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Chapter Text

Lan Jingyi brought the news back to Cloud Recesses.

Lan Qiren knew, in his soul, the words which would come from the young man’s mouth when he stepped into the receiving room, his dirty robes ripped, bloodied, devastation writ clear upon his face. Lan Jingyi had always been one of the most expressive disciples of GusuLan; Lan Qiren never despaired of the fact more.

Lan Qiren listened to the words, but—like oil meeting water—felt unable to truly absorb them. He felt nothing at all, actually. In fact, he rather wondered why his heart bothered to continue beating in his chest when most everything else had fled.

Lan Jingyi wiped at his tear-stained face with his sleeve, leaving a streak of half-dried blood on his cheek.

“And Sizhui?” Lan Qiren asked. He barely recognized his own voice.

Lan Jingyi’s face twisted up further and he shook his head, shoulders shaking with another punched-out sob.

Lan Qiren slowly stood. “Go. Tidy yourself. I shall send word to Lanling and Lotus Pier.”

Lan Jingyi took a shaky breath, bowed, and left. Lan Qiren stared blindly at the door for several minutes before summoning in one of his aids to take the dictation of the letters. While normally he would write such important missives himself, he did not trust his hands to their duty for they would not stop shaking.

Once the disciple finished—crying before the end of the first sentence—Lan Qiren managed a passable impression of his signature and then sent him to find someone to take them to the respective leaders of LanlingJin and YunmengJiang. He supposed the other clans would need to be told as well, but he wanted to give Jin Rulan and Jiang Wanyin as much time as he could to grieve in privacy before being bombarded with the simpering condolences of people who wanted to use this tragedy as a means of currying favour, those same individuals who surely would have been among the people who might have celebrated such an event only a few years ago.

Responsibility discharged, he tucked his hands into his sleeves to hide their shaking as he crossed the Cloud Recesses.

Five years. Wangji and Wuxian had only had five years of joy after a lifetime of tragedy. The deep unfairness of it finally cut through to him when his grief still refused to penetrate the numbness of his thoughts. Five years. Practically no time at all, when compared to the preceding sixteen.

He mounted the stairs to the doors of the hanshi, every bone creaking with age he had not felt before today. Lan Qiren nearly hadn’t the strength to walk up the steps to the door. He knocked, hoping for but not expecting an answer. Xichen had not strayed outside of his home since the death of Jin Guangyao; yet one more door in Cloud Recesses which would never open.

He knelt down before his legs had the chance to betray him.

“Lan-zongzhu,” he began, wondering if the formal address would at least draw Xichen’s attention. He heard a soft shuffle from inside, but the door remained firmly shut. “Xichen, I have come to tell you that His Excellency the Chief Cultivator, Acting Sect Leader Lan, Hanguang-jun, Lan Wangji is dead.”

Speaking the words aloud finally pierced through the shroud clouding his thoughts. He doubled over, eyes squeezed shut, as the gripping feeling of loss shredded through him and left him smaller and lesser than he had ever felt before.

He barely managed to gasp out the rest. “Dead, too, are your brother-in-law, Wei Wuxian, and their son, Sizhui.”

Lan Qiren had not always cared for his nephew’s choice of partner. He’d initially found Wuxian to be irreverent, shameless, and unyielding. He had, eventually, come to appreciate him as a moral and upright young man. A good teacher. A man of convictions who had, in his admittedly checkered past, quickly lost control of a situation no one would have had any hope of effectively managing.

And Sizhui. Lan Qiren remembered holding Lan Yuan as a child wracked by fever when Wangji brought him to Cloud Recesses, his nephew’s injuries nearly crippling him on the flight back from the devastation at the Burial Mounds, to the point Lan Qiren had worried that his nephew would die. And then Lan Yuan had lived with him until Wangji emerged from seclusion and took the boy as his ward. His son, Lan Qiren thought. A child who kept him alive in the killing depths of his grief.

Lan Qiren had no miraculous children to help assuage his own, now.

He waited until the sun began to dip in the sky—late, in these early days of summer—but Xichen gave no indication of having heard him. Eventually Lan Qiren dragged himself to his feet.

He came to a halt at the Wall of Discipline, gaze focusing immediately on the words he’d added upon Wangji’s marriage to Wuxian: Do not go near Wei Ying. A pettiness, added because he did not understand his nephew’s choice of spouse. In the intervening years, it had become somewhat of a joke between them; he now bemoaned how long it had taken him to truly understand Wuxian. “Do not go near Wei Ying,” he’d taken to telling the younger disciples. “He is shameless and only has eyes for Hanguang-jun. Go only to Wei Wuxian, who is a respectable member of GusuLan.”

There would no longer be a need for this rule, he realized.

Reserves finally depleted, he collapsed, and remained prone before the wall until morning.

Xichen did not emerge for the meeting Lan Qiren called with the elders to address the matter of succession.

The elders asked him to assume the mantle of zongzhu. He refused. No one seemed at all surprised, not even over his lack of courtesy when he simply said ‘no’ instead of offering any empty words of gratitude for the consideration. He had acted as Lan-zongzhu for nearly two decades before Xichen finally took command after the Sunshot Campaign ended, but he had been a much younger man then. Now he felt as though he had aged centuries in the moments between when Lan Jingyi started and finished his recount of the night hunt which had claimed the lives of the majority of his remaining family.

He felt unfit for leadership for one of the great sects.

He felt unfit for much of anything.

In Xichen’s continued absence, they decided that Lan Qiren’s first cousin once removed on his father’s side would be the next best one to take up the mantle of Lan-zongzhu. Lan Meiqing merely nodded at Lan Qiren when she accepted the position and promised to bring dignity to the role to the best of her ability.

Xichen likewise did not emerge for the funerary proceedings. Lan Qiren felt little surprise at it; having failed to emerge for their wedding, Lan Qiren had doubted he would come out of seclusion for their funeral.

Lan Qiren bowed before their tablets, burned incense and paper money and poured wine—specifically brought into Cloud Recesses at his request by way of honouring Wei Wuxian’s memory—without the comfort of his elder nephew at his side. Jingyi wept, shoulders heaving against Lan Qiren’s. He could not scold the boy; in his opinion, such grieving was not in excess of what the dead were due.

At the end of the day when all others had left the ancestral hall, Lan Qiren decided he deserved the cold loneliness left behind.

Still robed in mourning white, he eventually made his way to the jingshi. The place had been tacitly off-limits since the news had come back, a renewed monument to GusuLan’s great loss. Inside, the place remained a testament to the dichotomy of its inhabitants; for every neatly-ordered document bearing Wangji’s meticulous writing was another haphazard stack of random notes with countless doodles in the margins because Wuxian’s mind wandered whenever he found a problem to pick apart.

Ah, Wuxian. How could he have wasted so much time mired in misplaced hatred?

Lan Qiren’s robes brushed against the table and knocked a few pages off their precarious position. He bent down to pick them up and found himself toppling over. He gripped the documents tight enough that the wooden slats cut into his hand.

He raised his head and stared blindly towards where Bichen had been ensconced in its rightful place, a deep gash scored into the hilt.

“Wangji,” he whispered. Wangji, Wangji, Wangji.

Blood began to seep out of the thin cuts on his palm.

His stomach lurched as the world around him shifted, a rolling feeling of nausea not unlike the swoop of a sword suddenly turning downward while in flight. His hand tightened on the scroll and his eyes screwed shut as the feeling buffeted his senses.

The room around him dropped by several degrees and the darkness brought on by his closed eyes took on a tint of blue.

When he opened his eyes again, it was to the sight of his own room at night, the biting chill of late winter hanging fog-white with every breath, the brazier before him burnt down to only dim orange coals. Had he had some manner of episode or qi deviation? One that robbed him of his senses from early summer to late winter and from the jingshi back to his room?

No. Wait.

This was not his room. It was the room he’d lived in as a young man, prior to it being burned to the ground during the Wen razing of Cloud Recesses. He recognized the painted screen across the room which had once belonged to his mother, the loss of which he’d considered with deep regret once the rebuilding of their home began. Lan Qiren stood to examine it, barely able to breathe as he beheld his mother’s fine hand and careful brushstrokes.

He reached for his chin and started when he encountered smooth skin instead of his beard. The shock was so great that it took him a much longer moment to realize he still held Wei Wuxian’s notes in his hand. He unfolded the scroll in hopes of finding an explanation.

His blood had slipped through the slats in the scroll to power the complicated array within. The other notes, albeit incomplete given he’d picked them up at random, detailed Wei Wuxian’s thought process as he’d worked his way through the theoretically impossible challenge of time travel.

Lan Qiren was in the past.

Moreover, he was a young man again.

“Foolish boy,” he whispered to himself after a few long moments of study. “Foolish, brilliant boy.”

He took a steadying breath and tried to focus his thoughts. There were deep, ethical concerns which came hand in hand with the situation in which he now found himself. Any changes or attempt to alter the events through which he’d already lived would rob people of the agency of their choices.

Wei Wuxian might not have considered the ramifications of such actions; despite the hard-earned wisdom he’d accumulated since his return to life and marriage to Wangji, he still struggled with impulsiveness. This situation was more than proof of the matter. Even a cursory look at the scribbles in the margins of the scroll, a doodle of a lotus and the characters for ‘Yanli’ suggested that he had considered such ethical concerns as secondary to the possibility of seeing his sister once more.

But then, did the virtues of change—of keeping innocents alive—not align with the need to uphold morality?

He was still pondering it when a disciple knocked on his door.

“Come,” he called, hastily tucking Wei Wuxian’s array and notes into his sleeve.

Lan Qiren had watched the boy who entered—Lan Pei—die near the end of the Sunshot Campaign, when a handful of desperate Wen soldiers had tried to retreat through Gusu.

“Master Lan,” he greeted, a touch frazzled by the gravitas of his news, “Madam Lan is delivered of a son.”

Winter outside instead of autumn. And he’d been thinking of Wangji while accidentally activating the array.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

“As with Lan Huan, the elders have ordered the child to be removed to the wet nurse. Madam Lan will be permitted to see him once a month once her confinement has ended.”

Lan Qiren considered this for a moment; the long years of watching his sister-in-law waste away, the grief Wangji and Xichen carried throughout their lives after her death, the pain their family had suffered through because of it.

And then, channelling his gremlin nephew-in-law who sat so close to the surface of his thoughts, Lan Qiren set his shoulders back and replied, “Over my dead fucking body.”

Shock and outrage followed the next morning when he repeated the sentiment, verbatim, before the elders. In the meantime, he had used every inch of authority he’d accumulated in over sixty-five years of life—which, compared to how he’d felt as a rather clueless young man saddled with responsibility for which he’d never prepared in assuming leadership of the sect, was substantial—to make sure that A-Zhan was not removed from his mother.

Seeing A-Huan first thing that morning, hair amok and rubbing sleep from his eyes, had stolen Lan Qiren’s breath away. The unfettered joy his nephew expressed upon hearing that Lan Qiren would be reuniting him with his mother and new brother ahead of his next month’s visit reinforced Lan Qiren’s decisions that any decisions he made in the best interests of his nephews surely outweighed the continuity of the future he’d left behind.

Lan Shuping, the last of the elders to whom his father had deferred during his time as sect leader, advocated against the notion louder than any of the others.

“We cannot allow a murderess to hold sway over the next generation of the main family!” he barked.

Lan Qiren had thought about this at length during a cold and sleepless night, trying his best to remember everything about events through which he’d already lived and puzzling his way through his own misgivings about making significant changes. In the end, he decided, his responsibility in protecting a kinder future outweighed any debt he might owe to the past. Beyond that, he had a moral obligation to apply the valuable lessons he’d learned in order to guide those around him.

Wuxian, he knew, would have been utterly delighted by the mental gymnastics he’d employed to reach a place where he felt comfortable balancing his misgivings with his morals.

“Madam Lan has been held to account for this, without trial or proper investigation, for eight years now,” Lan Qiren said.

The reminder that she had been imprisoned only on the word of Qingheng-jun, served to at least bring Lan Shuping up short. The matter had been concluded, much to the discomfort of the elders, when Qingheng-jun chose to marry her and forbade any further investigation.

Lan Qiren continued, “Should it become necessary, I will of course call upon a neutral third party to conduct a formal inquest, which will doubtless expose GusuLan to unfortunate speculation, either because we have spent the past eight years wrongfully imprisoning an innocent woman, or because Qingheng-jun chose to marry a murderess to protect her from proper justice.”

More than anything, the elders would want to avoid gossip, especially that which might harm the peerless reputation of their sect.

Most of the elders feigned neutrality on the subject, regardless of their personal feelings. Without their support, Lan Shuping eventually folded. Would it have been this easy the first time? Or had his many years given him the necessary wisdom to speak against those who stood before him?

(Best not to speculate upon this matter or any other he would come to change; that way doubtless lay madness.)

“As Acting Sect Leader,” he continued, “I am officially permitting Madam Lan to determine for herself whether ongoing seclusion is appropriate. Lan Huan and his brother will be allowed to live with her.”

“I do not think Lan-zongzhu will be pleased,” one of the other elders murmured. An observation rather than a complaint.

“My brother may direct any concerns to me,” Lan Qiren said.

In the life he’d lived before this one, he relied on the wisdom of the men around him to lead his decisions, and eventually applied those learnings to guide Xichen through his first uncertain years of leadership. He had no need of them any longer. While he certainly welcomed their input in the daily running of the sect—especially while reacquainting himself with the current political ecosystem, of which he now found himself a full forty years removed—they would defer to him in matters regarding his family.

They parted and Lan Qiren made his way to A-Huan’s classroom to wait for his nephew to finish his daily instruction. A-Huan was first out of the classroom, despite being seated at the very front, and lunged forward to grab Lan Qiren’s hand.

“Are we going now?” he asked, mouth open wide with nearly unmanageable wonder at the prospect of meeting his new brother.

“Yes,” Lan Qiren said. He found himself smiling, having forgotten the way A-Huan threw his entire body into his smiles at this age, instead of the more staid expressions of politeness he used to mask his true feelings once he grew older.

A-Huan pulled him along, only occasionally pausing to look over his shoulder, as though afraid they might be seen and he would be forbidden from seeking out his mother. Lan Qiren silently swore that this would be the last time A-Huan would have to fear such a thing.

They heard the squalling infant before they stepped through the gates leading to the Gentian House. A-Huan, overcome, dropped Lan Qiren’s hand and ran forward.

“Quietly, A-Huan,” Lan Qiren called after him.

A-Huan stumbled on the stairs when he turned around to nod, picked himself back up and dusted off his knees, then delicately knocked, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

The last time Lan Qiren had seen his sister-in-law had been when he’d arrived to find her body after she’d taken her own life, her body swaying from the length of white silk she’d strung from the rafters. He had nearly forgotten the effortless elegance with which she moved, even in actions as simple as opening a door.

She slid into a crouch before A-Huan and opened her arms to embrace him, though she winced at his enthusiasm, barely recovered from the birth.

“Gentle,” Lan Qiren reminded him. She looked up in surprise when he bowed to her, lower than he had ever done so in his memory. “Forgive us for interrupting your confinement, but A-Huan wished to see you.” As had Lan Qiren, for no other reason than reassuring himself that she still lived. Strictly speaking, mothers could choose to accept limited visitors during their postpartum confinement. He hoped his use of language implied what he could not say in front of A-Huan: that this was not an interruption to her seclusion, but the first of many visits.

Li Linxia nodded mutely and stood back to let A-Huan inside. She paused before closing the door and tilted her head curiously in his direction.

“I have made arrangements for additional servants to tend to you during the next month,” he said, “They will see to your every comfort.”

“What is going on?” she finally asked, voice hoarse.

What could he tell her? How to explain the change which, to her, would come out of nowhere as it had for the elders. He’d had more than forty years to regret the situation which led to her death and his nephews’ lifelong grief, a burden he now carried alone.

“Your enforced seclusion is at an end,” he told her. “From this day forward, you will be treated with the respect and dignity of any other sect leader’s wife.” She paled slightly, which she frankly could not afford. She swayed in spot and he jumped up the stairs to assist her. When he touched her elbow, she flinched and then froze. It confirmed something ugly he’d always suspected. “You have been wronged,” he said, low enough to avoid being overheard by A-Huan. “I will do everything in my power to rectify it.”

She searched his face with wide and disbelieving eyes. “I do not believe you,” she whispered.

“I have not earned your trust,” he agreed. He stepped back and kept his hands carefully away from her. “I apologize for my part in what you have endured.”

She shook her head and stepped back into the house, albeit with the door still open behind her. He stepped inside and found A-Huan hovering over a small infant bed.

His lips parted as he caught the first glimpse of A-Zhan—Wangji, Wangji, Wangji, only a day old, impossibly small, who had died and in doing so inadvertently given Lan Qiren this second chance—and felt his knees shake.

“A-Huan,” Li Linxia said, slowly making her way over to her children. “This is your new brother.”

“He’s so tiny,” A-Huan marveled.

Li Linxia laughed gently and pulled him into her arms to kiss his head.

Lan Qiren watched them for only a moment before stepping back out of the door and closing it behind him.

Thirty days after arriving in his own past, Lan Qiren approached the Gentian House and knelt down at the bottom of the steps, settling his sword at his side within easy reach. He had trusted that Li Linxia’s confinement, and a basic sense of decency, although lacking before now, would spare her any unwelcome company. He also believed such peace would likely soon be at an end. He closed his eyes and fell into a light meditation—enough to allow for some rest, but not depriving him of his awareness of the surroundings.

Inside the house, A-Zhan cried once or twice overnight.

Outside the house, he heard the whisper of feet upon the ground on the pebble-lined path. They departed quickly, presumably upon spotting him.

Sickened, validated, he focused on achieving peace and hoped that attempting the impossible extended past the borders of Yunmeng.

He returned the following evening. And the one after. Knelt down upon the pathway to his sister-in-law’s door and unmoving. Both evenings, close to midnight, he heard the subtle crunch of footsteps upon the fresh dusting of snow on the pathway, and the ensuing retreat.

He suspected that if her would-be visitor had truly been welcome, then he would not withdraw in the presence of a witness.

On the fourth night, the door to the Gentian House slid open, spilling dim light out onto the snow-covered ground around him. He had made no attempt to hide his presence, nor had he bothered her with it.

“What are you doing?” Li Linxia asked him quietly.

A month of proper care, along with the warming food they'd brought in from Caiyi specifically for the purposes of nourishing a postpartum individual, helped her retain some of the weight she'd acquired during her pregnancy, rounding out her previously sallow cheeks and tired eyes. She looked quite a bit like Wangji instead of the ghost which once haunted him.

“Ensuring you remain untroubled,” he replied. If she found his interference unnecessary or officious, now was the time to let him know.

“‘Untroubled,’” she repeated.

Before he could reply, the sound of footsteps drew both of them up short. Li Linxia quickly shut her door and Lan Qiren looked towards the gates. He caught the barest glimpse of pale blue cloth disappearing back into the grove of trees separating her home from that of Qingheng-jun.

Once he felt confident that his brother had gone, he stood and the door opened once again.

"You should come in," she said quietly.

Lan Qiren nodded and followed her inside. The warmth of the braziers lining the room offered a welcome change from the biting winter wind outside; despite how his golden core kept him from suffering, he still felt the chill. Li Linxia waved him towards the table in the middle of the room, but did not sit herself once he’d settled.

“You discovered something,” she said. Not a question, but a statement accompanied by a guarded shrewdness in her gaze.

Before A-Huan had come to find him and say that she had not answered the door for him and A-Zhan when they’d knocked, Lan Qiren’s morning had been otherwise unremarkable. Then there had been a moment of deafening stillness when he’d simply known that something had happened. He’d made excuses to his nephews and settled them in with another disciple—he could not recall exactly what he’d said—before going in search of Li Linxia, already suspecting what he’d find.

There had been no note, nor explanation, but he suspected that long years of imprisonment had finally overcome her desire to live.

This time, he swore, she would have other avenues of escape.

Thirty-five years he’d thought of what he might say to her. Lan Qiren bent forward to touch his forehead to the floor before her. “I long held suspicions about your situation but convinced myself such a thing to be impossible. I cannot ask you to forgive me for the length of time it’s taken me to realize the truth, when you have always deserved better than my wilful ignorance.”

Li Linxia took a shaky breath. Before she could offer any sort of reply, however, the shrill cry of A-Zhan from her room drew her attention. She pressed her lips together and stood to go and tend to him, leaving Lan Qiren with his thoughts, all too loud.

Surprisingly, she returned with A-Zhan in her arms, already settled by his mother’s touch.

“You meant it when you said my seclusion was at an end,” she said, sitting down next to him instead of across with the table as a barrier between them.

“I did,” Lan Qiren nodded. “With your confinement over, you are welcome to come and go as you please. Officially, GusuLan has no stance on the matter.”

“And if I wish to leave Cloud Recesses?”

“That is your right.” He frowned. “I ask you to leave A-Huan and A-Zhan in my care, should you decide to go.” He hoped it would not come to that; A-Huan had already settled into the comfortable new joys of seeing his mother whenever he pleased, and Lan Qiren had no wish to deprive A-Zhan of her in this life.

“Should I decide to take them with me, and never return, what then?”

He caught her gaze. Despite years of experience with people, he could not tell if her question was in earnest or if she merely wished to test the boundaries of this unexpected change. Either way, he knew his answer.

“Then this unworthy one asks only to join you.”

Li Linxia’s face twisted, in confusion instead of disgust, he thought. Or, perhaps, he merely wished it to be true. “Truly?”

“I have not earned a place in your life, nor do I deserve one, but I will try to make amends for it if you would permit me to remain with my nephews.”

The words did not humble him as he feared they might. Perhaps because he’d spent many, many years prior to this shift into the past wishing he’d had the opportunity to speak them.

“You are sincere,” Li Linxia murmured, though seemingly to herself. “You would aid and abet me in removing the sect heirs from Cloud Recesses?”

After having seen how his nephews suffered in her absence? “Yes.”

Should she demand he remain behind, forever separated from the children of his heart, he would not argue. As their mother, it was her right to determine who she allowed near them. He only prayed that Li Linxia was the more righteous of the two of them. If not, then what fitter punishment for all his transgressions?

Silence descended between them, Li Linxia shallowly bouncing A-Zhan in her arms, her gaze aimed unblinking at the near distance.

After a few minutes of thought, she shifted and held out A-Zhan, the infant squirming in her arms until Lan Qiren gratefully took him. He had not been permitted to hold A-Zhan yet, in this life. He had not felt he’d the right, even though his love and grief over Wangji’s loss had sent him back in time. Feeling his nephew warm and alive in his embrace, the steady beat of his tiny heart and the rise and fall of his chest, nearly brought Lan Qiren to tears. Years of careful stoicism kept him from openly weeping, but his eyes burned all the same.

“I do not know what inspired this change in you,” she finally said. “But I will trust it is genuine.”

Did he deserve such clemency? No. Not yet.

But he would.

On the fifth night he knelt outside the Gentian House, Qingheng-jun finally lost his patience.

Lan Qiren had only just settled into his meditation when he heard his brother’s approach. This time, when the footsteps did not retreat, he opened his eyes and looked up towards the gate.

The last time Lan Qiren had seen his brother alive had been when Xichen came of age. He’d wanted to know if Qingheng-jun had any plans to emerge from seclusion to offer some form of guidance. In this, as in every other instance where he’d been called upon as a father, Qingheng-jun had deferred to Lan Qiren and refused to leave his house. Lan Qiren had still believed at that point that his brother had been in deep mourning. And perhaps he truly had been, for why else refuse to leave his seclusion after the death of his wife?

(He still had no answer. Guilt, Lan Qiren now believed, was not a feeling with which his brother had more than academic understanding.)

Qingheng-jun had always been the taller between them. The long years of seclusion had stolen away the former broadness of his chest and much of his muscle, but the loss merely made him more glacial; the single burning star on an otherwise black night.

“Qiren,” Qingheng-jun said, coming to a halt a few feet away. It had been snowing all day; the wet slushy fall of fat flakes clung to everything they touched.

Behind them, Lan Qiren heard the door slide open to only a sliver.

“Xiongzhang.” Lan Qiren did not stir from his bow, but he did shift his legs slightly wider apart in case he needed to move quickly. Baiyue sat at his side, sheathed but ready. “I do not think you are a welcome visitor here any longer, if you ever were.”

Qingheng-jun’s eyes narrowed. “That is for me to decide.”

“Not if you are ignoring your wife’s wishes,” Lan Qiren said. He rose to his feet, clutching his sword in his hands. “She will send you word by light of day if she chooses to entertain you.”

“We are both in seclusion.”

“She is no longer in seclusion and you are certainly not respecting the limitations of your own.”

Once he might have trembled at his brother’s ensuing glare, afraid of disappointing him. That callow and naïve young man was long gone. Too, he thought, was the man who would fear standing against the might of Qingheng-jun. In terms of spiritual power, his brother had outstripped him all their lives. But Lan Qiren had lived through a war and spent the past two decades growing his golden core, strength which had returned with him. He might have preferred the classroom, but he was not unacquainted with the battlefield. For all his brother’s strength, he’d never stepped foot into a warzone.

“Move aside,” Qingheng-jun ordered. “I will have my wife.”

“You will not.”

Qingheng-jun unsheathed his sword. Yexue set the standard for spiritual weapons among the Lan; the creator retired immediately upon its completion, confident in the knowledge he would never do better. The smiths who forged Shouyue and Bichen had tried to emulate Yexue’s icy beauty and only partly succeed.

Baiyue, in comparison, had only a simple sheath with moderate decoration. Hopefully his brother’s blood would not stain them.

Qingheng-jun had been the most powerful Lan cultivator in three generations. Before his sons came into their own, Cloud Recesses had not seen a more capable cultivator. In his youth, Lan Qiren had no hope of matching his skill regardless of the years his brother had spent in seclusion.

Lan Qiren, no longer in his youth, had four decades and a war now informing his own experience. He deflected Qingheng-jun’s first blow with ease, not allowing himself to be insulted by the elementary swing of his brother’s blade. A test, perhaps, of Lan Qiren’s resolve. To see if he truly meant to stand in Qingheng-jun’s way.

The next strike came quicker, leaving Qingheng-jun surprised when Lan Qiren once again easily parried. The surprise faded and his face hardened. There was no playful banter, nor mockery. Only the sound of steel striking steel.

Qingheng-jun tried again and again to brute force Lan Qiren aside, bringing Yexue down in increasingly heavy blows. Lan Qiren remained a wall between Qingheng-jun and the Gentian House door, immovable. Qingheng-jun’s hair came loose from his guan and flew wildly around his face, anger giving way to frustration with every foiled strike. Lan Qiren had an advantage: all he needed to do was stop Qingheng-jun from moving forward.

His disadvantage came in that, unlike his brother, he had no desire to cause harm.

Qingheng-jun feinted left and tried to dart around Lan Qiren’s right, aiming the tip of his blade at Lan Qiren’s side. He had personally watched Wuxian counter such a move against Wangji countless times and automatically moved Baiyue into position to catch the blow. He put all his strength into shoving Qingheng-jun back. Taken by surprise, Qingheng-jun stumbled away and hit the ground, staring at Lan Qiren in utter confoundment.

“Withdraw,” Lan Qiren said, his tone desperately close to begging. “Xiongzhang, please. Do not fall to evil.”

Qingheng-jun’s face twisted into a snarl and he pushed himself up to lunge forward again, this time with Yexue raised for a killing blow. Time seemed to slow down as Lan Qiren realized that his brother truly meant to murder him. He had admired and mourned and loved and hated this man in turns. In Qingheng-jun’s face, a mask of enraged determination, he detected no such conflict.

Lan Qiren steadied his nerves and moved.

No longer an untested boy, he called upon everything the intervening years had taught him. He caught Qingheng-jun’s blow and twisted his body to throw his weight into driving him backwards. He followed with three quick and twisting blows, one to send Yexue wide, one to knock it from his brother’s hands entirely, and one to slam his brother into the ground.

He came to a halt, sword poised over his Qingheng-jun’s heart. Their eyes met down along the blade, Qingheng-jun staring at him as though he did not understand how this had so quickly turned against him.

“You dare,” Qingheng-jun whispered.

Lan Qiren’s silence answered. He did not falter.

“Qiren.”

A small hand touched his arm. He looked at Li Linxia, agonized but prepared to concede if she wished him to strike the final blow. He did not want to kill his brother. The very idea coiled up around his heart like a blackened, dead thing threatening to spread its rot to all it touched. But as a tool of righteousness, he accepted the responsibility of bearing the weight if she required it of him. The price of reconciling himself to the act had to be worth the cost.

“Qingheng-jun,” Li Linxia said, her voice winter. “Our marriage is at an end. You will never cross my threshold again.”

His brother stared at her without comprehension. “No. You are my wife. You will submit yourself to my will by virtue of this union.”

“There has never been virtue in this union,” she said. Her hand trembled on Lan Qiren’s arm but her tone remained even. “Never. I do not consider you my husband and I am certainly not your wife.”

“I will allow you to return to your home,” Lan Qiren said, “Where you will stay. I will spare you the indignity of supervision as long as you remain there. I shall assume leadership of GusuLan.”

“All this so you can be Lan-zongzhu?” Qingheng-jun demanded.

It had never been his desire nor ambition to be Lan-zongzhu, but Lan Qiren had already dedicated one life to compensating for his brother’s shortcomings; to keep Li Linxia safe, he would gladly do so again.

“Return to your home,” Lan Qiren ordered. He stepped back, allowing Qingheng-jun to stand. When his brother reached for his sword, however, Lan Qiren moved Baiyue into the way. “Leave it.”

“You will rob me of everything else, along with my dignity?” Qingheng-jun’s mouth twisted into an insinuating sneer. “Will that include my wife?”

Li Linxia shuddered.

“Return to your home,” Lan Qiren said once more, unwilling to engage despite the low-banked anger building in his sternum.

Qingheng-jun glared at him with icy rage, but finally whipped around to make his way back to his own cottage, his stride smooth and graceful.

With his brother’s words still heavy in the air, Lan Qiren prepared himself for the sight of Li Linxia flinching away from him. He would not have blamed her. Instead she pressed her hand to his arm and returned to her house.

Lan Qiren considered removing himself back to his own home, but caution kept him close. He sheathed Baiyue and Yexue and tucked them at his side as he returned to his place kneeling before her steps in case Qingheng-jun continued to prove himself dishonourable and required further instruction.

Lan Qiren, after all, had always prided himself on his teaching abilities.

There were two orders of business to which he needed to attend the following morning. The sleep deprivation barely slowed his steps or his mind. Even Wuxian would have said he was no grumpier than usual. A benefit to being young again he had completely overlooked given how very old this entire affair made him feel.

He returned to his home, splashed cold water on his face and tidied his appearance for the day. He then summoned two servants to send on separate but equally important errands.

The first gathered the elders to the main hall.

The second, as he told aforementioned elders, went to work organizing the immediate move of Li Linxia from her current accommodations to a larger home better suited to both her station and raising her children.

“What does the sect leader have to say about that?” Lan Shuping asked. Lan Qiren expected him to be outraged, but his tone seemed thoughtful.

“This brings me to my next announcement: Qingheng-jun has made the wise decision to step down as Lan-zongzhu, as he is unable to fulfill his responsibilities to this sect any longer.” He made careful mental note of the elders who showed visible displeasure; to his surprise and gratification, there were only a handful of them. “Until Lan Huan comes of age, I shall be assuming responsibility as acting sect leader.”

A host of nods, one or two scowls, but tellingly no one argued over the matter. Qingheng-jun had little to do anymore with the daily operations of GusuLan, and whenever he did involve himself he tended to dismiss the elders’ counsel as irrelevant when it did not directly align with decisions he’d already made. Chances were they all felt something akin to relief in that while Lan Qiren did not always agree with them, he at least made the effort to acknowledge their suggestions.

Still, he thought later on, there was cause for concern when it came to the elders who preferred Qingheng-jun’s style of leadership and the freedom it gave them to advance their own agendas.

That evening he visited Li Linxia’s new house and brought along a stack of painstakingly drawn talismans.

When Wangji and Wuxian had first married, he had been against the union. His feelings about Wei Wuxian—at the time, severe dislike and disapproval that unfairly coloured many of his interactions with the younger man—prevented any show of support. He’d attended the ceremony but refused to be a part of it, which he deeply regretted for years afterwards in the harsh light of hindsight.

Several months after the wedding Lan Qiren had been summoned by the healers. With Xichen unwilling to leave seclusion and Wangji and Sizhui attending to the mediation between two lesser sect leaders, he had been called upon as the only nearby family member when Wei Wuxian fell ill.

Not ill, he discovered upon entering the healing pavilion. Cursed.

“Who have you angered now?” he demanded as he worked with the healers to alleviate the symptoms, a quick-spreading pox which ravaged the body with fever and weakness.

“Only you, Lan-xiansheng,” Wei Wuxian whimpered. The healers had bound his hands in cloth to stop him from scratching his pocked skin completely raw. He’d already raked his nails across both arms hard enough to draw blood. “People… just… hate me.”

He’d passed out before they finished administering the proper treatment. Lan Qiren, unwilling to leave him alone in case he found some other sort of trouble, remained at his side until Wangji returned that evening.

When he’d scoffed over Wuxian’s claim of innocence, Wangji had turned wide and wounded eyes towards him, the loss of his composure a sure sign of his worry.

“He is correct,” his nephew said. He reached out and took his husband’s hand. Lan Qiren resisted the urge to chide him for taking such liberties in a public space, but something about the subtle shaking in Wangji’s shoulders held him back. “Many still hate him over crimes he did not commit. This is not the first time he has been attacked.”

Lan Qiren frowned. “Why have such things not been brought to my attention?”

Wangji refused to look at him. “He did not think you would care.”

The words brought him up short, leaving him struggling with the conflicting feelings of guilt, anger, and irritation. Of course he would have cared! He might not appreciate Wei Wuxian as a partner for his nephew, but he had married into their sect and was therefore the responsibility of GusuLan. And, more importantly, Wangji might deserve far better, but he had chosen Wei Wuxian. At the very least, Wei Wuxian made him happy.

He sought out Wei Wuxian several days later, after meditating upon the matter. Wei Wuxian had tucked himself into a corner of the library, poring over some new project. Bandages remained wrapped around his wrists and forearms as the damage he’d done to himself healed. Mo Xuanyu’s golden core, barely a glowing candle wick when Wei Wuxian had been summoned back to life, had not had the chance to develop much further and struggled to keep up with the demands of its new owner.

“A rebound talisman,” he explained when Lan Qiren sat down across from him and eyed the scribblings with mild interest. His voice still sounded terribly weak. “It wards against curses, and sends the full effect back to whoever cast it, multiplied. Petty, I know, but maybe if rumour gets around people will back off.

“I don’t really care if people come after me, but it upsets Lan Zhan.”

“You should care,” Lan Qiren snapped, “And not just because of my nephew’s feelings.” Wei Wuxian merely sighed. “Why not confront those who would do you harm?”

Wei Wuxian stared at him, curious weight and deep resignation behind his gaze. After a few long moments of silence, he scoffed and returned to his work. “There aren’t enough hours in the day, Lan-xiansheng.”

The title irritated him, but for once he did not dismiss its use as mockery. Not when Wei Wuxian sat across from him looking older than a man not yet thirty had any right to appear. Perhaps he used the term for lack of anything better, considering that Lan Qiren had made no effort to treat him as a member of his family.

It had taken him another year before he fully reconciled himself with Wuxian’s presence in his life. He wished it hadn’t; he wished he’d made more of an attempt to understand the other man earlier instead of seeing him as a painful reminder of past transgressions and silently resenting him for it.

Only once had he seen firsthand the efficacy of the design, when a handful of cultivators arrived to decry Wei Wuxian for bringing harm to their sworn brother. The man in question had been wrapped head to toe in bandages, only a hint of leprous skin peeking out from between the strips of fabric. Lan Qiren had himself overseen the proceedings, Wangji pointedly removed due to his partiality.

“And how do you know it is Wei Wuxian who has done such harm?”

“It must have been, when he discovered our desire to purge the world of his crimes and filth.”

On the other side of the room, Wei Wuxian audibly sighed.

“What crimes has he perpetrated against you?” Lan Qiren asked. Wei Wuxian and Wangji often went night hunting together; it was not outside the realm of possibility for Wei Wuxian to have caused offense when such things came naturally to him as breathing.

They treated Lan Qiren to an impressive proselytization against his nephew’s husband, but presented exactly zero evidence or suggestion of direct injury. From his seat, Wei Wuxian listened to the vomitous hatred in silence. He made no effort to defend himself, even when the spit of one of his accusers flicked towards his face. Perhaps he’d decided that defending himself wasn’t worth the effort, when he would not be heard.

Lan Qiren had stood and pulled to himself every bit of authority he’d ever learned from sitting at the front of a classroom and treated the group to the most exacting dressing down to which he’d ever treated anybody.

“I don’t understand,” Wei Wuxian whispered as they limped out of the room, dissatisfied. “You hate me.”

Lan Qiren looked at the man before him and realized, for the very first time, that no. He did not.

“You still call me Grandmaster Lan,” Lan Qiren said.

Wei Wuxian lowered his eyes. “I apologize for staining your name, Lan-xiansheng. I know as a student I was not a credit to your instruction.”

“For goodness sake, Wuxian, you are my nephew’s husband. It would not be remiss for you to call me ‘Shufu.’”

Wei Wuxian turned injured, hopeful eyes up at him. This boy, he realized, had wanted a family for many years and, with few exceptions, had regularly been denied.

It marked the beginning of a change between them. One long overdue.

Li Linxia now studied the rebound talismans as he hung them on the entrances to her home. When placed at key points it created an impenetrable ward for everyone inside.

“You believe we are in danger?” she asked.

“‘Caution is appropriate when doubt exists,’” he quoted, pinning the last of them to her door frame. “I am implacable when my family is at risk.”

Li Linxia squeezed his arm and passed him A-Zhan once he’d finished his work, then invited him to stay for dinner.

He performed the same actions in his own home that evening, well past curfew. Once completed, he bowed before them and silently thanked Wuxian for keeping their family safe, even after his death.

Lan Qiren woke the following morning to the sight of the talismans burnt to ash.

He raced to Li Linxia’s residence half-dressed that morning after discovering the talismans had warded off whatever evil had been directed his way. She and the boys had been unharmed, their talismans intact.

Two disciples now guarded her door—the current head disciple and his best fighter—while Lan Qiren organized the search. He kept the existence of the talismans well out of the matter, unwilling to share details about the creator.

“Anyone else suffering from the curse will be easy to identify,” he told the gathered disciples.

He very carefully did not suggest that they start their search with the elders themselves. Rather, he directed them to check all of Cloud Recesses for any intruders who dared to move against the new Acting Sect Leader. He’d implied that the individual might be hiding unbeknownst in someone’s personal quarters. Given what he suspected the curse was meant to do, it would not be difficult to identify whatever remained of the person in question.

It took four hours of searching. Only that long because, initially, no one thought to check the Gentian House, now empty.

When they did, they found the half-liquefied remains of a man in white robes, unidentifiable due to the power of the curse which had rebounded upon him.

Once the body was discovered, the fresh snow made it easy to trace the footprints back to the house of Qingheng-jun. Also empty, save for a few volumes recently liberated from the forbidden section of their library.

He’d already mourned his brother, back when he’d still clung desperately to his idealized childhood impression of his brother. Now he merely directed the disciples around him in the removal of the body with quiet and unburdened efficiency. No one looked at him askance; any concerns over his detachment must have been attributed to a filial brother’s broken heart.

Already, everyone present speculated who would have brazenly attacked their sect leader. Lan Qiren had told no one else of the talismans he’d created, nor did he care to. There would be enough time for scandal once he and Li Linxia revealed the truth of the matter. In the meantime, the horror of scooping Qingheng-jun’s remains into wash buckets, now bound to be destroyed, felt more than adequately traumatizing.

Lan Shuping met him as he organized the sanitizing of the house. “It is no longer sufficient for you to be Acting Sect Leader,” he said, his mouth a hard line. “GusuLan will fall unless it names a permanent Lan-zongzhu.”

“I refuse to rob my nephew of his birthright.”

“Then name him your heir, irrevocably, even with consideration to future issue.” There would be no future issue; Lan Qiren had known most of his life he would sire no children. The idea of sex without feeling repulsed him and he’d sown his emotions in unyielding earth long ago. He’d come to terms with it as a much younger man than he was now, and no longer mourned for the impossibility of those tiny lives. “But without a formal leadership, we leave ourselves open to hostilities.”

Had he not seen that in the past? GusuLan had been the first of the Great Sects Wen Ruohan openly moved against, secure in the knowledge that the sect was managed by an untried young man, a wise but feeble group of elders, and Lan Qiren himself. Lacking strong leadership, they had fallen. He’d seen Lan Shuping himself die at the hands of Wen Xu.

“I will not be the leader my brother was,” Lan Qiren warned. “If I am to be Sect Leader, I will be Sect Leader.” In this, he might do justice to the figment of his brother instead of the reality.

“Good,” Lan Shuping said. “We have floundered without proper direction. Your investiture will benefit us all.”

“I have not agreed to this,” Lan Qiren said.

Lan Shuping hummed but did not press him further, falling silent only as the host of disciples bearing his brother’s remains emerged from the Gentian House.

Li Linxia sought Lan Qiren out later that afternoon, while Lan Qiren knelt in the ancestral hall before his parents’ tablets, struggling to parse the warring feelings within himself. He’d hoped for some guidance from his mother and father, especially since their original tablets still existed here and now. When the Wen came to burn Cloud Recesses to the ground, they’d prided themselves on starting with the places which mattered most to GusuLan—the library, their ancestral hall—and prior to his return, Lan Qiren had nearly forgotten the appearance of their original tablets.

A-Zhan slept peacefully against her chest when she knelt down next to him. She bowed low and whispered softly, “A-Zhan, these are your grandparents.”

A-Zhan whuffled a bit in his sleep, but did not wake. Li Linxia remained at Lan Qiren’s side for a long time before he could bring himself to speak.

“I do not know how to mourn him,” Lan Qiren admitted, ashamed of how his voice broke for a man who did not deserve his grief and had apparently been likewise undeserving of his love. Li Linxia sat silently, willing to listen. “The brother I knew did not exist, for he never would have treated you in such a manner, nor attempted to k-kill me for my actions against him.” His stumble shamed him.

The curse would have spread slowly; had there not been silencing talismans hung up around him, doubtless they would have heard Qingheng-jun scream for many hours.

“You don’t need to,” Li Linxia told him. “I won’t.” Lan Qiren hung his head. “You can mourn for the brother you say never existed, because Qingheng-jun must have fooled you into thinking he did.”

“I fooled myself.”

“He could be very charming when it suited his purposes.”

“You did not think so.”

“I find women, with some exceptions, tend to be on the receiving end of such deceptions more often than men and are therefore more capable of recognizing them.”

She handed A-Zhan over and lit two more sticks of incense. He watched her place them, brow furrowed. What perversion for her to be offering him consolation when she’d suffered at his brother’s hands for many years. She would have suffered for many more. Lan Qiren’s intercession hardly felt adequate recompense.

Li Linxia bowed again to his parents and thanked them for watching over her sons.

“I am now Qingheng-jun’s widow and I have a request to make of you, Sect Leader.”

“Anything,” Lan Qiren said without hesitation.

“I do not believe you have had time to tell anyone about the talismans you created. I ask you to keep this information to yourself, and allow Qingheng-jun to be considered a victim rather than a perpetrator.”

He swung disbelieving eyes on her, face twisting in confusion and disgust. “How can you, of all people, suggest such a thing?”

“I do not want my sons to grow up under the shadow of a rapist and a murderer,” she said. The blood chilled in Lan Qiren’s veins. Had he not more than once worried over Wangji and Xichen for the same reason, even as he himself wondered if their penchant for loving the unworthy stemmed from some taint in the blood? “Their father is a righteous man. He will raise them justly.”

It took far longer than it should have to realize she did not mean Qingheng-jun.

"I have made too many mistakes to be their father," he said, trying not to sag in place.

"We've all made mistakes," Li Linxia said.

The ability to express himself to let them, any of them, know they were valued had to the very last moment eluded him. How proud he'd always been of them. How their triumphs had filled him with devastating pride and their lows crumbled him like fallen empires and throughout every moment he had not been able to speak the words aloud.

(The silent echo of the discipline whip striking Wangji's back hung heavy in the air. Had there ever been a time to speak, it would have been then.)

He had saved their mother; what more could he do for these boys he loved, when he felt so terribly flawed?

"In another life, I would not have interceded. I would have remained wilfully ignorant until the long years of your imprisonment became unbearable, only to realize after your death that you were unhappy with my brother despite your separation." He tried to hand A-Zhan back to her, only for Li Linxia to pull away, forcing him to keep the infant in his arms. "And in that life, what if I did take primary custody of the boys? I would have allowed them to grow up without knowing a parent's love, denied kindness."

"Qiren," Li Linxia said, "In this hypothetical life you've described, I cannot imagine they would not have known a father's love because I see how you love them now. You know—" She wiped a tear away from beneath her eye, one quickly accompanied by many more, "—I remember one night A-Huan came to stay with me, shortly after you began his lessons on the xiao. He cried for you all night. And I resented it, I did. But I didn't begrudge it because I knew that the only reason for him to be upset was because he'd been parted from you." She breathed through a half-sob. "I hated you, but it didn't stop me from being thankful that he had you."

Lan Qiren bowed his head over A-Zhan.

“I’m not worthy of this honour,” he said.

“Neither was your brother,” Li Linxia said, pressing the heels of her palms against her face to wipe away her tears. She pulled them away, leaving rosy red colour high on her cheeks. “But at least you’ll try to do something about it.”

Content to let her have the last word, desperate for her to be right, Lan Qiren left it there.

Instead of giving him power and trusting that morality without tempering would be sufficient, he would find a way to model both wisdom and kindness, though the latter did not come naturally. He had struggled with the learning of it for many years. Now he had to find ways to keep Wangji, Wuxian and Xichen—his dead sons—in his heart to guide A-Zhan and A-Huan.

In deference to the mourning period, the date for Lan Qiren’s ascension to sect leader was set over a year in the future. But he decided to take no chances with the boys.

Only a week after his brother’s death, he adopted A-Huan and A-Zhan, officially acknowledging them by way of the family ledgers. Irrevocable, as Lan Shuping had recommended. Written into their records for time immemorial. Witnessed by their mother and a crowd of approving old men.

His blood and, now, his children.

Chapter Text

Life as impending Lan-zongzhu—unofficially as of yet, though many disciples seemed to forget the fact—resembled life as Lan-xiansheng with about as much similarity as an ocean and a desert: minimal overlap, but what existed tended to irritate.

He wanted to provide A-Huan and A-Zhan, his sons, with everything they would need to succeed in life; both as heirs to GusuLan and as adults. Speaking softly and trying to encourage instead of scold grated against his natural inclinations, but as days passed into weeks it became easier. With A-Huan, at least, who had been unfailingly congenial since infancy. He worried how his new approach would work with A-Zhan once he grew, knowing what he did of his second son’s nature, but given the challenges he’d faced in his first life, he supposed that all he could do was try to be better and hope he would succeed.

He recalled very little about the years after A-Zhan’s birth, spent in a haze of exhaustion as he struggled to balance his responsibilities to the sect with raising A-Huan and an infant alone. Especially not one who anyone might call ‘biddable.’ His first true memory of the time was of snapping awake when he heard a soft noise, chastising himself for dozing off even as he looked up to see A-Zhan take his first steps. It had been a moment of great joy during which he nevertheless found himself silently begging for even a moment of sleep.

Having Li Linxia helped. With her alive and hale, he hoped to be able to enjoy such a thing without insurmountable fatigue hanging over his head. It also allowed him to completely dedicate time to A-Huan, instead of splitting his attention between the boys and relying on A-Huan to assist with his younger brother.

Lan Qiren did not wish for A-Huan to face the world with unnecessary scepticism and distrust; he did want to engender a habit of critical thinking. While such a thing conflicted with A-Huan’s natural tendencies towards optimism and kindness, guiding him towards objectivity would save both A-Huan, and possibly the world, from much heartache.

To this effect, he frequently sat with A-Huan to discuss historical parables and stories which encouraged reasoning and logic, but refused to condemn his son for any sensibility he brought to the proceedings. A-Huan deserved his optimism, Lan Qiren merely wished to temper it. He also continued taking personal joy in teaching him to play the xiao.

One afternoon, halfway through their daily lesson, the bustle of someone’s approach drew their attention towards the door. Considering the specific timbre to the chaos, Lan Qiren half-expected Wei Wuxian to saunter inside with an insouciant smile. No one else ever caused such hullabaloo in the Cloud Recesses; Wuxian brought chaos wherever he went, and thus Wangji, too. Lan Qiren had despised it and relished it in turns. The number of times that horrible boy had tumbled into Lan Qiren’s sitting room with Wangji close at his heels—calm yet indulgent—had been incalculable once they’d come to understand each other better.

Lan Qiren’s heart tripped over itself, ridiculous in its hope. If he had found a means of returning—?

Lan Qiren should not have been as absolutely staggered as he was when Cangse Sanren sauntered in through the door.

Lan Pei followed close behind her, hands fluttering wildly as he tried to insist that she leave and wait to be summoned. Outside, an ostentation of disciples stared after her in dismay, all of them cheeping at her as quietly as possible to come back and wait for an invitation.

She…

Lan Qiren had deliberately avoided thinking about Cangse Sanren—Xiao Jingfei—for so long it had become a second nature; he hadn’t even paused to consider that at this point and time she still lived. It should have. It should have been one of the first things of which he thought upon blinking his way back into the past, but he’d been so wound up in saving Li Linxia and the subsequent changes that it hadn’t occurred to him that he no longer needed to mourn her.

Looking at her now, he realized with a stab of new pain that he’d forgotten more about her than he realized as years of repressed memories returned.

Lan Qiren rose to his feet, shaking.

“Gege,” she greeted abruptly, ignoring the fluttering disciple at her side and sending Lan Pei apoplectically close to qi deviation with the lack of formality.

Despite his misgivings, Lan Pei appeared unwilling to actually get in her way. At first, Lan Qiren thought it something they would need to work on, that the boy was far too timid, until he realized that Lan Pei’s hesitation probably stemmed from the obvious swell of her belly.

Wei Wuxian had walked through his door after all.

“I’ll have you know,” Xiao Jingfei continued, absently batting Lan Pei away when he tried to impose himself between them yet again, “That I forgave the first few letters you missed writing to me—stop that!. I figured that they’d gone astray while I was knee-deep in fierce corpses out in Yuangchuan. And then—”

Lan Pei once again tried to get in her way; Xiao Jingfei pinned him with a Look. He wisely moved aside, throwing Lan Qiren a pleading pout, as though anyone outside the Immortals themselves had ever been able to stop her from having her way. Lan Pei finally absolved himself of the situation and stood back, lips twisted in consternation.

“—After that was dealt with and I realized I hadn’t received word from you for nearly a month, I waited in the same place for two whole weeks for a letter. I know you’ve been busy, but I can’t believe you didn’t take a single moment to let me know that you’d stepped in as Sect Leader because your brother died.”

He had written to her at least once, every week, for years. In the months after learning about her death he still found himself reaching for a brush to send her a message and every time he accepted the renewed crippling pain of his grief as though he’d been run through.

He’d sent them diligently, sometimes as a way of sorting through his own thoughts, but never dreamed she truly read all of them. Any letters she sent to him in intermittent reply never referenced anything he’d written himself.

It had been a long time since he’d allowed himself to remember the fact.

“I never thought you read them,” he told her, feeling oddly detached from his voice as the words left his mouth.

“I may be a functionally terrible correspondent, gege, but I always read them.”

Lan Qiren wobbled as he crossed the room to her. In defiance of all propriety, almost certainly inviting gossip despite the edicts against it, he clutched her forearms.

Xiao Jingfei blinked at him in surprise, her next words dying in her mouth as she truly looked him over for the first time. She frowned at whatever she saw. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” he said, nonetheless tightening his hold on her, afraid if he let go for a single moment it would be the end of this merciful reprieve of sorrow so prevalent as to have settled into his bones. “No.”

When Wei Wuxian had first stepped foot into his classroom, bringing with him both Xiao Jingfei’s casual arrogance and the slant of her nose, Lan Qiren had been prepared to dislike him on principle for reviving the grief Lan Qiren had spent years refusing to acknowledge. It quickly became easier to be angrier at the boy than he likely deserved. And when Wangji had started looking at him with those soft, secret looks that Lan Qiren recognized from his own past with Xiao Jingfei, he’d faced the horrible fear of history repeating itself.

In the end, their story had been much worse. Lan Qiren mourned Xiao Jingfei as a friend, but hadn’t bothered entertaining the thought of her reciprocating his love for more than an instant or two in their youth, and did not begrudge her for finding it elsewhere. He’d been unsurprised that after Wuxian’s death, Wangji never considered marrying another. Lan Qiren certainly never had.

“Gege, you’re going to have to help me understand why—”

Whatever ‘why’ might have been, it was lost in the folds of his robes as he selfishly wrapped his arms around her. Just for a moment. Just to convince himself that here and now she was real and alive and would stay that way.

Her mouth hung open in shock long after he pulled back and away. She wasn’t the only one, he noted, turning to shoot a quelling glare at the disciples congregating around the door. They scattered, all save Lan Pei who tried slinking past them before Lan Qiren pinned him in place with a look.

“Where is your husband?” he asked, voice a pathwork of emotion.

“…” Her jaw flapped. She took a moment to collect herself. “A-Chang’s still at the gates. He distracted the sentries for me.”

Of course he had. “Lan Pei, please find Wei-xiangsheng and show him in.”

“Yes, zongzhu!” Lan Pei said, conspicuously loud, before bowing and nearly tripping over his own feet in his escape.

Once he’d broken through the crowd of other disciples, they scattered quick as dandelion seeds blown off an aging bud. Xiao Jingfei laughed, unable to help herself, and only stopped when she noticed A-Huan sidling up to them, eyes wide.

“Hello,” she said.

A-Huan bowed. “This one greets the honourable visitor to Cloud Recesses.” He looked at Lan Qiren and lowered his voice, “A-Die, who—”

“‘A-Die!’” Xiao Jingfei repeated, at some volume, making A-Huan jump.

A-Huan had stopped using ‘shufu’ quicker than he might’ve dropped a hot coal placed in his palms, incoherently happy when Lan Qiren and Li Linxia had told him of the change.

“Cangse Sanren, this is my son, Lan Huan. A-Huan, this is your Auntie Xiao.”

He had the pleasure of seeing her struck speechless for the second time in a day. Which, to his estimation, brought the grand total of the times he’d seen it in the many years they’d known one another to two.

A-Huan lit up like a festival lantern. “Lan Huan greets his Auntie Xiao!” His bow was less refined but definitely more enthusiastic.

Xiao Jingfei, wits quickly recovered, batted at Lan Qiren’s arm in silent admonishment. He took the abuse as the affection she intended it instead of berating her for the lack of decorum, given the far too likely alternative option of her pinching A-Huan’s cheeks and squealing.

She’d only just managed gather her senses enough to return A-Huan’s greeting when Wei Changze entered the room. Lan Qiren had never met the man in person; their wedding had been a hasty affair to which he had not been invited—a bitter fact he only remembered with extreme reluctance—and they’d spent the ensuing years on the road. He stood taller than Lan Qiren expected, even given Wei Wuxian’s height. He was a full head taller than Lan Qiren and a head and shoulders taller than Xiao Jingfei. He had a guarded but gentle smile and greeted Lan Qiren with finer manners than most sect leaders could boast.

“Are you satisfied?” he asked Xiao Jingfei after a few moments of careful niceties.

“Only that he’s alive,” she said, eyes narrowing in Lan Qiren’s direction. “He’s got four months of letters to make up for.”

“Then you’d both best stay for dinner,” Lan Qiren said.

Xiao Jingfei’s nose wrinkled, but she turned a dazzling smile on her husband. “Good thing you bought all that spice paste, A-Chang. We’ll be here longer than we thought.”

Later that evening, once Li Linxia had whisked A-Huan off to bed and left A-Zhan peacefully slumbering in Lan Qiren’s arms, he finally dared venture the words which had begged for voice since Xiao Jingfei had walked through the door and back into his life. Perhaps holding his second son in his arms, the comfort of knowing that such an adoption was official instead of honourary, and this was a piece of his heart he could acknowledge and safely keep close, gave him heretofore unsought courage there might be others with which he might do the same.

“I could use your assistance,” Lan Qiren said. “Please. Stay.”

Xiao Jingfei blinked at him in surprise. “Tonight?”

Forever, he wanted to correct. Instead, “At least until your child is born. Surely you must be in some discomfort while traveling?”

Wei Changze turned to regard Xiao Jingfei with a pointed look. She tried to poke the crease which had formed between his eyebrows. He caught her hand, kissed her fingertips, and then lowered it down to her side. In his younger years, Lan Qiren would’ve been flustered and hissed at them about propriety. Years of subjection to Wuxian and Wangji’s much more… insistent open affection had apparently inured him somewhat. Xiao Jingfei still seemed surprised when he remained silent. Perhaps the trick of managing her brashness was to merely keep her wrong-footed.

“I will admit that I’m considering turning that fucking donkey into a throw rug,” Xiao Jingfei sighed. Her eyes narrowed in consideration. “But you’ve threatened to kick me out of the Cloud Recesses a hundred times, gege. What makes you think you can put up with me being here so long?”

“I would cheerfully deal with all sorts of indignities to ensure your comfort and safety,” he said. “Both of you. And your child.” A-Zhan shifted in his arms and smacked his lips. He rocked the baby for a few moments until A-Zhan settled again. “I will see to it you both have jade tokens. You are not trapped here, nor obligated to stay.” He would merely bring down the heavens to encourage them to do so.

“Three months,” Xiao Jingfei said, still with that piercing consideration in her gaze. “Plus my confinement. Four months of my company all together, at minimum. You’re sure you can handle it?”

He levelled her with his own unimpressed downturn of his lips. “Confident.”

“Who went and taught you patience?” she laughed. She seemed about to poke him, too, but thought better of it at the last moment and settled her twitching hand back in her lap. “All right, gege. Since my company so delights you now, we’ll stay.”

Refusing to betray his relief, Lan Qiren stood. “Very well. I’ll arrange for more permanent lodgings, if you don’t mind staying in the guest dormitories for the evening.”

Once they’d been settled, he stopped by the kitchens as well, to make sure that they were properly outfitted to accommodate the palates of two people unaccustomed to milder fare—a indulgence he took liberties with arranging for the health and wellbeing of a pregnant mother, or so he claimed—and then issued instructions for the jingshi to be cleaned and outfitted as befitted long-term guests. It tugged at his heart to know that the house would be Wuxian’s home yet again, even if only for a short time.

When Xichen had entered selcusion, Lan Qiren had offered to reassume the position as Acting Sect Leader. Wangji, with his duties as Chief Cultivator, had more than enough on his plate to expect him to balance out the everyday demands of a Great Sect. His nephew had thanked him for the offer, but nevertheless took many of the responsibilities upon himself.

Lan Qiren tried not to take umbrage with what he saw as a slight, one—he thought—possibly driven by his reluctance to accept Wei Wuxian into their sect.

He had not as been subtle with his dissatisfaction as he believed he discovered one afternoon, quite early into their marriage.

“Ah, Lan-xiansheng, don’t take it to heart,” Wuxian said, their paths crossing outside the jingshi as Lan Qiren left and Wuxian returned from leading their juniors on a joint night hunt with YunmengJiang. Lan Qiren did not care to speculate what Wei Wuxian had seen on his face to inspire unsolicited conversation. “Lan Zhan knows you prefer teaching. He doesn’t want to trouble you.”

Lan Qiren had narrowed his eyes. “It is not an imposition to assist him.”

Wuxian nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe not, but he also wants the people he loves to be happy.”

“I would be happy if he would permit me to ensure that he is not putting his health at risk due to avoidable stress,” Lan Qiren huffed, the first time he’d ever shared a confidence with Wuxian, though this one came quite accidentally.

“You should tell him that,” Wuxian said with an unseemly smile.

Wuxian’s words held more than a small measure of truth, however. Lan Qiren did not enjoy the administration and endless politicking of sect leadership. He missed those years where he had been permitted the luxury of pursuing his passions instead of being saddled with accountabilities he did not enjoy. Had, in fact, been quietly thrilled when Xichen ascended at the end of the Sunshot Campaign, enough apparently to leave an impression on his second nephew.

He sought Wangji out again the next time Wei Wuxian left Cloud Recesses, this time accompanying Jinyi and Sizhui to visit his nephew in Lanling. He did not recall most of the conversation. Instead, he remembered the look on his nephew’s face when he suggested that if the joint responsibilities of being Chief Cultivator and Lan-zongzhu were too strenuous, then perhaps his spouse might deign to offer more support.

(Lan Qiren did not miss the foolish, officious, high-handed man he had become.)

Wangji’s gaze would have frozen the lava surrounding what remained of Nightless City. “Wei Ying helps,” he said, lips pinching.

“He is very good with the junior disciples,” Lan Qiren admitted, begrudgingly. “But what of the duties of a spouse? He is flighty and irresponsible, but surely even he could manage to shoulder some of your burdens.”

“My shoulders are broad,” Wangji said. “Shufu, your concern is misplaced.” How could it be, when he knew his nephew worked every moment of the day he did not sleep?

“Wangji, surely if he cannot be trusted to assist you—”

“There is no one I trust more than Wei Ying.”

The words stung. “Then why—”

Winter spoke through his nephew. “Wei Ying was raised as an appendage to Jiang Wanyin.” Despite the reconciliation between Wei Wuxian and Jiang Wanyin, Wangji could barely say Jiang-zongzhu’s name without a modicum of distaste. “As, I believe, was his father before him. Son of a servant. In turns abused and exalted for his superiority and always reminded of his place.” Wangji paused for only a moment to let the words hang in the air. “He may offer to assist me as he chooses, but I will not demand it of him.”

Wangji had, eventually, ceded some of the duties back to him, once Lan Qiren had undergone significant, if admittedly belated, aggressive self-reflection. But he still felt many years out of date in dealing with matters requiring political delicacy. In the years following Wangji’s ascension as Chief Cultivator and Acting Lan-zongzhu, GusuLan had developed something of a reputation for obstinance.

‘As his father before him,’ Lan Qiren thought, now, with Wei Changze seated across from him. When he’d requested their assistance, it had been with the desire to manufacture an excuse to keep them in Cloud Recesses. He refused to trap them here; some sense of purpose might satisfy their need for occupation. But he did not wish it at the expense of either Xiao Jingfei nor her husband.

“I’m going to go and get to know Li Linxia,” Xiao Jingfei had said two mornings after their arrival, depositing Wei Changze in his receiving room. Despite the late hour, Wei Changze still seemed to be blinking towards consciousness.

“A terrifying prospect,” Lan Qiren said blandly. “Please remember that she’s only four months postpartum.” Reminding Xiao Jingfei of her own dubiously ‘delicate’ condition would doubtless end in yelling.

She swanned off without a backward glance.

“She saw the disciple arrive with your correspondence,” Wei Changze said with a wry smile.

“Ah.” This explained her abrupt absence. The past two mornings she’d sought him out shortly after the morning bell for joint meditation and remained close.

He did not blame her. Today’s stack loomed intimidatingly large before him. Several of the elders had taken to passive-aggressively providing him with ‘appropriate readings’ regarding the contextual importance of some of the decisions made by Lan Qiren’s predecessors he now sought to contravene. Nothing which would bring shame or harm to GusuLan, but possibly further solidify their position in the future.

He pointedly turned his attention to outside matters. Sect Leader Yao had written to him with a plea for understanding regarding some dispute between a merchant with whom they mutually conducted business. The letter was full of obsequiousness and very little substance; Sect Leader Yao trying to present himself over as the senior zongzhu between the two of them, even though at this point in time he’d only risen to leadership recently.

Lan Qiren sighed one too many times, it seemed.

He barely noticed Wei Changze standing and dismissing himself with a gentle word, nor his return several minutes later. The smell of tea drew him out of his contemplation eventually, only for him to blink upwards and stare at the full service which Wei Changze had laid out between them.

“Oh,” he said. “Forgive me, I—”

Wei Changze’s smile calmed his fretting. The man steeped and poured tea with superior manners and quiet confidence, then slid the cup across the table without a whisper of sound nor a single bead dripping from the side.

“I’ve had a thought,” Wei Changze offered once Lan Qiren put down his scroll to enjoy the first, peerlessly excellent, sip. “If you would indulge this lowly one’s suggestion.”

Lan Qiren frowned at him. “‘Those who offer insight without expectation are righteous,’” he said.

Wei Changze laughed, a chuckle which set Lan Qiren’s chest aglow with warmth to hear it. “I can see that discipline being heartily abused.”

“Mn. It was an addition to the wall during my grandfather’s time as sect leader. I will admit that my knowledge of him is limited, but he was known for being opinionated. About everything.”

“I’ve been listening to you speak of this matter under your breath,” Wei Changze continued, “I believe there is compromise to be made.”

Lan Qiren sat back. “Please.” He had given some thought to regrowing his beard in the hopes that it would make him seem older than his (apparent) years and give some gravity to his presence. He hesitated due to the memory of how awkward and uncomfortable the first years of growth had been, but missed it now as a means of dignified fidgeting.

Wei Changze’s suggestion, on the outside, seemed to equally favour both parties. But winter travel by river between Gusu and Pingyang limited potential commerce and would position GusuLan very well to benefit in the colder months if the merchant remained in their borders during the fall.

“It is not underhanded,” Wei Changze promised. “Should Sect Leader Yao take care to think upon the matter and come to the same conclusion, you can point out that there is far more call for such services in the summer months, when they will be installed nearly exclusively in Pingyang.”

“Good,” Lan Qiren murmured. “Very good. Thank you.” Wei Changze bowed his head, though not before he caught sight of the pleased tilt to his mouth. “You have a good eye for such matters.”

At this, Wei Changze’s hands disappeared into his sleeve. Lan Qiren caught a glance of a loose thread at his left hem he immediately began worrying at. “I had the benefit of learning from the late Jiang-zongzhu while growing up. It was his hope that I would be able to offer counsel to Jiang Fengmian once he ascended.”

A wealth of meaning lay there, one Lan Qiren found himself hesitant to disturb. This man was Xiao Jingfei’s husband; he was not Lan Qiren’s friend. Not yet, anyway.

(Perhaps Xiao Jingfei’s decision to bother Li Linxia served a dual purpose.)

“I was born a full eleven years after Qingheng-jun,” Lan Qiren said. “A surprise to everyone, including my parents. My late brother already had a foundational knowledge of what it meant to be zongzhu by then. I was offered very little in terms of formal instruction.”

How fortunate for him now that he’d had many years wherein he’d needed to perform the duties of Lan Sect Leader. Being thrown into the role without them would have driven him mad. Even with the experience, he found he did not care for many aspects of it.

“Ah. In which case, I find myself even more impressed,” Wei Changze said. “It seems to come very naturally to you.”

“I assure you it does not,” Lan Qiren said with a wry downturn of his mouth. “And I do appreciate your assistance. I have never had the benefit of sound and objective advice before. It is very welcome.”

Wei Changze sought him out the next day, and the next. It easily became their habit to meet in the early afternoons, while Xiao Jingfei claimed to be napping, to discuss the day’s business. Wei Changze proved himself to be level-headed and kind, qualities which did not come naturally to Lan Qiren, and had an ingenious way with political nuance which likewise escaped him.

One late afternoon, a disciple brought a message inviting them to join Xiao Jingfei for dinner.

“I imagine she’s already spoken to Li Linxia,” Wei Changze said.

Hopefully only about dinner. Lan Qiren considered their growing friendship with mixed horror and satisfaction; while he’d always suspected the two of them might get along and his suspicions proved well-founded, the issue arose that they seemed to get along rather too well. Li Linxia, trust won, now looked upon Lan Qiren with an elder sister’s eye for teasing. As for Xiao Jingfei, her propensity for mischief would not meet its equal for another two years at least—until her son took his first steps.

They collected A-Huan from his class and made their way to the jingshi. Xiao Jingfei and Li Linxia were already waiting for them, the former looking resentfully at the cup of wine Li Linxia had poured for herself and muttering in irritation over the deep inadequacies of her tea.

Li Linxia passed A-Zhan to him as soon as he took the seat beside her. At some point in the past few months, she’d come to realize how important it was for Lan Qiren to be close to the boys when he could. A-Zhan regarded him with narrow-eyed consideration and then, very pointedly, smacked his nose.

“Gentle,” he said, taking the baby’s hand and kissing his palm.

A-Zhan offered a series of irritated-sounding noises in reply and then tried to launch himself out of Lan Qiren’s arms and back towards his mother. Lan Qiren placed him on the floor between them, at which point A-Zhan abruptly changed the target of his attention to A-Huan.

Wei Changze helped Xiao Jingfei ferry a few dishes to the table despite her protests. Dinner passed amiably; A-Huan very politely requested a taste of Wei Changze’s heavily spiced plate and spent most of the rest of the meal regretting it, shovelling plain rice into his mouth all while insisting he’d liked it through his tears. Xiao Jingfei slipped a small piece of cooked lotus root into A-Zhan’s mouth, to his superb consternation, which only lasted until he actually took the time to taste it and then made grabby fingers at her for more.

“Ah, your sons are too cute, gege,” Xiao Jingfei said, offering A-Zhan another piece. “I wonder what our child will be like.”

He will have your smile, and Wei Changze’s generous nature, Lan Qiren did not say. He will infuriate people with his inability to allow an injustice to go unaddressed and will take too many years to learn to temper the impatience I remember from you during our youth. He will love deeply and forgive too quickly, like Wei Changze.

“I’m sure the boy will be a credit to his parents,” Lan Qiren finally said.

Xiao Jingfei smiled. “Ah, you’re so sure it’s a ‘he,’ gege? Even the fortune teller said it was hard to tell.”

Lan Qiren silently chided himself for the slip. "Yes, well." Lan Qiren sipped his tea, mostly for the sake of hiding his face. "Regardless of gender, perhaps we might arrange a betrothal between your child and A-Zhan." Wangji had never been happier than when married to Wuxian; if he found a way to ensure that happiness without the tragedies that preceded it, he might feel less guilty for the part he'd played in their misery.

Xiao Jingfei stared at him. "Really," she said, flat.

"Mn. It will serve to join our families."

“No fair!” A-Huan protested once he’d swallowed the most recent mouthful of rice. “I want to be married to the baby!”

Lan Qiren tried not to wince at the thought of how Wangji, as a grown man, would have reacted to the suggestion that Wuxian might marry anyone save himself.

“You will be the sect leader after your father,” Wei Changze pointed out, looking thoughtful, “And will need a suitable partner.”

“Why won’t the baby be a suitable partner?!” A-Huan demanded.

“Because he will be eight years younger than you once he’s born,” Lan Qiren pointed out, cutting off whatever response Wei Changze had prepared; he refused to allow even a hint at the rhetoric that had followed Wuxian through his life. He would never merely be the ‘son of a servant’ in Cloud Recesses, no matter how jovially such a comment might be made.

“You yourself said that you had more fun playing with your friends in class than with A-Zhan,” Li Linxia pointed out kindly. “And this baby will be even younger. We will find you someone wonderful, A-Huan, not to worry.”

A-Huan sighed and slumped out of his perfect posture. “I want to be engaged,” he sighed.

“There will be more than enough time for such things once you’re older,” Li Linxia assured him. She glanced consideringly at Lan Qiren. “I was never a romantic, Qiren. He must get this from you.”

Lan Qiren pinned her with an unimpressed look and refilled her tea. ‘Romantic’ was not an adjective regularly applied to him. ‘Romantic,’ in his opinion, required a combination of sweetness and verbosity in balanced measure, neither of which he came by naturally.

His heart, once given, remained exclusively under the care of the recipient, who had, in fact, run off and married the only other person who’d ever stirred even the hint of such feelings, although admittedly such a thing had only become very recently relevant. He both enjoyed Wei Changze’s company and valued his wisdom. There were not three people in the entire world (yet) who could claim the same.

Li Linxia merely offered him a knowing smile. Lan Qiren boosted A-Zhan into his lap to ply him with a little rice in hopes of escaping the expression.

Once dinner ended, and Lan Qiren and Wei Changze set the dishes out for the servants to collect, Li Linxia scooped A-Zhan into her arms to wipe the rivers of drool from his chin.

“Ah, baobei, you’re such a mess. Let’s go and get you cleaned up before bed.”

Lan Qiren offered his hand to help her stand, only noticing the oddly intent look on Wei Changze’s face after the fact.

"A-Huan," Wei Changze said. "Why don't you and I walk your mother back to your house, and then you can take me to see the waterfall.”

“Good idea,” Xiao Jingfei agreed immediately. Lan Qiren startled at the sound of her voice, suddenly realizing she had not spoken nor made much noise at all in the past few minutes. He’d never go so far as to forget her presence; he’d merely taken it for granted. “He's never been there before."

A-Huan's face lit up and he looked towards Wei Changze. "You haven't? Oh, you have to come, Wei-shushu, I know the very best place to see rainbows." Hopefully A-Huan would not be too disappointed that with the sun already dipping behind the mountains, rainbows might be hard to come by.

"Please," Wei Changze said, offering A-Huan his hand. Xiao Jingfei smiled and accepted a kiss on the cheek from her husband before A-Huan led him out of the room.

Once they'd gone, she turned back to Lan Qiren. "All right," she said. Her hard tone made his spine stiffen. "I don't think you're possessed, but if you don't tell me what's going on right now then I'm going to attempt an exorcism anyway, and it's not going to be pleasant for either of us."

His blood ran cold. "Xiao Jingfei—"

"No gege, you've been acting odd since I arrived. Before then, if rumours are to be believed. Tell me."

Lan Qiren turned his face away and Xiao Jingfei shuffled closer to him in order to take his hands in hers. He looked down at their clasped hands. Her fingers, usually slim, had swollen somewhat in the past month since their arrival. She complained about its impact on her ability to hold a sword, but only a fool would ever assume that Cangse Sanren was only dangerous when armed. He reluctantly looked up and met her eyes. Whatever he expected, beneath the stubborn set to her jaw, all he found waiting for him in her gaze was stubborn concern.

"Here," he said, pulling away to retrieve the scroll from his sleeve. He should have secured it in the depths of the locked library room months ago, but despite his personal oversight of increased security, he had far too many associations with the place to dare entrust it with anything half so dangerous.

Xiao Jingfei unrolled it and studied it. It took very little time for her to understand its full meaning. Her forehead creasing with each moment until she took an unsteady breath and her attention shot back up to him.

"This is..." She huffed out a gasp half a shade away from a laugh. "You?" He nodded and she returned to study it further. "It's extraordinary. Who created it?"

Lan Qiren’s heart thumped hard in his chest. "A young cultivator. He has not yet been born."

"Will I get to meet him?" she asked with an expansive grin which made him shudder with how much it reminded him of Wuxian.

"Briefly," Lan Qiren whispered. He found himself unable to articulate further.

Xiao Jingfei's smile faded away to grim understanding. "Oh, gege. When did I die?"

"Five years from now," Lan Qiren answered quietly. "A night hunt."

He wanted to tell her that he spent years mourning her before relentlessly quashing all memory of her in an effort to yield to the Lan precepts. He did not. What good would it serve? Especially knowing how angry he’d been at Wuxian at first for reminding him of his loss. Her son, to whom he had shown insufficient kindness and had failed to appreciate until they'd both been much older. He carried Wuxian’s forgiveness of his ignorance close to his heart.

"Oh." She reached for him again and he allowed her to take his hand. She squeezed it tight. "A-Chang?"

Lan Qiren shook his head.

"And… the baby?"

"Orphaned. Raised by YunmengJiang."

Her face twisted into a rictus of grief and she turned her face down and away to hide the tears she hastily dashed away. She took a few heaving breaths to get herself back under control.

“A-Chang’s not a cultivator,” she said, almost to herself. “Once, in Moling, I was hurt.” Lan Qiren’s hands twitched towards hers again, as though he had any right to comfort her. “Badly. Probably worse than I’ve ever been. An entire day I lay at the bottom of a gorge, waiting to die.” She did not cry. Lan Qiren felt prepared to do so in her stead. “He’s always supposed to wait for me in town, but he acts too impulsively when he’s worried. He came to find me.” Ah, and here Lan Qiren had thought such a trait had been unique to Wuxian. Truly, they all really were in some way the products of their parents. "He nearly broke his neck scaling down the canyon wall. I was furious. What if the yao had still been alive? Or if he had slipped?

“I’ve never been angrier with anyone. I told him he was never allowed to do anything so foolish ever again.”

Lan Qiren had wondered, especially upon getting to know Wei Changze, how the other man had died. He found it impossible to believe the two of them merely abandoned Wei Ying. A hasty decision made in grief explained it, if not excused it.

“I try to be more cautious these days. But I suppose, five years from now, I’ll fail.”

“You will not,” Lan Qiren snapped. His tone pulled her out of her own head and she looked at him in surprise. “I will not allow it. Not again.”

“I’m sorry I left you alone,” Xiao Jingfei said. “But I think I’m capable of avoiding my own death, given sufficient warning.”

While he didn’t doubt it, he also knew that Xiao Jingfei was the second most likely person of his acquaintance to accidentally stumble her way into her demise with a cheerful grin. Fine. As Lan-zongzhu, he could provide the resources she needed to keep her balance.

“But you didn’t come back because of me, did you, gege? According to this, it brings you back to the hour of your first meeting with a loved one, and you’d come back long before, didn't you?”

“When A-Zhan was born,” Lan Qiren confirmed. “I did not intend to come back at all. It is my good fortune that I’ve been given this second chance and I will not waste it. Your loss was the first of many I intend to prevent.”

Xiao Jingfei searched his face. “I never realized I meant so much to you.”

He coughed and pulled away from her kindness. “Yes, well.”

“How long did you live after my death?” He told her, though she did not seem shocked. As she said, she’d discovered him much altered from the young man he’d been. “You need to tell me everything, gege.”

And he did.

Mostly.

It served no purpose save cruelty to tell her of Wuxian’s many years of agony and ensuing death, perpetrated in part by Lan Qiren’s own actions, inactions, and willingness to believe prettier lies. Especially when he refused to allow such things to reoccur. He did not name the young Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, the same who had created the talisman to send him back in time, but instead highlighted all the good Wuxian had done after being summoned by Mo Xuanyu.

Xiao Jingfei, while obviously proud of her son and gratified by Lan Qiren’s descriptions of his success—not to mention highly entertained at his marriage to Wangji—focused on different things entirely.

“Tell me more of this bastard of Jin Guangshan,” she said.

“He caused much harm.” The litany of Jin Guangyao’s evils sat on the tip of his tongue, yet Lan Qiren could not bring himself to speak them all. “But he will not be a concern for many years. I cannot, in good conscience, preemptively take action against someone who has yet to perpetrate a crime.”

Xiao Jingfei pursed her lips. “Fine. I’ll do it.” He frowned at her. “Tell me where to find him and I’ll cut the rot out at the root.”

“Even given he is currently a child?”

Xiao Jingfei blinked slowly, jaw tightening. “How old?”

“Four, by my reckoning. Perhaps a bit younger.”

“Not too old to be swayed, then.” She dropped her chin into her hand, scratching at a small patch of dry skin on the underside of her chin. “I’ll take him to the Mountain. Shifu’s never balked at a challenge.” Her pensive expression faded to a self-deprecating smile. “I would know. She’ll raise him to be righteous.”

“But your pending labouring and confinement?”

“He’s four, gege. Unless you’re suggesting he’s begun plotting already, I don’t think a few months will make a significant difference.”

While Lan Qiren would not necessarily put it past the keen mind of Jin Guangyao, he supposed Baoshan Sanren, more than anyone, had the best chance of keeping him on a righteous path.

He refilled her tea from the pot the healers had sent to assist with her circulation and enrichment of the blood.

She swirled it around in her cup with indifferent rudeness. "Who knows?"

"You."

She tilted her head. "Not Li-jie?"

He shook his head. "I could not bring myself to tell her. It's bad enough I left her to suffer so long without intervening. It is selfish, but I do not wish her to look upon me and see a man who allowed her to die." His shoulders slumped. "I have found myself to be a very selfish person.

"Bullshit," Xiao Jingfei hissed. "It is not selfish to want to find some measure of happiness after suffering for, what, decades?"

"You exaggerate my situation." Wangji had suffered. Wuxian. Others, to greater or lesser extent. He had quietly sat in Cloud Recesses teaching his students and wishing for change without taking action to effect it. “I was quite comfortable.”

“You would say you’re comfortable while coughing blood and half-dead.” She grabbed the collar of his robe and tugged on it before settling it back down flat to his chest. “Gege, please.”

“What good do recollections of my misery serve?” Lan Qiren demanded.

“Plenty! Do you think if someone like Jin Guangshan or Jiang Fengmian came back in time like this they’d be satisfied with changing a few things to make the lives of other people better? No. You were already righteous and your misery has just helped you refine it.”

“It did not. I am not righteous.”

“If you continue talking about my gege like that, I’m going to beat you, and you’re soft enough to let me get away with it.”

He rolled his eyes, unable to stop himself. While such a thing would usually unilaterally amuse her, fury still clouded her gaze when he returned his attention her way.

“I know you’re hiding things,” she said. “And I believe you know me well enough to have reason for it. But you’re not allowed to claim to be unrighteous while at the same time refusing to kill a child who nearly ruined the lives of you and your sons.”

They had not been his sons, then. Perhaps, if he’d been brave enough to claim them, he would have likewise been brave enough to defend them the way they deserved.

“You exaggerate my suffering.”

"And you sell it short! Qiren, gege, you've had this twisted view of yourself your whole life. Nowhere on your mountain does it say that denying yourself happiness leads to virtue. I should know! How many copies did I make of your rules?"

All in perfect calligraphy, in stark contrast to those copied out by her son. In a selfish moment during Wuxian’s attendance at the lectures, Lan Qiren had sent a copy she’d written out to his room, but had not clarified the value of them until much later. The why of it escaped him, now, more than two decades later. Perhaps he’d meant to tell him, eventually, only for the message to become muddled up in his anger.

He’d all but forgotten the volume entirely until late one evening long after Wuxian’s return to life, while they’d taken dinner together in the jingshi, and he noticed it sitting amongst Wangji’s modest personal library.

Wuxian spoke during meals, of course; had he not, everyone would have worried after his health. Sizhui and Jingyi, both regular visitors, took his cue. And their combined efforts occasionally cajoled Wangji to speak as well. Lan Qiren, however, remained implacable in his obedience to the rules.

Therefore it came as quite a shock when he spoke.

“You kept it,” he said, startling them all.

Wuxian followed his line of sight. “Ah, yes! Jiang Cheng sent the last of my things over and I found it buried in a box with some old paintings I’d been working on before…” He dipped his chin. None of them enjoyed speaking of ‘before.’ ‘Before’ was a desert with few oases. Wuxian had opened up somewhat more than the rest of them, for Sizhui’s benefit, but exclusively on matters pertaining to the Dafan Wen.

“Your mother copied that volume,” Lan Qiren continued, setting his food aside. Wuxian’s mouth fell open. “I’d forgotten that I’d given it to you. Please accept my apology.”

“Of course, Shufu,” Wuxian said. He nervously brushed his finger against his nose. “Aha, may I ask if you remember her well?” He scrambled to add, “Uncle Jiang never spoke of her, not really. Nor my father. If… if you recall anything…”

He’d opened himself to memories of her for the first time in many years, rebreaking a bone which had never healed correctly.

During moments such as those, Lan Qiren wondered if he deserved to be one of the people to whom Wuxian offered blanket forgiveness of the many petty cruelties to which he’d been subjected. Likely not. But Lan Qiren knew it made him a better man.

Neatly avoiding Xiao Jingfei’s point, Lan Qiren asked her, “What of the rest of it? We cannot take everyone involved to your master’s mountain. Nor, I imagine, would she wish us to.”

Xiao Jingfei’s jaw set in a very stubborn and vaguely murderous way. “You need to talk to A-Chang,” she decided. “My first inclination will always be to draw my sword. A-Chang knows these things better than you and I ever will.” Indeed, he’d already proved as much in the course of their conversations. “You can rely on him for the words and me for action, and together we’ll make sure things change for the better.”

“I’ve failed in so many ways. Ways I have not even begun to elucidate. Please, I…”

“You failed because I wasn’t there,” she said. Lan Qiren wanted to laugh at the utter temerity and barely managed to bite it back. “I’m here now.”

In a temporary leave of his senses, Lan Qiren took the liberty of clasping her hand in his briefly before patting the back of it and pulling away. “So you are.”

“This is what gave you away, you know,” Xiao Jingfei told him, chasing after his hands with her own until she’d caught hold of his fingers. “You always hated people touching you.”

“I did not,” Lan Qiren admitted. This time when he pulled away, she let him go. “From a very young age, the importance of propriety and comportment were pressed upon me. And, in deference to the disciplines, I took it too closely to heart.”

“My,” she said, “Gege, how wonderful for you to have both hindsight and prescience on your side.”

“Don’t tease,” he scolded.

“You take yourself far too seriously when I don’t.” She reached out and grabbed his shoulders. His eyes widened at the audacity, but she merely used him to help lever herself upwards. “Come along, then. Walk me back.”

“My pleasure,” he said, dryly.

“And see if I can’t finagle out everything you’re not telling me.”

“I believed you disdained any association with YunmengJiang,” he replied, offering her his arm. Perhaps not entirely proper, but she was pregnant and he wished to be gallant. “And yet here you are, attempting the impossible.”

Her braying laughter disturbed the tranquility of Cloud Recesses, but he decided such a disturbance to be worth the cost.

A knock on his door broke his concentration and Lan Qiren looked up from the latest in the endless pile of scrolls before him. “Enter,” he called, already anticipating Wei Changze as the man slipped inside. It was Xiao Jingfei’s usual naptime.

Wei Changze offered a small smile of greeting. “Good afternoon.”

Grateful for the interruption, though he’d never admit it, Lan Qiren set aside his work and gestured for Wei Changze to join him. He wore uncrested Lan robes quite well, though the style seemed to discomfit him slightly as he took his seat, tugging on and adjusting the loose fabric to keep it from bunching up beneath his knees. He looked rather oddly nervous, considering they’d been having these conversations for nigh on a month now.

“If you have time, there are some things I would like to discuss with you that may take quite a while.”

“Of a serious nature?”

Wei Changze’s lips twisted into a tight moue of thought. “Everything about your situation is serious.”

Ah. Well. He should not be entirely surprised that a secret shared with Xiao Jingfei was one shared with Wei Changze. He placed silencing talismans around the room before Wei Changze continued.

“I’ve made some notes, if you would assist me in looking them over for any errors,” Wei Changze continued. He pulled a hefty scroll from his sleeve and passed it over for Lan Qiren’s wide-eyed examination. The information appeared quite thorough, given he’d had the whole of the tale secondhand. Lan Qiren picked up his brush to make a few adjustments and notes in the margins, relieved as the tale went on that Wei Changze did not seem to question the identity of the besieged demonic cultivator living in the Burial Mounds. His handwriting, while it started out neat, quickly dissolved into a series of shorthand and quick notes, some written in the margins, obvious answers to questions he must have asked. It made Lan Qiren’s heart clench to think of Wuxian’s habit of doing the same.

When Lan Qiren came to the end of the tale, he offered his edits for consideration. Wei Changze, who’d watched across the table as he’d made his notes, merely nodded and set them aside.

“There are things I believe are missing from your tale, but I understand your desire for discretion.” Xiao Jingfei had not understood. Gratification filled him that someone agreed with his need for it. “If you’ll permit, I do have a few things to discuss with you which I believe are pertinent to the present.”

“Proceed,” Lan Qiren said.

“Thank you.” He said it with such earnest gratitude that Lan Qiren suspected that he would have stayed silent if his input had not been openly encouraged and welcomed. “The Wen sect.”

Lan Qiren nodded for him to continue. Many people, himself included, forgot about many of the early signs of evil the Wen sect perpetrated prior to the open hostilities which prompted the coalition against them. And, after the Yiling Patriarch became the focus of the world’s hatred and fear, few people bothered to speak of QishanWen save for in broad, sweeping terms and bloated exaggeration of their villainy. They were the simpler and therefore more boring of the two evils, when compared to the salacious reputation and power of the Yiling Patriarch.

“The Wen sect is powerful, but not wealthy. Their cultivation techniques are strong. They have a vaster number of disciples than many of the other great sects,” Wei Changze started. Lan Qiren would not have necessarily coached it in such terms, but Wei Changze was correct in the evaluation. “The reach and the requirements to maintain the army you’ve described and allow it to move needs more than mere power.”

Mn, this much was true. In some of those desperate days near the end of the war, when hope began running thinner than the porridge placed in hungry hands, more than one formerly capable warrior had fallen due to hunger instead of a blade.

Wei Changze continued, “How, then, did they pay for their war?”

“Wen Ruohan did not care overmuch about adequately provisioning his soldiers.” And those that died were inevitably turned into fierce corpses to be reused against the people who killed them.

“A soldier practicing inedia because he has nothing to eat will not last against a fully fed cultivator. This scales upwards. An underfed army will not win, regardless of numbers. In the beginning, to have made it as far as he did, he would have needed access to vast wealth, or Wen forces would not have even made it to Qinghe, let alone Yunmeng and Gusu.”

Lan Qiren frowned. “Wen Ruohan is Chief Cultivator.” Had been, for little over a year now. The acquisition of wealth must have been a pittance.

“Powerful. Prestigious. Not rich. People will pay tithes and send gifts in thanks and acknowledgement, but such things would not be enough to fund a campaign the size of which you’ve described.”

The pleading look Wei Changze offered suggested that Lan Qiren overlooked some vital piece of intelligence, but for all his supposed wisdom, Lan Qiren could not see the point the other man angled for.

“The Jin sect,” Wei Changze said, “Is rich, but not powerful. They have not produced an immortal in four generations. They have money and prominence, but no single cultivator trained in the Jin forms can match one of comparable age and experience to one of the other great sects.”

“Jin Guangshan would never admit this, but I suppose…” Lan Qiren paused to give it thought and see the point towards which Wei Changze drove. “You.” He stopped again, finally coming around. “...You believe that he provided Wen Ruohan with the resources to fund his army.”

“I do,” Wei Changze agreed. “LanlingJin only joined this war at the end, once the outcome had been decided.”

“Jin Guangshan sent his only legitimate son to lead his forces.”

Though, all things considered, Jin Zixuan would have been a liability to his father’s ambition; too honourable and unfortunately naive. And he had only brought those loyal to him, a pittance compared to the martial strength the other sects brought to the fore. Even those sects who had been ravaged by Wen forces early on committed more to the cause than LanlingJin. At the time, Lan Qiren thought it distasteful for Jin Guangshan to arrive at the end of the Sunshot Campaign to accept his share of the spoils and play the part of a leader among leaders. Lan Qiren himself had only missed the negotiations because of his commitments in Gusu. He could not say what he would have done had he been present when Jin Guangshan had arrived to take the lion’s share of credit.

“He has others to spare,” Wei Changze pointed out. “One of which apparently went on to become Jin-zongzhu. And, as unfortunate as it may be to think in such terms, bastards may only have so many scruples before they become useless to the ones who sired them.” His lips twisted into a bitter smile.

Lan Qiren did not know much about this man who Xiao Jingfei had married. A servant of the Jiang, he knew, who Jiang Fengmian considered invaluable but not to the point of elevating his station beyond that of personal servant. Perhaps his insight to the misfortune of illegitimate children came by way of firsthand experience. It pained him to know how Wuxian had experienced something of the same, legitimate or not.

It made sense. Terrible sense, but sense indeed. Had Wen Ruohan won, would he have deigned to share power with Jin Guangshan? Perhaps it did not even matter. Had it not been for Wuxian, they all would have been roundly defeated. Anyone of poor moral character would have hedged their bets and tried to ingratiate themselves to both sides in order to survive the aftermath. In Meng Yao’s case, the blow had come literally. In his father’s, apparently, he only saw the necessity of showing up to accept the honours without the sacrifice.

Wen Ruohan and Jin Guangshan—the true villains who drove people to violence and cruelty when allowed power unchecked.

“You do not have to listen to the words of a lowly servant—”

“Don’t,” Lan Qiren interrupted. “Please.” Wei Changze met his eyes, unashamed. “You are no more a lowly servant than your wife is a simple rogue cultivator, and anyone who believes otherwise is welcome to speak to me in order to have their misconceptions corrected.”

It took Wei Changze a long moment of heavy silence to speak, “You’re a good man, Lan Qiren. I can understand why Xiao-Fei always…” He paused again. “A good man.”

Lan Qiren turned his attention back to the discarded stack of notes. “I have not always been good,” he admitted, “But I have tried to be righteous. Perhaps you can help me with the difference.”

“I can hardly call myself righteous, considering my background,” Wei Changze said.

“Your background is irrelevant.” Words he had always meant to say to Wuxian; his beloved nephew-in-law would not have heard them. Not when his entire life he’d been told that his blood meant more than his merit. “I know your worth.”

He did not care to think upon the appeal of Wei Changze’s blush. He coughed through it, though the colour remained high in his cheeks. “Removing the threat of this child, Jin Guangshan’s illegitimate son, is not sufficient to prevent the tragedies you’ve described,” Wei Changze said, voice rough, though Lan Qiren could not quite figure out why. “As long as Jin Guangshan is sect leader and has access to wealth, he and Wen Ruohan will be a threat to our peace.”

“Then what do you recommend?” Lan Qiren asked.

What Wei Changze recommended, laid out in carefully subtle step-by-step efficiency, was the utter financial devastation of LanlingJin.

It had always been easy for Lan Qiren to see Xiao Jingfei in Wuxian; this glimpse of such an advanced understanding of political nuance and trade helped lan Qiren understand that not all of his brilliance had come to him by way of his mother.

“I notice this will elevate GusuLan’s wealth a shocking amount,” Lan Qiren said, stroking his chin and wishing again for his beard.

“As well as QingheNie and YunmengJiang,” Wei Changze agreed. “But we will need to funnel money away from Qishan. I recommend finding one or more of the smaller sects of strong moral standing and ensuring they benefit from this as well.”

They muddled this over a few moments, considering and discarding some of the lesser sects as potential candidates. The Yao and Ouyang were deemed both overly officious and too willing to be led. The Qin already too closely tied with the Jin. The He too vulnerable to manipulation due to the debts of the sect leader. On and on and on.

Finally Lan Qiren grumped, “We might as well establish a new sect entirely.” The words sat in the air as he blinked his way through to revelation. “Yes,” he said to himself. “Yes. That may work.”

“Hm?”

“There is a young man. Xiao Jingfei’s shidi. He will be coming down the mountain in a few years and eventually cross paths with a disciple of Baixue Temple. Together they will turn their hopes towards establishing their own sect. We might keep the funds aside for them until they’re ready.”

It also might save them both from the tragedies awaiting them, if only they had someone upon whom they might turn to help resolve their conflicts. Wuxian had been devastated by the fate of his shishu. Song Zichen had visited Cloud Recesses once or twice to pay his respects to Wangji and Wuxian, the spirit trapping bag never far from his hand though little progress had been made in knitting the souls within back together. It broke their hearts every time.

“Would they accept?” Wei Changze asked, making a few notes.

“I’m sure Xiao Jingfei can exert some of her influence as his shijie to help him see the value in the proposal,” Lan Qiren said with a small twist of his mouth.

“She’ll be thrilled,” Wei Changze said through a smile of his own.

The ‘she’ in question joined them a little over a sichen later, drowsy and relaxed.

“So? Have you two figured everything out?” she asked.

“To the best of our abilities,” Lan Qiren said as he finished penning the message to one of the local silver traders.

They’d decided to approach Wei Changze’s plan in small steps, easily overlooked or missed until they all came together too late for Jin Guangshan to do much more than watch his sect’s wealth dwindle to nothing. The loss would curb other concerns as well; promising young people would go to other sects in search of tutelage, further strengthening the others who would stand against Wen Ruohan should he decide to move forward even without the wealth of LanlingJin behind him.

“Then I’m sure it’s all settled,” she hummed. She sat next to Wei Changze and leaned up against him to drop her head onto his shoulder, eyes drifting shut. He pressed his lips to the crown of her head in response.

They looked very arresting together.

Lan Qiren abruptly turned his attention elsewhere.

“Lan-zongzhu, it’s time!” Lan Pei cried, skidding into the room.

Lan Qiren nodded to the gathered elders, wilfully ignored the dissatisfied curl of Lan Shuping’s upper lip, and followed Lan Pei out the door.

It was not custom in Gusu for anyone outside the birthing individual and a small selection of attendants to be present for the birth. Xiao Jingfei, in the last few days of her pregnancy, had begged for someone to send word to her master and ask her to come in person.

Word had been sent. There had not been a reply. Xiao Jingfei went back and forth between being relatively phlegmatic on the matter and desperate fear that something might go wrong without a member of her family.

Li Linxia had finally set her mind at ease by offering to stand in place of any female relatives, leaving Lan Qiren and Wei Changze to watch A-Huan and A-Zhan as Xiao Jingfei entered the birthing tent.

Lan Qiren set up a weiqi board between them as a means of distraction and regretted it when Wei Changze soundly beat him with very little apparent effort while simultaneously coaxing A-Zhan into trying a new food and listening to A-Huan’s first stumbling attempts at poetry, distracted and constantly looking at the door for any possible sign.

Li Linxia rejoined them late into the night, tired but smiling, to announce the delivery.

In his first life, Lan Qiren did not learn about Wei Ying’s birth until months after the fact, in one of the rare letters Xiao Jingfei sent him. The actual wording was lost to time, now that nearly forty years had passed, but he remembered how he’d felt upon receiving it. Second-hand pleasure on her behalf. Wry hope that motherhood would somehow temper her wildness. Deeply buried and quickly banished sorrow that the child was not his. All wrapped up in the exhaustion of being both a full-time caregiver for his nephews and acting sect leader of GusuLan.

In this one, having Wei Ying placed in his arms mere hours after his birth, all he felt was unfettered joy.

“Hello, Wei Ying,” he whispered.

“‘Ying,’ is it?” Wei Changze said with a warm smile. “There, Xiao-Fei, your gege has resolved our conundrum.”

“It was never much of an argument,” Xiao Jingfei breathed, half asleep.

Her head lolled against Wei Changze’s shoulder, eyes heavy. The doctors had insisted upon her staying in the healing pavilion overnight, despite her protests, which were only mollified when Wei Changze was permitted to stay as well. It flew in the face of Lan traditions, but as both of them pointed out, they were not members of GusuLan and Xiao Jingfei had already suffered through their insistence that Wei Changze remain away until the baby had been safely delivered.

It was late enough to feel early, and Lan Qiren had selfishly abused his authority in order to skirt around curfew to come and check in on Wei Ying and his family. Another piece of his heart felt slotted back into place as he shifted Wei Ying around in his arms. He would do everything in his power to ensure that this child would grow without the burden of debt holding him back and forcing him to make terrible decisions which drove a wedge between him and everything he loved.

When he looked up again, Xiao Jingfei had passed out and Wei Changze was watching him quietly.

“I should return your son,” he said, voice low to avoid disturbing both the baby and his mother.

“Please,” Wei Changze said. Not unkindly, merely in the same way that Lan Qiren felt whenever someone had taken A-Zhan from him in those first early days, eager to have his child returned. His smile grew as Lan Qiren carefully passed Wei Ying back to him.

He had a truly lovely smile.

The thought came unexpected and unbidden; the only true beauty in Lan Qiren’s life had ever been Xiao Jingfei. Startled, but not entirely displeased, Lan Qiren allowed himself to linger for a few moments to enjoy the sight of father and son.

“I should let you rest,” he finally decided. “Do not hesitate to send for me if you have need overnight. I am willing to assist, whatever you require.”

Wei Changze managed to rip his attention away from Wei Ying to meet his eyes. “I was worried that A-Ying would be born on the side of the road. I cannot tell you how much it means to us that you’ve opened your home.”

“Let it be yours as well, for as long as you wish it to be,” Lan Qiren said, sentiment emboldening him.

“Thank you, Qiren,” Wei Changze whispered after a long moment.

Lan Qiren accepted the words with a nod, then finally stood and showed himself back out of the room.

Chapter Text

“I’ll only be a month, at most,” Xiao Jingfei assured them, again.

A-Huan looked absolutely devastated, despite the fact that he’d draped himself over Wei Changze to get the best possible vantage point to look at both A-Zhan and A-Ying. Once her confinement had come to an end, she and Li Linxia resumed their habit of taking tea together in one of the smaller pavilions, nicely situated between a break in the trees overlooking the mountainside. Lan Qiren, A-Huan, and Wei Changze had joined them to say their goodbyes that morning as she prepared for a somewhat delayed trip to Yunping. At three months, she’d deemed A-Ying sturdy enough to be left in the care of his father and a wetnurse loaned to them from another disciple. There was no more sense in delay.

“But do you have to go, Auntie?” A-Huan asked, probably for the fiftieth time since Xiao Jingfei had announced her intention to leave Cloud Recesses.

“I do,” she said. She reached out and gently pinched his chin. “But I’ll be back as soon as I can, you have my word.”

A-Huan sighed and pouted, the picture of tragedy.

“And, if you are very good—by my standards—I’ll bring you back something sweet.”

Somewhat mollified, though obviously puzzling over subjective behavioural expectations, A-Huan listed back against his mother.

Xiao Jingfei straightened, and accepted the qiankun pouch Lan Qiren shoved into her hands as he willfully ignored her cheeky smile.

“Provisions,” he huffed.

“Thank you, gege,” she said. “Take care of my boys.”

“I will.”

He turned away to allow her some semblance of privacy as she said goodbye to Wei Changze, a wise move, considering A-Huan’s ensuing high-pitched giggle. He only turned back when Xiao Jingfei tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and dragged him along, ostensibly as an escort down to the gates.

“I’ve told A-Chang to look after you as well,” she informed him. “Pei-er said something about your ridiculous hours before my arrival, and I wouldn’t put it past you to fall back into bad habits without my mitigating influence.”

“You’re a menace,” he told her without rancour. “Stop being so familiar with my disciples.”

“No,” Xiao Jingfei replied blithely. Once they reached the gates, her expression faded to one of severity. “Meng Yao. Yunping.” He nodded. “I’ll be back in time for your investiture,” she promised.

The auspicious date in which he would officially assume the title of Lan-zongzhu was little more than a month away. For all he wished for her to be present, he also feared her pushing herself. In their regular spars, he still detected a subtle weakness in her movements. While he had no doubt she’d recover from the ordeal of pregnancy and childbirth, he also wished she’d take the recovery at its own pace instead of insisting upon hers.

He did not do her the discredit of asking if she had recovered enough for the journey; at best she’d tug on the nascent beginnings of his beard and laugh at his concern. At worst he’d arouse her temper. She knew herself enough to know her limits, and knowing now how her death had affected so many, he felt confident she’d take better care of herself.

“Do not strain yourself for my sake.”

Xiao Jingfei chuckled. “I’d do a lot for your sake, gege.” She drew Tianbi and mounted it. “Including visiting a brothel, apparently, which I am going to relish in reminding you for the rest of our lives.”

He watched her take flight just outside the gates and had to restrain himself from following.

As days crept into weeks, Xiao Jingfei’s absence began to feel more like an abscess, a broad and painful infection threatening to spread.

His formal ascension to sect leader loomed every closer; every day there seemed more and more disciples greeting him as ‘zongzhu.’ He thought he’d been prepared for it. He’d been incorrect. He thought of Xichen, who had so firmly established himself as ‘Zewu-jun’ that the ‘Lan-zongzhu’ had become an afterthought even after he’d formally assumed the role.

He hoped he would pave the way for a kinder future, where his nephew might enjoy the relative simplicities of his youth far longer than he’d had opportunity to in Lan Qiren’s first life.

A-Zhan, now approaching a year, showed every sign of being one of the most opinionated toddlers the world had ever seen. A stark difference from the child Lan Qiren recalled, who had spent his early years anxious over the smallest change instead of merely judging them. How much of it was Li Linxia’s influence, he wondered. Or, perhaps more obviously, A-Zhan needn’t worry about his mother disappearing and reappearing from his life.

A-Ying was fascinated by the older boys. His first real laugh came while watching A-Huan and A-Zhan roll a ball back and forth between them. Wei Changze, unable to contain his delight, scooped his son up in his arms and peppered his face with kisses, earning himself even more laughter until A-Ying became nearly breathless with it. A-Huan giggled madly the entire time and even A-Zhan smiled, a large grin which showed off all four of his tiny teeth.

(It took Lan Qiren several hours to realize he’d never stopped smiling himself.)

Each day that passed without word, the skin around Wei Changze’s eyes tightened further.

Lan Qiren tried his best to distract him with the children, decent conversation, and weiqi as often as his ego could handle it. Other days he requested Wei Changze’s assistance with the daily tasks of running a sect. It became a matter of course for the disciples and elders to direct things to Wei Changze instead. And while he always offered to let Lan Qiren reply, Lan Qiren invited Wei Changze to do so in his stead. He had proven himself an admirable advisor; the rest of GusuLan would do well to note it.

“This,” Wei Changze chuckled one afternoon over a matter involving Yunmeng, “The river will not flow backwards at your command.”

An excellent metaphor, especially considering the subject matter. Lan Qiren borrowed it for his reply. Wei Changze smiled, but it looked wan and strained. Lan Qiren began to suspect that if Xiao Jingfei took much longer than he might be in the position of having to physically restrain her husband from going in search of her.

Not much time later, after Wei Changze had whisked A-Ying away for his nap, Lan Pei entered the room.

“Zongzhu,” Lan Pei said. “I noticed someone riding the sword towards our gates and felt I should come tell you.”

“Thank you,” Lan Qiren said, standing. He did not run; restraint which, judging from the heave of his shoulders, Lan Pei had not shared.

He realized almost immediately that it could not be Xiao Jingfei; the shape of the person astride the sword had the incorrect silhouette. But few visitors dared approach by sword instead of climbing the mountain path and the very audaciousness of the act brought Xiao Jingfei to mind regardless.

They had nearly reached the gates when he realized that the shape was that of a young man with Xiao Jingfei behind him. He recognized the drape of her sleeve from the arm wrapped around his waist. And, this close, he finally caught sight of the rough state of him. His face bruised to black, one eye completely swollen over, and his arm hanging at his side at an unnatural angle. He had a sword at his belt, but little wonder he flew with Xiao Jingfei; with those injuries yet untreated he likely hadn’t the spiritual energy to fly himself, even if he could have seen properly.

Not Meng Yao. Too old by far, probably close to thirteen or fourteen. He obscured his full height by hunching in on himself, already preparing for a blow.

When they landed and Xiao Jingfei helped him down, Lan Qiren got a look at her properly, confusion quickly turning to fury.

She’d been injured.

Not anywhere close to as bad as the boy. A large swath of mottled purple skin from her left cheekbone to her temple and a gash upon her lower lip which needed attention before it split her lip wide open.

“Come, didi,” she said, beckoning the young man forward and inadvertently showing off the bruised and ripped skin across her knuckles.

The boy shook with nerves, but allowed her to guide him forward. With a single, steely glare she had the gate sentinels backing away, only Lan Qiren and Lan Pei unshaken, the latter likely only due to long exposure.

“It’s all right,” she said quietly. “Gege, may I introduce my charge, Xiao Zhuliu.”

She took hold of the young man’s hand and squeezed. Some of the tension eased out of Xiao Zhuliu even as Lan Qiren’s ramped up at the sight of her touching his bare skin. Someone else, then, had delivered the beating. Lan Qiren hadn’t truly expected it of Xiao Jingfei when he’d deliberately concealed the part that Wen Zhuliu had played in her son’s downfall, his barebones discussion of the Core Melting Hand only that of a Wen disciple and the implement of much loss.

Ice settled in Lan Qiren’s stomach. “Welcome,” he forced out, relying on muscle memory for the niceties. “May we see you safely to the healers?”

“My didi, certainly.”

Lan Qiren wanted to recoil at the familiarity; Xiao Jingfei had never quailed at forming instant and nearly unbreakable bonds with others, but this?

Xiao Zhuliu looked pleadingly at Xiao Jingfei. “You won’t come?”

“I’ll be close behind,” she assured him. “Remember what I said? Their library has all sorts of books on meridian disorders.” He nodded uncertainly, still unable or unwilling to look directly at any of them.

“Accompany Xiao-gongzi to the healing pavilion,” Lan Qiren instructed Lan Pei. He nearly warned Lan Pei off of touching him, but he held his tongue.

“Be careful with him, Pei-er. His spiritual energy is currently suppressed.”

Lan Pei nodded and gestured for Xiao Zhuliu to follow him. Xiao Zhuliu did, eventually, at a distance. More than once he turned to look back over his shoulder towards Xiao Jingfei, who nodded encouragingly each time. Once they were out of sight, Xiao Jingfei turned to Lan Qiren with the beginning of her usual smile, the cut on her lip abruptly reminding her why it was a poor idea. She grimaced and poked at it to stopper the blood.

“Come along,” Lan Qiren said brusquely, motioning towards the walkway which would bring them back towards the residential area. He noticed one or two disciples wince out of the corner of his eye; the tone was something with which many of his former students—the disruptive ones—tended to be well-acquainted.

She gamely followed along and seemed unsurprised when, once they were well out of sight of the gates and any other disciples, he grabbed her sleeve and hauled her off the path into the shelter offered by a small copse of tightly spaced trees.

“Gege—” she said, voice gentle and placating.

“Do not,” he interrupted, surprising her to silence. He took her wrist gently in hand, desperate to feel for her golden core. It thrummed away, depleted but not gone. She must have funnelled all her spiritual energy into carrying Xiao Zhuliu to Cloud Recesses on her sword instead of healing, a matter he neatly took into his own hands by channeling his own power into her. “You will scare A-Chang and A-Ying, coming to them in such a state. You look as though you were in a common brawl.”

He should have known, of course, by the sight of her flying that her golden core remained intact, but something about seeing her injuries in conjunction with the presence of Xiao Zhuliu had temporarily robbed him of his senses.

“I was.” The bruising on her face slowly began to fade. “I took Meng Yao and his mother to my master. On the way back I realized how close I’d be passing to Zhao lands and. Well. Gege, I only meant to look into things, not start a fight. But you know me. I can’t sit by and let someone…” She shook her head. “You should have seen what they were doing to that poor child. No wonder he ran to the first person who treated him with any kindness. He’s so desperate, gege. On the way back I had to hold onto him just to make sure he didn’t throw himself off my sword. I only managed to coax him back from a cliff by promising that the doctors here might be able to help him.” Her mouth twisted into a half-grimace. “I can understand how someone like Wen Ruohan managed to win his loyalty. We weren’t even halfway here when he decided to take the name ‘Xiao.’ I didn’t have the heart to tell him that nearly everyone who comes down from the Mountain uses it.”

With the influx of his spiritual power, the bruising quickly began to fade. It did nothing for the stormy cast to his thoughts or, he imagined, his features.

“Aha, you worry too much, gege. This is nothing. I’m absolutely impossible to be around when I’m really hurt. Literally. I’d chase you away like an injured badger trying to retreat to its den.”

Once the majority of the damage was healed, leaving only the merest traces of injury, Lan Qiren released her wrist but did not step back. Instead, he straightened his shoulders and pulled himself to his full height, tugging her a half-step forward.

“You,” he said, low and not a little angry, “Cannot be so casual about your well-being!” True anger, the sort of which he’d rarely felt before, flowed lava-thick through him. He released her, afraid he’d inadvertently hurt her by clenching his fists. He veritably loomed over her, shaking his finger in her face for want of something to do with his hands. “What would have happened had you not won his loyalty? Hmm? What if he had crushed your golden core?”

She backed up a step, her back hitting the tree behind her, but she did not seem afraid of him, taking his censure with wide eyes and slightly parted lips.

“Please, have a care for yourself. For your family’s sake. We could have gone together. There is no need for you to address the entirety of the world’s ills on your own!”

Xiao Jingfei took his hand in both of hers, wrapping her delicate fingers around it as he closed it into a fist. He suddenly realized how terribly close they were standing. Their chests were practically touching, only their clasped hands fitting into the space between them. Highly indecorous. Yet. He looked down at her and did not seem quite capable of pulling himself away.

“Qiren,” she said, dangerously serious. “I, Xiao Jingfei, promise you that I will take every necessary precaution to make sure I come back to you this time.”

Lan Qiren took a steadying breath. She squeezed his fist until he relaxed his hand. There seemed more to be said, but for the life of him he could not conjure a single word. They instead stared at one another in silence.

“Did you hear that Cangse Sanren has returned?” a voice from the nearby path asked.

“Has she? She promised to bring me candy.”

“Me too, me too.”

The voices faded again almost as quickly, but they took with them the heavy feeling of the moment which had preceded their arrival. Lan Qiren felt more capable of taking a step backwards, gently tugging his hand away from Xiao Jingfei. She watched him go intently.

“We should go to Wei Changze. He’s been worried.” He coughed and tugged on his sleeves. “And stop corrupting my disciples.”

A slow smile crept across her face. “Is that what I’m doing?”

Unaccountably flustered, he made his way back to the path, Xiao Jingfei following him after a few long moments.

Vindication quickly followed once they reached Wei Changze. While her injuries were healed, he nevertheless seemed to know something was amiss. He did not prevent her from taking A-Ying into her arms and blowing raspberries on his cheeks, earning herself a series of joyful screams.

A-Zhan crawled over to him and grabbed the front of his robes to pull himself up to standing. Just over a year, yet he wanted very desperately to be able to walk on his own accord as A-Huan did. He balanced himself on Lan Qiren’s lap and babbled solemn but insistent nonsense which Lan Qiren responded to with earnest nods and hums of agreement. It did not offer the same intellectual gravitas as conversations with Wangji had as an older man, but he found them equally engaging.

In his first life, Lan Qiren remembered A-Zhan being a withdrawn, easily irritated child. In this one, he exhibited far greater resilience when it came to such terrible inconveniences as a wet diaper or hunger.

After Xiao Jingfei had thoroughly kissed Wei Changze in greeting, Lan Qiren made a point of standing with A-Zhan in his arms and scooping up A-Ying as well.

“A-Chang,” Lan Qiren said. “Were you aware that your wife had decided to go and seek out the Core Melting Hand?”

He showed himself out the door somewhere between Xiao Jingfei swinging an accusatory glare towards him and Wei Changze immediately beginning to fuss over her with his specific combination of wide, pleading eyes and gentle hands checking her over for injury.

Served her right.

In the best interest of all parties, Wei Changze woke with A-Ying overnight and sat with the baby when required. Combined with his natural inclination for sleeping late, the man was rarely seen outside the jingshi before midmorning. When not pregnant, Xiao Jingfei was an inveterate early riser and sought Lan Qiren out first thing, allowing them to share an early breakfast and following meditation. Her stillness and silence still surprised him, even after sharing countless such quiet moments since her arrival.

A few mornings after her return to Cloud Recesses, Lan Pei reluctantly interrupted them to announce the arrival of Jiang-zongzhu.

Xiao Jingfei’s eyes snapped open.

“We’re not here,” she hissed, grabbing Lan Qiren’s shoulders and forcing him to meet her eyes. Any other disciple might have boggled at her audacity, but Lan Pei had become accustomed to it, hence his semi-permanent position as Lan Qiren’s assistant. He hardly blinked.

“What?” Lan Qiren frowned, far too caught up in the mixed panic and irritation in her tone.

“A-Chang and I are not here,” she repeated, releasing him. “You haven’t heard from us, you haven’t seen us.”

She ducked around the privacy screen dividing the room. He waited only a beat before eyeing his disciple.

“Has anyone mentioned the presence of Cangse Sanren and her husband to the visiting Jiang-zongzhu?” he asked.

“No, sir,” Lan Pei confirmed.

“Mn. Please convey the importance of it to the others, then show him in and fetch us light refreshments.”

Jiang Fengmian, it struck Lan Qiren as the man walked through the door, wore the robes of authority with more confidence yet less presence than Jiang Wanyin. A pleasant, empty smile stretched across his face as he greeted Lan Qiren with felicity and grace. He complimented the Cloud Recesses and Lan Qiren’s tea, made a show of his grief for Qingheng-jun, congratulated Lan Qiren appropriately on his upcoming ascension, caught Lan Qiren up on the comings and goings of Lotus Pier while glossing over how such things surely fell under the umbrella of ‘gossip.’

It had all the markings of a pleasant visit, if a meaningless one. Lan Qiren found himself tensing as he braced for the other man to come to the true purpose of his visit. Jiang Wanyin, Lan Qiren thought fondly, only resentfully went through the motions of propriety, always quick to arrive at his point. Jiang Fengmian seemed determined to stretch them out as long as possible.

“I came into possession of your letter regarding the matter of our overlapping territory,” Jiang Fengmian finally said. “I found myself curious about a certain turn of phrase you used.”

“Oh? Have I offered some insult?”

“Not at all, not at all,” Jiang Fengmian congenially waved his hand. “Only, I did think it odd that you’d inadvertently happen upon a phrase that my former manservant occasionally used.” Lan Qiren did not blink when Jiang Fengmian met his gaze. The smile remained on his face. “We are both gentlemen, Grandmaster Lan. Surely, we can agree that it’s the height of poor manners to poach another man’s servants.”

Behind the screen, Xiao Jingfei squawked in outrage, a sound Lan Qiren anticipated and hummed over, just loud enough to make it seem as though he’d been the only to make a sound. “Indeed. However, it is not in the custom of Cloud Recesses to maintain individual servants. The ones in Cloud Recesses work towards a collective harmony and tend both our grounds and the needs of all disciples.”

“And does your desire for collective harmony extend towards having others compose your correspondence?”

“I am not in the habit of allowing anyone to take over such tasks on my behalf,” Lan Qiren said. Strictly speaking, Wei Changze only directly communicated verbal orders.

Jiang Fengmian’s lips drew tightly together. “I shall ask directly: a servant from my house has left without permission to pursue a marriage to which no consent was given. If he is here, I ask you to do me the courtesy of telling me and returning him to my sect to have such actions appropriately addressed.”

Lan Qiren yet again found himself thinking of Wuxian. All he’d gleaned from regarding Wuxian’s time as the First Disciple of YunmengJiang; the desperate loyalty with which he'd bound himself to the Jiang family out of a sense of debt. How much of it must have been instilled by the man sitting across from him? Had he done so while thinking of Wei Changze, eager to get ahead of a similar situation by making Wuxian's ties to their family supposedly indelible? Wuxian had thought tearing out his golden core to give to Jiang Wanyin a perfectly reasonable solution to Jiang Wanyin’s loss because he felt the overwhelming weight of that same debt pressing him to sacrifice everything he had.

Lan Qiren always believed it had been Madam Yu driving the point home. It seemed at least some of his ire deserved to be directed elsewhere.

He realized, very abruptly, that he wished to do some violence upon this man. He hid the thought and ensuing shaking of his hands by taking another sip of tea.

“In Cloud Recesses,” he said, cold as Gusu winter, “We have strict rules which dictate courtship, conduct between partners, the respect due to the sect. All of which we request our servants follow to bring proper honour to GusuLan. However we also acknowledge that once the servants have left Cloud Recesses, they are out of our purview and are no longer subject to our disciplines. I cannot imagine that YunmengJiang, with your admirable philosophies on personal freedoms, do not believe the same.”

“Ah, of course. Only this is a peculiar matter. The servant in question, Wei Changze, has been with me since he was a young boy and my parents and I trained him in a particular set of skills which was meant to complement me as zongzhu. He became bewitched by a rogue cultivator of your acquaintance. I’m sure you remember Cangse Sanren.”

Years—years!—of pernicious gossip would have been avoided if any one person had asked Jiang Fengmian’s opinion on Cangse Sanren. Because it was obvious from the fierceness in his eyes and displeased downturn of his mouth as he said her name that he despised her. Lan Qiren knew Xiao Jingfei well enough to know the feeling to be completely mutual. Was that why the sect leader had never gone out of his way to contradict the rumours of Wuxian’s parentage? As a final way of avenging himself on a dead woman who’d affronted him by, what had been his word, ‘poaching’ his manservant?

“She is hard to forget.” And, having heard him say as much aloud, would no doubt take delight in reminding him of the words. Possibly forever.

Jiang Fengmian drank his own tea, gaze locked with Lan Qiren. “And knowing her arts, you can appreciate how an impressionable mind might be led down a path of mischief.”

Wei Changze’s mind had always struck Lan Qiren to be roughly impressionable as diamond. His love for Xiao Jingfei just as brilliant. How terribly sad that the man before him could not see either.

“Unequivocally, allow me to say that there are no personal servants in the Cloud Recesses, nor have I circumvented our traditions to employ one. If you are, indeed, searching for a particular servant here, then you will leave disappointed.”

Some of the warmth returned to Jiang Fengmian’s smile. “Thank you, Master Lan, for indulging my curiosity. I hope you understand I intended no offense.”

“Nor did I take any,” Lan Qiren replied honestly. Whether or not Xiao Jingfei had was another matter entirely, but at least she hadn’t betrayed her presence by jumping out from behind the screen with her sword drawn.

They returned to niceties for a while longer before Jiang Fengmian rose and dismissed himself with another pleasant expression of gratitude and promises to see him at the next Discussion Conference, if not before.

Lan Qiren issued no invitation for him to return in advance of such an affair.

Once the door closed behind him, Xiao Jingfei slipped back from behind the screen.

“You eloped?!” Lan Qiren demanded once she’d come out of hiding.

She rubbed her nose in a way that painfully reminded him of Wuxian. “We had to. Besides, didn’t you think you’d’ve been invited to the wedding if we’d had a proper ceremony?”

With her non-existent replies to his letters, he’d assumed she’d forgotten all about him the moment she stepped out of Cloud Recesses’ gates. From the look on her face, she gleaned as much from his expression and frowned at him sternly.

“‘Had to,’” he repeated, eager for a change in subject.

Xiao Jingfei sighed. “The first time we went for a walk together, Jiang Fengmian had him ‘disciplined’ for shaming the sect. And A-Chang made excuses for him. That he should never have presumed to think himself worthy of the attentions of a cultivator such as myself, the disciple of an immortal. They beat him, but he apologized to me for reaching above his station.” Her jaw clenched. “You heard how he talked about A-Chang. Jiang Fengmian treats him like a pet and cannot conceive of him having his own thoughts and wishes. So yes, we eloped. I love him and I wanted him to be free of the debts they seem to believe he’d accrued by elevating him to Jiang Fengmian’s personal servant." Her mouth twisted and she scoffed. "Quite the honour.”

“If you stay—” It still pained him to imagine otherwise. “He’ll discover you both here eventually, given we’ve made no real effort until now to hide you.”

“Well, Ziyuan’s pregnant and due any day. Hopefully that will distract him.”

It would not. Hopefully, though, without Wuxian present in Lotus Pier, Jiang Fengmian might actually pay some attention to his son.

“I do need to thank you, though, gege,” she said. For a mortifying moment it seemed she would bow to him, but perhaps the surely horrified look on his face dissuaded her.

“I cannot accept your thanks when I’ve done nothing to merit them,” he told her.

“Oh? You didn’t just lie to another sect leader for us?”

“Of course not. I spoke no word of a lie. Jiang Fengmian has no servants here, for Wei Changze is not a servant.”

Xiao Jingfei stared at him for a long moment and then crossed the space between them, albeit slowly, and cupped his face in her palm before kissing him. Shocked to breathlessness, Lan Qiren remained stock still. Her lips were warm. Slightly rough from her habit of biting down on them while lost in thought.

His eyes opened when she stepped back with a smile wholly different from the puckish one with which he usually associated her. He finally remembered to breathe, inhaling with a hitch in his chest.

“Thank you, gege,” she repeated. She rubbed her thumb across his cheek, gaze soft and warm.

She leaned up on her toes to kiss him again. This time he felt more aware of the press of her body against his, the dangerous way she teetered on her tiptoes until he braced her with his hands at her waist.

“That one is for A-Chang,” she said, though she did not pull herself out of his hands when she resettled on the floor. “He’ll come to collect it later this afternoon.”

“You—?” He paused, thoughts fled.

Xiao Jingfei nodded. “Us.” She brought her hands to rest atop his. “You’re very charming, gege.”

He lifted his hands away from her. “Please, I…” He stopped. What to say? How to unburden himself to her when he’d never suspected she’d return the affections he’d kept close to his heart all these longs years?

“There’s no hurry,” she promised him once he found himself unable to continue. She kissed his fingers. “We’re not going anywhere.”

No, they were not. He would absolutely ensure it, this time, even if it meant that he was the one to die in the Burial Mounds.

When Wei Changze arrived for their daily discussion, he placed a warm hand on Lan Qiren’s arm and squeezed it, but otherwise made no overtures. Lan Qiren felt torn as to whether or not he should be disappointed, left floundering when he decided he was. Instead, they worked with their usual quiet efficiency.

After they'd made their way through the most pressing matters, Wei Changze spoke. "Thank you for hiding my presence from Jiang-zongzhu." The title tripped awkwardly off his tongue with quiet grief. "I will see him again, I know, but I am hoping that some time and distance will help him reconcile himself to the matter.

“Qiren—” The intimacy of the address pressed against Lan Qiren's sternum as though Wei Changze had touched him yet again. He looked up warily. “Xiao-Fei acts upon the whims of her heart before she fully considers them. Should she do or say anything to make you uncomfortable…” His lips twisted, half amusement and half resignation, “She’ll chastise herself for it worse than anyone else ever could.”

“I wasn’t uncomfortable, exactly. Merely surprised.”

The look on Wei Changze’s face suggested that he should not have been surprised, but he struggled to think of how he could have anticipated such a shift in their relationship. Truly, he had loved Xiao Jingfei since nearly the first day they’d met. (He found that, like all his family, he fell quickly and endured long past any reasonable hope.) Whereas, to the best of his knowledge, she’d only ever seen him as a dear friend. Occasionally even the ‘dear’ he found himself doubting. She poked and prodded and teased, flirted to get a rise from him, demanded things of his conscience that threw his own views into doubt and showed no sign of remorse in making him question his worldview…

…All things, he realized, Wuxian had done with Wangji.

Ah.

Wei Changze kindly remained silent as Lan Qiren recontextualized two lifetimes’ worth of interactions.

“And you?” he finally dared to ask.

“Yes.” Wei Changze offered a small smile, so very different from the bright cheer shared by Xiao Jingfei and Wuxian, but no less sincere. The look brought Lan Qiren up short. “I trust my wife to help lead my heart onto paths where I would never otherwise dare tread. It’s what brought me to her. And, now, to you.”

Lan Qiren’s lips parted slightly, though he found his voice curiously absent.

Wei Changze stood and Lan Qiren readied himself for the same bursting affection to which Xiao Jingfei had treated him. Instead, the taller man merely inclined his head, eyes knowing. “I don’t take liberties.”

He left before Lan Qiren could say that, perhaps, kissing was not the liberty he assumed it to be.

Unkissed and conflicted, Lan Qiren found it next to impossible to return his full attention to his remaining tasks. He stared at the latest piece of gossip masquerading as news from Sect Leader Yao right up until Lan Pei arrived with a call for assistance in one of the small towns north of Caiyi.

“Shall I send some of the senior disciples?” Lan Pei asked.

Lan Qiren’s first inclination was to agree, wanting some measure of time to reconcile with his unexpected revelation. He faltered at the last moment; introspection, he decided, had not served him as well as he’d always thought.

(“Wei Wuxian, you will stop shamelessly flaunting your affections for my nephew in front of the other disciples at once!”

“Ah, Lan-xiansheng, you’ll have to forgive me. I love him so much I forget myself.”

“...Well. Take care to set a proper example for the younger disciples.”)

Lan Qiren decided the time had come to forget himself.

“No, I shall take Cangse Sanren and look into the matter personally,” he said. The declaration settled something in him and steeled his resolve.

Lan Pei offered a small smile. “Very good, zongzhu. I know…” He paused.

“‘Be forthright with your words.’”

Lan Pei squared his shoulders. “The other disciples will be relieved that you intend to continue night hunting. It unsettled many of us that Qingheng-jun refused calls for aid.”

Lan Qiren had not thought of it, really. Other sect leaders regularly went night hunting; even Jin Guangshan occasionally deigned to dirty his hands in the search for boast-worthy accomplishments to crow over at Discussion Conferences. While Lan Qiren trusted his disciples to have such matters well in hand, he’d overlooked the key importance of undertaking such dangers himself.

Lan Qiren asked Lan Pei to prepare the usual night hunting paraphernalia and went in search of Li Linxia.

She welcomed him into her home with a smile and listened very patiently as he requested her assistance in watching not only their own sons, but also Wei Ying overnight.

“It’s not a hardship. A-Ying is a wonderful baby.” She tilted her head. “But why take Changze as well? I thought Jingfei extracted promises from him to keep him away from such matters.”

“I have a private matter I must discuss with them,” he told her.

Li Linxia’s lips curled into a small, knowing smile. “‘A private matter.’ Which must be conveyed outside of Cloud Recesses. Perhaps because certain aspects of the matter conflict with some of the rules?”

Lan Qiren was, in spirit if not physical age, nearly seventy years old. He refused to blush at her insinuating tone. Unfortunately, he had styled his hair in such a way that it did nothing to hide the tips of his ears as they reddened under her increasingly amused scrutiny.

“Being outside of the Cloud Recesses does not recuse me from following its edicts,” he said with a perfectly dignified cough.

“I imagine it does alleviate some of the burden you’d feel in breaking them, however.”

She laughed heartily at whatever his face did in response. The sound summoned A-Huan, who emerged from his room and ran over when he saw Lan Qiren lingering in their doorway.

“My love, go run to Auntie Xiao and Uncle Wei and tell them we’d like to have A-Ying stay with us overnight, will you?” Li Linxia said after A-Huan had hugged half the breath out of Lan Qiren’s lungs.

A-Huan lit up the room with the power of his smile before whisking himself out the door and in the direction of the jingshi.

“I’d wish you luck, Qiren, but somehow I doubt you’ll have much need of it.”

Lan Qiren and Xiao Jingfei dispatched the spirit harrying the village without much effort. An unfortunate farmer had died in a mudslide just beyond the town borders, leaving his corpse undiscovered. A promise to see him disinterred and properly buried liberated him from the weak resentful energy keeping him bound to the area and they delivered him back to his son, now grown, who promised to honour his father properly.

The town, a single street with only simple services to offer to the surrounding farmsteads, did not have an inn. While several of the residents obligingly opened their homes to them, Lan Qiren politely declined the offers.

“Are you going to sleep in a tent, gege? Are you sure your delicate constitution can handle it?” Xiao Jingfei laughed.

“Quite sure,” he huffed, to her continued delight.

Wei Changze, who’d remained behind in the town while they’d gone to deal with the spirit, looked at him knowingly.

Not far outside of town, though tucked away from casual observers by a craggy hillside, they found a small lake and set up camp near the shore. Lan Pei had arranged for one of the larger tents, capable of accommodating half a dozen people, and enough food to see them comfortably through a week.

Xiao Jingfei waved off Wei Changze’s offers of retrieving firewood and went off to search some out for them instead.

“You didn’t give us time to grab our own kit, gege,” she said once she returned with an armful of wood, a joyful tease in her voice. “We’ll have to share your tent.”

“That is rather the point of the exercise,” Lan Qiren said.

She dropped the wood in her arms in shock and Wei Changze straightened from where he’d been trying to dig out a small pit for the fire.

They both looked at him expectantly and he found words fleeing him under their scrutiny. He’d never been a poet. His talents for speaking resigned themselves to the structured comforts of a classroom. They both deserved far better than plain speech but hopefully they would forgive him for his shortcomings.

“I am a fool,” he said. Xiao Jingfei started to protest, but Wei Changze wrapped a broad hand around her forearm. He’d come to know Lan Qiren’s mind and anticipate his thoughts. And yet, even as he held Xiao Jingfei back from her kneejerk need to defend Lan Qiren from himself, his own expression softened into something full of hope. “A blind fool, not to have even suspected that you… You both… I imagine there have been a great many years of foolishness I hope you can forgive.

“I have lived a life absent of both of you and do not care to do so again. Please, will you…” He swallowed and sturdied himself. “Keep me.”

Wuxian, he knew, would be proud of him for his honesty (once he’d gotten over whatever mortifying spectacle he made of the fact that Lan Qiren had chosen to involve himself with his parents, anyway. Awful, incorrigible boy. Lan Qiren missed him terribly.) And Wangji would celebrate his willingness to accept their offered love.

The thought bolstered him.

“Gege,” Xiao Jingfei whispered.

Wei Changze finally released her and she wasted no time crossing the sparse distance between them. She cupped his cheek and stared at him. When he’d first felt her touch upon him, he hadn’t known what to do with it. Now he pressed his palm to the back of her hand to anchor her in place, catching her eyes and allowing himself to enjoy his greedy fill.

Wei Changze waited for them to look away from one another, fathomless patience keeping him rooted in place.

Xiao Jingfei grabbed the trailing end of Lan Qiren’s ribbon and used it to tug him over to Wei Changze. He allowed it, though the sight of the white silk caught between her fingers threatened his very tenuous grasp on his self-control. The hope which had shone brilliantly in his face when Lan Qiren had spoken had hidden itself away behind uncertainty Lan Qiren immediately wished to banish.

“Take whatever liberties you’d like with me, A-Chang,” he said. “I welcome them.”

With an unsteady gasp, Wei Changze ducked his head down and pressed his mouth against Lan Qiren’s.

Lan Qiren’s sample size of kissing now consisted of two; he found that being the one to tip his head up in expectation of another mouth upon his own felt distinct and welcoming him in a way he hadn’t anticipated. Wei Changze’s broad palm came to rest upon his hip, overlapping Xiao Jingfei’s hand as well.

The rest of the night passed in a slow eternity, yet ended far too quickly.

He held Xiao Jingfei in his arms and enjoyed the welcoming warmth of her body as she pressed messy kisses to his face, Wei Changze bracketing them between his own legs.

He bit marks across Xiao Jingfei’s body, staring in fascination as they quickly disappeared. They stayed on Wei Changze far longer, each one drawing forth an accompanying breathy moan. Xiao Jingfei watched Lan Qiren suck the bruises onto her husband with single-minded intensity, her lower lip caught between her teeth. Wei Changze blushed from his navel to his throat, spreading warmth that Xiao Jingfei trailed her fingers over as she whispered filth into his ear, Lan Qiren equally fixated by the sight of them together.

They ended up squeezed together under the same blanket, barely big enough to cover all three of them, Wei Changze in the middle, the only one who had no golden core to help regulate his body heat.

“This is not how I was expecting this evening to go,” Xiao Jingfei admitted.

“That’s not what you said to me the other night,” Wei Changze said.

“Imagining something could happen—hoping for it—and expecting it are very different,” she said.

Xiao Jingfei was older than she appeared; with her level of cultivation, she’d likely still look to be in her twenties all through the many centuries of her life. But the weight of the words when she spoke betrayed her true age.

Lan Qiren glanced over in time to catch her pressing an open-mouthed kiss to Wei Changze’s bare shoulder.

“You’ll have to help us move our things into the hanshi, gege,” she said, draping herself across Wei Changze to reach him and slide her lips against his right cheekbone. “Not getting rid of us now.”

It satisfied the deep-rooted need to keep them close. “Mn.”

He drifted off slowly, warmed through, listening to the gradual slowing of Wei Changze’s breath and enjoying the feeling of Xiao Jingfei’s fingers strumming a rhythmless beat across Lan Qiren’s ribs.

The morning of his ascension, Xiao Jingfei woke before he did and nudged him out of bed. Wei Changze slept on, A-Ying cradled in the crook of one elbow and A-Zhan in the other, A-Huan having spent a rare night alone with his mother.

“Sit,” she ordered.

When Lan Qiren did not immediately obey, she gently pushed him to the seat before his mirror and turned him around until his back faced her. She picked up his comb and gently began tugging it through his hair.

While perfectly capable of seeing to himself, being pampered and cared for in such a way felt inexplicably lovely. She ignored his usual, comparatively simple guan and chose the more elaborate piece befitting the station to which he now rose. She set it expertly in his hair and then wound his ribbon carefully through it. Seeing her fingers lovingly caress the silk quickened his heart and stole his breath. He took her hand in his and kissed her palm.

“A-Chang drafted your announcement,” she said, leaning in to press her cheek against his, careful not to disturb his beautifully styled hair. “He’s made sure to include me as your cultivation partner.”

Lan Qiren tried not to stiffen, but the shift of his shoulders nonetheless drew forth her frown.

“Gege?”

“I do not wish for you to feel trapped here,” he admitted. This, more than anything, was the chief of his worries. That Xiao Jingfei and Wei Changze would begin to resent him for desiring their presence and the obligations which kept them here, prisoners of their honour. “I dread you coming to think of Cloud Recesses as a cage.”

“It’s not,” Xiao Jingfei assured him. She craned her shoulders around to press her lips against his.

“Will you be satisfied in one place after living as long as you did on the road?”

Xiao Jingfei sighed. Satisfied with his hair, she slipped her way into his lap, eyeing him carefully. “It’s our nest, gege. Our rookery that we’ve created together. Where we can come and go and be welcome. Be home.”

Noticing the way her gaze seemed to settle around, but not on, his mouth, he hastily covered his goatee with his palm. Xiao Jingfei laughed.

“I never understood why you felt the need to shave it off,” he muttered behind his hand.

“Because it was just one more thing you took far too seriously,” Xiao Jingfei said. She took his wrist and pulled his hand away from his mouth, kissing his fingers as she did. “You need to be reminded how to smile.”

Lan Qiren sniffed, though he could not deny the truth in the words. “You’re right, of course. Having lived a life without you, I will say your absence lessened me.”

It had given him permission to become a harder man, less forgiving. A person who adhered to the rules without giving a thought to why they’d been put into place. One who’d allowed his nephew to be whipped near to death rather than doing what he should have done and fought the elders who demanded his execution and then remitted the punishment to one that might have killed him anyway. A man who looked upon Wuxian as a troublesome interruption to his equanimity instead of a new member of his family, at least until he’d helped remind Lan Qiren about the importance of love.

He missed Wuxian, but strangely he thought the other man might be proud of him for making the most of the opportunity he’d been given. And, hopefully, in this life A-Ying would be able to look upon him and see another father in time, instead of an obstinate old fool and obstacle to his happiness.

Her gaze softened. “You won’t have to do that again. We’ll cultivate to immortality together, and in his next life we’ll find A-Chang and help him to do the same. Our children and their descendants will all grow and thrive. We’ll watch over them. Together. Lan-zongzhu and Cangse Sanren.”

He turned his wrist to twine their fingers together.

“Together,” he echoed.

Xiao Jingfei smiled and leaned in to kiss him once more.

Chapter Text

Amidst his usual correspondence, one morning nearly two years after his return to the past, Lan Qiren received the most curious letter.

“Second Madam Nie is expecting,” he said aloud. That… couldn’t be right. For all his feigned immaturity, Nie Huaisang was a year older than A-Zhan. He continued reading, brow furrowed, until he reached the end of the missive, which referenced the two existing young masters of QingheNie.

QingheNie had never had a third child; he hadn’t even recalled Second Madam Nie being pregnant.

Unless.

Unless she had been pregnant at the time of her death.

Nie Niubai had lost both his wives at the same time, Lan Qiren recalled, though the Nie remained uniformly tight-lipped regarding the matter. It had been largely understood that his first wife had succumbed to a qi deviation, but little was known about the death of his second. The announcement only came months afterwards, when gossip about Nie-zongzhu going into mourning seclusion already ran rampant through the other sects. It marked the beginning of the downfall of Nie Niubai, his grief leaving him open to what Nie Mingjue always claimed was an assassination, though he lacked evidence of his accusations against Wen Ruohan.

They did not currently enjoy the same warm relationship that Xichen and Nie Mingjue had cultivated between GusuLan and QingheNie during his first life, although it had cooled significantly with the introduction of Jin Guangyao. They’d only formed their friendship when Nie Mingjue attended the guest lectures. If there was a way to arrange for their sects to become allies in advance, perhaps they could do something to keep Nie Niubai and his wives alive.

He found himself still pondering the matter when he joined his family for dinner that evening. He regularly took meals with the other disciples in the main dining hall, but made a point of gathering them all together at least once a week for a shared meal.

Li Linxia welcomed him with a warm greeting and set him at the table where Xiao Jingfei was currently enjoying a cup of wine and entertaining A-Zhan and A-Ying with small bursts of spiritual power that hung in the air like glowing stars. She listed against him and smiled.

“Good day?” she asked.

“Yes, though I will admit a confusing one,” he said. He pressed his cheek to the top of her head. “I shall speak to you and A-Chang about it after dinner.”

She nodded and plopped A-Ying into his lap, who immediately spun around to tell Lan Qiren, in detail, about a flower he’d spotted in the back hills earlier that afternoon.

A-Zhan, who had been holding his mother’s skirt across the room, quickly crossed the room to join them. “‘Die,” he declared, grabbing Lan Qiren’s sleeve. “A-Ying’s flower was blue.”

“Blue,” A-Ying agreed, leaning into Lan Qiren and tucking his head under his chin.

Heart full, Lan Qiren adjusted himself to make sure both boys had his undivided attention until A-Huan and Xiao Zhuliu arrived from their classes. Despite the disparity in age, the two of them had similar levels of cultivation, and A-Huan had made it his personal mission to help Xiao Zhuliu catch up with the fundamentals which had been cruelly overlooked during his time with the Zhao.

Lan Qiren had not ever personally met Core-Melting Hand in his first life, left merely with the impression of others who considered him a loyal attack dog unwaveringly attentive to the command of Wen Ruohan and his sons. Xiao Zhuliu, while capable of levels of stoicism which Wangji would have found impressive, softened around Xiao Jingfei and Lan Qiren’s sons. The past few years had not entirely healed the scars left by cruel hands. Xiao Zhuliu was especially nervous around men, even gentle ones such as Wei Changze, in ways that made Lan Qiren understand Xiao Jingfei’s spontaneous decision to intercede.

With the boys, however, no one outside their family was more devoted. Xiao Jingfei made a point of dragging him along to their family dinners and encouraged A-Ying and A-Zhan to call him ‘shushu.’ She looked upon him with a sororal eye and expressed a vested interest in his development.

It had taken the better part of a year for the healers to discover the source of his meridian disorder and find ways to help him. They had, for a time, even called upon Wen Yingzhi—a known expert in the field and the mother to a toddler who would eventually be one of the foremost medical cultivators in the world—to offer her insight.

It had taken him quite a bit longer to become comfortable with giving or receiving touch. Xiao Jingfei had needed to shove A-Ying into his arms multiple times to convince him that she did not consider him the monster that the Zhao Clan had convinced him he was. Lan Qiren summoned every scrap of his willpower to not recoil in horror at the sight and he had ruthlessly locked down his knee jerk reaction. It had gone unnoticed, save for Wei Changze’s knowing gaze. Whatever he’d gleaned from Lan Qiren’s discomfort, Lan Qiren hoped it did not reflect the terrible reality of the beast Wen Ruohan had made of Wen Zhuliu, Core-Melting Hand.

A-Huan hustled Zhao Zhuliu into his usual seat and then made his way over to assist his mother with finishing dinner preparations.

The meal passed by in a low hum of companionable chatter. A-Huan and Xiao Jingfei teased conversation out of Xiao Zhuliu, who still seemed constantly baffled by his inclusion regardless of their combined efforts over the past year. Wei Changze, Lan Qiren, and Li Linxia took turns eating and encouraging their younger sons to do the same. A-Zhan had, for whatever reason, entered a stage of his life wherein he absolutely refused to eat anything that A-Ying had not tried first. Even old favourites were disdained. Fortunately, A-Ying was an adventurous eater and enthusiastically ate everything placed in front of him, but the ongoing repetition of pointing out every mouthful to A-Zhan tended to prolong mealtime.

At the end of the meal, Lan Qiren gestured for Li Linxia’s attention. “Would you mind taking the boys this evening? I have something to discuss with my partners.”

“Happy to. A-Huan as well?”

A-Huan had been angling to be allowed to take a room in the disciple’s dormitory. While some children went as early as nine, depending on their progress, Lan Qiren found himself hesitant to agree. A-Huan had paced well ahead of his class, with Xiao Jingfei and Lan Qiren present to help and encourage him, but whenever Lan Qiren looked at him, he just seemed so terribly young.

“Perhaps A-Huan might like to stay with his shushu this evening,” Lan Qiren said. “With Xiao Zhuliu’s permission, of course.”

A-Huan grinned at him. “Oh, yes! Is that all right with you, Shushu?” Xiao Zhuliu quietly agreed. “Thank you, A-Die!”

Xiao Zhuliu looked between the three of them—Wei Changze, Xiao Jingfei, and Lan Qiren—and nodded, though mostly to himself.

Once Li Linxia, Xiao Zhuliu, and the children had gone, Lan Qiren sat down with his partners. In the past two years, their conversations around Lan Qiren’s first life had become much sparser. LanlingJin had already begun its descent into obscurity. Wen Ruohan’s grabs for power had been limited, with subtle application of formerly Jin funds and Lan Qiren’s own influence as Lan-zongzhu. And while he would occasionally find himself beset by comparisons to his first life—especially when surrounded by his family—he tried not to dwell. Sometimes he even succeeded.

But this affair with QingheNie had thrown him.

“I don’t know much about Nie-zongzhu and the Unclean Realm. We didn’t travel there often,” Xiao Jingfei said after he explained the matter. “I met Yu Xinhua once or twice in Meishan, but we never had much of a chance to speak. Silly, flighty little thing.”

Ah, how many people had used those same words to describe Nie Huaisang?

“Feng-ge appreciates Nie-zongzhu’s openness,” Wei Changze said. In the two years since coming to live at Cloud Recesses, some of the relationship between Wei Changze and his former friend and master had healed, though Jiang-zongzhu still treated Lan Qiren and Xiao Jingfei with nothing save contempt barely concealed behind icy civility. “But finds he lacks temperance.”

“Sounds like he and I will get along,” Xiao Jingfei laughed. “When did the Madams Nie die, gege?”

“I don’t remember exactly. A few months before A-Huan’s eleventh birthday.”

“We’ll have to arrange a lengthy summer visit, then,” Xiao Jingfei said with a bright grin.

“To improve relationships between two future sect leaders, and cement the informal alliance but longstanding warmth between GusuLan and QingheNie,” Wei Changze offered.

“I shall write to Nie-zongzhu and make arrangements,” Lan Qiren said.

Their arrival at the Unclean Realm came heralded with the sound of thunder in the distance, which Lan Qiren tried not to take as an ill omen when the gates came into view. Lan Qiren craned his neck to look up, catching a brief glimpse of a young child looking down at them before he realized he’d been spotted and he jumped back.

The gates creaked open with a rather ominous air and Nie Niubai walked out.

Seeing Xiao Jingfei for the first time in nearly forty years had been a revelation, but he found that Nie Niubai inspired a sense of gut-twisting inertia. He resembled Nie Mingjue closely, save for the broad streaks of grey in his hair and the generous beard of the same colour surrounding his mouth and chin, berobing a wide smile. Broader, especially around the midsection, but in such a way that suggested strength instead of idleness.

His voice boomed when he greeted them, “Lan-zongzhu!” This, Lan Qiren realized, he had forgotten. Nie Mingjue’s commanded presence, but not in the deeply congenial way of his father. Jin Guangshan might try to make himself jovial and beloved, but his reputation followed him too closely to make any of his attempts feel genuine. “Welcome, welcome.”

Lan Qiren and Xiao Jingfei dismounted their horses and bowed. Nie Niubai grabbed Lan Qiren’s hands and squeezed them; his hands were hard enough to be mistaken for tree bark, but also warm and dry.

“Nie-zongzhu,” he returned. “My cultivation partner, Cangse Sanren.”

“Ah, the disciple of the Immortal on the Mountain, you are very welcome, too.” He likewise grabbed her hands, which Xiao Jingfei received with fascinated delight. After years of pandering to the endless formalities demanded by the sects she visited, this must have been a welcome change. “You know my second wife, I think. She has been nattering about your visit for an age.”

“I’ll be glad to see her,” Xiao Jingfei said, “Thank you for the hospitality, zongzhu.”

“None of that, none of that. You will call me Nie-ge and we’ll hear nothing else about it.”

The Unclean Realm, Lan Qiren suddenly remembered, had been far less austere before the deaths of its two mistresses. Although the Nie had always been a fierce people, they had also hardened during his lifetime.

The mistresses in question emerged behind Nie Niubai, night and day. Nie Xiahong, a mountainous woman who stood nearly as tall as her husband, wore robes cut for a warrior instead of the wife of a sect leader, her sabre resting against her back. It shared many features with Baxia, Lan Qiren realized. He could not remember having seen it before. She looked them over, one at a time, with an assessing stare and brusque nod.

Nie’s Second Mistress, a far smaller woman, greeted them with an exquisitely executed bow. “Husband,” Yu Xinhua said, “You are keeping our guests waiting in the dust, and I am sure I hear the sound of children in the carriage. Bring them all inside and allow them to rest.”

After a week on the road, Lan Qiren had little doubt that Wei Changze could use a full reprieve from watching A-Huan, A-Zhan, and A-Ying. Li Linxia, while invited to accompany them, had instead expressed her interest in visiting friends in Meishan and had declined to join them. Lan Qiren had been uncertain over her absence, right up until she told him that she did not doubt his ability to protect their children. Given she’d only left Cloud Recesses once or twice since his return, he felt she deserved whatever freedoms she deemed take.

“Ah, of course, you are correct as always, sweet birch,” Nie Niubai said. For a moment, he twitched towards her, but stopped at the pointed look she offered in return. “As always, Xinhua polices my lack of courtesy. Please, please. Come.”

Servants came out to lead their horses and the carriage in through the gates. In the courtyard just beyond, a maid waited with a young child in her arms—older than A-Zhan, but noticeably smaller—and the youth who had been observing them from the wall earlier. They all bowed together, clumsy and unpracticed in the case of the older boy, but earnest.

“Do it again, A-Jue,” Yu Xinhua said.

Nie Mingjue looked pleadingly towards Nie Xiahong, but found no recourse in her silent severity. He bowed again. Still not quite perfect, but far better than his first attempt. When he rose, he turned the same wide-eyed plea towards Yu Xinhua, who inclined her chin, but with a look in her eyes which suggested that remedial lessons loomed large in his near future.

He perked up considerably when the carriage came to a halt behind them and A-Huan hopped out in front of Wei Changze and the younger boys. They’d debated whether or not to bring the children along, but the ostensible purpose of their visit was to forge closer ties and leaving the majority of their family behind would undermine the message and likely put Nie Niubai on his guard.

A-Huan, Lan Qiren noted with pride, bowed with the technical precision of a boy who’d paid close attention to lessons in comportment.

All of which for nothing when he darted up to Nie Mingjue. “I’m Lan Huan, and we should get married!”

Nie Niubai burst out in unseemly guffaws even as Lan Qiren considered the very appealing option of investigating the top of the wall in order to throw himself bodily off it. Xiao Jingfei playfully tugged his sleeve and he submitted to the very natural and justified mortification.

Nie Mingjue regarded A-Huan with wide eyes. “Really?”

A-Huan nodded enthusiastically and, before Lan Qiren could remind him that children of eight years and ten, respectively, could not determine their own prospects, continued, “My didis are betrothed and we should be, too.”

Before Lan Qiren could protest, Nie Niubai slapped his shoulder hard enough to make him stumble. “You did not mention a marriage negotiation in your notes, Qiren! Or else I’m sure we would have received you much differently. Very sly of you!” Lan Qiren favoured him with a wry glance, at which Nie Niubai snorted. “Come, let’s see you all settled. From the looks of things, our sects will become quite close indeed.”

The Unclean Realm, in his memory, had been a launching point for the Sunshot Campaign and hosted Discussion Conferences only when Nie Mingjue deemed it absolutely necessary. There had been nothing soft about it. The room to which they were shown boasted graceful decor and comfortable furnishings, suggesting such future austerity to be one born of grief.

Sect Leader Nie threw a feast that evening to officially welcome them.

The cuisine of the Unclean Realm tended towards pickling and increasingly obscure preservation techniques. The soil supported only the hardiest flora and thus the majority of the dishes were meat-based.

Nie Niubai waited only until Lan Qiren reluctantly picked up his utensils before laughing and calling for soup to be brought for ‘more refined palates.’

(Lan Qiren very generously did not look at where A-Huan was shovelling large pieces of braised pork into his mouth, even when he began to choke and Wei Changze helpfully struck his back to dislodge the obstruction.)

At the end of the meal, Nie Niubai stood and gestured for Lan Qiren to follow him. “My lovely wives will entertain your spouses,” he promised.

The room to which he led Lan Qiren looked familiar, but it took a moment for him to realize that the last time he’d stepped foot inside had been to speak in private with Nie Mingjue, nearly thirty years of age, and looking wan and pale from prolonged exposure to the Song of Turmoil.

Wei Changze’s letter sat on his desk, partially unrolled. Nie Niubai gestured to it. “You and I are both honest men, Lan-zongzhu. Let’s not pretend that you’re truly here to ‘engender our friendship’ or whatever poetic nonsense you came up with. GusuLan does not suffer for want of allies. Why come to us now?”

Wangji had taught Lan Qiren an important lesson, though neither of them had appreciated it until much later. It, perhaps, had started when Wangji had looked up at him, the discipline whip cutting again and again into his back and peeling strips of skin and flesh off along with it, and asked him what was black, and what was white. Lan Qiren remembered being irreconcilably furious that this child who he felt he’d raised to be righteous had allowed himself to succumb to darkness and allow the influence of the unrighteous to sway him. The elders had demanded Wangji’s execution. The discipline whip had been the result of long hours of negotiation in trying to save his nephew’s life and Lan Qiren had hated the sound every time it cracked down, audible proof of how both of them had failed.

Much later, once the anger had faded and he and Wangji had reached a place of mutual tolerance, if not the simple peace they’d once enjoyed, he’d come upon Wangji leading a group of their junior disciples in a discussion about morality.

It had planted the first seeds of doubt he’d ever had about whether Wuxian had truly been the villain.

“But how do we know what’s right?” a child—Jingyi, he thought, though this far removed he barely remembered.

“That’s what the rules are for,” another disciple answered with a sniff.

“I’m not sure the rules are always right,” A-Yuan had said, quiet and thoughtful. Nine, ten perhaps? Not much older, but already gentle and wise beyond his years.

“Explain,” Wangji said, encouraging where Lan Qiren would have been infuriated despite his general affection for the boy.

“Well, rule four hundred and thirty-nine says that to pay no mind to matters which do not concern you, but this conflicts with rule one thousand two hundred and seventy-six.” Intercede in matters in which someone may come to harm. “In this case, the conflicting rules are both held as equal, but the second one is kinder.”

“Mn.” Wangji folded his hands over his knees. “And you feel kindness is more important?” A-Yuan nodded. “Good. Righteousness without kindness is fallible. Do not rely upon the strict definition of the rules, but instead look upon them as a guiding star to align your own morality.”

He thought about confronting Wangji about the frankly dangerous philosophy many times, but found himself instead ruminating on the value of this wisdom, hard earned. The words stayed with Lan Qiren through the following days, weeks, and years. He liked to think—he hoped—it had made him a better man. One more open to welcoming the new member of his family, when Wangji had married Wuxian.

For all he’d learned from Wuxian and Wangji, this was possibly the most important lesson he’d ever taken to heart. Lan Qiren still struggled with kindness. But at least now he knew the virtue of it, instead of considering it an unnecessary distraction.

He thought about it again once he and Wei Changze sat down to discuss how to address Nie Niubai. Lying did not come naturally to Lan Qiren, honesty ground like sand into his very pores from a young age.

“Then we must find a way to speak which requires no untruths,” Wei Changze said.

He answered Nie Niubai with carefully scripted honesty. “My cultivation partner came across a dead Nie cultivator.” Years ago, but true. “Eventually, it came to my attention that he’d suffered a severe qi deviation, tied into his sabre cultivation.” Also true, though the ‘he’ in question was a different person. “It occurred to me that there are methods which may be used to mitigate some of the damage from Nie dao cultivation. A valued member of my sect made some recommendations which we believe would be of value to QingheNie and stave off the more troubling results.”

Nie Niubai regarded him closely, head slightly tilted to the side and brow furrowed.“Do you honestly believe that, after generations of QingheNie’s inability to resolve this, that GusuLan can merely wave a hand and see it done?” Nie Niubai presented the question as honestly curious, though there was a hint of affront in his gaze.

“We have a disciple who has recently been treated for a meridian disorder. One thought to be incurable, and nearly always resulted in the death of the patient.” Generally because they were murdered in fear or killed in self-defense, but Nie Niubai did not need those details for Lan Qiren to make his point. “In addition to the healing songs we might play to ease the strain of resentful energy, there are doctors who can be called upon to assist.” He braced himself. “A talented healer, Wen Yingzhi, was most helpful in identifying ways to help my disciple overcome his affliction.”

Nie Niubai's face became stony, the air chilling between them. “I hope Lan-zongzhu is not suggesting I reach out the hand of friendship to my vilest enemies,” he said, low and dangerous. “Or this budding friendship between QingheNie and GusuLan will wither on the stem.”

“Not at all,” Lan Qiren said, “I speak of the Wen of Dafan Mountain. Distant cousins, yes, but not involved in the machinations of Wen Ruohan. Brilliant doctors, more than capable of assisting you. To court them would be to give them protection and deny Wen Ruohan a potentially valuable resource in the future.”

He allowed Nie Niubai to consider this in silence. He wished to repay the kindness that Wen Qing, Wen Qionglin, and their family had paid Wuxian. To find a means of supporting Sizhui’s birth family and, hopefully, be able to see him again one day even if there was no ribbon in place of honour upon his brow.

Sizhui. After A-Zhan and A-Ying were born, Lan Qiren found himself thinking back to those first terrifying days when a feverish toddler had been shoved into his arms—one more child for whom he was suddenly responsible—while Wangji had been shuffled off to suffer in isolation. Lan Qiren had mopped the sweat from Sizhui’s brow and comforted him in the worst throes of his illness, confused and bewildered at this unexpected addition to their family. It had taken weeks of recovery for Sizhui to begin returning to health. Lan Qiren had taken responsibility for him until Wangji left seclusion, defying the elders to ensure the two of them had adequate time to visit one another; he refused to see another child wanting for their parent’s care and receiving it only once a month.

That, he thought in retrospect, might have had more influence on his current actions than he’d suspected.

“I suppose,” Nie Niubai finally hummed, “That extending such protection and friendship to these people would greatly anger His Excellency.”

“Most definitely,” Lan Qiren agreed.

The concept obviously pleased. “Wen Yingzhi, you say?” Lan Qiren nodded. “Perhaps I shall seek this person out.”

Lan Qiren inclined his head and changed the subject.

During the first weeks of their stay, Xiao Jingfei nearly exhausted herself in a series of playful yet one-sided spars with her ‘Nie-jie’ in which the First Lady Nie unilaterally emerged triumphant. During one such match, Lan Qiren happened upon Wei Changze and Yu Xinhua seated at a nearby pavilion. A weiqi board sat between them, both of them staring at it with intensity they both respectively hid while in mixed company. Only a small handful of stones had been placed, Wei Changze taking white, and neither of them even twitched their attention away as he passed by. While he enjoyed playing in general and Wei Changze as an opponent, he’d never been part of a game which had become this tense so early on.

Lan Qiren, then, found himself frequently in the company of Nie Niubai , content to listen to the man speak at escalating volumes and enthusiasm over anything which caught his attention. The only thing which seemed to earn his ire were the very real matters of running his sect, most of which he delegated to Yu Xinhua. Nighthunts, however, remained under his purview. Such was the case when a missive crossed his desk early one morning three weeks into their stay.

Nie Niubai frowned over the missive. “At least it’s not those Wen dogs again,” he grumbled. Then, with a brief glance towards Lan Qiren. “Those QishanWen dogs,” he corrected. Apparently his first letter to Dafan Mountain had merited a courteous reply which had resulted in Wen Yingzhi expected within the fortnight.

“What then?” Nie Xiahong asked.

“Unknown. Something powerful enough to blight the land and kill a number of our farmers,” he replied. He stood and his sabre snapped from its stand and flew into his hand.

“We have patrols in the area,” Nie Xiahong pointed out.

“Also dead,” Nie Niubai said, expression grim. “I’ll take some of our disciples.”

“Take as many as can quickly fly by sword,” Yu Xinhua said idly, her attention still determinedly fixed on a fine piece of embroidery. She cut him off before he could protest, deliberately touching her heavily rounded stomach. “For my peace of mind.”

Nie Niubai sighed. “Very well.”

“Shall I come?” Nie Xiahong asked.

“It would give me greater comfort if our wife stayed.” Yu Xinhua yet again did not so much as glance up from her needlework, but both Nie Niubai and Nie Xiahong traded identical looks of fond resignation.

“For your comfort, then.” He pressed his lips to the crown of her head, traded a silent nod with Nie Xiahong, then took off in search of a few volunteers to bring along.

“I want to go on night hunts,” A-Huan sighed after the doors slid shut behind him. “Will you go with me when we’re older, Da-ge?”

“Yes,” Nie Mingjue said sullenly from beside A-Huan, also obviously disappointed at being left behind. While seemingly still somewhat mystified over their presence in his home, he’d at least reconciled himself to A-Huan’s company and regularly sought him out instead of leaving A-Huan to wander the hallways in search of him. “We’ll become great heroes together.”

“You’ll both have your turn,” Lan Qiren said. A-Huan sighed again and slumped over, resentfully glowering at his practice rows of simple calligraphy. “Sit properly!”

A-Huan’s back snapped into perfect posture and he returned to frowning over his exercises. Wei Changze had managed to convince him of the value of practicing his calligraphy by pointing to the excessive amount of correspondence that Lan Qiren dealt with on a daily basis, required by a sect leader. A-Huan, were he left to his own devices, would rely upon face-to-face meetings to conduct sect matters. While Lan Qiren certainly saw the appeal for one more inclined to sociability, he also did not believe the office of Lan-zongzhu had enough hours in the day.

Mere hours after Nie Niubai set off on his night hunt, one of the gate guards joined them to announce the arrival of Jin-er-gongzi to the Unclean Realm.

Jin Guangshui greeted them all with boisterous good wishes and dead eyes. He shared many features with Jin Guangshan, though his weaker golden core had not prevented lines of age from gathering around his eyes. His attire seemed less ostentatious, perhaps in deference to Jin Guangshan’s need to be the best-dressed man in any room, even those absent his company. He swept into the receiving room, leaving a large entourage in the courtyard behind him; men with swords and women with sweet faces.

He doubted it was a coincidence that the man had arrived so quickly on the heels of Nie Niubai's departure. A quick glance at Wei Changze’s face, stern and thoughtful, confirmed that his husband thought the same.

He did not seem to notice Lan Qiren and his family as he dropped into a shallow bow.

Nie Xiahong had taken her husband’s seat, though she did not appear pleased to be there. Yu Xinhua stood at her elbow, serenity written into her perfectly pleasant expression.

“Jin-er-gongzi was not expected,” Nie Xiahong said.

“I trust you will not mind my intrusion,” he replied, “I came to discuss a potential trade alliance with Nie-zongzhu. I was unaware he’d be absent. How unfortunate I’ve missed the opportunity to speak with him.”

“Nie-zongzhu is night hunting,” Nie Xiahong said slowly. “We are seeing to sect matters.” Lan Qiren realized it was the longest he’d heard her speak since arriving in the Unclean Realm. Xiao Jingfei might have teased a few words out of her, but otherwise the woman was as hard and taciturn as the land in which she’d been born. Her silence felt differently edged than Wangji’s had been; a guandao instead of a sword.

“Well, I can’t suppose that either of you would be much help,” Jin Guangshui said with a disappointed sigh. “These matters really are better suited to more logical minds and I would much rather speak to Nie-zongzhu.”

Obviously Jin Guangshui had never spoken to Nie Niubai. While the man was sensible, he tended to concede the logistics of sect management to his second wife, to the point that Lan Qiren rather wondered how QingheNie had managed prior to their marriage. Lan Qiren supposed,this far into Wei Changze’s plan, that LanlingJin was finally beginning to feel the strain instead of choosing to excuse or ignore it. Interesting that they had come to QingheNie… he would have thought Wen Ruohan the first one to whom Jin Guangshan would try to ingratiate himself.

Jin Guangshui continued with a wide, false grin. “I would also like to personally congratulate him on his good fortune, now that another child is expected into the family. My elder brother sends our sincerest greetings and well-wishes at your news.” He finally looked directly at Yu Xinhua, which seemed to set Nie Xiahong’s nerves on edge. His eyes lingered on her midsection. “My own boy will be of age, I think, once he’s born. I have no doubt that this generation of young masters will prove the envy of all that came before. And,” he laughed, “In the unfortunate event of it being a girl, I pray that she will be as beautiful as her mother. Maybe then I can finally sway my brother into a worthier engagement for his son.”

Nie Xiahong’s sabre shook at her side, though it calmed when Yu Xinhua shifted in place and allowed her skirt to brush against the other woman’s hand.

“Jin-er-gongzi is too kind,” Yu Xinhua said seamlessly, stepping forward and bowing. “From all reports I doubt Nie-zongzhu will return before the end of the week. You’re welcome to visit again at a different time. Perhaps with more advanced notice to give us the chance to receive you properly.”

“I suppose…” He sighed. “Though it seems an unfortunate waste of our time. I’ll trouble you to listen to my brother’s proposal. Perhaps with thorough notes you might be able to convey the elegance of it to Nie-zongzhu.”

“I will try my utmost to follow your direction,” Yu Xinhua said. “If Lan-zongzhu and his family will pardon us.”

Jin Guangshui’s gaze snapped to them, obviously startled at their presence. Given that the Lan robes weren’t subtle, Lan Qiren wondered that they’d been overlooked until now. Instead of considering it a deliberate snub, he generously chalked it up to the other man’s self-absorption.

His eyelids fluttered in a way that Lan Qiren had seen upon the face of Jin Guangyao once or twice; a telltale sign, he’d always found, that the other man was quickly changing the trajectory of his thoughts.

“Ah, I was unaware you already had company. Good you have someone capable here to attend you.” He bowed to Lan Qiren. “You must tell me how you came to visit Qinghe, Lan-zongzhu. I had not realized you still strayed out of Gusu. I believe your predecessor disdained such visits.”

“Qingheng-jun’s choice to remain in seclusion was not motivated by a dislike of travel,” Lan Qiren said stiffly. “We are here to discuss the benefits of future alliances and trade considerations.”

Jin Guangshui nodded officiously. “It can be very hard to find trustworthy allies. I know my brother has struggled with his ability to find peers who are both alike in dignity and honour.”

Xiao Jingfei quietly snorted. Given that neither Jin Guangshan or, apparently, his brother paid any attention to women they were not openly trying to harass, it went unremarked.

Yu Xinhua likewise appeared to have a thought on who would merit the dubious distinction of being called Jin Guangshan’s peer in honour, albeit silently, but said nothing.

Nie Xiahong’s jaw clenched. Lan Qiren doubted Jin Guangshui noticed, fixated as he seemed by the sight of Lan Qiren. “If that is all, I will convey your greetings to my husband upon his return.”

‘If’ being the operative word, Lan Qiren mused silently. A pretty way of inviting him to take his leave, though he doubted anyone who’d lived to adulthood in Koi Tower would accede to being shown out a door through which they did not wish to walk.

“Oh, I’m sure Lan-zongzhu can pardon us,” Jin Guangshui laughed. He had the exact same laugh as Jin Guangshan, one Lan Qiren recognized from countless Discussion Conferences in which the latter had lobbied for Jin interests at the expense of neighbours and supposed allies. “It is good he is here, after all.”

Was it?

Nie Xiahong stood and looked pleadingly at her wife, who nodded and beckoned a couple of male servants to show Jin Guangshui to a nearby room, promising to follow shortly.

Once the door shut behind them, Yu Xinhua turned to Wei Changze. The two of them conducted a silent conversation exclusively via eyebrow.

“Jin-er-gongzi is very gallant,” Wei Changze finally said.

“And possessed of remarkable timing,” Yu Xinhua agreed. She tapped her lower lip with her index finger. “Perhaps Lan-zongzhu and Cangse Sanren would pardon us for only a few minutes, and deign to wait close by.”

Wei Changze nodded on their behalf and Lan Qiren settled back into place, keeping his attention on the nearby door. Anyone trained by LanlingJin, especially one of the highhanded and officious sons of the late Jin-zongzhu, would struggle to match Nie Xiahong in martial prowess, or Yu Xinhua in wits, but they also likely lacked the wisdom to appreciate it, given the possessors of the qualities in question were women.

The longer the three of them spent inside, the tenser Xiao Jingfei grew at his side, ceaselessly fidgeting.

“A-Chang,” she finally said, “Why don’t you take the boys to the southern courtyard?”

Wei Changze nodded and, without a word, ushered the entire flock out the far door, A-Ying and A-Zhan holding one another’s hands and Nie Huaisang looking woefully over his shoulder back to where his mothers had absconded.

Once they’d gone, she loosened Tianbi in its scabbard.

“Surely not,” Lan Qiren murmured to her.

“Too many people outside,” she replied, just as quiet.

Before either of them could speculate further, Jin Guangshui crashed through the door, ripping through the screen as he flew through the air. He hit the ground not far from them, grabbing at his chest and coughing out a mouthful of blood. Nie Xiahong stepped through the ruined remains of the door, a long cut on her hand dripping blood, her gaze murderous.

Behind her, Yu Xinhua rubbed at her wrist, a roughly hand-sized red mark already swelling up.

“Madam Nie, this is all a misunderstanding,” Jin Guangshui croaked. “Surely you don’t want to make such a spectacle in front of Lan-zongzhu? Not when it could mean your sect loses so much face.”

Nie Xiahong looked well prepared to deal with the consequences. Unfortunately, there would be a direr result than merely loss of face. While their fortunes had diminished, LanlingJin still commanded allies aplenty and if this went any further they would undoubtedly manage to find a way to cast QingheNie in the role of villains in whatever narrative they created. With the mutual enmity between QingheNie and QishanWen a backdrop to violence, this could mean hostilities even more gruesome than the Sunshot Campaign.

“I think it’s time for Jin-er-gongzi to leave,” Lan Qiren stated, rising to his feet.

Jin Guangshui protested. “These women are hysterical—”

“And will they say the same of me, when I speak of your conduct to the Chief Cultivator?” Lan Qiren asked. As Lan-zongzhu, even if the words of Nie Xiahong and Yu Xinhua were ignored, he would not be. He doubted Wen Ruohan would care, overmuch, but the threat of official sanctions, in addition to unofficial ones, might at least appeal to his political acumen.

“My conduct is faultless,” Jin Guangshui said weakly. Nie Xiahong took another step towards him and he leapt to his feet with far more agility than Lan Qiren would have expected. “You did not see anything to disprove me.”

“Neither did I see anything to support you,” Lan Qiren said, “But having been the guest of the Madams Nie without incident thus far, I can confidently speak against any supposed ‘hysteria.’”

Jin Guangshui winced and manoeuvred himself backwards to the receiving hall entrance. Outside, his gathered cultivators and servants snapped to attention.

“I’ll be speaking to Jin-zongzhu about this. Perhaps QingheNie should start considering different trading partners!”

That would move Wei Changze’s plans along quite tidily, in truth. Lan Qiren hoped that the Zhou sect were prepared to step up their mining efforts.

Jin Guangshui scuttled out the door without another word or a bow. Xiao Jingfei followed him out the door, presumably to ensure he actually left, leaving Yu Xinhua to fret over Nie Xiahong’s injury. It was not overly deep, but it bled freely.

“Here,” she murmured, taking a handkerchief and pressing it to the skin. “My valiant protector as always, Jiejie.”

Nie Xiahong hummed noncommittally, but a slow blush spread across the bridge of her nose. It deepened when Yu Xinhua leaned closer to kiss her knuckles.

Xiao Jingfei returned a short time later and nodded at them; the Jin had gone.

“We’ll watch the children so you may settle yourselves,” Lan Qiren offered. “And see you at dinner.”

Yu Xinhua nodded at him, offering him the first hint of an approving smile he’d received since his arrival; she usually saved such expressions for her family and, occasionally, Wei Changze, albeit only during particularly vicious games of weiqi.

Dinner started off pleasantly enough, despite the afternoon’s unpleasantness. A-Huan had been subtly trying to scoot closer to Nie Mingjue since the first evening they’d dined together. Subtlety, however, proved the domain of adulthood and no one failed to notice when he put his elbow down onto Nie Mingjue’s plate after misjudging the distance between them.

In the absence of Nie Niubai, they arranged for a meal with few formalities, the table heavily laden down with various dishes to which they were all welcomed. Crowded with five adults and five children, the air swelled with the cheerful chaos that reminded Lan Qiren of meals shared with Wuxian, Wangji, Sizhui and Jingyi. The memories hurt less now than they had.

“What’s this?” A-Ying asked about every small morsel set onto his plate. “Mama, what’s this? Baba, what’s this? A-Die, what’s this? Auntie Yu, what’s this?”

A-Zhan ate everything in silence, though he waited for A-Ying to try each bite before conceding anything. Whenever he wrinkled his nose or carefully nudged an unwanted bite to the side of his plate, A-Ying grabbed it away and replaced it with something he knew A-Zhan would find more palatable. This seemed a new behaviour between them, one which Xiao Jingfei watched with undisguised adoration and poorly concealed coos of delight.

“Nie-xiong, are you going to ask your mothers when you can visit us in Gusu?” A-Huan asked, not quite whispering.

Nie Mingjue nodded, but proceeded to shove a large piece of meat into his mouth instead of doing so and chewed it with an air of careful consideration. Lan Qiren seemed to recall Chifeng-zun looking similarly thoughtful while planning out strategies for the battlefield.

A moment later, Nie Xiahong dropped her cup.

The sound echoed in the suddenly silent hall. Lan Qiren looked at Nie Xiahong, brow furrowed with concern. She rubbed her chest, face twisted in discomfort. At her side, Yu Xinhua reached for her.

“Jiejie—”

She gasped when Nie Xiahong slapped her hand away. “Don’t,” she growled. She took in a shaky breath, her lungs audibly rattling on her exhale. “Don’t touch me.”

She stood abruptly. Behind her, her sabre Ruimeng shook in its stand. She grabbed at her chest, gasping out a ragged breath. Blood seeped through the bandage on her hand, black tinged tinged green.

“A-Niang?” Nie Mingjue whispered in his seat.

She turned to look at him, eyes red and a trail of blood rolling out from the corner of her mouth. She started to speak, but managed little more than a violent cough which sent blood spitting out across the floor.

It felt like the air left the room. Lan Qiren barely had time to register jumping to his feet himself, Xiao Jingfei close on his heels as Wei Changze stumbled back from the table.

Ruimeng flew to its mistress’ hand.

Nie Xiahong lunged towards Yu Xinhua, sabre stretched out before her, face a rictus of bloody rage. Nie Xinhua screamed and threw herself in front of Mingjue and Huaisang, arms outstretched and prepared to receive the blow in defense of her children. Her eyes squeezed shut—

And suddenly a sword appeared between her and Ruimeng. Nie Xiahong’s gaze slid down the length of the blade, eyes wide and murderous, coming to rest on Xiao Jingfei. Xiao Jingfei’s arm nearly buckled under the weight of Nie Xiahong’s sabre, quivering with the effort to keep her blade from descending. Xiao Jingfei threw her entire weight behind throwing the larger woman back, nearly tripping over her own feet when Nie Xiahong stumbled away. She recovered herself quickly and followed, blocking a fierce series of blows as Nie Xiahong tried to press her attack.

“Gege,” she called, throwing Nie Xiahong away again and ducking under a broad swing of Ruimeng.

With a fierce overhand swing she sent Nie Xiahong flying through the door and into the courtyard. She followed, flying forward with her sword outstretched, Lan Qiren fast on her heels with his guqin at the ready. Rain hammered down upon him, nearly hard enough to bruise, a pounding and insistence presence as real as the two women before him.

“Stay back!” Xiao Jingfei shouted at the guards, her eyes fixed on Nie Xiahong.

Nie Xiahong met her eyes, chest heaving, rage emanating from her, but did not seem to see her. Not truly. Whatever stood in between her and the receiving hall of the Unclean Realm was not an ally.

Each time they’d faced one another, Nie Xiahong emerged victorious. She was stronger than Xiao Jingfei. Larger. Faster. Xiao Jingfei had the benefit of long years on the road and tricks she’d learned at the feet of her master. All together, barely enough to capably stand against a true master of dao cultivation.

Lan Qiren wanted to draw his sword and assist, but it would only end with Nie Xiahong dead.

Instead, Lan Qiren took a bracing breath, centred himself, and began to play Cleansing.

The first note had barely sounded before Nie Xiahong threw herself forward and their swords met in a clash of steel.

They moved quickly, blinding as lightning, swords meeting and parting with the speed of a heartbeat.

Nie Xiahong’s eyes widened with blind rage and she pressed forward. Xiao Jingfei’s left foot slid back into a puddle, putting her off balance as she scrabbled for purchase on wet stone. She only just managed to regain her footing and pushed herself to her feet just in time to accept Nie Xiahong’s overhead swing. The angle put her at a disadvantage and the sabre cut down too far for Xiao Jingfei to halt it entirely. She managed to stop it from cutting her in half, but gasped in pain as it sank into her shoulder.

Nie Xiahong and her sabre needed blood, the desire sat heavy in the air despite the heavy rain. Her arms heaved with the strain of her attack. Xiao Jingfei’s knees hit the ground.

“Stop,” Xiao Jingfei gasped, the blade cutting deeper with every moment. “Nie-jie, stop.”

Lan Qiren had long mourned the loss of Xiao Jingfei; these last years in her company had been an unexpected blessing for which he would never be able to thank Wei Wuxian. He had already lived without her and watched himself become a much harder man. He refused to do so again; if she died, now, it would not be because his strength had faltered.

But he had not had enough of her.

Please, Lan Qiren silently begged the heavens and earth and all in between. Please don’t let this be the moment I see her die. Not when I have already spent a lifetime mourning her. Not now that I know what it is to have my love returned.

Lan Qiren changed the score to send a blast of spiritual energy across the courtyard. It blindsided Nie Xiahong; she crashed back into the far wall and gave Xiao Jingfei the moment she needed to steady herself. Her chest heaving, she used her sword to push herself back up. Despite the pain twisting her features, she managed to draw a sigil in the air and sent it spinning towards Nie Xiahong, trapping her in a net of spiritual energy.

Lan Qiren took immediate advantage of the undoubtedly temporary entrapment and redoubled his efforts. Coaxing anyone down from the madness brought about by a qi deviation was an art he’d long wished he’d mastered in his first life, and spent time in this one doing his utmost to refine it. Now would prove whether or not he’d managed.

Nie Xiahong, tangled in the net and slowed by his playing, forced herself free as the last notes of the score began to dwindle down. She sluggishly swung her sword towards Xiao Jingfei, who easily batted it aside. The next three blows were countered the same way, one after the other, until Nie Xiahong lost the strength to even lift her sabre.

Lan Qiren played the last note of his score at the same time as Xiao Jingfei cracked a final blow against Nie Xiahong’s temple, sending her spiralling to the ground. The smaller woman stood over her opponent, her entire body heaving with the strain of the battle and sword at the ready in case her opponent stood again.

Nie Xiahong did not stand. Not for the next moment, nor the one which followed. With a heaving breath, Xiao Jingfei fell backwards and hit the ground, her eyes still affixed on the other woman in anticipation.

Lan Qiren waited only until Nie Xiahong’s eyes fluttered shut before dismissing his guqin and running to Xiao Jingfei’s side.

The open wound in her shoulder bled freely, and Lan Qiren grabbed hold of her hand to funnel her spiritual power. She reached up and grabbed his hand, clutching it tight, her blood staining both their palms, the only heat between them in the pounding rain.

“Let’s get her to the healer,” she whispered.

Lan Qiren shook his head. “Let me help you first. Please.”

Her shoulders heaved, still ready to fight, but eventually she nodded and allowed him to tend her wounds. Once it scabbed over, flesh barely knitted together, she gently pushed him away.

Between them, they manhandled Nie Xiahong up and dragged her back towards the main hall. A dozen disciples, all waiting in the wings, flooded out to surround them and guide them to where Yu Xinhua stood in the doorway. She watched their approach with an expression torn between fear and relief, neither emotion the decided victor.

She nodded to her disciples. “Bring her,” she said before turning with a swish of skirts.

It took four disciples to manoeuvre Nie Xiahong out of their arms. Xiao Jingfei slumped once the weight of her was removed and Lan Qiren immediately moved to brace her. They watched together as the disciples dragged Nie Xiahong—alive, hopefully sane, edged back from the qi deviation which would have taken her life—until she’d left their line of sight.

At which point Xiao Jingfei seemed to lose the integrity of balance and fell over. Lan Qiren barely managed to catch her, sweeping her into his arms. She did not stiffen, nor gasp in surprise, merely melted into his arms and allowed him to carry her back into the twisting corridors of the Unclean Realm.

She passed out before he reached their assigned rooms, but he only struggled with the doors a moment before Wei Changze threw them open.

“Mama?” A-Ying tried to run to her, only for Wei Changze to catch him around the waist and hoist him into the air. A-Ying kicked for a moment, attempted to go limp to slide from his father’s arms, and eventually huffed and settled.

“Mama needs rest,” Wei Changze informed him.

A-Ying’s face twisted into a mutinous scowl, but he reluctantly satisfied himself with kissing Xiao Jingfei’s cheek and then allowing Wei Changze carry him into the adjoining room, where Lan Qiren spotted one of Yu Xinhua’s personal maids sitting with A-Zhan and A-Huan.

Wei Changze closed the door on A-Ying’s bitter complaints and darted to them. He helped Lan Qiren move Xiao Jingfei to the bedroom, eyes half-wild as Lan Qiren eased the bloodied robes from her body. Her eyes snapped open halfway through it, expression screwing into one of agony as she tried to move her injured arm enough for them to strip her down.

“Ah, Xiao-Fei,” Wei Changze muttered.

“It’ll heal,” she ground out. She took a bracing breath. “Could you both please leave me alone for a bit?” Lan Qiren and Wei Changze exchanged looks over her head. “Don’t do that,” she insisted. “Just… go. Please.”

Lan Qiren reluctantly pulled himself away. Wei Changze hesitated a bit longer, but did not press the issue, merely joined him in the main room. Lan Qiren longed to play healing songs for her, even in the adjoining room, but his hands ached from the strain of his earlier efforts.

Wei Changze noticed him flexing his fingers and knelt down before him, taking his hands to massage out the pain. Lan Qiren sighed at the warmth in his touch and submitted to his care.

A little over an hour later, Yu Xinhua knocked on their door. She looked pale but more at ease.

“My wife will make a full recovery,” she informed them. “Thanks to you.”

“As will ours,” Lan Qiren replied evenly. Xiao Jingfei remained deep in meditation, trying to speed her healing along. Despite her efforts, Lan Qiren doubted her arm would be back to full strength before the week was out.

“Good.” Yu Xinhua regarded the two of them, folding her hands in front of her. “I found your original letter curious. Your visit, and its seemingly excellent timing, more so.”

Lan Qiren stiffened, but Wei Changze placed a hand on his knee. His husband and Yu Xinhua regarded one another with the same intensity they brought to their weiqi games; to Lan Qiren’s knowledge, every game had ended in a standstill.

“You had cause to doubt the integrity of the Jin?” Yu Xinhua asked.

“We had some concern over your wellbeing. We did not know the truth of the threat,” Wei Changze told her. She nodded to herself. “I’m sorry that Nie Xiahong was harmed.”

“The healers have confirmed that poison drove her to the qi deviation,” Yu Xinhua said. She sounded angry; at herself, at Jin Guangshui, perhaps even at her husband’s likely manufactured absence. “When he grabbed me, it did not occur that he’d done so to deliberately provoke her. And I suppose they also made the arrangements for our husband to be away.”

Lan Qiren had wondered how it had played out in his first life. He supposed he saw the full shape of it, now. Nie Xiahong killing Yu Xinhua and whatever disciples left behind by Nie Niubai. Returning to such a thing must have broken him. It certainly would have done Lan Qiren. He considered it a small miracle that Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang had lived through it. He had little doubt that, as in this life, Yu Xinhua had put herself in the way to protect her children. Thankfully this time it had not cost her life.

(A small part of him hoped rather than believed that Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang had not seen their first mother kill their second before succumbing to a qi deviation.)

“It would not surprise me,” Wei Changze said.

The two of them traded another indecipherable look.

“Wei-xiansheng is very knowledgeable. I hope that we will, in the future, work closely together to the mutual benefit of QingheNie and GusuLan.”

“I think that would be in everyone’s best interests,” Wei Changze agreed.

They bowed to one another as peers and Yu Xinhua left to attend her family.

Nie Niubai returned with the dawn, ruffled but uninjured. Calm until he heard of the past night’s events and then thrown into a panic as keenly edged as his usual good humour. Lan Qiren and Xiao Jingfei happened to be in the healing quarters by chance, Xiao Jingfei finally deigning to allow someone to look at her, though she glared her way through it with such profound irritation that Lan Qiren imagined that even Jiang Wanyin would be impressed by the veracity.

“Wife!” Nie Niubai cried as he bustled in through the doors. “What happened? No one will tell me anything!”

“No one?” Nie Xiahong repeated slowly. “Not even Yu-mei?”

“She has been very tight-lipped and claims she doesn’t know what caused your qi deviation.”

Nie Xiahong rubbed the back of her hand, where the cut through which Jin Guangshui delivered the poison had remained a bright and vivid red, despite every attempt of the healers. “Whatever the cause, I will take care that it will not happen again,” she said. “Lan-zongzhu has offered to allow one of his disciples to come stay here permanently to address our troubles.”

Lan Qiren nodded when Nie Niubai looked his way. “It is beyond my power to come as regularly as I would need to, to help Nie-zongzhu and his wife. But there are several very promising senior disciples who are competent and capable of helping you.” Combined with the presence of the DafanWen healers, he hoped this would

Nie Niubai nodded. “My second wife tells me that we also owe you and your cultivation partner a life debt. I am a man who takes these matters very seriously.”

Of this, Lan Qiren had no doubt. “Let us seal our formal alliance, then, before we take our leave.”

“A sworn brotherhood,” Nie Niubai countered. “I would offer no less to someone who has done so much for his family.”

Lan Qiren blinked. He had done no less than Xiao Jingfei. “I’m…” He cast his gaze to Xiao Jingfei, who merely squeezed his hand and smiled at him.

Nie Niubai pinned him with a heavy look, one which suddenly reminded Lan Qiren of both Chifeng-zun and Nie Huaisang at their most obstinate. “Come. I shall either call you my didi or shave my beard.”

“My honour,” he finally stammered out, unsure of what else he could possibly say to the other man’s proposal. He’d… never been called ‘didi’ before. He couldn’t imagine life with an elder brother who actually cared for him. Honestly, Lan Qiren found himself hard pressed to articulate his feelings over such a thing, save for a quick double-beat of his heart against his breast.

“Good, then.” Nie Niubai clasped his shoulders. “We will swear our oaths and celebrate them before you return to Gusu. I’ll leave the planning to your husband and my sweet birch.” His lips twisted wryly. “I imagine they’ll handle the entire affair much more efficiently than either of us could.”

“I think Nie-ge will find they’re far better at managing our lives than we are ourselves,” Xiao Jingfei laughed, some of her usual spark lighting up the sound, albeit still dimmed.

“Indeed,” Lan Qiren nodded.

Nie Niubai squeezed his shoulders and then returned his attention to Nie Xiahong, leaving Lan Qiren to stare in wonder at his back.

The ceremony was deceptively simple considering the gravity of it. The entire day, before and after, Nie Niubai insisted upon calling Lan Qiren ‘didi’ and sung his praises to anyone who would listen.

This was not how he’d expected his life to turn out.

Lan Qiren cast his gaze around the room; Xiao Jingfei was laughing at some story A-Huan was telling her and Nie Mingjue, Nie Xiahong watching with the smallest upturn to her lips. Wei Changze sat with Yu Xinhua, their heads bent together and quietly discussing something, likely nefarious, which Lan Qiren decided not to ask about. And his elder brother had decided to entertain A-Ying, A-Zhan, and Nie Huaisang all by allowing them to climb him in his best impression of a cheerful tree. A-Ying had managed to perch himself on Nie-ge’s lower back, trying his best to coach the other two higher.

No, not at all how he expected. Yet, he could not fault it.

With a smile, he went to assist his sons in their efforts to reach his elder brother’s shoulders.

They left the Unclean Realm, Lan Qiren quietly confident they had changed things enough to keep Nie Niubai—his brother—alive.

Shortly after their return from Qinghe, Xiao Zhuliu requested an audience.

It was a relative rarity. They generally only saw one another in social settings rather than formal ones.

“Lan-zongzhu,” Xiao Zhuliu said, bowing low enough to raise Lan Qiren’s eyebrow. The young man was tirelessly polite and proper to standards even the most rigid elders could not fault, but given that Xiao Jingfei considered him family such things were not absolutely required between them. “I ask you to hear me out.”

“Go ahead,” Lan Qiren said.

“My meridian disorder is now addressed,” Xiao Zhuliu began. “I have been informed of the importance of maintaining my discipline in regulating my qi to prevent accidentally damaging the golden cores of other cultivators I touch,” he continued. “But, it seems to me, that such a thing might be of use against possible threats to GusuLan and those living here.”

Lan Qiren’s eyes widened. “No,” he said, nearly at a shout.

Xiao Zhuliu rocked backwards, eyes wide and furtive, before dropping into a kowtow, forehead to the floor. “Forgive this one, zongzhu,” he whispered.

Lan Qiren silently cursed himself. “I should not have yelled. Please forgive me.”

Xiao Zhuliu cautiously rose again, but remained at a distance. Out of arm’s reach. Xiao Jingfei was going to be so upset when she discovered his slip.

“I know you and my jiejie are hiding things,” Xiao Zhuliu said slowly, cautiously. “You do not have to tell me what. It is not my business to know. But I have come to value this place and its people and I do not wish to see them come to harm.”

He looked terribly young in the moment, though his words seemed suited to someone much older. Lan Qiren’s lips pressed together in thought. Xiao Jingfei would have hugged him to impress upon him her lack of fear over his abilities. Wei Changze would offer a few gentle words. Lan Qiren’s reservoirs of touches and gentle words were reserved for his family.

Yet, was Xiao Zhuliu not a part of his family in this life?

With extreme discomfort, Lan Qiren stood and moved to Xiao Zhuliu’s side. The boy watched in mild fear as Lan Qiren’s hands came to rest upon his shoulders. He waited for the young man to relax before he finally spoke.

“What dangers we face are our own to address,” he said. “And no matter how terrible, no one will ever ask you to intentionally harm anyone in such a way. A person who asks such a thing of you is dishonourable and seeks to dishonour you as well.

“Xiao Zhuliu, you are not a weapon.”

They were not the words he wanted to say; those had no place in a conversation between an adult and a teenager who had no knowledge of what harm he might be compelled to cause.

Xiao Zhuliu took an unsteady breath and released it with a shudder. “My father…” He paused. “He once.” Another halt, this one accompanied by Xiao Zhuliu squeezing his eyes shut. “He was the third heir to the Zhao sect. He wished to be leader. He.”

Lan Qiren had often wondered how a man such as Wen Ruohan had won the complete obedience of Wen Zhuliu. Now, he supposed, he knew. If Wen Zhuliu, as was, had already believed his horrible power was something to be exploited—a matter of which he’d been convinced by his father, no less—than unquestioning loyalty would naturally follow for someone who demanded nothing to which he was unaccustomed while treating him with even the smallest modicum of respect.

“I will not allow anyone to demand such things of you,” Lan Qiren vowed. “And I should think that my reaction to it would be far milder than that of your sister.”

Xiao Zhuliu lowered his head without opening his eyes. Lan Qiren caught sight of teardrops sliding down his cheeks. “Thank you,” he whispered. “Please, zongzhu, will you accept this unworthy disciple as a full member of GusuLan?”

During his time in Cloud Recesses, Xiao Zhuliu had been given permission to learn from their instructors, but without a formal request to truly join their sect, it limited the knowledge they could share. Xiao Jingfei worked closely with him as well, effortlessly folding him into the blanket of her good humour, nudging and prodding him to excel, even though he’d had a slower start on his path. Once allowed to truly learn from their instructors, Lan Qiren imagined there would be no finer example of a Lan-trained cultivator save, with acknowledgement and deference to his biases, his own sons.

“Yes,” he said. “Though you will need to remain Xiao Zhuliu, with respect to my cultivation partner’s temper.”

Xiao Zhuliu rose, a small smile barely curling the corners of his mouth.

It did not take long for word to reach them that Jin Guangshui had suffered a fatal qi deviation.

Wei Changze and Yu Xinhua had made it clear that no one was to tell Da-ge of the Jin involvement in Nie Xiahong’s qi deviation and the narrowly-avoided tragedy which nearly ensued. His temper had improved already and QingheNie was well on its way towards a position of prosperity not currently enjoyed by any of the other great sects. Lan Qiren had rather foolishly expected her to let the matter go until she could bring it up without fear of a backslide.

When Lan Qiren looked to Wei Changze, the other man merely dipped his chin and reminded him of the Yu clan motto: We remember what is owed.

Chapter Text

Lan Pei appeared somewhat frazzled when he answered Lan Qiren’s knock. Inside, the sound of A-Ying’s voice filled the room, a joyous sound stretching to every corner.

“Zongzhu,” he greeted with a bow. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” Lan Qiren said, gently patting Lan Pei’s arm with a smile. “I appreciate your watching the boys.”

“My honour,” he replied. His lips pressed together. “Though, it is an honour I feel best enjoyed in limited quantities.”

Lan Qiren waved him off with a wry, if understanding, smile. “Go, go. I believe there is someone waiting for you.”

Lan Pei bowed again. “Thank you, zongzhu.”

(Lan Qiren had once known the lady in question, a recently-promoted senior disciple, quite well. She’d only come to his attention the first time he’d needed to speak to her regarding her youngest son’s challenges with obeying the disciplines and countless times afterwards. Seeing her now, at the beginning of her adulthood, had thrown him for a loop when before he’d only seen her as a rather harried single mother of five. He supposed he was the fool, for not recognizing the similarities in Lan Pei and his son, Jingyi, before now. Lan Qiren had taken some care to encourage their association, without outright pressuring either of them.)

Lan Pei bid a hasty retreat. Usually, one of Li Linxia or Xiao Zhuliu stayed with the boys in the afternoons, but his sister was currently occupied assisting Xiao Jingfei, and A-Huan had finally received permission to lead his first night hunt. Given he’d be heading a small group of their disciples to purify a rather insidious haunting in the marshland on Gusu’s furthest borders, Lan Qiren suspected that his eldest son would be returning once again with the epithet of Zewu-jun.

Xiao Zhuliu joined him in his capacities as a beloved uncle and dedicated disciple. And, in the case of this recent night hunt, chaperone. Nie Mingjue had volunteered to join A-Huan, after all, though promising that he would not step in unless absolutely necessary. The two of them had exchanged besotted grins during their negotiations which Lan Qiren graciously overlooked.

Over the past few years letters from Nie Niubai—first written with a teasing tone over their nascent engagement—had become more considering as to how a union between sect heirs might truly be managed. Perhaps somewhat easier, now that Nie Mingjue had three brothers and two sisters who might assume the position if he married into the Lan.

With Lan Pei gone, Lan Qiren paused in the doorway to listen to his children.

“The kitchen workers say that childbirth is very painful,” A-Zhan said quietly.

“Don’t worry, Lan Zhan, when we’re married, I’ll have all the babies for us,” A-Ying promised.

Lan Qiren chuckled, low and warm. He’d wondered if growing up together might engender more feelings of brotherhood than romance, the latter of which they were obviously still much too young for. However, while A-Huan was always ‘gege,’ A-Zhan was never anything save ‘Lan Zhan’ from the moment A-Ying had first learned to speak. Things might yet grow and change between them, but no matter what, Lan Qiren felt confident they would face the world side by side, never to be parted.

“And what,” he said, sweeping into the room and startling A-Ying into jumping nearly a foot into the air, “Have the kitchen staff been saying exactly?”

“Nothing,” A-Ying and A-Zhan answered in perfect unison, A-Ying with wide-eyed guilt and A-Zhan with absolute, shit-eating dignity. He sighed over the boys, only distracted when A-Tang ran up to him and crashed into his leg.

“A-Die, up please,” he asked sweetly.

Feeling indulgent and warm, Lan Qiren picked him up. Although, at two, he really needed to walk more on his own, A-Tang insisted on being shuffled between his parents and they indulged him to a one, none so much as Lan Qiren.

Lan Qiren, in changing the past, had taken an embarrassingly long time to realize that even small changes tended to beget others.

The year A-Ying turned five, he’d become a wreck of nerves, convinced that no matter what, he’d end up losing everything they’d fought so hard to build. He’d refused to be sticky, as such a thing was surely beneath his dignity, but he had found himself increasingly panicked whenever either of Xiao Jingfei or Wei Changze—or, in fact, any of their sons—were out of sight. He wanted to keep them close. Keep them safe and sheltered and away from a world which might harm them.

The thought eventually sickened him nearly as much as the threat of death.

‘Nearly’ had cumulated in a conversation which, in his recollection, now seemed conducted while he’d been in an unforgivable frenzy.

“You must go,” he told them, pulling a mishmash of things from various drawers around their room, giving no mind to actual use or ownership. A-Chang’s worry manifested in a drawn brow. Xiao Jingfei merely waited until he’d stepped close to her before grabbing the front of his robes and bodily turning him to face her.

“Go where, gege?” she asked with surprising calm.

“Anywhere but Yiling,” he replied, “But. If you stay here…” He shook his head. “I will not be Qingheng-jun. I refuse to trap you here and yet, I.” Shame filled him and he could not bring himself to look at either of them, dreading what he might see in their eyes.

“Gege,” she whispered, echoed by an equally quiet, ‘Qiren’ from Wei Changze. “You are never going to be your brother. We won’t let you.” ‘Won’t let,’ in Xiao Jingfei’s world, tended to include some violence.

“The world knows Cangse Sanren is Lan-zongzhu’s esteemed cultivation partner, as I am your husband and foremost advisor,” Wei Changze said. All true and respected facts, despite the feelings of a certain sect leader of Yunmeng. “It is not unusual for us to sit in with your meetings. If that will calm your nerves, then we will remain close.”

“Until we annoy you into chasing us away,” Xiao Jingfei laughed. “A rookery, gege. Not a cage. Remember?”

It had taken him months, and a nearly fatal qi deviation, for him to overcome his fears, no matter how irrational. They both accepted it with careful understanding, but did not mock him over it, even now three years had passed.

The product of ‘remaining close’ had been born the summer before A-Ying turned six. Wei Tang already shared many of A-Ying’s habits, but had more of Wei Changze’s thoughtfulness.

“Baby,” A-Tang said, either in reference to the present circumstances or a call for his San-ge. Likely the former. All his brothers were referred to by ‘ge’ with varying tones, from adoration (A-Huan) to exasperation (A-Ying.)

His favourite person besides his parents was, without question, Xiao Zhuliu. A-Tang had been in a temper since the hunting party had left.

“Baby,” Lan Qiren agreed. A-Zhan rose to his feet, A-Ying already dancing in place in anticipation. “Everyone is healthy. You have a sister.”

A true Lan, this precious little girl. He saw much of his own father’s features in the gentle slope of her nose and shape of her jaw, small as they were. He’d never had a daughter. He’d never truly thought to have any children at all, though he’d be more than a little foolish to deny that in his first life Wangji and Xichen had been his sons, regardless of how he’d failed them.

(He clung to the promise he’d made to himself to avoid failing them in this one.)

He’d been the first to hold her after Xiao Jingfei. Not once in his entire life could he ever recall being so incandescently happy.

“A meimei for didi?” A-Tang asked, pointing at himself.

Lan Qiren nodded, at which point his sweet youngest son burst into tears. Nonplussed—A-Tang felt things very deeply—he waited for the moment to pass, sobs interspersed with the words ‘baby’ and ‘gege.’ In truth, he had likewise cried upon seeing a particularly fuzzy caterpillar during their last trip to Caiyi and this was not entirely unexpected.

“Didi did not have his nap,” A-Zhan informed him.

“Pei-ge’s very easily distracted,” A-Ying said.

Lan Qiren’s smile grew as he gently bounced A-Tang in his arms.