I recently been watching the anime Mo dao su zhi and i just had to draw the reference between the scene from despicable me to the one where Lan QuiRen was reading the rules out loud so that people (or Wei Wuxian) would not claim ignorance.
Sect Leaders by How Likely Their Disciples Are to Accidentally Call Them “Dad”
Most Jiang sect disciples have slipped up and accidentally called Jiang Fengmian “dad” at least once. Look at that archery lesson! Strong dad energy.
One notable exception is Wei Wuxian, who is so terrified that he might accidentally call Jiang Fengmian “dad” where someone could hear that he’s constantly on alert for it.
By contrast, no Jiang sect disciples have ever accidentally called Jiang Cheng “dad.” However, at least one sleep-deprived disciple has accidentally called him “jiujiu” after a long night wrangling Jin Ling.
Nobody in the Wen sect would dare accidentally call Wen Ruohan “dad.” Xue Yang called him “daddy” once, but that was on purpose to see what would happen — sadly, Wen Ruohan was too far gone at that point to notice or care, and the telepathic chokings neither increased or decreased in frequency or quality.
It’s pretty rare for Lan disciples to call Lan Qiren “dad,” but he secretly loves it when they do; sadly, neither Lan Xichen nor Lan Wangji ever make this error.
Lan disciples will, occasionally, call Lan Xichen “dad,” but it’s usually not a slip-up in front of the class, it’s more of an on-purpose thing: he’s like “Don’t forget, curfew’s in an hour!” and they’re like “thanks dad!”
Nobody except Lan Sizhui ever calls Lan Wangji “dad” but somehow they say “Hanguang-Jun” in a way that sounds like “dad.”
Lots of people call Jin Guangshan “dad,” but not in an “accidentally slip up in front of the class” kind of way, more in a “surprise, I’m your bastard child” kind of way.
No Jin disciples call Jin Guangyao “dad,” and this hurts his feelings and he secretly suspects it’s because they don’t respect him.
No Nie disciples call Nie Mingjue “dad” but every single Nie disciple has accidentally called him “da-ge” at leastonce. It’s almost a rite of passage.
lan qiren’s look of disapproval when they’re all stuck in the cave during the second siege of the burial mounds and nie huaisang asks “how can we mend the array?”
being on the receiving end of that resigned sigh would kill me
Came across the template and couldn’t resist The Urge on this nice Saturday. It’s whoever-sees-it’s turn to sort LSZ, LZY into the lines.
We would say… Wen Chao and Wang LingJiao*
*if they weren’t pseudo-ancient-Chinese, hence WLJ could better solidify her position at WC’s side by bearing him a son. Actually curious how in a half year they had together she didn’t end up knocked up. …And what had happened to WC’s official wife during Sunshot Campaign
“Are you actuallyswearing off love?” Wen Ruohan asked Lao Nie.
They were all seated around the table in Wen Ruohan’s private study – not the one he generally used to deal with matters relating to his inner sect, but rather the one he retreated to when he truly wished for complete silence and uninterrupted privacy. It was a rather small room, and far messier than any of his public rooms. There were piles of papers and books everywhere, tossed aside casually and left to sit in place; it was quite evidently a place where servants weren’t allowed to come. Even the tea and snacks they were currently consuming had only been brought as far as the door; Lao Nie, more familiar with this place than Lan Qiren, had gone to fetch them and bring them in himself.
“I am,” Lao Nie said, sounding regretful. “Wholly and entirely, at least for now. Apparently, I lost the privilege on account of abusing it.”
“Why can’t your sect do that?” Wen Ruohan asked Lan Qiren, who pointedly ignored him. “On second thought, never mind. In this one instance, it’s accruing to my benefit…”
“Oh ho,” Lao Nie said, leaning forward, eyes avid as a fishwife looking to gather gossip at the marketplace. “Is it? How so? Qiren, is there something you need to tell me?”
“I thought we were discussing my kidnapping,” Lan Qiren said, flustered. “You were fighting about it mere moments ago!”
“An entire stick of incense ago, Qiren, please, keep up! Tell me everything. Do you have a crush?”
“He told me he likes me,” Wen Ruohan boasted.
“I’m liking you less and less every moment,” Lan Qiren informed Wen Ruohan even as Lao Nie burst into spontaneous applause. “Lao Nie, stop that this instant.”
“But that’s wonderful! You’ve wanted to fall in love for so long! You’ve always been so worried that you’d never love anything but your sect and your nephews –”
“That’sprivate!”
“If it were really private, you wouldn’t have told me, I’m a notorious blabbermouth,” Lao Nie said, and he was right, damn him. “No, truly, I’m delighted to hear it. Good for you, Qiren.”
“Are you not in the slightest bit upset that I chose your lover as the target of my affections?” Lan Qiren glanced at Wen Ruohan a little warily, although he did not seem as annoyed as Lan Qiren might have expected. “Lao Nie, don’t speak of such things so lightly. It might lead people to think your feelings are shallow.”
Lao Nie frowned at him. “Two of the most attractive people I know and like might get together. Why should I be upset? For the aesthetic value alone it would be worth it.”
Lan Qiren pinched the bridge of his nose. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting.
“I don’t think Lao Nie is familiar with the feeling of jealousy,” Wen Ruohan said. He, at least, looked more amused than upset. “Not even in the theoretical sense, where he can understand and sympathize with what we mere mortals experience. I understand your difficulty with it, Qiren; it is not a issue that you share.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever not been jealous a day in my life,” Lan Qiren agreed. “It is one of my faults.”
Wen Ruohan reached out and put his hand on Lan Qiren’s arm. “Mine as well.”
“I think everyone knows that, Hanhan,” Lao Nie said cheerfully. “All good things under the sun ought to belong to you – isn’t that the Wen sect’s unofficial motto?”
Wen Ruohan smirked.
Lao Nie laughed, and Lan Qiren huffed. It felt bizarrely normal for it to be the three of them, together – as if they’d just finished some discussion conference or another, with Jiang Fengmian and Jin Guangshan off chatting somewhere or else having already gone about their own business, as if Lan Qiren hadn’t been kidnapped after some terrible party due entirely to Wen Ruohan’s anger at his missing lover, as if the cultivation world weren’t currently upside down and in a terrible frenzy.
“Whatis it between you two, anyway?” he asked, a little plaintive – though whether for his lack of understanding or nostalgia for those uncomplicated days, he didn’t know. It was still Wen Ruohan’s fault that everything had changed, and he was still upset about it, politics aside, but things had gotten complicated now and it was all his fault, for once. “I know that you are lovers, but…what does that mean for you?”
“We have fun,” Lao Nie said, right at the same time Wen Ruohan said, “He’s mine.”
Lan Qiren watched as the two of them exchanged sharp looks.
“Hanhan,” Lao Nie finally said. “You know I’m not – anyone’s. It’s not in my nature to be any single constant thing for anyone, not anything other than Jiwei’s master.”
Wen Ruohan’s face did something strange, seeming to pass momentarily through rage and then settle back into resignation shortly thereafter. “Your saber’s master and your children’s father, I suppose.”
Lao Nie scrubbed the back of his head. “Not even that,” he said, and now both Wen Ruohan and Lan Qiren look at him questioningly. “I forget, sometimes. You know how it is.”
“…not really,” Wen Ruohan said, and then he looked at Lan Qiren as if wondering if heunderstood.
“Most certainly not,” Lan Qiren said, a little offended. “At no point in my life do I forget that I am my nephew’s guardian. They are the utmost priority for me.”
“What, even over your sect? Or yourself?” Lao Nie asked, seeming genuinely curious.
“Naturally,” Lan Qiren said. “The sect is for them, not the other way around. I, like all elders, am merely a caretaker. Is it not the same for you? Wen Ruohan?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Wen Ruohan said, because of course he did. The man thought he might become an immortal divinity one day. “At the same time, my sons are extensions of myself, and I care for them. Assuming that I had not already gone completely mad, the loss of my sons would strike a deep blow, even a shattering one, and that knowledge is always with me.”
“Lao Nie?”
“Naturally I love both my sons with as much of my heart as I can spare,” Lao Nie said. “Yet I suppose I am innately selfish, and always have been. If you put the question to me, me or them, I should hope I do the right thing, but sometimes, well, I wonder…”
Lan Qiren was about to start scolding when Wen Ruohan raised a hand, frowning. “What about if it were your Jiwei?” he asked, suddenly far more intent than he had been before. “Say – your eldest son or your saber, if you had to choose.”
“Oh, come now, that’s unfair!” Lao Nie protested.
“Lao Nie,” Lan Qiren exclaimed.
“Oh, hey, don’t look at me like that! I didn’t say I’d pick Jiwei!”
“The fact that you even hesitated–”
“Someone told me that,” Wen Ruohan said, and Lan Qiren and Lao Nie left off their fighting to turn to look at him. Wen Ruohan was looking genuinely perturbed, which was highly uncharacteristic of him. “I don’t remember who, but someone – told me.”
“What are you talking about?” Lao Nie asked, puzzled. “It’s only a question you raised now, isn’t it?”
“No. It’s –” Wen Ruohan pressed his lips together, and his hands clenched into fists. He didn’t continue, only look down at the table as if it had personally offended him.
Lan Qiren thought about it, then frowned. “It’s the party, isn’t it?”
“The – what?”
“That awful party you didn’t come to, Lao Nie,” Lan Qiren clarified. “The one where he was showing off that new saber of his, the one that someone-or-another was saying was as good as your Jiwei…why didn’t you come, anyway? Even if you’re sworn off love – or lovers, if that’s more accurate – you probably should have still attended in your role as Sect Leader Nie. I was of course happy to go in your place to convey your regrets, but despite it, it was still something of a surprise that you missed it.”
“Oh,that,” Lao Nie said, and scratched at his nose. “I suppose I could give you any dozen excuses or so – Huaisang ate something that upset his stomach, so he was acting as if he were dying. Normally I don’t pay any attention to such things, he does that every time he’s so much as about to break a nail, but it makes Mingjue anxious, and I was – ah – oh, whatever. It’s none of those. To be perfectly honest, I was sulking. Rampantly.”
Lan Qiren was developing a headache again. “Because you weren’t allowed to bed a lizard?”
“…I have questions,” Lao Nie said, putting his hand over his eyes. “I don’t think I want answers. No, I was sulking because it seemed rather rude for my entire sect to gang up on me like that, and also because I didn’t want to explain to my darling Hanhan that we needed to put a stop to our little games because otherwise Mingjue would be disappointed in me.”
“You malingered because of that?”
“Qiren, if it had a good reason, it wouldn’t be malingering, now, would it?”
Lan Qiren decided to ignore the ridiculous man. He turned back to a brooding Wen Ruohan. “Let me see if I understand this correctly,” he said. “From your perception, Lao Nie simply disappeared on you, failed to respond to your letters, and while you were worrying about that, someone told you that Lao Nie prized his saber over all other things, including you, and would pick his saber over you every time. You became angry and decided to hold a party as an excuse to force him to come make amends and prove you wrong about the depths of his affection.”
“Wait,” Lao Nie said. “What was that about letters? What letters?”
“What I don’t understand is why it has upset you so much,” Lan Qiren continued. “Surely you’ve known Lao Nie long enough to stop expecting him to behave like a human being.”
“Hey!”
“I was angry,” Wen Ruohan said, also ignoring Lao Nie. “I was – very, very angry. And when I am so angry, I make mistakes. I have made – terrible mistakes.”
My brother died cursing my name, thinking I hated him, Lan Qiren suddenly recalled Wen Ruohan saying. And also – in a library no one but Wen Ruohan could visit, from a dark cell no one else could go – you blame yourself but it was all my fault.
I swear to you that I never meant to kill them.
Lao Nie had gone still, Lan Qiren noticed. It was the same thing he did on night-hunts when he sensed something dangerous in the vicinity, when the amiable cheerfulness of his abruptly fell off and there was only the instincts of a predator left, a beast with eyes of steel.
Not good.
“What sort of mistake could you make at a party?” Lan Qiren asked with a scoff, trying to divert the tone of the conversation. “Admittedly, I will grant you that that party was itself a mistake. It was, to be clear, an absolute mess of an event, I’ve never seen such bad hosting. But you would be before a crowd, amidst your fellow peers – how much damage could you do?”
Wen Ruohan was still staring down at the table and for a long moment, he did not respond to Lan Qiren at all. Just when Lan Qiren was about to follow up with a question, he abruptly reached out and tapped one corner of the table firmly with two fingers.
It was such a purposeful motion, full of intent and even an aura of intimidation, that Lan Qiren found himself expecting something big, and being disappointed when nothing happened.
He glanced at Lao Nie, wondering if the other man understood, but Lao Nie was frowning, clearly just as puzzled as he was.
“This table was made from oak and iron,” Wen Ruohan said. “The design is very clever, taking the firmest aspects of each and weaving them together to support the other’s weakness. Because of that, it has weathered many storms with me, a steadfast companion to my fits of temper and madness.”
He was silent for a moment more. And then –
“In six months, it will shatter.”
“A delayed impact?” Lao Nie asked, raising his eyebrows. “Oh, that isclever.”
“It is diabolical,” Lan Qiren said sharply. “An assassin’s tool, nothing more. And what would you have turned it on, in your anger? Another sect leader? Your own lover?” A terrible thought struck him. “Your perceived competition?”
Wen Ruohan said nothing. Lao Nie, who was usually right there alongside him in wickedness, took an extra moment to understand what Lan Qiren meant, and when he did, he recoiled viscerally.
“Mysaber?” he exclaimed, genuinely aghast. “Hanhan, no! Don’t you know what that would mean?”
“I know you Nie sect cultivate your sabers too closely,” Wen Ruohan said, frowning at him. “You have poured too much of your effort into cultivating with Jiwei, in truth. I have no doubt that it would damage you greatly to have to start again with a new one. Your cultivation would likely fall several levels from the backlash…”
“No, Hanhan,” Lao Nie interrupted. “No, you don’t – you don’t understand. You’ve been through a number of swords, having lost them or broken them or otherwise. But I’ve only ever had Jiwei, ever since I first raised her. Only Jiwei, and none other.”
“I know that! You’re so absurdly overprotective –”
“Not me. She wouldn’t have allowed it.”
Wen Ruohan fell silent.
“You’re both orthodox sword cultivators,” Lao Nie said. “Neither of you would understand the joy and despair of your spiritual weapon being – being more than a spiritual weapon.”
“Lao Nie,” Lan Qiren said, trying to keep his calm. “Exactly…how much more? You haven’t done anything – anything rash, have you?”
“Not rash, no,” Lao Nie said, his voice very mild. “Rash implies an act of impulse, not deliberate action. You don’t get the sort of soul-bond that Jiwei and I have without a lifetime’s worth of effort.”
Do not succumb to rage shattered into a thousand pieces at once.
“What is wrong with you?!” Lan Qiren bellowed, slamming his hand down on the table. “You can’t – why the world would you bind your spiritual weapon to your soul?! What happens if she breaks?”
“Sabers don’t break nearly as easily as your piddly little swords do.” Lao Nie reached out to touch the saber that he’d placed on the stand near the door with a fond smile. “My Jiwei wouldn’t break that easily.”
“But what would happen if she did?” Lan Qiren wanted to know. “If you’ve built her into your cultivation cycle at that deep a level, you wouldn’t be able to cultivate without her. Your meridians would process spiritual energy without direction, a one-way transfer, your golden core would bleed out qi, and you yourself would – you would –”
“Die of a qi deviation,” Lao Nie said, nodding in agreement as if Lan Qiren had only remarked casually about the weather. “As my father and my forefathers before him did. It’s my destined end regardless, Qiren. Why would I give up the pleasures of life as it is now simply because of what will happen then?”
Lan Qiren had absolutely no idea what to do with such a blatantly hedonistic view of life. He turned to Wen Ruohan for assistance, only to find that Wen Ruohan was staring at Lao Nie as if he’d never seen him before, pale as a ghost.
“…Wen Ruohan?”
“It’s for power,” Wen Ruohan said flatly, not moving his eyes. “The Nie sect is – incredibly powerful, on a personal level, and the main line clan even more than most. That damn motto of yours, fight evil no matter where it is; that’s where it comes from, doesn’t it? You need power to fight evil, and cultivating your sabers in unorthodox ways gives you the power you need…is your Jiwei a genuine spirit in her own right? Does she feed on resentful energy in night-hunts?”
“Impossible,” Lan Qiren denied. “That’s demonic cultivation!”
“It’s only demonic cultivation if you defile human bodies or souls,” Lao Nie corrected. “We’re a butcher’s sect – we use yao.”
“But…!”
“It’s within the boundaries of traditional orthodoxy, if at the very edges of it,” Lao Nie said, and damn him, he was right. Lan Qiren’s own ancestors had certainly played around with similar highly questionable things while clarifying their own understanding of the limits of orthodox sword and music cultivation. Lan Qiren scowled.
“I don’t give one damn about orthodoxy,” Wen Ruohan said before Lan Qiren could say anything. “What I care about is that you’ve bound your soul to a piece of steel, and I nearly shattered it.”
That got Lao Nie to shut up.
“You would have died, yes,” Wen Ruohan said, and his tone was harsh. “Just as your ancestors all did. But how long would it have taken you? How long would your high cultivation have kept you alive, breathing and moving but no longer yourself? How much damage would you bring to your sect before the end finally came? Who would – would have to watch as you – as you – A qi deviation breaks your mind before it kills you, Lao Nie! Do you know how many you could have hurt? You could have murdered your own sons at one moment, and then become aware enough to realize what you’d done the next.”
“I would never do a thing like that!”
“Wouldn’t you?” Wen Ruohan said. “Do you even know what it’s like when someone has a cultivation system dependent on something that breaks after the body has already become accustomed to it? Have you ever seen someone’s meridians shattering one after the other, their qi twisting into snarls and knots within them – their mind decaying within their body, their spirit rotting away even as their body lives on with all the strength and power that it ever had?”
“Haveyou?” Lan Qiren wanted to know. That description was – horrifying, and far too specific to be simply theoretical.
“Yes,” Wen Ruohan said, his voice as lifeless as the dead, rasping and cracking like the burning of joss paper. “Yes. I have. It is the most unkind death I could ever imagine.”
You blame yourself but it was all my fault.
A cell locked away from the light where no one could see.
I swear to you I didn’t mean to kill them.
A bookcase filled with all sorts of words, kept only for Wen Ruohan himself.
Throw my bones to the Burial Mounds, my heart, for only the ravens’ beaks can pick me clean again.
“Was that how your wife died?” Lan Qiren found himself asking, even though he’d promised himself not to mention it. “The first one. The one that was locked away in that cell.”
Lao Nie’s eyes went wide – he didn’t know about the cell, of course, because Wen Ruohan had never been angry enough to throw him in there the way he had with Lan Qiren, when Lan Qiren had defied him in his moment of temper, a rage so blinding that he had to lash out at someone and hurt them because he couldn’t hurt the one he wanted to hurt.
Wen Ruohan was silent for a long while.
Eventually, he spoke once more, his voice dull and hollow: “I created an array that would release a person from the tethers of their inborn talent and allow them to fly up to touch the sun. It would have made ordinary men into geniuses, and let geniuses break beyond the boundary of cultivation that we now know – to touch the very edge of the divine. To defy death and truly enter immortality, as our long-ago ancestors were said to have done. It was the finest thing I ever made…and the worst.”
“What happened?”
“My wife was not as talented as I. I was full of arrogance. Although the array wasn’t fully ready, although I did not know all the consequences of using it or misusing it, I bragged to her about this wonderful thing that I made. I did not consider how she might try to take it for herself – she was getting older and I wasn’t; I was too powerful, too talented, and she knew that I wanted to be a god. I had never demanded fidelity of her, nor she of me, and when she picked a lover that I disapproved of, I banished him, I threatened to divorce her, more out of a fit of temper than anything else. She took it too seriously – she feared that I had tired of her simply because she did not have the power that I did. She looked at my array and thought she saw the answer.”
“She tried it out?” Lao Nie asked.
“Shestole it. I took no precautions against her – she was my wife. After my brother died, I thought that the lesson I needed to learn was that I needed to trust more, and I did; I chose to trust her.See where that got me, in the end! She took it and she used it. She touched the face of the sun, and it burned her. She went mad.” He pursed his lips. “The array worked, but not completely, granting power and talent…but not permanently, only when the array was actually in use, and no array can be maintained forever. She became obsessed with it, addicted to it, even as she came back less and less whole after each time she used it. She tried it again and again, burning herself again and again; it never worked, it was never enough. She even…the array requires blood to work. It’s meant to be your own blood, but somehow she got it into her head that she had failed to manifest the permanent effect only because she hadn’t spilled enough of it. First she killed her servants, but when that didn’t work, she thought perhaps the mistake was that the blood was not her own…or…not near enough to her own…”
I swear to you I didn’t mean to kill them. You blame yourself but it was all my fault.
“Your children?” Lan Qiren asked, his voice as neutral as he could make it.
“Two boys, as is right and proper, an heir and a spare, and two little girls besides that to dote upon,” Wen Ruohan said. “She gave me what I married her for. She gave me power and children and even love – perhaps not romantic love in the way it usually is, but I cared for her, I trusted her. She gave me all that she could give, and in return I gave her a terrible death. And she, in turn…took away what she had given me.”
He smiled mirthlessly, that dead smile that was so common in his fits of temper – with dead and hollow eyes, an echoing emptiness.
“I destroyed the array after that, of course, along with all records of its creation. But in doing so, I destroyed her, as well – she’d grown dependent on it to the point that she could no longer cultivate as she had once done. Her madness became complete, irreversible, a steady decline towards death that was painfully slow…she forgot, after, sometimes. What she’d done. Quite often, even – she’d go half a month thinking that our children were just out of sight, complaining to me that they wouldn’t come visit their dear mother, unfilial creatures that they were, saying that even if she understood she needed to be locked away that they should still make an effort on her behalf. And then she’d remember. Time and time again, she would remember what she’d done.”
Throw my bones to the Burial Mounds, my heart, for only the ravens’ beaks can pick me clean again.
Lan Qiren shivered.
“But it didn’t happen,” he said, and when Wen Ruohan turned his head to him, confused, he clarified, “This time. You can’t beat yourself up about what might have happened if you’d actually shattered Lao Nie’s saber –”
Wen Ruohan would have lost his mind for good if he’d done that, that much was clear. He would probably have gone back to that horrible path of clarity, said to purge all feelings both good and evil, that Lao Nie had so barely dissuaded him from years ago, and he would have become little more than a lifeless living corpse, capable of nothing but carrying out the ambitions he had set himself to before. He wouldn’t have cared about anything after that, anything and anyone, not his sect, not even his own sons. He would have turned to his Fire Palace and his armies, tools that he could use but which could not hurt him, and he would have become a true scourge onto the cultivation world.
There would have been nothing left of the man he’d once been.
“– because it didn’t. And now that you know what would happen, it won’t. Right?”
“Of course not,” Wen Ruohan said at once.
“Not least of which because now that I know about the potential issue, I’ll know to protect against it,” Lao Nie said. “You’re not wrong that it’s a weakness, and a potent one. Certainly if I’m doomed to die in rage, I’d far rather that it be at the natural end of my life, rather than as the victim of some murder. Certainly poor Hanhan’s murder. Doesn’t he have enough blood on his hands? Who am I to add to it?”
“…you are a ridiculous man and that is not even slightly how that works,” Lan Qiren told him, then looked back at Wen Ruohan. “I have a question. It may be impertinent.”
“Oh,now you think you might be impertinent?” Wen Ruohan said. “Now?!”
Lan Qiren flushed.
“Has little Qiren been impertinent?” Lao Nie asked, sounding vastly entertained. “Oh, Hanhan, you must tell me everything. He’s usually so well behaved!”
“Only until you push him. He’s got quite a temper, actually.”
“Little Qiren! Really? How charming! Why have you never let me see it?”
“Lao Nie, do you take anything seriously?” Lan Qiren asked, exasperated.
“No,” Lao Nie said promptly, completely shameless. “Not a single thing, as far as I can manage.”
Useless ridiculous man. A good friend, but…truly ridiculous.
“I’ll tell you all about it later,” Wen Ruohan told Lao Nie, and as much as Lan Qiren longed to throw something at both of them he had to admit that it was good to see Wen Ruohan’s complexion start to return to normal after how pale he’d been. Lao Nie’s ridiculousness was distracting Wen Ruohan from his pain, as it always did…really, in retrospect, it was no surprise that Lao Nie had managed to take Wen Ruohan to his bed and keep him there, even going so far as to make him feel possessiveness and jealousy; no one could manage Wen Ruohan’s temper nearly as well as he did, making it seem almost effortless. “In the meantime, Qiren, what is your question?”
“You said someone told you about Lao Nie preferring his saber above all else,” Lan Qiren said. “Incorrectly and without all the facts, but enough to incite you to rage. This is not dissimilar from what happened between us just recently, when someone told you about my brother in such a way as to cause you to be angry at me. Even the situation with Lao Nie not receiving your letters properly…I have to ask. Is there anyone who knows about your sore spots?”
“Are you suggesting that someone is doing this on purpose?” Wen Ruohan asked, his eyes narrowing. “That someone is – what – trying to make me angry –”
“It’s not a bad ploy, actually, if you think about it a bit,” Lao Nie said thoughtfully. “Take it from an expert on the subject of rage… You said it yourself, Hanhan. You make terrible mistakes when you’re angry. You stop paying attention, you rush too quickly, too impetuously; you lash out, you’re violent, you do things you wouldn’t normally do, take actions you later want to take back…if someone wanted you to trip up badly, tricking you into killing those you care about isn’t the worst way to do it.”
“Even just seeing them die, or having them turn against you,” Lan Qiren said, thinking about it. His nephews had come to him too readily that evening, too quickly – even if he himself survived the explosion, which was not unlikely given his high cultivation, he would have lost his mind if they had come to harm. He would have blamed Wen Ruohan for not having done more to protect them. “That explosion, remember –”
“Wait,” Lao Nie said. “What explosion?”
“Someone tried to kill me, but it isn’t important –”
“Not important?!”
“It’s not! Wen Ruohan has already ordered an investigation.”
“Hanhan, what the fuck. This is the Nightless City, your own backyard! How are people launching assassination attempts without your knowledge?!”
“It’s a large city,” Wen Ruohan protested. “I can’t control everything everyone does while they’re here. And most of the time I don’t care, either. It’s rare that they’re trying to kill people I actuallylike.”
Lan Qiren was not going to start scolding, as it would be inappropriate for him to interfere in another sect’s inner business like that, but it was starting to be physically painful to restrain himself.
“…which is of course something I will be taking steps to correct immediately,” Wen Ruohan added, and Lao Nie covered his face with his hand in a way that completely failed to hide his gigantic shit-eating grin. “Naturally no one should be getting assassinated at random, as a matter of principle and good order, regardless of how much or little regard I have for them.”
Lan Qiren looked at the two of them suspiciously.
“We can hear your teeth grinding,” Lao Nie explained. “Your face is also turning very red.”
“If he breaks ‘do not succumb to rage’ enough times, he’ll order himself to be beaten,” Wen Ruohan told Lao Nie. “I’m hoping to get in on that. I’ve ordered no one else to assist so that he’ll have to ask me.”
“Can we get back to the subject at hand?” Lan Qiren asked, throwing his hands into the air and pointedly ignoring the intrigued noise Lao Nie made. Was everyone he liked depraved? Should he have looked more thoroughly at Cangse Sanren back when she’d been alive, too? “Namely, the fact that someone is trying to kill me and Lao Nie, and drive Wen Ruohan insane? That subject? Which seems relevant to all our lives? Or do we want to just keep talking about sex?”
“…would you talk about sex?” Lao Nie wondered. “If we decided that was the subject?”
“I will read you a spring book as a bedtime story if that is what you truly desire, but that is not what’s important right now.”
“I’m so incredibly tempted to pick the sex option here,” Lao Nie said. “Sorry, Qiren, it’s clearly a once in a lifetime opportunity. Hanhan, you with me?”
“No.” Wen Ruohan held up his hands against Lao Nie’s betrayed look. “He said he’d consider sucking my cock. I don’t want to risk jeopardizing that.”
“Oh, well, fair enough. You were always a long-term benefit over short term gain sort of person.”
Lan Qiren was considering pulling out his guqin again, or maybe his sword.
Or possibly just strangling them both with his bare hands–
“Anyway, since I’ve been outvoted, let’s proceed with talking about the person who wants to kill us before Qiren explodes and does the job for them,” Lao Nie said, clearing his throat a few times as if it could hide the way he clearly wanted to start laughing. “Hanhan, what do you think of Qiren’s idea?”
“The notion of a deliberate campaign of provocation sounds plausible, as much as I hate to admit it.” Wen Ruohan’s eyes glittered. “When I find out who dared…”
“Yes, yes, Fire Palace, slow and painful death, we all know,” Lan Qiren snapped, still riled. “Can we skip the threats and focus on the preliminary part where we figure out who it is? I don’t want to risk something happening to my nephews or to your sons and wards, who are my students.”
Lan Qiren couldn’t repress a full body shudder once it finally sunk in that he had been the target of a genuine assassination attempt.
Luckily both his nephews were too busy watching the servants to piece it together themselves, having started arguing (in their own way) about which of Lan Yueheng’s explosions had been the most dramatic, or at the very least which one was their favorite of the lot. For his nephews, an argument largely consisted of Lan Xichen making well-reasoned points in favor of his preferred view, a particularly wretched explosion that had somehow dyed everyone involved a virulent shade of bright green that hadn’t faded for nearly half a month, while Lan Wangji hummed, mentioned his own favorite, a bunny-shaped firework that had gotten out of control and gone off four times in a row, and promptly refused to engage any further or concede the point in the slightest.
It kept them both entertained, anyway.
Lan Qiren was just considering getting up to help the servants that were putting out the flames – they weren’t having much luck – when Wen Ruohan swept in, face dark.
“Enough,” he snapped, and the flames all went out at once.
It was rather impressive, actually. He didn’t even summon up an array, just used his high cultivation to smother the flames with spiritual energy directly. Wasteful, of course, tremendously wasteful, but impressive nonetheless…
“I will have an answer to what has happened here,” Wen Ruohan said, his voice soft and gentle in that terrible sort of way that he had when he was genuinely angry, and his servants quailed before him. “If not, you will all share in the punishment. Is that understood?”
The servants all dropped to their knees, shouting, “Yes, Sect Leader!” with enthusiasm.
Lan Qiren closed his eyes, feeling the onset of a headache. Was this really the man to whom his long-quiet heart had finally inclined? Really? What was wrong with him? Wrong with his entire sect, even, that they so consistently fell in love so terribly?
When Lan Qiren ultimately went to join his ancestors, he would have some very serious questions to ask of their founder Lan An. Perhaps he had simply omitted to include mention of some family curse he had brought down upon all their heads in the family histories…
“Qiren,” Wen Ruohan said, turning to him. “You should see a doctor.”
“No need,” Lan Qiren said. He did not wish to trust his health to a doctor he did not know – he rarely did in the best of times, back in the Lan sect he was known as an infamously terrible patient, but now that someone unknown had actually sought to kill him, he was even less inclined. “I’m fine.”
“There was an explosion –”
“Do you think I don’t know how to deal with explosions? I’m fine.” Seeing Wen Ruohan’s fierce expression, unlikely to yield so easily, Lan Qiren sighed. It was exactly the same instinct he’d had with his nephews, only unlike that situation Wen Ruohan was clearly having difficulty processing the desire to clutch at someone in distress over their potential demise. He probably also wanted Lan Qiren out of the way so that he could threaten people in peace, something Lan Qiren would normally object to a lot more if his nephews hadn’t been at risk. “I will have someone look me over. Acceptable?”
Wen Ruohan nodded stiffly and swept away, still seething.
“Where is Wen Qing?” Lan Qiren asked his nephews, who led him to her. Wen Qing was still only learning to be a doctor, but Lan Qiren felt moderately comfortable that she was not about to do something terribly stupid or malicious, which was more than he felt with most other doctors.
Of course, by the time he reached her, she’d somehow already heard.
“Really, how did you even dodge…?” she started to ask, taking his pulse, and he glared at her until she shut her mouth.
“Xichen,” he said, drawing their attention to himself. “Wangji. It is late, and you have morning study. You should rest. Tomorrow you will make me a list of all the rules that could be applicable to why you should not enter the adults’ quarters without adequate reason.”
“Yes, shufu!” they both chorused, not seeming even slightly perturbed by the minor punishment.
“I’ll escort you there. Wen Qing, you can finish checking me in their courtyard.”
She kept her mouth shut until Lan Qiren had inspected their rooms to his satisfaction, then sent them off to bed and returned to the courtyard.
“They haven’t figured it out yet?” she asked.
“They are only children, and the Cloud Recesses does not have a tradition of assassination,” Lan Qiren said stiffly, then held out his wrist. “I will tell you in advance that I am fine and do not require medical care.”
“That’s for me to determine,” she retorted, but even Wen Qing had to admit, after some examination, that he had a point. “How did you manage that? Even if you dodged, you were in direct vicinity of the blast. Yet you have no burns, no serious disruption to hearing or sight, no broken bones…the worst you have is the knock on the head you got from falling, and even that’s not a proper concussion.”
The voluminous Lan sect robes had arrays woven into them, both defensive and pedestrian in nature – something had to help them keep them clean, after all – and Lan Qiren had long ago replaced all the ones he owned with the thicker, heavier robes favored by both warriors and, more importantly, alchemists. Lan Yueheng’s willingness to limit his passion for alchemy to the laboratory was indeed a relatively recent innovation, dating only to the birth of his first child, and Lan Qiren had always found it much easier to simply be prepared at all times rather than have to change before visiting his best friend…
“Preparation in advance is more valuable than reacting in the moment,” he said vaguely, getting up to go prepare the cot he had previously used when he stayed with his nephews. “At any rate, your efforts on my behalf are appreciated. I have kept you from your rest.”
Wen Qing scoffed. “Not everyone keeps Lan sect hours, Teacher Lan. Think nothing of it…wait, is that a cot? Are you staying here tonight? Why?”
“…my room was just blown up,” Lan Qiren said blankly. “Where else would I stay?”
Wen Qing gave him a strange look. “With my uncle?”
“Why would I do that?”
Her expression got even stranger. “Did you really have nothing to do with the explosion?”
Now it was Lan Qiren’s turn to stare at her. “You think…why would you think such a thing? Why would I blow up my own room?”
“To have an excuse to stay with my uncle, of course!”
“Perhaps I ought to make an exemption to my rule against mixing genders in my classes. What in the world have you been learning? What sort of ridiculous logic is that?”
“Someone was actually trying to kill you?” she squawked, looking horrified. “I thought you were joking about the assassinations –”
There must be something about the Wen sect, Lan Qiren decided, or possibly in the water in the Nightless City. No one at home assumed he was joking about anything.
Eventually, Lan Qiren managed to get Wen Qing to go away, primarily through appealing to her concern for her younger brother – why she had suddenly switched to worrying about him, he had no idea, but family was naturally more important – and by then it was the Lan sect curfew time.
He would talk to Wen Ruohan about it tomorrow, he decided. He had no idea who might want to hurt him or hurt his nephews, but he wasn’t about to take such a threat lying down.
The next morning he excused his nephews from morning training so that they could compose their list, did his own training, and waited until a time of the morning that he had learned the Wen sect generally considered to be ‘reasonable’ to start making his way towards Wen Ruohan’s study.
He had spent most of his time considering the question of the assassination, rather than romance, but he judged the time appropriately distributed. They could always discuss the issue of his feelings later; safety and security of human life, as ever, took precedence, and protecting his nephews was first and foremost. Lan Qiren had built up the strongest possible shield that he could around their bedrooms and the classroom, and he could ensure that they remained in those two places – that was a good start, but insufficient. He would need Wen Ruohan to help him enact additional measures to find the perpetrator and stop them once and for all…
An ominous rumble sounded.
Lan Qiren paused, then picked up his pace considerably. That hadn’t sounded like an explosion. Rather, it sounded a lot more like the aftereffects of a wave of spiritual energy hitting spiritual energy, the way it did in a duel – but that was not especially comforting. Who would dare have a duel on Wen Ruohan’s doorstep?
The answer, Lan Qiren discovered as he burst into the main hall, was Lao Nie.
His old friend was wielding his saber, pointing it at Wen Ruohan with his face black with rage, practically emitting steam from all the apertures of the face, and Wen Ruohan was smiling back at him with those terrible dead eyes of his, the curve of his lips deliberately provocative, his posture aggressive and equally angry. They were in the midst of shouting at each other.
“What are you doing?” Lan Qiren exclaimed, but they both barely glanced at him before continuing to glare at each other.
“As you can see, he’s perfectly fine,” Wen Ruohan said silkily. “Your fears are, as ever, exaggerated –”
“Intact and fine are two different things,” Lao Nie shot back. “You kidnapped another sect leader –”
“Acting sect leader. I think you’ll find those are quite different, politically –”
“Fuck the politics of it! You cannot simply steal people the way you do land. Such a thing is evil! Even if they later forgive you, even if your motives can be understood, it is fundamentally wrong–”
“Evil? Fine, let it be evil! Let me be evil! The only thing that you have gotten wrong is thinking that I care about what you think –”
Lao Nie brought down his saber, a wave of spiritual energy as powerful as any tsunami sweeping across the main hall; Wen Ruohan broke it with a wave of his hand, then summoned up arrays that circled around his palms with an ominous red glare.
“Stop fighting about me as if I’m not here!” Lan Qiren demanded.
They ignored him again.
“It is not as if you did not already know what I am like. You knew from the very beginning, and came to me regardless,” Wen Ruohan was saying to Lao Nie, deliberately taunting. “You put on a show of protest now, but back then you were the first to turn your eyes away from evil –”
“Fight evil wherever it may be,” Lao Nie snarled in response. “Don’t think I will look aside, not even for you –”
In frustration, Lan Qiren summoned Yunhan out of his qiankun pouch and laid his guqin out in front of him, sending out a harsh strum of spiritual energy of his own.
Both Lao Nie and Wen Ruohan responded on instinct, each one throwing up a hand to block without taking their eyes off each other – the greater threat, given how their martial prowess vastly exceeded Lan Qiren’s own – but Lan Qiren was, unlike them, not currently maddened into a frenzy. He had at no point expected that he could defeat either of these two titans.
Instead, he’d directed his spiritual energy at the floor under their feet.
Tile cracked and stone shattered. Both Wen Ruohan and Lao Nie staggered, surprised by the sudden loss of steady footing, and Lan Qiren took advantage at once to hit them upside the head with the strongest lullaby he knew. When infused with spiritual energy, it was traditionally used in night-hunts to calm horses and sometimes to lull the angry ghosts of neglected infants; it was almost never used as a weapon against other cultivators, since most people, even non-cultivators, could shrug off the externally inflicted sensation of calm sleepiness quite easily – but then, Lan Qiren wasn’t trying to win a fight right now.
He was trying to endone.
Both men had been walloped so firmly over the head with the lullaby that they’d fallen backwards onto the floor; they both gaped at him, each one having clearly correctly identified the choice in music as Lan Qiren calling them overgrown babies that were having an unjustified temper tantrum. Resentfully, Lan Qiren switched songs to something a little more directly effective – at first he considered Cleansing, but then decided that it was insufficiently powerful, given the targets; he went instead with Clarity, and played that highly complicated tune as aggressively as he possibly could.
“…I feel like my head was just doused in lye and scrubbed vigorously,” Lao Nie said blankly after Lan Qiren finished. He was still sitting on the floor, looking as though he had no idea how he had gotten there. “And then twisted until all the water was squeezed out of it and left to dry in the sun.”
Wen Ruohan was sitting on the floor as well, with a hand to his temple. He seemed highly bemused. “I know exactly what you mean,” he said. “Was that meant to purge resentment? It is – remarkably effective.”
“I trust that that means you have both gotten over this ridiculous dispute,” Lan Qiren said sternly, rising to his feet and putting Yunhan away. “Allow me to remind you both that I am the one who was kidnapped, and therefore I, and I alone, am the final arbitrator of what justice righteousness demands. I have never appreciated being used as a tool for the disputes of others. If you intend to fight like a bunch of squabbling infants, you may do so outside of my presence, but you may not do so in my name. Am I understood?”
“Yes, Teacher Lan,” Wen Ruohan said, and Lao Nie nodded.
“What he said,” he said.
“Good,” Lan Qiren said. “Now get up off the floor. We are going to go have tea and discuss this matter like reasonable adults until I have had my concerns answered to my satisfaction. At that point, if you are still so inclined to persist in your infantile squabble, you may at that point resume your fight on the training field.”
Neither of them made any motion to get up.
“Well?”
“He’s magnificent,” Wen Ruohan said to Lao Nie. His voice was strangely plaintive, almost as if he were complaining. “It’s quite unfair.”
“Itold you,” Lao Nie said, and he, at least, got up. “Come on, we can commiserate later. We don’t want to keep Teacher Lan waiting, now do we?”
“I don’t know. The thought of the imposed punishment has its own appeal.”
“Mm, I know what you mean…”
Ridiculous. Both of them, utterly ridiculous. Lan Qiren couldn’t believe he liked either of them.
He scoffed and turned on his heel, marching towards Wen Ruohan’s study, intending on grabbing a servant on the way and passing along orders to prepare tea and some small snacks. The two idiots behind him would simply have to make their own way there; he simply wasn’t going to deal with them for a single moment longer.
After about three sticks of incense, Lan Qiren did end up kicking Wen Ruohan out of his classroom.
The Wen boys were completely frazzled by their father’s presence, incapable of focusing on their studies no matter how often Lan Qiren reminded them to pay attention, and they infected even Lan Qiren’s nephews with their restlessness. Sadly, even ejecting Wen Ruohan from the classroom did not remedy their distractedness, but rather only changed its focus.
“He just left,” Wen Xu said blankly. “You told him to go, and he just – left.”
“He was being a distraction,” Lan Qiren said. “Though you will all need to learn how to perform in front of him eventually. You can’t just fall to pieces anytime you notice him watching.”
“Yes, but…he just left. He wanted to stay, you could seethat he wanted to stay, but he just…didn’t.”
“He doesn’t normally do that,” Wen Ning volunteered. “If he wants to watch, he stays to watch.”
“Not if shufu tells him to go,” Lan Xichen said, and Lan Qiren could hear the pride in his voice.
“Wasn’t he really angry earlier?” Wen Chao asked, looking side to side to his peers for confirmation. “I sawhim. He was really angry. And now he’s not angry. How?”
They all look at Lan Qiren, who coughed.
“Adult matters,” he said dismissively. “We had a minor disagreement, and resolved it between us. It is nothing to concern yourself with it.”
Stares all around.
Lan Qiren ignored it. “Now, who wants to recite the next rule? Or shall I impose punishment?”
It took some doing, but eventually he got them in line, although the rest of the lesson continued to drag torturously long for all of them. After class was done, he dismissed them, and found to his surprise that it was Lan Xichen who lingered – he would have expected the Wen boys to try to bombard him with more questions, although it didn’t really surprise him that they opted to rush off to gossip amongst themselves instead, sweeping a confused Lan Wangji and Wen Ning in their wake.
“Do you have a question?” he asked his eldest nephew, who looked concerned. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s about Sect Leader Wen,” Lan Xichen said. “Shufu…are you all right?”
Lan Qiren blinked. “I’m quite well, Xichen. Why do you ask?”
Lan Xichen shuffled his feet. “When we went in for dinner, he mentioned – well, he mentioned Father.”
Lan Xichen had always been the dutiful, obedient, amiable one of his nephews.
He was also stunningly perceptive.
Lan Qiren sighed. Lan Xichen was ten years old. He was not as old as Wen Xu, but he was still old enough to understand things that Lan Wangji, at seven, did not yet wholly comprehend.
“He did,” he agreed cautiously. “He had heard some things that were…perhaps not untrue, but highly misleading, and he wished to question me on the subject.”
He tried to tread carefully, unsure of what element of that most highly sensitive of subjects Lan Xichen was concerned about. Was he perhaps concerned that Wen Ruohan had defamed his father? Was he worried that the knowledge of what had happened in the past generation had leaked out, such that the shame of their family would become known and haunt him in the future? Did he fear mistreatment, or simply worry for his father’s loss of face, or –
“Did he hurt your feelings?” Lan Xichen asked, very seriously, and Lan Qiren felt a stab of emotion right in the chest. “I know shufu regrets many things about what happened back then, and has suffered greatly as a result of it. I hope Sect Leader Wen did not cause you distress with his questions.”
Lan Qiren’s heart hurt in all the best of ways.
Truly, he thought, all the pains of the past were redeemed by the existence of his wonderful nephews.
“I am well, Xichen,” he said again, feeling a little helpless. He had tried very hard to hide how much he disliked He Kexin from his nephews – to this day, he thought that perhaps Lan Wangji, who had inherited Lan Qiren’s inability to understand people, still did not know. But Lan Xichen was as sharp as his father had been in such matters, skilled in reading things out of the smallest signs, and there was no hiding it from him. He knew that Lan Qiren had been trapped in the Cloud Recesses by his father’s selfishness and, later, his own birth; he knew that Lan Qiren’s life had not been what he would have wanted if he’d had the freedom to choose. There was a chance he might even know that Lan Qiren and his father were not and had never been on good terms.
Lan Qiren didn’t know where to begin to explain the complicated web of resentment and debt and, yes, even love between himself and his brother. He wished he could, if only to make things easier and more understandable for himself, much less Lan Xichen.
“I thank you for your concern,” he added. “But Sect Leader Wen is not…it was only a misunderstanding.”
Lan Xichen nodded. “And you like him.”
“And I – Xichen!”
Lan Xichen beamed at him. “You do, don’t you? I knew it!” Then his smile faded. “But you can’t marry him and move to the Nightless City, shufu, you can’t. What would Wangji and I do without you?”
“I’m not leaving you under any circumstances,” Lan Qiren said firmly. “Do not be concerned.”
Lan Xichen looked relieved, and Lan Qiren reached out to press his shoulder, feeling a little relieved himself by the clarity that this conversation had given him. Even if he liked Wen Ruohan – and he still couldn’t believe entirely that he did, what was he thinking, he’d been right in his original analysis, the man was a completely ass, a self-aggrandizing megalomaniacal tyrant with a penchant for torture and for pestering Lan Qiren into a rage – even if he did, his nephews, and sect, came first in his heart. He might be enjoying his stay here as a temporary vacation, but that was all it was, and all it ever could be: temporary.
He could never leave his nephews behind, and that meant he could not leave his sect behind. That much had not changed.
Wen Ruohan would simply have to understand.
So decided and determined, Lan Qiren returned at last to his usual calm. He saw Lan Xichen out, his nephew now in a better mood and asking all sorts of inappropriate questions with a twinkle in his eye that suggested he was doing it just to see his uncle splutter incoherently, and he himself headed back to his room, intent on meditating and considering the issue at greater length, as Wen Ruohan had suggested. Regardless of the final outcome, Lan Qiren wanted to be prepared for whatever ridiculous arguments Wen Ruohan would undoubtedly end up putting to him – ah, perhaps he ought to have phrased that thought differently, because he was quite certain that there was a great deal Wen Ruohan would like to put to him–
Lan Qiren was thoroughly distracted as he made his way to his room, his body making its way there almost wholly on instinct, and perhaps that was a good thing.
All throughout his childhood, his brother had scathingly remarked on how Lan Qiren was far too deep in his own head to be a good swordsman, and Lan Qiren still to this day believed him, no matter how much he had later been praised for his beautiful style and flowing sword forms. That he had become competent at the sword because of the need to teach it to his nephews was not anything especially admirable to his mind, nothing at all like his brother’s heavens-sent genius; rather, in his view, it was only that he had found ways to compensate for his innate lack of ability, a testament to necessity. In combat he had a terrible tendency, namely that he always took an extra half-moment to think before he acted, no matter what he did, and while that trait served him well enough in duels where he had a chance to prepare, he had no doubt that the minute delay would have caused him trouble in a real field of battle, whether some desperate night-hunt gone wrong or a real fight – he’d never had the chance to test it out, of course.
And yet perhaps Lan Qiren had in fact finally managed to grind some small amount of fighter’s instinct down into his bones, because when he pushed open the door to his room, he did not stop to think at all before he was throwing himself sideways to avoid the onrushing blast.
“ – shufu! Shufu!”
Lan Qiren stared up at the ceiling.
His ears were ringing wildly, and he was lying on the ground, which seemed wrong. He was briefly unsure what had happened – had Lan Yueheng blown up another furnace? No, that was wrong; Lan Yueheng had long ago learned that he wasn’t allowed to play around with alchemy in the common areas of the Cloud Recesses, but only in his safe and triply secured laboratory, built further in the mountain ranges where the explosions wouldn’t trouble anyone.
Also, and Lan Qiren took an extra moment to recall this, he himself was not currently in the Cloud Recesses, but rather in the Nightless City, where Lan Yueheng had no reason to be, and also Lan Yueheng had no idea where he was at the moment.
“Shufu!”
Lan Qiren sat up just in time to be hit dead on by two small bodies, both reaching out to grab him and hold him as tightly as their little hands could manage – being as they were Lans, that was in fact actually very tight – and although he nearly fell back, he managed not to, forcing his spine back to stiffness.
“Xichen? Wangji?” he asked, puzzled. “What are you doing here?”
They were speaking, but he could not hear them properly. They were speaking too quietly for him to hear now that they were no longer shouting; his ears were still ringing from the echoes of the explosion, and he could only hear them very distantly.
“Hold a moment,” he told them, and sketched out the talisman to restore balance to the ear. Normally he didn’t need such a thing, given that the arrays on his robes included a stabilizer – the Lan sect focused on musical cultivation, and ensuring clarity of hearing even under situations of great stress was naturally a matter of utmost importance to them – but he’d picked up this particular talisman long ago. Around the same time Lan Yueheng had been struggling to learn to keep his experiments away from the living quarters, in fact. “There. Try again now. Why are you here?”
“There was an explosion,” Lan Xichen said, clearly not for the first time. “We came at once!”
“This is the adults’ quarters. You’re not allowed in here,” Lan Qiren said, feeling irrationally upset. “You both know better than that.”
“But there was an explosion!”
“I am aware of that,” Lan Qiren said irritably. “But rules are still rules. If you were to break a rule every time there was an explosion, we wouldn’t be able to have any alchemy at all. How’d you get here so quickly, anyway?!”
His nephews blinked at him, confused by the question, and right around then Lan Qiren suddenly stopped being angry and started being scared.
He reached out and pulled his nephews into his arms. He’d been scared all along, he realized, only he hadn’t understood it – there were servants running in with buckets of water in their hands, disciples trying to stamp out the flames that were trying to spread along the tapestries and ceiling beams using whatever was to hand, but it was quite clear that they had only just arrived.
If they, the adult servants who were presumably in various places in the living quarters already, had only just arrived, then how come his nephews, who were much smaller and meant to be much further away, were already here?
If they had arrived any earlier – if he hadn’t jumped to the side so quickly –
At best, they would have been there just in time to see him die. At worst, they might have – they could have – if they hadn’t been Lans, required to mind their pace no matter what the circumstances, if they’d run forward like any other child would have, if he hadn’t impressed the rule so deeply into their mind that they minded it unconsciously…if they’d made their way to his side, if they had been beside him when the explosion had gone off –
“Shufu? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” Lan Qiren said, still holding both his nephews tightly. Probably too tightly. He forced himself to relax his grip a little, and to keep his voice steady. He had never been so glad for the natural tonelessness of his speaking voice. “All is well. I am merely shaken from the aftereffects of the blast.”
His nephews took their cues from him, calming down and turning to regard the servants rushing around with expressions of interest rather than fear.
“What happened?” Lan Wangji asked, serious as ever. “Is it like Uncle Yueheng?”
“No, it can’t be,” Lan Xichen objected. “Uncle Yueheng only blows up furnaces in the alchemist’s area.”
“That is a relatively recent innovation,” Lan Qiren put in, voice dry. His hands were still shaking, he noticed, and he tried to ensure his nephews didn’t see. His mind was still racing, trying to work out what had just happened. It seemed impossible, an explosion in the middle of the Nightless City – an explosion that had started from his room–
Lan Qiren felt cold. The magnitude of the explosion had not been small. If he had to guess at the cause, he would assume that a battle talisman had been placed behind the door, such that it would activate as soon as he pushed it open, his own spiritual energy acting as the fuel for the trap. Such things were not uncommon in actual war, although it had been years since there had been anything greater than a skirmish between sects – the Nie sect’s conquest of the north had been largely completed by Lao Nie in his splendid youth, and the territories of the other Great Sects were already mostly settled. Even the Wen sect largely continued to expand through absorbing other sects through politicking and intimidation rather than outright battle, and the few times they did take up arms the entire thing was usually over before anyone could complain.
“You are dismissed, and may dine in your own quarters,” Lan Qiren told his nephews and the Wen sect boys, all of whom looked at him uncertainly. “Do I need to repeat myself?”
“Who gave you the right to determine who sits at my table?” Wen Ruohan asked, his tone poisonous.
“You did,” Lan Qiren said, keeping his tone level. “When you made me their teacher. Either they obey me and go, or they disobey me and I send them to receive punishment. Are you contravening me?”
He gave Wen Ruohan a significant look – If you undermine my authority with my students, there is no point in me staying here any longer – and after a moment Wen Ruohan scowled and waved his hand, affirming the order.
“At any rate, it suits me well to speak with you alone,” he said, ignoring the way the children all scampered out of the room at speeds that suggested they were knowingly and voluntarily risking the penalty for violating Running is prohibited. “You’ll have less excuse to evade the subject.”
Lan Qiren was more than willing to trade away any excuses he might or might not have had in exchange for getting the children out of harm’s way.
Wen Ruohan seemed to be in a particularly violent mood, the sort that in previous discussion conferences had usually presaged someone getting dragged away with the implication that their fate would be decided in the Fire Palace. Everyone, regardless of sect, knew to avoid him when he was like this, knowing that he’d be especially vicious; no one wanted to risk becoming the target of his ire and of his relentless grudges, which persisted long after the actual triggering event had passed. Usually, it took Lao Nie putting in some serious effort to get him out of that sort of mood, and even he was only successful about half the time.
“We’ll be speaking over dinner,” Wen Ruohan added with a faint sneer. “I do hope you don’t mind.”
The rule of hospitality overrode the rule against speaking during meals, so Lan Qiren inclined his head politely, conceding. He seated himself at the table, arranging his sleeves around him.
Knowing that Wen Ruohan’s volatile temper made this a dangerous situation, he decided that he had to remain especially polite and distant. He would keep his temper intact and mind propriety, however difficult it had grown to be during his current stay at the Nightless City; he would master himself and sink into the yawning gulf of distance that had arisen between them the moment Wen Ruohan had reverted back to calling him ‘Sect Leader Lan’.
It was amazing how much that title irritated him now that he’d grown unaccustomed to it. Lan Qiren had always privately preferred being referred to in his role as teacher if at all possible, even though politics demanded that everyone indulge in the polite fiction of referring to him as Sect Leader (omitting the ‘acting’ for efficiency, unless they felt especially annoying); it had only been the irritation of Wen Ruohan’s presumption that had made him insistent about the formality at first, and it hadn’t taken Lan Qiren very long to adjust to not hearing the title. Recently he’d even gotten used to Wen Ruohan stamping all over his established boundaries and calling him directly by name.
Still, as Wen Ruohan was now so aptly reminding him, Lan Qiren had been a sect leader for a decade and more. He was painfully familiar with the stupid sort of polite talk that sect leaders tried to engage in before they began a negotiation, all delicate probing and needle-sharp jabs; he’d never been especially good at it, but he’d gamely memorized all the things he might need to say or do. He wasn’t going to ask about Wen Ruohan’s heath or comment on the weather or anything as inane as all that, but he was going to be scrupulously circumspect, as befit a conversation with someone as dangerous as Wen Ruohan.
Well, he was going to try. All this rest and relaxation and informality had had a terrible effect on his self-control.
“I am of course willing to answer any questions you might have,” Lan Qiren said in a measured tone. “As I have ever been.”
“Oh, yes,” Wen Ruohan said. “Because you’ve always been a model of clarity and transparency.”
The sarcasm, and direct insult that it implied, was unexpected, and Lan Qiren scowled. “I cannot recall any instance in which I have sought to deceive you,” he said stiffly. “In fact, allow me to remind you which of us brought about the current situation –”
“Oh, yes, kidnapping this, kidnapping that,” Wen Ruohan scoffed. “It’s amazing that you get any teaching done, the way you harp on a single subject without variation.”
It seemed Lan Qiren had in fact gotten a little too used to not needing to be polite with Wen Ruohan, because despite all his promises to himself to treat Wen Ruohan with the respect he deserved, what came out of his mouth next was, “Who poisoned your tea?”
Wen Ruohan stared at him.
“Not literally,” Lan Qiren added quickly, realizing how such a statement might be misconstrued by someone as naturally inclined towards paranoia as Wen Ruohan and mentally kicking himself. “I mean it in the metaphorical sense.”
“I’m fairly sure it’s traditionally phrased as ‘who pissed in your tea’,” Wen Ruohan said, and although his brow remained furrowed and his expression stormy, he strangely seemed a little calmer – albeit still the sort of calm that presaged a disaster. “Though I assume a learned scholar such as yourself wouldn’t know such things.”
“Perhaps it’s a difference in localized idiom. I always heard it the other way.”
“…are you trying to distract me?”
“Is it working?” Lan Qiren asked, quite serious. “It always seemed like a distraction was the only thing that worked to put you in a better temper when Lao Nie would do it – he’d get you talking on another subject for long enough until you forgot why you were angry, and only then return to the main subject.”
“Lao Nie would also suck my cock to cheer me up. Are you going to do that?”
Lan Qiren suppressed a sigh.
It seemed that there was no pleasing Wen Ruohan today. He was bound and determined to have a bad time, and nothing and no one would be permitted to stand in his way. For such a clever man, he could sometimes be so incredibly stupid–
Lan Qiren frowned to himself, realizing that at some point along the line he had truly cast aside all fear of Wen Ruohan.
That was, of course, an immensely stupid thing for anyone to do, given the other man’s power, both personal and political, and his inclination towards cruelty. It was even stupider when it was done by Lan Qiren, who was still very much wholly within his power. Even when faced with what could by some lights be construed as a threat of sexual assault, he felt no fear, only exasperation – and Wen Ruohan had actually taken some actions in that vein before!
It was utterly illogical. After He Kexin had, on only one occasion, snuck up on him in the bath to steal a kiss in an effort to irritate his brother, Lan Qiren had had to consciously avoid flinching every time he removed his clothing for the next month. When she had made a more concerned effort to seduce him not long after she’d been locked away into her endless seclusion, he had woken up with nightmares for over half a year, and consciously avoided being alone in the company of women for even longer. And yet with Wen Ruohan, who had not very long ago thrown him into a windowless cell and then come to his bedroom to threaten him with sex as a means of extracting obedience, Lan Qiren was nonchalant and almost carefree – even when the subject of the conversation threatened to touch on that sorest of points. What was wrong with him?
“It seems you are still unwilling. Very well, I suppose I’ll have my answers instead,” Wen Ruohan said. “You never told me you were on such poor terms with your brother.”
“…I thought everyone knew,” Lan Qiren said, honestly puzzled. “He was never fond of me, and over time that dislike became mutual.”
“Mutual dislike. Is that what you call it?”
“Well, yes – that’s why I called it that way just now. That’s how I think of it.” And it had taken many years for him to be comfortable calling it as much as that. The habits of his youth made it hard for him to even think of his brother negatively; the mere idea of criticizing him, even if only in his own mind, had become instinctively associated with punishment or involuntary isolation, ostracization, shame and guilt… “Is there some other way you think it should be termed?”
Wen Ruohan scoffed. “It only seems to me that ‘mutual dislike’ is a little soft a term to accommodate arguing in favor of your brother’s permanent seclusion.”
Lan Qiren really didn’t understand. “But that was what he wanted!”
“After you threatened to kill his wife.”
“Even putting aside all her other offenses, He Kexin murdered an honored teacher of the Lan sect in violation of all the laws of hospitality and good conduct,” Lan Qiren said, truly taken aback. “What were we supposed to do, give her a toast and salute her for her bravery? We held a trial and her crime was judged worthy of death.”
“A trial in which you spoke against your brother.”
“I refused to speak in favor of He Kexin,” Lan Qiren corrected. “On account of not having a single good thing to say about her. When my brother proposed seclusion as an alternative – I use the term ‘proposed’ lightly, he was sect leader and made it clear that it was his will, and we were not to defy him – when he proposed seclusion, I offered up my voice to support him even though doing so would ruin my life. What was I supposed to do? Let him die?”
Wen Ruohan frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What do you think it means?! My brother is as much a Lan as I am, and like all of our bloodline we seem fated to give our hearts away unwisely!” Lan Qiren glared at him, goaded as ever beyond reason by Wen Ruohan. “Don’t pretend you don’t know that of which I speak. I read that treatise on Chord Assassination – I know exactly why you keep such a book in your personal library, and it has nothing to do with some inaccurate and outdated observations regarding the technique. It’s there because of the way it describes my Lan clan’s folly! We Lan love to the point of invention, to the point of destruction, to the point of madness – Lan Yi sacrificed her principles and looked the other way for too long, Lan Tianye forgave what ought not be forgiven, both willing to do anything at all as long as it was for the ones they loved, and in the end Baoshan Sanren still left and Yanling Daoren still died!”
He shook his head, his fists clenched so hard that he thought he might have drawn blood. “If my brother were not permitted to go into seclusion, neither could He Kexin, and she would have to face the justice that her own selfish actions brought down upon her head. It could have happened. My brother could have been tied down until the verdict was carried out, unable to prevent her death – there were those in my sect who thought that would be a good ending. But they were wrong. My brother put his heart above his sect; if she died while he watched, he would have died alongside her, and then we would be in the same situation as we are now, only he’d be dead and I’d be sect leader and I wouldn’t even have my nephews to console myself with..!”
At some point Lan Qiren had started shouting. He would have continued, too, only at that moment the door opened and the silent servants started to bring in the food, so he shut his mouth and stewed in anger, glaring.
Wen Ruohan was still frowning. “You would have been sect leader in that situation,” he said after a long period of silence, sounding thoughtful. He waved the servants out of the room once more. “You thought of that at the time?”
“My brother has always been selfish in matters relating to his wife,” Lan Qiren said bitterly, watching the door close behind the servants with no little relief – he could not have borne having this out in front of them. He could scarcely understand why he was speaking now, in fact, only it seemed as though he couldn’t stop. It was as if all this time he’d spent away from his sect, unburdened by duty, had left him completely unmoored, all those long-suppressed years of bitterness flowing out of him in a wild torrent as if his heart simply couldn’t take keeping it to himself any longer. “He Kexin didn’t care overmuch for him, treating him lightly, and yet he didn’t care; he pursued her wildly regardless, throwing aside all honor and all face, embarrassingly pathetic. When I wanted to leave the sect to travel, he made me stay and do the work he neglected so that he could have more time to spend with her. When she tried to force her way into my bed, he sentenced me to punishment, not her. Even when she died this past year, he refused to leave seclusion and help –”
“She did what?”
Lan Qiren frowned at the interruption. “She died. It was – unexpected, and very unfortunate. I found her body…ah, you see, I was the one responsible for visiting her, to report on my nephews…”
“Notthat,” Wen Ruohan was scowling.“The part about her trying to get into your bed. That wasn’t the story I heard.”
“It’s the story I lived, so I rather think I’m the authority on the matter here. Or do you think I am lying?”
“…no,” Wen Ruohan said slowly. “Do not tell lies is a rule, and you abide by your sect rules.”
Lan Qiren nodded sharply, pleased despite himself that Wen Ruohan at least gave him enough face to believe in him.
Out of lack of anything better to do, and unwilling to continue speaking, he reached out to serve himself from the plates on the table. It was rude to act before the host, but he was eager to get to the part of dinner where he could at least pretend that his mouth was too full to speak.
Wen Ruohan didn’t call him out on it, only frowned deeply, also reaching out to serve himself. “The story I heard was quite different,” he said again, and his tone, while thoughtful, remained suspicious. “Not just about yourself and He Kexin, but more generally. It made it seem as though you had deliberately intrigued against your brother, seeking to trap him in order to steal his birthright.”
Lan Qiren snorted. “I wanted to travel. But a sect leader, even if only an acting one, cannot be allowed to risk themselves when the only other options for the position are children. Teaching was only ever a second option, however much I have grown to enjoy it…though I suppose even that theory, by which I have lived so much of my life, is flawed. Someone must be doing the job of sect leader now, even without me, after all. You showed me that.”
Wen Ruohan nodded slowly.
Meanwhile, Lan Qiren thought about it for a moment, then grimaced as any number of the ridiculous rumors to which he had been subject these past few days came to mind. Surely no one had gone so far as to suggest…
“At least tell me there aren’t rumors that I sought to trap him in order to steal He Kexin from him,” he demanded, appalled by the very notion. “I would rather die.”
“So you say.”
“I assure you, I’m quite serious.”
“Oh yes, don’t let me forget. You do have a tendency to put your life on the line for such things,” Wen Ruohan remarked, tone still caustic, poisonous in what it implied. Absent-mindedly, he took a bite from his plate, clearly not paying any attention, then visibly froze.
Lan Qiren blinked at him, surprised out of his anger – there was an entire story’s worth of emotions passing over Wen Ruohan’s face, each one changing out for another too quickly for him to entirely track. “What is it?”
“…are these sour fern noodles?”
Lan Qiren blinked again, then looked down at his plate. He hadn’t been paying attention in the slightest. “Oh, they finally made it,” he said, and tried a bite himself, enjoying the sourness. It was remarkably cooling, and very tasty to boot. “Yes, I made a request from the kitchens for them a few days back - it was in one of the cookbooks in your library and it struck my fancy. Why? Do you not like them?”
“My wife liked to eat them when she was pregnant,” Wen Ruohan said, still staring down at his bowl. “That was always the easiest way to tell – even before the doctors could detect a joy pulse, she would start demanding sour fern noodles and refusing to eat anything else, and sure enough within half a month they would declare her with child. I haven’t had them in…half a century or more.”
Lan Qiren felt a stab of sympathy and regret, followed almost immediately by annoyance, primarily at himself. Wen Ruohan had kidnapped him, harassed him, threatened him, and had just accused him of wronging his brother, an accusation so farfetched that it nearly took Lan Qiren’s breath away with how misguided it was. Why should he care that he’d accidentally brought up an old, clearly much-loved memory that caused Wen Ruohan some pain? Had he lost his mind?
For some reason, he was reminded of that spell-song he’d been working on, the one that made him think of Wen Ruohan while he composed – think of Wen Ruohan and chuckle to himself, thinking of what the other man’s expression would like when he found out what Lan Qiren had composed for him.
Abouthim.
There was something about that that tugged at Lan Qiren’s mind, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what.
“Well, I can assure you that I’m not with child,” he said, a little diffidently, instead of thinking on that strangely disturbing line of thought any further, and Wen Ruohan lifted up his head to stare at him. “And even if I were, it isn’t yours, so there’s nothing for you to worry over.”
He only said it out of lack of anything better to say, a dull bit of nonsense meant to get them through the awkward moment and back onto solid ground, but Wen Ruohan took it as a joke: his eyes started curving into a smile, rather involuntarily – he coughed several times to try to keep from laughing, and appear to be struggling quite sincerely to try to keep his features in an angry expression, but despite that seemed on the verge of succumbing nonetheless.
Lan Qiren was a little bemused by how genuinely hilarious Wen Ruohan seemed to find him, which was something of a first. Back in the Cloud Recesses, very few people thought he was even rated as much as an ‘interesting’, although his loyal friends had at certain points maintained that he could be quite funny, if often unintentionally so.
“Tell me one thing,” Wen Ruohan said, shaking his head forcefully to clear away the hilarity. It was a rather impressive demonstration of willpower, although that had never been something Wen Ruohan had lacked. “When did you first start to dislike your brother?”
Lan Qiren thought about it. “It’s difficult to put a precise date upon it,” he said. “I only admitted to myself that what I felt was dislike when I was nearly old enough to be crowned, almost an adult. When it actually began, though? I’m really not sure. He never liked me, and it is difficult to love where you are disdained…He blamed me for our mother’s death, you see.”
“Your mother? I thought she died of an illness?”
“The illness was a recurring one. It began with an infection she got during my birth. Even if she died when I was three years old, the cause was me, in the end…” He trailed off. “I was the age Wangji is now, I think. When I first began to dislike him.”
“What happened when you were seven?” Wen Ruohan asked. He seemed calm again, composed, the madness that had been upon him earlier seemingly completely gone, seemingly jarred out of him by the shock of their conversation and that bit of humor. “What did he do?”
“He found me beside her grave,” Lan Qiren said, recalling the incident. He hadn’t thought of it in years – he hadn’t even realized the importance of it, or admitted it to himself, before it had leaped to mind just now. “I never really knew her, you see. She raised me herself only for a few months, perhaps even a year, but then she got sick and had to hand me over to others, seeing me only once in a while; by seven, I had barely any memories of her. Despite that, I would go to light incense for her and talk to her, pretending she would talk back to me…I was a lonely child, and an unhappy one. My father favored my brother and ignored me, my brother disliked me, and I was perceived as being slow and stupid, lacking in talent, so I didn’t have any friends. I thought I could at least have a mother, even if she were already dead.”
“And what did he do, when he found you there?”
“Oh, he thrashed me and told me never to come back.” Lan Qiren shook his head. “He was seventeen and angry with it, with all the expectations of the sect falling onto his shoulders because our father had been so wounded by our mother’s death, and I suppose he took it out on me. He didn’t even cite any of the rules to justify his conduct! Do you know, it’s almost a little funny – at the time, that was what upset me the most. That he didn’t follow the rules…”
“It’s not funny at all,” Wen Ruohan said.
“No. I suppose not.”
Wen Ruohan exhaled sharply, then shook his head once more. “I was wrong,” he said abruptly, and Lan Qiren stared at him, not quite believing his ears. Wen Ruohan did not admit his fault no matter the circumstances, that was a fact as well-known as the direction the sun rose each day. “I should not have accused you. When I was young, I had a brother of whom I was very fond, for which I thought I would do anything, yet through my selfishness and arrogance, I took actions that led to his death, even though it was not my intention. He died cursing my name, thinking I hated him. I have been – abnormally sensitive on the subject of brothers ever since. Despite that, I should have known better to think, even for a moment, that you had done deliberately what I did by accident. I was wrong, and I am sorry.”
Lan Qiren nodded dumbly. His heart was racing at twice the usual speed, or so it felt, and his entire body felt warm – he hadn’t believed Wen Ruohan was capable of apologies, much less one as straightforward and unstinting as this. He was quite sure that Wen Ruohan didn’t do it often. In fact, this might be the first apology that had crossed his lips during the entirety of Lan Qiren’s lifespan.
He thought, suddenly, of that song again.
He tried to push the thought out of his head, only it came back in again, doubly strong, and he didn’t understand why he kept thinking about it. He hadn’t even finished the song, didn’t even know its purpose yet; there was no reason to keep thinking about it. The only thing he knew about it was that it reminded him of Wen Ruohan, that he had composed it about him, forhim –
Lan Qiren froze.
He’d said it himself, earlier, hadn’t he?
We Lan love unwisely, to the point of invention, to the point of destruction, to the point of madness – we look the other way, forgiving what ought not be forgiven, doing anything at all as long as it was for the one we love – love to the point of invention–
“Oh no,” he blurted out, utterly horrified at his realization. “I likeyou.”
Wen Ruohan stared at him, then burst out laughing. “Is that what you got from that conversation?!” he choked out, bending over the table and laughing almost too hard to breathe. “That – ah, Qiren, there’s no need to look so glum about it! You’re allowed to like people! There’s no need to look as though you’ve just been sentenced to execution!”
Sentenced to slow and painful torture was more like it. What in the world was wrong with him, falling for someone like Wen Ruohan?! They spent every moment they were together squabbling and insulting each other! True, it was the most fun Lan Qiren had had in years, a light-heartedness that he hadn’t enjoyed in any relationship he’d ever known, not even with the lively Cangse Sanren or the even livelier Lao Nie…
Ohno. Lao Nie! He hadn’t even thought of that – Wen Ruohan was his friend’s lover, however much Lao Nie’s sect disapproved, and Wen Ruohan very obviously loved Lao Nie back as well, he would never have reacted so violently to a presumed disappointment if he didn’t. How could Lan Qiren fall for someone who was already taken? Wasn’t that just dooming himself to heartbreak and misery?
Lan Qiren groaned and put his head into his hands.
He wouldn’t even be able to critique Lao Nie’s terrible taste anymore, he thought miserably to himself. He sharedit.
“It’s not that bad,” Wen Ruohan said, still laughing. He didn’t understand. “Yes, I know I’m despicable, a self-aggrandizing tyrant and an ass and all that, but really, liking me is really not thatbad.”
“Incorrect. This is terrible. We’re not even compatible.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? We’re perfectly compatible – you insult me and I laugh, I insult you and you scold me and then I laugh some more. We get along perfectly fine.”
“That would be perfectly fine for being friends, yes,” Lan Qiren said resentfully, and Wen Ruohan abruptly stopped laughing so suddenly that he very nearly choked on his own spit.
He stared at Lan Qiren, eyes wide. “Qiren,” he said slowly. “When you say you likeme…”
“There’s no point to it,” Lan Qiren said, putting his hands down and shaking his head. “We’re really not compatible in any sense that would be necessary. We’re both sect leaders, at least most of the time for me; you already have a lover and several wives; you desire things that I don’t care much for, like wanting me to suck your cock –”
“Would you?” Wen Ruohan’s voice had dropped deep, and his eyes were dark and intense. “I understand it’s something you have no natural inclination towards, but…what if I asked? Would you do it for me?”
Lan Qiren thought about it and grimaced. His was a nature inclined towards pleasing those he liked if it wasn’t too great a burden, and based on what he’d heard of it…
“Probably,” he admitted, and Wen Ruohan inhaled sharply, nearly a gasp. “I might need to think on it further before I decide. I only just thought of it, you see. The liking you, I mean.”
“Only just –” Wen Ruohan put his hand up to his face and pinched his brow. “And you just saidit?”
“Would there be any reason not to?” Lan Qiren asked, a little unsure. He truly had no experience in romantic matters. “It seems like relevant information for you, even if you choose not to do anything with it.”
“Willpower,” Wen Ruohan muttered. “Reckless bravery. Funny, intelligent, and thoughtful. And those arms…you know what, let’s put a pause on this discussion. You’re the sort of person who inclines towards careful consideration and contemplation – we can pick up this discussion again once you’ve had time to do that. Take the time to think about what you really want, and what are the obstacles you perceive in the way of achieving that goal.”
Lan Qiren felt oddly touched. “I would appreciate that time, yes,” he agreed. “You don’t mind?”
“I’m over a century old, Qiren. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s how to wait.” Wen Ruohan was looking extremely pleased, though. He even served himself a second helping of the food, despite usually preferring to only pick at it like an oversized bird. “Besides, I need to think about it myself. How else will I have an opportunity to come up with counterarguments to all of those obstacles you’ll be thinking up?”
“I don’t think –”
“Ah, ah! We’re having dinner. I excuse you from your duties of hospitality, so now you have to follow the rule against not speaking during meals, right?”
Lan Qiren rolled his eyes – whether or not he was truly in love with Wen Ruohan, which was something he still needed to figure out, the man was definitely and unquestionably still an ass – but he gamely took more food himself and began to eat in appropriate silence.
When dinner was over, he excused himself to go find the children for their evening class, but Wen Ruohan insisted on coming with him. He was whistling.
“Stop that,” Lan Qiren said after less than two hallways of enduring.
“Why? There’s nothing wrong with my pitch.”
“Your musical abilities are not in question. One does not whistle indoors.”
“A Lan sect rule? You know I don’t follow them.”
“A matter of politeness,” Lan Qiren stressed. “You don’t casually whistle around members of a sect famed for its musical spells – it makes us nervous.”
Wen Ruohan laughed. “I didn’t even think of that! Very well, Qiren, I’ll stop.” He glanced over with a smirk. “You don’t mind me calling you ‘Qiren’ anymore, do you? Under the circumstances?”
“I suppose not,” Lan Qiren said, and wanted to sigh. “You’re going to be completely intolerable from now on, aren’t you? We haven’t even decided anything.”
“I’m just happy to know about it,” Wen Ruohan said, then stopped walking without warning.
Lan Qiren got a good few steps ahead of him and then had turn back, wondering what was the matter – Wen Ruohan had that dumbfounded look on his face again. Had Lan Qiren accidentally summoned up another memory of the past?
“What is it?” he asked, feeling as if he could just about manage it this time, whatever it might be.
“I’m happy,” Wen Ruohan said again. He seemed almost dazed. “To know that you like me. Even if it ultimately amounts to nothing.”
“…so?”
“I’mhappy,” Wen Ruohan said again, and Lan Qiren frowned at him, not understanding.
Rather than respond immediately, Wen Ruohan shook himself – not just his head, but his whole body, as if he were trying to shake off a weight that had been dragging at him for a while. Then he turned and smiled at Lan Qiren, a proper smile, charming and lively and reckless in a way that was wholly unlike the dead-eyed false smile Lan Qiren was more accustomed to seeing on his face. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It’s been a while, that’s all. I’d almost forgotten the feeling.”
Lan Qiren gave him a strange look, but decided not to question it. His own heart was in far too much of a muddle to be of any use in analyzing anyone else’s reactions – he could contemplate it later, at his leisure.
The children were all waiting obediently in the classroom, prepared for their evening study, and they brightened at once when Lan Qiren walked into the room – though the Wen boys’ expressions twisted into confusion when Wen Ruohan followed him in.
“I’m just here to spectate,” Wen Ruohan said with the sort of self-confidence one got from being the master of the entire palace, city, and sect that surrounded them all. “Don’t change anything on my account.”
Irritating man. Lan Qiren had such bad taste.
“If you disturb their learning, I’m kicking you out,” Lan Qiren informed him, and settled down to teach.
“I didn’t think you came out of your room,” a well-dressed lady said to him, her tone snide.
Lan Qiren ignored her as he perused through the bookshelves. He was assuming she was one of the Nightless City’s many courtiers, or at least the wife of one – presumably one of the ones he’d already refused to help, given her rudeness. She’d appeared within only a stick or two of incense after he’d arrived at the main library, her timing impeccable; it really made him wonder if someone were having him watched.
Someoneother than Wen Ruohan, that was. He wasn’t stupid.
Ignoring her seemed to annoy the lady further, though, and she followed him deeper into the rows of bookcases, saying, “One really does have to one what you spend all your time doing, locked away in there…though I suppose one needn’t really wonder. It must be a piquant delight for the sect leader, having a former rival sect leader submit to you –”
“Acting,” Lan Qiren corrected her, having heard accusations of a similar tenor several times before and no longer capable of being moved by them. “I was never truly a sect leader, so I cannot be given the title of ‘former’. The position has at all times been temporary, even if it were regularly renewed. At the moment, I am acting only in the role of teacher.”
“Oh, yes, teacher,” the lady sneered as if it were a bad word. “You lack the ability to give him children, so you will mold the ones he has, is that the idea?”
That was so very much not the idea that Lan Qiren couldn’t help but scoff.
“Or is there another reason you want to be left alone with young boys for so long…?”
“Have I done something to offend you, mistress?” Lan Qiren asked icily, finally pushed too far for endurance and turning to look at her. “I assume I must, and yet I cannot think of what it might be, given that we have not been introduced.”
The woman gaped at him. “You cannot be serious!” she shouted, and Lan Qiren’s frown deepened. “You know perfectly well who I am!”
“I most certainly do not. Who are you?”
“I’m – I’m Second Madame Wen!”
Lan Qiren just barely managed to bite his tongue before blurting out The former maid?, since unfortunately that was the only thing he knew about her. He took another look: she was, as he’d noted before, very well-dressed, draped in luxurious fabrics and glittering with gems, but it was like he’d said to Wen Ruohan before – riches and luxury all looked the same after a while. She was pretty enough, he supposed, though he’d never developed much of an aesthetic for such things, and if he tried he supposed he could see something of Wen Chao’s features in her face.
“Oh,” Lan Qiren said. “Why haven’tI seen you before, then?”
Second Madame Wen gaped at him again.
“I only banned Wen Xu from seeing his mother, not Wen Chao from seeing you,” Lan Qiren said, wondering if she needed a further explanation. “Your son may be overly spoiled, but I haven’t seen any indication that you were actively interfering with his education or efforts, so there was no need. Given that I’m teaching your son, and since I’m here in your home, I would have expected you to come to greet me far earlier. Or at least join in on one of the official dinners that Wen Ruohan has been holding – you are invited, are you not?”
“Howdare you!” she shouted, which wasn’t even remotely a proper response to his question. “You – you – trollop!”
Lan Qiren blinked. “…me?”
It wasn’t that he didn’t understand where she was coming from, what with all the rumors about him sleeping with Wen Ruohan, but – really?Atrollop?Him?
What next, was she going to call him a brazen little hussy too?
He almost wished she would. It would make a fine story to tell Lan Yueheng when he returned home. And Lao Nie, should he ever heard of it, would probably do himself very serious injury laughing –
Sadly, Second Madame Wen instead made a high-pitched sound between her teeth and stormed off.
Lan Qiren was so taken aback by the abruptness of her actions that it took another moment for him to realize what had happened, and then he called after her, “No, wait – I was serious – we really do need to discuss Wen Chao’s progress on –”
No, it was too late, she was gone.
Lan Qiren sighed. He’d already learned from experience that there was little that could be done about these sorts of relationship-based misunderstandings – denying it just made people think he was hiding something, asking people what was wrong with them made them suspect that he was ashamed of it, and even getting the other individual in question to deny it was only seen as further evidence of a secret liaison, as if such a thing were necessary to collaboration. The only time he’d ever managed to throw off rumors had been when the other person in question had been Lan Yueheng, who had very genuinely not understood what was being implied and asked a lot of very earnest question about how exactly he could ‘improve’ his relationship with Lan Qiren on account of them already having reached the pinnacle of friendship back when Lan Qiren had edited an entire book on the mathematics underlying alchemy for him.
(The rumors about him and Cangse Sanren, in contrast, were somehow still going strong, and she was already married to another – anddead.)
In this case, Lan Qiren was quite sure that attempting to try to talk Wen Ruohan into issuing a denial would be completely pointless, and also probably lead to nothing more than further flirtation.
Anyway, even if it didn’t, Lan Qiren didn’t actually want people sent to the Fire Palace just for gossiping about him. Even with the improvements of the past short while, proper discipline was terribly hard to implement in the Nightless City, given how afraid everyone was of Wen Ruohan reverting to form…
“Are you Teacher Lan?”
Lan Qiren missed the private library already. He closed the book he was holding, suppressing the urge to sigh, and turned to look at the person who’d interrupted him – another lady, though far more simply dressed, without any of the ostentation or jewels that had been practically pouring off of Second Madame Wen.
“I am,” he said politely. “Can I help you?”
The young lady dipped her head down shyly. “There’s a matter I don’t quite understand in my book. Could I prevail on you to assist me?”
Lan Qiren was not a teacher of girls, given how the Cloud Recesses divided men and women for the purposes of their daily life, and being himself unmarried, he did not have too much experience in dealing with the other sex. Still, despite his role as the Wen boys’ teacher, he was still very much an interloper in the Nightless City, however unwillingly he’d arrived – it was probably rude to simply reject a polite and very simple request like this out of hand, no matter how much he longed to.
“I am unsure of my ability,” he said, casting a longing gaze at the bookshelf beside him as if it would save him. “What is the subject of your study?”
Her question turned out to be something related to music, very basic and straightforward, so at least he knew he had the ability to help. Deciding to be efficient, Lan Qiren went to a desk and pulled out a piece of paper and the treasures of the study – the hidden mechanism had taken a while to get used to, but now that he knew about it, having a brush to hand at all times was actually quite convenient – and began writing out an explanation.
The young lady apparently hadn’t anticipated that. “Are you certainly you don’t want to just tell me about it directly?” she said uncertainly, shifting her weight from one leg to another. “If you would just come sit beside me, I could continue to read on my own and simply ask you anything I don’t understand.”
“If you’re having trouble with a concept as fundamental as this, it means your foundation is all wrong,” Lan Qiren told her bluntly. “Reading a book that is beyond your limits won’t help, not even with assistance from a teacher. I’ll write up the parts you need to know first so that you can review them at your leisure – more than once, ideally. In fact, if you copy out the notes a few times, it would probably help your understanding.”
The lady stared at him blankly.
“You don’t have to linger,” he pointed out. “Feel free to go make another attempt at your book. I’ll be done soon enough.”
“…no, I’ll stay, thank you,” she said, and then proceeded to make a complete nuisance of herself – offering to pour him tea (he’d just poured some for himself), asking if he were comfortable (he was), complaining that she was cold (what she expected him to do about it, he had no idea).
She even asked him whether he thought she was pretty.
“Just because you’re no good at music now doesn’t mean you can’t get better,” Lan Qiren said, trying to be comforting. He couldn’t imagine reaching the age this woman had without knowing the elementary aspects of qin playing, especially not if she was, as she claimed, an aspiring musician who had loved the instrument from a young age, but perhaps her family circumstances were unfortunate and her self-confidence affected as a result. “Even if you do end up not finding a talent for it, you can always find another skill. You shouldn’t be so hasty to give it all up and assume that your only asset is your face.”
She brightened. “So you like my face?”
“…I’m not the person to ask.” Lan Qiren decided that bluntness was the only way to make it through to her apparently thoroughly obtuse head. “Listen, all of your interruptions are making writing this introduction for you more difficult than it needs to be. Could you wait elsewhere?”
“But –” She glanced from side to side, then proceeded to abruptly swoon.
Lan Qiren was enough of a gentleman to try hastily scramble to his feet to catch her. “Are you all right?” he asked, concerned by her sudden onset of weakness. “Should I call a doctor?”
“I’m better now,” she said, looking up at him. “Muchbetter.”
“I’m glad to hear it, but a sudden loss of consciousness can presage any number of more serious illnesses: a drop in blood pressure, dehydration, heart issues, brain issues…You should go see a doctor at once.”
“Oh, but – but Lan-gege…”
Lan Qiren’s eye twitched at the overly intimate form of address. He was about to correct her when he heard someone clear their throat.
Lan Qiren glanced over and was relieved to see Wen Ruohan standing there.
“Oh, good, you’re here,” he said, helping the lady back into a standing posture. “Wen Ruohan, tell this woman she needs to go see a doctor immediately; she hasn’t been listening to me. I am more than happy to continue writing out the introduction to qin playing for her, but it’s not something that requires her presence – I can have one of the pages send it to her rooms later on. Certainly there’s no reason to wait around for it when such a delay could pose a risk to her health! I understand of course how music can drive one to recklessness, but –”
“Qiren,” Wen Ruohan said, and his eyes curved in a smile that seemed even genuine, as if he were suppressing the urge to laugh. “Qiren, she was trying to flirt with you.”
Lan Qiren recoiled at once. “She was what?!”
He looked at the lady, who was blushing.
Flustered, Lan Qiren took several steps back, thinking to himself (not for the first time) that his sect’s rule about not disturbing female disciples was a good one but somewhat lacking in guidance as to what one did when the female disciples sought to bother him. Then he frowned. “Hold on, does that mean you don’t actually want the introduction to music theory?”
“It’s actually quite good,” Wen Ruohan said, having meandered over to the desk to poke his nose into Lan Qiren’s business as usual. “Very straightforward. Have you considered writing a book?”
“I – well, I’ve never had the time…”
“You’re dismissed,” Wen Ruohan said to the lady, who saluted, pale-faced, and hurried away. He glanced over at Lan Qiren, still looking incredibly amused. “Surely someone has flirted with you before.”
“Notoften.And they’re usually more overt about it.”
“Are they? Or did you just not notice anyone who wasn’t blunt enough?”
That was distressingly plausible.
“What a colossal waste of everyone’s time that was,” Lan Qiren said, discouraged. Wen Ruohan sniggered. “What was even the point of that?”
“Me, I suspect.” Wen Ruohan shrugged when Lan Qiren looked at him. “My first wife has a way with schemes. I expect I was supposed to walk in and see you snuggled up together with some pure, virtuous, scholarly young lady that would be far more what one would expect a person like you to like. People seem to think I have a problem with infidelity.”
“Then people are very stupid,” Lan Qiren said, irritated beyond belief. In retrospect, the only part of it that surprised him was Wen Ruohan’s assumption that it was his first wife that had taken action – he himself would have assumed it would have been the Second Madame Wen who’d instigated it, thinking it revenge for him having seemed to slight her earlier. He’d just been thinking nastily to himself that Wen Chao would clearly need to work quite hard to overcome the deficiency of brains on that side of the family – though perhaps he was being naïve once more. It wasWen Xu’s mother that he had irritated first, and the lady had clearly been well prepared; Second Madame Wen wouldn’t have had time to put such a thing together so quickly, and her presence immediately beforehand could have been arranged specifically to divert his blame. Rather clever, he supposed, if petty and ultimately pointless. “Obviously you don’t care one way or another what anyone does with their bodies, provided you have their heart.”
“You sound very certain of that.”
“You sound as if you’ve forgotten that I’ve been acting sect leader for over a decade,” Lan Qiren said, rolling his eyes. “And that I’ve had to endure those horrible parties at Jinlin Tower for just as long. No one who has seen you and Lao Nie making bets on how many prostitutes you can handle in a given night without resorting to your cultivation for additional energy would think that you expect physical fidelity from your lovers.”
“That was a good night,” Wen Ruohan said nostalgically. “Also, that man is insatiable.”
“Maybe you’re just old.”
Wen Ruohan snorted, hand actually rising up to cover his mouth – he must not have meant to laugh – and then he shook his head, clearly dismissing the entire thing. “Why are you in here, anyway? I thought you preferred the other library specifically to avoid situations such as these.”
“I do, and that is indeed why. I was looking for something specific.” Lan Qiren realized a moment later that admitting that fact meant opening himself up to questions as to what, exactly, he was looking for, and possibly even an offer of help in finding it, which he didn’t want. “Nothing sufficient to rise to your concern.”
“Well, now I’m doubly interested. Were you finally tempted by the spring books?”
“I have more interesting things to do.” There was no getting around it, it seemed. Perhaps he could be non-specific? “As it happens, I was looking for records on the Wen clan.”
Wen Ruohan blinked. “I utterly forbid you to read the Quintessence. It may be the gift of my ancestors, but I can do very well without having it quoted in my ear at every moment – the Lan sect rules are bad enough.”
“I hardly quote my sect rules at every moment, though I’m willing to make a significant effort to do so if you continue to pester me about it.” Wen Ruohan held up his hands in mock surrender. “Anyway, there’s no point in learning a bunch of quotations that contain wisdom that nobody follows.”
Wen Ruohan didn’t bother disputing the point. “So what were you looking for?”
There was clearly no way out of explaining, so Lan Qiren begrudgingly admitted, “I was looking for family records. It occurred to me that I had no idea if you had any siblings.”
Wen Ruohan appeared taken aback.
“Yes, I know, I could have just asked,” Lan Qiren said with a sigh. “However, given the importance of knowing family structures among the sects, it seemed rude to admit that I had no notion of yours. Assuming the absence of knowledge on the subject wasn’t intentional on your part.”
“Merely an artefact of time, in this instance,” Wen Ruohan said, sounding bemused. “The last time someone actually quoted my family tree back at me was in your father’s generation, and that was to accuse me of having murdered all of my immediate kin for power.”
Lan Qiren arched his eyebrows. “Did you?”
“Onlysome of them, and typically they were also seeking to kill me at the time. My father fancied himself an emperor.”
“Ah,” Lan Qiren said. “A familial disorder, I see.”
Wen Ruohan was struggling not to smile again. He hadn’t smiled this much in the entire decade or so Lan Qiren had known him, but then again he supposed that they hadn’t really spoken much in that time. “Oh, to be certain,” he agreed. “I would argue that it’s been in our blood since Wen Mao first put the red sun in the sky…though I like to think I’ve been more successful at it than any of my predecessors.”
“If you were to say you were second, no one would dare claim to be first. Congratulations on your successful career of tyranny.”
“Even your insolence is charming,” Wen Ruohan mused. “You say things that would have me ordering an execution if it were anyone else, and yet I find them hysterically funny. You must tell me how you manage it.”
“Contrast, perhaps?” Lan Qiren said after a moment’s contemplation. “You have over a decade of expecting me to be frightfully dull. You’ve belatedly discovered that I’m not, but your initial impression is engraved so deeply that you continually find it to be a surprise.”
“That wasn’t actually a question that needed answering, but I suppose you’re right. Dare I ask why you wanted to know about my family? I assume it wasn’t for the purpose of insulting me.”
Lan Qiren rolled his eyes. “A matter of curiosity, nothing more. I had suddenly recalled an old teacher of mine who once asked if I could find out whatever happened to ‘that poor boy Wen Ruoyu’ and I thought I might try to find out if that were a real person or not.”
Wen Ruohan choked.
Lan Qiren arched his eyebrows, having not expected such a reaction from the normally unflappable sect leader.
“…my favorite younger brother,” Wen Ruohan said, sounding a little strangled. “He died tragically. I regret it to this day.”
“Ah. My condolences. Losing a brother is very difficult, especially if you liked them.”
Wen Ruohan gave Lan Qiren a strange look, which Lan Qiren didn’t think he entirely deserved for such an anodyne statement.
“I’ll be going,” Wen Ruohan finally said instead of pursuing the conversation further. “There’s a report that’s been sitting on my desk for too long, being neglected, and I find myself suddenly compelled with a deep desire to read it.”
“…do you want me to wish you safe travels and good luck?” Lan Qiren prompted when Wen Ruohan did not, in fact, leave. “Or were you lingering in order to point me in the right direction for a genealogy?”
Wen Ruohan’s eyes were curving again. “I haven’t the slightest notion where such a thing might be. I recommend you ask a servant to find it for you, that’s what they’re for.”
“That’s what I was trying–”
Wen Ruohan rather rudely left before Lan Qiren could finish his sentence. In the end, Lan Qiren decided that discretion was the better part of valor and left instructions with one of the servants to find it for him and deliver it to him later, then retreated back to his rooms to focus on something else.
Anythingelse.
He ended up settling on composing something, a hobby he hadn’t had nearly enough time to devote himself to in the past. He’d initially planned to pick up one of the spell-songs he liked to tinker with when he had time, but instead he’d started writing something new – a snippet of tune that had popped into his head out of nowhere, which for some reason reminded of Wen Ruohan, aggressive and yet cool, like some massive snake hanging around sunning itself on one’s throat, its fangs always at the ready.
At some point during the afternoon, while he was preoccupied with that, Lan Wangji wandered in with Wen Ning trailing behind him like a duckling, and they made themselves at home in the corner. Lan Qiren had always allowed his nephews to settle near him if they so wished, provided that they were quiet, and so he did not pay them any mind as he continued what he was doing. Spell-song composition was tricky, requiring expertise in cultivation techniques, musical theory, and the art of combining the two, which was its own independent skill, and so there was rather a lot of plucking away at Yunhan, writing something down, repeating the melody with spiritual energy, writing more down and crossing things out, picking out yet another attempted melody…
Sometimes Lan Qiren thought he might envy the demonic cultivators of old, who were said to bend spiritual energy to their whims through the feel of the music rather than the content. While one could brute-force it and use a lullaby as a calming spell or a spritely dance as a summoning, it was a grossly inefficient waste of one’s own spiritual energy, vast quantities spilling out into the environment to grow grass rather than being properly channeled into the music. Only a demonic cultivator who relied on external sources of spiritual energy or who went as far as to utilize resentful energy could reliably use such a method, since it wouldn’t be their own energy they were wasting – of course, a demonic cultivator also typically ended up relying on murdering people to obtain the necessary spiritual energy to strengthen themselves, so it wasn’t actually any sort of solution. Orthodoxy was orthodoxy for a reason.
But oh, it would make things so much easier…
“Shufu?”
Lan Qiren shook himself out of his reverie and crossed out several lines of musical notation that kept edging towards the outright jarring. “Yes, Wangji?”
“Wen Ning said that you make Sect Leader Wen better by being around him.” Lan Wangji was frowning down at the ground, and Wen Ning was lurking behind him, looking at Lan Qiren warily and yet hopefully. “How did you do it? Does it work on other – on anyone?”
Lan Qiren winced and put his guqin aside.
“It doesn’t work like that,” he said, putting his hands in his lap and hiding them in his sleeves so that his nephew wouldn’t see the way he’d clenched his fists. “I’m not making Sect Leader Wen ‘better’. If being around me makes him want to be better, then he can be better, but it always remains his choice. We cannot change the decisions of others.”
If Lan Qiren could, through his presence, have made his brother better, or even his much-despised sister-in-law that was likely to be the closest thing he ever had to a wife, he would have sacrificed everything in order to achieve it – he hadsacrificed everything, and yet had not made a single change in either of them.
The worst of it was that Lan Qiren knew that Lan Wangji, who was very much like him, would have made the same choices he had, and just as futilely. That was his true fear for both his nephews, Lan Wangji and Lan Xichen both – he knew that they were just like the rest of their clan, Lans ruled by their heart and restrained only by the rules that they loved just as much, and he feared that if he did not do his utmost to guide them in the right way, they would end up like their father…or their uncle.
It didn’t matter to him whether they would be the one to make the terrible mistake or the one to have to pay for it, whether they would commit themselves to that which did not love them as well as they deserved or whether they would keep the world at arms’ length, distant and cold, until they drowned in it and forgot their own identity. It was irrelevant. The fear was the same either way.
He wanted them to be luckier than he and his brother had been. He wanted them to be happy.
He…
He himself was happier now than he had been in the past, although Lan Qiren hated to admit to it.
He hated to think that it took being kidnapped to remind him that he could not model joy for his nephews when he himself had none of his own – to remember that he had longed to give his nephews the gift of their family’s rules and its inheritance, not to treat the sect as a burden that he could only protect them from for so long before he had no choice but to load unto them. He did not want them to grow up thinking of their sect, and his own presence, as an obligation merely to be borne.
The way others did.
(Lan Qiren supposed Wen Ruohan didn’t see him as a burden, but he really wished the other man had expressed that feeling in some way other than kidnapping. The fact that they were on better terms now, or that the kidnapping may have saved his life and sanity from the corruption of his own sect’s negligence, did not mean that that he had wholly forgiven him for having done it in the first place.)
Lan Qiren’s eyes drifted over to Wen Ning. “Who is it that you wish to change?” he asked, and Wen Ning flushed. “Sect Leader Wen? Or someone else?”
Wen Ning wrung his hands and ducked his head. He disliked speaking at the best of times, which this was far from being.
“His grandfather, I think,” Lan Wangji announced, helpfully blunt. “Or maybe his sister. Definitely Sect Leader Wen. They all expect so much from him, and he hates that he lets them down.”
Unable to lie and say that Wen Ning had done well, as his performance was truly mediocre at best in most fields, Lan Qiren told him, “Of late, you have done much better in my classes than you did at the start, and I have told both Sect Leader Wen and your sister of your improvement.”
Wen Ning looked pleased enough at that.
“I would tell your grandfather the same, though I haven’t met him –”
“Oh, you shouldn’t!” Wen Ning blurted out, uncharacteristically interrupting. “He lives in Dafan and he hates Sect Leader Wen.”
He did? How strange. If that were the case, Lan Qiren wondered why the man had sent his grandchildren to the Nightless City after the death of his son and daughter-in-law, though he supposed it was possible that Wen Ruohan had just taken Wen Qing when he’d discovered her talent. Though if that were the reason, why take the amiable but fairly useless Wen Ning as well? From what Lan Qiren had learned, both Wen Qing and Wen Ning had been in the Nightless City for some time and seemed to expect to remain indefinitely, yet Wen Ruohan was not the sort of person to bring along someone for no reason, nor to give in to a girl pleading to bring along her brother. Even Lan Qiren had had to threaten suicide to try to change his mind – and even then it hadn’t actually worked. That irritable bastard had just found another way to get what he wanted.
Lan Qiren resolved to ask Wen Ruohan about it at the next possible opportunity. It might be a little rude of him to stick his nose into other families’ affairs, but Wen Ning was his student; he could (just barely) justify it.
“It’s all right, though,” Wen Ning said shyly. “As long as you’ve changed Sect Leader Wen, that’s good enough.”
“Again, I have not ‘changed’ him, even if my presence might have been the trigger for some change,” Lan Qiren corrected. “It is only that he has chosen to change himself – and he can always choose otherwise.”
He had cause to regret his prescient words later that evening when they all went to dinner, it being one of the days Wen Ruohan invited them all to the formal dining room, because when they arrived it could be seen that Wen Ruohan’s mood was terrible, his face as black as stormclouds.
“Sect Leader Lan,” he said sharply the second Lan Qiren entered the room, before he even had a chance to sit down, much less for the food to be served. “Let us speak on the subject of your brother.”
Freed of an obligation to make ready an immediate escape, Lan Qiren set about forming a daily routine for himself: morning training for himself, followed by morning training with his nephews, and then breakfast, followed by classes with the Wen boys once they crawled out of their beds. That took up the better part of the day, including lunch, and in the afternoon he allowed all the boys to go off their own way until dinner, for which they were now joined by Wen Ruohan on a near daily basis even if the ‘official’ dinners were set to remain at their usual cadence, and then evening study followed by free time once more until bed.
The entire thing felt disturbingly like a vacation.
Teaching was of course a pleasure in and of itself, Lan Qiren wouldn’t have fought so hard to preserve his right to do it otherwise, and his students were delightful. His nephews, of course, never gave Lan Qiren cause for complaint, and the others were progressing very nicely.
Wen Xu, for instance, was picking things up rapidly, his endless hunger for praise transmuting itself into something that was very nearly indistinguishable from a passion for learning – he was even finding some areas of learning that he seemed to genuinely enjoy for their own sake, rather than merely learning for the purpose of completing an examination. Indeed, Lan Qiren had quickly figured out that those areas that he had been competent in before were the ones he’d actually enjoyed or found came naturally to him, since those were the only ones where he’d bothered to pay attention beyond the initial lectures, knowing that his mother would protect him from any stronger urging to pay attention. To keep his interest, once Lan Qiren had helped Wen Xu with the basics he’d been lacking, he introduced him to more advanced levels of learning for those subjects he seemed to enjoy – to the joy of actually being able to speak on a subject as an expert, and to be listened to and respected for his view.
In this endeavor Lan Qiren was aided by Wen Ruohan, however inadvertently. In his irritatingly effective efforts to be charming, Wen Ruohan had taken to showing of the breadth and depth of his knowledge on any given subject. He had figured out quickly that Lan Qiren was a consummate teacher, unable to resist boasting about his students when there was something worth saying, and moreover that the surest way to lure him into a conversation was to pull one of the boys in as well. He could do it with any of them, but once Wen Xu actually had something worth saying, he naturally inclined towards him; rather unsurprisingly, Wen Ruohan enjoyed talking about cultivation more than he did rabbits. And with his father, both his role model and his goal, leading the way, Wen Xu was all too eager to follow.
Yes, Lan Qiren was very satisfied with Wen Xu. The boy remained anxious in any number of ways, overly immature and young-acting for his age, but the worst of it seemed to be relieved by the imposition of a reliable structure, strict but fair and, most importantly, predictable. He no longer grew upset at Lan Qiren’s restrictions or his punishments, increasingly rare – Lan Qiren had cajoled a story out of Wen Ruohan about one of the times he himself had been punished by his teachers in his youth, a genuinely funny retelling of a disastrous attempt to use an array to hide his younger brother’s illicit adoption of a pair of goats that had been foiled on account of the goats turning out to be a breeding pair, and after that it seemed that Wen Xu would put up with anything with his head held high.
If his mother still disapproved, then at least she didn’t make a fuss where Lan Qiren could hear it.
For his part, Wen Chao’s literacy had improved dramatically, and while he would never be a scholar, he would at least be able to interact with his peers and future subordinates without embarrassing himself. Without that weight bearing down upon him, he lost something of the chip on his shoulder and became significantly friendlier; Lan Qiren had even seen him willingly and without compulsion invite Wen Ning and Lan Wangji to join him in various activities, and he even convinced the stablemaster to give Wen Ning a pony of his own.
Wen Ning, in turn, had started (very slowly) pulling himself out of the wallpaper and into something resembling an actual human boy. He was still inclined against speaking, especially given how he tended towards stuttering any time he was nervous, which was often, but he was more present, somehow more vivid, as if the color in him had been filled in – he was no longer so afraid all the time, and he was willing to go and do things on his own initiative, rather than always waiting to be instructed by others. He liked to stay close with Lan Wangji, but Lan Wangji had no patience for a mute and personality-less shadow, sternly insisting on his participation, and there were soon positive results. Eventually Wen Ning was even lured into agreeing, or possibly even suggesting, that they go after class to play, where before he had always immediately returned home to wait for his sister – something Lan Qiren only learned when Wen Qing showed up at his door looking panicked and convinced that Wen Ning had been abducted by force.
(The irony was not lost on Lan Qiren.)
He managed to calm her down with an explanation, and then was promptly forced into retreat when she burst into relieved tears – it seemed that Lan Wangji was Wen Ning’s first and only friend, and furthermore that Wen Qing had been deeply concerned about her younger brother’s inability to form connections with others.
(“This is what the fearless Teacher Lan is afraid of?” Wen Ruohan sniggered when he heard of it, but he also went to speak with Wen Qing, somehow managing to make her both less upset and less afraid – Lan Qiren wasn’t sure how, given Wen Ruohan’s usual approach of terrifying everything in his path – and Lan Qiren found himself momentarily feeling relieved at the presence of someone he could rely upon. A strange thought, given how they’d ended up where they were now.)
Still, no matter how he enjoyed it, even teaching could not fill all of Lan Qiren’s time.
His own free time seemed almost alarmingly empty without sect business to attend to – he really did hope they’d found someone talented to manage it in his absence – and he was able to fill it instead with the things he truly did enjoy: musical composition and practice, quiet contemplation of ethical dilemmas and the Lan sect rules, reading.
For that last, he took advantage of Wen Ruohan’s offer to continue to utilize his private library. The atmosphere there was unsurprisingly ideal, as befit a sect leader’s privileges, and while, as he’d suspected, there was another, larger library elsewhere in the Nightless City, Lan Qiren preferred the smaller space where he could be certain to avoid the unwanted company of others. Now that his ‘relationship’ with Wen Ruohan had been mentioned so often as to become ‘common knowledge’, the courtiers of the Nightless City had oozed out of the shadows, eager to try to drop words into Lan Qiren’s ears in the hope that he would repeat them to Wen Ruohan, and there was no dissuading them, only evading. The library, forbidden to the majority as it was, worked well for that.
The books themselves remained an unmitigated pleasure. Eclectic as Wen Ruohan’s taste was, Lan Qiren could be certain of the quality of anything that happened to be in there – even the lighter fare, the novels and such, was entertaining without being cloying or clichéd. Lan Qiren did not take Wen Ruohan up on any of his offers to review the spring books (and certainly not, as Wen Ruohan had implied, together), but he had little doubt that they were undoubtedly of equally fine make.
And then there was the library itself.
Lan Qiren couldn’t quite suppress his curiosity about it, or rather, about its previous location and owner. He developed a habit of running his fingers along the inside of the bookshelf that he happened to be frequenting at the time, and as often as not he would find some more words scattered in there, just as random and unpredictable as before. Even the emotional content could not be predicted. He found Stop reading right before bedtime you know it only makes your eyes hurt in one place with death is the only true release from misery right beside it, and immortality is a lie for fools and madmen right beside what is it about mirror cakes with roses that makes you completely unable to stop eating them?
By now Lan Qiren was fairly sure he knew who the previous owner was.
Being sect leader, acting or otherwise, had given him access to all sorts of secrets, the sorts of dark histories and hidden skeletons that every sect had. Every sect, and the Great Sects most of all, pretended to be gentlemen, civilized and genteel, and in some cases they genuinely sought to live up to the principles they professed…and yet politics was politics, and could not be avoided. There was no Great Sect that lacked for spies and informants, and while Lan Qiren didn’t dare trouble the ones his own sect had planted long ago – if he’d been trying to escape, perhaps he would have called upon them, but he wasn’t doing that now and there was no point in risking another person’s life unnecessarily – he still knew things most people did not. And once he seriously settled himself down to think on the subject, it was only a matter of forming a suspicion, and then taking steps to confirm that it was true.
He’d thought long and hard on it, but in the end concluded that between the age of the engravings, the stylized script, the intimacy of the words, and Wen Ruohan’s reaction to having the words spat out at him…
Clearly, the previous resident of that dark and windowless room could be none other than his first wife – his original first wife, not the current one.
Wen Ruohan was an ancient monster of the first grade, over a century old, but no one could possibly have known in his youth that he would eventually reach such peaks. As such, he, like all young men, had eventually found his way towards matrimony, establishing a wife and having sons as any good son would do to please his ancestors. Of course, Wen Ruohan’s first wife, and indeed the entirety of his first family, had lived and died before Lan Qiren had ever been born, so he had no personal knowledge of any of them, and neither were there too many people willing to talk about them. Wen Ruohan had long ago declared the entire subject under strict taboo in the Nightless City, and he wasn’t too picky about enforcing his taboo outside of his home, either – the only times Lan Qiren had ever heard mention of that first family were in the prelude to stories about how Wen Ruohan had cruelly demolished sects that dared defy him by mentioning it. As a result, Lan Qiren did not even know the unfortunate Madame Wen’s name, nor the name of the two sons and a daughter she had borne for Wen Ruohan.
All he knew were the occasional rumor, and he didn’t put much stock in those, either.
The rumors claimed that Wen Ruohan had married his wife for power and that he had later divorced her in a fit of temper – some stories claimed it was because she had taken a lover, others had claimed that the lover was allowed and the fatal sin something else – and that somewhere along the line Wen Ruohan had gone further than that, proceeding to slaughter all of his first family, wife and children alike. There, too, the stories diverged, some claiming (implausibly) that he had discovered that they were bastard cuckoos, one and all, and others saying that he’d acted in preemptory self-defense, eradicating all connection to his first wife’s maternal family that might have reason to seek revenge on him for the divorce. The most outré of all the rumors Lan Qiren had heard was from one of the oldest elders in the Cloud Recesses, an honored grandmaster called Lan Jinyan, a sleepy old man of great antiquity who had lost most of his reason at least a decade back and yet consistently refused to shuffle off to his next life – he was nominally a teacher, though his ‘classes’ were primarily educational only in learning how to care for the elderly, and were regarded more as a chore than anything else – and that had been nothing more than an offhand comment, squeezed in between any number of other nonsensical statement, about that ‘unfortunate accident in the Wen sect however many years back’ with a tone suggestive of some sort of explosion or natural disaster.
Lan Qiren had dismissed it the way he (and everyone else) dismissed most of the things the old teacher said, but he thought back on it now and wondered if maybe it had been some sort of terrible accident. The inscriptions he’d seen spoke of intimacy and fondness, the sort of familiarity that came from a married life and maybe even real love of a sort – tone was impossible to tell from engravings, but the frankness of the words, the idea of calling someone ‘my heart’ to their face like that, made his ears go red. He still barely acknowledged the fact that he’d said it himself in a fit of temper, wielding it as a weapon – how embarrassing!
Of course, his old teacher had also asked Lan Qiren once how ‘that poor boy Wen Ruoyu’ was doing, and yet other times referred vaguely to ‘Wen Ruoxi’, ‘Wen Ruojing’, ‘Wen Ruofeng’, and ‘Wen Ruohong’, among several others, so unless Wen Ruohan had had a truly startling number of acknowledged and now-deceased brothers and sisters, the old man was probably just confused.
Though, on second thought, it occurred to Lan Qiren that he didn’t know if Wen Ruohan had had a large family. It seemed implausible, both given the tendency of cultivators not to have many children and how much of a loner Wen Ruohan was now, and of course the absence of any reference to any such siblings whatsoever in the Nightless City, but who knew? Perhaps Wen Ruohan had declared his siblings taboo in the same way he’d done for his family, casting off any connections with the mortal world in his quest for godhood.
Lan Qiren couldn’t quite contain his curiosity. He checked Wen Ruohan’s private library without success – perhaps unsurprisingly, Wen Ruohan knew everything he needed to know about the subject – and eventually, out of lack of other options, decided to go over to the main library in search of a genealogical history of the Wen sect. Everyone knew about Wen Mao, of course, and a few of the more notable Wen sect leaders over time, but Wen Ruohan himself had lived for such a long time that his immediate ancestors, unlike those of the other sects, were no longer within living memory…rather embarrassing, actually, come to think of it. It was something he shouldknow.
The library would have something for him. Of course, he’d been avoiding the place, knowing how people would invariably come to mob him, especially after they’d determined that it was one of the few places he willingly went that wasn’t protected space like his classroom or his personal rooms; the couriers of the Nightless City were as persistent as a pestilence, and just as irritating. But he wouldn’t need to go for very long – just long enough to get the record, then back.
No one need even know he was there. Surely, he told himself, there would be no problem in just going quickly to check…
By some measures, the dinner the next day was an overwhelming success.
Wen Ruohan was able to amuse himself by delivering the report on the state of the cultivation world immediately before the dinner was set to begin, knowing that Lan Qiren’s sense of propriety and desire to be a good role model for the children would ensure that he would suffer his curiosity rather than pick it up and read it immediately. Lan Qiren, in turn, actually got the report, which pleased him immensely, and furthermore was able to supervise Wen Ruohan’s interaction with his sons and wards to his satisfaction – although he and his nephews, per the Lan sect rules, did not speak during mealtimes, the Wen sect was not so confined, and Wen Ruohan questioned all the children about their progress, doling out praise and approval to all of them in their turn. The Wen sect boys were obviously thrilled, even Wen Ning once he realized that he wasn’t going to be scolded for his stuttering (Lan Qiren had given Wen Ruohan a death glare to ensure he didn’t think of it), Wen Qing was delighted that her brother was being treated well, and Lan Qiren’s nephews enjoyed watching the proceedings and the even greater diversity of food than usual, since if there was one thing the Nightless City did not lack, it was that.
Still no fern root noodles, though. Lan Qiren made a note to ask about it later.
The dinner was even a success in terms of what it lacked, namely a confrontation – it was nominally meant to be a full family event, but to Lan Qiren’s disappointment both of Wen Ruohan’s wives, even Wen Xu’s much-vaunted mother, sent excuses rather than make appearances, much to the visible relief of their children. It seemed Lan Qiren would have to wait for another opportunity to evaluate, and possibly eviscerate, the mothers that had allowed their children’s education to go so far astray.
Instead, the dinner went well, and then Wen Ruohan kept them all at the table for quite some time after the meal had concluded, declaring loudly that the Lan sect rule of not speaking during mealtimes was over the moment the food had been removed from the table and that they were therefore required to talk with the rest of them to make up for their silence.
Even that part hadn’t been as dreadful as Lan Qiren had momentarily feared it would be. Wen Ruohan was actually terribly charming when he put an effort into it, and he was unquestionably brilliant, which helped a great deal to make his presence more tolerable. He had all sorts of old stories to regale them with, and was full of interesting tidbits of trivia on their favorite subjects, no matter how obscure – he was even able to talk skillfully and knowledgeably for an entire incense stick about rabbits, Lan Wangji’s current obsession, and to make it interesting enough that the rest of them didn’t mind. He even kept his terrible flirting to an entirely reasonable minimum. By the end of it, full up on delicious vegetarian dishes and good company, Lan Qiren was almost inclined to feel as though the Nightless City were not the worst place to be kidnapped to, assuming one had to pick.
From a different perspective, the dinner was an utter catastrophe.
In particular, the combination of the successful dinner that so closely followed Wen Ruohan’s visit (alone) to Lan Qiren’s courtyard, Lan Qiren now publicly calling Wen Ruohan by name and not getting his head lopped off for impertinence, and Wen Ruohan’s order that no one in the Nightless City was to lay a hand on Lan Qiren or else they would answer to him were apparently put together and then grossly misconstrued by the larger portion of population of the Nightless City.
In other words, it seemed as though everyone around them had simultaneously and unanimously formed the firm conviction that they were sleeping together.
This by itself might not have been too much of a problem, necessarily – Lan Qiren was woefully accustomed to people assuming he must be sleeping with someone, despite his repeatedly stated disinterest in the matter. He had hitherto faced accusations ranging from Cangse Sanren (who was married, and he wouldn’t have anyway on account of not being insane), Lan Yueheng (despite their shared surname and ancestry!), and even Lao Nie (wholly out of the question, if only because of the highly temperamental competition), as well as any number of sect leaders’ daughters, sisters, nieces and whatnot, some of whom were the age of some of his students. All things considered, a few rumors and some gossip about Wen Ruohan floating around in the Nightless City was nothing, comparatively speaking.
Unfortunately, Lan Qiren was distracted at the time by the report he’d received and was thereby unable to prevent his nephews from finding out about the rumors, which he would have otherwise have done. And that oversight, in turn, meant that the first he heard of the matter was when Lan Wangji got it into his head that Wen Ruohan was not only courting his uncle but doing so badly, and decided to deal by this in his usual inimitable manner.
Namely, he bit him.
“Why didn’t you stop him?” Lan Qiren asked Lan Xichen despairingly, since Lan Wangji had that mulish look that suggested he didn’t think he was wrong, that he wasn’t going to think he was wrong, and that nothing anyone said was going to change his mind about it. “The rules of hospitality alone…have I taught you both nothing?!”
“I’ll look after him better in the future, shufu,” Lan Xichen said obligingly, then ruined it by saying, “Is Sect Leader Wen courting you? Because if he is, Wangji’s not wrong that he’s doing it wrong –”
“He is not courting me,” Lan Qiren said firmly, and dragged both his nephews over to apologize.
Well, to try to get them to apologize.
“What do you mean I’m doing it wrong?” Wen Ruohan asked, chin in hand as he lounged back in his throne. He had obviously not been impacted in the slightest by the bite, other than expressing some surprise that it had happened – if anything, Lan Wangji’s teeth had probably taken more damage from the encounter – so naturally he was enjoying the humiliating outcome to the utmost. “How am I supposed to be courting your uncle?”
“Donot answer that,” Lan Qiren instructed his nephews.
“For that matter, how would I know if he were trying to court me?” Wen Ruohan asked, because he was still an ass. “Perhaps I’m simply so irresistible –”
Lan Qiren’s only excuse for casting the Lan sect silencing spell on an outsider at that moment was that he did it purely on instinct.
Unsurprisingly, Wen Ruohan broke the prohibition a moment later, his higher cultivation level making snapping the spell effortless, and then he promptly started to laugh.
“Look at how red-faced your uncle is,” he said wickedly to Lan Wangji, who crossed his pudgy little arms and sniffed disdainfully. Presumably unable to resist, Wen Ruohan reached out to poke at Lan Wangji’s round little cheek, which was admittedly exceptionally pokeable. “Can you blame me for wanting him? Your shufu would make me the loveliest concubine…”
Lan Wangji bit him again.
“Wangji!”
“Shufu is not a concubine,” Lan Wangji informed Wen Ruohan as the other man counted his fingers, a reasonable reaction to Lan Wangji’s rabbit-sharp teeth. “Shufu is first wife or nothing.”
“That is not the problem here!” Lan Qiren shouted. “Wangji –”
“Shufucan’t be someone’s wife!” Lan Xichen put in, looking alarmed as he glanced between Wen Ruohan and Lan Qiren. It appeared as though he had abruptly realized a serious problem with the entire concept that he hadn’t thought about before, which was, in Lan Qiren’s opinion, about time… “Wives marry out! Shufu can’t leave us!”
That wasn’t the problem Lan Qiren had had in mind.
“Xichen –” Lan Qiren started.
“Why does it have to be him?! If shufu’s going to marry anyone, it has to be someone who will marry in instead!”
“Xichen! No one is going to be marrying anyone – ”
Lan Wangji, eyes gone wide with horror at the thought of Lan Qiren leaving, lunged forward to try to bite again.
Lan Qiren just barely caught him.
“This,” he said furiously to Wen Ruohan, who had put his hand over his eyes as he shook all over with the force of his laughter, “is all your fault.”
The entire fiasco only made the rumors worse.
(Lan Qiren was no longer looking forward to meeting Wen Ruohan’s wives, as he now expected that any conversation they ended up having would involve a great deal of embarrassment and absolutely no discussion of their sons’ education. It might even involve florid and wholly incorrect accusations of husband-stealing. He made a point of trying to avoid any place they were said to be.)
For his part, Wen Ruohan very evidently didn’t mind the rumors in the slightest, going about his days looking as smug as a cat with a bird in hand – a bird that he most certainly did not have in hand, as far as Lan Qiren was concerned – and when Lan Qiren scolded him for not diminishing the rumors, only responded, “Well, you’re still here, aren’t you?”
That was true.
Though, surprisingly, that wasn’t because of anything WenRuohan had done. According to the report Lan Qiren had received, the entire cultivation world was a complete mess at the moment, and his disappearance, and that of his nephews, wasn’t even the main driver of it.
Apparently, the Jiang sect had received word of the death of Cangse Sanren and Wei Changze not long after Lan Qiren had, which was within his expectations. More recently, however, Jiang Fengmian had declared to the world that he believed that their son, Wei Ying, was (however implausibly) still alive, and matching deed to word, had thereupon launched a fairly expansive search for him, looking up and down and everywhere to try to locate him. Any number of smaller sects, invariably and probably justly suspicious of the Great Sects looking for any excuse to expand their boundaries and run roughshod over the rights of their less powerful neighbors, immediately kicked up a fuss about Jiang sect disciples marching to and fro across their territories as if they owned them, but Jiang Fengmian, typically easy-going and inclined to let everyone have their own way, was for once refusing to listen to reason. Those subordinate sects who had pledged to the Jiang sect had their complaints ignored and their protests overridden, and the sects that weren’t pledged to them immediately wrote to whatever Great Sect was backing them or, if they didn’t have a backer, just started complaining to anyone who would listen.
The other Great Sects naturally all objected to the Jiang sect’s overreach, although the degree to which they did so differed greatly. The Jin were the Jiang sect’s close allies, so they blew a lot of hot air but ultimately proposed no practical solutions and made no real effort to stop it beyond a half-hearted admonition. The Wen sect, accustomed as ever to standing alone, was blatantly fishing in troubled waters, including publicly sending an overture to the proud Meishan Yu sect, whose beloved third daughter, Jiang Fengmian’s wife, had been utterly humiliated by his excessive enthusiasm in searching for his ex-lover’s child, now widely thought to be Jiang Fengmian’s own bastard. Honestly, the greatest surprise Lan Qiren had upon reading that part of the report was simply that Wen Ruohan had managed to find the time for such scheming, given how busy he’d been with tormenting Lan Qiren over nonsense.
(Oddly enough, the sheer familiarity of seeing one of Wen Ruohan’s usual schemes for power in action ended up being somewhat reassuring, suggesting as it did some measure of return to sanity on the other man’s part. Lan Qiren would never have expected such a thing.)
Normally, one would be able to count on the Nie and Lan sects to muster up some real opposition to this sort of overreach in such a circumstance – and they were opposed, naturally, and made their positions on the matter quite clear. However, in contrast to the usual course of events, their two allied sects were not acting in harmony but rather each one moving independently, which greatly reduced their ability to constrain Jiang Fengmian. The reason was not made clear in the report, which suggested that the rest of the cultivation world hadn’t figured out the exact cause yet, but for one in the know, and with Wen Ruohan’s helpful annotations, it was quite clear what must have happened.
Namely, Lao Nie had figured out that something had happened to Lan Qiren.
How and when it had happened, Lan Qiren could not be sure, but it seemed fairly evident that Lao Nie had somehow noticed Lan Qiren’s absence and, concerned, had gone to the Lan sect to see him, only to be refused. In actuality the refusal was more than likely simply due to the Lan sect’s natural instinct for discretion leading them to be overly secretive; they would never admit to having a problem even if they did. Unfortunately, however it happened, it seemed that Lao Nie (predictably) lost his temper over the matter and was now refusing to give the Lan sect the time of day until they produced Lan Qiren, whole and entire.
It was a little gratifying, actually. Lan Qiren had always considered Lao Nie to be one of his friends, of course, however weakened the bond had grown after the disaster with his brother, but he hadn’t flattered himself in thinking that Lao Nie, who was really more sociable and charismatic than was good for him, returned the feeling in any serious fashion. Certainly not enough to throw a politically tricky tantrum over his well-being, anyway.
Except, apparently, he did.
That was the complicating factor, in fact. Normally, Lan Qiren would have insisted on rushing back to his sect in order to clear up the misunderstanding, but ironically enough the division in the normally aligned Nie and Lan sects had caused an even larger stir than Jiang Fengmian’s overreach – and to each sect’s tremendous benefit, too. The abrupt and unexpected change in Great Sect dynamics that had been static for a generation or more had released a cat into the aviary, convincing any number of subordinate sects that there was a war imminent in the cultivation world and that they had better make their allegiances and positions clear, seeking shelter from the oncoming storm within the safety of the Great Sects. The outer boundary of the Lan sect’s sphere of influence had grown prodigiously in the past month, swallowing up some coastal areas they’d been eyeing for a while, and the Nie sect’s own tentative foray into their stubborn south had unexpectedly nearly doubled its reach; smaller sects were flocking to their banner in droves, tempted by their martial might and tales of Lao Nie’s own personal prowess, whether as a cultivator dedicated to the eradication of evil or as a perilously talented general based on the skirmishes that had continued to grow his sect’s power in the north. The Qinghe Nie had even dared to peel away a few of the Wen sect’s northernmost allies for themselves.
At this particular moment in time, therefore, it would have been exceedingly awkward for everyone involved if Lan Qiren were to make a sudden appearance.
The Lan sect would likely be accused of having schemed to mislead others in order to sweep up benefits, and Lao Nie in particular would be caught flat-footed, robbed of his righteous indignation, with the loss of face driving away the sects he’d just acquired before he had a chance to consolidate them properly.
Lan Qiren couldn’t do that to him, especially not after he’d just stuck out his neck for Lan Qiren’s sake. Not only would it be ungracious, it would probably ruin what was left of their friendship, since if there was one thing Lao Nie cared about more than his friends, it was his sect. He wouldn’t forgive anyone that harmed it, whether or not they’d done it purposefully.
“Even I’ve had to step carefully there,” Wen Ruohan remarked when Lan Qiren had stuffily explained his reasons for wanting to stay in the Nightless City, the entire thing made horribly embarrassing on account of how much he’d wanted to leave before. “He’ll forgive me for the little things, like stealing some resources or seducing a sect out from his grasp, but he has made very clear that if I ever actually do something that could harm his sect’s foundation – even if only conceivably – he would have no mercy.”
“One can hardly blame him,” Lan Qiren said. “His Nie sect is younger than either of ours, and there are many hungry eyes out there…not least of all your own.”
“When I rule the world, he will be at my right hand, whether as my empress or my general,” Wen Ruohan said agreeably – so agreeably that Lan Qiren had to do a double take before realizing that Wen Ruohan was joking. About his ambitions!
Lan Qiren thought about his words carefully before responding. “I think,” he said delicately, “that Lao Nie would look terrible in a dress.”
Wen Ruohan guffawed. “And he’s not much inclined to be a general when he could be a king, I know, I know,” he said, waving a hand dismissively. “Someone in your sect is very smart, managing him the way they did.”
“Managing him? What do you mean?”
“You don’t think that Lao Nie would – or could – stop that outrageous Qinghe Nie temper of his in its tracks simply for benefits, do you?” Wen Ruohan shook his head. “‘Fight evil no matter where it may be.’ The Nie take their ridiculous motto far too seriously. Sometimes I think they’re worse than the Jiang…! Lao Nie got it into his head that your sect had forced you into seclusion and he was on the verge of marching over to tear down their gate to find you. He wouldn’t have stopped simply on their say-so.”
Lan Qiren should not feel complimented by the threat of violence against his beloved home. He would have been utterly furious and deeply betrayed if Lao Nie had actually gone ahead and invaded the Cloud Recesses, even if Lao Nie could be trusted not to have harmed any innocents, even if Lan Qiren really had been trapped away in his own home as a prisoner.
(It was a little worrisome that Lao Nie thought Lan Qiren being trapped like that was a real possibility. Normally Lan Qiren would have said that Lao Nie had superb judgment regarding political situations, provided he wasn’t sexually attracted to any of the relevant participants, and for him to suspect such a thing might occur, to the point of threatening actual violence if confirmation that it had not happened were not provided, meant that he must truly see it as a genuine risk. Lan Qiren didn’t like to think about what that might mean.)
“At any rate, someone at your sect must have managed to calm him down. I believe one of your letters must have actually reached the intended destination, albeit with the providence hidden – my sources tell me that your sect presented him with a letter that suggested you were elsewhere, and in good health, if not especially great temper. At which point he switched over to demanding to know why they hadn’t done more to find and retrieve you.”
And that, of course, was something that Lao Nie could press through simply political means and a refusal to cooperate, once his initial concern regarding Lan Qiren’s safety was assuaged. If the letter they’d shown him had been the one Lan Qiren suspected it was, the one he’d addressed to Lan Yueheng, Lao Nie would have reasonably concluded that Lan Qiren was extremely unhappy with his present circumstances but still safe and unwilling to act further without his sect’s approval, suggesting a lack of present danger. He therefore would have felt comfortable to limiting himself to using his sect’s power to bully and harass the Lan sect into revoking whatever orders he must have assumed they’d given Lan Qiren to keep him where he was.
Anincorrect assumption, but quite reasonable – and reasonable for the Lan sect to encourage it, too.
“I understand all of that,” Lan Qiren said. “But there’s one thing I still don’t understand. How did you convince my sect to give you my nephews? Or, rather, to not start a manhunt to search for them no less fervent than Jiang Fengmian’s?”
“Oh, they know they’re somewhere,” Wen Ruohan said lazily. “And with you, too. I just didn’t tell them where.”
“…did you lead my sect to think that I absconded with my nephews?!”
“I can’t tell if you’re more annoyed that I did it or that you didn’t think to do it first,” Wen Ruohan said, and Lan Qiren firmly squashed the small part of him that guiltily thought that it might not have been the worst idea. Such a thought was selfish: his nephews deserved to be raised in the safety and comfort of the Cloud Recesses, surrounded by their family that loved them and the rules their ancestors had left them, both rules and sect both their proper birthright that they should never be denied. That raising them by himself, without interference, would be more comfortable for him was irrelevant – that he would have enjoyed traveling the world with them by his side, pointless to think about.
That was not the life he was fated to have.
“They should have figured out that you haven’t by now, of course, assuming they’re not complete fools,” Wen Ruohan remarked. “Your letter made quite clear that you were exceedingly annoyed at having been detained, and expressed your concern regarding your nephews – any person reading it would understand at once that you were being involuntarily restrained from returning home.”
Lan Qiren’s eye twitched. “Wen Ruohan.”
“Yes?”
“The only way you would know that is if you have been reading my mail.”
“I never said I wasn’t,” Wen Ruohan said, smirking at him. “Only that I didn’t take any action to stop it from reaching its final destination…though I’m rather tempted with the latest. Tell me, were you just intending on giving me a headache, or is there some code or hidden message in all that math?”
“No meaning at all other than the fact that my cousin enjoys mathematics and alchemy, and I thought he might enjoy the contents of one of the books I picked up on the subject,” Lan Qiren said, and didn’t even glare – there was no point, since it clearly wasn’t teaching Wen Ruohan anything but how to best irritate him.
It was immensely uncomfortable to be robbed of his moral high ground when it came to the matter of his staying in the Nightless City, especially since the Wen sect wasn’t even getting any real benefits out of the political situation between the Lan and Nie, but Lan Qiren comforted himself that Wen Ruohan was at least still getting his services as a teacher, however…inappropriately obtained, at the start. And Wen Ruohan himself was handling the shift in circumstances with more grace than Lan Qiren might have expected – relatively little gloating, all things considered, and nothing more intimate than some light flirtation which could be tolerated, and even sometimes enjoyed when the other man was in particularly amusing form.
Wen Ruohan seemed…better, all told, than he had been before. Than he had been for years, really.
He laughed at things, and spent time with his sons even outside of their regular dinners, and took to the business of running his sect with enthusiasm rather than dull apathy. Lan Qiren even overheard one of the guards commenting with bemusement that they’d never seen him go without a visit to his Fire Palace for so long. Even the way he carried himself seemed different, his entire demeanor seeming almost younger than usual, his temperament livelier and even a little mischievous.
Indeed, Lan Qiren could see the change in how his servants reacted, each one slowly starting first to relax and then to be pleased – pleased mostly with Lan Qiren, in fact, since the majority seemed to ascribe Wen Ruohan’s improvement to their supposed relationship. His requests were fulfilled with alacrity, his teapot scarcely had an opportunity to grow cold, much less empty, and the kitchens had even, just that morning, sent a page to inquire as to whether there was any dishes he particularly favored or might like to see. He’d mentioned a few of his usual favorites and also the fern noodles recipe he’d developed such a curiosity over, and they’d promised to see what they could do.
Wen Ruohan’s changed behavior wasn’t due to a relationship between them, of course, but Lan Qiren was hard pressed to identify what exactly had caused it. He wasn’t vain enough to think it was simply due to his presence, but neither could he bring himself to think that it was pure happenstance that his presence coincided with such a dramatic change.
At any rate, Lan Qiren decided not to question it.
In the end, they walked together for a little longer in silence as Lan Qiren thought over Wen Ruohan’s proposal.
Well, it had been more of a statement than a proposal, but he was choosing to take it as one anyway.
Wen Ruohan walked beside him, looking pleased with himself as he waited for him to finish thinking without any show of impatience. He knew, presumably, that Lan Qiren was bad with decisions that went too quickly, and that forcing the issue would only make him defensive and more likely to stiffen his back and be stubborn for no reason at all. He presumably knew, too, that no one could convince a person of something they wanted better that they themselves could…
Irritating man.
Howdare he be so attractive.
Finally, unable to think of any other potential problem, Lan Qiren asked, “Have you resolved your issues with Lao Nie?”
Wen Ruohan twitched.
“Perhaps that’s a question better aimed at you,” he said, his smile a little stiff all of a suddenly, and Lan Qiren belatedly realized that the fearless tyrant had been afraid to raise the subject of Lao Nie because he didn’t know how Lan Qiren would react to it.
“You did that to yourself, not responding to me all this time,” Lan Qiren told him crossly. “I would have told you up front that I’m fine with it.”
Wen Ruohan blinked. “Fine – with it? What is ‘it’ here, exactly?”
“Physical fidelity is unimportant to me, especially since I don’t generally see the point of all that nonsense anyway, however willing to participate in it for your sake I might be,” Lan Qiren explained. “What I care about is your heart, and if you offer me that, I am confident that it will be mine alone. Even if you continue to bed Lao Nie, you could offer your heart to him a thousand times over and he’d find a way to dance away each time as if it were a burning ember.”
“…ouch,” Wen Ruohan said dryly, but seemed to relax, the tension flowing out of his stance. “You’re right. He would, and that is what has been between us all this while, festering…perhaps it is some fault within me, but I cannot love fully what is not clasped within my grasp, what is not and will never be mine. I can be fond of him, I can have affection for him, I can even invite him to my bed, but I can’t trust him, and that is all there is to it.”
“And your wives?” Lan Qiren frowned. “The living ones, I mean. You said your first wife, Wen Xu’s mother, she was involved –”
Wen Ruohan waved a hand. “Ambitious and treacherous as a dog, willing to sink to any low as long as it was for her son’s benefit,” he said, and actually sounded approving. Ugh, Wen sect! “I can no more condemn her than I do the other sects for what they did. Self-interest is self-interest, and hers, at least, she thought would be to the benefit of my bloodline. Now that Wen Xu will be named the official heir, being trained to take the reins of power as my deputy, I think she may finally be willing to rest easy in her retirement…of course, I have censured her and restricted her spending for the next three years, cut in full for the present year and halved for the next two. She won’t be able to show her face unless she wears last season’s fashions, and she won’t do that.”
Lan Qiren didn’t quite understand how that worked, but Wen Ruohan seemed satisfied, and in the end it really wasn’t any of Lan Qiren’s business. He might have objected to an enforced isolation, the sort He Kexin had been forced into, but a self-imposed one…well, with his brother as his example, he couldn’t exactly say much about it without being a rank hypocrite.
“The second one won’t be any problem either,” Wen Ruohan said. “She’s not very smart. I’ve commissioned one of my more loyal retainers to pay attendance upon her – you haven’t met him, his name is Wen Zhuliu; quite talented, albeit not very creative. I’d had him in mind initially to be A-Chao’s bodyguard, but he’ll do just as well for the mother as for the son. I expect them to be lovers soon enough, and whenever she has a lover she thinks of nothing else. I’ll be all yours.”
“Emotionally.”
“…emotionally, yes. Though if you were interested–”
“Even if I were interested, you wouldn’t be satisfied with any one person, least of all someone like me that doesn’t enjoy it that much. You’re not going to swear fidelity to anyone,” Lan Qiren pointed out, and Wen Ruohan considered it and shrugged in agreement. “No more bastards, though.”
“That won’t be an issue; I’ve learned my lesson. Does that mean you agree?”
“It means I’ll think about it.”
“I can convince you some more, if you like –”
Over the years, Lan Qiren had found plenty of his students in the shadow of the trees that lined the more distant pathways of the Cloud Recesses, curled up in each other’s arms and rather breathless from the kisses they’d been trading, horrified to have been discovered by their stern teacher, but he’d never actually thought he’d be one of them.
Truly, as the rules said, one never stopped learning…
Of course, the rules also said Do not wallow in luxury and pleasure, but Lan Qiren thought he could make a decent argument for why what he was doing could not be considered wallowing.
Or, well, he probably could, anyway, once he could think properly again.
“I have chores,” he said blankly to the sky as Wen Ruohan explored the hitherto-unknown sensitive areas on his neck and ear. “I have – Xichen’s chores. My own remaining duties. It’s getting late.”
“Let it get late,” Wen Ruohan said.
Still, when Lan Qiren gently pushed him, he obediently released Lan Qiren with only a bit of grumbling.
“Diligence is the root,” Lan Qiren said, straightening out his clothing and willing his face and ears to not be so red. “This won’t take long. You can go back –”
“I’ll come with you,” Wen Ruohan said promptly. “It’s been a while since I’ve actually walked through the Cloud Recesses, rather than remaining only in the areas meant for guests and meetings. If I’m going to marry in, I ought to start getting used to it, shouldn’t I?”
Lan Qiren huffed, but allowed it.
Tragically, having Wen Ruohan at his elbow, showing his teeth like some predator on the hunt, actually did turn out to be exceptionally useful, with many of those that might have otherwise found a reason to quibble with Lan Qiren suddenly finding a reason to be elsewhere, or else giving in and letting him solve their problem directly. It would have been a problem if Wen Ruohan were an outsider – Lan Qiren could at no point allow himself to be seen as swayed by influences outside the sect, or else he would lose all authority forever, seen only as a puppet – but if he were to marry in, he wouldn’t be an outsider; he would be Lan Qiren’s wife, his very purpose to support Lan Qiren in all his endeavors.
Anyway, it wasn’t only intimidation and the powerful Wen sect that Wen Ruohan brought to bear. He had a century’s worth of experience at managing people, and it showed, both in the way he interacted with people and the suggestions he whispered into Lan Qiren’s ear where appropriate, and as a result Lan Qiren spent more of his attention on watching him than he did on the actual tasks he was supposed to be accomplishing, most of which he could do in his sleep.
Possibly that was the reason he didn’t notice or attach any significance to the fact that one of the tasks on Lan Xichen’s list was visiting with Lan Jinyan, a task that primarily involved making sure that old teacher had enough tea and other comforts and had not at any point shuffled off the mortal coil when no one was looking. These days, the old man tended to stay put in his favorite chair in his garden, as still and motionless as a statue unless actively prodded into a response, so the usual process was to try to talk to him a few times (often at ever-increasing volumes) and eventually edge forward into his personal space until he turned to glare or squint blearily at the intruder…there was a reason this was a task deemed appropriate for eleven-year-olds like Lan Xichen.
Mostly because it was too embarrassing for adults.
This time, though, after they’d entered the secluded little garden but before Lan Qiren could actually say or do anything, the old man’s head turned towards them like a dog scenting a rabbit.
“Oh, that’s nice,” Lan Jinyan said amiably enough. “Seventh Young Master hasn’t visited for quite some time.”
Lan Qiren was fairly accustomed to the grand-elder mistaking him for someone else – the most usual was some person called Lan Liangsheng, who was apparently nicknamed ‘little dragon’ and who also apparently needed regular scoldings for being ‘too well-mannered and obedient’ – so he didn’t think much of it, at first.
Wen Ruohan, however, stopped dead in his tracks.
Lan Qiren turned his head towards him, questioning, but Wen Ruohan didn’t notice; he was too busy scrutinizing Lan Jinyan with a strange expression on his face.
“Do I…know you?” he asked, sounding strangely hesitant. It occurred to Lan Qiren that Wen Ruohan, who had had numerous siblings now all lost to time, might in fact once have been a Seventh Young Master, long, long ago.
Long ago enough, perhaps, that an ancient like Lan Jinyan really might have recognized him.
“What was that?” Lan Jinyan said, frowning, and Lan Qiren obediently stepped forward and repeated Wen Ruohan’s question at a much louder volume, more appropriate for Lan Jinyan’s elderly ears. He also politely clarified that the person next to him was named Wen Ruohan, just in case of any mistake.
“Oh, no, probably not,” the old man said once he’d finally understood. “I was always a homebody, spending all my time in Cloud Recesses while you were off making yourself famous! Never much liked the outside world, personally; too many people. Though my younger brother did go on a few night-hunts with the Eleventh Young Master, and I joined in once or twice. Charming young man, very charming. No other cultivator had a family even half as large as that in my day…my didi was fifth, you know, and that was already startling enough for us, positively unheard of. The notion of aneleventh…”
Wen Ruohan made a strangled sort of noise. “Yes, well,” he said, and cleared his throat with an effort. “My father thought himself an emperor, and decided to start on the part of that which he enjoyed most. Jin Guangshan reminds me of him, sometimes…you said you night-hunted with Ruoyu? What did you say your name was?”
Much to Lan Qiren’s bemusement, it turned out old Lan Jinyan actually had accurately recognized Wen Ruohan – which he supposed made sense given how little the man had changed over the years, and how often Lan Jinyan’s memory receded back into the past – and had, in fact, gone on a few night-hunts with Wen Ruohan’s favorite younger brother. Lan Qiren ended up making tea and eavesdropping on a frankly fascinating conversation that seemed to revolve in large part about rebuilding after ‘that awful war’ (they both danced around the subject for quite some time before tacitly conceding that it had apparently been caused by the Lan sect leader of the time, and now Lan Qiren was dying of curiosity, he’d have to check the library for clues), as well as something very vague and highly unsettling about a cultivation blight (he didn’t want to know) and some interesting (and long-deceased) people that they’d both known or at least known of, Wen Ruoyu (an accomplished warrior who excelled at all weapons but preferred the spear, as well as an avid collector of all sorts of random things, apparently) not the least of them.
It was the most excited Lan Qiren had seen his old teacher since his childhood.
“What brings you to the Cloud Recesses, anyway?” Lan Jinyan finally asked. “Your cultivation level’s too high to feel age the way the rest of us do, for all that I’ve lasted plenty longer than most.”
“He’s the Wen Sect Leader,” Lan Qiren said, not for the first time, and was dismissed with a “Yes, yes, Liangsheng, I know,” and a pat on the head as usual for his troubles. He tried not to roll his eyes and glared when Wen Ruohan smirked at him.
“The Wen sect never comes this far to the back halls,” Lan Jinyan said to Wen Ruohan. “It’d be far too suspicious for you lot of conquerors. You must have another purpose than mere sect business.”
“Oh, I do,” Wen Ruohan said cheerfully. “I’ve come to convince Qiren here to marry me.”
“I’m not marrying you,” Lan Qiren reminded him. “You’re marrying me.If I agree, which I haven’t!”
“Right, right. As he said: I’ve come to convince Qiren here to marry me in.”
Lan Jinyan blinked a little, clearly still processing the suggestion entirely. “You and little Liangsheng? Oh, that’ll be good, very good. He’s a little too eager to please, sometimes, but he’s got steel in him, a temper like nobody’s business, stubborn as anything. That’s the dragon part, I think, though sometimes I think we only say dragon because we won’t say donkey. At any rate, it’ll be a good match for your inexorable sun. I give you my blessing.”
Wen Ruohan looked taken aback at first, clearly not having expected anyone to dare, and then increasingly delighted.
Lan Qiren pinched the bridge of his nose.
Do not disrespect your elders.Be a filial child.
“Thank you, grand-uncle,” he said, voice as neutral as he could manage. He was acting sect leader, he didn’t need anyone’s blessing. “Much appreciated, grand-uncle.”
“Your brother would have been pleased,” Lan Jinyan continued, ignoring him entirely to speak with Wen Ruohan, who froze at once, going as still as a statute, or perhaps a corpse. “He always thought the world of you, you know. The only negative thing I ever heard him say about you was that the only mistake you’d ever made was in marrying that…ah, in marrying your first wife, that is. Thought she was beneath you, if I recall, said she was pedestrian and unequal to your greatness, always thinking first of advantage and second of people, and letting her emotions get ahead of her thoughts in either case…I agree whole-heartedly with that, Seventh Young Master Wen. You need someone who’s always thinking, and who will let you fill his heart with nothing but thoughts of you. A proper Lan, just the way you Wen are all so afraid of – yes, that’s what you need. Good, good. Never too late to start fixing things, is it?”
“I suppose not,” Wen Ruohan said thoughtfully.
He continued to be thoughtful all the way back to the guest rooms that had been assigned to him, and which Lan Qiren insisted he stay at under threat of – well, he’d think of something, anyway.
“Does it bother you?” he finally asked after they’d gotten there. “That I’m a peer to some old fart like that?”
“You’ve handled aging better,” Lan Qiren said dryly. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t knownWen Ruohan was a cultivation monster that had lived past the boundaries of a normal lifetime, even for cultivators – that all his contemporaries were dead, other than those that had been hiding away, one foot in the grave, like Lan Jinyan. “I’m just amazed he managed to get through an entire conversation intact. He’s normally quite forgetful.”
“He lives in the past,” Wen Ruohan said. “There’s nothing left here in the present for him. His close kin are gone, his wife and children sent along before him, those unfilial descendants that are left behind already distant strangers that know him only by reputation – no friends nor equals, no one who understands anything of the now-gone world in which he spent his life. Why notforget?”
He shook his head before Lan Qiren could answer.
“I know what you’re going to say,” he said. “Do not give up on learning, right? We must always proceed forward. Only the dead do not change…I’ve been living in the past for too long, striving towards old ambitions and nurturing old grudges and hatreds as if they were all that sustained me. Lao Nie refused to accept that, and so did you, and I – I suppose I am forced to admit that you both have a point.”
“Amazing. I didn’t know you knew how to do that.”
“Oh yes,” Wen Ruohan said, and pressed his lips on Lan Qiren’s cheek. “I remember. You are a paragon of righteousness, who only sometimes ducks out of parties to teach the host’s children some lessons because – how did you put it – the host was being an –”
Lan Qiren coughed pointedly to interrupt him, flushing. “You’ve made your point,” he said hastily.
“Have I? I could make it a few more times –”
“You will do no such thing. I’ve permitted too many liberties already.”
“Mm, indeed. How do your rules put it, do not be promiscuous?”
It was Promiscuity wasn’t prohibited, actually.
“That is not applicable,” Lan Qiren hissed, flushing red.
Wen Ruohan was grinning. “Isn’t it? Ah, yes, of course – there’s exceptions for the newly engaged. Naturally, that means that if you want to continue being a good little rule follower, you should agree with my proposal. Unless you’d prefer to admit your error and apply a little bit of discipline – appropriately witnessed by the victim, of course –”
“Iwill use that song I made on you,” Lan Qiren threatened, but it had the opposite effect intended: Wen Ruohan’s eyes lit up in delight.
“You know what it does now? Wonderful! Is it awful?I hope it’s terrible. I want to see –”
“Get lost.”
“Qiren! Is that any way to speak to your future wife? Where is your etiquette? Your chivalry?”
Lan Qiren was having trouble maintaining a stern expression.
He was also losing this argument.
An argument about the rules, no less. Utterly unacceptable.
“I’m serious,” he said instead. “Go back to your quarters. If you’re serious about your proposal, you’ll have to make it to the larger collection of sect elders, not to me; after all, it’s inappropriate for a man to arrange his own marriage. And if you want to see the sect elders, it’ll take me all day tomorrow to get them wrangled up if you want to see them the day after, and the day after that –”
“The day after that, tragically, your classes will be starting and you will have no choice but to absent yourself from the majority of our discussions,” Wen Ruohan said, and his smile was broad and genuine, shining like the summer sun in the sky, relentless and warm all in one; he knew agreement when he heard it. “As it should be, when one is negotiating a marriage. Don’t worry, Qiren! I promise to be good.”
Somehow, Lan Qiren doubted he would ever truly be that.
That was fine. Sad to say, Lan Qiren thought he might like him that way.
True to form and expectation, Wen Ruohan showed up, and three days ahead of all the rest, too.
Lan Qiren knew, because Lan Yueheng burst into his office to announce it with a big wide grin that was immediately echoed on the faces of all of Lan Qiren’s new secretaries.
“Running is prohibited in the Cloud Recesses,” Lan Qiren said sternly, ignoring them all.
“So is promiscuity,” Lan Ganhui cackled in what was definitely not enough of a whisper that he could have plausibly thought that Lan Qiren wouldn’t overhear him.
“Do not smile foolishly,” Li Zhouxi put in before Lan Qiren could – she was mimicking him, he could tell; his students did it often enough, and the gesture she made of pretending to stroke her chin as if she had a beard was remarkably reminiscent of the one Cangse Sanren liked to make. “We’ve got the rest of the work covered for today, Teacher Lan. You should go greet your guest! After all, it would be inappropriate for anything less than the Sect Leader to meet with a guest as august as Sect Leader Wen.”
Lan Qiren’s eye twitched, but – in fact, she was right, and moreover, he really did want to go see him.
It was one thing when he could blame the lack of correspondence on the mastermind, but it had been some time, so surely that was resolved by now. Anyway, now that Wen Ruohan knew there was a problem with the mail, there was no way he wouldn’t be able to get letters through if he really wanted; the man was the sort that wouldn’t hesitate to force some poor servant to fly all the way to Gusu if that was what it took. That meant that Wen Ruohan’s silence was deliberate, and deliberately provocative, a rightful cause for irritation and even genuine anger…
And Lan Qiren wanted to see him rather desperately anyway.
“Fine,” he said with a faint sigh, and pointedly ignored how they all did that same exact facial expression that was typically completely unnoticeable to unfamiliar outsiders but which within the Lan sect meant the same as breaking out in rapturous applause. The Li siblings had clearly been at the Cloud Recesses too long if they were picking up family habits. “I will go meet with our guest.”
Wen Ruohan was indeed at the gate with all his usual retinue – the Wen sect travelled with more grandeur than anyone but the Jin, and liked in particular to show off how numerous they were. Looking at the size of the retinue now, it seemed that all of those tendencies were magnified considerably in the rare occasions that their sect leader deigned to go out into the world, and then magnified even more when he was trying to show off on purpose. He was surrounded by people, many many people, and despite having stayed in the Nightless City for a considerable bit of time before and tried to get to know its inhabitants, Lan Qiren couldn’t have named a single one of them right now, his gaze firmly fixed upon Wen Ruohan himself.
He looked – good.
Better than before, even. There was more color in his face than usual, more expression in his eyes, and he seemed more comfortable than he had been when Lan Qiren had last seen him, more accustomed to this new state of existence; he no longer looked as if he had died at the end of his natural lifespan and that what had kept on moving was only walking around in his corpse. He had that terrible smirk that suggested either the presence of Lao Nie (unlikely, given that Nie Mingjue had already finished his classes at the Cloud Recesses and Nie Huaisang wouldn’t be ready for them for a few more years unless he, too, wanted to go to the junior class), imminent conquest (equally unlikely, despite the number of Wen sect disciples present suggesting that they might as well be planning to move in – they weren’t dressed for it, and Wen Ruohan had an excess notion of style), or the firm belief that he was about to get something he’d wanted for some time.
He was beautiful.
Lan Qiren had such bad taste.
He was still bemoaning it to himself as he went to go greet the other man, only at that point he realized that ‘greeting’ someone and actually getting to talkto them were completely different things.
There were processes and procedures for greeting another sect leader, formalities to be observed, each one painfully formulaic, hideously boring, and critically necessary given that their sects were not formally allied nor historically on good terms – and then when that was done there were even more formalities and bureaucracy to deal with in terms of enlisting Wen Xu and Wen Chao as temporary guest disciples and making all the usual assurances that they would be cared for appropriately while in the Lan sect.
Lan Qiren had always had a great deal of patience for such things.
Apparently not today.
Eventually, and it felt as though a minor era of the world had passed by first, they managed to lose their obsequiously helpful staff and go off by themselves. Admittedly, achieving such a feat had taken Wen Ruohan glaring death at everyone and pointedly talking about how although the Fire Palace had been closed, it wouldn’t actually take much to reopen it again – a bit of renovation, a bit of paint, some new torture devices – and Lan Qiren spontaneously deciding that Wen Ruohan needed to go view their Wall of Discipline so that he could, if he wished, see a real life example of Lan sect discipline imposed on anyone who followed them there, but they did manage it.
Mostly.
“I can’t believe you have a list of chores,” Wen Ruohan remarked as they walked. “Aren’t you sect leader? Since when do sect leaders get assigned chores?”
Lan Qiren rolled his eyes and shoved the list he’d been handed into his sleeve. “It’s your fault,” he said. “They’re not mychores. I granted Lan Xichen permission to take the afternoon off to take your sons on a tour – ”
Said sons (and Lan Xichen, for that matter) had been among the most persistent of their avid following, and Lan Qiren had been desperate to get rid of them. It turned out that they were all far too invested in what was going to happen – Wen Xu was apparently an avid devotee of opera and theater, the less said about Lan Xichen the better, and Wen Chao was very nearly as bad as the two of them put together despite being of such young age that Lan Qiren wasn’t sure he entirely understood what romance was. At least Lan Wangji and Wen Ning were just tagging along for the ride, completely disinterested other than joining in on the fun of bothering their elders, and Lan Qiren hoped that they stayed that way for a good long while…though of course too much disinterest now might blow up in his face later on, if Lan Wangji eventually grew into that irritating Lan sect heart he’d inherited and fell unexpected in love.
Still, there were some things that teenage boys did not need to witness, even overly romantic teenage boys, and Lan Qiren’s personal life was very high on that list.
In his opinion, anyway. The boys had all looked supremely disappointed.
“ – and as the person who granted the exemption, I have to make sure the chores he would otherwise have done are completed.”
“Must you do it personally?”
That was suspiciously close to a whine.
“I’m leading by example,” Lan Qiren said, barely suppressing a sigh. “I can’t allow anyone to accuse me of hypocrisy now, it’ll undercut all my efforts to date. Besides, seeing the sect leader completing menial tasks will encourage others to do the same, showing that no one is above such things. It’s…good for the sect.”
He just had to keep reminding himself of that.
“Anyway,” he said, ignoring how unconvinced Wen Ruohan looked, “I’m more than capable of completing Xichen’s chores in a tenth of the time it would take him, so we do have time for a walk first.”
“Indeed we do,” Wen Ruohan said, finally looking somewhat appeased. “And we can speak of many things.”
“Indeed we can,” Lan Qiren said, and then before Wen Ruohan could bring up anything embarrassing while they were still in earshot of the Lan sect disciples – or, worse, attempt to proposition him, because that was completely something he would believe of Wen Ruohan – he added, “I heard rumors that you recently made some major changes within your sect’s hierarchy. Dare I hope that you have solved the issue you were having last time?”
“I did,” Wen Ruohan said, the chance to boast about his accomplishments working to distract him where little else would. He waved his hand idly and a sound-proofing array appeared around them, the array circle surrounding them visible for only a moment before disappearing and taking the surrounding noise of chattering birds and equally chattering disciples along with it. Lan Qiren hadn’t even known that mobile versions of such a thing existed, and was mildly suspicious of it not having existed previously. “Regretfully, the mastermind was a relative of mine – the head of the subsidiary family branch, near Dafan. You wouldn’t know him, I doubt you’ve ever met, but…”
“Dafan…?” Lan Qiren said, and frowned. “Wen Qing and Wen Ning?”
“Mm, yes. Their grandfather. He’d been causing problems for a while – that was one of the reasons I took them both in as my wards after their parents died. I didn’t want him raising any other children to make trouble for me.”
Lan Qiren considered for a moment, then decided not to ask if Wen Ruohan had had anything to do with the death of the parents in question. If Wen Qing and Wen Ning’s parents had lost their lives by rebelling against their sect leader, taking them in to the Nightless City as a means of assuring the good behavior of the rest of their family was far preferable to the alternative option – namely, slaughtering them all. And yet, at the same time…
“I thought Wen Qing once mentioned that her family branch had long focused exclusively on medicine-making?” he asked.
“Oh, they are, they are! But that doesn’t stop them from making trouble.” Wen Ruohan chuckled. “Poor A-Qing. She can be a little naïve. She’s interpreted the fact that her clan hasn’t raised a sword in war for years as some sort of familial vow of pacifism, love all beings the way your Lan sect rules say to do, or perhaps something like ‘a doctor treats all in need, no matter high and low’, which I vaguely recall as being something stupid Wen Mao once said. In fact their custom means no such thing; it’s only that they figured out long ago that they could do more damage with their needles and poisons than a sword. Her father had a remarkable facility for growing plants that could be refined into highly acidic compounds, and a profound facility for doing just that, using them to great effect…of course, many of those plants also have medicinal purposes, so I suspect he didn’t explain to his daughter the primary use of what he was doing was before he died.”
“I should hope he didn’t,” Lan Qiren said, a little appalled. It wasn’t actually a surprise, given what he knew about the Wen clan and their personalities, their traditional inclination towards arrogance in a myriad of different forms – though he supposed it was probably for the best that Wen Qing, as the next head of that particular family branch, retained her illusions about her family history. It would make for a more peaceful future.
And then, despite himself and his own hopes for a more peaceful future, he found himself saying, “I don’t suppose you’ve met my cousin Lan Yueheng…”
“I have not, but I look forward to doing so,” Wen Ruohan said. “Don’t think I didn’t notice that you addressed all your private mail to him. He’s the one with the alchemy focus and the, what did you call them, ‘nightmare plants’? I’ll broker an introduction between him and them.”
That had in fact been what Lan Qiren had wanted. He inclined his head in thanks. “I assume that introduction does not include the troublemaker in question?”
“It does not, no. There’s a limit to the number of times I’ll be schemed against, even by close family.” Wen Ruohan’s eyes were briefly quite hard. “You see, he was one of the – mistakes. One of the first. I’d been far too lenient with him as a result, letting him think he’d gotten away with things before, and that made him feel too confident. He has now learned that there are lines that cannot be crossed.”
Lan Qiren arched his eyebrows, more interested in the first part of what Wen Ruohan had said. “Mistakes?”
Wen Ruohan shrugged. “I’m no Jin Guangshan to leave my bloodline abandoned throughout the countryside, but neither am I a Jiang Fengmian, to bring my bastards back to sit like cuckoos in the home nest. If something happened, I would collect them, compensate the mother appropriately and ensure she’s married off if she wishes, and then send them out to be adopted into the branch families.”
Lan Qiren made a noise of understanding. That explained it, he supposed. This grandfather of Wen Ning’s was an unacknowledged son of Wen Ruohan’s, and bitter about it even after he’d been formally adopted out of the line of inheritance. It was not terribly uncommon a strategy among clans with large enough families to handle it, although the Lan sect never engaged in it (or at least never admitted to it). It often led to some trouble, since everyone knew the bloodline connection, and it could lead to issues down the line if someone in the branch line turned out to be more talented than in the main line – of course, usually the original progenitor did not last quite such a long time, rendering such inheritance questions irrelevant. Wen Ruohan looked as though he were in his twenties, not old enough to have great-grandchildren…
“How many are there?” Lan Qiren asked. “Do you know?”
“Of course I know! If you don’t keep track of such things, you’re just asking for incest to happen sometime down the line through no fault of the people involved. Other than A-Qing and A-Ning, there are seven still living, whether of direct or indirect descent, and most are quite content where they are. I cannot repeat it enough: I am not Jin Guangshan.”
No, merely friendly with him.
“What was his purpose in doing what he did, then?” Lan Qiren asked. “With a formal adoption to a branch family…I mean, Wen Qing is talented, to be sure, but not enough to plausibly win a battle over succession against Wen Xu, and anyway you’ve been raising her; she has no loyalty to his branch, so he couldn’t have wanted that. And given his age, hecouldn’t have inherited even if you died –”
“Not unless I went mad, cut off all of my emotions, and started a war with the rest of the cultivation world that would coincidentally end with both of my heirs and myself all dead,” Wen Ruohan said, and grimaced. “I think his expectation was that I would lose the war once I’d become too mad for self-control, but I really don’t have such a low opinion of myself. I would have gone mad in a far more rational style than that.”
Lan Qiren didn’t doubt it. Wen Ruohan was best known in the cultivation world for his relentless ambition, and such things did not disappear in the face of madness – he would only have become far crueler, more ruthless, less lenient. That ambitious grandfather in Dafan would probably have been the first to be executed if his plan had actually worked.
“How did he manage to get the mail, though?” he asked, frowning. “If he was all the way in Dafan? There must have been someone else.”
“Oh, there was,” Wen Ruohan said with a shrug. “He’d reached an agreement with my first wife that when I was dead, they would divide up my Wen sect’s territory between them.”
Lan Qiren looked at him sidelong. Wen Ruohan did not appear overly upset by the revelation, although Lan Qiren supposed that he had had more time to absorb the blow.
“I expect that’s why she never made an appearance to pester you directly, in fact – too busy plotting,” Wen Ruohan shook his head. “I should have guessed back then, really. She would never tolerate a threat to her power or position and a single ploy or two wouldn’t be sufficient.”
“A ploy that included attempts to instigate several fights between us, followed by an assassination attempt involving an explosive,” Lan Qiren reminded him. “An explosive that could have hit my nephews. Does she really hate you that much?”
“Not at all. I’m merely an obstacle in her path – if it all worked, she would have kept the Nightless City for A-Xu to rule, while he would lead the area around Dafan to break off and become independent, with a great deal of territory for itself. It was, I suppose, the price she thought as worthwhile for getting me knocked off before I could pick another heir or actually became a god and was no longer in need of one.” Wen Ruohan smirked. “I’m almost complimented that she was so worried about that possibility.”
Of course he was.
“Still, it seems strange that she should be capable of so much,” Lan Qiren said, deciding not to give that statement the dignity of a response. “That explosion was caused by a battle talisman, and one of great strength, too. Only a Great Sect’s armory would be able to produce one, and I cannot believe that either your wife or a branch family member would have access to your armory without your knowledge, no matter how high their status.”
“Of course not. But you don’t think there were internal politics without external ones, do you? Naturally they made a number of agreements with certain other parties for support ahead of time, making sure that the changeover of power would be relatively painless. And there are always wolves at the door, willing to lend a hand…”
“Not the Lan,” Lan Qiren said immediately with a fierce scowl. He would never have signed off on such a vile thing, a wife and son conspiring to kill their husband and father, and neither would Lan Tianqi, though he supposed that if push came to shove that certain of the elders more resistant to his reforms might have considered it a sacrifice in favor of the greater good. Perhaps they even would have without the push, but that required them having the capability, which after all the efforts he had made, however blunted they had been, he doubted they had had. “And neither would the Nie.”
Lao Nie was also ambitious, to be sure, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew Wen Ruohan too well to think that losing his mind would reduce his capacity.
Wen Ruohan nodded in agreement, only he looked pleased with himself. “I suppose I really can’t hold it against Jin Guangshan and Jiang Fengmian for expressing interest in expanding their sect’s territories by absorbing parts of my Wen sect, especially if all they had to do was look the wrong way about a few talismans and other small things. After all, they were only acting in their sect’s self-interest.”
Those two sects would now be facing severe consequences for their behavior in the next few discussion conferences regardless of how involved they were or weren’t, Lan Qiren interpreted – he personally thought Jin Guangshan the more likely, given that if he recalled correctly Wen Xu’s maternal family had something of a connection there, and Jiang Fengmian had been extraordinarily busy at the time with his successful hunt for Cangse Sanren’s son – and made a note to himself to raise the issue with Lan Ganhui and the others to see if there was something they could make of it themselves.
His Lan sect might not support internecine strife, philosophically speaking, but they were still a Great Sect, and therefore required to be politically minded; this sort of tussling between their peers might leave room for the Lan sect to fish in muddied waters and pursue their own self-interest. Lanling Jin in particular was their neighbor to the north, and some of the southern-most small sects that were their subsidiaries were quite well off in their own right. If the Wen went at the Jin with any seriously effort, they would quickly become scared, each one of them a fat sheep ready to be snatched up by a steadier, more tranquil minder once their current shepherd was too occupied to notice…
(Sometimes Lan Qiren wished that he could truly be a scholar, untainted by such worldly affairs. But that would leave his sect undefended against the wolves and tigers outside their door, and he would never permit such a thing.)
“How about Lao Nie, then?” Lan Qiren asked. “He never said why he showed up when he did, but it was right after we had had our fight, which was rather suspicious…”
“You can blame that one on your explosive cousin,” Wen Ruohan said dryly. “Complete coincidence that he showed up when he did. If anything, all signs point to efforts being made to keep Lao Nie away from the situation, lest he help us resolve it…which I supposed, reluctantly, I must admit he did.”
Lan Qiren acknowledged the point.
“I see,” he said, reviewing it all in his head. That seemed to be…everything, really. “Well done.”
Wen Ruohan nodded. “What about you?” he asked, unusually polite and maybe even actually interested. “How are your efforts proceeding? I take it that it has still been difficult to make the changes you want to see take root, given your comment earlier about not being able to demonstrate even the slightest hint of hypocrisy?”
“Dealing with sect elders is very difficult, particularly when they are older than you and thus deserving of respect, regardless of how little they may have done to earn it,” Lan Qiren said with a faint sigh. “You may have forgotten it on account of being the oldest member of your sect for quite some time, but it brings all sorts of problems. They’re all very well-respected, honorable elders, with families and disciples that depend on them…they have deep roots and solid foundations, a wide web of debt and unspoken obligations to support htem. It’s hard to unravel, and harder still to actually impose discipline upon them. It doesn’t help that they don’t have a very high opinion of a young upstart like me.”
“Wellthat’s solved easily enough,” Wen Ruohan said, and now he looked even more pleased with himself. “They won’t be able to use age or experience to look down on you once we’re married.”
Lan Qiren had known it was coming.
Still, it had been so long since the time that he’d anticipated Wen Ruohan’s courtship attempts to start up again that he’d let down his guard. So now it came as a surprise once more – a surprise that warmed his stupid thoughtless heart, because of course it did. It was terribly nice to have his endless well of affection be reciprocated by someone other than his immediate family or closest friends, for once.
Lan Qiren suppressed the feeling firmly. It would not serve him well.
“Wen Ruohan,” he said sternly. “I have already told you that I’m not leaving the Cloud Recesses. I simply cannot and will not be able to marry you.”
“I know,” Wen Ruohan said, and that mischievous smirk was on his face again. “That’s why I’m proposing that I marry you.”
Lan Qiren came to a complete halt.
“…what?” he said. He must have heard that wrong.
Wen Ruohan’s smirk widened. “Oh, you heard me,” he said, obviously enjoying himself. “I’m proposing that I marry into your Lan sect, rather than you into my Wen sect. That was your little nephew’s suggestion in the first place, I believe, and it really does eliminate all the problems, doesn’t it? You won’t have to leave at all. I’ll come to you, instead.”
Lan Qiren opened his mouth and tried to talk, only for the first few moments he found he had absolutely nothing to say.
“What?” was about all he finally came up with.
“Do you need me to repeat myself? Qiren, really, if you’re having hearing problems at your young age –”
Lan Qiren held up his hand to cut him off. “How in the world can you marry in?” he demanded. “You have an entire sect to run! You’re – you’re Sect Leader Wen! Your sect controls a third of the cultivation world!”
“Considerably more than a third, actually, if you take a hard look at the current alliances,” Wen Ruohan said, looking unbearably smug. “Even given recent developments, I expect to have control over nearly half within a decade.”
“You are missing my point. You have so many obligations! How can you marry out?!”
“My sect is so large that it has to be managed indirectly anyway,” Wen Ruohan said, still missing the point, probably deliberately. “I have an entire department of deputies that manage various sections of it for me, all of which are highly incentivized to keep an eye on each other – I only have to deal with the matters that get escalated to me, and the system is designed so that I can do that from anywhere within my territory, rather than being trapped within the Nightless City. There’s no reason I can’t do it from here, too, especially if I throw in some surprise inspections.”
Lan Qiren didn’t know what to say about that. Except maybe –
“I could help you build a similar system here,” Wen Ruohan said temptingly, and Lan Qiren wondered when he’d become predictable. “And of course help you bully those awful elders of yours into behaving. It won’t be any different than someone who marries in retaining their dowry in their own hands…hmm. Do you know, I think this might be the largest dowry in the history of the cultivation world?”
Lan Qiren covered his face with his hands. Wen Ruohan would be self-absorbed and vain enough to feel a ridiculous sense of accomplishment at something as stupid as that.
…and he supposed the idea wasn’t thatstupid.
There had been marriages between sect leaders before, although it was almost exclusively between minor sects rather than Great Sects. The idea of the two of them still running their sects separately, despite being together – could it be possible?
“I suppose that’s why you took so long to answer my letters?” he asked, desperately trying to corral his thoughts. “You were silent for so long…”
“I had to make sure it would be foolproof before proposing it, didn’t I? I couldn’t just up and leave my sect if it were still beset with troubles,” Wen Ruohan said with an artless shrug that suggested that there may have been more to his struggle against the mastermind and his current first wife than he’d said. “Moreover, it wasn’t that long, and I would rather say it’s worth it, wouldn’t you?”
“I haven’t said I agreed! There are still many reasons for concern – I mean, even politically speaking, the risk –”
“Both our sects already have heirs,” Wen Ruohan pointed out with a wolfish smile that suggested he was already three steps ahead of Lan Qiren in this debate, just as he said he’d be. “My sons, your nephews…I do hate to keep reminding you of it, but you’re only acting sect leader. There’s no risk to your Lan sect’s line of inheritance, particularly through a childless marriage. Once your nephews have grown, Lan Xichen will be the sect leader, with Lan Wangji as his right hand, and I could appoint A- Xu as my deputy to manage affairs in the Nightless City, with A-Chao to support him in a similar capacity. Once they’re all settled, we could go traveling. Together. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Wen Ruohan had been talking with his spies, or possibly Lao Nie.
“…yes,” Lan Qiren said, feeling touched, his heart trembling with joy. “I would – like that.”
Wen Ruohan looked supremely pleased.
“Andyou, undoubtedly, like the idea of an alliance between the Wen and Lan.”
“You can’t expect an old tiger to change his stripes that fast,” Wen Ruohan said with a shrug and a smile. “The Lan have a very close alliance with the Nie, and while my Wen sect has no such alliances forally, I’m close to both of you – why can’t we manage the cultivation world as a triad? It’s a very stable form, you know.”
Lan Qiren wanted to bash his head in and kiss him at the same time.
He suspected he was going to become very familiar with that feeling in the future, if Wen Ruohan were allowed to proceed with his plan…and Lan Qiren was having some serious issues finding any serious problems with it.
If Wen Ruohan married into the Lan, the Lan sect wouldn’t need to fear being swallowed up by the Wen sect, even if for no other reason than because Wen Ruohan’s vanity wouldn’t permit for his new family to be slighted in any way – and they would be the best defended sect in the world, safe from anyone else on account of having the world’s foremost array master living in tranquility with them in the undisturbed sanctity of the Cloud Recesses. If an alliance between the Lan, the Wen and the Nie such as Wen Ruohan described were eventually put into place, and such a thing would only come after a long period of negotiation and testing, that would serve them even better; Lan Qiren would no longer have to worry so much about the predations of the other Great Sects. Even if the alliance were only temporary, lasting only until the next generation were ready to take the lead and then dissolving, the idea of raising his nephews in an era of peace was overwhelmingly appealing.
Surely there had to be something wrong with the idea. Nothing that good ever happened to Lan Qiren.
Lan Qiren returned to the Lan sect with his nephews in tow.
This was not as easy as it had initially seemed when it was being discussed in Wen Ruohan’s study, despite the lack of any serious obstacles in their path. Perhaps most relevantly, Wen Xu, Wen Chao, and even Wen Ning were utterly inconsolable about Lan Qiren’s impending departure, each one of them frantic and anxious even though Lan Qiren assured them repeatedly that he had obtained Wen Ruohan’s solemn promise to get them proper teachers, prevent any interference by third parties such as their mothers, and even to supervise their education personally whenever possible – he’d thought the last would be sufficient, given how much they idolized their father and guardian, but apparently not.
Even his nephews seemed put out about the idea of leaving their newfound friends behind.
Lan Qiren was not entirely sure, afterwards, if they had ever figured out that the circumstances surrounding their presence the Nightless City had not been wholly above-board, and if, assuming they had figured that out, whether they thought he had handled things correctly. Lan Wangji kept his own thoughts private, as he so often did, while Lan Xichen seemed more invested in the fact that Lan Qiren liked Wen Ruohan – or, well, he’d been very supportive of it once he’d figured out that Lan Qiren was quite serious about not leaving him and Wangji, which significantly reduced his anxiety on the subject. Unfortunately, their return back to the Cloud Recesses apparently served to make him realize that Lan Qiren staying with them for good meant that he and Wen Ruohan weren’t going to continue their courting with the aim of marriage, causing him significant emotional distress no matter how many times Lan Qiren had assured him that they would still be visiting each other. He’d taken to reading novels, writing sad poetry, and sighing at odd intervals, which…Lan Qiren had no idea what to do with, in all honesty.
He’d asked Lan Yueheng for assistance, as the person he trusted most about matters of romance on account of the latter’s successful marriage, and Lan Yueheng had just nodded wisely. He’d then swept Lan Xichen away for an evening of drinking fruit juice and solemn moon-watching which was, apparently, just the thing to relieve his nephew’s melancholy.
Lan Qiren would never understand it. Not in a million years.
Of course, Lan Yueheng also used the opportunity to leave his wife behind with Lan Qiren to express at great length and volume how they had felt about Lan Qiren’s mysterious disappearance, interrupted only by the arrival of extremely vague and unhelpful notes that appeared without any return address whatsoever. Given Zhang Xin’s lung capacity and hardy constitution, not diminished in the slightest and even apparently improved by having borne several children, Lan Qiren was pretty sure he got the worse end of that deal.
Oh, the things he did for his nephews…
At any rate, it was good to see Lan Yueheng and Zhang Xin again, despite the yelling and, in Lan Yueheng’s case, teary-eyed sentimentality and profound relief that he was back unharmed. Even beyond them, Lan Qiren found that there were quite a number of Lan sect disciples that had, entirely without him noticing, made their way into what one might (if one were Wen Ruohan and prone to high drama) dub his inner circle, and what Lan Qiren would probably more appropriately term colleagues. In other words, people with whom Lan Qiren was actually friendly and had even subconsciously missed seeing them on a regular basis; they, in turn, seemed to have missed him for more than just his contributions to the sect. It was a very pleasant surprise to find himself among those who seemed genuinely pleased to see him, and that he himself was genuinely pleased to see.
Sadly, the same could not be said for a considerable portion of the elders of the previous generation.
This was not all of them, luckily enough. There were plenty of men and women in the Lan sect who were as they ought to be, upright and upstanding, careful and thoughtful in following the rules and in applying them to others; people that sought righteousness in all things and listened to the rules that exhorted them to Shoulder the weight of moralityandTake the straight path.
Not everyone, though.
The rot had originated from only a few, but once there was rot, it spread.
Refreshed from his time without work, Lan Qiren set himself to fixing it at once.
Some of the offenders were only doing what they had seen others do before them, generally those of Lan Qiren’s generation or those that had come of age after him. Those were generally easy to correct – after some education, they were by and large horrified at the notion that they had erred so badly and closed their eyes to justice within their own home, or at least they had the good sense to pretend to be; their punishments could be relatively light and focused primarily on contemplation and reacquaintance with the rules. Their sin had been to trust the actions of their elders without applying critical thought, and while that did not relieve them of the weight what they had done, especially those actions that had harmed others in the process, it was still a lesser degree, less grave than those who had set them off on their crooked road in the first place.
As for those instigators…
Lan Qiren had known it would be hard to deal with them. He had known it would be hard, and it was, dreadfully hard, even when he utilized everything he knew and threw the full weight of his authority at them in force, denouncing their actions with all the fervor he possessed. He even had support, being backed in full by the exhausted-looking cousin of his that had been shoved forward to take Lan Qiren’s place during the ‘illness’ that had purportedly kept him from returning home.
Poor Lan Tianqi might once, in some past nightmare, have longed for the position of sect leader; he was a relatively close cousin from a recent secondary line and older than Lan Qiren to boot – his great-uncle’s eldest grandson. Apparently, he had done a complete about-face on the subject after he’d had to endure the trials and travails involved with the actual work of being sect leader, especially when the sect, accustomed to Lan Qiren’s diligence, had tried to demand that he meet the same standard.
He’d apparently been drowning.
Drowning, and doing badly, too, faring far worse than Lan Qiren, who had the unusual ability to stay completely focused on a single project for half a day or more without issue, often forgetting even to stop to eat or drink. In the end, he’d gone to Lan Yueheng to beg for advice, thinking perhaps that Lan Qiren was close to him for a reason or maybe had confided some secrets on how to survive to him. Lan Yueheng naturally had no secrets, as anyone who had met him for more than a moment would know, but he was always obliging and willing to help those who asked – as Lan Qiren had foolishly not done, due to his own feelings of guilt and inferiority, his need to prove himself worthy of the sect that had been left to him by tragic accident through his own self-sacrifice.
After wracking his brain for some time, Lan Yueheng had come up with the idea of putting Lan Tianqi in touch with his first cousin, Lan Ganhui, who despite being best known for his garrulous charm, easy-going nature, and general popularity, was in fact a skilled and able secretary in his own right when he put his mind to it; it turned out that he was the one that usually stepped up and helped manage things in the event of an emergency whenever one arose during the rare occasions when Lan Qiren was gone out on sect business and could not be urgently summoned back, such as during the discussion conferences. Lan Ganhui, in turn, had enlisted his husband Li Zhenquan and his sister-in-law Li Zhouxi, who had come to the Cloud Recesses with her brother, a solid determination never to marry, and an exceptional hand at calligraphy, and between the four of them and some sleepless nights they had just about managed to cover Lan Qiren’s job.
Lan Qiren had immediately recruited them all as his own secretaries upon his return. Some were easier to convince than others – Lan Tianqi had been pleased at the idea of having influence on sect affairs without having to bear the entire weight of the sect on his shoulders, while Li Zhenquan was delighted to finally find a place where he could be of service to the family he’d married into. Lan Ganhui had initially declared that he would rather perish than do a job like this every day, being as he was a dramatic sort of person, but Lan Qiren had convinced him that a part-time position would not make too much of a dent in his active social life and would furthermore give him a chance to steal precious private time during the day with his husband. Lan Ganhui, in turn, had managed to convince the hitherto most resistant (and yet by far the most precious of the whole set) Li Zhouxi to agree to the job as well.
(Lan Qiren had made the mistake of inquiring as to how he had done so, followed almost immediately by considerable regret as he was cheerfully informed that a desire not to marry said nothing about not having desire at all, and also that having a position of power made a person more attractive towards the certain type of person that happened to be just Li Zhouxi’s type. Apparently the lady had ambitions of a harem of her own, filled with attractive and empty-headed young men – Lan Ganhui had used the word ‘stable’, which was another concept that he also decided, despite absolutely no interest on Lan Qiren’s part, to explain to him at length without stopping. Lan Qiren could understand that his cousin was good-naturedly getting his own back at him for some of the more boring lectures Lan Qiren had subjected him to in their youth, which he didn’t mind, but he did find himself wondering throughout the entire discussion why people who enjoyed sex were likethat. How did it not make things incredibly awkward all the time?)
Still, even with all of them sharing the weight of the sect between them and there being enough time for Lan Qiren to attack the problem of corruption and selfishness within his sect head-on, it wasn’t easy. He was still bound to respect his elders, and many of them had set down strong roots, with plenty of people inclined to take their side in an argument or to minimize what had happened even when the evidence was irrefutable. Lan Qiren resigned himself to a long slog, knowing that change would undoubtedly be incremental and slow – but at least he would be setting the right example for the next generation, showing them what it really meant to be a Lan.
He would strangle those rotten roots where they lay and turn them into fodder for better growth, even if it took him years to accomplish. It was what his sect deserved – his sect, his rules, and his nephews.
Unlike before, however, Lan Qiren was far more alert to the possibility that he was overworking himself. He had thought, with the arrogance of youth, that he had been doing fine in the days before; if he had been tired, that was only the lack of sleep he consistently failed to get, and if he had never stopped working, well, that was only what the position and his sect required of him, penance for some sin in his past life that he now had to repent of.
Now, though, he knew that the rules were right in prioritizing care for the self. He was not doing his best for the sect when he was too tired to think properly, and rest and relaxation was necessary rejuvenation for his mind to be at the peak he needed it to be. He made sure to take the time for his music, his training, his teaching, and even reading purely for pleasure rather than for work – he’d always enjoyed esoteric texts, especially those imported from foreign locales, and he thought he could quite proudly say that his Lan sect, however smaller than the Wen sect and less wealthy than the Jin, could still teach its peers a thing or two about collecting interesting books. His schedule wasn’t as free as it had been in the Nightless City, but that was a trade he gladly made in exchange for being once more at home.
As for Wen Ruohan…
Surprisingly, Lan Qiren hadn’t heard much from him. This was not especially unexpected, at least at first, since they had both known that Lan Qiren would be busy dealing with his sect and Wen Ruohan dealing with quashing any criticism once the kidnapping had become public knowledge – they had both agreed that it made sense not to do anything too overt in terms of their relationship for the first few months. Well, Lan Qiren had insisted, and Wen Ruohan had reluctantly agreed after some considerably pressure was applied, which amounted to the same thing.
He’d sulked rather dramatically about it, which had led Lan Qiren to, perhaps unwisely, permit himself to be talked into allowing certain liberties on the night before he’d left the Nightless City. He was perfectly aware that he was setting a poor precedent for the future, but Lan hearts were not exactly susceptible to reason. It had been an interesting experience, he supposed – he still did not intrinsically see the appeal, and suspected he never would, but it was hardly the first time Lan Qiren had willingly suffered some minor discomfort for the purpose of pleasing someone else. It didn’t even involve any particular aches and pains, and Wen Ruohan had been so verypleased by it; the entire experience was enjoyable purely for his enthusiasm and for the fact that it had rather effectively shut him up, which was worth it in and of itself. For all of Lan Qiren’s concerns, it turned out that Lan sect discipline was far harsher by comparison, with less immediate rewards, and Lan Qiren went away with the conviction that anything further they did would be no more difficult to bear – excluding perhaps Wen Ruohan’s avid interest in eventually being involved in matters of discipline, anyway.
It…was a little disturbing to be met with silence after something like that, if truth be told.
Wen Ruohan had only agreed to cease all talk of courtship for a few months, and yet that time had long since passed that point, with no mention of the subject, or indeed any word at all. Lan Qiren had braced himself, expecting that Wen Ruohan would bring up the subject as soon as the deadline passed, trying once more to invent some means by which a bird and a fish could live together despite Lan Qiren’s insistence that he would not leave the Cloud Recesses for anything, even love.
Instead, there was silence.
The silence was unusual, and unnerving, but Lan Qiren was quite certain that Wen Ruohan’s affections were not so shallow as to be satisfied by mere physical trifles – he was no Jin Guangshan – and so he had to assume that the cause was something else.
Presumably the matter of the mastermind.
They did eventually end up exchanging a few letters, but they were stilted things, rigid and formal, and said nothing of substance. They’d already observed that the mastermind had sufficient influence to interfere with the post with the Nightless City, and neither was inclined to let whoever it was see their personal correspondence. Wen Ruohan layered his letters with implications and allusions, complex enough that Lan Qiren had shamefully had no choice but to ask for assistance in deciphering the ones he didn’t understand, only to have them turn out to be sexual inneundo – Zhang Xin had nearly burst a gut laughing at him. In return, Lan Qiren’s responses were painfully straightforward, as dry as when he was writing to any other sect leader in the normal course of events; he simply didn’t know any other way. It was a good thing, he thought, that Wen Ruohan would not expect him to engage in any sort of erotic correspondence – that was far more Lao Nie’s style than his own.
And that was another thing Lan Qiren needed to consider.
He hadn’t had time to think it over while in the Nightless City, and by now he’d had almost toomuch time to think it over: his beloved was another person’s lover, and even after a great deal of consideration he had no idea how he felt about that. Family tradition dictated that Lan Qiren ought to be possessive of his lover, jealous of their time and attention well beyond the point of reason – and yet, perhaps it was having suffered so much from his brother’s similar madness, but the mere thought made Lan Qiren recoil, left cold and repulsed by the idea of demanding that anyone isolate themselves like that simply because of his feelings.
Or perhaps, instead, it was simply the knowledge that he had that Lao Nie was no true rival of his. The thought of Wen Ruohan ever being besotted by another was enough to make Lan Qiren’s temper flare up, but Lao Nie himself had confirmed that he would not give his heart away in this life, nor willingly claim anyone else’s for his own, and the idea that Lan Qiren might have Wen Ruohan’s heart all to himself satisfied all the possessive instincts he might have had. He had even spent some time wondering whether, when Lao Nie’s prohibition had been lifted by his sect, they might reach some form of…he really didn’t want to call it an agreement, but he couldn’t think of a better way to put it. It did make him feel a little as if he and Lao Nie were Wen Ruohan’s wives scheduling matters of the harem to equitably divide the days between them, and that was without even accounting for Wen Ruohan’s actualwives…
It was, in sum total, a bit of a mess.
Especially since Wen Ruohan himself, who was rather critical to figuring this out, was currently making himself scarce.
Irritating, irritating man.
Which made it, of course, doubly irritating when Lan Qiren found a letter from him mixed in with the other applications for students for his lectures during the summer – Wen Xu had been put forward as a candidate, and Wen Ruohan had added a casual postscript noting that “on account of the friendship that had been formed between my younger son and your younger nephew,” he would be sending Wen Chao as well to be enrolled in the junior classes alongside Lan Wangji, even though those were primarily taught by another teacher. None of this, of course, had been mentioned in any of the personal letters Lan Qiren had received, a subject he noted with some irritation in his own personal letter sent back the next day.
Wen Ruohan, in what Lan Qiren was starting to suspect was deliberate provocation, did not respond.
At all.
There were no letters that arrived from the Nightless City from him, none at all. Not even one that ignored the issue!
Lan Qiren ground his teeth together and thought to himself two things: first, that he understood how Wen Ruohan had managed to get so worked up when he’d thought Lao Nie was deliberately ignoring him and, second, that Wen Ruohan seemed to have developed a penchant for making him angry.
Irritating,irritatingman!
Lan Qiren comforted himself with the fact that Wen Ruohan was almost certain to accompany his sons to the Cloud Recesses to drop them off for classes – even though most parents generally sent their children with only an escort, especially from larger sects, it seemed implausible to him that Wen Ruohan would willingly give up an opportunity to meet in person, even if his absence would in fact succeed in his (apparent) secondary goal of inciting Lan Qiren into a fury.
So reassured, he settled down to focus on his work.
Unfortunately, despite both men agreeing to focus on the subject at hand, that was as far as they were able to get.
They knew that the perpetrator had to be someone who knew of Wen Ruohan’s past so as to be able to target him so particularly, but there were no obvious suspects, despite Lao Nie’s increasingly absurd suggestions –
(“Herlover?” Wen Ruohan asked blankly. “The one I briefly banished her over? I have not the slightest idea what happened to him. I don’t even remember his name or what it was he did that was so obnoxious, much less how he turned out.”
“Oh, that’s even better! That means he could be hiding away somewhere, secretly plotting, raising children sworn to vengeance –“
“Lao Nie,” Lan Qiren hissed. “This is Wen Ruohan’s life, not a storyteller’s tale. Stop looking for twists!”
“But it’s fun!”
“He’s already paranoid enough! He doesn’t need you to help!”
“But Qiren, I so pride myself on being helpful – hey! Don’t throw books at me! What if that one was something Hanhan needed? Wouldn’t you feel bad?”
“Qiren, I really don’t know why you were objecting so strenuously to being spoken about as if you weren’t there,” Wen Ruohan drawled. “This is hilarious.”)
Moreover, as Wen Ruohan himself admitted, even with the taboo he had imposed, it wouldn’t be too difficult for someone else to figure out the details if they wished: there were plenty both within and without the Wen sect who were old enough to remember what happened, and yet more who might have heard stories from their elders. Based on the style of the attacks and the location thereof, whoever was masterminding it had to either be in the Wen sect or else have allies within the Wen sect – but who could it be?
The Nightless City was too large, the Wen sect too avid a recruiter, to be able to separate out the good from the bad with great ease. Servants and disciples had free range over much of the Sun Palace. Even if they restricted the places where Lan Qiren and his students would be, that would only serve as a defensive measure; it would not draw out their enemy.
Moreover, acting too obviously might let on that they knew what was really going on, that it wasn’t a series of random events but a targeted campaign meant to drive Wen Ruohan to the end of his tolerance and beyond. That was another complication, in fact – despite devoting serious time to it, they had trouble figuring out why someone would want to do something like that.
“I would probably stop being so subtle about my attempts to take over the world,” Wen Ruohan mused, ignoring the way both Lao Nie and Lan Qiren squawked like enraged geese and shouted “Subtle?You think you’re being subtle?!” at him. “I would go back to the way of clarity and cut off all my emotions, too. They’re clearly far more trouble than they’re worth.”
“If you enter the way of clarity, I will never touch you in a sexual manner no matter how you ask,” Lan Qiren said.
Lao Nie pointed at him. “What he said.”
“If I entered the way of clarity I wouldn’t care,” Wen Ruohan pointed out, but held up his hands in surrender in the face of their glares. “However, as I haven’t, I care a great deal. My point was simply that I don’t understand what the benefit of pushing me into insanity would be to anyone else. If their goal was for me to suffer, it wouldn’t work for very long. I’d simply become utterly intolerable instead.”
“Maybe that’s the point,” Lao Nie remarked. “They think there’s not enough tyrannical jackasses out there in the world, and they’re trying to change that.”
“Your contribution is, as always, a welcome ray of sunshine that adds clarity to the discussion.”
“As long as it’s not too muchclarity…”
Completely useless.
Far more relevant to Lan Qiren, however, was what happened next, when Lao Nie finally stopped sniggering, sobered up, and said, “All right, so how are we handling Qiren’s situation?”
“What situation is that?” Wen Ruohan asked, his own smile fading away at once. “He’s doing quite well here. Better than he was before, even.”
“That he was suffering at home does not retroactively make kidnapping him for completely different reasons all right and you know it,” Lao Nie said. “And don’t pretend you were thinking of Qiren’s well-being when you did it originally. You’re as self-absorbed and arrogant as you are talented, Hanhan; you didn’t even like him before.”
“I’m capable of changing my mind when presented with new evidence,” Wen Ruohan said loftily. “And new evidence indicates that he’s marvelous and also that I want him desperately. Anyway, my initial motivation is irrelevant; look at the effects. Do you even know what they were doing to him back there? I locked him in a windowless room for six days and he looked healthier.”
“Can we go back to the fact that you locked him in a windowless room for six days?”
“He was threatening suicide, what was I supposed to do?”
“What do you mean he was –”
Lao Nie was starting to get angry again. Lan Qiren put his hand over his eyes.
“Desist immediately, both of you,” he said. “You can fight about it later. Lao Nie, you asked about my situation – at the moment, I am staying voluntarily on account of the political circumstances, which are currently structured in such a way that my reappearance would be awkward for everyone. Something that is largely yourfault. What were you thinking?”
“It would only be awkward if you were willingly hiding yourself away,” Lao Nie said, skirting around the pointed question with ease. “Everyone and their brother knows that I received some information that caused me to lose my temper and fly over to the Nightless City. If you were to reappear now, in the context of a rescue, the sects that flocked to my banner – and to your sect’s – would be reassured that a war between the Nie and the Lan was not imminently on the horizon, without feeling as if they had been deliberately deceived. They’ve already gone ahead and declared themselves, there’s no point in playing coy and withdrawing now, and this way they will have less concern about the state of affairs in the future as well –”
“Leaving me and my sect to play the villain, I suppose?”
“Hanhan, you kidnapped the man, you are the villain here. Anyway, Qiren, my point is – the political situation will be fine. You can go home.”
You can go home.
Lan Qiren could go home.
Lan Qiren could –
He could face up to the fact that it wasn’t a matter of could any longer. It was a matter of have to.
There had been a certain sort of freedom in knowing that he couldn’t return, whether because he’d been kidnapped or because politics demanded discretion, but now that the option to return was once again available, Lan Qiren was going to have to stop avoiding the subject and actually think about what had happened back in his sect, with everything, with him. He would have to think about how his sect had treated him, or rather mistreated him; he would have to think about what this said about him, and them, and how he would have to deal with it in the future.
It wasn’t actually all that difficult to figure out what happened, shamefully. It had only ever been that Lan Qiren had been constantly working too hard and sleeping too little to take the time he had needed to actually consider it…though that, of course, had always been the point. This was no act of active malice, the way the present scheme obviously was against Wen Ruohan.
No, it had been something far lesser than that – pettiness, not malice; indifference, not hate.
His sect elders knew Lan Qiren’s worth, but they also knew him to be stringent and rigid, unyielding in a way his brother was not. His brother, and his father before him, had been open with their willingness to play favorites among their followers and peers, to favor some and disfavor others, applying a different understanding of the rules to those they liked and to those they didn’t. Even if his father and brother had done so within reasonable bounds, the model they had created for others to follow was a poor one – and so others, with less judgment, followed their example to flawed ends. Some even went so far as to misapply the rules themselves, inflicting abuse that Lan Qiren stamped out the moment he became aware of it, while others just continued in their own little bad habits, pampering their own regardless of merit and ignoring the rest.
(The rules said Do not form a clique and exclude others, and Do not take advantage of your position to oppress others. But once you started to pick and choose your friends, you might also pick and choose the rules you cared to follow – Lan Qiren was hardly perfect himself, breaching the rule against losing his temper multiple times, but at least he tried, genuinely and without avoidance, to follow the right path.)
If his brother had become sect leader they had all expected him to be, perhaps he would have straightened them out in his own way. Lan Qiren thought it was likely, even – his brother might be inclined to play favorites himself, but he was very conscious of his own reputation and that of his sect, which reflected on him. He was far too clever not to know that a self-indulgent and corrupt sect would be blamed upon his leadership, and he was vain enough not to be willing to tolerate it. He would have been willing to ignore his own hypocrisy and complicity in the situation he created and take firm steps to remedy the problem, provided at all times that his own sense of self was maintained.
(Lan Qiren thought sometimes that he saw hints of the same all-encompassing vanity in Lan Xichen, who was so proud of being the peacemaker regardless of situation, and in Lan Wangji, who never backed down even when he knew he was wrong, and even in himself, with his pride in his teaching and in his adherence to the rules, in his partiality towards his nephews no matter how justified it was, but simply knowing about a flaw didn’t mean he knew how to deal with it. He could only try his best to adhere ever more firmly to the rules, hoping through his strictness to impart some wisdom to his nephews.)
At any rate, when his brother had entered seclusion and leadership of the sect had fallen unexpectedly upon Lan Qiren, who was so infamously strict, there were many who disapproved, and even more who worried about what it might mean for them. So to distract him they purposefully made trouble for him, complained and blustered, and he worked himself to the bone trying to handle it all, carving out pieces of himself to meet the requirements of the role that he did not want and which did not suit him – and through that, they had figured out that it worked. They had realized that as long as Lan Qiren was too busy with sect matters, he would not have time to turn his attention towards rooting out their misconduct, focusing only on the issues that were so severe that they rose to his attention. They realized that so long as he was sunk in deep in the dust of the world, the muck and mud of the mundane, dealing with the trifles of the everyday, he would not have time to look – and without looking, he would not see them.
That was why they objected to him taking the time to raise his nephews or to focus on his teaching or his music, which would refresh and reinvigorate him and let him remember the bigger picture; that was why they declined to allow him to go into seclusion, to go out on more night-hunts than politics demanded; that was why, even though there must be others who could help him, he remained alone and unaided.
Lan Qiren almost wished it had been malicious.
He had always known that many of his sect elders did not care for him. But that they would so totally disregard his wellbeing simply to be allowed to continue their petty little privileges…
He had taken the time, these past months, to think it over, considering the long-term the way they had always feared he would, and he had identified many problems. Fighting the entrenched interests and set standards of his sect would be difficult, it would take a long time and a great deal of effort. It would require the use of all the political capital he had accumulated both within and without his sect. Returning with a new alliance with the Wen sect in hand would help, but it wouldn’t actually solve it.
It was going to be a struggle. A long, precarious, exhausting struggle, with only a slim hope of success.
Lan Qiren felt tired just thinking about all that lay ahead of him.
The worst of it was – he didn’t have to do it.
He had, unwise as it might be, chosen to bestow his affections upon the supremely selfish Wen Ruohan, and Wen Ruohan, in turn, was unaccountably fond of him. Putting aside his comments regarding sexual gratification, he genuinely seemed to like Lan Qiren, to find him funny and to enjoy his company. More than that, he was obvious enough about that liking for other people to notice and decide to target Lan Qiren in an effort to hurt him and drive him mad. This mysterious mastermind thought that an injury to Lan Qiren, or a betrayal by him, would have caused serious harm, and Wen Ruohan had agreed with that conclusion, with Lao Nie, who probably knew his lover best in the world, having concurred after only a few shichen of seeing them together.
Wen Ruohan liked Lan Qiren, even maybe loved him, and if Lan Qiren said that he didn’t want to go back to his sect and deal with all the headaches that awaited him, Wen Ruohan would be the first to say he didn’t have to. He would be delighted by it, even. Who cares about the rest of the world? He would say with a smile that actually reached his eyes. Let us be here, together, and the rest can all burn for all we care. Let he who dares to complain come knock on my door to do it!
In the safety of the Nightless City, Lan Qiren could be safe and comfortable – he could devote himself to teaching and to music, to the Wen boys who were making such excellent progress and to his wonderful nephews who had adapted so well to the labyrinthine hallways of the Sun Palace in place of the gardens of the Cloud Recesses. Wen Ruohan would even encourage his efforts in teaching the children of other sects, and Lan Qiren’s greatest struggle would be in convincing him not to go overboard and do something absurd like sending out orders to all the sects throughout the cultivation world to deliver up their heirs to learn from him whether they would or no. He would not need to fight the fights left over from the previous generation of his ancestors, and which had sprung up from his brother’s folly. He would not need to do all the work for which he was temperamentally unsuited, to waste his life on the trifles of others.
He could, if he so wished and for the first time in his life, be selfish.
But…
Maintain your own discipline.
Lan Qiren loved his sect with all the steadfastness of a Lan. He loved the beauty and tranquility of the Cloud Recesses, that home they had made for themselves; he loved the multitude of their stern rules, inscribed for eternity on the Wall of Discipline. Those rules were his ancestor’s gift to him, and through him to the next generation; he had always seen them as such, treasuring them in his heart more highly than jade and pearls.
The sect, the rules, the Cloud Recesses –
All this and more were not only for him, but for his nephews. Gusu Lan was their inheritance, and they deserved to receive it in its purest form, in the best possible form that he could get it to be before they grew old enough to want to manage it for themselves. If he were to turn away now and abandon it all simply because the burden was heavy, then how could he bring himself to face his nephews in the future? How would he have the face to go to meet his ancestors when he died?
No. His ancestors had given their sect the rules, and Lan Qiren knew those rules inside and out. His reputation was upright and pristine, even-handed and scrupulously fair, even to the point of rigidity – he would spend every bit of renown that he had won through his hard work over the years if that was what it took to get people to listen to him. He would impose discipline, inflict punishment, no matter how painful to others or even to himself, and in the end he would wash the Cloud Recesses clean. He would make it an inheritance worthy of his beloved nephews.
It would be hard, yes, but it would be worth it in the end. Everything was worth it, if it was for them.
Have a strong will, and anything can be achieved.
So be it.
“– see no reason why he can’t stay here,” Wen Ruohan was arguing to Lao Nie, who looked long-suffering. “Do you know how well my boys are doing? Ever since A-Chao learned the new writing style, he’s actually been learning, rather than just getting better at cheating.”
“I know he’s a good teacher. Everyone knows he’s a good teacher! That’s not the point, Hanhan. You can’t just take someone against their will and hope against hope that they’ll learn to like it –”
“He learned to like me, didn’t he?”
“You only keep dwelling on that because you can’t bring yourself to believe it. No, don’t lie, I know you too well. You never know what to do when someone who likes you for reasons that aren’t power, and you never have. Especially when it’s someone like Qiren.”
“…it is a little surprising, yes. But that’s not the point. He could be happy here –”
“No,” Lan Qiren said, and they both turned to look at him. “I couldn’t.”
Wen Ruohan scowled. “You can’t possibly prefer the company of those old farts over me.”
“Of course I vastly prefer yours,” Lan Qiren said, and the scowl faded slightly. “But those ‘old farts’ are my kin, and Gusu Lan my inheritance, my birthright, and my duty all together. If I were the sort of person who would abandon it all for the sake of the security, comfort, and even love that I could find in your embrace, I wouldn’t who I am, and you wouldn’t care nearly as much about my regard.”
Wen Ruohan opened his mouth to disagree, but he moved his lips and nothing came out. There really wasn’t anything he could say.
Lan Qiren nodded, appeased – if Wen Ruohan had protested, it would have meant that he didn’t respect those parts of Lan Qiren that he himself valued most. “I have never known how to bend,” he told them. “It is both my worst fault and my highest virtue, both in one. My heart is with my sect, with my family, and, yes, with you, but – the sect comes first. My nephews come first. You understand that. Both of you understand that. Even if it’s hard, even if it takes time and effort and robs me of my freedom…it doesn’t matter. Without Gusu Lan, without the Cloud Recesses, there is no me.”
“There is no you if they grind you into the mud either,” Wen Ruohan objected, voice heated, and Lao Nie nodded furiously. “You were like a lantern that had burnt down to its wick, spluttering before it went out – you cannot say that that is who you are, because it isn’t. You are so much more than that. You shine so bright, Qiren; you cannot let your sect occlude you until the world is deprived of your light.”
“I have no intention of letting them,” Lan Qiren said, feeling a faint smile appear on his face. “I thank you for your concern, truly, and this interlude – however foully it began, and know that it did begin foully, that I have not fully forgiven you for it, and that I expect a sincere and fulsomeapology for your overreach – this interlude has been of great value to me. I know what I’m dealing with, now, and deal with it I shall.”
“I really like how he sounds when he’s determined,” Lao Nie remarked. “That willpower. Terrifying. In all the best ways, of course.”
“It is truly something to behold,” Wen Ruohan said. He was still frowning, but less. Lan Qiren thought he could see some resignation in his eyes. “Are you sure, Qiren?”
“Quite sure. Will you let me go?”
“You have no idea how much I would like to forget myself and answer ‘no’, but I know it would only be robbing my future to pay for my present.” Wen Ruohan sighed. “Fine, yes, you can go. Lao Nie’s not wrong, it’s not a bad time for it…what about my boys?”
“You can send them to me to teach at Gusu,” Lan Qiren said. “Well, Wen Xu, at least. It’s not too long before my usual summer classes start, and I can continue tutoring him individually until then, if he needs it. Wen Chao needs a few more years, but he’s still building his foundation. Now that you’ve taken steps to help him deal with the imbalance, he doesn’t need special schooling, just a repeat of everything he should have learned until now. After that he can be back on the usual track for boys his age.”
Wen Ruohan was silent, frowning, as if that weren’t the answer he wanted.
After a little while, Lao Nie snorted. “Qiren,” he said. “When he said ‘what about my boys’, he actually meant ‘what about me’.”
“Well, why didn’t he just say that, then?” Lan Qiren sighed. “You can come visit me in Gusu as well, and I’ll come to visit you. You managed a relationship with Lao Nie for how many years, did you not? You know how it goes.”
“That was different,” Wen Ruohan said, and if Lan Qiren hadn’t known better he would have said the man was sulking. “Lao Nie said it himself, didn’t he? He doesn’t belong to me and never could, not really. But you…you’re a Lan. You love like madness.”
“And don’t I know it. How do you think I figured out that I like you?” Lan Qiren grumbled. “Love to the point of invention – I wrote you a song. I don’t even know what it does yet. It’s just…pointy. It’s probably some sort of horrible curse.”
Wen Ruohan looked absurdly pleased.
“As for the rest of it, we can figure it out. Neither of us are going to die any time soon.” Lan Qiren shrugged. “Well, assuming you fix this mastermind problem, anyway.”
Wen Ruohan lit up, and Lao Nie groaned.
“Great job, Qiren,” he mock-grumbled. “Now he thinks that all he needs to do is find this bastard and he’ll get you – well done, what a way to motivate him.”
“…don’t we want to motivate him to find the mastermind?”
Lao Nie patted Lan Qiren’s shoulder. “There’s motivation,” he said wisely. “And then there’s motivation. You’re about to learn the difference.”
Lan Qiren: Wangji, do you still remember Lan Sect’s rules? Don’t make noise. Don’t push, fight / chase. Don’t be unhappy today. Happy Birthday!
Lan Xichen: Wangji, Happy Birthday! I’m glad to see your growth today. Hope you can smile so happy forever.
Lan Sizhui: Sizhui wishes Hanguang-jun Happy Birtheday. Happy and peace will always be with you, and smile will always be on your face.
Lan Jingyi: Hanguang-jun, Happy Birthday! The most surprising thing for me this year is Hanguang-jun, such a cool man would smile. Wish Hanguang-jun will always be happy.
Wei Wuxian: Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, look at me, look at me! Today is your birthday. These Gentian flowers are for you. Hope you can be always smiling like this. Because you’re really good-looking!
a messy little comic i made based off of my twitter thread where jiang cheng goes to visit lan qiren under the guise of “wanting to learn about sect duties” but actually goes to play with lan qiren instead (the twin jades are busy being mini Adults TM which is why lan qiren gets lonely sometimes) they both enjoy each others company until its time for jiang fengmian to pick jiang cheng up which makes him realise hes losing a competition. the competition of fatherhood. he has to win a-cheng back. it works! at a cost.
Lan Qiren stares down at the open filigree box. His nephew has always been a collector—of memories, of dried flowers from a mother’s garden, of rocks, and so on and so forth. He has always been a sentimental boy when you deigned to look beyond the surface. It is no surprise that Lan Zhan wishes to preserve all that he loves but Lan Qiren wishes that his nephew had not decided to collect pictures of another boy who is regrettably all too familiar.
Lan Qiren stares down at pictures of Cangse Sanren’s son and wants to die. He remembers when Lan Zhan used to refer to himself as Zhanzhan with his high pitched voice and his sweetly blank chubby face. Zhan’er is still a little boy in Lan Qiren’s heart and he does not enjoy the way the boy is maturing.
Lan Zhan has begun to resemble his father overly much so. The curse of all Lans. Wei Ying and his bloodline is a menace to humanity and to Lans. He remembers Cangse Sanren’s raucous laughter and her lack of boundaries. Her son has clearly seduced his nephew. Otherwise…
Why does Lan Zhan have a collection of photos of Wei Ying?
Upon hearing a barely audible footstep, Lan Qiren whirls around with damning evidence clutched in his hand. He stares at his youngest nephew who meets him with a blank gaze.
“Hello, Uncle,” Lan Zhan says primly. “Please put the photos back in my box.” He walks further into his room and slides off his backpack. He approaches Lan Qiren, who looms over his desk and collection of boxed photos.
Lan Qiren does not appreciate the utter disregard the boy treats him with. A certain heat consumes his face as his brows draw together. He opens his mouth and closes it when Lan Zhan sits down at his desk and begins to fiddle with…with framed images of Wei Ying! A shrine of photos! A shrine to some sort of demonic entity because surely that boy’s bloodline is sourced straight from the underworld.
“Lan Zhan!” Lan Qiren snaps.
Lan Zhan lifts his head to stare at his uncle.
“What is the meaning of this?” Lan Qiren demands as he waves the photo of a boy in swim shorts, almost identical to the central image of the Wei Ying shrine. The photo in Lan Qiren’s hand also has a cloud-embroidered ribbon painstakingly glued across the boy’s nipples. Thank the heavens that the ribbon is not one of Lan Zhan’s personal ribbons. Otherwise…No, it doesn’t bear thinking about.
“He’s my boyfriend from Yunmeng,” Lan Zhan says. The tone is almost defiant, imperceptible enough that Lan Qiren cannot address it.
“A boyfriend!” Lan Qiren thunders. “You’re too young for a boyfriend! Especially for this…this shameless hussy!” He waves the photo in his hand for emphasis.
Lan Zhan opens his mouth.
It better be repentance and a promise to break up with the demon.
“Uncle, please be careful with the photo…and he’s not a ‘shameless hussy’.”
“You! Shameless! Half-naked photos!”
“Uncle, please. It’s three-quarters.”
“Insolent boy!”
Lan Qiren attempts to rip the photo of the three-quarters naked boy but the ribbon at Wei Ying’s nipples hinders any further progress. Inarticulate with rage, he stares down at his nephew, who has the gall to sport the slightest of injured looks with his downturned mouth.
“You are no longer boyfriends with him! I am calling the Jiangs tonight and putting an end to this nonsense,” Lan Qiren says. He lets out a long gusty exhale at the end, reassured by his own plan.
“He’s my boyfriend,” Lan Zhan insists.
Clearly, Lan Qiren has been too lenient with the boy. Taking up with a shameless hussy! A shameless hussy who sends three-quarters naked photos to respectable young men. Zhan’er has been seduced!
“No boyfriends! You’re only 12!” Lan Qiren shouts.
“Uncle,” Lan Zhan says, as if emphasizing their family relation will quiet his anger, “I’m 17.”
Lan Qiren points an accusing finger at his nephew. Wordless with rage, he backs out of the room with his eyes focused on his recalcitrant nephew. He cannot bear to see the sight of this wayward nephew now.
I see Madame Yu, Jin Guangyao, FUCKING Xue Yang redemption fics all the time but the one I really want to see is the Lan Qiren redemption!!! Like yes, fics where Wei Wuxian sends Lan Qiren’s blood pressuring skyrocketing are hilarious. Yes, I know his role in the story is to add another reason for Lan Wangji’s hesitation to be true to himself. Yes, I know Lan Qiren is symbolic of the cultivation world that is too arrogant and stuck in their ways to consider what is true justice.
but consider this: Lan Wangji getting understanding from his only surviving parental figure and them being able to repair their relationship makes my heart feel nice.
