Archive of Our Own

"One day," baba always says, whenever they find themselves by the water's edge in their travels, "You should go visit Lotus Pier. Go pick lotus seeds, swim on the waters and climb a willow tree to watch the sunset over the lake. It really is the prettiest thing in the world, A-Yuan, even prettier than the jiejies in their market!"

Even from early on, something inside A-Yuan knows that Lotus Pier is not somewhere they could go - Just as they could not go to any city nor town where there are Cultivation Sects and their sword-toting disciples. But there is a longing in baba's face whenever he talks about Lotus Pier, gazing out at whatever water's surface they've encountered, eyes faraway and unspeakably tender. 

A-Yuan grows up along a series of far-flung cities and roads, away from all the places baba used to call home. He grows up on trade caravans and abandoned shacks and cozy inn rooms, with lessons in sword forms and cultivation and archery done on the side of the road and beneath the shade of kindly trees. With discussions of philosophy and the analects done in rowdy teahouses and any library baba could talk themselves into - Which is a lot of libraries, it turns out. 

Sizhui, he is named, as he grows up with stories of his Popo, of Qing-Ayi and Ning-Shushu and the brood of uncles and aunts that had cradled him to sleep when he was small, their memory kept alive between his baba and himself. He grows up with so much love it makes something in his chest tightens sometimes, as if it would burst with every fond kiss baba puts on the top of his head, with every gentle threat to plant him back in the soil. He grows up with baba's arms both fragile and terribly strong around him, and an old, wordless lullaby that baba hums whenever nightmares of purple and gold invade Sizhui's sleep. 

For baba, part of the home in his heart still lies in a place of wooden decks and lotus blooms. But for Sizhui, home is simply wherever his baba is.

- ooo -

When he is sixteen, Sizhui spends his last summer with baba in a small village South of Changsha, in a cottage near the water where they can see the lotus flowers bloom. They spend the summer in slow days and stories and laughter, and Sizhui spends every night tucked into the crook of baba's frail body, listening to his heartbeat until they both drift to sleep. 

"My little radish," baba would say every time, bony fingers gentle on his hair, "So big now, hmm? No need for his baba to plant him in the soil anymore." 

Every few days, someone would come over, an auntie or uncle from the village bringing food, or a group of children and youth, ever enamored as baba holds court in the daybed - regaling them with stories or lessons. Once a week, Yang Shushu, who is the headman of the village, comes over and takes baba's hand, checking his pulse and reprimanding him for whatever mischief he had managed and Yang Shushu always found out. 

They had met Yang Shushu on the road many years ago, the older man having professed a life debt towards baba for saving his life from a group of bandits. Upon meeting them again, he had taken one look at baba and insisted they stay in the village until baba got better. 

Baba never got better.

Sizhui has always known that his baba is living on borrowed time, that it's something of a miracle that baba has hung on this far, this long with a body that's been torn apart in more ways than one. Always known that he'd lose his baba too soon, even as baba smiles down at him in warmth and assurance, as if he would live forever. And when baba does pass, he has Sizhui's hand on his and a smile on his face, as if he's telling Sizhui that everything would be alright until the very end. 

Sizhui plants baba under a magnolia tree, where he could see the water and the lotuses blooming in the summer, and laments that he could not simply plant himself next to baba and be home forever. 

- ooo -

Baba left him a qiankun pouch that used to belong to Qing-Ayi, his aunt's notes and box of needles, along with her old mortar and pestle reminding him of days in the Burial Mounds. He left him a thick stack of his notes on demonic cultivation and talismans, pages upon pages of writing and diagrams his baba had scrawled on the road and in dimly-lit inns, the last remnants of his brilliant, brilliant mind. 

And lastly, there is a sword. 

My little radish, the note slipped into the scabbard says in his baba's chicken-scratch script, As my parents before me named me so I would be free of wants, Wuji is for you so you could live unrestrained by the world and our past. 

There is a small carving of a sunburst on the hilt of the sword, intertwined with a bushel of radish leaves that unwittingly makes Sizhui smile. His baba, ever looking out for him, even after the world had taken him away like it did the rest of Sizhui's family. 

"You should be Yang Sizhui, for a while," Yang Shushu says, the night before he is to depart, a bottle of baba's favorite wine between them, "When your business is done, you could visit your baba here and take back his name."

Yang Shushu does not exactly know of baba's past, of who Sizhui's family had been, but he sees enough to know that they had been the casualties of machinations infinitely greater than they were. Yang Shushu had been in the war, knew all to well the disregard by which the powerful treated the lives of people without the right name, without the right birthright. And the same thing that made him pledge a life debt to baba recognizes the quest for unpaid blood in Sizhui's eyes. 

He bows to the older man, and accepts his embrace as he accepts his new name, in this new world without his baba in it. 

- ooo -

Sizhui spends a year on the road, helping with what he can and building a network of people he could call upon, eyes and ears and favors scattered from Yueyang to Tingshan - Rogue cultivators and innkeepers and city officials, courtesans and traders and wandering scholars. 

He gets used to the way they spit baba's name like a curse the closer he gets to the domain of the Great Sects, gets used to his own birth name being treated the same. It's easier to get used to than he thought - He's heard worse back in the camps, where the Jin guards would taunt them before flinging dirt or kicks upon their tired bodies. 

He's only been skirting Yunmeng territory for a few days when he crosses path with the Jiangs. 

Yunmeng Jiang cultivators are a rarity, even in their own domain - Something of a blessing when he was still on the road with baba, but a lamentable fact for the people beneath their supposed protection. 

They wouldn't send anyone unless people have died, a village elder told him once, after baba had dispatched a malicious water yao on the shores of her village. The villagers had been thin and pale, deprived of their livelihood for weeks by then, trying to stay away from the water. One of the kids said that we should have reported a demonic cultivator instead. That would have gotten them here for sure.

His baba had smiled then, sad and wan, slipping away quickly afterwards in case the Jiang cultivators did decide to come after all. Sizhui thinks they never did. 

Despite what Jiang Wanyin and his Sect had done, despite everything, baba never once cursed them as they did the Yiling Patriarch's name. Mourn as baba did for Sizhui's family, for the family that had become baba's own in all but name, never once did baba look upon the cultivation world in vengeance. Instead, every breath, every drop of life in baba's failing body had been dedicated to keeping Sizhui safe, fed and loved, as if the slightest speck of grudge towards the world would have tainted his own boundless love towards Sizhui.

Why would I think of anything else when I have my little radish right here with me, hmm? 

 But Sizhui is all alone in the world now, and he is not his baba. No one else is like baba, and Sizhui supposes that was what had sealed his father's fate, in a world where one is demanded to serve righteousness and honor rather than the people, even if costs them the lives of innocents and loved ones. 

Sizhui does not blame his baba for wanting to detach them from that kind of world entirely, for wishing Sizhui a life unrestrained by everything that had torn baba's own life apart the moment he tried to do something beyond his given place. Yet again, he is not his baba. For along with the radish leaves that presses on his palm whenever he grips his sword, there is also the sunburst against his skin - Long gone but not forgotten. 

He had always meant to go for the Jins first, but the sight of the purple robes nudges at something inside of him. Memories of Popo's quiet gasp as a blade went through her chest, as purple flooded their humble home and Sizhui tried not to sob from his hiding place. Of baba's sad smile when Sizhui asked where the pretty purple bell he always wore was, that day he came home to the Burial Mounds with a stab wound on his stomach. 

Perhaps, Sizhui thinks as his eyes follow the swaying bells through the crowd, it would not hurt to start a little closer to home. 

- ooo -

The Jiang disciples are easy to follow, with their fine lotus silks and their leader's loud, barking demands as they settled in a nearby inn - Their plans laid out for the world and Sizhui to hear through the subdued din of the inn's dining room. It's easier still to beat the Jiangs to their destination - For Sandu Sengshou might have trained his disciples himself, but Sizhui was trained by the best tracker Yunmeng Jiang's ever had. 

It's clear that the men the Jiangs were hunting are no demonic cultivators. They are barely cultivators at all, merely thugs who preyed on passing caravans and had a few flashy, illusion-based talismans at their disposal. Were he here, his baba would have given them all a good thumping with his staff and sent them away after putting the fear of the Gods in their hearts.

Sizhui needs them dead. 

"It's nothing personal," he smiles as he drops down from the trees atop their camp, scattering the handful of men even as they draw their weapons angrily. Their blades are no match for Wuji, their fumbling charges easily sidestepped as Sizhui cuts down each and every one of them. 

The footsteps of the Jiang disciples approach just as Sizhui finished drawing the array on the ground - A rudimentary and wholly ineffective bastardization of one of baba's own. He swiftly gets to his feet, opting to wipe the blood on Wuji's blade when Jiang Wanyin steps into the clearing to regard the carnage Sizhui has wrought. 

"Did you do this?" The Jiang Sect Leader barks, more of a command than a question. The Jiang Wanyin in baba's stories had always seemed merely a difficult, sometimes callous young man. But now that the man himself is before him, Sizhui rather thinks that Jiang Wanyin is simply too used to being appeased, too used to his words having power over others. 

"I've been tracking them for weeks now," Sizhui says, then steps aside to show the array on the middle of the camp, "They weren't particularly happy that I caught up to them just as they were about to do whatever this is they're about to do."

Jiang Wanyin's questioning scowl stays in place, and Sizhui draws a deep breath before he let his eyes turn somber. 

"My baba was killed by demonic cultivation," he says quetly, remembering the tendrils of resentment that nearly tore his baba apart as he destroyed the Yin Hufu - racing against time to obliterate the damning power before the Sects arrive -  No resources, no assistance, not even a golden core inside his body to dampen the backlash, "He was a rogue cultivator, trained me to fight. To hunt."

"Six men by yourself," Jiang Wanyin grunts with something like grudging approval, even as his violet eyes size up Sizhui from head to toe - From his threadbare robes to the modest scabbard of his blade, "Your father taught you well."

If only Jiang Wanyin knew just how well baba had taught him. 

The next morning, Sizhui packs his meagre belongings and follows the Jiangs Southward, a pretty, purple-tasseled bell hanging from his waist. 

- ooo -

Lotus Pier is everything baba had told him in his stories, and at the same time nothing like it. Despite the glittering water and lotus blooms, gone are the laughing shidi and shimei in baba's stories - Boys rough housing and splashing each other, girls shooting kites and jumping light-footed on the roof tiles. The older disciples, few as they are, are hardened and rough, loud and rowdy as they swagger through the markets and the docks. The children are quiet and determined, yet with something almost skittish in their eyes. Sizhui thinks he would have been like that too, were he to grow somewhere the rules seem to change along with the whims of the people who hold power over you. 

The compound itself is more lavish than what he imagined from baba's stories - Creaking timbers and old wooden structures replaced by shiny lacquers and ornately carved walls. From what he gathered out of the market aunties and uncles, the Jiang Sect had thrived from the spoils of the Sunshot Campaign and their reputation as the one who brought down the Yiling Patriarch - The lands and subsidiary Sects they now control bringing a steady stream of prosperity. The Lotus Pier of baba's stories had been transformed with gold that baba earned for being a weapon during the war. With the glory that Jiang Wanyin earned from slaughtering Sizhui's baba and his whole family. 

Sizhui doesn't know how to feel about the knowledge. 

And yet, it's easy enough to adapt himself into the Sect's strict training regiment. Many of the basic forms baba taught him were Yunmeng Jiang's, and years of actual experience and lessons from other rogue cultivators they met on the road grants him an edge over the other disciples his age. Soon, the forms flow through his body like water, the Jiangs' riverlike movements blending seamlessly with his own.

It's easier still for him to gain Jiang Wanyin's confidence, once he mentions that he could help with the ever-present paperwork and ledgers on the Sect Leader's office - Citing how he practically grew up playing with suanpans on trade caravans and scribing books for extra coins on the road. Most of the older disciples used to be rogue cultivators or mercenaries recruited during the war, useful for hunting down demonic cultivators and the occasional Yao, but of little to no help regarding correspondences and numbers.

It takes barely a year before he is made Head Disciple, after the former Head Disciple conveniently eloped with the love of his life and stole off into the night. Not that Sizhui had anything to do with fanning the flames of budding romance between Hu Wentao and the beautiful rogue cultivator who frequented the inn on the docks. Jiang Wanyin rages for days, ranting about ungratefulness and selfishness before he threw the Head Disciple bell Wentao left behind at Sizhui - Snapping at him to just leave Lotus Pier right then and there if he even has an inkling to do what his Shixiong just did.  

Sizhui bows low instead, the ornate bell held between his clasped hand as he thanks the Jiang Sect Leader for the honor. Jiang Wanyin scoffs, and turns on his heels to storm off from the practice courtyard, leaving behind a smiling Sizhui and the disciples crowding behind him. 

- ooo -

The hunts are difficult. 

Sizhui entered Yunmeng Jiang fully knowing what the Sect has been doing for more than a decade now, fully aware that many rogue cultivators and wanderers tend to avoid Yunmeng territory for fear of catching Sandu Sengshou's attention. But seeing it for himself had been another matter entirely. 

The first time an alleged demonic cultivator was brought into Lotus Pier, Sizhui barely registered what was happening before the screaming started. He hurriedly ushered the younger disciples to the archery field, far away from the sight and sounds of Jiang Wanyin flaying open the back of a man in black robes - blood already spattering the baking ground of the main courtyard. 

He had not been the one to dispose of the body afterwards, but Sizhui saw the stack of familiar sigils inside the dead man's pack - Protection talismans that baba had once made to be easily copied even by the common people, highly intricate for the fact that it's so simple. Looking back now, anyone who knew baba closely would have recognized the particular ingenuity in those talismans, and that man had been killed exactly for having baba's talismans. For wearing the black and reds that baba had prefered when he was the Yiling Patriarch. Jiang Wanyin had whipped that man to death with Zidian, perhaps hoping that it had been baba. 

Sizhui didn't sleep that night.

He devises a system, afterwards. Sent out word to his well-tended network and made sure whatever tips people were giving about strange happenings or suspicious cultivators went through him first. He keeps qiankun pouches filled with spare clothes and necessities, ready to be handed to anyone who needs a quick getaway. The more he climbs the ranks amongst the disciples, the more he's taken along into the hunts proper, and once he becomes Head Disciple, it often falls to him to lead the disciples under Jiang Wanyin's command, to scout out ahead of the group - Giving him the headstart that he needs. 

 Sometimes, the people they hunt turn out to be bandits or deranged killers - Deserving of their punishment, albeit for wholly different reasons from what Jiang Wanyin believes. But most of the time, the people are mere rogue cultivators, village healers and daozhangs, people who use makeshift talismans or whatever spiritual defenses they could cobble up in a dangerous world that never looks kindly towards the weak.

The person Sizhui has caught up with in this hunt is a simple rogue cultivator - Venturing into the area to help with a case of disturbed graves. But he bears no sword with him, cultivating the summoning-based discipline of the Far South - an incongruity that would be enough for Jiang Wanyin, enough to drag him back to Lotus Pier without any semblance of trial nor explanation.

"You'll have to run," Sizhui says, pushing a qiankun pouch into the bewildered rogue cultivator's hand, "Go North towards the capital, change your clothes into these and put your weapon inside - Sandu Sengshou would be looking for a rogue cultivator, not a scholar on their way to Xiangyang. Lay low for a while."

The man nods, still bewildered, before he bows, low and solemn. Sizhui pushes him out of the small shack he's set up camp in, and waits until he's disappeared into the treeline before he gets to work. 

He takes out a waterskin from his own qiankun pouch, filled to near-bursting with pig's blood. Soon, the shack is awash in blood and bits of entrails, and a low whistle draws resentment into the close air of the small space. 

Jiang Wanyin grunts at the cloying resentment filling the shack as he steps in barely a ke later, having followed Sizhui's signal.

"I was too late," Sizhui says grimly, gesturing at the carnage. A-Liang, one of the younger shidi blanches, and runs outside to empty his stomach on the forest floor. Jiang Wanyin sends a sharp glance at the retching boy outside before he gruffly motions the other disciples to leave them.

"Did he leave anything? Notes? Talismans?"

"No, Zongzhu. There's just traces of resentful energy left and not much else. I reckon it must have gotten out of his control somehow to cause this."

"Fucking waste of time," Jiang Wanyin spits, glowering at the blood painting the walls, "What did the idiot expect would happen, dabbling with shit like this?"

Sizhui keeps quiet, head bowed attentively until Jiang Wanyin huffs in disgust and start to head outside as well, clearly meaning to return to the inn they've booked for the night. 

"Zongzhu," Sizhui bows, "Forgive this one for speaking out of turn, but there had also been a request for help from a village nearby this area. A matter of fierce corpses from disturbed graves, I believe."

"The one North of Wuhan? Has it claimed any victims yet?"

"It was not mentioned in the missive, but the villagers were rendered unable to tend to their fields normally, as the graves were too close to where they usually work."

Sizhui stays in his bow, hands clasped in front of him as he wait, feels Jiang Wanyin's gaze heavy upon him. He knows it's a gamble, with how relatively new his position as the Head Disciple is. But Sizhui had driven away what would have been the villagers' only hope for aid, and it feels plainly wrong, to already be here and not do a single thing when they are more than able. 

"This one is ready and willing to take care of the matter alone, but only if Zongzhu would allow it."

A long silence hangs in the close air between them before Jiang Wanyin finally snorts, "Take three disciples with you. But all of you better be back in Lotus Pier by noon tomorrow at the latest."

There is something inscrutable in Jiang Wanyin's violet gaze as Sizhui finally looks up from his bow, and Sizhui could only hope that his gamble won't jeopardize the path he's already carved upon his baba's erstwhile home.

- ooo -

Sizhui has worked a system around Jiang Wanyin's continued hunt for demonic cultivators - Made sure that he's always one step ahead regarding rumors and hearsays, made sure he always leaves enough time to get everyone to safety, or at least provide a sufficient distraction for them to do so themselves. But Sizhui is but one man in a Sect that has been reforged into hunters, and sometimes he slips. Sometimes, he is too late. 

The first time he slips, Sizhui watches in barely concealed horror as a family of rogue cultivators are brought before them. There are two men, and a child - Probably six or seven, as old as Sizhui was when the Sects descended upon his home - clutching at one of the men's robes as his partner spits on Jiang Wanyin's feet. 

There is no time nor for a distraction, no opening to somehow spirit them away, now that the Jiang disciples had them surrounded. The men know this. Jiang Wanyin knows this. By the time they drag the family to Lotus Pier, it would be much too late. Already, he has narrowed down his sights only on the child, aware it might be an equally futile hope. 

Popo had hidden him in the hollow of a tree - Fully knowing that being a child would not save him from the righteousness of the Sects.

"You have no right to detain us - Is mere night hunting forbidden within Yunmeng Jiang territory?"

"Night Hunting? Is that really what you were doing?" Jiang Wanyin snarls, "People have been saying that you subdued fierce corpses using but a flute - Were you really subduing them, I wonder? Or were they under your control all along?"

"It had been regular musical cultivation. There were no traces of resentful energy in the reburied corpses."

Sizhui feels his breath catch at the familiar voice - One he heard last more than a decade ago, on one long, sunny day in Yiling. All eyes on the clearing, including his own, swing towards the figure emerging from the treeline, regal and almost otherworldly in his mourning whites. 

Hanguang-Jun.

The Second Jade of Lan steps into the clearing proper, and places himself between Jiang Wanyin and the small family - One hand resting lightly on his sword's hilt, golden eyes a cold, silent challenge. 

A long, fraught silence stretches over the crowded clearing - Only the cracking of Zidian filling the heavy air even as Hanguang-Jun stares steadily ahead, something hard, yet almost dismissive in his gaze. As if whatever Jiang Wanyin's yet unspoken grievances would be would be inconsequential for him. 

The silence is finally broken when Hanguang-Jun turns his back towards Jiang Wanyin, inclining his head for the family to walk on ahead of him. Sizhui holds his breath. 

"You're looking for him, aren't you?" Jiang Wanyin says, an ugly edge to his voice, "Afraid that I'll get to him first?"

Hanguang-Jun stops, and the family along with him. From where Sizhui's standing, the Second Jade seems to perfectly embody his namesake, standing statue-still, face a cold, inscrutable mask. But something in Jiang Wanyin's words had made him stop. 

"Well you better hope I don't, because then not even the so-called righteous Hanguang-Jun could stop justice from being done the second time, or however many times it would need to be done if that bastard ever dares to come back!"

Baba, Sizhui realizes, through the roaring of blood in his ears, trying to remember how to breathe. They're talking about baba. 

"What the Sects did to Wei Ying was not justice," Hanguang-Jun says, voice so quiet it takes the qi enhancing his senses to properly hear. The shape of his baba's name, so gentle on another's lips, hits him like a punch in the gut nevertheless, "You don't know justice. Only the rage of your own failings." 

"So the great Hanguang-Jun talks now!" Jiang Wanyin snaps back readily, purple already suffusing his scowling face. There is something almost wild in his violet eyes, old and festering and barely held back together, "Where were those words, I wonder, when that bastard was still here to actually hear you speak for him? Heaven knows he threw Yunmeng Jiang into the fire for you, Lan er-gongzi, and look what good it does him now!"

The words are sharp and mocking, wielded like Zidian - Only ever meant to flay and hurt. Sizhui sees the slightest flinch cross Hanguang-Jun's face before he turns away and doesn't look back - And feels the resounding hurt inside his own chest.  

- ooo -

Sizhui had often asked about his Rich-gege as he grew up. Hanguang-Jun, he heard the name spoken in awe from gossiping tavern goers, in respect from their fellow rogue cultivators, and in gratitude from the villagers  and townfolks he had aided. Always where the chaos is, helping people in places the Sects won't reach for lack of gold and political importance.

Baba himself had always spoken of Hanguang-Jun in fondness, tidbits of their adventures in their younger days, and playful admonishments for Sizhui to behave and be dilligent if he wants to grow up as righteous and perfect as the Second Jade of Lan. 

"Once," his baba had said as they were looking at the full moon, a bottle of wine warming his voice, "We made a promise. To stand with justice, protect the weak, and to live with no regrets. Your Rich-gege sure lived up to all that, little radish! He's always been a bit of an overachiever like that, honestly."

"Can't we go and meet him? The innkeeper said he's around the area-" Sizhui had seen the way Hanguang-Jun looked at baba, that day in Yiling, with something quiet and tender and almost desperate. And then, slowly, carefully, because even as a child he knew what the people in baba's past thought of him, by the very end, "I don't think he hates you, baba, perhaps he could help us with this night hunt?"

Help you, his adolescent mind had hoped, too young to understand the extent of the damage the Yin Hufu had wrought upon his baba's body. His baba had so many stories about the Cloud Recesses great library, of the secrets and knowledge housed there. Surely, a younger him had thought, surely there's something there that could help baba, and surely Hanguang-Jun, who had vowed to stand by what is right, to protect the weak, would protect baba in kind. 

"Oh little radish," baba sighed, and right then, his smile had been the saddest Sizhui's ever seen it, "That's the whole problem. Hanguang-Jun is too good, and he would want to help too much. We can't upset his life like that, not when he's doing so much good as he is now."

You're looking for him, aren't you? Jiang Wanyin had said, and Sizhui thinks he understand a little more, of the tangled thread of fate between baba and his erstwhile Zhiji. Like him, perhaps Hanguang-Jun too lives under the shadow of baba's memories - Unable, unallowed to acknowledge their grief and their love in a world that essentially killed him.

He only gets to see Hanguang-Jun again in another hunt, after he's begged Jiang Wanyin to let him take care of a wolf Guai sighting in a nearby farmstead. Sizhui tracks down the resentful energy along the slowly darkening woods just as Hanguang-Jun is putting his blade through the Guai, its scream piercing the cool spring air.

Hanguang-Jun draws back his blade and cleans it methodically after acknowledging his presence. His gaze is silent, but not unkind - the tawny gold almost gleaming in the dying light. 

"It would seem Hanguang-Jun was one step ahead of me," Sizhui salutes, "This one is Yang Sizhui, of the Jiang Sect. We met some time ago, near Wuhan."

Hanguang-Jun nods, before lapsing back into the steady silence Sizhui's almost familiar with from all of baba's story about him. 

"I have not had the opportunity to thank you, the last time we met," he bows again, deeper this time, "I had been remiss in my observations, and didn't have enough time to get the family to safety myself. This one is grateful to Hanguang-Jun for his intervention in the matter." 

There is another beat of silence, something sharpening in Hanguang-Jun's eyes as he seemingly takes him in anew.

"You don't agree with Jiang Wanyin's actions," Hanguang-Jun observes, his tone careful and deliberate, "Why do you stay?"

"Someone has to," Sizhui answers truthfully enough, and something fleeting crosses Hanguang-Jun's face - Something bittersweet, almost fond. He wonders if the Second Jade is thinking about baba. 

"Gusu Lan would always welcome capable disciples in our ranks, should you ever change your mind." 

Sizhui almost laughs. Remembers all of baba's stories of Hanguang-Jun's insistence on taking him back to Gusu, even back when they met in Yiling. As if everything would be solved, would be alright had baba only given himself up to a Sect of people who had stood by as innocents were killed, all the while preaching the righteousness of whatever straight path they profess to follow. 

In another life, perhaps he might have accepted. Might have simply followed the warm familiarity and the promise of shared grief that Hanguang-Jun, his Rich-gege, would provide. But as he is right now, Sizhui remembers too much to ever look upon any of the Sects with good regard. There had been Gusu Lan whites in the Siege, picking their way through the strewn bodies of his family after all was said and done. There had been Gusu Lan whites in the Siege, doing nothing, condoning everything. 

In another life, perhaps he could be a Lan, living his life within the arbitrary lines the cultivation world had drawn to protect themselves and only themselves. 

In this life, Sizhui bows to Hanguang-Jun, to his baba's Zhiji, and parts with him as they did so many years ago on the edges of the Burial Mounds.

- ooo -

It happens after a particularly rowdy banquet, Sizhui sending off the older shidis to supervise the cleanup and the stragglers as he shoulders half of Jiang Wanyin's drunken weight, leading the Sect Leader to his chamber deep in the inner pavilions of Lotus Pier.

The ornately carved doors open with a shuffle and a push of Sizhui's knee as he manuvers the larger man into the room, channeling qi to light up the lanterns strewn across the spacious chamber. 

It happens fast. Sizhui barely had time to carefully lower his Sect Leader into the bed before his world flips over and he finds himself horizontal - Pulled along into the bed as Jiang Wanyin flops atop it. 

"Jiang Zongzhu," Sizhui whispers, trying to nudge himself out of the tangle of limbs the two of them have fallen into, "Your boots, we'll have to take it -"

"Just leave it, Wei Wuxian," Jiang Wanyin grunts, and for a moment Sizhui's blood runs cold - Thinking he's somehow, impossibly been found out. 

"Fuck, you sound as if you didn't drink at all, you annoying bastard," Jiang Wanyin snorts in disgust, pinning him with glassy violet eyes, a heavy slur on his voice, "Leave the fucking boots, so what if I slept with them, huh?"

The realization hit Sizhui like a punch in the gut. The sweltering summer had rolled into Lotus Pier with a vengeance, and this morning he had gathered his hair on the crown of his head - The way baba had done it for him when he was younger, reminiscing fondly that his Shijie had done his hair that way in his own youth. Jiang Zongzhu's gaze had been following him all day, a strange, inscrutable look in his eyes. And now, through the heavy haze of one too many jars of lotus wine, Jiang Zongzhu thinks - 

Jiang Zongzhu thinks that Sizhui is his baba. 

Many they encountered on the road had said that Sizhui has his baba's smile, despite the starkly different shape of their faces. Has his baba's laugh, and the almost-pout baba gets whenever he's thinking hard about a particularly tricky problem. Sizhui has always been secretly pleased whenever someone mentioned it, a warm thing blooming inside him to know that something tangible of his baba's would live on in him, long after he's gone. But this, this is -  

Sizhui is suddenly overcome with the urge to get away, his whole body flinching back as he tries frantically to dislodge his arm from beneath the weight of Jiang Wanyin's body. 

"Where the fuck are you going?" A hand grabs at Sizhui's other arm, making him whimper quietly, "Stop being so stubborn, Wei Wuxian, you promised, you promised."

"No more leaving," hands push Sizhui down, pressing him against the bed as Jiang Wanyin looms over him - That wild, barely restrained thing in his wavering eyes. Fingers grasp his chin, tilting it at an uncomfortable angle, a lone thumb bruising over his lips, "Your place is here, with me. You owe that to Yunmeng Jiang, to us, to me."

Sizhui's stomach churn, bile rising up his throat and tears burning the edges of his eyes. This is the man that baba had looked upon like a brother, had loved and protected with his own life, a man he had given his golden core to. This man, who thinks of baba only as something that's his - 

It's only when Jiang Wanyin's lips descend hungrily upon the skin of his neck that Sizhui's senses snap back into alertness. With a trembling hand, he reaches back and taps a point behind Jiang Wanyin's own neck, the way Yang Shushu had taught him, and wrenches himself from Jiang Wanyin's embrace as the older man goes limp around him. He lands with a thud on the wooden floors and immediately curls into himself, the tremble in his hand slowly overtaking his whole body. 

For a moment, he simply lies there shaking - tears streaming silently down his face as he hugs himself, hands digging into flesh until it hurts, wishing for baba to hold him instead, for him to tell Sizhui that everything would be alright. Wishing, wishing for a different world that is kinder, more deserving for his baba until all of his tears are gone and his fingers are numb upon his own arms. 

And then Sizhui rises from the floor, wards the room, and gets to work. 

- ooo -

Sizhui can feel the moment Jiang Wanyin wakes, having draped the older man on top of him, stripped of his robes, the sheets tangled all around them. He keeps his limbs loose, his mouth slack as the weight atop him jerks, then lifts completely. 

"What the fuck-" Jiang Wanyin grunts, the sheets rustling, then drawn back, "What the fuck."

Hands grab his arms and shake him roughly, and Sizhui makes a show of blinking himself awake - Jiang Wanyin staring down wide-eyed at him. 

"Zongzhu?" Sizhui gives a small smile, clambering slowly into a sitting position, all too aware of the barely-held together ties of his inner robes, the bruises he had pressed against his own collarbones and chest, peeking from beneath the collars, "What's wrong?"

"What's wrong? What are you doing here?" Jiang Wanyin snaps back, gesturing wildly at Sizhui's barely-clothed state, "Why are you-"

Sizhui widens his eyes, makes his smile drop slowly from his lips, as if in realization. 

"Oh, you-" he swallows, tugging the collar of his inner robes closer together, arm held across his chest, "I had thought - Last night, after I took Zongzhu here, you asked me to stay. Did Zongzhu…not mean it?"

"Wait-" Jiang Wanyin rasps, eyes suddenly sharp upon him, even as Sizhui makes himself fidget on the sheets, hands clenching and unclenching on the thin fabric, "You-you wanted this?" 

Sizhui ducks his head, the way he'd seen his baba do when someone praises him. Disbelieving, shy. 

"- I have always admired Jiang Zongzhu, so when you asked me, I was-" he swallows again, then chances a glance at the older man, "I'm sorry. This one had presumed too much."

There is something uncertain in Jiang Wanyin's expression, strangely placed upon his usually scowling face. He reaches out to pat Sizhui on his arm, firm and awkward all at the same time, once, twice. 

"You did nothing wrong, I - I was inebriated and I-" Jiang Wanyin clears his throat, before he rises from the bed, adjusting his own inner robes before he looks at Sizhui again.

"I trust you'll keep this between us," the unspoken threat is clear beneath the levelness of Jiang Wanyin's voice, even as he feels the older man's gaze trailing down the part of Sizhui's robes, over the purpling bruises he thought were his.

- ooo -

Sizhui keeps his hair tied up after that, letting his ponytail trail along behind him as he walks and runs around Lotus Pier. He laughs more, the way baba did it - head thrown back and eyes crinkling into crescents. He takes the younger juniors swimming, herding them to the lakes in an increasingly rowdy line, as baba once did with his own shidis.

He stays by Jiang Wanyin's side, takes care of his correspondences and ledgers and sweet talks the merchants and minor nobles that Jiang Wanyin himself is loathe to deal with. Pours tea and liquor for him, and listens to the Sect Leader's tirade over one matter or another, even as many of the barbed words land on Sizhui himself. 

He flanks Jiang Wanyin in his hunts, scouts and gathers information for him, even as he spirits off innocents from Sandu Sengshou's misplaced wrath. He stands his ground even when a regular night hunt turns dire - A mountain lion Yao left rampaging too long, feeding on too many souls already - and ends up with a long gash across his back from covering Jiang Wanyin against the Guai's sharp talons. 

"What the fuck were you doing, playing hero like that?" Jiang Wanyin snaps, even as he passes spiritual energy through their touching skin, "You could have just done what I said and left me to deal with that Guai like everyone else! You think I couldn't handle that by myself?" 

"I won't leave Jiang Zongzhu like that," Sizhui shakes his head, "I'll obey Jiang Zongzhu on anything else, but you can't tell me to leave you."

Jiang Wanyin stays silent for a long time afterwards, until the other disciples return with now-uneeded reinforcements and gets a round of tongue-lashing from him. He stays silent towards Sizhui even until they've returned to Lotus Pier, the weight of his gaze heavy on Sizhui's shoulders all along. 

Sizhui wonders if he's miscalculated, if he's overlooked something crucial in his understanding of Jiang Wanyin - Something in baba's many stories that he had missed. He's so lost in his ruminating that he only realizes that Jiang Wanyin had taken a seat across him, a table of half-unread missives between them.

"Jiang Zongzhu?" He asks tentatively as the older man stays silent, violet eyes inscrutable and focused upon him. 

"That night, after the banquet," Jiang Wanyin finally says, "Did you really want it?"

Relief floods the hollow of Sizhui's chest, even as he rearranges back the calculations in his mind, like the clack-clacking of suanpan beads against each other.  

"I understand that I overstepped," he says after a measure of his own silence, the words carefully stringed together, "Jiang Zongzhu is a Sect Leader, after all. And I'm - I'm merely the orphan son of a rogue cultivator that Zongzhu had taken in. Even if I wanted it, it would not be my place."

Something shifts in Jiang Wanyin's expression, at that. Something heavy and wrought, settling down somewhere in him. The Sect Leader's shoulder relaxes the tiniest fraction, even as his violet eyes regards Sizhui's own with renewed fervor. 

"You said you won't leave, not even if I ordered you to," a hand reaches out across the table, cupping the side of Sizhui's face in an almost tentative gesture, "Did you mean that? Would you really be beside me always, Sizhui?"

Jiang Wanyin's thumb grazes lightly along his cheekbone, and it takes everything in Sizhui not to flinch away. He nods instead, not yet trusting his tongue to be wholly under his control. Not while Jiang Wanyin is touching him like this. 

"You won't look at another? Won't let anything else tempt you from your place by my side?"

"Only you," Sizhui manages a tremulous smile, marvelling at how steady his voice is, "If Jiang Zongzhu is fine - With me, with me being who I am."

"No one has to know," Jiang Wanyin says fervently, fingers firm now on Sizhui's jaw - Caging, holding him still, "To the world, you'll be my Head Disciple, my right hand man. No one else has to know."

Had that been what Jiang Wanyin wanted for baba? To devote his whole life solely to him, to be tethered to him forever, yet always clearly beneath him - Never as a lover or even a brother, never acknowledged, never known. Had that been what the late Jiang Zongzhu wanted as well, before Wei Changze had chased his freedom with Cangse Sanren? 

When Jiang Wanyin's thumb brushes over Sizhui's cheek, it's easy to mistake the red painting it as the blooming flush of love, instead of the white-hot rage burning, burning inside of him. 

- ooo -

Sizhui finds a comb in his quarters a mere few days later, sweetmeats on his table as he does the Sect's ledgers, hands brushing each other over sword drills and correspondences, lingering touches on his shoulders and waist when no one is looking. Jiang Wanyin still yells and snaps at him every time something in his day vexes him, but now he has taken to being awkwardly accommodating, almost contrite whenever his anger had simmered down and it's merely the two of them behind closed doors. 

And then, he finds a length of purple ribbon, folded neatly upon his dressing table. It's smooth to the touch, embroidered subtly with lotus flowers - Like the red one baba had worn during their time in the Burial Mounds, the edges fraying but the lotus embroideries well-preserved through everything. 

One whistle, Sizhui thinks hazily, even as he picks the ribbon in his fingers, tracing the lotus flowers with his thumb. One whistle, and all of Lotus Pier could be rent apart, reduced to nothing but submerged ruins. There is enough dead in the waters beneath Lotus Pier from the war, enough resentment from the people Jiang Wanyin tortured and killed on its grounds.

Perhaps his own resentment would be enough, when it comes down to it, the weight of forty-three unjust deaths wreathed upon him like a crown, the death of more still in the prison camps, as the cultivation world studiously looks another way. Baba's notes showed him how, and watching baba for years is enough to make him a disciple. One whistle, and it would all be over. This charade, this sickening indignity.

Instead, Sizhui gathers his hair up, winds the purple ribbon on the crown of his head in a bow. He ties it until the pull on his scalp makes him wince, then smiles into the quiet emptiness of his room - Eyes crinkling into crescents, as his baba does.  

Jiang Wanyin's eyes follows the trail of his ribbon for the whole day.

- ooo -

Sizhui's first impression of Jin Rulan had been that he is as ill-tempered and self-centered as Jiang Wanyin, which he supposes is no great surprise as the boy had spent most of his childhood in Lotus Pier. The Jiang disciples are ill at ease with him, toeing the line between weary impatience and the need to cater to the volatile Jin Heir.

But Sizhui has spent years sweet talking bratty young masters in taverns to finnagle wine for his baba, spent years learning to appease and fill the oftentimes yawning chasm for affection and acknowledgement beneath their gilded exterior. And so everyone but himself had been suprised when their first meeting ended with Jin Rulan following Sizhui all around Lotus Pier, eager for companionship that he lacked in both of his homes. 

He is the one surprised, however, when Jiang Wanyin takes him aside to accompany him to Jinlintai for an official visit. 

"A-Ling likes you," Jiang Wanyin says, even as his eyes rake over Sizhui, a glimmer of satisfaction in his eyes as he notices the purple ribbon wound securely around Sizhui's hair, "It would be good for him to have some company while I discuss things with Lianfang-Zun."

"He's a kind boy, if a little prickly," Sizhui lies easily, "As with Jiang Zongzhu who raised him, it takes one some time to get to know him. But once one does, then he is easy to love."

There's a dusting of red, high on Jiang Wanyin's cheekbones, and Sizhui smiles his baba's smile, even as he averts his eyes not to anger the older man for noticing it. 

There is that same shade of camellia-red on Jin Rulan's plump cheeks when Sizhui gives him a brief embrace, once it's just the three of them secure behind the closed doors of Jin Rulan's receiving chambers. 

"I heard from Jiang Zongzhu that you're learning some new moves?" Sizhui asks, when he's poured tea for all of them, placing the basket of lotus seed paste cakes he's brought from Lotus Pier, the one he knows Jin Rulan always craves for, "Would this one be lucky enough for a demonstration later?"

"It's not good enough yet!" Jin Rulan shakes his head petulantly, already reaching out for one of the cakes, "I want to show Sizhui-ge when it's perfect! Jiujiu, could Sizhui-ge come along again next month?"

"You brat, my Head Disciple's not on your beck and call!"

"If Jiang Zongzhu would allow it," Sizhui smiles and winks playfully at Jin Rulan, "I could show you a couple of new moves that the disciples in Lotus Pier are practising as well, to give you an edge over the other disciples here."

After Jiang Wanyin is gone, Sizhui thinks as Jin Rulan beams and his uncle grouses, he has time yet to teach the Jin heir everything he doesn't know he needs to bring the Jin Sect to justice. 

- ooo -

Sizhui finds the perfect backdrop for the last thread of his plans in a seemingly sleepy village North of Anqing - Smack-dead amidst the unclaimed territory of Old Qishan, but close enough to Gusu for the ever-righteous Lans to kick up a fuss later on, if needed. 

It had been one of his merchant contacts who had brought it up - Worried over the increase of missing girls and women around the Anhui area and the rumored influx of certain prized 'goods' in the black market. Sizhui had taken a few stolen days tracking the network down, finding the small village operating as a halfway point between when the girls were taken and before they are subsequently sold to the highest bidder.

The people manning the operation are mostly older - Highwaymen and mercenaries and thugs who had become too aged for the life they led and chose a retirement of lording what power they still have over countless unfortunate maidens - All the while keeping the guise of a perfectly ordinary village, with an admittedly sparse fields and even sparser livestocks. Sizhui would not be sorry to see them die. 

Their superiors died first, a measure of heartbreak grass mixed into their wines, air stolen from their very lungs as their body refuses to breathe. The girls he sends off with coins and provisions to carry them back home, and others who are hesitant to go back he sends to Yang Shushu and his wife, with an offer of a quiet life spent tending the fields or learning medicine. 

He relays the information to Jiang Wanyin, as he does most days now regarding rumors and reports of alleged demonic cultivators. A strange village with not enough crops nor livestock to support themselves, that takes in girls only for their screams to be heard by nearby travellers afterwards, and has strange wards on the edges of its land. 

"I could accompany Jiang Zongzhu, if he'd like," Sizhui demurs, playing with the ends of his purple ribbon on his fingers, seemingly an unconscious gesture, "It would perhaps be a nice change of pace. Jiang Zongzhu could depart ahead and secure lodgings in Anqing, while I'll take care of matters here before catching up to go to the village proper?"

Jiang Wanyin had not touched him, truly touched him, ever since the night after the banquet. Something about the way Jiang Wanyin skirts around physical touch tells Sizhui that it's something the older man is only getting used to after a lifetime of going without.

He had been bolder recently, however, fingers and touches lingering on the nape of Sizhui's neck, the circle of Sizhui's waist. It seems like something Jiang Wanyin would enjoy, to take a step to be bolder still after he lets out steam and kills a village of demonic cultivators. 

Jiang Wanyin's eyes are heavy and heated upon him as he nods and Sizhui bows himself out of the Sect Leader's office. 

He informs the other disciples that Jiang Zongzhu had departed on a sudden tip of strange activities near Anqing. It's an usual enough occurence for the Sect Leader to set off alone, particularly when he's in an especially foul temper. 

"He was in a bit of a temper yesterday, wasn't he?" Yu Ziqiang whispers, even as the other disciples titters quietly and Sizhui sends them off for a day of practice. 

As the disciples bow to him, Sizhui lets his lips curl with a smile - A gentle thing edged with promises, sharp enough to draw blood. No longer baba's smile but his own.

- ooo -

Getting Jiang Wanyin to kill the villagers is predictably easy. 

Yu Ziqiang had not been wrong. Jiang Wanyin had been in a foul temper as he departed for Anhui, the careful result of Sizhui tampering with the schedule of his audiences - Granting Yao Zongzhu and several of the most grating local lords time with the Jiang Sect Leader in succession. 

He is in no better mood when Sizhui meets him on the outskirts of Anqing, snapping at the time it took for Sizhui to get there and the general incompetence of his disciples to still need so much coddling, and then at Sizhui for coddling them in the first place. 

It's easy enough to point out the arrays Sizhui himself had drawn on the outskirts of the village, the unmistakable mingling of characters that speaks of baba's hands. Easy enough to get Jiang Wanyin to draw Zidian when the villagers draw their own weapons - The lightning patterned on their skin irrefutable proof for later on. 

Weeks, months, two years of his silence, of bows and obedience and his baba's borrowed smile, makes it easy for him to run towards Jiang Wanyin after it's all done. Sizhui's hands flutter in worry, unhindered and unquestioned along the Sect Leader's body before Sizhui's needle finds a spot on the nape of Jiang Wanyin's neck, and he jabs. 

- ooo -

Sizhui had seen Jiang Wanyin torture people, before. Had seen the wild, unrestrained thing in his eyes as he flays the skin of people's backs, as he brings down Zidian again and again and again amidst the quickly diminishing screams of his victims. 

But Sizhui had grown up with his Qing-Ayi and her needles. With Yang-Shushu and the firm, sure press of his fingers - Each of their touch precise and delivered with the knowledge of  how one's body starts and stops. Sizhui had grown up knowing how to make things last - How to spread a meagre meal into a few, how to wear his shoes and brushes carefully, when times are hard on the road. 

Unlike Jiang Wanyin, he knows how to make the screams last longer. 

Without his lavish robes, without his sword and spiritual weapon and all the trappings of his birth and wealth, Jiang Wanyin looks surprisingly young. Sizhui supposes it's baba's golden core thrumming inside him, giving him the everlasting youth robbed from baba's own body. But he also supposes there has always been something very young about Jiang Wanyin, in the way the world had bowed down to his whims and wants as they would to a child, all in the name of the selfsame birth and wealth. 

"Who -" Jiang Wanyin spits, eyes wide and hunted in a face pale with pain, "Just who the fuck are you? Did - Did someone send you?"

"I'm actually a little hurt that Jiang Zongzhu does not remember me," Sizhui smiles, kneeling carefully so he's on eye level with the other man, "After all, I held on to your legs once. But perhaps I had been too small, and you had been too busy trying to kill your brother, hmm?"

"You-" realization dawns on Jiang Wanyin's eyes, "You're that Wen brat that Wei Wuxian kept. How -"

"I did say I was raised by a rogue cultivator," Sizhui shrugs, picking up another needle from his Qing-Ayi's old wooden box, carefully screwing it into another meridian point, joining others that are already arrayed along Jiang Wanyin's body, "You didn't ask whether you knew that rogue cultivator or not." 

"So that traitor bastard got away? I suppose even diyu would not have him -"

"That traitorous bastard," Sizhui says, firmly screwing on another needle to the sound of Jiang Wanyin's strangled scream, "Was merely a man trying to protect innocents, a convenient scapegoat for the world thrown away at the first chance by a man he had loved and protected with his life." 

"You don't know anything-" Jiang Wanyin pants, eyes wild and bloodshot now that most of Sizhui's needles are in place, "That bastard destroyed Lotus Pier! Killed my sister and her husband!"

"Funny how one forgets the simplest truths, if only one tries hard enough, hmm? Lotus Pier had been as much of a victim of Wen Ruohan as everyone else in the war, as your sister were a victim of the Jins. Wei Wuxian had lost his family as you did, and still he had given you a chance at life - Had given you this very core you used to slaughter innocents in his name."

"What the fuck are you talking about? How do you-" Jiang Wanyin sputters, his body jerking uselessly as he tries to struggle, to gain access to the powerful core burning in his lower dantian, "This core was given to me by Baoshan Sanren, it has nothing to do with-"

"You think if one could find Baoshan Sanren one won't have asked for aid in the war? You think anyone even knows where Baoshan Sanren is?" Sizhui jabs in another needle, screwing it counterclockwise with brutal precision, drinking in the dawning horror that's eclipsing the pain on Jiang Wanyin's face, "You're not stupid, Jiang Wanyin. You just didn't want to see. You never wanted to see anything if it means having to face your failures, your sheer inadequacy."

"You liar!" Jiang Wanyin snarls, even as his eyes lose the edge of utter rage he had before, the youth there unmistakable now - So similar to Jin Rulan that Sizhui almost laughs, "Shut up! Shut up!" 

"Don't worry, Jiang Wanyin, I just have one more thing to say to you," Sizhui soothes, picking up his last needle, "In fact, you should not worry about anything anymore, as your beloved Sect would be safe in my hands after you pass. Poor, poor Sandu Sengshou, driven to madness from his anger and obsession, killing countless innocents along the way. Oh how the people would talk, Jiang Wanyin."

"You," Jiang Wanyin grits out, almost completely paralyzed by now, "How dare you-"

"You'll die knowing your legacy would be one of madness and disgrace, and a Wen-dog will rule your beloved Sect in your place. A Wen dog raised by the son of a servant, a son of a traitor."

"And you know something, Jiang Zongzhu? This Wen-dog, this son of a traitor would do it better than you, because even if you have my father's core, you would never amount to anything compared to him." 

 Sizhui screws on the last needle upon the crown of Jiang Wanyin's head, and pours his own qi into the other man, smiling at Jiang Wanyin for the last time. 

- ooo -

Sizhui flies back to Lotus Pier that very night, slipping into his own quarters quietly in the darkness. He waits three days until he rounds up the senior disciples and one of their healers for a search party to look for their Sect Leader.

They retraced Jiang Wanyin's route from Anqing, confirming with a local innkeeper that Jiang Zongzhu had indeed booked a room for the night, four days ago, and never came back. Sizhui makes a show of gathering information and lets his disciples spread out before they finally make their way to the small village. 

Three days of being exposed to the elements had made the carnage in the village worse than when Sizhui left it. Darkened blood paints the ground, even as flies swarmed atop the bodies strewn all across the small village square. And in the center of it all, Jiang Wanyin's body lay - unmarked and unblemished in the cooling autumn air. 

Someone empties their stomach behind Sizhui, even as Healer Liu runs to their fallen Sect Leader's side, shaking his head immediately upon the briefest touch. 

"Qi deviation," the healer frowns, checking again just to be sure, "Jiang Zongzhu had been complaining of headaches, do you think the resentful energy he encountered might have exacerbated something?"

"These people-" Yu Ziqiang says from a few steps away, his voice quiet as he slowly turns a body with the tip of his scabbard, "I don't see a sword with them, or any traces of qi, resentful energy, anything, really."

"That's because they're not cultivators," Qiaolian whispers, face pale as the moon, "Sizhui-ge, they're, they're just farmers. What - what do we do?"

All eyes glance reluctantly at the silent, unmoving body of their Sect Leader, years of fear, of looking the other way slowly dissolving with his absence. 

"The right thing," Sizhui says quietly, "We're going to try and do the right thing."

- ooo -

Word quickly spread of Sandu Sengshou's strange death. Of the village he's slain without provocation and his longtime obsession finally culminating in a qi deviation - Overtaken with rage upon having the spirit of the Yiling Patriarch elude him yet again. 

Lotus Pier is in utter disarray in the aftermath of Jiang Wanyin's death, the man having left no heirs nor any clear line of succession. There is so little of the Jiangs left after the war, and most of the distantly related of the clan had abstained from the offer of power - Too wary of the spreading rumors of Jiang Wanyin's disgraceful death and not being cultivators themselves. Many of the older disciples had fled in the night, themselves having been party to torturing and slaughtering many others they knew as innocent in the early days after the Siege, when Jiang Wanyin's rampage had been particularly prolific.

The choice seems clear, even for the people whispering, gossiping along the docks of Lotus Pier.

Sizhui takes care of Jiang Wanyin's funeral, and is sworn in as Yunmeng Jiang's new Sect Leader a mere day after - the remaining Elders bequeathing the Jiang name upon Sizhui readily enough, if it means they could clean their hands of the mess that is sure to follow. Kneeling in the ancestral hall as the symbolic Lotus guan is crowned upon his head, Sizhui would have laughed for the irony of it all had no one else been present. 

He acts swiftly afterwards, giving no time for potential stragglers in the game to move before he sends out a series of missives around Yunmeng and beyond. It states that after Jiang Wanyin's death, Yunmeng Jiang had looked into his personal Night Hunt records and found many more cases where he took the lives of innocents in his apparent madness. That Yunmeng Jiang is offering restituition to any surviving family members of Jiang Wanyin's victims.

There is only a trickle of people at first - Fearful and suspicious as they state their stories. And then there is more, after it's clear that Yunmeng Jiang is honoring their promise and the people are left unharmed, well cared for.  There is a village near Chongyang whose men Jiang Zongzhu took for daring to use baba's protection talismans. There is the child of a rogue cultivator couple, whose parents never came back after a night hunt in Yunmeng. There are the parents of a travelling merchant, whose son was accused of demonic cultivation by a covetous rival. Many are rogue cultivators who had lost friends and comrades, not wanting compensation but simply an acknowledgement that their departed friends had been innocent. For them, Sizhui also offers a place in Yunmeng Jiang, along with many of baba's own rogue cultivator friends that he'd welcomed into the Sect. 

More and more they come, until their guest quarters and the inns outside are full to bursting. And then, surprisingly, Gusu Lan sends them assistance in the form of a young disciple - One that Sizhui later learn is the Lans' own heir apparent. He carries a beaten-up guqin and sports a slightly crooked forehead ribbon atop a pair of friendly, excited eyes. Sizhui likes him immediately. 

"Hanguang-Jun sent me, actually," Lan Jingyi whispers to him conspiratorially, in a way that made it hilariously clear the Lans would not notice a conspiracy even if it stole into their bedchambers and ate their morning porridge, "Said that the matter of Jiang Wanyin's crime is the responsibility of the whole Cultivation World, since everyone kinda pretended not to see it while it was happening, you know? He's so right, though, Hanguang-Jun always is. But oh, you're really cool too for doing this, I mean, uh - Jiang Zongzhu?"

Sizhui finds himself chuckling, genuine mirth he hasn't felt for a long time bubbling in his chest. 

"Just Sizhui would do, if we are to work together," he smiles, and Lan Jingyi beams. 

Most of the allegations turn out to be true - scores upon scores of spirits laying down their grievances before they are put to rest with promises of restitution, of Yunmeng Jiang striving as best as they could for this not to happen again. 

In the end, they built a memorial - carved with the names of the departed, placed before their main gate for all the disciples to see, for all the world to see and acknowledge.   

- ooo -

Hanguang-Jun comes to Lotus Pier unannounced, after everything is said and done and Jingyi had bid him a cheerful goodbye, roping Sizhui into a visit to his home sometime soon. 

He is striking beneath Yunmeng's crisp winter sunlight, the mourning white of his robes and the stillness of his poise a contrast to the riot of colors and movements all around him. They exchange pleasantries on an open pavillion overlooking the lotus lake, Sizhui offering his gratitude for Gusu Lan's assistance, even as Hanguang-Jun firmly restates what Jingyi had said about the matter. 

As a comfortable silence descends upon then, Sizhui notices how the Second Jade takes in the blooming lotus flowers surrounding the pavillion, his eyes tender and careful - As if noting all the things around them one by one and storing it carefully in his heart. 

"Has Hanguang-Jun been to Lotus Pier before?" Sizhui asks gently, when the older man's eyes have turned less faraway. 

"A dear friend invited me once," Hanguang-Jun says, something bittersweet in his golden gaze, "But this is my first time."

Ah, I asked Lan Zhan to visit me in Lotus Pier so many times! baba had often said, eyes that same faraway look that Hanguang-Jun has just now, but I suppose it's busy work being the Second Jade of Lan! Too bad, it would have been so much fun too, to show him around. 

Almost thirteen years, and Hanguang-Jun is finally here. Perhaps Hanguang-Jun had not wanted to set foot on a Lotus Pier that had no baba in it, a Lotus Pier that only had the man who doomed baba to his death.

"If Hanguang-Jun is willing," Sizhui rises from his seat, bowing his head towards the older man, "This one has something to show him."

After the bulk of the trials were done, Sizhui had made a short trip to Yang Shushu's village, and now Baba's name plate stands amongst the row of names in the Ancestral Hall, Cangse Sanren and Wei Changze's own plates sitting proudly atop it, as they had never been allowed to when baba was living in Lotus Pier. 

He had not expected Hanguang-Jun to cry upon seeing it. 

"Forgive me," Hanguang-Jun says, his voice low and quiet despite the tears still streaming down his jadelike cheeks. He had touched baba's name plate, fingers gentle and reverent before he lit incense with the same trembling hand. 

"How did you-" the Second Jade draws a deep, shaky breath, "Why?"

Something catches in Sizhui's throat, tight and hot and vulnerable. For him, it's only been three years of mourning baba, three years of mourning silently, of not speaking baba's name and Sizhui's grief for him because he is not allowed. But Hanguang-Jun had mourned baba for almost thirteen years, only able to wear his grief by honoring an old vow, probably the only thing he had left of his baba. 

"Because he's my Xian-gege," Sizhui says, voice small and fraying at the edges, "My baba."

Hanguang-Jun's lips part, golden eyes widening as he takes him in with renewed scrutiny. One hand reaches out towards him, held in the air between them. 

"A-Yuan?"

"Rich-gege," Sizhui couldn't help the smile blooming on his lips, even as his vision blur, and he clasps Hanguang-Jun's hand gently in his own. 

There is utter anguish in Hanguang-Jun's face as Sizhui concludes his story of his and baba's life after the Siege, and Sizhui hurries to soothe what must have been a painful realization, that baba had been alive for almost as long as Hanguang-Jun had grieved for him. 

"There would have been nothing that anyone could have done," Sizhui says, even knowing that it wasn't the point, "The Yin Hufu started killing him the moment baba destroyed it in the Siege, there was no way to stop what it was doing to baba's body."

Hanguang-Jun shakes his head, "I could have been there for Wei Ying. Could have cared for him, for you."

"I think - I think baba would have wanted that too," Sizhui admits shakily, squeezing Hanguang-Jun's hand in his, "He talked about you a lot, and so fondly too. I think he - I think he really did not want to be a burden to you, to make your life difficult due to being who he is."

"Foolish," Hanguang-Jun whispers, "So foolish."

His baba's is the most brilliant mind Sizhui has ever met, but Sizhui thinks he was foolish too - His baba, who slowly chipped away parts of himself to save first his brother, then the cultivation world, then Sizhui's family, and then hung on to that slowly extiguishing life until he's sure Sizhui would be fine by himself.

Foolish, foolish baba, and this foolish, foolish man who loved him, loves him so much still. Sizhui loves him so much. Loves them so much. 

Sizhui draws a deep, shaky breath.

"Did baba ever tell you about the willow tree? The one you could climb and see the sunset from?"

Hanguang-Jun blinks, slow as a cat, before he nods. Sizhui gently untangles his fingers with Hanguang-Jun's before he rises, smiling as his baba does, as Hanguang-Jun must have remembered as well.

"Would Hanguang-Jun like to go there?"

- ooo -

Hanguang-Jun visits Lotus Pier regularly, after that. 

Sizhui tells him of baba as they take tea together, watching the lotus blooms sway with the lapping waves. He tells him of the years they were on the road, of the things he taught Sizhui, of the chaotic month they carried around a wounded bunny along with them in the road before setting him free in a hill near Changsha. In turn, Hanguang-Jun tells him of baba's many misadventures during their teenage years, his bravery during the Sunshot Campaign and the bunnies baba gave him that now populates the entire back hills of the Cloud Recesses.

Hanguang-Jun teaches Sizhui the guqin and sword forms and brings him books from the Gusu Lan library, and Sizhui accompanies him in night hunts and indulges Hanguang-Jun's secret sweet tooth - plying him with sweets his baba had favored. They would take long walks along the decks of Lotus Pier and the surrounding woodlands, and at the end of the day Hanguang-Jun would retreat to the Ancestral Hall, a bottle of Emperor's Smile carried in his hand for baba.  

The youngest of his disciples take on Hanguang-Jun like a flock of ducklings, following him around in affection and awe. Zewu-Jun, in turn, seems delighted with this strange friendship his brother had seemingly forged with the Jiang Sect's new Zongzhu, and Sizhui smiles and bows and charms his way accordingly into the older Lan's good graces. The unofficial backing affords Sizhui with a lot of leeways, being an untested sect leader of no gentry background, even as it gets him closer to Jin Guangyao, to Jinlintai.

Sometimes, Sizhui thinks of what could have been, of how his life would have been had both baba and Hanguang-Jun known of their regards for each other before it was all too late. Sometimes, he pictures Hanguang-Jun in that cottage by the water, holding baba with gentle hands, peeling him lotus seeds and carrying him everywhere. Pictures himself nestled between them at night, safe and sound where the world couldn't get to him. 

Tonight, Sizhui passes by the Ancestral Hall in his patrol and catches the strains of a familiar melody - A song he hasn't heard for more than three years now, ever since baba was gone. 

His feet takes him through the threshold of the hall, finding Hanguang-Jun sat with his guqin, fingers dancing across the strings, plucking the familiar notes as easily as he draws breath.

Sizhui thinks of baba, cradling him to sleep with this song in his lips, cocooning them in safety amidst all the death and destruction wreathed around them. 

Baba, Sizhui thinks, as he closes his eyes, letting the sound of his childhood wash over him, You've raised me with a piece of your Zhiji's heart too. 

- ooo -

And then, one day a signal flare lights up the sky, just as Sizhui and Hanguang-Jun are about to set back to Lotus Pier to wait for their disciples. 

They race to Mo Village to find it in utter chaos, both their disciples scattered on the Mo Manor's outer courtyard, resentment hanging thick in the night air. Hanguang-Jun is quick to soothe the younger juniors, even as Jingyi runs towards them, looking pale and harried but unharmed. 

"Hanguang-Jun, Sizhui! Thank Heavens you're here! Everything was okay until the Mo family all got possessed, and then Mo-qianbei - he's a cultivator, I think? - He helped us when it turned out there's this" Jingyi's eyes widen, his face suddenly pale, "- Oh shit, Mo-qianbei and the others are still inside, with the demon arm! He was trying to subdue it - Hanguang-Jun, please, you have to-"

The sound of a dizi pierces through the air, bearing the familiar and mournful melodies of an old lullaby. His eyes meet Hanguang-Jun's over the chaos of disciples around them, and just like that, they know.

They don't wait for Jingyi's directions before they set off deeper into the compound, through walkways strewn with bodies and into a smaller inner courtyard, where a man in black is playing a dizi, facing off what appears to be the aforementioned demon arm that plagued the Mo family. 

Baba's body is different, if uncannily similar to the one he remembers - Shorter, slighter, pretty in a rounder, more delicate way than the sharp angles of the body Sizhui grew up seeing. But Sizhui would know his baba's gait anywhere, the sharp, unwavering focus in his eyes, the way he had coralled the remaining juniors behind his back like a beacon of safety.  

The song ends, and one of the Lan juniors swiftly hands a spirit-trapping bag for baba to wrestle the possessed arm into. 

It takes but three strides for both Hanguang-Jun and Sizhui to be at baba's side, their hands reaching for something, anything of baba to hold. 

"Jiang Zongzhu, Hanguang-Jun-" Yu Mingxia blinks from amidst the crowd of disciple, her gaze bouncing wildly between his hand to Hanguang-Jun's, both firmly wrapped around baba's wrist, "Do you…Do you know Mo-qianbei?"

"Yes," they say in unison, to the further confusion of everyone present. Baba laughs, and even though it's a different body, a different voice, there's no mistaking that laugh - The way baba throws his head back and his eyes turn into crescents. He chances a glance at Hanguang-Jun, and only needs to see the wonder in his golden eyes to know that he's thinking the same. 

"Ah, A-Yuan," Baba whispers, still shaking with much-missed laughter "What is this I heard of you being the Sect Leader of Yunmeng Jiang and best buddies with Lan Zhan, huh? Did you manage to do what I couldn't and wormed your way into Hanguang-Jun's stoic heart, hmm?"

"Ridiculous," Hanguang-Jun whispers, something unbearably fond in his eyes. 

There is something in the air around them, the familiar heaviness of things to come, and there is a literal demon arm trying to claw its way out of the pouch in baba's hand. But baba's hand is warm on his, Hanguang-Jun's clasped around his other in kind, and Sizhui thinks that whatever might happen next, they would be alright. 

- ooo -

When it's all said and done, after more than a decade of lies and truth are uncovered and the cultivation world is left scrambling to salvage what they still could, they come back to Lotus Pier.

Baba had been stricken upon knowing of Jiang Wanyin's death, but the recounting of Jiang Wanyin's victims and the way he died settled his grief into something less, helped along by A-die's very firm thoughts on the matter. 

"I did what I could, but Sizhui had done a lot to ensure that there were less in this list," A-die says quietly, runing his hand over the names now forever engraved on the cenotaph they've erected near the gates.

Sizhui had done much to ensure many other things, but it is something for him alone to know. Baba and a-die had fought so hard to fulfill their vows, to protect everyone they could while staying true to themselves in a world that has no place for such naive, unwavering ways. After being given nothing but suffering in return, Sizhui thinks it only right that it's his turn to protect them in kind - To wrap both of them safely in the knowledge that they had fulfilled their vows without having to sacrifice it at the same time. 

It's worth it to see baba laugh, open and carefree in a body yet unmarked with the cultivation's world brand of cruelty, to see a-die's quiet smile as he dutifully lays down a thick blanket for them, the beloved willow tree of his baba's stories curling over the three of them. 

Once, his baba said that the sunsets above the lake of Lotus Pier was the prettiest in the world. He had thought it nostalgia, a longing for things long gone - But now that he's here, now that they're all here and watching it together, Sizhui could see what his baba meant. 

There is the faint laughter of children from the compound behind them, the bickering of shidis and shimeis packing up their gears for the day, Ning-Shushu's patient calls for the youngest of them to line up for their baths mingling with the clamor of egrets coming home for the day. 

He leans against baba's shoulder, feeling a-die wrap his steady arms around the both of them - And for the first time in years, Sizhui feels like he's finally, truly home. 

- ooo -