#sect leader nie

Relentless - chapter 13 - ao3

“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.”

“And…?”

“Andyou two can take care of yourselves.”

Lao Nie started laughing, and Wen Ruohan smirked.

Relentless - chapter 14 - ao3

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.”