Chapter Text
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Jiang Cheng thought he’d used up his lifetime’s supply of tears when his sect was decimated, his parents murdered, and his home destroyed. After that night, after the bitter, angry crying that had left him hollow and absent from his body, it had seemed absurd to think he could ever cry again. He must have exceeded the limits of emotion that could be wrung from him.
That was proven wrong just days later, of course. First, when he was taken back to the desecrated walls of his home and tortured, though he tried not to give Wen Chao the satisfaction of seeing him break.
Then, when he woke up and discovered what had been done to him.
He hadn’t actually planned to be caught, though he had been willing to risk it. And when he was, he hadn’t expected to have to live with the consequences.
Now — now he knew, for sure, for a fact, that there were no tears left for him. Not after today. He had run dry, a riverbank in drought. A number of tears had been allotted for his life, and he was already in debt. It wouldn’t happen again.
After all, who was left to cry for, now?
His sect, and little Jin Ling. They were all that mattered. And he’d do whatever it took to make sure he never had to cry for them.
After everything, Jiang Cheng had gone to the bottom of the cliff. If he didn’t, someone else would.
There was nothing but dirt, and bright-hot magma, radiating heat that made Jiang Cheng’s eyes sting.
Wei Wuxian had to be somewhere, had to be, because cultivators of his level didn’t just die from something as mundane as a fall. But there was no sight of him.
(But why had he jumped in the first place? Why had he let go? Why did he look like that, even after Jiang Cheng had found himself unable to kill him?)
Jiang Cheng found no trace of him. Nothing but that damned flute.
(Why did he leave Chenqing behind, if he was out there somewhere?)
(He had to be out there somewhere.)
(Even alive, it seemed he was too far gone for Jiang Cheng to reach.)
(He said he could control it. He promised.)
He took Chenqing with him. If he didn’t, someone else would. Even now, he had more right to it than any of them. He would not leave it to their grasping, greedy hands.
He’d already felt cocooned from the world since that morning. Distant and nearly numb, performing as expected without feeling it for a second. Maybe longer than the morning — maybe it began days ago, when news of what happened on Qiongqi Path reached them. When he held his sister and tried to stay steady as she lost even more, more than any person should have to bear. When he’d heard the Wens had been taken into custody, just two days later.
Maybe longer, even, than that.
The cocoon had been torn open bit by bit: when he heard the Wen siblings were executed this afternoon, when Jin Guangshan announced his intentions for Wei Wuxian, when Wei Wuxian showed up, the fucking idiot, and then when jiejie—
Now, he was almost numb again, despite the twin gashes on his heart. He could feel them bleeding only faintly, as if from far away. There was anger, too, bubbling through the cracks.
If he tried he could probably reach for it. It had always been easy for him to find. But he didn’t reach, and it didn’t come to chase him.
Chenqing hidden in his pocket and his sister’s limp body on its way back to Lanling, and he was nearly emptied out inside.
He supposed he should be grateful.
Lianfang-Zun approached as he left, his face all beatific sympathy that made Jiang Cheng want to rip something apart. His bow, as always, was perfect.
“Jiang-zongzhu. I wanted to extend the invitation to you to stay in your guest room at Golden Scale Tower for longer, if you’d wish. We can pay to put up any Jiang disciples you may need with you at an inn nearby. Lanling Jin wants to extend its deepest condolences for your loss — please be assured we are feeling it keenly, as well.”
The guest room Jiang Cheng had initially been staying in for his nephew’s one month banquet. The guest room he’d been offered before the day became an ambush, a massacre.
Jiang Cheng could hear his teeth grind as he nodded. He didn’t bother to say anything; he just left. He made no effort to pull on the diplomacy skills he’d been so carefully honing, or thank the Jins for their gracious hospitality. His second-in-command would deal with whatever logistics remained. He could be excused, just this once.
As if Jiang Cheng would leave yet even if he was asked to. As if Jiang Cheng was going to abandon his sister’s body with these wolves and allow her to be buried without him. As if he wouldn’t still summon the strength to make his case for little A-Ling to spend part of the year with him at Lotus Pier, for the education and culture he’d be losing out on, now.
He would bring that up. He would fight until they agreed. He’d use every bit of goodwill Madame Jin had ever borne his sister and his mother and the place they had lived. He would make sure of it.
After he slept, though, perhaps.
If he could possibly sleep. If there was sleep left for him.
By the time Jiang Cheng had made it back to Golden Scale Tower, the returning cultivators were beginning to celebrate their success. The meeting at Nightless City had been intended as a conference, and there were plenty of dead to mourn, but Golden Scale Tower had undoubtedly already been set up to cheer the execution of the Wens. Jin-zongzhu wouldn’t let the night pass by without toasting his victory, no matter how many losses there were.
Even his son and his daughter-in-law being among them couldn’t entirely snuff out the spirit of self-congratulation. They could just tell themselves they were cheering for avenging their deaths, another dimension to the mourning now that the person to blame was gone.
Yanli was dead. Jiang Cheng had an accepted reason to make his excuses. Madame Jin, too, and all of the disciples from Yunmeng Jiang, would likely be retiring early.
No one else had to know his sister wasn’t the only person he was mourning.
He escaped to his rooms, snagging several jars of wine on the way.
His skin was sticky with sweat, and dirt, and blood, but ordering a bath and dealing with it was too much. He took the wine to bed with him, and didn’t bother to light a candle.
In the dark, with the drink in his system, he still couldn’t stop hearing how Wei Wuxian had said his name. Even at the end. With a smile, like he was pleased to see Jiang Cheng, even as Jiang Cheng meant to kill him, like he was relieved, mouth forming around his name like a prayer, still smiling when Jiang Cheng raised his blade.
And then he couldn’t do it. Not even with a-jie’s blood staining that unworthy dirt. Not even when she’d taken a blow for Wei Wuxian, who shouldn’t have even been there in the first place, what was he fucking thinking?
But at least if Jiang Cheng was an unfilial coward, too soft-hearted and too hard-headed, all the things that had ever been said about him and then some, no one knew for sure but Lan Wangji, who had never held him in high esteem anyway, and certainly didn’t now.
His face, too, lingered, but it was easier to push aside.
He was so angry with Wei Wuxian. He could hardly bear it. He wanted to scream.
Jiang Cheng wished he had stayed.
Yanli’s eyes stared into him long after the real world became blurry. The shape of her body crumpled in his arms was as clear as it had been the moment it happened.
It took hours. Jiang Cheng couldn’t be sure how much he drank.
Eventually, it was enough that even his traitorous mind went dark.
---1---
Jiang Cheng had expected a hangover.
It was almost a disappointment to wake up — well, not refreshed. But as refreshed as he ever was. As refreshed as was possible for him since the razing of Lotus Pier.
A small, inefficient part of him wanted to feel worse. Wanted to have taken more of a beating, or drunk himself sick, so he would ache, so he would sleep, so he would have a wound to nurse. He wanted his outside to match the inside. He wanted an excuse to pay attention to his body, rather than his foolish heart.
It felt like the same part of him that had thought his efforts should be visible, when he was a kid. He’d hoped that if there were signs of how hard he was working, all the time he spent, in sweat and bruises, cuts on his hands and built-up callouses and shaky legs, it would be harder to ignore.
Of course, Wei Wuxian had won, and won, and won, and made it look sensible and easy and inevitable, and kept a smile on his face as he did it. None of Jiang Cheng’s sweat and tears could possibly have been as dazzling as that.
Jiang Cheng desperately wanted to be asleep again.
The sunlight was weak like early morning, and the alcohol had left him without bashing in his skull — and yet he was still restless and alert, shifting under the blanket.
Wait.
Jiang Cheng sat upright, freed himself from the bedding, and stared.
He’d been changed. Somehow, in the night, he’d lost his battle-worn outer robes. In their place was a set of the simple inner robes he wore to sleep when traveling. Not only that, but his skin was clean, without the blood and grime he’d ignored when he’d gone to bed. The bedding was pristine.
Jiang Cheng’s mouth twisted with a sort of bewildered offense.
No matter how well-meaning, no one could have possibly thought he’d welcome that kind of invasion. No one would have dared, surely?
Before he could get properly fired up, there was a knock on the door.
“Zongzhu,” came the cool, calm voice of his second-in-command, Zhuo Wentian. “Jin-zongzhu would like to speak to the present sect leaders, in preparation for tonight’s Nightless City conference.”
Jiang Cheng felt his temper flare, still slightly muted under the blanket of his grief. Can’t that pompous, self-congratulatory asshole leave him be even in mourning?
“You can tell Jin-zongzhu,” Jiang Cheng snapped, and then what had been said came into belated focus, and he stopped breathing.
Tonight. Tonight’s Nightless City conference.
It hadn’t happened.
None of it had happened.
Jiang Cheng was no stranger to nightmares, even the kinds that left you shaking and shattered and seemed as real as life while you were in them — usually, however, he could tell the difference once he woke. None of them had ever lingered like a true memory for this long.
But it had to be a dream. Because if things had happened the way Jiang Cheng remembered them, Zhuo Wentian wouldn’t dare play with him by pretending it wasn’t true.
Relief flooded him like water in an unirrigated field. Jiang Cheng found himself slumping back against the bed, gone boneless. His heart was hammering in his chest.
“Zongzhu?” Zhuo Wentian called, rapping at the door again.
Jiang Cheng found his tongue.
“Yes,” he said, rough-voiced. A thought seized him, and abruptly he flung himself from the bed. He crossed the room in an instant, and slid open the door still only dressed in his inner robes, to Zhuo Wentian’s ill-concealed confusion. “Where is my sister?” he demanded.
“As far as I’m aware, Jin-shao-furen should still be with Jin-furen in the ancestral shrine, paying her respects. You know she’s hardly left.” Zhuo Wentian flicked her eyes over him, something wary in her face. “Zongzhu?” she asked. “Are you–”
Jiang Cheng cut her off, his thoughts a mess. “Fine,” he confirmed. He snatched up the nearest outer robe, still laid out from the night before, and pulled it over his shoulders. With a brief nod to Zhuo Wentian, he was out the door.
Jiang Cheng always took care with how he dressed, how he presented himself. He couldn’t afford to be sloppy. He was too aware of the judging, searing eyes surrounding him. He was too aware of the ways he was already underestimated, the things that he was called in whispers; a child playing at being sect leader, young and soft, a man that thought too much of himself, a naive dreamer with a shattered sect that would never regain what it had lost.
He had taken measures to ensure he looked like a sect leader, even though he wasn’t yet fully respected as one. Even as he worked hand-in-hand with his people to rebuild what had been destroyed, he made sure to dress like a young master. He ensured the most conspicuous parts of his robes were lush with embroidery and silk, even when the inside, the lining, all the invisible parts, scratched at his skin to make up for the cost.
Today, he didn’t bother with the carefully-arranged layers that composed the rest of his outfit. He didn’t think about his unbrushed hair, or how disheveled he must look. (Or, well… he did think about it. He couldn’t help himself. He was aware of exactly how many people he passed along the way. He didn’t let it stop him, though.)
He didn’t slow down until the Jin ancestral shrine was within sight. Like the rest of Golden Scale Tower, it was all gilt, flashing and glinting in the early morning sun like the fish it was named for. The doors were already open, for mourners to come and go as they pleased.
For the first time since he’d opened his eyes, he felt like he was able to breathe. His sister was there, as she had been for days; in her mourning robes, her head bowed by her husband’s coffin. She was alive. Pale, wavering from grief and lack of food or rest, her eyes red-rimmed from repeated bouts of crying, but real, solid.
He almost crashed into her.
Jiang Cheng redirected just in time with a little burst of qi, and brought himself down to kneel by her side. With the image of her open, unblinking eyes still sharp and clear in his mind, just being next to her didn’t feel nearly close enough. He crushed his sister into a hug, careful not to squish Jin Ling between them.
Jin-furen, a couple of maids attending either her or Yanli, and a small number of Jin disciples were still in the room. This wasn’t proper behavior, but given the last few days, he was likely to be given a pass. Grief hadn’t left any of them untouched.
“A-Cheng?” Yanli murmured, her surprise audible. Her voice had always been fairly soft, even at her most boisterous. Now, sanded down by her tears, it was like the whispering of wind through trees. “What is it? Are you alright?”
She was always his big sister. Older, more sure of what to do, steady when he wasn’t. It was strange, looking at her and realizing again that he was bigger than she was. It had only been a few years since he’d had the growth spurt that made him outpace her. At fourteen, fifteen, he’d still been lagging behind.
Right now, even with her baby in her arms, she felt fragile.
He squeezed her for another moment, and pulled back.
He couldn’t tell her. He didn’t even know what words to use. And if he found them, what would it do? Just force Yanli to imagine a world where things were even worse than they were now? She was a new mother; she was a widow. No nightmare Jiang Cheng’s brain could concoct would measure up to that pain, and the last thing he wanted to do was add to it.
Jiang Cheng tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear, and then offered up his finger for Jin Ling to grab. A-Ling took it happily, as he usually did, his chubby little fingers wrapping around his fingertip.
“I’m okay, a-jie,” he told her. “I was just worried about you. How are you? When did you last eat? I can have something brought.”
Remembering himself, he ducked a bow to Jin-furen, to Jin Zixuan’s coffin, and to the ancestors. It was a slightly non-traditional one, with one of his fingers still held in A-Ling’s grip, but Jiang Cheng thought those people, out of anyone, would understand.
“I’m not hungry,” Yanli said.
Jiang Cheng frowned.
She probably wasn’t avoiding the other question intentionally, like Wei Wuxian would have. Speaking was hard for her these days. She used her words sparingly, and sometimes seemed to lose the thread of the conversation and miss questions, or fail to finish her sentences. She had probably only said so much when he threw himself at her thanks to years of practice and instinct, looking after him and the gaggle of shidimei that trailed after her.
“That may be true, but you should still eat,” he told her, and the lecturing, at least, was familiar, even if it wasn’t ordinarily his sister on the receiving end. She’d said similar things to him in the past. “You need your strength. And it’s not just for you. You still want to do most of A-Ling’s meals yourself, don’t you? You have to eat for him, too.” He caught Jin-furen’s eye — it wasn’t easy to look at her, right now, not with her pain so fresh, but he knew they had this, at least, in common. “I’m sure Jin-furen must have made you eat something. How long ago was that?”
Jin-furen was more than willing to help take care of all that remained of her son. Salty, filling rice porridge with egg was brought to Yanli’s side, and between the two of them, they were able to coax her into taking a few bites.
If that was all Jiang Cheng accomplished for the day, it would be enough.
He couldn’t stay forever, of course. He didn’t have that luxury. But Yanli was as safe as she could be, here. Jin-furen viewed her as a daughter. The Jin servants adored her, as did the less insufferable disciples — of course they did, especially when you considered the type of people they were used to serving. Everyone in the room was watching over her with worried eyes.
There was still unease in Jiang Cheng’s guts. Maybe there always would be. But his sister was safe.
But when he went to stand, Yanli’s fingers snatched at his sleeve, with sudden, surprising force, a fog lifting from her eyes.
She leaned to his ear, her features stark and her gaze darting around the room.
“A-Xian,” she whispered, her voice small and shaking and close.
“What?” he asked. He kept quiet, too — Wei Wuxian had not been favored here in some time, but it was worse now than it had ever been. “What about him?”
His sister shook her head, her eyes filling again with tears and her shoulders beginning to tremble. Jiang Cheng gripped her fingers, and wished he had the power to fix anything at all.
Yanli tried to speak, her hand still insistently knotted in his robes, Jin Ling cradled to her chest, but no other words seemed to come.
Jin-furen stepped forward, crowding close to comfort her, and Yanli let go.
“I know,” Jiang Cheng said, hoping he did. He was angry, too. He was scared, too. He wished it hadn’t happened. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”
He wasn’t sure if he was lying to her or himself.
The day wore on, and Jiang Cheng’s nightmare haunted him, dogging his steps.
In his dream, so much of this day had been muffled and unclear. He’d been insulated from the world for days in reality, and his subconscious had carried that torch. He remembered so little of it, except for a few bright, awful spots, which clung to him with every detail clear.
For instance, he had almost no memory of the minutiae of what other sect leaders had said in his dream, building up bravado and flattering each other as they prepared for the conference.
Honestly, he could hardly believe he’d even dreamed of those mind-numbing conversations — would he have to deal with them when he was asleep now, too? The rest of his life, and nowhere he could escape their shit-spewing, even when it wasn’t real?
He didn’t know the words his mind had made up for them to say. He didn’t know how accurate they would have been. Still, a sharp prickle rose on his spine through the day.
Sometimes, when he wasn’t speaking, when he was distant and wary and watching, the shape of their bloviating felt so familiar.
But — of course it did. They were always the same. So many of them repeated the same mindless pleasantries without thought. Jiang Cheng had heard them all before.
The Nightless City conference came quickly, as inevitable as death.
Jin Guangshan, dressed for mourning, promised war.
No. Not war. War implied two sides, a fight, even an unequal one. What Jin Guangshan promised, with the remaining Wens recently dead and on display, was a drawn-out assassination.
Like in his dream (again, again, too much like his dream), Jiang Cheng’s mouth was glued shut and his mind dull as voices rose in chants around him. Jin Guangshan called for blood, and Jiang Cheng couldn’t speak.
Even if he pried his lips apart, what could he say? His diminished sect couldn’t survive against all the others. They were still rebuilding, still recruiting, their numbers still reduced. He was still clawing respect from the ashes of Lotus Pier, long after they had been swept away. A newly-adult sect leader, a half-dead sect — Wei Wuxian had insisted on his defection for a reason.
Then, Jin-zongzhu’s speech was interrupted by echoing laughter, high and shivering on the wind, cold.
Dread pooled in Jiang Cheng’s guts like yin qi, heavy and icy enough to root him to the ground.
No. No. Not again. Not for real.
But it was true. Here was Wei Wuxian, showing up at a conference hosted by a man that wanted him dead. Because of course he was. Wei Wuxian, retreading familiar arguments, just as ineffectual now as they were before, as Jiang Cheng’s battered heart froze over in his chest.
He knew what came next. And it did; the arrow, the first death, the inexplicable appearance of Lan Wangji, the malignant black swirls of resentful energy.
And then his sister’s voice, distant and determined, an awful promise.
Jiang Cheng lurched in her direction, with nothing in his mind but getting there faster. A chorus of zongzhu! went up behind him, but there was no time to explain.
Nightless City had dissolved quickly into tumult, cultivators frenzied, panicked, vicious. It only worsened as the corpse puppets rose, as Wei Wuxian’s resentful energy yanked itself from his leash. Jiang Cheng pushed through the crowd without regard for the rest of the fight, listening at every moment for the sound of his sister’s voice.
Finally, he saw her, highlighted between the clash of swords and voices yelling. She was still far away, and the fierce corpse he remembered (from dream, nightmare, vision, memory, what?) was already close behind. On the other distant side of her, rushing through the rabble with Chenqing at his lips, was Wei Wuxian.
“Wei Wuxian!” Jiang Cheng heard himself yell, the desperation in his voice slicing at the back of his throat. “Stop this, please!”
He already knew, though, even before Wei Wuxian’s face crumpled.
He couldn’t. If he could, this wouldn’t be happening at all.
Heart in his throat, Jiang Cheng mounted Sandu. He tore through the remaining distance in the air, ignoring everything that scratched at his skin and clothes as he passed too close, mere feet off the ground and right in the middle of the fray.
He touched down between Yanli and the fierce corpse, just in time to take the blow meant for her and return it with his own blade.
“A-Cheng!” he heard her gasp, but he couldn’t look yet. He gritted his teeth, and put his all into dismantling this fierce corpse and the others nearby before they could come any closer.
One by one, the fierce corpses fell at his feet, dead again. Jiang Cheng turned to find his sister.
His heart lurched. While he’d been busy, the tide of battle had pushed Yanli further away, and the space between them had filled with cultivators and fierce corpses, seething with violence.
There she was, across from him. And there was Wei Wuxian, near her side.
And coming closer, with his face set, was the man who had driven a sword through his sister’s chest the last time Jiang Cheng had seen this scene.
The horror inside him was a living creature, claws and teeth scrabbling against his bones.
“Wei Wuxian!” he screamed, through the riot of the fight.
Wei Wuxian’s eyes snapped to him (so he did still know how to respond when Jiang Cheng called), but he didn’t look behind. He didn’t see the blade, already so close.
Yanli surged forward, and took the blow in his place.
Jiang Cheng was at her side more quickly than seemed possible, like the world had slowed to let him pass. It still wasn’t fast enough.
He caught his sister as she fell, and the two of them went to the ground together, Jiang Cheng kneeling with Yanli propped up in his arms. Here, the wound was different than it had been in his vision, blood spreading jagged and ugly across Yanli’s robes from her abdomen.
It wasn’t any less deadly.
“No,” Jiang Cheng heard. It was his own voice, but with no conscious effort to speak, as if summoned from outside him. “No, no, no. A-jie.”
“A-Cheng,” Yanli murmured, blood pooling wet from her mouth, hot against his hands as he tried to staunch the wound. “A-Xian. Are you okay?”
Wei Wuxian made a wounded animal noise from somewhere nearby.
The ringing in Jiang Cheng’s ears spiked to a roar.
He was rooted to the ground, mumbling assurances as Yanli died in front of him, her life’s blood pulsing out around Jiang Cheng’s fingers even as he tried to feed qi into her to help her heal. Her cultivation level wasn’t strong enough, and the wound was too deep, too badly placed; even experienced cultivators would lose to this. He knew Wei Wuxian had to be retaliating, now, killing the man who had done this. He didn’t watch, this time; he couldn’t tear his eyes from Yanli’s face.
Her pulse slowed and flickered out. Jiang Cheng felt her die.
This was his fault. He’d known. Something had warned him, somehow, and he hadn’t listened.
There was noise, shouting. Jiang Cheng couldn’t make out the words. They didn’t feel important. He just kept looking at his stained hands, at Yanli’s slack face, white as her mourning robes. Her body was heavy across his legs.
It was only when a handful of Jiang disciples broke through the crowd and ringed around him that he snapped out of it. There was horror on their faces, grief. It felt like a shallow mirror of Jiang Cheng’s own feelings, but it was something; at least he wasn’t the only person who knew the world had ended.
Like waking up, like breaking a trance, the sounds around him came into focus. He realized all at once that the fight was now much fiercer than it had been. Rather than battling fierce corpses and uncontrolled resentful energy, supposedly respectable cultivators were at each other’s throats, diving after shards of the artifact they’d called dangerous in Wei Wuxian’s hands. Fucking hypocrites.
Wei Wuxian. Fuck. He had no idea how long it had been, or where he’d gone. He hadn’t seen him since Yanli—
Jiang Cheng entrusted his sister’s body to his disciples’ careful hands. They’d protect her with their lives.
He started for the cliff from his memory, striking through the heart of the chaos. He wasn’t even sure what he intended to do when he got there. His feet moved on their own, while his thoughts churned like an unquiet ocean.
Did he plan to hurt Wei Wuxian? He hadn’t been able to, last time. Help him? He wasn’t sure anyone could.
But he couldn’t just stay still. He needed to do something.
The cliff’s edge came into sight. Jiang Cheng only saw the last moment of a scuffle, of Wei Wuxian wrenching his arm out of Lan Wangji’s grip. Shoving at him, falling, plummeting over the side already, so quickly.
Jiang Cheng was numb again. That was one thing to be thankful for, in this nightmare.
Lan Wangji was more injured than he had been in his vision, bleeding heavily from blooming cuts scattered across his arms and torso, vivid against his white robes.
His expression was the same, though. Naked agony, far more expressive than Jiang Cheng had ever seen him be. Then his eyes shifted to Jiang Cheng, and the agony blurred into pure vitriol.
Jiang Cheng ignored him. This time, he looked over the edge, searching for some trick, some clever twist, another one of Wei Wuxian’s endless miracles.
This time, he watched, as the most powerful person he knew was swallowed up by hissing, spitting magma.
Jiang Cheng bypassed Lianfang-Zun’s sympathetic, smiling mask, and all other condolences or congratulations. While everyone was still collecting themselves, reeling, counting their dead, Jiang Cheng outflew his disciples, the soldiers, the Jins themselves to Golden Scale Tower. He stormed inside, past guards and gold-robed Jins and the impending celebrations, up into the nursery.
He scooped his nephew into his arms, not bothering to check who else was in the room.
Who would stop him? The wet nurses and maids knew he had the right. Who could possibly think to stop him, even if the news of what had happened had not yet reached Golden Scale Tower?
Jin Ling was a warm bundle against his chest, human heat and weight packed into such a tiny, vulnerable form. His eyes were closed in sleep, his mouth open, his little brow just barely furrowed, though he shouldn’t have any reasons for bad dreams yet. Barely a month old. His hands were curled into fists, soft and small, each nail a perfect oval. Untouched by swords or pens, barely able to grasp, fingers that had never known dirt or blood.
Jiang Cheng held him tighter, and tried to stifle his voice so he wouldn’t wake him when he wept.
Jin Ling would never know his mother. He wouldn’t remember her. He would never know the curve of Yanli’s soft smile, the way her voice trembled when she was trying to be stern but wanted to laugh, would never taste the Yunmeng recipes she had planned to bring to Lanling, made the way only she could do it. Jiang Cheng could feed his nephew dozens of extravagant meals, from Yunmeng or Qinghe or Lanling, and it wouldn’t replace a single Lotus bun shaped and formed by his sister’s hands, with her care.
It mattered, too, that they had lost Jin Zixuan. Of course it did. Jiang Cheng would have never wanted Jin Ling to grow up without a father. And Jin Zixuan had seemed determined to be a good one. Jiang Cheng had thought he might be loving enough, or aware enough of his own father’s flaws, or even just aware of how lucky he was to have Yanli, to do right by his son, and any others that came after him.
But it wasn’t the same kind of loss.
Jiang Yanli, his jiejie… she was one of the brightest spots in a world that suffocated and choked with darkness. It wasn’t just that she was uncommonly kind, and forgiving, and gentle — though she was all those things.
It was that she was uncommonly kind, and forgiving, and gentle, even though it took incredible strength. Though it took work.
Jiang Cheng hadn’t always seen how much strength it took.
Their mother had seen it as weakness. It was no secret that Yu Ziyuan had wished her children were more like her, and Yanli had been even further away from that ideal than he was. She could have tried, strived, worked, to be more like her mother, to act in the ways she would like. Jiang Cheng had.
Li-jie chose not to. Over and over, even when she was scolded, she didn’t change. She was gracious when people were cruel. She forgave when it wasn’t deserved. She took care of everyone that orbited around her, even when she needed care herself. She did not allow herself to become jaded and callous, and she did not cow, or break, or bow. She chose it. She chose, again and again.
Jin Ling deserved to have her as a mother. Jin Ling deserved to know her. And she had deserved to see him grow, to guide him.
No one left alive would do half as good a job. Jiang Cheng could not possibly fill the gap she had left behind, the vast hole in the world where she was meant to be.
Jiang Cheng missed his sister. Jiang Cheng wanted his sister. Already, for the second time, again, forever, he missed his sister. The idea of the future stretching forward, unimaginably vast, a long life ahead, every day of it without a-jie — it was fucking unbearable.
And Wei Wuxian — he couldn’t even think about Wei Wuxian, yet. It was too complicated a tangle, a fist squeezing in the center of his chest.
He held A-Ling’s little body for hours, rocked him gently in his arms. He held him even when he woke and fussed and looked around with those wide, curious eyes. No one dared to disturb him, to pull Jin Ling from his grasp, to insist he go back to his own room. They could stare all they wanted, as long as they left him be. Jiang Cheng let go only when a nurse came to feed A-Ling, and he took him back into his arms again the moment he’d drunk his fill.
He held A-Ling until the moment the late night inched into the next morning.
This time, Jiang Cheng was awake when the world shifted. It took only seconds. The weight of his nephew vanished from his arms. The room around him warped, twisted, contracted.
He opened his eyes, eyes he hadn’t closed, to morning light in his rooms at Golden Scale Tower.
Yesterday. Again.
---2---
Not a dream, then.
Then what? A curse? Some trickery he’d never heard of, crafted specifically to drive a man mad? Karmic punishment for Jiang Cheng’s attempts to have a life that wasn’t a fucking joke?
Whatever it was, no one else seemed to think anything was amiss. Everyone around him was acting as expected. To the rest of Golden Scale Tower, this day had never happened before, and would never happen again.
Again, he went to Yanli first. Again, he couldn’t bring himself to tell her what was going to happen. She was already so damn brokenhearted.
What would he say, even if he tried to explain? He didn’t have the words. He’d never experienced anything like this. A-jie would be gentle about it, kind, but she would likely still think he was cracking under the recent pressure. He needed to be strong for her, now. Steady, like she had always been.
(He’d heard of some yao or strong curses that messed with time, of course. But not like this. Those cases were usually illusions. The ones that weren’t illusionary did twist and confuse time, looped it back on itself, but only in their own specific territory. Travelers would unknowingly tread down the wrong path, end up in the wrong stretch of forest. The yao would spring their trap, and the travelers would become lost and disoriented, unsure how much had passed, worn down into easier prey. Those who escaped would find that only minutes had passed that felt like days, or days when it should have been hours.)
(Jiang Cheng had already tried every trick and talisman for dispelling or revealing illusions that he knew. And the day had stretched from Lanling to Nightless City, at least — there was no yao he knew of with territory so large. He couldn’t think of something that could envelop so much space and so many people, and rob the memories from everyone but Jiang Cheng.)
“Stay here,” he told his sister, gently squeezing her warm, white-clad shoulders. She looked up at him, her eyes red-rimmed and uncomprehending. “Okay? No matter what, stay safe. I’m figuring it out. Everything is a mess, I know. Stay here. Don’t go anywhere. Do you hear me?”
She nodded, but Jiang Cheng wasn’t sure she understood.
He wouldn’t necessarily understand, either, in her place. At least she wasn’t looking at him like he had gone crazy. At least she was still close and kind.
One of the Jin servants agreed to bring her and Jin-furen food throughout the day, things that would be easy to eat, brought at intervals. That, at least, was something he could do.
It felt like no time at all before he was back on that accursed battlefield.
He was expecting it, this time.
It still felt like drinking molten metal to see Wei Wuxian show up again, laughing brokenly and talking himself into corners.
Wei Wuxian had always been so good at talking himself out of trouble — Jiang Cheng wasn’t sure if that was what he expected to happen here, if he didn’t realize how much worse it was than all the scoldings he’d charmed his way out of when they were kids. Maybe he did know, and just didn’t care. Maybe he’d come here to die.
He had hoped, desperately, that Yanli would listen to him, that she’d stay in Lanling with her son. But he was ready for it this time when he heard Li-jie’s desperate voice above the sounds of the clash.
He wasn’t even sure how Yanli was getting here. She was an average cultivator and an adequate flier, but she was also half-mad with grief, and had barely slept or eaten for days now. At top speed, with cultivation shielding your body from the elements and the pressure of the wind, it would still be at least two hours from Lanling to Qishan. Jiang Cheng should know — he’d taken that same flight earlier that day. How could she even navigate, with her mind so clouded?
Nonetheless, she was here. His questions didn’t change that.
But Jiang Cheng was readier than he had been.
“Jin-shao-furen is here!” he barked to the disciples surrounding him, and was gratified that even the most recent recruits, who had never known a Yungmeng Jiang always warmed by the light of Jiang Yanli, immediately snapped to attention.
With their help, Jiang Cheng cut through the chaos of the fight, carving a path towards his sister’s voice. He scanned the crowd frantically for any sign of her face, until he finally saw her. So pale, so much smaller than she normally seemed, almost drowning in her mourning robes but still moving so fast, ducking past swords and away from blood-hungry cultivators that didn’t even seem to care that she wasn’t supposed to be here. The fierce corpse, again, the same one as it had been before, was slowly shambling after her, chasing her heels.
Even if he had gone mad, Jiang Cheng couldn’t believe Wei Wuxian would do this if he could help it — to anyone else in the world, perhaps, if he was gone enough, but not to Yanli. So what the hell was he doing? Where was he, now? Why wasn’t he stopping this? Why hadn’t he stopped before, even when Jiang Cheng had begged?
(The answer was obvious; he couldn’t. Jiang Cheng knew he couldn’t. Wei Wuxian had confirmed it for him last time. But a voice in Jiang Cheng’s mind still yelled with the petulance of a child that hadn’t yet realized the world wasn’t fair. He promised.)
“A-jie!” he called, raising his voice over the din. Yanli’s face turned towards him, her gaze still searching.
He reached her before the fierce corpse could.
“Get behind me!” he told her, and leapt between them with Zidian already sparking. This time, when he cut the fierce corpse down, the barrier of Jiang disciples meant his sister stayed close, safe. This time, Jiang Cheng didn’t take a single hit.
With her wrist in his grip and her pulse fluttering under his fingers, Jiang Cheng sought his next target.
The cultivator that would kill his sister had just lost a brother at Wei Wuxian’s hand. His brother had been an idiot — the incautious fool that broke the unsteady peace and started the violence, someone dimwitted enough to think Wei Wuxian could be killed by his flimsy, inconsequential arrow. Did he want to be a hero? Did he think he’d escape unscathed and be celebrated?
Still. A brother.
Jiang Cheng knew what his sister’s would-be murderer was feeling; rage, surely, and all-consuming grief, and an urgent need for vengeance. The agony of loss, so recent and so close. He’d felt it all himself.
Jiang Cheng hated him anyway.
Jiang Cheng wove through the crowd, leading Yanli by the hand; he didn’t want to be taking her into the battlefield, he didn’t want her to be here at all, but she already was, and the safest place for her to be was at Jiang Cheng’s side. Who knew how she would respond if he took her away and Wei Wuxian was killed with them gone?
That man, who had tried to kill Wei Wuxian without even a thought about the fact that he was kneeling before an injured woman, without effort at an honorable fight because he couldn’t win one — he was not actually all that hard to find. Jiang Cheng had been here before. Even with the ways Jiang Cheng’s changing leadership had shifted the landscape of the battle, all Jiang Cheng had to do was follow the sound of people calling for Wei Wuxian’s head.
He found him there, sword already in hand, closing in. Wei Wuxian hadn’t noticed him yet. He still had enough of his senses that his eyes were fixed on Yanli, all gape-mouthed relief.
“A-Xian!” Yanli yelled, and Jiang Cheng knew if he did nothing, she would try to protect him again.
His heart sang with dark triumph as he ran the man through.
For jie, he told himself, desperately keeping his eyes on Sandu’s blade, not turning to discover whatever expression might have been on Wei Wuxian’s face. This was how he would keep her safe.
The sounds around them pitched into a riot.
“Traitor!” someone yelled.
Bile rose in Jiang Cheng’s throat. The others didn’t know what he knew. They didn’t know what was about to happen.
All he had thought about was protecting Yanli. What would happen after hadn’t even crossed his mind. He’d been so intent on keeping his sister safe, on not watching her die again.
“Jiang Wanyin! Will you turn against us to protect Wei Wuxian, even after his actions caused the death of your family? How shameless are you?”
Jiang Cheng adjusted his grip on the hilt of his sword.
“No,” he tried to say, though he wasn’t sure he could be heard over the buzz of the hungry crowd, pressing closer. “You don’t understand!”
There was more commotion; his disciples tried to rally around him, pushing at the edge of the mob. There were more raised voices, more accusations, so many eyes. Every part of Jiang Cheng’s body was tightly coiled as he tried fruitlessly to see everyone at once, surrounded on all sides.
“A-Cheng!” he heard Yanli gasp. She shoved him with more strength than he’d ever thought his sister possessed. Reeling, Jiang Cheng twisted back towards Yanli, just in time to see her with another sword through her chest. For him, this time.
“No,” he said. It sounded like begging.
The world had never listened to his pleas before, and it didn’t now. Yanli was still dead, and going cold. She had still thrown herself on a sword not meant for her.
If he had flown away, or not fought back, he might have escaped. They might have reconsidered, when they realized who they had killed. He might have lived. But Yanli was dead, again, again, when he’d been so close, and he couldn’t let it go unanswered.
He knew he couldn’t win. Jiang Cheng held his sister’s body with one arm and fought with the other. He had been made fierce by grief and rage. But he was swarmed, outnumbered if not outmatched.
It all happened so fast. There was no time for anyone to intervene.
The last thing Jiang Cheng saw before he died was Wei Wuxian’s face; his uncomprehending shock giving way to something else.
---3---
This time, Jiang Cheng did not leave his rooms.
Nothing had been solved, even though he had killed his sister’s murderer. He’d lost his own life. Yanli had died again, trying to protect him. And here he was again; awake, the same sunlight glinting off Golden Scale Tower and creeping into his bed.
It was an impulse he’d never give into, under normal circumstances.
He tried not to think about the disciples who might find him, or how it was a coward’s death. He tried not to think of anything at all, as he cut his throat open with Sandu.
It didn’t matter, anyway.
He woke to see the previous morning, same as it had ever been.
---4---
Jiang Cheng tried. No matter how early he went or how fast he flew, there didn’t seem to be any way to make it to Yiling while Wei Wuxian was still there.
Which didn’t make any fucking sense; Wei Wuxian arrived at Qishan when everyone has already gathered. Where the hell was he before then, if not Yiling?
---8---
He went back.
Of course he did. All sorts of things could be said about Jiang Cheng, many of them bad – but at the very least, he wasn’t a quitter. He never had been. He tried again. He tried to beat Wei Wuxian at competitions he had never once won. He tried to convince his father to look at him, see him, praise him. And he went back to the Nightless City conference, where his sister would die and Wei Wuxian would jump off that damned cliff.
Battlefields were noisy, chaotic, constantly changing. That meant that even after experiencing it repeatedly, Jiang Cheng still hadn’t memorized every moment, every player. Any move he made that differed from the first time would shift the field in reaction, make enemies and allies maneuver to account for him.
Still, he’d survived this fight the first time. He knew where his enemies were, had his eyes peeled for attacks and opportunities both.
So it shook him through to his bones when he turned towards a voice saying his name and was greeted by the piercing, all-consuming pain of Bichen through his chest.
If it had been a fair fight, with time to react, if Jiang Cheng had thought to expect this from an ally, if the ring of disciples around him had any reason to believe they shouldn’t allow Lan Wangji into their quarter of the fray, if Jiang Cheng wasn’t so focused on keeping an eye on Wei Wuxian and an eye out for Yanli, if there had been a speck of honor in it, it wouldn’t have been so easy.
But it wasn’t. It didn’t.
“Lan Wangji,” Jiang Cheng spat out, and already his mouth was filling with copper, his vision darkening at the corners. Even with his core, this was… the sword twisted, jerked, and he was sure there was too much destroyed inside him to fix. “Why?” It came out as barely a breath.
Lan Wangji looked back at him, no triumph on his face.
“I take no pleasure in it,” he said, and Jiang Cheng wondered, faintly, when the last time he’d heard him say a whole sentence was. “But if it ensures Wei Ying survives the day, then…”
There might have been an apology, somewhere at the end, or maybe that was wishful thinking. Jiang Cheng couldn’t be sure.
He opened his eyes to the morning light, the phantom taste of blood still thick on his tongue.