Work Text:
By now, the sun had long since sunk below the horizon, and the last golden embers of what was once a roaring bonfire were beginning to dim. The Yunmeng Jiang disciples, who had earlier today all clustered around the bonfire with varying degrees of awkwardness, had all since returned to Lotus Pier. That was entirely fair. They had run themselves ragged over the past few days, traveling between different marketplaces to seize as many of the offending books as they could find, fending off angry vendors and eventually coughing up full price; they had dealt with an enraged Sect Leader Jiang, who had screamed so loudly his vocal cords had torn, and who upon multiple different occasion had to be physically restrained from attacking some of the books' more prolific writers. When Sect Leader Jiang had ordered them to pile all of the offending tomes in the town square, they had complied without comment. Nor had they said anything when, with a flare of spiritual power, Sect Leader Jiang had set the entire pile ablaze. No--as the flames consumed page after page, character after character, and as Sect Leader Jiang screeched and screamed about how anyone caught writing such filth would from today onward be dragged to Lotus Pier and summarily executed, they had dutifully said nothing.
Now they were gone. Now they had all returned to Lotus Pier. Now only Sect Leader Jiang was left.
Unseen by anyone, Sect Leader Jiang pulled a small volume out of his sleeve and cracked it open.
"A-Cheng," Wei Wuxian murmured into Jiang Wanyin's hair, pulling his sleeping form closer. Jiang Wanyin grumbled in protest but did not wake. "Why were you so surprised to see me come back? Didn't I promise you that I'd always stay by your side?"
Jiang Wanyin closed the book and flung it into the embers.