Lan Qiren had been fairly confident that this situation was only temporary, and that as long as he made sure to rein himself in and not spook Wen Ruohan too much with the strength of his regard, he could eventually coax the other man into understanding his own feelings and developing their relationship into something mutual…but now he wasn’t so sure.

If Lan Qiren was just being the odd man out again – if he was, yet again, feeling things differently than the way most people felt – then maybe he was wrong about everything. How would he be able to know, looking at it from the inside? How would he know if he’d deduced correctly, or if he was just projecting his own too-strong feelings onto others?

It was just like the matter of lust, which had puzzled him for years and years until he realized that he simply did not feel it the way other people did. He had been constantly confounded by the many ridiculous behaviors of the people around him, behaviors which seemed to him to be completely irrational, but which everyone else seemed to accept as a matter of course; it had given him a reputation for being cold, unfeeling, unsympathetic. He’d erred by using his own behavior as a measure for others, assuming other people felt as he did, and been wrong time and time again when people made decisions that he simply didn’t understand.

He’d failed to understand that they were all feeling something he didn’t.

That he…lacked something that they had.

His lack in that sense had not changed, not even after all the sex he’d been having with Wen Ruohan, physically pleasant as it might be. He liked it well enough, to be sure, but for him the act of sex was the same as having discovered a new type of food he enjoyed or a particularly comfortable blanket, or perhaps a pleasant massage technique – he did not feel any particular internal drive to have to have it, felt no intrinsic need for it, would be perfectly content without it.

Well, maybe not perfectly content. The physical pleasure of release was nothing, as he could obtain it far more conveniently on his own, but he did have to admit he deeply enjoyed how much Wen Ruohan liked it.

He liked being able to elicit such profound reactions with relatively little effort, and he liked how much and how obviously Wen Ruohan wanted him, how he knew that it kept the other man constantly thinking about him. He liked how it let them feel close, liked the way sex made the otherwise prickly Wen Ruohan soften…and, yes, if he wasn’t lying to himself, he liked the way it let him bully and tease Wen Ruohan in ways the man would normally not permit. If tomorrow Wen Ruohan told him that he could return his love but that they would never have sex again, Lan Qiren’s only real regret would be the loss of that particular hobby.

Not that he thought such a thing was likely, given that Wen Ruohan was very fond of sex. Indeed, if it wasn’t for his devotion to his sect and his political ambitions, he would clearly be inclined to follow Lan Qiren’s father’s example and simply absent himself from the world for two months to do nothing else.

But…that was precisely the problem. Wen Ruohan felt that way – most people felt that way, Lan Qiren’s father and other predecessors included – but Lan Qiren did not. What if the same were true with love? What if what he felt was yet again different from the norm, and he just didn’t know it? For that matter, was what Lan Qiren felt love? Or was it merely some form of insanity, some type of obsession that he had convinced himself was love? Would it be something Wen Ruohan would enjoy being the subject of, or would he be repulsed, unnerved, even disgusted…?

Lan Qiren was aware that it was a little ridiculous to worry about Wen Ruohan being disgusted by him when he’d so recently thrown Lan Qiren into the Fire Palace.

The marks were gone, courtesy of the Wen sect’s really quite remarkable doctors, but the fact remained, and most people would not be inclined to forgive such a thing. For him, though, it simply was what it was, an unfortunate event but one he was confident would not occur again – but perhaps that was another sign that his irrational overwhelming affection was out of the ordinary. That it was perhaps out of line with normal people’s expectations, and perhaps, because of that, unwelcome…?

For the time being, Lan Qiren had decided to keep his feelings to himself. He wanted to have a chance to think about the subject further and maybe even, if he could, to get a better handle on it, try to be a little less intense in his affections. But it was fiendishly difficult, the first time Lan Qiren had ever struggled with Maintain your own discipline, and it was making him doubt himself in all other respects, too. It was simply impossible to know when he was being reasonable and when he was going too far.

Take his ridiculous jealousy over Lao Nie, for instance. Early in their marriage, more fool him, Lan Qiren had told Wen Ruohan that he was pleased to know that the other man had other lovers, people who would be able to take the brunt of Wen Ruohan’s insatiable lust when he tired of it. It would surely be unseemly to try to take that statement back now, would it not? Much less to try to explain, however incoherently, that it wasn’t that he so much objected to the fact of Wen Ruohan having sex with Lao Nie, but rather that he found the notion of Wen Ruohan continuing to devote his heart to a relationship that at present didn’t seem to be especially beneficial or even entirely mutual to be a highly unpleasant one...no, it would simply be impossible to explain.

No, Lan Qiren was just losing his mind, plain and simple.

Worrying about Lao Nie, worrying about the Lotus Pier even though there was nothing actually wrong – it was paranoia, pure and simple.

Or maybe he just didn’t like the way people kept looking at Wen Ruohan.

It wasn’t even a bad sort of looking, not really. In most cases, their gazes were filled with admiration, whether outright or merely begrudging. After Wen Ruohan’s display at the mountain, each one of them had no choice but to respect Wen Ruohan’s formidable arts, no matter how much they might despise him personally. If it had been someone from Lan Qiren’s sect that was the subject of such glances, he would have been worried about the eventual consequences of that lingering resentment, mixed in with envy, but that was hardly relevant to the case here. With Wen Ruohan, the difference between him and other people was so great that their envy was almost inevitable, unavoidable and therefore irrelevant…though perhaps that was just some of Wen Ruohan’s arrogance that had started rubbing off on Lan Qiren.

Still, he didn’t like it. There was something profoundly different about the way they looked at Wen Ruohan now in comparison with the way they’d regarded him before. Before, everyone had acknowledged Wen Ruohan to be the most powerful cultivator in the world, but he hadn’t publicly displayed his abilities in a serious fashion for as long as Lan Qiren could remember. As leader of the largest and most powerful sect, it would have been crass for him to go out and do something himself, so he would always send someone else to act on his behalf; he was a general at the head of his armies, not a hero out to show off and win fame. Before Xixiang, his power had always been theoretical – something spoken of but only half-believed, understood but not actualized.

There was a difference between hearing someone boast that they were only a half-step away from being a god and actually seeing them prove it.

They were all of them cultivators, and all cultivators by necessity went against the natural order, whether by flying on swords or hoping to achieve immortality. But there was going against the natural order and then there was stopping a natural disaster in its tracks, pitting yourself against not only the natural flow but against the rampaging torrent – and more than that, Wen Ruohan had done it by himself. To take Wen Ruohan’s joke about Lan Qiren’s brother not being able to fight one-against-many as an example, if all the cultivation world joined hands together against Wen Ruohan, his display in Xixiang had been a declaration that it was no longer so certain who would win.

That was an exaggeration, of course; even at the peak of his power, Wen Ruohan would not have been able to fight off the world. But in another ten or twenty years, another fifty years, it might not be – and unlike most people, Wen Ruohan, who’d already broken the confines of one lifetime, had the time to spare.

So people were looking at Wen Ruohan with a certain strangeness in their eyes now, and Lan Qiren didn’t like it. He didn’t like the way they were whispering about him, he didn’t like the way they were obviously scheming against him or even for him, wanting to get in good with the Wen sect now that they knew how strong its leader was. He didn’t like the dirty looks people were sending his way, as if they thought he’d known about the extent of Wen Ruohan’s power in advance and decided to marry in just to beat the rush.

But what he really didn’t like was that despite him having instructed Wen Ruohan to stay by his side and not go too far afield during their visit to the Lotus Pier, Wen Ruohan had gone and disappeared on him.

Lan Qiren was perfectly aware as to the reason behind it. It hadn’t exactly been very subtle, not even for someone as occasionally oblivious as him: someone had shown up with a somewhat shifty expression, which suggested that they were up to some shady business on behalf of the Wen sect, and Wen Ruohan had decided to go off to deal with it alone rather than risk irritating Lan Qiren’s conscience, or perhaps because he wished to avoid Lan Qiren’s temper.

Which was of course a perfectly logical and reasonable method of handling such things, because Lan Qiren would feel obligated to stop anything unethical he knew was going on and Wen Ruohan was unlikely to stop everything he was doing that fell into what Lan Qiren viewed as being unethical. After all, even if Lan Qiren’s love was requited, and even it was requited to the same degree of madness, it still wouldn’t solve all the disputes between them, politically speaking. It was completely reasonable for Wen Ruohan to leave him out of this sort of thing.

Besides, there was no marriage in the world that did not permit both sides to spend time on their own particular interests – just as Lan Qiren wouldn’t expect Wen Ruohan to develop a passion for the Lan sect rules, he didn’t expect to be included every time Wen Ruohan was scheming something.

And yet.

The logic might all be there, but none of that meant that Lan Qiren didn’t want to track down Wen Ruohan and smack him upside the head. He’d said that he would stay close by, and then hadn’t. He could be so obnoxious sometimes…!

“Whatever it is that you’re chewing over, Qiren, I’m sure it can’t be that bad.”

And here was the only person capable of being more obnoxious.

Lan Qiren turned and gave Lao Nie a look, deeply unimpressed at the lack of greeting, then followed it up with a polite nod at Nie Mingue, who was unsurprisingly trailing after his father. For his part, Nie Mingjue greeted him with an appropriate salute and a perfectly respectable murmur of “Teacher Lan.”

“Is it Hanhan?” Lao Nie asked. He was passing a bowl of wine between his hands, oddly restless. “Don’t worry about him. He’s got a top-notch combat sense. He could have the cultivation level of a hamster and still beat out most of the sect leaders here.”

“Lao Nie! That is both highly disrespectful and also false.”

Not to mention playing on Lan Qiren’s current anxieties.

Lao Nie shrugged indifferently. “Disrespectful to who, the other sect leaders? What are they going to do about it?”

“If you continue in your present vein, I am going to stop talking to you,” Lan Qiren informed him. “I have done nothing to merit you taking your evidently terrible mood out on me. What is your problem, anyway?”

He regretted asking the moment after he did. What if Lao Nie’s problem was that he’d finally realized that Lan Qiren had married his lover and that he didn’t like it? It hadn’t seemed to be a problem before, he’d seemed to be more upset on Lan Qiren’s behalf than Wen Ruohan’s, but still, if it were Lan Qiren in his position…

“Was it your brother?” Lao Nie asked abruptly, and Lan Qiren stared at him, taken aback. “Xixiang. That was where he met his wife, wasn’t it?”

Lan Qiren opened his mouth, then closed it. He didn’t know exactly how to respond to that question. It wasn’t strictly true to say that his brother had been involved in the original fiasco with the mine, and yet it would be untrue to deny his involvement in what had happened just now…that wasn’t the problem, though.

The problem was that Lao Nie was asking at all.

Lan Qiren had agreed with Wen Ruohan that the best result of the situation with the mine would be for those within the Lan sect that had been involved to take responsibility for what they had done and face justice, but for it to happen internally, not externally. It was better that outsiders not learn of the matter, letting the sect save face and serving as an additional motivation for the people involved to give themselves up, since they would not be harming the sect in doing so. They hadn’t reached a similar agreement as to what they would do with regard to Lan Qiren’s brother’s behavior, but presumably the same applied, since explaining one would mean having to explain the other.

If at all possible, and Lan Qiren was painfully aware that it might not be, he would prefer to preserve his brother’s public reputation for the sake of his nephews. He hadn’t had a chance yet to speak to them about their father, though he would, since they deserved to know the truth – but he didn’t want them to have to bear the burden of being publicly known as the sons of a madman. Everything was easier if you had a good reputation; everything was harder without. And for better or worse, the world put immense value on who your parents were…

“I thought so,” Lao Nie said darkly, interpreting Lan Qiren’s silence correctly. His question had been vague, purposefully, which Lan Qiren decided to interpret as his consent for Lan Qiren to try to handle this internally with the Lan sect; Lan Qiren was appropriately thankful. “Do you know, the last time we were here, he told me to my face that he was going to try to make things better?”

Lan Qiren winced.

“If it does any good,” he said slowly, “I think that he was sincere, in his own way.”

It was only that Lan Qiren’s brother’s view of what was “better” had been warped by his self-absorption, by his years of obsession in seclusion, by the death of his wife – by his murder of his wife.

Lan Qiren wasn’t sure that knowing his brother had simply lost all perspective would help make Lao Nie feel better, but he hoped that it might. It hadn’t helped him, but then again he hadn’t been his brother’s friend, not the way Lao Nie had been.

He hadn’t helped his brother try to win He Kexin’s heart the way Lao Nie had, either.

His brother had been wrong about many things, virtually everything, Lan Qiren reflected, but he’d been right about how terrible complicity could be. Poor Lao Nie: he hadn’t even done all that much back then, just a few kind words by letter, a careless “you can do it!” or two that Lan Qiren’s brother had taken as encouragement. In the time since then, it was clear that Lao Nie had deeply regretted his inattention back then, so he’d tried so hard to make up for it now, extending faith and attention both, but it had only resulted in him making further mistakes, piling wrong on top of wrong. And now this was the what he got for all his efforts…!

No wonder he was upset.

Lao Nie snorted disdainfully. “As always, Qiren, you have no idea what would and would not do good.”

He tossed back the rest of the wine in a single gulp and stalked off into the crowd, leaving Lan Qiren staring after him in surprise at the uncharacteristically cruel comment. Lao Nie was quite often rude, of course, but he was rarely nasty, and certainly not nasty to Lan Qiren. What had happened to his seemingly never-ending good humor…?

“Please forgive my father, Teacher Lan,” Nie Mingjue said, and the longer sentence combined with the way he scuffed his heel embarrassedly against the floor reminded Lan Qiren yet again of how young he was. “He hasn’t been feeling well.”

Lan Qiren frowned and stroked his beard. “That is no excuse for rudeness. Have courtesy and integrity.”

“Yes, well…” Nie Mingjue’s eyes flickered from side to side, as if trying to determine whether the corner they were in was sufficiently private. There was no one around – Lan Qiren had picked it especially for that purpose – but they were still part of the main room. “Teacher Lan, could your student consult you with a question?”

“Of course,” Lan Qiren said at once, a little surprised by the request and the way it was phrased. But perhaps he shouldn’t have been. Had it really only been two years since he’d taught Nie Mingjue? “I am at your service.”

They left the main hall and went to one of the side rooms that were inevitably provided for these types of meetings. This might technically only be a party, not a discussion conference, but the whole point of making up for the missed discussion conference was to give the cultivation world a chance to do all the things they’d intended to do last time: to broker the deals and fix up the relationships, to make new alliances or to reassure themselves of existing ones.

“What is the matter?” Lan Qiren asked Nie Mingjue. Something to do with his father, he surmised; something that would explain Lao Nie’s terrible mood, his uncharacteristic grouchiness – maybe even why he was so upset about Lan Qiren’s brother’s actions, when normally he seemed to take everything light-heartedly, no matter how awful.

He expected the issue to be something political, perhaps something in internal Nie sect politics (someone complaining about Nie Huaisang’s lack of aptitude for cultivation again, perhaps?), or maybe even a new romantic relationship gone wrong. Something like that, anyway.

And that assumption meant he was completely unprepared when Nie Mingjue took a deep breath and blurted out: “He had a qi deviation.”

“What?!” Lan Qiren exclaimed.

“Just a little one,” Nie Mingjue said. He looked miserable. “He got better – or, well, I mean, he’s mostly better, and he would be getting the rest of the way better if he’d only rest the way the doctors told him to. But…I don’t know. He’s not taking it well.”

No wonder, Lan Qiren thought to himself, numb and horrified. No wonder.

It wasn’t that he didn’t know about the tendency for leaders of Qinghe Nie to die of qi deviations – to eventually die of rage, insuppressible and irresistible. They bore the weight of their sect upon their shoulders in a way that other sect leaders did not. Their cultivation style had always prioritized the present against the future, trading years of their lives in exchange for the power to fight evil today, and their leader bore that charge more heavily than the rest.

As a sect leader of a Great Sect, and in particular one that was closely allied to the Nie sect, Lan Qiren was more aware of the details than most. Like most of his ancestors, Lao Nie had devoted a certain level of effort to trying to find a solution to the problem, not wanting his children to bear such a heavy cost for their ancestors’ choice if they could avoid it. Lan Qiren had even offered his personal assistance a few times, but Lao Nie had always declined, noting that previous generations of their sects had worked together without success; he had always preferred to be sanguine on the subject, taking things easily, hoping for the best…

Surely Lao Nie was still far too young for the bill to already be coming due!

“The doctors say it was just an aberration,” Nie Mingjue explained. “He’s got at least another ten years…maybe fifteen or even more, if we’re lucky. He was nearly thirty when he inherited the sect, and we’re all hoping he’ll make it until I’m thirty myself. That would be a perfectly respectable lifespan for a common person, even if it’s short for a cultivator. I think it’s more that he just didn’t want to think about it, and now he has to. But…I mean…”

“I will speak with him,” Lan Qiren promised at once. “If there is anything we can do to aid him, we will.”

Nie Mingjue looked at him gratefully. “Do you mean that? I mean – I know you will, Teacher Lan…”

“Wen Ruohan as well,” Lan Qiren said firmly.

He wasn’t sure there was anything Wen Ruohan would actually be able to do about the Nie sect’s familial disorder, for all his brilliance, but he was also fairly sure Wen Ruohan had never devoted any attention to the issue – Lao Nie had undoubtedly never asked, given his preference not to think about the problem, and Wen Ruohan was sufficiently self-absorbed that he would never think of it independently without being asked. He was inclined towards indolence, and for someone as paranoid as he was about his own business, he could be remarkably relaxed when it came to future threats to others.

On the other hand, if there was anyone who could help Lao Nie, it would be Wen Ruohan. He was a genius among geniuses, the only person to have successfully used his cultivation to break through the limits of a human lifetime, and that was all even before one took into account whatever it was that he’d used to fight the landslide. If he really put his mind to it…well, who knew?

Maybe he really could come up with something.

“Thank you, Teacher Lan. I really appreciate it!” Nie Mingjue paused. “Uh, one more question.”

“You may ask.”

“…did Baoshan Sanren’s mountain really – ”

“Permission to ask questions revoked,” Lan Qiren said sternly, and Nie Mingjue laughed gleefully, completely unabashed by the implicit rebuke. “You are my student, Mingjue. I know you know better than to believe such nonsense.”

“But the representatives of the Lan sect were saying – ”

“It was an earthquake,” Lan Qiren stressed. “If there had been a celestial mountain moving overhead, we would have seen it. Baoshan Sanren is unrelated to what occurred, and Cangse Sanren was merely jesting.”

And his sect representatives were acting like idiots, though he didn’t come out and say that. It was stupid enough to have believed her to begin with, but to continue talking about it was compounding stupidity on top of stupidity!

“Sure, Teacher Lan,” Nie Mingjue said in a tone that suggested that he was going to go around saying the exact opposite because it was funnier. Sometimes Lan Qiren could really tell that Nie Mingjue was his father’s son, even though he was generally more earnest and certainly far more righteous. Lao Nie would fight evil with the best of his sect, but Lan Qiren had to admit he had the personal moral sense of a damp noodle. “I’ll keep that in mind. Tell Xichen I said hello?”

“Of course.”

“And Wangji! Tell him I look forward to seeing how much he’s improved with the sword the next time we meet.”

“…I shall inform him.”

Lan Qiren managed, just barely, not to sigh until Nie Mingjue had left. He recalled with painful clarity how Nie Mingjue’s time at the Cloud Recesses had gone, particularly as it related to his nephews, and he could already see what would happen if he passed along the words as requested: Lan Xichen would start walking on air, delighted that Nie Mingjue had remembered him and becoming absolutely useless for anything else, while Lan Wangji would immediately triple his training time for the next half-month, undoubtedly drawing questions and potentially jealousy from Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng. Not to mention Wen Chao, who took after his father in disliking anyone spending any time on anything that didn’t involve him…

He rubbed his eyes once Nie Mingjue had left to return to the party and reminded himself that Nie Mingjue was a sweet and earnest boy, and it really wasn’t his fault that he’d apparently charmed not one but both of Lan Qiren’s nephews into developing little puppy crushes on him. He couldn’t hold it against him.

What a disaster. Why did people, including himself, insist on falling in love?

Lan Qiren gloomily mused on the subject as he walked further out into the Lotus Pier, opting not to return to the party. He didn’t enjoy socializing with his fellow sect leaders at the best of times, and the revelation about the source of Lao Nie’s distress had soured what little taste for it he might have had. He was in no mood to celebrate. Well before Lao Nie had been what Lan Qiren might consider a romantic rival, he had been Lan Qiren’s friend, and that was by far more important.

He would ask Wen Ruohan to assist him as soon as he found him.

Or, well, he’d ask as soon as they were alone in private, anyway. He couldn’t imagine Wen Ruohan having a good reaction to the notion that his lover and one of his few genuine friends was facing down the prospect of his own potentially imminent death…

“Senior Lan! Senior Lan!”

Lan Qiren turned in surprise, finding that a young man that he did not recognize, wearing Jiang sect colors, had run up to him, looking panicked.

“Senior Lan, can you come help?” the young man asked urgently, pointing back the way he came. “We need a musical cultivator – please, come quickly – ”

“Yes, of course,” Lan Qiren said, alarmed. He at once followed the young man back to wherever he had come from, drawing his guqin from his qiankun pouch as he did. “What is the issue? Can you explain – ”

“There’s no time,” the young man interrupted, rather rudely. “I’m sorry, Senior Lan, they didn’t tell me much, just that we needed a musician, and urgently. This way, come through here.”

Lan Qiren found the request a little odd. If they just needed a musician, why not get one of the Jiang sect’s? Many of them were skilled with instruments as well, usually flutes and the like. He supposed it made a certain amount of sense to ask him if he was the first potential musician they’d seen, since unlike most sects virtually every member of Gusu Lan was practically guaranteed to be a musical cultivator of some degree. But just in terms of saving face, it seemed strange that the disciples of the Jiang sect would bother someone from another sect in the middle of a party like this, rather than seeking to keep it to their own people…

Moved by instinct or possibly simply infected by his earlier paranoia, Lan Qiren slowed his steps, coming nearly to a complete halt instead of continuing to trail the other man at full speed.

He took a half step into the room, hesitantly starting to ask, “Can you tell me what exactly – ”

The person standing behind the door brought their sword down.

Luckily Lan Qiren had not gone too far inside, so the strike passed in front of him rather than falling on his undefended back. He hastily used his guqin to block the follow-up blow, the heavy wood resounding with a heavy and unfortunate-sounding clunk, but before he could do anything else, the instrument was yanked out of his hands by the young man he’d followed here. The other man’s fingers were already glinting with spiritual energy already brought to bear, even though Lan Qiren was still summoning his own – he’d been expecting this.

No. He’d been part of this.

A moment later, before Lan Qiren could get his bearings, someone hit him at speed from behind, knocking him stumbling over the threshold and fully into the room they’d been trying to lure him into.

The person that had shoved him – another man he did not recognize, this one heavy-set and fierce-looking – stepped into the room after him, pulling the door shut behind him. The moment the door closed, a privacy barrier flared to life, having obviously been placed there in advance, and the sounds from outside the room abruptly cut off.

They wouldn’t be able to hear the outside world, and, more importantly, no one from the outside would hear what was happening here.

“What is this?” Lan Qiren demanded. There were five in total in the room with him, three men and two women, all of them dressed as Jiang sect disciples, although in slightly ill-fitting clothes. It occurred to Lan Qiren they might have stolen the outfits so as to better make their way through the Lotus Pier unnoticed and to better lure him away without raising suspicion. Certainly that was more likely than Jiang Fengmian ordering an assassination. “Who are you – ”

One of the women threw dust into his face.

No, it wasn’t dust, but rather – something spicy.

It was painful, and instantly effective. Lan Qiren’s eyes immediately started to tear up, making it hard to see, and he choked on the spice, his tongue tingling with pain and throat immediately getting coated by it, rendering him unable to speak another word.

How clever, some part of Lan Qiren’s brain commented, distant and remote from the immediate panic of the situation, strangely appreciative. It sounded a bit like Wen Ruohan. They have taken away my instrument and cut off my ability to whistle; those are the two main sources of power for a musical cultivator. And with my eyes blinded and throat blocked off, even if I manage to escape this room, it will be difficult for me to reach others and call for help.

As assassination attempts go, this one seems to be pretty well put together.

“Execute him quickly, while he’s helpless!” the young man from before snapped, his voice sounding harder and more professional than it had before. “I don’t want to waste too much time here. The sooner we can go help the squad targeting Sect Leader Wen, the better – ”

The what?!

Everything suddenly made a great deal more sense. Lan Qiren had been wondering who in the world would bother trying to assassinate him – he wasn’t even a sect leader anymore, he was only a sect leader’s husband, and nothing more. But if the real target was Wen Ruohan…

Wen Ruohan, who had just used up virtually all of his spiritual energy in one blow.

Who was currently weakened, vulnerable, and all because of something he had done for Lan Qiren.

Absolutely not.

Lan Qiren, still choking, raised his hand and drew his sword out of his qiankun pouch.

“Don’t hesitate!” the leader called, meaning that presumably at least one of the purple-clad figures had done so. “He’s a musical cultivator, not a swordsman, and he even can’t see. Get him!”

Lan Qiren had always preferred to use his guqin for public events, the night-hunts and the like that he had attended while acting as the Lan sect leader. This was for several reasons: firstly, he thought himself better at musical cultivation, and it was important for his sect to put their best foot forward when in public, particularly since he was only technically standing in for his brother. Secondly, Lan Qiren’s teachers in swordsmanship growing up had always drawn comparisons between him and his brother, an undeniable genius with the sword, and his brother had often criticized him for his lack of real-life experience or warrior instincts; this had led Lan Qiren to conclude that he was at best barely better than average and doomed to remain so, and therefore he was a little shy about demonstrating his swordsmanship in public. Lastly, as an adult, he had largely socialized with his own peers, meaning the leaders of the other Great Sect, and so his most common point of comparison was Lao Nie – and there was really no point in a comparison like that, since Lao Nie’s skill with his saber was to such extent that he could fight even Wen Ruohan to a standstill.

None of that meant that he was not a swordsman.

Lan Qiren closed his eyes.

He breathed in through his nose. He let himself forget about sight, and focus only on hearing – the other important skill a musical cultivator had to have.

He could hear a sword coming towards him from the left, the blade whistling through the air; he blocked it, using his arm strength to knock it straight into the path of the next sword flying towards him from another direction, causing a loud clang. Someone to his right startled, taking an extra step forward, and the sound of their footfall against the floorboard echoed in Lan Qiren’s ear – he swept his sword over, aiming low, and they stumbled back. He stepped forward to follow through on them in a fluid motion he’d practiced a hundred thousand times or more, over and over again every morning with the same monotonous regularity that he excelled at the most.

Sword struck flesh.

Lan Qiren did not hesitate. He drew his sword back, and swept it wide again, raising his free hand to his chest and forming a hand seal, sending his sword out with his spiritual energy, a quick thrust – another strike, aimed a little ahead of the last footfall he’d heard. And then the thud of another body hitting the floor.

His attackers were yelling now, panicked. Listening to them, it was clear enough that they had not counted on him having much skill with the sword, and they had not expected that he would be able to fight them without his sight. Most of all, they had in no way anticipated that he would be willing to attack so decisively, striking immediately with intent to kill rather than injure.

Foolish.

The rules said: no killing in the Cloud Recesses. Applying the standard canons of rule interpretation, the exception proved the rule – because there was a rule against killing within the Cloud Recesses, it therefore stood to reason that there was no restriction on killing outside of the Cloud Recesses, provided one respected the other rules that called for virtuous conduct and righteousness.

Not that anyone would question the righteousness of executing a would-be assassin.

Lan Qiren lunged forward in a sudden burst of acceleration, surprising his attackers; he took down a third, then spun and slit the throat of the fourth. Only one was left: the young man who had been acting as their leader.

Him, Lan Qiren stabbed only in the shoulder, pinning him to the wall.

“Wen Ruohan,” he said sharply, not opening his still-streaming eyes. “You said a second squad was attacking him. Where?”

“You – you…!”

“Wen Ruohan,” Lan Qiren stressed. “Where is he?”

“Will you let me live?” the assassin gasped.

“You will not die by my sword today,” Lan Qiren agreed. He left open the possibility that the man might die by other means – if Wen Ruohan was dead, he was making no promises as to what he might do. And if Wen Ruohan was not dead, well, Wen Ruohan would probably have some questions, and the man’s fate would be determined based on how well he could answer those. “Tell me where he is.”

“The westernmost pavilion,” the man confessed. “They drugged his drink and lured him there. He – ”

Lan Qiren did not stay to hear any more. He knocked the man out by grabbing him by the chin and slamming his head into the wall, pulled out his sword and sealed the wound with a hasty talisman, then turned on his heel to go, taking only a moment to forcefully flush out his eyes with water before hurrying onwards.

He needed to find Wen Ruohan.

He needed – he needed Wen Ruohan to be all right. He didn’t know what he would do if he wasn’t.

He’d known that something was wrong, hadn’t he? He wasn’t paranoid, it was only his intuition, and in his distress over what he’d discovered about his brother, his worries about love, he’d ignored it. And now they were here, with Wen Ruohan weakened and now apparently drugged…

If Wen Ruohan was dead, Lan Qiren was going to hurt someone.

He wasn’t going to do anything on the scale of what his brother had planned, but he was going to find out who had ordered this, by whatever means it took, and then he was going to use every single resource he had to do whatever he had to in order to avenge him. He had already established that he could and would govern the Wen sect in the event that Wen Ruohan was incapacitated – presumably that was why there had also been an attempt on his life, rather than merely Wen Ruohan’s – and he would use them as well, if that was what it took.

Anything. Everything.

How had Wen Ruohan put it?

“A broken-hearted Lan on the path of just revenge will not rest until the cause of their grief has been obliterated”?

It was true. Lan Qiren had always believed it to be true. Such grief demanded answer, and always had, and the madmen of his sect would always provide it. Whether the cause was external or internal, whether they needed to wield the sword against another or against themselves…

Only – Lan Qiren didn’t want to obliterate anything. He didn’t want to be broken-hearted. He didn’t care if Wen Ruohan didn’t want him back, if he would be spooked by the strength of Lan Qiren’s emotions, he just wanted Wen Ruohan to not be dead.

Wen Ruohan wasn’t allowed to die!

Lan Qiren rushed to the westernmost pavilion and found its door ominously shut. He sent his sword out ahead of him, spiritual steel ripping into the wood so violently that the entire door went to pieces. He followed only a moment later, leaping across the threshold, looking around with still-reddened eyes to see…there.

Wen Ruohan was still alive.

He was by the water – no, in the water, being forced down by the hands of the assassins, who were overwhelming him with sheer numbers. There were more here than the five that had been assigned to Lan Qiren; at least twenty, at first glance, though quite a few were already on the ground, unconscious or dead.

They were trying to drown him.

It was a smart move. Wen Ruohan’s skin was glowing, which meant he’d activated his favorite self-defensive array, the one that made him virtually invulnerable to sword strikes – as long as his guard wasn’t down and he hadn’t been taken completely by surprise, he could bring it up at a moment’s notice, and clearly he’d done so here. But having invulnerable skin didn’t mean he didn’t need to breathe, and with his spiritual energy reserves being as low as they were, most of his power had to be going to maintaining the array. If he dropped the array long enough to fight back, they would stab him; if he didn’t, they would drown him.

There were even sticky black threads wrapped around Wen Ruohan’s arms, the wet seaweed and rotted rope that signified the presence of water ghouls; they were pulling him down and impeding his efforts to fight back. It was impossible for such creatures to exist so close to the Lotus Pier, which was full of cultivators that would normally banish them, so they must have been brought here deliberately, presumably as a flimsy excuse upon which to blame his death.

Wen Ruohan’s hair had fallen loose in the struggle, his crown having been knocked away, and it was even wet and heavy, which meant the assassins had gotten his head into the water at least once already. Even as Lan Qiren watched, they managed to force him down again, Wen Ruohan gasping for air before he went under, though a few of the assassins turned away from the spectacle to raise their swords against the invader –

Lan Qiren threw himself forward with a fury unlike any he’d ever felt before.

His first strike was perhaps a little too powerful – he’d intended to slit the throat of the first assassin that was trying to lunge at him, but he ended up decapitating him entirely, sending the head rolling on the floor. It ended up being a fortuitous turn, as it got the attention of the assassins in earnest, distracting them from Wen Ruohan, who in turn was finally able to free a hand, fingers twisting into the initial stages of summoning an array of some sort into existence.

Lan Qiren kept one eye on him as he fought the other assassins, side-stepping their blows where he could and blocking them where he couldn’t, counterattacking at every opportunity. His fighting style had always been elegant and smooth, a little slow but immensely steady, leaving no openings that anyone could take advantage of. It served him well now. The assassins were not able to get at him even when they teamed up and tried to attack him from multiple directions at once.

A few moments later, Wen Ruohan’s array finally activated. Lan Qiren had been focusing on his fighting, but he still noticed, if only because the array had the somewhat unexpected result of pulling all the decorations off the wall and flinging them straight at the assassins who were still trying to push Wen Ruohan down into the water. Vases, plates, even some decorative swords, they all fell like hailstones.

The assassins shouted, more annoyed than anything else, but their distraction gave Lan Qiren the opening he was waiting for, and he used the opportunity to attack in full force, cutting his way through them without the slightest bit of mercy. It turned out that the best fighters were the ones holding Wen Ruohan down, one of them leaping up and meeting Lan Qiren head on, but by then it was already too late. Wen Ruohan was steadily fighting his way free of both assassins and the water, an array meant to forcefully liberate evil spirits appearing over his head and dissolving all the water ghouls in the vicinity.

With a loud splash he managed to break away from them and make his way back onto land.

At that point, the remaining assassins – there were only two left by then – realized that there was no hope and tried to flee.

Wen Ruohan’s teeth were bared in a snarl. He lifted up his hand to put an end to that foolish notion, but he never got the chance: Lan Qiren’s sword made it there first, slashing first at one and then, with a sudden burst of acceleration, skewering the other one just as he was about to make it to the door.

And then there was no sound but their heavy breathing: Lan Qiren from exertion and strain, and Wen Ruohan still trying to regain his breath from having been nearly drowned.

Wen Ruohan recovered first, unfortunately.

“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you kill before?” he remarked, sounding remarkably cheerful. “You’re far better at it than I expected. Clearly an oversight on my part – ”

Lan Qiren turned his head slowly to look at him. He wasn’t sure what was in his face, but whatever it was, it made Wen Ruohan cut off his words and stare at him, wide-eyed.

“Your eyes,” he said blankly. “They’re all – all red and teary. What did they…are you all right?”

Was Lan Qiren all right?

Was Lan Qiren all right?

Lan Qiren stormed over to Wen Ruohan and grabbed him by the collar.

“You were supposed to be invulnerable!” he howled, shaking him. “No one was supposed to be able to hurt you! That was supposed to be the one advantage of falling in love with a bastard like you!”

Wen Ruohan was staring at him.

Lan Qiren didn’t care.

“The next time I tell you to stay by my side, you are going to do it, you hear me?” he snarled, his hands curled so tightly into Wen Ruohan’s collar that his knuckles had gone white. “I do not care if you have to discuss all of your dirty business in my presence! I will support you in the moment and we can fight about it later, like normal married couples. But this will not be happening again, do you understand? Tell me you understand!”

“I understand,” Wen Ruohan said. He was smiling, for some reason – no, not smiling. He was beaming. “Tell me again anyway.”

Lan Qiren shook him once more, because he deserved it, then released him.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, looking Wen Ruohan over, still panicked but starting to calm down a little now that it appeared that Wen Ruohan was indeed alive and likely to remain that way. This was definitely not how Lan Qiren had wanted to learn how to really empathize with his brother. “The assassin that tried to kill me said they fed you a drugged drink. What was in it? Should I call a doctor?”

“No need. I noticed that the flavor was off after the first sip and discarded the majority of it,” Wen Ruohan said. “I’m only a little disoriented. Where did they take you?”

“One of the northern pavilions. Not far, a little less than a ke to walk.” Lan Qiren had made noticeably better time than that. “Less by sword flight. Why?”

“Just wondering how many people got to see you covered in the blood of your enemies and leaving behind a swath of destruction on your way to rescue your wife.” Wen Ruohan was still grinning. “But also, can we go back to the bit where you said that you’re in love with me?”

Lan Qiren started, having not realized he’d said that. Certainly not out loud.

“With a bastard like me, I believe you put it,” Wen Ruohan helpfully reminded him.

The memory abruptly returned.

“…I had not meant to bring it up like that,” Lan Qiren said, feeling his entire face go hot and probably red. “Or to imply – I mean, I did not intend – that is – your parentage – ”

Vulgar language is forbidden was a good rule, Lan Qiren thought miserably, and really ought to be followed in one’s thought as well as in one’s speech. If he’d been a little more faithful, perhaps he wouldn’t have blurted out something like that…!

He’d have to punish himself for it later. Assuming this embarrassment wasn’t punishment enough…

“Think nothing of it.” Wen Ruohan caught him by the waist and pulled him closer, ignoring both his own soaked robes and Lan Qiren’s blood-stained ones. “You can insult my parents as much as you’d like as long as you say it again. And I’m being serious this time – say it again. Please.”

Lan Qiren was a little shocked by Wen Ruohan knowing the existence of the sincere version of the word ‘please.’ Nevertheless, there was no reason to refuse him. He’d come this far already; there was no turning back, there was only going forward.

“I have fallen in love with you,” Lan Qiren said, opting to omit the insult this time around. “I am presently in love with you. I expect to remain in love with you for the rest of my life.”

He hesitated for a moment, but, impelled by honesty, added: “In fact, I seem to have rather lost my mind over you.”

Wen Ruohan’s hands shook where he was holding him.

“Do not tell lies, Qiren,” he said, staring at him intently. “If you say that, you must mean it.”

“I do mean it,” Lan Qiren confirmed. “I refrained from telling you because it seemed that you did not – that is, that you might be unsure as to whether you returned my feelings, and that being forced to determine if you did or did not might cause you some distress. I did not want to impose – ”

“Impose?” Wen Ruohan interrupted. “You thought – you didn’t want to impose? Aren’t you a Lan? Aren’t you all mad for love?”

“I had thought so,” Lan Qiren admitted, a little relieved to finally be able to share his thoughts on the subject with someone else. “After what happened with my brother, I became worried that perhaps my feelings were not as common as I might have thought. I have something of a history…that is, I was afraid that perhaps being so incredibly consumed by love in such a manner would be – inappropriate.”

He paused there, waiting for Wen Ruohan’s reaction.

For his part, Wen Ruohan opted not to reply in words. Instead, he dropped his hands from Lan Qiren’s waist, reached up to his face and pulled him in to kiss him.

Not just once, either: he kissed him again and again, at times light, at times deep and hard.

After a little while, he let Lan Qiren go.

“Never,” Wen Ruohan said, and the look in his eyes, while no less intense, now contained nothing but joy. “Never inappropriate, never an imposition. If you have been consumed by love, if you are mad with it, then I am mad alongside you.”

There was a hot feeling in Lan Qiren’s chest.

“I swear it,” Wen Ruohan added. He was looking directly at him, sincere and almost too much to handle. “I swear it, Qiren. My feelings are just as strong as yours. I’ll prove it to you, this time. I will be your partner, just as you have been to me, and I will match you in this as I will anything else. Believe me.”

It was undoubtedly foolish to believe a known liar like Wen Ruohan about anything. But no more foolish than having fallen in love with him in the first place.

“Trust me, Qiren,” Wen Ruohan said. “Please. Believe me.”

Lan Qiren did.

Chapter Text

Not even having to explain to Yu Ziyuan why they had ruined the Jiang sect’s event for a second time running could put a dent in Wen Ruohan’s good mood.

“You can’t really blame us for it,” he told her, wondering with amusement if he should mention that the sound of her teeth grinding in irritation was becoming almost audible. “We came here at your invitation to enjoy your sect’s little party and then were unexpectedly set upon by murderous assassins…assassins, let me remind you, that somehow managed to defy your sect’s security precautions, borrow your disciples’ clothing, and then attack your guests, when by all the rules of hospitality we ought to be under your protection. If the party also happened to be ruined as a result, well, that’s really nothing to do with us. In fact, we’re quite upset by it all.”

“Really,” Yu Ziyuan growled. “If that’s the case, then why – are – you – smiling?!”

That was mostly because Wen Ruohan couldn’t help it.

Lan Qiren was in love with him. Lan Qiren loved him. Lan Qiren was willing to trust him. Lan Qiren loved him!

That wasn’t anyone else’s business, though.

“Just trying to put a good face on it for the sake of your sect,” Wen Ruohan said, voice almost syrupy with how condescending he was being. “After messing up not one but two gatherings in front of the whole cultivation world, you practically have no face left at all…really, a smile or two is the least we can do for the sake of our good friends in Yunmeng Jiang.”

Yu Ziyuan’s eye was twitching. So was the finger upon which she wore Zidian, which hadn’t quite started crackling but had started emitting an almost subsonic hum of spiritual energy as if it was considering it.

Hmm. Perhaps he was overdoing it a little.

Not that Wen Ruohan cared.

Still, in the interest of not starting yet another fight that he was presently in no condition to win…

“At any rate, as you can see,” he added smugly, unable to feel any genuine caution when his heart was full of repeated refrains of I am loved, I am loved, “my husband has taken today’s events to heart.”

He nodded over at where Lan Qiren was sitting, still cleaning his sword and glaring balefully at everyone around him as if he suspected them of wrongdoing, having apparently decided to appoint himself as the paranoid one for the day.

If Lan Qiren were anyone else, Wen Ruohan would say that it was a beautiful display of subtle intimidation. The almost pristine glow of Lan Qiren’s almost entirely white outfit, marred only by the almost artful flecks of drying blood that highlighted the subtle red suns at the hems, acted as vivid contrast to the gory imagery of the bloody and at times incomplete bodies the Jiang sect disciples were still carrying out on mats from the room behind him, while the steady and sure motion of his hands drew the eye to focus on his sword, the one that had slain most of those people – an unspoken but extremely clear threat.

Of course, since this was Lan Qiren, he probably hadn’t thought about that at all.

Lan Qiren was a very good politician, when he put his mind to it – but he often forgot to put his mind to it. In fact, if Wen Ruohan had to bet, he’d say that Lan Qiren was probably currently thinking about some obscure Lan sect rule about cleaning your sword as soon as possible to avoid rust, about how it was valuable and taught all sorts of larger lessons and so on and so forth. Also, he’d probably want a bath as soon as possible, quite understandably, and certainly at a minimum by the time they got back to the Nightless City. He could just change clothing to get rid of the bloodstains, of course, but there was that general rule on changing clothing after bathing, and Wen Ruohan knew that Lan Qiren, with his fondness for routine, would prefer to do things in the proper order whenever possible.

(Lan Qiren, who loved him. Who was in love with him. Who would probably make that part of his routine as well, an everyday reminder that he belonged, body and soul, to Wen Ruohan…)

Lan Qiren was insisting on their leaving at once, which was quite reasonable under the circumstances. Wen Ruohan certainly wasn’t objecting. His sect’s disciples, who had rushed over as soon as he’d been able to properly signal them, had managed to keep a few of the assassins alive, including the one Lan Qiren had purposefully preserved. They had all been taken away to be interrogated – with the Fire Palace for once serving in its traditional capacity as a prison rather than Wen Ruohan’s personal playground – and answers would be forthcoming. Wen Ruohan had made that extremely clear to all of the assembled sect leaders.

Wen Ruohan had also made a number of very ominous statements about the vengeance he was imminently going to undertake as soon as he found out who was responsible for sending the assassins. Moreover, he had made clear that, as the victim of a dishonorable attack, he fully expected the cultivation world to back him in seeking reprisals, no matter what penalty he demanded – or else.

His announcement had spread a great deal of consternation throughout the crowd, all of whom were already somewhat keyed up due to the last near-war they’d been drawn into. It had caused any number of people to consider departing early as well, each to go back home to think over what to do next in peace rather than stay any longer in the Lotus Pier. Presumably it was those impending departures that had caused Yu Ziyuan to march up and pull Wen Ruohan aside for a quiet confrontation, with all of the seething, barely-concealed rage that had made her old Purple Spider moniker quite so famous visible on her face.

Again: not that Wen Ruohan cared.

Oddly enough, though, it seemed that something he’d said had soothed Yu Ziyuan’s fiery temper, or at least distracted her from it. Zidian was no longer making that irritating humming noise and her fingers no longer shook as if they were on the verge of being clenched into a fist; she was practically verging on normal.

Well, normal rage.

“Sect Leader Wen is very open-minded,” she said, very begrudgingly.

Wen Ruohan looked at Yu Ziyuan with some suspicion. Was she referring to the fact that he wasn’t blaming the Jiang sect for the assassination attempt? He’d wanted to, even though he was fairly certain they had nothing to do with it. Even if they hadn’t hired the assassins, it had been their negligence that had allowed the attack to occur at all, which meant that they ought to carry some share of the blame, and therefore some of the responsibility of making it up to him…but Lan Qiren had objected.

He’d said something about not sowing discord, or maybe about being easy on others. Wen Ruohan thought it was more likely that he just felt belatedly bad about having accidentally incited Cangse Sanren into stealing away the Jiang sect children at the same time she’d taken his nephews.

(They hadn’t told anyone that Cangse Sanren had brought them to the Nightless City, or indeed that Cangse Sanren and her family were currently residing with them rather than traveling the cultivation world. It seemed unwise to officially confirm it, lest they attract unwanted attention.)

“I will still be expecting Yunmeng Jiang’s support against the perpetrators, of course,” he clarified, but unexpectedly Yu Ziyuan waved her hand dismissively.

“Naturally you will have it,” she said coolly. “Whoever planned the attempt on your life, Sect Leader Wen, deliberately chose to use our Jiang sect as its scapegoat. In order to restore our good name, we must of course take every measure necessary to seek vengeance. That was not what I meant.”

“What, then?”

Very uncharacteristically, Yu Ziyuan hesitated for a while before answering. Just as Wen Ruohan was about to lose patience, she finally spoke, saying, “I meant…in the matter of your marriage.”

Wen Ruohan arched his eyebrows. What about his marriage? He’d made an excellent marriage. He’d known it from the start, and now the rest of the cultivation world was starting to realize it, too. And they hadn’t even figured out the bit about the classes yet!

None of that seemed to him to fit the criteria of rendering him “open-minded,” though. So what was Yu Ziyuan talking about?

Yu Ziyuan seemed to realize that she’d lost him, a frown appearing on her face as she watched the confusion on his.

“Do you really not mind?” she asked. “You are the stronger party, politically and personally, and you’re both men, not restrained by convention – shouldn’t Lan Qiren be the one calling you husband, rather than the other way around?”

Oh, so it was that again.

Ridiculous. Hadn’t they already covered that?

“My husband,” Wen Ruohan said, emphasizing the word mostly for the amusement it gave him to see the way it made her frown deepen, “is an innate conservative. He’s very fixed in his habits, and averse to change. Having been raised with the expectation that he would one day become a husband, it pleases him to be one, and it pleases me to see him pleased. What more does there need to be than that?”

“It cannot be that simple.”

“Why not? As you said, we’re not restrained by convention.” He smirked, deciding to needle her further. “Isn’t that part of your Jiang sect’s motto? Isn’t it ‘Make it work’?”

Her eye twitched again. “Attempt the impossible.”

“Isn’t that what I said? Make it work despite it being impossible.”

Yu Ziyuan scowled at him. “A mountain cannot contain two tigers,” she said testily. “A household cannot have two husbands. If he is the husband, then you are the wife, Sect Leader Wen. You cannot possibly be satisfied with the expectation that you are to submit to him, to abide by etiquette and decorum for him, to restrict your own activities for his sake…!”

“Does the sun care for the expectations of the earth?” Wen Ruohan asked carelessly. Lan Qiren had never demanded his submission in anything, except in bed – and even there, it was only ever something that added to Wen Ruohan’s pleasure, never something that had turned into an expectation or an insult. Lan Qiren had never once thought that what they did in bed meant anything about how they conducted their life outside it, as some men might have. On the contrary, when they were in public, it was Lan Qiren who sought wherever possible to abide strictly by etiquette, and part of that etiquette was supporting Wen Ruohan’s sect as the sect he’d married into, which in turn by default meant supporting Wen Ruohan himself as sect leader. “I have never restricted myself for the sake of others. I hardly plan to start now.”

“Really. Then does that mean, Sect Leader Wen, that you plan to take on the duties of a wife as well?” she asked scathingly.

“Actually, Qiren seems to have gotten it into his head that it is the duty of a husband to do the satisfying,” Wen Ruohan said dryly. “A Gusu Lan peculiarity, I expect. I wasn’t planning on disabusing him of the notion.”

Yu Ziyuan turned red. “That’s not what I meant!”

Wen Ruohan scoffed. “Then what do you mean? Do you expect me to manage my household like some commoner? I manage my sect, that’s close enough.”

“It is exceptionally different.”

“Perhaps for you,” Wen Ruohan said condescendingly. “Allow me to remind you that I am sect leader. I am free to implement my will as I wish – however I wish – and you have not identified one good reason why I cannot deviate from tradition.”

“At least you know you are deviating from tradition,” she snapped.

Wen Ruohan just barely restrained himself from saying something sarcastic like And of course your marriage is such a model of happy compliance with tradition, mostly since he was pretty sure she really would try to kill him if he did.

From the look on her face, he’d managed to convey the message anyway.

“If it matters to you, then it matters to you,” he said indifferently instead. “It certainly doesn’t to me.”

Yu Ziyuan’s expression somehow worsened, which he hadn’t thought was possible.

“We’ll be leaving now,” he said smoothly, deciding that it would be impolitic to drive his hostess into apoplexy. Not to mention that it would be such a shame to rob himself of the moral high ground right after a perfectly good assassination attempt had given it to him. “Qiren wants to fly back to the Nightless City to avoid any threat of ambush, and we must leave early if we are to arrive before the end of xu shi, which of course we must. You know how Gusu Lan is.”

Everyone knew how Gusu Lan was.

(If Wen Ruohan was ever to seek to invade the Cloud Recesses, he would be wise to launch his attack in the evening, right when their internal clocks would be urging them to rest instead of fight. Not that he would, of course – he couldn’t even imagine Lan Qiren’s reaction if he did, not even if it was forced upon him by Qingheng-jun’s actions. It was only something he’d considered before, in the abstract hypothetical…)

“Have a good journey,” Yu Ziyuan said. She was gritting her teeth again.

Wen Ruohan smirked and took his leave.

And then he took Lan Qiren, who was very relieved to hear that they were finally departing, and went home.

Wen Ruohan spent the entire flight back to the Nightless City, painfully long and boring as it was, feeling lighter than air.

Sure, there were still problems to be dealt with, not least of which was figuring out who had tried to have him killed – not just killed, but drowned, and at a party surrounded by the rest of the cultivation world, no less. Whoever it was had figured out that Wen Ruohan had used up all of his spiritual energy, that he was temporarily vulnerable, and they were undoubtedly already thinking through the next step in their plan, knowing that they only had a brief window in which to act before Wen Ruohan regained his invincibility.

Really, his paranoia ought to be going completely haywire, questioning everyone and everything, trying to figure out who was behind it – given that it couldn’t be Qingheng-jun, who was too newly out of seclusion to have the resources necessary to train up assassins unless there was something very significant Lan Qiren had left out of his descriptions of the Lan sect – and his political instincts ought to be focused on how all of these developments would impact the balance of power in the cultivation world and how to turn them in his sect’s favor. Even considering it purely from the standpoint of cultivation, he ought to be worrying about how weak he still was, how tired he was, how much the fight and even this journey home was taking out of him.

Instead, Wen Ruohan couldn’t stop smiling.

(Interestingly enough, it turned out that genuine smiles while issuing threats only made people even more inclined to worry – exceeding even their reaction to an intimidating smirk or ominous scowl. Who knew?)

But in his defense: Lan Qiren was in love with him.

There was always that.

There was always going to be that, because Lan Qiren was a Lan, a good Lan, in the classic model of his sect. When he gave his heart away, he did so irrevocably. Even if things were to shatter between them, the way things had gone somehow wrong between Wen Ruohan and Lao Nie, or the way they had with his first wife, with his brother, with his family – even if Wen Ruohan did something utterly beyond the pale, utterly unforgivable, the fact that Lan Qiren loved him wouldn’t change.

Of course, if he did something like that, Lan Qiren would make his life absolutely miserable, up to and including leaving him in the dirt, and that probably after yelling at him until he went deaf. Lan Qiren had been quite emphatically clear about his intentions in that regard, repeating himself several times, though Wen Ruohan privately thought that it was all a little unnecessary.

It wasn’t as if he didn’t already know.

He’d figured it out after the fiasco with the Fire Palace: the price of Lan Qiren’s continued good regard was nothing more or less than his own good conduct, persistent and maintained.

Once, that would have been infuriating.

Wen Ruohan had always been his own person. He had always gone his own way, done things in his own style, bowed to no one – his Wen sect’s symbol was the sun, and he as their sect leader was the sun in splendor, directly overhead and shining in full midday glory. Even among his brothers he had always been the most stubborn, the most bull-headed, whether in his insistence on learning the sneered-upon “support skill” of arrays to the point of mastery instead of focusing on the sword or his slow but persistent approach to becoming sect leader, which had been successful in the end. He had never yielded to anyone, whether through force or coaxing. He had never adjusted his behavior for someone else’s sake.

But now…

Well.

After a lifetime of betrayals, his own or others’, Wen Ruohan was willing to consider it an equal trade.

Love for love, that was easy. Trust for trust would be more difficult, but he was the best of the best: he was Wen Ruohan. He wasn’t afraid of a challenge.

And it wasn’t as if he was going to find someone else he wanted more. Who could be more fascinating or full of ridiculous contradictions than Lan Qiren – a rigid moralist who had nevertheless demonstrated his sincerity through slaughter? That had always been a surefire way to Wen Ruohan’s heart, though not a route he’d previously believed Lan Qiren likely to take. It had always been more along the lines of what he’d gotten out of his relationship with Lao Nie, both of them vigorous and blood-thirsty and suiting each other perfectly – or at least, they had before the other man had grown distant and disdainful…

Well, never mind about that.

Wen Ruohan had Lan Qiren now, and if he played his cards right, he would have him forever.

That was surely something worth smiling about.

He continued smiling even when they arrived, frightening his servants. Lan Qiren didn’t notice, but then he was practically falling asleep standing up. Whether that was because of the energy expenditure of having to fly such a distance immediately after a vicious fight and emotional upheaval or simply that it had gotten late enough for all good proper Lan disciples to go to bed, it was impossible to tell.

“Do you require my services tonight?” Lan Qiren blearily asked Wen Ruohan, who snorted involuntarily in amusement at his serious expression.

“I think not,” he said dryly. “Look at you, you’re already yawning. I doubt you’d be able to, ah, rise to the occasion.”

Lan Qiren frowned censoriously at him. “Even if I cannot, I can still do my duty, if that’s what you desire.”

Wen Ruohan did desire, as it happened – he had a great deal of appreciation for Lan Qiren’s hands and tongue, both of which had become exceptionally skilled through the application of consistent practice – but he still said, “No need. You can make it up to me with interest tomorrow.”

It was an interesting novelty to deny himself for another’s sake. He’d observed that Lan Qiren, lacking as he did an internal instinct towards desire, at times also lacked a good sense of judgment as to when it was appropriate to offer to have sex, although tragically he’d picked up enough etiquette to be resistant to frolicking in public where people could see. It therefore fell to Wen Ruohan to bear the responsibility of being the final arbiter of such things, to ensure that Lan Qiren would be in a position to enjoy himself as well as providing enjoyment for his partner.

With a final yawn, Lan Qiren nodded and went off to find his bed, not bothering to wait for Wen Ruohan to join him. Presumably he’d figured out that Wen Ruohan was too full of nervous energy to rest, meaning that tonight was going to be one of his occasional bouts of insomnia.

Normally, on nights like these, Wen Ruohan would stalk through the halls of the Nightless City like a wandering ghost before eventually finding himself drawn to the Fire Palace and its screams, its reminder that he was alive, but that was unnecessary tonight. Tonight he already felt wholly alive, completely vibrant. In fact, that was the issue: he felt full of energy, like he wanted to do something. And not just anything, but something productive – to set up an experiment in arrays, perhaps, or practice sparring with the sword against some worthy opponent, or even…

Even…

Wen Ruohan smiled.

Cangse Sanren found him the next day.

“It’s already noon, you know,” she announced, having entered the room without knocking. “Also, my husband was the one who actually found you here, but he decided to nominate me to be the one to interrupt you. I’m less killable than he is.”

“Is that the case?” Wen Ruohan asked, not looking up from what he was doing. “And here I thought all you celestial mountain disciples were doomed.”

“We are. There’s some big scary beast marching towards my future, coming to tear me limb from limb; it’s inevitable, as sure as the dawn, but that also means there’s no point in worrying about it now. But putting that aside, people are more used to me being annoying, so they put up with it more.” She paused. “Are you painting? I didn’t know you knew how to paint.”

Wen Ruohan ignored her. He was almost done, so he wasn’t going to stop now just to talk.

“You’re a good painter,” she commented, peeking around his shoulder. “I had no idea. And I mean…you’re really good. Exceptionally good – ”

“You can stop sounding surprised about it at any point.”

“I’m just saying, I didn’t know you had hobbies other than torturing people.”

“This is not a hobby,” he clarified, finishing the final few strokes and putting down his brush. “This is an aberration. It’s a gift. For Qiren.”

“As if you would pick up a brush for anyone else,” she snorted, and inelegantly tried to shove him to the side so that she could get a better look at what he’d created. It didn’t work, of course, since he was stronger than she was, but he stepped aside anyway. “…huh. That’s…not what I expected. This is the first painting you’re going to give to him?”

Wen Ruohan shrugged. Other than his brief flirtation with portraiture, which had been an exclusively financial decision during a period of time when his backing within the Wen sect had been especially shaky, he’d always treated painting the way he did his cultivation: something to develop and nurture and even perfect, but not to force.

Back when he’d been alive, his favorite brother, Wen Ruoyu, had been Wen Ruohan’s primary target for these sorts of painting gifts. He’d had a fondness for collecting things, so he always accepted the gifts, but he’d found them confusing. You say this is meant for me? As in, you painted it specifically for me? he’d often asked, squinting at whatever the latest one was. What in the world do you mean by giving me this in particular? What’s the symbolism here stand for? What does it mean?

If I could have told you what it meant, I wouldn’t have needed to paint it, now would I? Wen Ruohan had always retorted. Tell me if you like it or not. If you don’t, I’ll take it back and give you another.

I like it, I like it! Don’t you dare take away things that are mine!

“Well, it’s not like I didn’t know you were several kinds of fucked up in the head,” Cangse Sanren remarked, interrupting Wen Ruohan’s wandering thoughts. “If there’s anyone who’d think that painting a war scene is a good gift for their lover, it would certainly be you. But lucky for you, Qiren’s taste in art runs towards the complicated, so I think he might like it anyway.”

Wen Ruohan had indeed painted a war scene, though he was mildly impressed that Cangse Sanren had been able to identify it as such. There were no people in it – it was mostly trees, and rocks, and blood, the occasional glint of broken steel and furrows dug deep. Hidden in the painting were the signs of cultivators at battle: splintered bark with smoldering anchor points, smeared ash and cinnabar left behind by burnt talismans, sharp and unnatural angles revealing cuts by sword or string.

Color had been used only sparingly, as an accent, and his brushwork was as brutal and ruthless as it had ever been, leaving the whole image with a gloomy and morbid air, grey, hopeless, and depressing.

He’d even painted it from the angle he’d once seen it from, with the trees reaching up into the heavens, tangled limbs suffocating the sky.

It was probably not an appropriate gift to give to one’s lover.

Wen Ruohan was going to give it to him anyway. Maybe he really would get lucky, and it would suit Lan Qiren’s tastes. Even if it didn’t, though, that would be fine – the point had always been in the making and the giving.

“Where is Qiren, anyway?” he asked.

“Meditating in your yard. He did sect business for a shichen in the morning, earlier on, once he realized you were busy, but as soon as he finished the urgent business, he told them all to come back tomorrow with the rest.”

“Good.” Wen Ruohan hadn’t been planning to do any business at all. Lazy days were what secretaries were for. “Next question: where are the children?”

Cangse Sanren arched her eyebrows. “Yours, mine, the Lan or the Jiang?”

“I meant Qiren’s nephews, as it happens. But you referred to mine – did you just mean Chao-er, or is Xu-er back?”

“Yes, he arrived yesterday morning, so there’s both of them here. He’s in his room, as are all the others. Do you want to see him?”

Oddly enough, even though he had no specific purpose in mind, Wen Ruohan found that he did.

“Father!” Wen Xu stood up quickly when Wen Ruohan strode into his rooms. So quickly, in fact, that he accidentally knocked all the papers off his desk and all over the floor. “I didn’t – I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I wanted to confirm that you were in one piece after what happened with the army in Jiujiang, Xu-er,” Wen Ruohan said mildly, doing his best not to smirk. Unfortunately for his son, Wen Ruoyu had also been a master of the “knock everything off the table so that they don’t see what I was looking at” dodge, and it hadn’t worked when he’d done it, either. “I am pleased to see that you are.”

“Uh, yeah,” Wen Xu said. He was blinking rapidly. “I…Teacher Lan said the same thing.”

Wen Ruohan arched his eyebrows. Lan Qiren moved quickly when he wanted to, it appeared – Wen Xu was already calling him “Teacher Lan” despite having undoubtedly met him all of maybe once. “Did he?”

Wen Xu looked embarrassed for whatever reason, so Wen Ruohan put his hands behind his back and gave his son an expectant look.

“He said you were proud of me for how I handled myself. Even though all I did was get sent away!” Wen Xu blurted out, then looked horrified at himself. Presumably at the gross sentimentality of what Lan Qiren had said, which was more than a little ridiculous – Wen Xu really hadn’t done anything of note, not unless one counted not complaining about being sent away and listening to the generals’ advice to avoid making the situation worse. And, well, not getting kidnapped and used as blackmail at any point while retreating.

Which Wen Ruohan supposed had been rather helpful.

Well, be your spouse’s partner and all that. If he wanted Lan Qiren to have a genuine shot at improving Wen Xu, it wouldn’t do to undercut his authority as a teacher before he’d even had a chance to get started.

“I am,” he said, and reasoned virtuously to himself that it wasn’t a lie even if he hadn’t given the subject a single thought before this exact moment – after all, he was always proud of his sons, who were his bloodline and therefore superior to all others. Anyway, even if it was, it wasn’t like the Wen sect abided by Do not tell lies. “You did well.”

Wen Xu looked stunned to the point of breathlessness.

Actually, he looked like he’d stopped breathing entirely.

Wen Ruohan decided that that was probably enough torment for a teenager for one day.

“You should write to your master in the army and advise him that I will be keeping you by my side for the near future,” he said, moving to practical matters instead. “If he wishes to continue your training, he should send someone here.”

Wen Xu recovered with admirable speed, straightening his spine and looking as dependable as he could at fifteen. “Yes, Father. I’ll do that at once!”

Wen Ruohan nodded. And then, because he could, he added, nodding at the pile of paper on the floor: “I’ll leave you to your romance novels, then.”

The horrified sound Wen Xu made was appalling.

Wen Ruohan walked off, chuckling to himself.

Continuing his inexplicable impulse from earlier, he decided to check in briefly on Wen Chao as well.

“Go away,” Wen Chao said, not looking up from where he was lying on his stomach reading something with a great deal of pictures and absolutely no substance. He wasn’t even trying to hide it.

“You do not command me, Chao-er.”

“Father!” Wen Chao jumped up at once. He didn’t make any effort to hide his picture-book – a heavily illustrated adventure, rather than a romance – and scurried over, looking delighted to see him, as usual. “Father, you’re here, you’re here!”

“Mm. Tell me what you have been up to.”

“I’ve been spending time with the other sect heirs, just like you told me to,” Wen Chao said proudly. “They’re very annoying, lots of trouble, but I can handle them. They’re no match for me!”

Wen Ruohan had no difficulty in discerning that this was extremely high praise for Wen Chao’s new friend group, potentially even gratitude and joy that they’d willingly included Wen Chao in their antics, and also that Wen Chao desperately wanted the present state to keep going forever.

“Good,” Wen Ruohan said. “Continue as you are. Become close to them and learn more about them, learn from their virtues and vices both. And listen when Teacher Lan tells you things meant to improve you. Make me proud.”

“Yes, Father! I will!”

That done, Wen Ruohan finally made his way down the hall to where his original targets, Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji, were being housed. He needed the two of them to do something for him.

After all, he owed Lan Qiren a debt, and it was time to deliver.

“Qiren,” he said, walking into their rooms later that afternoon. “I have something for you.”

He’d picked a good time: Lan Qiren was neither meditating nor playing his guqin, and neither was he composing – an activity that also involved a guqin, but a great deal more angry plucking, grumbling, and furious scribbling. Instead, he was only writing something down on scrap paper, though whatever the content of the note was, it was making him frown deeply, with a furrow between his brows that suggested that the subject was genuinely concerning to him.

“There you are,” Lan Qiren said, looking up. “I have something to say to you as well – ”

He paused, his expression suddenly clearing, discomfort making way for an expression of surprise, as well as something that seemed torn between pleasure and apprehension. “Did you say that you had something for me?”

“I did,” Wen Ruohan said agreeably. “Several things, in fact. Is what you have to say urgent?”

“Not at all,” Lan Qiren said bemusedly, rising to his feet and coming over. “It can wait, and indeed I would insist that it do so, given the alternative. What have you gotten me?”

Wen Ruohan produced two small booklets from inside his robes and handed them over.

Still looking somewhat wary, Lan Qiren accepted them, then opened the first one.

A moment later, he let out a surprised bark of laughter.

Wen Ruohan smirked triumphantly, watching the tension in Lan Qiren’s shoulders disappear. The man was too used to bad surprises, to everything that was unknown or a change being a bad thing – it was about time that he learned that some changes were good.

“I realize that my behavior was inappropriate, both in the specific situation and in general,” Lan Qiren read out loud. “When I am angry, I should withdraw from the situation and do what it takes to master my emotions, to better maintain my own discipline, before making any bad decisions. Under no circumstance should I take my mood out on other people, and especially not family. Additionally, I particularly recognize that I should always take the time to listen to you before making a final judgment. I have learned a valuable lesson from what I did, and I will not do it again – Wen Ruohan, did you get Xichen to write you an apology essay for me?”

“I got both your nephews to write me apology essays to give to you,” Wen Ruohan corrected him. “The second one is from Wangji.”

“Of course it is.” Lan Qiren’s shoulders were shaking with suppressed laughter again. “That’s - this is terrible. Your apologies keep getting worse and worse – and this one is unnecessary! I have already forgiven you.”

“This one isn’t an apology. It’s punishment.”

Lan Qiren’s eyebrows went up. “Oh?”

“You said the purpose of punishment is deterrence and remediation – that I need to take some loss in order to show my sincerity, to pay for the past and to make a deposit as assurance for good conduct in the future. A loss that means something to me, the way pain and time don’t.” Wen Ruohan reached out and cupped Lan Qiren’s cheek with his hand. “Something that can show you that I really have…how did he put it? That I ‘learned a valuable lesson from what I did, and will not do it again’.”

Lan Qiren leaned into his touch, smiling faintly. “And you think you have done that with this? What is your logic?”

Wen Ruohan found himself returning the smile. There it was, there was what he’d been looking for.

Lan Qiren was giving him the benefit of the doubt.

On the surface, it was patently ridiculous to think that convincing two boys to write essays could be a sufficient punishment, something that it could constitute a loss for someone of Wen Ruohan’s stature and power. Lao Nie would have thought he was joking, would have laughed along with a jest he wasn’t making, while his wives would have thought he was being sarcastic, that he was mocking them; they would have stormed out, maybe after throwing something at his head.

Lan Qiren just waited, certain that an explanation (of whatever quality) would be forthcoming.

“In our first visit to the Lotus Pier, I offered to help your nephews find you,” Wen Ruohan said, withdrawing his hand. “But not for free. I asked each of them to promise me a favor: one each.”

Lan Qiren frowned. “Unrestricted?”

“Your Xichen tried his best – he insisted on it being ‘nothing bad.’ But he’s young. He put no other restrictions on it, neither time, nor goal, nor extent…”

Lan Qiren winced. An open-ended favor like that, from a future sect leader, from a sect that did not make promises lightly, that did not break promises lightly, not even when they were extracted under duress…he knew exactly the sort of mischief Wen Ruohan could get up to with something like that. He’d seen it, even. In the ten years that the Lan sect was under his leadership, Lan Qiren would have been well aware that Wen Ruohan had twice utilized far more limited favors he was owed to devastating effect.

No, Lan Qiren well knew to be wary of such favors. He understood the gravity of such a thing – and just as he recalled it, that was when the understanding hit.

Wen Ruohan had the pleasure of seeing Lan Qiren genuinely shocked.

“You used those favors to get them to write these essays?” he exclaimed. “Surely not!”

Wen Ruohan smirked. “Is that sufficient loss for you?”

“More than sufficient! I would not have asked you to give up an advantage like that,” Lan Qiren said, frowning at him. “I might have sought to blunt the effects of the favors they had given, particularly in light of their age and immaturity, but a promise made is a promise made. Surely you know that – you are sect leader, and this is not a personal matter between us. Favors between sects is a matter of your sect, which is your first priority. I would not wish to abuse my position as your husband to interfere.”

“You might not wish to, but you might regardless,” Wen Ruohan said dryly, having figured out a little more of Lan sect cleverness with words by now. “And you might not, though I wish that you would.”

“What do you mean?”

“You are my husband,” Wen Ruohan said, as much for the pleasure of seeing Lan Qiren automatically smile at the reminder as to make the point. “That makes you half-master of my Wen sect in your own right…of our Wen sect. Our Wen sect is known for its arrogance, our superiority, our certainty that we deserve everything good in the world, and I would be very happy to see the same in you, Qiren.”

He shook his head.

“It is not abusing your position to want things, even things that are not necessarily to our Wen sect’s immediate benefit,” he said. “I want you to want things. I want you to ask for…no, I want you to demand everything that you want. I want you to learn to expect to receive what you ask for, rather than expecting to have to struggle to obtain it.”

Lan Qiren didn’t understand, Wen Ruohan could see that.

He found his voice softening. “You deserve the best, Qiren. You deserve to have the best given to you: without pain, without struggle, without effort, just for the asking. The world is your rightful due, and if you only ask for it, I would give it to you.”

“You are not using me as an excuse to take over the world,” Lan Qiren informed him primly, but there was something in his eyes that suggested that he had understood a little of what Wen Ruohan meant, even if he didn’t comprehend the fullness of it. At minimum, he’d understood that Wen Ruohan meant that he was family now – Wen Ruohan, who had always put his family over everyone, for good or for evil, with reason or without, following faithfully in the path laid out by Wen Mao in prizing their Wen clan over the whole world. Perhaps he even understood what Wen Ruohan was really saying: that he would now put him first, first before anything.

It might take some time before Lan Qiren could really bring himself to believe what Wen Ruohan told him, and even longer before he was willing to act with that glorious arrogance that Wen Ruohan so longed to see in him, that carelessness and freedom that accompanied true power. But at least he understood that that was something Wen Ruohan wanted to give to him.

A good change, rather than bad.

“This is my promise to you,” Wen Ruohan told him, nodding at the essays. “My loss, yes, my sect’s loss, also yes, but it is the loss I should take. It is my payment for not trusting you, as I should have, because not trusting you is a loss.”

Wen Ruohan was known for many things. He was blood-thirsty, a tyrant, a madman who delighted in torture; he was brilliant, a master of cultivation, ancient and terrifying. He was paranoid and cruel and selfish, and he put his ambitions above everything else.

He might be all those things, but Lan Qiren had chosen him anyway. The least he could do was choose him in return – to let Lan Qiren change him the way he wanted to change Lan Qiren. To trust him, yes, but also…to be worthy of his trust in return.

To be anything less –

Now that would be the real loss.

And, of course, Wen Ruohan did not lose.

Lan Qiren was staring at him open-mouthed.

“Do you understand?”

“…yes. I understand.”

Wen Ruohan kissed him. After a moment, he released him.

Lan Qiren still looked dazed. It was a good look on him.

“Now tell me,” Wen Ruohan teased. “Was that a good enough punishment?”

“If I were grading you, I would pass you with honors,” Lan Qiren said fervently.

Wen Ruohan laughed.

“Now, it is your turn to tell me,” Lan Qiren added, recovering a little. “Do I dare read what Wangji wrote…?”

“I genuinely have no idea,” Wen Ruohan said cheerfully. “He did it all in musical notation.”

“Oh no.”

“I like your second nephew. He’s clever.”

“Please refrain from getting any bright ideas. I am already working diligently on helping him recover his equilibrium; he does not need any further assistance in growing any more feral, and still less does he need to grow any more tyrannical than he already is.” Lan Qiren shook his head. “I will review the essays in full later, and I expect to be greatly amused by them, both immediately and for a great deal of time into the future. Thank you.”

“Of course. Would you like to see what else I have for you?”

Lan Qiren glanced at him sharply. “There’s more?”

“No need to sound so plaintive,” Wen Ruohan chuckled. “Do not do things in excess, or however the rule goes. That was all for the punishment. This one is an out-and-out gift – I painted something for you.”

“You painted…? Is that where you were all morning?”

“All night and all morning,” Wen Ruohan corrected. “It’s in my secondary study, if you’d like to come see it now. Or would you prefer to first discuss the subject that you mentioned earlier?”

Oddly enough, that caused the worried furrow to return to Lan Qiren’s brow, and he hesitated for a long moment before eventually saying, “Do not harbor doubts or jealousy, do not fail to carry out your promise. I think we had better discuss it now.”

That didn’t sound promising. Wen Ruohan tilted his head to the side. “Very well. What is it that you wanted to discuss, then?”

“It is about Lao Nie,” Lan Qiren said slowly. “I promised to myself that I would speak with you on the subject at the first instant I could. And yet, as time goes on, I find myself searching for further reasons to refrain for a little longer – which is misconduct on my part, although understandable. I have only just had you confirm that you returned my feelings, which has brought me tremendous joy. When one feels great joy, one seeks to preserve it…I suppose I wished to have you to myself for a little longer.”

“You do have me to yourself,” Wen Ruohan said, a little confused. “Lao Nie and I are not on the best of terms, as you yourself have seen. While it is true that we have never officially broken off our relationship, his recent actions and behavior make it clear enough that that will be the inevitable result, and sooner rather than later. He suspects me at every turn, disdains me, becomes angry at anything and everything I do – ”

“He had a qi deviation.”

Wen Ruohan stopped.

For a moment his mind rebelled, refusing to accept what his ears told him they had heard. “What?”

“He had a qi deviation, not long ago,” Lan Qiren said. His voice was solemn, serious, and Do not tell lies. He was telling the truth. “His son, Nie Mingjue, told me about it. You know what fate awaits the sect leaders of Qinghe Nie. You know how it looks, when it starts. You know what it does to them. How it makes them feel – ”

“Rage,” Wen Ruohan said, finding that his lips had started tingling, even if the rest of his face felt strangely numb. He did know. He’d seen Lao Nie’s father and grandfather suffer from the very same thing. “Disdain. Irrationality. Suspicion, paranoia…are you saying that you think his qi deviation is the genesis of his recent behavior?”

“I believe it is likely. You know how subtle qi deviations can be, particularly the small ones that the Nie sect initially suffer from – even if it was only discovered recently, it is likely that the deviation has been affecting him for months, perhaps even a year or two. From what I have observed of your disintegrating relationship, and based on your description of past events, his seeming distrust and your reaction to it…yes, it seems likely.”

Wen Ruohan…

Wen Ruohan didn’t know what to do with that information.

He didn’t want to believe Lan Qiren. He wanted to accuse him of lying, even though he knew he didn’t. He wanted to throw something, hit something, hurt something – he wanted to claim that this was all some sort of sick scheme, designed to strike him right when he was most vulnerable. But he’d promised to trust Lan Qiren, and he did trust him, and if there was one thing he knew, it was that Lan Qiren did not lie.

Lao Nie had had a qi deviation.

Lao Nie was dying.

Lao Nie – Lao Nie had come to Wen Ruohan when he’d been at his lowest point, when he’d been sick and tired of living, entertained by pain and nothing more. At that time, Wen Ruohan had been on the verge of considering entering the way of clarity, a path that cut off his feelings entirely as a means of avoiding the endless misery of having them mostly cut off already. He’d been searching for some method, any method, to stop the way he felt dead inside most of the time, dead and bored. Dead, and bored, and…and alone.

Lao Nie hadn’t let him be alone.

Lao Nie had brought to bear all the good cheer his considerable force of personality gave him, and he had aimed it at him. Lao Nie had laughed at him, had teased him, had all but demanded a place in his bed, and Wen Ruohan had found him amusing. It hadn’t been anything more than that at the start of it. He’d been glad that it’d been nothing more than that – he’d thought at the time that he didn’t want any more connections to the world to tie him down, to hold him back. What Lao Nie had offered him had seemed perfect.

A friend, an occasional lover, someone willing to slaughter his way into Wen Ruohan’s good graces, but without any serious commitment…it’d been easy. Casual. Light-hearted, the way Lao Nie always was, no matter the circumstances.

Even when their sects had been at odds, it hadn’t ever gotten any more difficult. Lao Nie was a Nie after all; he was straightforward and blunt, even when he was being clever or tricky. He held no fear of lying, did not refrain from it like Lan Qiren, but his actions, at least towards Wen Ruohan, were so lacking in malice that it was impossible to take offense from them. He’d always saved his malice for other people, and let Wen Ruohan share in the fun with him…

Yes, that was it. Lao Nie had always been fun.

And then he’d disappeared for a while, and returned with Nie Mingjue.

That had been the first break between them. A small one, but still a break – it wasn’t that Wen Ruohan hadn’t expected the man to marry eventually, since as sect leader he had a duty to continue his family line, but for whatever reason he’d expected to be involved in the process. Helping pick out some likely girl, debating her merits, that sort of thing, the same way they amiably argued over the pick of prostitutes during parties they attended. He hadn’t expected to be taken by surprise.

He hadn’t expected to care.

It had been only a little consolation that everyone else had been taken by surprise, too.

And of course it had helped that the First Madam Nie, Lao Nie’s much talked-of goddess, never actually made an appearance herself, even if she did get full honors in the Nie sect’s family record. It had been awkward, yes, and had made Wen Ruohan realize that he felt more things for Lao Nie than he really ought to – he’d reacted by ignoring said feelings for nearly a decade – but it hadn’t really felt like a betrayal.

The second wife felt like a betrayal.

They’d argued over that one. Lao Nie hadn’t understood why Wen Ruohan would care, and Wen Ruohan was too arrogant, and too embarrassed, to admit the truth that he did. After all, hadn’t he been the one to insist on them being nothing more than casual friends who occasionally indulged in more than that? And that was all he wanted, too, or thought he’d wanted, only he’d also wanted to be the most important part of Lao Nie’s life, and it came as a nasty shock to discover that he wasn’t. To discover that Lao Nie was actively pursuing others, and that he would pick them over Wen Ruohan if it came to it.

Things had never quite gotten better after that.

Oh, once Lao Nie’s second wife had died – or disappeared, whichever – they had fallen back into each other’s orbit, being almost too familiar with each other not to. They were the leaders of Great Sects, who knew virtually no peer; of that smaller group, they were the only two who were genuinely powerful in their personal capacities, or at least so Wen Ruohan had thought at the time. He’d known that Lao Nie was exceptionally fond of Lan Qiren, fond enough to almost drive Wen Ruohan into jealousy, but luckily he’d heard enough of Lan Qiren’s lectures to know that the two of them would never be compatible in any real sense. Even if Lao Nie had managed to get Lan Qiren into bed, the way Wen Ruohan had semi-seriously suggested to the man a few times that he try to do and which Lao Nie had laughed off as impossible, he’d been confident that Lan Qiren would never eclipse his own position in Lao Nie’s regard.

It certainly hadn’t occurred to him that he might be the one to fall for Lan Qiren in the end.

Wen Ruohan felt confident that he would have acted in the same way, fallen in the same way, even if his relationship with Lao Nie had not deteriorated to such an extent before he’d married Lan Qiren, but that didn’t change the fact that it had. It didn’t change the fact that Wen Ruohan had been growing steadily more offended by the way Lao Nie never seemed to trust him anymore, the way he always ascribed the worst possible motives to him, the way he seemed to think so little of him. Lao Nie had always had a suspicious side to him, which Wen Ruohan had once liked, a point of similarity between them, but he hadn’t liked it when it was aimed at him. Especially when he actually hadn’t done anything to deserve it!

Suspicion – anger – disdain –

It had never occurred to Wen Ruohan that it could have been caused by a qi deviation.

Perhaps it should have, given Lao Nie’s poisonous heritage, but it never had. Lao Nie was Lao Nie: he laughed where his ancestors would have shouted, let his anger carry him forward without letting it master him. He’d looked for solutions to his familial issue, of course, the way all of his ancestors had, but he’d done so idly, not serious, never serious. He always took things so easily. How could he die of rage?

How could he die?

“How long?” Wen Ruohan asked. The Nie sect doctors knew their business by now, after as many generations as it had been. “What do they say?”

“Ten years,” Lan Qiren said, and Wen Ruohan actually took a step back, staggering, horrified: that was so short. “Nie Mingjue said they’d expressed hope for fifteen, maybe even twenty, but that may have been meant only as comfort. As you know, Nie sect leaders die faster the more powerful they are, and Lao Nie’s cultivation is very strong.”

Wen Ruohan shook his head in denial, but he knew even as he did that it wasn’t something that he could deny.

Lao Nie was strong. And now that very strength was going to take him to the end of his life – too young, too soon, even for a Nie. It was all well and good to speak of trading your future for your present, but one day the future would come calling to collect the debt that had been incurred…

“I told Nie Mingjue that we would help however we could, do whatever we could about it,” Lan Qiren said. “Both of us. I assume you do not object?”

“There isn’t anything to be done about it.” Wen Ruohan pressed his fingers to his temples, which throbbed with a sudden headache, his body already starting to express the grief his mind could not yet accept. “Do you think the Qinghe Nie hate their children? They know what inheritance they are passing to them, they know what it costs, what it will take. They all look for a way out, every one of them…if it was easy, if there was a solution, don’t you think they would have found it by now? Every generation has its geniuses. Medicine, cultivation, esoteric arts; they’ve tried them all.”

“I know. There is no guarantee of success. We can only continue to try.” Lan Qiren hesitated, his face twisting into some strange expression that Wen Ruohan couldn’t quite parse. “If you wish…I had already told you that – that I would not object, if you wished to – with Lao Nie – ”

It was unusually garbled for the typically eloquent Lan Qiren, but Wen Ruohan still got the gist.

He shook his head.

“His mood at the party was foul,” he said. “He’s not taking it well, I assume? He’s still processing the revelation himself. Right now he wouldn’t accept a kind word, much less anything else.”

Lan Qiren nodded.

“And…” Wen Ruohan grimaced. “And I don’t know if I want to, anyway.”

That took Lan Qiren by surprise, Wen Ruohan could tell. He hadn’t been expecting that.

In fairness, before he’d said it, Wen Ruohan hadn’t been expecting to say it. If a few months ago someone had come to him and told him that they could prove that Lao Nie hadn’t really meant all the ways he’d been cruel or distrusting – and even if they’d warned him that there was no way to fix it, no way to have the old Lao Nie back, back as he’d been when things had been good – then Wen Ruohan wouldn’t have hesitated to jump right back into his bed.

But that was then. That was before he’d had Lan Qiren – Lan Qiren, who wasn’t light-hearted, who didn’t take everything easily, who was serious and sober and sincere. Who’d given Wen Ruohan his heart, whole and entire; who trusted him, and had faith in him, and forgave him, even against his better instincts. Who loved him, and wasn’t afraid to tell him. Who had let Wen Ruohan change him, who hadn’t been afraid to seek to change Wen Ruohan in turn.

Lan Qiren, who’d told him with all seriousness that he had lost his mind over him.

Wen Ruohan wasn’t alone anymore. He didn’t need to be content with the scraps of Lao Nie’s inconstant heart, which in truth belonged to no one and likely would never, could never. He didn’t need to be constantly hurting himself by wanting more than he could get, and never getting even what he deserved as the man’s friend.

“The qi deviation might have been the cause of his changed behavior,” Wen Ruohan said slowly, feeling it out for himself even as he spoke. “But it still happened. He still did it. Isn’t it the same for you, what happened with the Fire Palace? Just because there was a valid explanation doesn’t change the reality of it – what happened, still happened.”

He’d been hurt by Lao Nie’s seeming disregard of him. He’d been angry, yes, his vanity offended, but…it had been another betrayal, in a lifetime full of them.

Wen Ruohan was so very tired of betrayals.

He could admit, if only to himself, that some of the incompatibility between him and Lao Nie had preceded the qi deviation. Wen Ruohan was ambitious and greedy, he couldn’t be content with only a part of a person’s heart rather than the totality of it, and Lao Nie wasn’t capable of giving him what he wanted. And Wen Ruohan wasn’t able to give Lao Nie what he wanted, which was a connection that didn’t come with jealousy or unhappiness, something to enjoy without concern, without any strings attached.

“I forgave you for the Fire Palace,” Lan Qiren protested.

“Not everyone is you,” Wen Ruohan said, and omitted to mention you’re also in love with me, so your judgment is skewed in my favor – I’ll never complain about having an unfair advantage, but I prefer to recognize when they exist. “Anyway, like I said, it’s not the time. Lao Nie has ten years, and we will help him, just as you promised Nie Mingjue. Maybe we’ll figure out some way to give him a little longer – ”

Alternatively, they could try to find a way to make him immortal.

Wen Ruohan knew that most people thought he was joking when he said that becoming a god would solve a lot of his problems, but it really would. He was already so powerful, surely he just needed a little bit more…

Anyway, that was a later problem. As was the fact that Lan Qiren was also not yet immortal, though Wen Ruohan felt very confident that he’d be able to solve that problem before it became a pressing issue.

(And once they solved the problem of Lao Nie dying, they could perhaps once again discuss the other question. Lao Nie had always been very good in bed, and Wen Ruohan would be delighted to have the chance to introduce Lan Qiren to that fact, if he were willing. But he would only invite him in as a guest, the way Lao Nie preferred, and this time he would leave his heart out of it.)

“For the moment, we need to figure out who is trying to kill us. That’s the immediate issue,” he concluded, deciding not to think further on the subject of those he loved dying when there was a more pressing practical concern, denial and postponement having always served him very well in the past. Anyway, it was relevant. After all, immortality, in the sense of not dying of old age, was all well and good, but it wouldn’t help you if someone assassinated you.

In fact, even knowing that it had happened, even having lived through it, the whole thing still seemed somehow fake to Wen Ruohan. Who would dare try to assassinate him? With actual assassins, no less. Even if he was personally weakened, he still had all his influence, all his army, all his sect behind him. Surely whoever had ordered it would know that he would take vicious reprisals against them? Why would anyone risk such a thing…?

“There should be an answer to that by now,” he added. “Should we go see what it is?”

Lan Qiren blinked owlishly at him, as if surprised. “Have you not already figured it out? It took me a little time, thinking about it, but in retrospect it seems obvious.”

Now it was Wen Ruohan’s turn to be startled. He most certainly had not figured it out.

“What,” he said, a little disbelievingly, “surely not your brother again?”

“No,” Lan Qiren said. “It was Jin Guangshan. We are going to have to go to war.”

Chapter Text

The evidence from the Fire Palace came in not long after, confirming Lan Qiren’s deduction.

Wen Ruohan still looked stupefied by the revelation, though he’d lived up to his word and believed Lan Qiren immediately, which was nice. He just hadn’t believed it of Jin Guanshan, Lan Qiren supposed.

That was reasonable enough.

Jin Guangshan might not be especially smart, but he made up for it by having cunning in spades. Lan Qiren could out-argue him nearly every time, particularly on matters of morality, but Jin Guangshan got his own way just as often, whether through schemes and maneuvering or underhanded tricks. He’d been pretty close to Wen Ruohan, too. The Wen sect never made alliances, it was part of their founding principles – the clan over everyone, the clan over the world, Wen Mao at what was either his finest or his worst depending on what commentary you were reading – but Jin Guangshan was good at flattering people, and Wen Ruohan liked to be flattered. He enjoyed not only the reality of being powerful, but the pageantry of it: he liked it when people bowed to him or recited phrases honoring him, he liked it when people thought about him, and he liked it when people praised him, even when they were smarmy sycophants obviously out for their own interests like Jin Guangshan.

(Having now spent a little more time with Wen Chao, Lan Qiren felt that he had a better understanding of Wen Ruohan’s character. Wen Ruohan was smarter, subtler, and far more experienced than his second son, and certainly more ruthless, but Lan Qiren could see that some of the same characteristics were there, writ miniature. Certainly some of the same flaws: Wen arrogance and self-absorption, a prickly competitive pride – though with Wen Chao, unlike his father, not quite enough cleverness and talent to justify it – and of course a tendency towards indolence and laziness, impulsiveness and excitability…not to mention, interestingly enough, a certain degree of gullibility, worsened by their tendency to think themselves above being tricked.

It was a little adorable, actually.

Wen Chao, at least, was young enough that Lan Qiren felt confident he could help ameliorate the worst of his flaws, or at least help him manage them better and with fewer awful tendencies than his father. As for Wen Ruohan…well, it was good for him that Lan Qiren liked him so much. He’d never met a man more in need of a beating. And that included Lao Nie.)

“Why would he be so foolish?” Wen Ruohan asked, not for the first time. He had started pacing – almost as if conjured up by his irritation, Cangse Sanren had appeared, this time with Wei Changze trailing behind her. “No Great Sect directly encroaches on another, not like this. We all refrain because we all know where it would lead…why would he incite war against me?”

“Not just a war, but a war in which you are the aggrieved party,” Wei Changze agreed. He looked worried, probably because of his natal sect’s potential involvement – the Jiang sect were formal allies with the Jin sect, close to the point of having arranged for a future engagement between Jiang Yanli and Jin Guangshan’s son, Jin Zixuan. The engagement had been mediated by their mothers, who had been close as girls, but even Lan Qiren, who did not gossip and tried not to listen to it when it was presented to him, knew the rumors that claimed that Madam Jin had utilized that very connection to help win her current place as mistress of Jinlin Tower. “It does seem rather implausible, not to mention irrational.”

“People act irrationally out of fear,” Cangse Sanren said. She’d perched herself on the stool again, with her knees pulled up in a dreadfully inappropriate manner; Lan Qiren was starting to wonder if she had difficulty getting comfortable unless she was contorting herself. “His conduct being irrational doesn’t necessarily mean that this is a trap.”

“It could be,” Wen Ruohan said.

“Anything could be. In this case, I don’t think it is. Qiren-gege is right: Sect Leader Jin decided to bet on a roll of the dice with Qingheng-jun, siding with him and trying to box Sect Leader Wen into a major loss. He probably figured that two Great Sects acting together were hard to stop, especially since he could bulk up their power by suborning Yunmeng Jiang through their alliance with his sect. And it’s a good point! With three Great Sects you can do a lot!” She shrugged. “But he didn’t realize that Qingheng-jun was insane, so his plan failed.”

“That’s not unreasonable. But it is unreasonable to go from there to ordering an assassination.”

“I suspect that part is likely my fault,” Lan Qiren said heavily. “Jin Guangshan has always been able to rely on his knowledge of people to manipulate them. With Wen Ruohan, he counted on knowing how to calm him down whenever he overstepped, whether through flattery or gifts or otherwise. But now, for the first time, we rejected his attempt to smooth things over…well, I rejected it, and Wen Ruohan endorsed that rejection. That may have spooked him.”

“Spooked him enough to try to kill me?” Wen Ruohan sounded offended, even though he himself had pointed out several times that his temporary vulnerability made it a perfectly reasonable time for someone to try something. “I understand that he had a relatively narrow window of opportunity at present and would need to act swiftly if he wished to take advantage of my impairment, but at the same time, it seems like rather a bold move, particularly for him. Maybe it is a trap.”

“Even if it is a trap, how can we avoid it?” Lan Qiren pointed out. Quite reasonably, to his mind. “I despise war. I would do everything within my power to avoid it where possible, but despite that, even I know that trying to kill another sect’s sect leader can lead nowhere else. If we do not respond in force, it would be tantamount to saying that anyone can try to kill the people in the Nightless City with impunity.”

“How bloodthirsty of you, Qiren.”

“He’s not being bloodthirsty,” Cangse Sanren objected. “He’s being logical.”

“He’s being terrifying,” Wei Changze said bluntly. “He’s not wrong, it makes sense, it’s the way it has to be. But wars aren’t bloodless, and they shouldn’t be started bloodlessly.”

Lan Qiren frowned. He was hardly being cold-hearted, he didn’t think – it really was only logical, and not just because his new sect happened to be the victim. The Wen sect was the most powerful sect in the cultivation world; its behavior set the standard for the rest, for better or for worse. If they didn’t take the strongest possible measures against someone who had ordered an assassination now, it would suggest that such things were acceptable, or at least not too objectionable, and setting such a precedent would be disastrous for the entire cultivation world, not just the Nightless City. Every sect would start thinking about how to target each other.

They had to stamp this out at once. They had to make it so incredibly clear that the consequences of this type of behavior vastly outweighed the benefits, that there would be immediate and overwhelming reprisals, that the only outcome would be utterly cataclysmic. The only way to do that was to go to war.

There was simply no other choice.

What had Jin Guangshan been thinking? It would be one thing if he were in the Wen sect’s position, thinking that he was strong enough to cast off the consequences or maybe even to intimidate whoever he had offended out of demanding justice. But they weren’t a small sect being threatened by a large sect, where they would have to balance accepting an intolerable offense against the risk of their sect being subsequently destroyed. The Wen sect was large and powerful and unlike most sects, it had an army. An army, and a powerful sect leader known for conquest and tyranny. It would never take such an insult lying down.

Jin Guangshan wasn’t strong enough to go against Wen Ruohan’s Wen sect, and surely he knew that. He’d done the equivalent of poking a bear with a stick and running away, expecting the bear to chase.

Under the circumstances, it was pretty obvious that there had to be some sort of trap involved.

Why get a bear to chase you if you didn’t have plans to deal with the bear once you got it to where you wanted it to go? Lan Qiren was perfectly willing to believe that Jin Guangshan was a little stupid, or even more than a little, but he wasn’t that stupid. He must have, or at least must believe that he had, some sort of ace up his sleeve that would enable him to turn the tables against them at the last moment, some final card left to play, something that he plausibly thought would let him triumph over not only a weakened Wen Ruohan, but the entire Wen sect army.

But what could it be?

“– need to look at who we’re dealing with here,” Cangse Sanren was arguing. “Don’t look at the situation as a general rule, what would normal people do and why would they do it. We need to think about why Sect Leader Jin would do what he did. ‘People are different, and different people react differently to the same stimulus.’”

That almost had the sound of a rule.

Actually, now that he thought about it, Lan Qiren thought he might remember having said something similar to Cangse Sanren all way back when they were still adolescents, back when she’d been frustrated by not being able to understand why people acted the way they did. He’d overheard her ranting about it one afternoon and he’d been struck by a sudden sense of kinship. As one person struggling with the same issue to another, he’d offered to share the benefits of his hard-won lessons on social norms. He hadn’t actually expected her to accept, but she had, and he’d spent a number of highly enjoyable afternoons explaining what he’d figured out to her, occasionally even supplementing his explanations with charts and the like. It had been fun.

He hadn’t realized that she remembered.

“I see your point,” Wei Changze said thoughtfully. “Sect Leader Jin is rich and powerful, and he was born rich and powerful. I doubt he’s ever haggled or been desperate for anything in his life. He doesn’t need to take risks, he probably never did before, and now, for the first time in his life…”

“Exactly! He’s exposed. It’s probably the weakest hand he’s ever held. Combine that with pride and egotism, and he decides to double down – ”

“It is still irrational,” Wen Ruohan said with a scowl. “Starting a war with another Great Sect – with my sect – is tantamount to suicide. Jin Guangshan may be foolish, but he is not that foolish. To act so recklessly is unlike him. I think – ”

“Qiren-gege,” Cangse Sanren interrupted, turning to look at Lan Qiren. “Can you call a doctor? I think Sect Leader Wen might be under the influence of some sort of severe fever or mind-altering drug – ”

“What?!”

“Or possession! It could be possession, we haven’t checked – ”

“Cangse Sanren, that is enough,” Lan Qiren said sternly.

She crossed her arms and arched her eyebrows. “Sect Leader Wen is refusing an invitation to go to war? A justified war, that no one will be able to object to? By the laws of the night-hunt, that definitely qualifies as aberrant behavior sufficient to necessitate a check for possession.”

“I am not refusing,” Wen Ruohan snarled. “I am merely – ”

“I think my brother might be involved,” Lan Qiren announced, deciding that the minor breach of etiquette involved in interrupting people and blatantly changing the subject was less egregious than allowing this conversation to continue any further. It wasn’t that he hadn’t noticed that Wen Ruohan was being unusually squirrelly about being handed an opportunity that he would normally salivate over and even scheme wildly to obtain, but he also had enough insight to be able to determine that his hesitation was more than likely due to him still being unnerved by their earlier discussion about Lao Nie rather than any actual anxiety over the notion of going to war.

After all, Lao Nie and Jin Guangshan had ascended to their positions at around the same time. To lose one would be an ominous sign for the other, and Wen Ruohan had already lived past the length of a human lifetime, had already lost every single person he’d known as a young man. He hadn’t yet prepared himself for more loss, more change.

Lan Qiren could sympathize with that.

“I do not mean to be repetitive on the topic of my brother,” he added, when everyone else had stopped what they were doing and turned to stare at him. “I assure you, I am not seeking to lay the blame for all my misfortunes in one place simply for convenience. I genuinely think that my brother may have played a role in what happened.”

“I doubt your brother has access to assassins,” Wen Ruohan said dryly, then smirked. “Unless – ”

“There are no secret assassins in the Lan sect.”

“Hey, Lan Qiren,” Wei Changze said. “Remind me again, what was that really cool skill that Lan Yi invented? Starts with ‘chord,’ ends with…?”

“…Chord Assassination is named that way because of its similarity to other already existing methods of combat, and the fact that at the time using a string to garrote one's enemies was considered the sole province of assassins,” Lan Qiren said, rubbing his temples. “We do not employ actual assassins.”

“But theoretically, if you wanted to – ”

“If I wished to assassinate someone, I would not use Chord Assassination to do it. I have a sword. I would merely stab them.” He scowled at the crowd of grinning monkeys in front of him. “As I very recently demonstrated, if you recall. Can we return to the subject at hand?”

“Right, your brother,” Wen Ruohan said. He was still smirking, but Lan Qiren was willing to give him a pass on account of smirking being better than the tight and angry expression he’d had earlier. “Explain your thought process. How is he involved?”

“He was always exceptionally talented, and he continued to improve both his cultivation and his swordsmanship during his time in seclusion,” Lan Qiren explained. “Having faced him, I would rank him exceedingly high, putting him among the greatest cultivators of our time, up there at the top alongside Wen Ruohan and Lao Nie.”

“From what I hear, you’re not that bad yourself,” Cangse Sanren put in, rather unhelpfully. “Especially once you factor in the element of surprise.”

“He’s magnificent,” Wen Ruohan informed her. Also unhelpfully.

Lan Qiren decided to ignore them.

“We know that my brother has not returned to the Lan sect,” he said. “We know, too, that he must have worked with Jin Guangshan to put together the plot that led to the mountain collapse in Xixiang, though presumably Jin Guangshan was only informed about the parts of the plan that involved causing Wen Ruohan to take a loss, rather than the parts that involved mass slaughter of innocent lives.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Wei Changze mumbled. “I’ve met him. He might not mind.”

Lan Qiren was also not particularly sure, having also met Jin Guangshan, and indeed having had to spend significantly more time around the odious lecher than he would have preferred. Still, the rules said Be easy on others.

“However it may be, we know that they worked together. It was likely one of the Lanling Jin sect’s spies that was used to set up the plot, and Lanling Jin’s support was critical to springing the trap by convincing the rest of the world of the truth of their claims – in short, for whatever reason, however he did it, my brother successfully obtained Jin Guangshan’s support. I propose that when my brother left Xixiang, he may have gone to ground in Jinlin Tower.”

“Jin Guangshan also left the battlefield early, around the same time that your brother disappeared,” Wen Ruohan said, nodding. “His absence was commented on at some length at the party. Wasn’t that why he was handing out those stupid trinkets? To distract everyone from that?”

“Trinkets?” Cangse Sanren perked up, resembling a magpie catching a hint of something shiny. “What trinkets?”

“Commemorative coins to celebrate the event.” Wen Ruohan wrinkled his nose in genuine disgust. It was adorable, though possibly Lan Qiren was biased. “I had my subordinates pick up a few extras, if you’d like some.”

“Ugh, no thanks. They’re probably unbelievably gaudy.”

“They are. They’re also made of gold.”

“We’ll take two,” Wei Changze put in at once. “Cangse, stop scowling. Even if they’re hideously ugly, it’s not like we’ll keep them for very long. We’ll sell them the next time we run out of cash.”