Chapter Text
It took them the better part of two weeks to make their way to Yueyang. Lan Wangji wasn’t really too concerned about getting there in a hurry—whatever happened to the corpse whose parts he and Wei Ying were coaxing to sleep every night, it had happened a long time ago, and if there was anything time-sensitive about the nature of the crime, it had lapsed so far back in the past that it ceased to matter in the here and now. Anyway, he had two people with him who couldn’t fly: Edward didn’t have a spiritual sword, and Wei Ying didn’t even have a golden core.
He’d asked Wei Ying, once, if he had any theories about what had happened to it. “If it can be found and returned to you,” he started.
Wei Ying had just smiled, sadly, and shaken his head. They’d set up camp in the wilderness and Edward had gone off to wash their clothes, and Wei Ying was cleaning Chenqing out, carefully replacing its special membrane. “It can’t,” he said. “Lan-er-gongzi, I don’t know where it’s gone. I never really asked. And I’m all right, really, even without it.”
“But you will not be able to heal as fast,” said Lan Wangji.
Wei Ying brushed a thumb over a finger-hole, and said, his voice one of desolate heartbreak, “It won’t want me back. And I can’t have one anyway, so.” He smiled, and that was perhaps the worst part of it all—that this was something he’d made some semblance of peace with, because what else could he do? What could anyone do? And perhaps that was why he was like this, Lan Wangji thought: because Wei Ying had been a prisoner for so long that he’d had no other recourse but to make a peace with what happened to him, or else shatter further.
“You do not know that for certain,” Lan Wangji said. “I have never heard of a golden core rejecting the body it’s in, before.”
Wei Ying shrugged. “It’s a moot point,” he said. “I don’t know where it is. Anyway, it’s fine! It’s fine. I’m still pretty good at what I do, and if I had a golden core then I’d really need to be leashed.” He lifted Chenqing to his lips, played a soft tune as a test, and something tightened around Lan Wangji’s lungs as the notes of Wangxian came crooning out of the dizi.
How was it, that of everything that had been torn out of Wei Ying’s head, this had stayed? Lan Wangji didn’t know, and he knew Wei Ying wouldn’t be able to answer, but he felt…shamefully relieved, that this much had stayed even when everything else was gone. And then even more ashamed to feel that way because everything else was gone, even the memory of Jiang Yanli, if his surprised reaction at being given pork and lotus root soup at the last inn was any indication.
What right did Lan Wangji have, to be happy that a little scrap of him had been overlooked?
“You do not need to be leashed,” he said now. “Golden core or no.”
Wei Ying stopped playing, and put the dizi away. “Whatever I did when I was a person,” he said, “it was bad enough that I stopped counting as one, and I did that with a golden core, probably. I don’t get to have one. I don’t get to be anything more than what I am.” Pained as he was, his voice was firm.
“Have you never even thought about it?” Lan Wangji asked. “Even to somehow have it back?”
Wei Ying’s fingers touched the marks the collar had left around his neck. Most had faded, but there were still telltale lines, traces it had left on his throat that Lan Wangji was coming to realize might never really go away, not for good. “What good would wanting that do for me?” Wei Ying said, drained of anything that resembled hope. “What good would want do at all? I just have to be useful, and that’s it. I don’t, I can’t get to be anything else.” He smiled again, sad and brittle. “I’m okay. Really. Moreso than before.”
It was only, relatively, true. Lan Wangji had felt Wei Ying curling into his sleeping robes more than once in the night, fingers tightening in the fabric. Had heard him in his sleep, sometimes: I’m so hungry, please. It hurts too much. Just go away. No, don’t go. Please, I’ll be good I’ll be good I’ll be good. He never remembered what he dreamed when he awoke, but Lan Wangji could make a guess.
So he couldn’t argue much further than that, because Wei Ying had turned to sharpen a dagger, putting an end to that conversation.
And now they were in Yueyang, where another clan massacre had taken place. This one Lan Wangji was certain wasn’t one of Wei Ying’s—messy and bloody his might’ve been, but there was no disputing that someone else had been the perpetrator for this one. Though Lan Wangji was trying to recall who they were, as it had been a long time since that case, and he’d been in recovery by then. At the very least, though, here Wei Ying seemed not to feel the need for a mask, because he hadn’t pulled it up over his mouth and nose for now.
Edward, ahead of them, slowed his pace to a casual saunter, tilting his head to the side. His eyes darted around briefly, flicking up to the rooftops then down around the crowd, before he relaxed. “No one hostile for now,” he said. “Might change, but not for a while yet.”
“Mn.” Lan Wangji glanced at him and Wei Ying, and said, “How is the curse mark?”
“Still there, but manageable,” said Edward.
“Jin Ling was buried too closely to our good friend’s legs,” said Wei Ying, “so there was a lot of resentment clinging to him. It should be fine, though—it faded down to a little bit of resentment with your help, and I can handle it well enough on my own now.” He jerked a thumb toward Edward and said, “Worry about him more, he’s like a little baby.”
“I’m forty-two years old,” said Edward.
“You’re what now,” said Wei Ying.
“This ain’t my body, remember?” Edward huffed, gesturing to Mo Xuanyu’s body. “I’ve told you this before, this can’t be a surprise to you.”
“I have an awful memory!” Wei Ying grumbled.
“Well, that’s already obvious,” Edward said, gently knocking his knuckles against Wei Ying’s shoulder. “Anyway. I’m fine, I can handle whatever the curse throws at me—and besides that, Wanyin had one of his healers look me over and they wrote a note.”
“Wanyin,” said Wei Ying, shaking his head. “You might as well call him his milk name and be done with it.”
Lan Wangji wrinkled his nose at the mention of Jiang Wanyin. Edward could do much better than him, truly. Even Nie Huaisang was a better option, because Nie Huaisang had never turned his sword on Wei Ying, and because Nie Huaisang didn’t have a reputation for torturing and killing demonic cultivators. How much of that was the truth, Lan Wangji didn’t know, but he’d been in the same war as Jiang Wanyin. He’d seen the man at his worst, and ever since the Burial Mounds siege all those years ago, he knew that any reminders of Wei Wuxian could easily bring out the worst of Sect Leader Jiang.
And yet. Here was Edward, who’d apparently come away from meeting Jiang Wanyin even more infatuated with him than before.
Lan Wangji supposed there was no accounting for some people’s tastes.
“Anyway, the arm points here,” said Wei Ying. “Good odds we might find our good friend’s head, eh?”
“How little is a little?” Lan Wangji asked.
Wei Ying grinned brightly at him. “A little is a little, but if you want, I can show you,” he said, and almost yanked up his pant leg to do so.
“Absolutely fucking not!” Edward yelped, immediately getting in between them. “Not in bloody public! Save that for your rooms, Wei, Jesus Christ.”
There was that strange phrase Edward kept swearing by again. “Impertinent,” Lan Wangji said, and Edward shot him a narrow-eyed glare. “But yes, I would prefer to see it later.” Did he think Wei Ying was going to strip down in front of—wait, he probably did, and it wasn’t an unfounded worry considering how Wei Ying seemed to care so little about his own privacy.
“Sure, sure,” said Wei Ying, easily, letting go of the fabric. He spun on his heel and walked off, and Lan Wangji could not help but follow after him. Could not help but wonder if some part of Wei Ying remembered teasing him like this when they were younger—if he remembered all the pranks, all the innuendo-laden comments, all the joking remarks on how handsome and peerless the Second Jade of Lan was. No one would know you’re really such a fussy old man deep in your soul, Wei Ying had laughed once, and leaned over the table, and grinned at him, so careless and free.
He had missed him so much, over those long, long years. And now here was Wei Ying, shattered, scarred, unable to trust even his own mind half the time—but himself, still, always. That boy was still there, evidenced by all that teasing that he was certain Wei Ying likely didn’t even realize he was doing half the time, as was the man he’d grown into, with fine hands and red eyes and a fierce protectiveness. Lan Wangji did not miss him anymore. How could he miss someone who stood right in front of him?
If only he could help. If only he could pick up all the shattered pieces of Wei Ying and glue them all back together, and see Wei Ying really, truly smile again in sincere delight. All he wished was to see Wei Ying alive and all right and safe—everything else was immaterial.
Edward broke off for a moment to speak to someone selling mantou, so Lan Wangji said, “Wei-gongzi. What is it?”
“Ah, is it obvious I’m thinking of something?” Wei Ying said. “You want to hear it?”
Lan Wangji nodded. Of course he wanted to hear it. He missed the sound of Wei Ying’s voice too much not to want to hear it at every opportunity.
“All right, Hanguang-jun,” said Wei Ying. “I was thinking—our mysterious arm thrower back in Mo Village and whoever sewed our good friend’s legs on a different corpse and stuck them into a wall in Qinghe, are they really the same people?”
Lan Wangji mulled it over. If they were the same group, it didn’t make any sense that the mysterious arm thrower had done what they did—it had jeopardized the secrecy of the crime, something that whoever had gone to such lengths as desecrating the Nie sect’s tombs and their corpses would never allow. “There are two different groups in play,” he said, “with opposing goals.”
“Exactly,” said Wei Ying. “Throwing the arm caused such a scene that it had to be investigated, and I think that was exactly what our mysterious arm-tossing friend was hoping for. Meanwhile, the other party wants to hide the body, and thus the crime, so much that they sewed legs onto a completely different corpse.”
“Mn,” said Lan Wangji, approvingly.
“Our shady tailor friend knew Nie sect secrets,” Wei Ying went on. “Our arm-throwing friend, on the other hand, had a very good sense of Lan sect plans and usual practices, from what Edward and the juniors have said.” He scratched at his chin, and said, “You know what I hate more than complicated schemes?”
“Hm?”
“Multiple complicated schemes with opposite goals in the same territory,” said Wei Ying, with a dramatic groan. “It’s hard keeping it all straight. I’ll lose track of who’s in what group, I’m sure of it.”
“I will keep track for you,” said Lan Wangji.
“Ah, Lan-er-gongzi, you’re too good to this humble one,” said Wei Ying, absently, before he froze and glanced worriedly around as if terrified that he’d been heard addressing Lan Wangji so informally. Lan Wangji took his hand, and Wei Ying looked back at him, a question in his eyes.
“Call me whatever you like in public,” Lan Wangji said. “I do not mind.” Secretly, though—he wanted to hear Wei Ying say Lan Zhan again.
Wei Ying chewed on his lower lip. Then he let out a breath, and said, “Lan-er-gongzi. Really, really too good to me.” He pulled his hand away with a sad sort of hesitance, as if hoping to hold on to Lan Wangji’s warmth somehow. “I’m…I still don’t know why all of this, for something like me. And after those men in Qinghe I killed—when you got angry I was worried.”
Well. Of course he would be. Lan Wangji was certain of this: if you were the sort of person who would keep someone a prisoner in order to torture them into compliance, you were also the sort of person who would take out your frustrations on them. Of course Wei Ying was wary of incurring Lan Wangji’s wrath, because look at his back, look at the scars from a whip, all from different times.
“I cannot promise that I will never be angry,” said Lan Wangji, now. “I cannot even promise that I will never be angry at you.” He had, more than once, been furious with Wei Ying when they were younger, for one thing or another. Mostly he was furious this impertinent boy had such a hold over his mind, that he could not tear it away from his laugh, his smile, his eyes, the fine bones of his wrists when he stretched his arms up and his sleeves slipped downward. He knew one day he might be angry with Wei Ying again, for one thing or another. “But I can promise you, I will never strike you in anger. And if I do, you can, you should and you must stop me.”
“But if I do something wrong?” Wei Ying asked.
“Then we talk,” said Lan Wangji. “Violence does not need to be used for discipline, and besides that—I believe you have discipline enough.” Which would be a shock to his younger self to hear out of his mouth, but that was true, wasn’t it? Wei Ying wasn’t undisciplined and wild, he was smart enough to know when to be well-mannered and when to go wild. Right now he seemed to be stuck in trying to be as well-mannered as he could, but if Lan Wangji thought about it, it wasn’t a surprise.
Sometimes it was a matter of survival, being as deferential as you could be.
Wei Ying made a skeptical noise. “You’re telling me this?” he said. “I’m bound to you for a very good reason.”
“You are free to go whenever you wish,” Lan Wangji pointed out.
“Not practical right now,” said Wei Ying, but he went quiet after that, as if digesting the thought of being able to just—leave, if he wanted to.
Then Edward came back, mantous in hand, and sang out, “I have some information!”
“We're in Yueyang,” said Wei Ying, “and the local cultivation clan’s dead, so they’ve been relying on rogues and the nearest major sect’s kindness.” He paused, frowned, then turned to Lan Wangji and said, “I—Okay, how did I know that?”
“I remember the Yueyang Chang case somewhat,” said Lan Wangji. “It’s…” He hesitated, because—this was a bit much, really, to explain out in the street like this.
Edward, miffed, said, “That was exactly what the nice vendor told me, actually, when I asked them if anything strange had happened recently.” He sighed, letting it go, and handed them both a mantou each. “Is it a long story?” he asked. “Because if so, we should find a place to sit and drink.”
“That, I think I can solve,” said Wei Ying, jerking his head towards the nearest tavern, where a few men were stumbling outside, hungover from their night of drinking. “And maybe we can even finagle a story out of one of the waiters—I don’t remember how I know that or the details of it, and—actually, Lan Zhan, how much do you remember of the clan’s case? Was—Was it…”
“It wasn’t you,” Lan Wangji assured him, and Wei Ying breathed a sigh of pure relief, shoulders sagging as if he’d half-expected to hear yes, you did it. Which. Considering what Wei Ying had been put to use for, was actually likely in any other case. Just not this one. “But we should catch your student up on it. I do not remember as much as I would like, either.” And—he did have to speak to Edward alone, because there was the matter of Xiao Xingchen, and his connection to Wei Ying’s mother, and Wei Ying’s strident insistence that he wasn’t a person and he didn’t have anything that could make him a person, not even a name.
That was going to be tricky to navigate, and he didn’t want to burden Wei Ying right now. But at least Edward was around to talk to about this.
Edward nodded, and said, “Aye, I’ve no bloody clue who the Chang clan used to be and what happened to them.” He paused, then smirked. “Also, I want a drink. I’ve worked up a thirst walking all the way here, since some people,” and here he glanced at Wei Ying, “hogged the donkey all those days.”
“Built your character, didn’t it,” Wei Ying said. “Anyway, who’s the teacher here?”
“I’m older than you, my character’s well and truly built,” said Edward, but he casually slung an arm around Wei Ying’s shoulders, and the two of them looked almost like brothers, if Lan Wangji tilted his head and squinted. He thought, quite suddenly, of Jiang Wanyin, with Wei Ying’s arm around his shoulders, the two of them bending their heads together.
Hopefully this would turn out better than that had. To be fair to Edward, he seemed a lot less willing to bend to popular opinion and turn his sword on Wei Ying than Jiang Wanyin had been.
The three of them, together, stepped into the inn.
--
One of the first things Edward had learned, not as an Assassin but just as a pirate, was that taverns and pubs were fountains of information. You didn’t even have to put in much effort, you just had to buy a drink, take a seat, and open your ears to the conversations around you. Alcohol was an ever-reliable loosener of tongues, after all, and he’d learned all kinds of information on raids and routes and hidden coves and the like that way.
And if you needed something more specific than that…
“Gongzi, try the famed He Family Brew! If you can still stand after this, why, I’ll change my surname to whatever you like!”
Well, the waiters knew a lot more than they let on. Edward grinned, grabbed the cup from the man’s outstretched hand—
—and yelped in dismay when Wei Wuxian yanked it out of his hand and knocked it back. “You’re not getting us kicked out of this tavern,” he said.
“You just want to drink!” Edward huffed.
“You start bar brawls for fun,” said Wei Wuxian. He looked to the waiter who’d made the offer, and said, with a charming smile, “So changing your surname, eh?”
“If you can drink a whole jug of this brew, I’ll change my surname to whatever you say,” said the waiter, who was clearly something of a weasel and a sore loser. “What do you say, hm, gongzi?”
“A challenge!” Wei Wuxian exclaimed, gleeful.
It was something of a surprise, really, watching Wei Wuxian bantering back and forth with the waiter, winkling a guarantee of two entire jugs of wine out of him. Edward had seen flashes of this charisma, once or twice, but this was the first time he’d ever seen Wei Wuxian deliberately using it to his advantage. He’d honestly thought the man wasn’t even aware of it.
Truthfully, it was a little annoying how easily Wei Wuxian got the waiter to be so agreeable with him, but Edward supposed he couldn’t really get too peeved about it so long as it was getting them the results they needed. The waiter showed them to a clean table that just so happened to be the easiest one in the tavern for the servers to get to, and delightedly took Lan Wangji’s money when it was offered to him.
“How much money was that?” Edward said, incredulous. Every time Lan Wangji just casually threw money around, his head spun. “Are we getting three rooms? Are they going to wait hand and foot on us?”
“No, two,” said Lan Wangji.
“We’re helping their establishment,” said Wei Wuxian. “And it’s insurance, so if you do start a brawl, they won’t stick you in the stable with the horses. Again.”
That happened maybe three times, the shit. “Oh, fuck you, Wei,” Edward huffed, as the waiter came back around with some jugs.
Wei Wuxian leaned on the table, fluttered his eyelashes at the waiter, and, with a bright smile, drew him into a conversation about the wine and how it was made. He had a real gift for this, for getting someone’s attention and making them feel seen, making them feel special, and in no time he and the waiter had established a friendly rapport between the two of them. It was impressive, really, for a man who’d kept insisting he wasn’t even a person.
And then Edward glanced at Lan Wangji and winced at the way he had narrowed his eyes at the waiter. His brow had furrowed, and the tiniest wrinkle had appeared in the bridge of his nose, as if he’d tasted a lemon in his drink and hadn’t liked it.
He was jealous. And judging from the way his fists were clenched, the fabric of his robes bunching up around his fingers, he wasn’t too pleased with himself over feeling jealous.
This was either going to be hilarious or heartbreaking, Edward didn’t know which way. He’d put his money on hilarious, Lan Wangji was consistently very, very careful with Wei Wuxian, as if terrified he might break the man’s trust in him and destroy the tiny buds of hope shooting up inside Wei Wuxian’s heart. Still, Edward kept an eye.
Eventually, Wei Wuxian said, “Have you heard of anything strange happening around here, recently?”
“What sort of strange?” the waiter asked.
“Haunted houses, deserted cemeteries, dismembered corpses.” Wei Wuxian’s eyes slid briefly away from the waiter, and when he next spoke there was the slightest hesitation to his tone that Edward was sure the waiter hadn’t caught: “Clan massacres. That kind of thing.”
The waiter’s eyes darted between the three of them, taking in Lan Wangji’s pure white robes, Edward’s blues and whites and red sash, and Wei Wuxian’s black and red clothes and the expensive-looking hairstick topped with a beautiful pearl. “What do you three do for a living, anyway?” he asked.
“You haven’t guessed?” Wei Wuxian said, smirking.
Edward, drumming his fingers on the table, said, “We’re just curious travelers, mate.”
The waiter immediately winced. Wei Wuxian coughed, and said, “He’s—Sorry, we picked him up off the side of the road, he’s a little rough around the edges still.”
“He’s sort of a surprise, yes,” said the waiter, and Edward shot Wei Wuxian a quick little glare. “I figured he was some sort of student! But the both of you, ah, you must be some of those truly skilled cultivators, the ones who fly around on their swords! I’ve never seen anyone so…so…”
“Beautiful,” Wei Wuxian said. He nodded to Lan Wangji, who raised an eyebrow at him, and said, “He’s really quite beautiful, yeah!”
“Well, beautiful, sure, but for the both of you,” said the waiter, “I’d go with…hm. Righteous. Yeah. Like heroes out of a story.”
Wei Wuxian had frozen up, as if the waiter had sprung a trap on him that he hadn’t quite expected. “I—You don’t mean that, do you?” he said, half-laughing, a little nervous. “I’m handsome, sure. I don’t—I don’t know about righteous.”
Lan Wangji was beginning to look really twitchy, so Edward leaned on the table, grinned at the waiter, and said, “Ah, my teacher’s the humble sort. Call him righteous and he gets all flustered, and I’m certain we can both agree on how that’s a sign of the truly justice-minded, hm?” It was, of course, a line of absolute bullshit, but the waiter was swallowing it all with the look of someone who was certain he’d stepped into a dream of some kind.
“It is!” the waiter cried. “Ah, I wish I had more recent news to give you, but I’ve only got the tale of the Yueyang Chang clan to tell you.”
“So tell me,” said Edward. “We’ve got all day. Pour us some drinks too, while we’re at it.” And he flicked a few coins the waiter’s way, smiling brightly as he saw the greed kicking in. Gold always did get people’s attention fast, and he’d greased quite a few palms that way as a pirate and an Assassin.
The waiter talked, all right. This was the tale he’d spun for them:
The Chang clan, in its entirety, had died out, leaving behind what had once been a beautiful manor not two miles outside of town. They’d once been the cultivator clan in charge of looking after the town, but apparently, one horrid night, they’d all been frightened to death. Slamming doors had been heard, the sounds of horrified screaming and fists thudding against doors so loud that it shook the heavens. Certainly it woke up the neighbors, who were so terrified by the noise that they’d stayed inside and hidden away. They’d all thought that the Chang clan could get themselves out of their own house—after all, the doors locked from inside.
“But they didn’t get out,” said Edward.
“Not a single one,” the waiter said, nodding, and continued on.
In the morning, after the wails had grown silent, a few brave neighbors had come up to find that the doors had been thrown wide open. Inside, everyone lay dead—a few, barely hanging on to what threads of life remained inside them, had vomited up what remained inside their stomachs.
Wei Wuxian glanced uneasily to Lan Wangji, who shook his head and mouthed not you. Which was true, this sounded far from Wei Wuxian’s usual methods, from the notes Edward had been allowed to read off Lan Wangji’s desk. Like Edward himself, he preferred to get in, do the job, then get out. This…sounded like whoever did it had a personal stake in making sure everyone in the house suffered.
Bleedin’ hell.
The proprietor came closer, about to ream out the waiter. Wei Wuxian leaned over, flipped him a few more coins, and said, “Five more jugs.”
As the innkeeper walked off, smugly counting the coins, the waiter continued to talk. It was one thing, he said, to have a family of ordinary people scared to death—but these were cultivators, and their bread and butter had been in dealing with ghosts and monsters and the like. That one had broken into their very home and killed them all—ah, didn’t that bode ill? And that wasn’t all, because after the dead had been buried, you could still hear them banging on their coffins, thud thud thud. If they could scream, they would’ve called: let us out let us out let us out…
Edward looked at Wei Wuxian, who’d fallen quiet and was sipping at a cup of clear liquor. Some shadow lurked behind his eyes, and Edward wondered if he was sitting here in this inn or if he was seeing bars to a cell. Lan Wangji slipped closer, and Wei Wuxian turned towards him, his eyes clearing, the light returning to his face.
He knew what that face looked like. He saw it on Tessa, whenever he came back alive from a voyage, from a job. He used to see it on Adé, before Edward’s own obsessions and lack of care for those around him drove them apart.
He was sure of it now: these two had been married for a long, long while.
“Lucky thing for Chang Ping, that he’d managed to escape,” the waiter said.
“Hold on now,” said Edward, his attention snapping back to the waiter, “didn’t you say the family was all wiped out to a man?”
“Well, yeah,” said the waiter. “I’m getting there, I’m getting there. He escaped death one time, just by virtue of being out of town, but a couple years later he died too—and most unpleasantly at that! D’you know what lingchi is, gongzi?”
“Oh, fuck,” said Wei Wuxian, repulsed, coming out of whatever funk he’d been in. He was still pressed close to Lan Wangji’s side.
“No, do tell,” said Edward, and immediately regretted it when the waiter opened his mouth and started talking. Apparently it was one of the more gruesome methods of execution out there: you took a blade and you flayed someone alive, making three thousand and six hundred cuts, until there was nothing left of them but bones and, Edward assumed, a wet red mess surrounding those bones.
Wei Wuxian said, “Okay, calm down, my student looks like he might throw up now.”
“I wasn’t about to throw up,” Edward muttered, downing his cup and then pouring another for himself. Jesus Christ. He’d been a pirate, he’d seen men keelhauled and whipped and birched and all manner of other tortures, and this was not even mentioning what he’d heard from Adé about how slaves were treated. He’d been imprisoned, he’d heard the screaming, he’d seen the hangings. This was…certainly up there, among some of the worst tortures he’d ever heard of.
“Definitely were,” Wei Wuxian said in a low, teasing voice, then to the waiter: “Any idea why they were all killed?”
“I heard it was a setup by another cultivation sect!” the man said. “After all, they were all cultivators, who else could kill them all? Certainly not us ordinary sorts. They must’ve been trapped inside by someone. Or something.”
Edward, whose whole job involved killing those more powerful than him as fast as possible, shrugged. “It’s not impossible,” he said, because he’d spent quite a few nights chucking knives at cultivators’ heads and could attest that, if you knew what you were doing, you could take them down without them ever even noticing you. “But the method of death’s a little more extreme than someone without that sort of power can do.”
“Did anyone ever find out what that something or someone was?” Wei Wuxian asked.
The answer was no, they had not found out, for certain, who’d done it. “But they must’ve run into some infamous evil demonic cultivator!” the waiter said. “I hear that they crossed the Yiling Patriarch himself!”
Lan Wangji froze up. Edward, who’d brought his drink up to his lips, nearly choked on it. “Sorry, hang on, who?” he said.
The Yiling Patriarch himself, attached to Lan Wangji’s side like a barnacle latched onto a ship’s hull, said in a blithe tone, “Oh, him again? He sounds terrible.”
“He invented demonic cultivation!” said the waiter. “I hear he even killed his own martial sister for rejecting his advances, and this after she got married to the Jin sect heir at the time. To say nothing of the thousands of people he killed and resurrected as part of his undead army!” He shook his head with a laugh, and Edward chanced a glance at Lan Wangji, who was as still as stone, his face as smooth as polished jade. Mo Xuanyu’s last will bubbled up in Edward’s memory once more: I offer my body to Wei Wuxian, Yiling Patriarch, terror of the sects.
“Oh,” said Wei Wuxian, Yiling Patriarch, terror of the sects. “What the fuck. Yeah, lingchi doesn’t sound out of character for someone like that.”
Edward drained his jug of liquor.
Lan Wangji, who’d clearly reached the very end of his patience, said, “Let us go.”
“Now?” Wei Wuxian asked.
“Mn.” He looked at Wei Wuxian, and the two of them held a whole conversation with their eyes that Edward could never even hope to decipher in a thousand years. It was ridiculous, how intensely married they were. Edward had been married three times, he knew what it looked like.
The two of them got up together. Edward leaned over to the waiter, and said, “We’ll be back later to finish off the rest of this.” He let a dark smile slip onto his face, and added, “If you cheat us, I’ll know.”
The waiter gulped, and said quickly, “Don’t worry, gongzi! Why, we’d never cheat a customer. You just leave your liquor here and we’ll keep the doors open until you boys get back.”
Edward slid him a few more gold coins, said in a friendly manner, “See that you do.” With that, he got up himself, only for the waiter to catch him by the sleeve. “All right, what now,” he huffed.
“What was that gentleman next to your friend glaring at me for?” the waiter asked, nodding to Lan Wangji. “The way he stared at me when I talked to his companion, I swear it was like he thought I was hitting on his wife or something.”
“Uh,” said Edward. “Well. I think he did think that way. They’ve been married some time, I believe—haven’t said anything to me, but I’ve been around them a few weeks.”
The waiter choked on his shock, looked askance at them, then back at him. “That explains so much,” he said.
“Oh, and my friend finished his jug,” Edward added, passing him another coin. “So if you’ll kindly remind him of the deal you made earlier…”
--
“It really wasn’t me?” Wei Ying asked, as the two of them made their way into the woods where the Chang clan residence still stood, long abandoned, long ruined. “I don’t think it was, generally I was just supposed to get the job done as efficiently as possible, but. I don’t know for sure.”
“It truly wasn’t you,” Lan Wangji assured him.
“Oh, good,” said Wei Ying, relaxing.
But it is connected to you, to some degree. This, Lan Wangji didn’t say. Wei Ying didn’t even see himself as a person, any evidence of any past connections would be turned down flat and Wei Ying would simply shut down any more discussion from thereon out. So instead he said, “I remembered some more details about the case that you should hear. Do you know of a man named Xiao Xingchen?”
Wei Ying rocked back on his heels, rubbing at his chin. “I think I’ve heard the name,” he said, which was a surprise. “I don’t remember who I heard it from, but I know it was—I’m not sure he was very well-liked, at least with whoever had me in their basement.” He frowned. “There was a grudge involved? I don’t remember much in the way of details, I’m sorry.”
A man with a grudge against Xiao Xingchen…there were a few who came to mind. Rogue cultivators tended to collect quite a few enemies. “He was a disciple of Baoshan-sanren, and came down from the mountain twelve years ago, achieving fame in barely any time at all. Now, however, no one speaks of him.”
“Oh, the immortal!” Wei Ying said, eyes lighting up with recognition at Baoshan-sanren’s name. “So Xiao Xingchen must’ve been a hell of a cultivator, people don’t often come down from her mountaintop. I know there’s been, hm, only three of them who came down? No idea what their names are, just that they all had terrible ends.” He sighed, shoulders hunching upward, and said regretfully, “Poor souls. I hope they didn’t regret it, at the end.”
Lan Wangji thought about Cangse-sanren, who must’ve loved her son dearly. His heart wrenched, knowing Wei Ying could not even remember her title or their connection to each other, let alone her face. “I hope as much, as well,” Lan Wangji said. “Xiao Xingchen, though…” And so he told him what he knew of Xiao Xingchen: a young cultivator who’d been invited by every clan to join them because of his sheer talent, but who’d turned them all down because he wanted to start a new sect with his friend Song Lan, one that didn’t rely on bloodline. He’d soon become known across the land for never turning down a plea for help, for both his gentle kindness and his rock-solid determination.
It had been around this same time that the first massacre of the Yueyang Chang clan had occurred, by Lan Wangji’s recollection. Chang Ping and a few others had left on a night hunt that was going to take some time, but when they’d come back, everyone left behind at their residence had been horrifically murdered. Some investigation yielded the sight of deliberately-ruined protective arrays, and footprints in the mud that belonged to a human being who had led powerful evil spirits to the defenseless home.
“It wasn’t actually this Yiling Patriarch, was it?” Wei Ying asked. “From what little I know of this guy it sure sounds like something he’d do.”
Lan Wangji swallowed the lump in his throat. Of course Wei Ying didn’t remember the sobriquet he’d gone by, near the end of his life. Of course he thought that was a different person. Still, it felt…wrong, to hear him say such things. “It wasn’t,” he said. “I would know.” Because Wei Ying was standing right there. “But Xiao Xingchen volunteered to investigate. In the course of his work, he was able to uncover the murderer’s name: Xue Yang.”
Wei Ying froze. “Oh,” he breathed. “Oh. Fuck.”
“What is it?” Lan Wangji asked.
“I—I know that name,” Wei Ying said. “I know that—but how do I—but that means my last student was—”
Lan Wangji said, “He was your student?”
“I—I think so?” Wei Ying swayed on his feet, wrapping his arms around himself as if trying to ward off the cold. “I remember—some things, not enough. Scattered bits and pieces. I didn’t—I don’t know if you could call it teaching, I just, I had to show him how to do things or else. Or else.” His eyes went wide, and he looked to Lan Wangji with a horrified sound. “He figured out this trick from me,” he said. “He—This is what he used it for, what I showed him, I—fuck, this is on me.”
Cangse-sanren, Xiao Xingchen, and now Xue Yang. Wei Ying was more tangled up in this mess than Lan Wangji had even suspected. “It is not on you,” he said, shaking his head and stepping closer, placing a hand on Wei Ying’s shoulder to steady him. Wei Ying leaned into the touch, his brow furrowing, his mouth a downward curve of sheer anguish. “Wei-gongzi. Xue Yang’s actions with the methods you taught him, under duress, are not your fault. He freely chose to do this.”
“I just…” Wei Ying started, then stopped. Sighed. Reached up to clutch at Lan Wangji’s sleeves. “I could’ve taken a sleepless night,” he murmured.
“Under duress,” Lan Wangji emphatically said.
Wei Ying said nothing more, just looked up at Lan Wangji with shadows lurking behind his eyes. He doubted it, Lan Wangji knew, so he squeezed gently and hoped Wei Ying could feel his sincerity through that.
After a moment, Wei Ying said, “I don’t remember much, and—what I do remember is scattered, I can’t tell when they occurred. Tell me what happened when Xiao Xingchen found him?”
Lan Wangji told him of how Xiao Xingchen caught and dragged Xue Yang into trial, in order for justice to be served. As he talked, in the back of his own mind he thought of the Jin sect, the only sect to have raised any objection to executing Xue Yang. Jin Guangshan had thrown his protection over him—Xue Yang was a guest cultivator for the Jin sect, he was doing what Jin Guangshan insisted was important cultivation research, according to what Xichen and Shufu had told him. Jin Guangshan had deeply coveted the Yin Tiger Tally and the power that it held.
Jin Guangshan, Lan Wangji knew, would not balk a bit at doing this to Wei Ying. He had not been a man accustomed to being refused, after all, at least not for long.
Wei Ying said, after Lan Wangji had finished explaining, “Lan-er-gongzi?”
“Mn?”
“You’re clenching your fists.” It was an observation made neutrally, but Wei Ying was watching him carefully, and it occurred to Lan Wangji that Wei Ying must’ve had to anticipate the moods of his captors in order to survive. Ah. He worries.
He forced himself to relax his fingers, and let out a breath. “I—have some theories, about who may have kept you,” he said. “At least at first. From what I know, Xue Yang was cast out of the Jin sect later on. You may have gone with him.” Had Xue Yang been exiled before or after Jin Guangshan’s death? Lan Wangji didn’t like Jin Guangyao all that much, but Xichen wasn’t wrong that his sworn brother was so often unfairly maligned because of his origin. Perhaps Jin Guangyao hadn’t known what his father was up to, god knew Jin Zixuan was often clueless.
Except. Except.
Well, he’d ask later.
“Let’s not think about that,” said Wei Ying, lightly. “Anyway, I know I was passed around. If the Jin sect did have me, I don’t think they kept me for very long.”
Jin Guangshan had died. Hopefully Jin Guangyao had taken one look at Wei Ying and decided he wanted nothing to do with this. Hopefully.
Lan Wangji had spent too long traveling and dealing with obsequious town leaders not to wonder, anyway, how culpable his brother’s closest, dearest friend was. For Lan Xichen’s sake, he hoped he wasn’t. “Anyway,” he said, “before that—Jin Guangshan wished to protect Xue Yang. But the sects were furious with him, and called for Xue Yang’s execution.”
“Why would such a big shot want to protect Xue Yang, of all people?” Wei Ying asked.
“Do you remember the Yin Tiger Tally?”
Wei Ying stopped right in his tracks, looked sharply at Lan Wangji, and said, “I know that name—I’m sure I do, somehow. I remember that it’s dangerous. So: how do you know about it?”
--
By the time Edward had gotten out of the inn, Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian had long gone. He let them go for now, and went around digging up more information on the Yueyang Chang clan from a variety of other sources. Took him a bit to sort through the chaff and what he figured were the likeliest bits to be exaggeration, but he thought he’d worked out the story in his head by the time he was through.
This man named Xue Yang sounded…disconcertingly similar, actually, to men Edward had associated with in the past as a pirate. At the very heart of him was someone who had been wronged, and who had decided to avenge that wrong on everyone who crossed his path. But he’d disappeared sometime over the years, presumably having crossed one too many cultivators and gotten his arse killed. Someone named Xiao Xingchen had finished the job he’d started in exterminating the Chang clan.
Or, well, everybody seemed certain it was a fellow named Xiao Xingchen, but when he’d pressed for more details on the man, what he’d gotten were tales about a gentle, justice-minded man who’d wielded a sword covered in frost, who had himself attempted to bring Xue Yang to justice, only to be stopped by the Jin clan, who tried their hardest to keep Xue Yang safe.
Details had gotten a bit blurry after that. Most concurred the Jin clan had chucked Xue Yang into a prison rather than kill him as the sects, especially someone named Nie Mingjue (huh, someone of the Nie clan, he’d have to write Huaisang), had demanded of them, but what happened afterward, nobody could truly agree on. Had he died, rotting, in a prison cell? Had he been broken out by the Jin, sent off to finish whatever they wanted him for in secret? Had they decided he was too much trouble after all, and had him discreetly killed?
“Well, if they wanted to show how truly just they were, they’d have had the man executed in public,” Edward muttered to himself, thinking out loud as he walked out into the forest. “It’d serve as a real deterrent, too. So…likely, he was alive for at least some time afterward, wouldn’t you think, Tess—”
And he froze in his tracks, breath catching in his throat. He’d turned his head, expecting to see Tessa’s dark hair and a thoughtful look in her eye, and all he saw were just…trees.
Ah. Right. Tessa…wasn’t here. He couldn’t talk to her like this, couldn’t get her opinion on something, because she was—gone. Just. Gone.
He breathed out. Get a hold of yourself, Kenway. He shook his head, and looked away from the side to search for tracks the other two had left behind. Easy enough to find, Lan Wangji had never learned how to sneak around the way Edward and Wei Wuxian could, and his footprints were easy to find in the forest dirt.
So Edward kept on, turning what he’d been told over in his head.
Xiao Xingchen had a friend named Song Lan, that was true. They’d wanted to build a sect together, that was also true. But then someone had burned down the temple Song Lan had been raised in, and that desire went up in flames as well. Some swore it was Xue Yang, others argued it was Xiao Xingchen, a few even went so far as to say they were certain it was the ghost of Wei Wuxian himself, come back from the dead to enact more horrors upon innocents.
Edward, who’d been hanging around Wei Wuxian for a while now, had had to excuse himself for a second so he could laugh himself sick in private somewhere. But anyway.
So Chang Ping publicly retracted his testimony. Didn’t save him, but it did give Xiao Xingchen some motive to kill him, if it truly was his hand that did the deed. Edward rather doubted it, though. There had to be something he was missing here, some crucial piece of evidence that had been missed.
“Jesus, this damned riddle,” he sighed.
Where was Xue Yang, or his corpse? Where was Xiao Xingchen? Where was Song Lan? No one could really answer these questions, but Edward suspected that knowing those answers was key to figuring out the Yueyang Chang clan’s horrific fate. It itched at him now, the not knowing, and was like to drive him insane if he didn’t figure it out soon.
Ugh, his neck itched, too. Damned insects. They were just as bad in ancient China as they were in England, 1735. He kept going anyway, following in Lan Wangji’s tracks, and now caught sight of Wei Wuxian pacing agitatedly, with Lan Wangji watching him.
“—think he might’ve recreated it?” Wei Wuxian anxiously asked. “I taught him a lot, maybe I taught him this. Who even made this stupid thing anyway—no, don’t answer that, might be the Yiling Patriarch, again.”
“Mn.” Even to Edward Lan Wangji sounded pained.
“Fucking plaguing me, that guy.” Wei Wuxian pinched the bridge of his nose. “The only consolation I have is Xue Yang is almost certainly dead. He might be possessing Xiao Xingchen, that’s the only explanation I have for his sudden turn, but I know he lost the protection he was counting on, and considering the number of people who really wanted him dead, it’s almost likely somebody’s killed him.”
“You believe Xiao Xingchen may not be himself?” Lan Wangji asked.
“I know he’s not,” said Wei Wuxian. “A disciple of Baoshan-sanren doesn’t break that easily. No, there’s something else at play here.” He sighed, and kicked up some leaves from the forest floor. “And it would be the likeliest scenario, Xue Yang is—he’s not. He doesn’t like to not have the last word.”
“We are not far from the Chang residence,” said Lan Wangji.
“I don’t know how useful Inquiry is going to be,” said Wei Wuxian. “Well, I do, but that’s a lot of ghosts.”
“So who’s this Baoshan-sanren and what’s she got to do with Xiao Xingchen and the Chang family?” Edward asked, and Wei Wuxian damn near jumped out of his skin, whipping around and yanking Chenqing out, the flute halfway up before his eyes landed on Edward. “Whoa, whoa, mate, it’s just me!”
“Oh, right, you don’t know,” said Wei Wuxian. “Okay, so, you know how the average cultivator’s goal is to reach the stage of cultivation where you achieve a longevity far past the human lifespan?”
“Yes,” said Edward. It was a goal he’d set for himself, after all—if he could get to that stage, he could get back to his family. Sounded simple enough, but Edward knew well enough that such things were much easier said than done. That was fine. Whatever it took to get there, to save his family from that fate, he’d do. “So this Baoshan-sanren’s one of them?”
“Yes, but she resides on a mountain that moves, so no one knows exactly where it is, where she lives, how to even contact her, and she’s certainly not coming down for any reason,” said Wei Wuxian. “I don’t—I don’t remember how many of her disciples have come down from the mountain, but I do know that once they come down, they can never go back up again.”
“There have been three that I know of,” said Lan Wangji, and Edward caught him glancing at him, thought perhaps there was something else he wasn’t saying on account of Wei Wuxian not knowing some…particularly relevant details. “Xiao Xingchen is one of them.”
“Ah,” said Edward. “And then he met Xue Yang—who you taught?” he asked Wei Wuxian, and saw the way he winced, fingers skimming over the red cloth around his neck that hid the marks from the collar.
“For lack of a better term, yeah,” said Wei Wuxian, and the shaky note in his voice told Edward that it was less teaching and more just another way he’d been tortured. “I don’t…remember. Much. About him. I’d tell you both more if I could, I swear.”
“You are already contributing more than your fair share, Wei-gongzi,” said Lan Wangji, gentle, his eyes softening as they caught Wei Wuxian looking at him. Something about being around Wei Wuxian made him warm up from the icily stoic statue Edward had met during the mountain hunt, melted him into a human being. Edward was more than familiar with the phenomenon himself—he was a thrice-married man. He knew what a man looked like when he was so tremendously in love that you could almost see him offering up his heart in his hands.
Edward let out a breath. He hated to puncture this moment, but… “What did he recreate?” he asked. “I’m guessing whatever it was enabled that massacre. I’m not nearly skilled or strong enough to try it, and I imagine it’s not something you’d do often under your own power.”
“You’d be right, but it doesn’t take much in the way of power to let in ghosts,” Wei Wuxian explained, with the air of someone who had done it before, “even in a cultivator’s home. What does take power is ensuring specific deaths for specific people—if it were up to the ghosts they'd either pick how they died, or just rip and tear their victims apart.”
Lan Wangji nodded, and said, “I can take over explaining, Wei-gongzi—I know more of the case than you do.” He tilted his head towards somewhere more private, and Edward glanced back at Wei Wuxian, who hummed in response.
“I’ll go find the residence,” Wei Wuxian said. “It’s not far from here. Maybe there’s something left.”
As Wei Wuxian traipsed off, Edward stepped closer, and said, “You didn't let him answer my question.”
“Because he would not remember this about it,” said Lan Wangji, “but Wei Ying was the one who first created the Yin Tiger Tally.”
Edward sucked in a shocked breath. “All right,” he said. “So. What the hell’s it?”
--
The Chang clan’s manor stood on a lonely hill, a decaying shell of its former self. The wind whistled through rotting wood, and inert talismans, their power long gone, hung limply from the walls. The broken remnants of what used to be solid oak doors creaked as Wei pushed them open, with no resistance otherwise as he stepped onto the lonely, silent grounds of the manor’s courtyard.
He’d never been here before. That much he knew immediately—nothing about this desolate house and its grounds pressed on any holes in his memory. No images flashed in his mind that he needed to shy away from. There was nothing that tied Wei to it, beyond the fact that he’d taught the murderer.
He let out a breath, then tugged Chenqing out of his sash and played a little tune on it. He wasn’t looking to summon anything, merely to see if there was still any resentment left around here.
The tune cut off in a harsh note as the darkness swirled around him. Right. Yeah. There was a lot of it left. He started up another tune to dismiss the resentment, and watched as it slunk back to the dark crevices it had seeped out of, the ground that it had sunk into over the years.
The ground…
Wei sat down under a dead tree that had been half-uprooted by some storm once, a long time ago. He played a few quick notes on Chenqing, and watched as shadowy tendrils rose tentatively from the ground again. Then he reached out and petted them gently, and said, “Did you live here?”
No, but he let us in. Flashes of red, and accompanying them was a simmering, stifled anger that there hadn’t been more.
“Who let you in?” Wei asked, and pressed his hand into the ground. Darkness prowled around him like a starved dog, and he watched it carefully, ready to dispel it at any moment.
He smiled, and smiled, and he locked us in and watched. We could not leave. We cannot leave! The resentment stroked over his arm like a lover. Take us, came the whisper. Take us, take us, don’t you want revenge? Don’t you want— And there was a flash of Lan Wangji’s naked, scarred back under his palms, glistening with oil and sweat and—
Wei yanked his hand loose from the ground, and said, “No. No. You listen to me.” Broken thing though he was, resentful energy was something he knew how to handle. He didn’t appreciate the attempt at hitching a ride, when he was the one asking questions here. “I will put you to sleep, after. But I need to know: did he bring anything with him that called you without room for questions?”
The resentment sullenly retreated, pressure lifting from his shoulders. As easy as it felt, Wei knew it could’ve been much worse. Should have been much worse, in truth. People had been gruesomely murdered here, this place ought to be teeming with resentment. Unless…
He called, and we could not help but answer. Gleaming metal flashed in ghostly sunlight. Wei flinched. He left and locked us in, but we could taste his hunger, taste his bloodlust.
…no, he wouldn’t have wanted to lock the ghosts in, would he now. Not unless—
“This was a test,” Wei said. “He made something. He recreated the Tally and he tested it here. And if it was a test, someone was interested in the results.” And it wasn’t just Xue Yang himself, or else—Wei was starting to remember a little better, Xue Yang would’ve directed the ghosts towards whoever else he felt had wronged him in the town if it was all up to him. No, someone had been holding his leash, too.
He could almost remember—
Instinct had him flinching away from the memory, and he pulled free of the darkness. It coiled around him anyway, as if it disliked the idea of letting him go, but he figured he had some idea what the ghosts now populating this house wanted, so they could be liberated.
A lot of them wanted blood. Not a good idea. It would have to be suppression, then.
He put his flute to his lips and played—a gentle song, half-remembered. Where had he learned it? He didn’t know. He'd heard music in the dark, he knew that, music that hurt too much to remember clearly, but this was different, this soothed him. He’d found, in time, that it soothed the dead as well.
The dead of the house settled down, as the song went on, and the darkness dissipated from around him, seeping back into the ground as his dizi trilled out the final notes. He breathed easier, and slid the flute back into his sash as he heard Lan Wangji’s footsteps—he knew them well, by now, after so long spent walking alongside him.
Wei turned, and there he was: Lan Wangji, standing in the doorway, something soft in his eyes. “The family’s dead aren’t here,” said Wei. “I mean—their ghosts. Which is…strange, yeah?”
“Mn.” Lan Wangji came to stand next to him, and Wei stepped closer, unable to stop himself from tucking into Lan Wangji’s side. To tell the truth, he wasn’t exactly interested in stopping himself from having this much. If Lan Wangji minded, he’d have said something earlier, or ordered Wei to stop doing it. Instead, Wei felt him raise his arm, and took that as an invitation to make himself a little more comfortable. “It is.”
“They’re somewhere else,” said Wei.
“It is said,” Lan Wangji began, “that at night, when you pass by the graveyard, you may hear the corpses of the Chang clan, beating their fists against their coffin lids.”
“Yeah, okay, that’s where they are,” said Wei. That was a mystery solved relatively quickly. “I was wondering about that. Where’s my student, the one who thinks it’s fine to jump off towers?”
“At the graveyard,” said Lan Wangji. “I caught him up on a few things. How are you, Wei-gongzi?”
“I know what this massacre was for,” said Wei, exhausted. “It was a test. Xue Yang came here to test something that drew these ghosts, bent them to his will—but he had a grudge, too.” He twisted the hems of his sleeves around his fingers, and said, “That he didn’t then go further than this and target someone else in town who’d offended him tells me that it was a test for someone else’s benefit. Which means…” The conclusion was right there, it was right there—
—and it slipped right through his fingers, the memory nothing more than a lance of pain through his head. He wrapped his arms around himself and breathed out slow.
“Wei-gongzi?” Lan Wangji asked, worried.
“I can’t remember,” he said. “It’s—It hurts to try.”
Lan Wangji got quiet, but it was the sort of quiet that Wei learned meant he was deeply, deeply upset for Wei, which was a novel concept. People didn’t get upset for him, that was as useful as getting upset on a brush’s behalf when it broke because the man who’d carved it had whittled it too thin. “If you cannot remember, it is all right,” said Lan Wangji, now, after a moment spent breathing out. “The absence is a clue in itself—someone did not wish their identity known even if you left. That tells us they were, are deeply paranoid someone will discover their crimes, and their involvement with Xue Yang.”
“I suppose that’s one way of seeing it,” said Wei, who personally thought he was failing pretty miserably at being Lan Wangji’s weapon.
“Wei-gongzi,” said Lan Wangji, gently chiding, “it is not a failure. And even if it were, there is no punishment for failing. You did well, and I trust that you did your best. I will not ask you to push past your limits.”
Trust. Fuck. That did feel good to hear, so Wei sighed and said, “You know I’d tell you, right? If I could remember?”
“I’m aware,” said Lan Wangji. “But if it hurts you too much, I will not force it. Your well-being takes priority.” Which was an insane thing to say about a weapon but—well, this was Lan Wangji. Every day Wei saw him taking good care of Bichen and his guqin, keeping the blade sharp and the strings taut. And those were effective weapons, durable things. His regard for Wei and concern for his health was, while strange, not exactly without precedent, if Wei thought about it that way.
(On the heels of that thought came another one that said, So then why did they lash my back with—)
“Graveyard,” said Wei, cutting off that thought before it could go any further. “We should go to the graveyard. There might be something there I can talk to, and anyway I am curious over all the coffin-banging.”
“Then let us go,” said Lan Wangji, and Wei fell into step beside him.