Chapter Text
Thirteen years ago, in the Burial Mounds settlement:
By the time Wei Wuxian arrived, everyone had gathered in the open space in front of the cave. Everywhere Wen Liqiu looked were drawn and grim faces; they all knew what was coming. If the events three months ago hadn’t been writing on the wall enough, all of them knew about the massive force gathering just beyond the boundaries of the Mounds. The attack would come any day now, it was only a matter of which fool would charge first.
“All this for little old us. I suppose you could call that flattery!” Wei Wuxian said wryly as he finally emerged from the cave.
Wen Liqiu eyed him. She wasn’t a doctor – that had been Qing-shijie. But all of them had learned a few things, helping her gather and grow herbs and watch over their protector’s health. They’d all been keeping an eye on him since his return from Lanling and the Nightless City.
He’d lost weight, and the bruises under his eyes were dark against too-pale skin. And was that truly a surprise? Like them, he’d been mourning Wen Qing and Wen Qionglin, as well as Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan. And this final, crashing end bearing down on them.
But for all that, his eyes were bright and clear, and the crooked smile on his face might be less brilliant than usual, but unforced and genuine all the same.
He quickly scanned the crowd, checking that everyone was there. And then…
“I’ve made a safe path through the Burial Mounds and out the other side, and tokens to guide you out. Everyone who can should take them and go.”
Stunned whispers and exclamations rippled through the gathering. Wen Liqiu leaned back against He Changming, suddenly feeling unsteady on her feet, and felt her husband’s hands tighten on her shoulders with shocked disbelief.
They’d braced themselves to die here. How could they escape? Where would they even go?
“Enough, everyone. Let me speak.”
The voice was thin and reedy – Granny’s joints were giving her trouble again, and without Wen Qing there wasn’t a great deal they could do to alleviate it. But it still carried the full authority of her age with it, quieting everyone around her.
Sitting on the convenient stone that Wei Wuxian had laughingly declared her throne when Wen Qiongling had set it in place, Granny rested her hands in her lap and studied the ghost cultivator with clear, knowing eyes. “You don’t intend to go with us,” she said.
Ice ran down Wen Liqiu’s spine as Wei Wuxian shook his head. “We can’t afford that. If they don’t find me here, they’ll just keep hunting. They’re not going to stop until I’m dead, or every one of them is.”
“Is it any different for us?” He Changming asked bitterly. Doubtless remembering his fruitless efforts to plead with his birth clan for shelter for him and his wife, or at the very least their unborn child.
A child who ultimately had never been born, dying in Wen Liqiu’s womb because they hadn’t had enough food for an adult to survive on in the camps, let alone nurture a new life.
He Changming’s own brother had spat in his face and handed him over to Jin Zixun.
But to her surprise, Wei Wuxian nodded. “This isn’t about you anymore. Not really. You’re a convenient excuse.” His smile this time was dark. “If they catch you, they’ll kill you. But if they can’t find you… You’re not useful enough to use as an enemy.”
“Ah.” Off to the side, Uncle Four nodded, mouth twisted. “Nightless City was a trap, wasn’t it. But not for you.”
Wei Wuxian snorted. “Of course it was. Even Jin Whatshisname had the sense to clear Qiongqi Pass of resentful energy before he attacked me. And Jin Guangshan thought it would be a good idea to hold his pledge conference at the site of one of the biggest battles of the Sunshot Campaign?” He smirked. “And in the end, not a single one of his rivals ended up dead. He must have been so disappointed!”
Personally, Wen Liqiu would have been just as happy if the old schemer had gotten his way. Maybe the army baying for blood at their door would have been a little less enthusiastic if they’d lost a leader or four. Especially given… “He’s doing the same thing now,” she said flatly. “Just like he did in the war. He’s not going to be leading the attack here.”
Wei Wuxian sighed. “No. That will probably be Jiang Cheng.” His eyes were shadowed as he looked away. “Or Hanguang-jun.”
Her nails bit into her palms, points of pain granting a bit of clarity in the midst of fury.
Jiang Wanyin was one thing. The man had never made any pretense at being a good person. He’d looked at Wen Qing and Wen Qionglin and spat on the debt he owed them. He’d looked straight at A’Yuan and told Wei Wuxian to send the boy back to be worked to death, if the guards didn’t kill him for entertainment first. He’d stabbed Wei Wuxian in the stomach and then walked away to tell the cultivation world that Wei Wuxian hadn’t just left the Jiang, he was an enemy to all the sects.
They’d always known where they stood with Jiang Wanyin.
But Lan Wangji had been someone Wei Wuxian considered a friend. Had bought toys for A’Yuan. Had even entered their settlement and helped Wei Wuxian calm Wen Qionglin and bring his soul back at last. Had seen that they weren’t some evil sect gathering power.
Hanguang-jun had made his name going out and helping people. But when Jin Guangshan called for the pledge, the man had gone meekly along like every other member of the mindless mob. Had dared to tell Wei Wuxian to stop and simply let himself be killed.
Some Hanguang-jun. Some Light-bearing Lord. The hypocrisy made her want to spit. Or better yet, stab. Pity she didn’t have a sword anymore, destroyed or distributed as booty just like all the other spiritual weapons of the Wen sect.
Swallowing her bitter thoughts down, she looked around. On every face around her, she could read devastation, frustration, rage and grief, and resignation. Because Wei Wuxian was right. They might get away as harmless little mice, but not Wei Wuxian. Not Yiling Laozu, the boogeyman invented by the sects’ own gossip and their inability to leave well enough alone.
It wasn’t right. But it was fact.
“I’ll be staying as well, then.”
Wei Wuxian started as the entire crowd broke into murmurs again. “Granny…!” he started.
And then stopped, biting his lip, a grim, shattered expression on his face.
Granny smiled calmly. “I’m an old woman,” she said. “I’m not strong enough to pull up roots and start over yet again. And you know as well as I do, young man: they’ll need to kill at least a few of us, or they’ll know that some got away.”
Then her smile shifted, taking on a dark edge that reminded all of them: patient and kind as Granny was, she was a matriarch of the Wen clan. Fallen as they might be, she was not one to take lightly.
“And if those fools out there think they can just cut down an old woman? These old bones of mine might not have much fight left to them, but this old granny’s ghost has a few lessons yet to teach!”
Wen Liqiu smirked, as similar smiles and even laughter rippled through the crowd. Once, she might have been horrified at the thought of someone willingly, even intentionally becoming a resentful spirit, but…
Well. Living in the Burial Mounds, alongside Wei Wuxian… all of them had a rather different perspective on death now.
“I’ll stick it out here as well, then,” Uncle Four said. “Put too much work into that still to let it go just like that, and my wife is waiting for me by Meng Po’s pot. Besides, you’ll need at least a few fighting-age people in the mix. I worked with Young Master Wen, I know enough guerrilla tactics to make it something like a proper fight.”
“Besides,” Granny said knowingly. “Best to let us buy some time, so you can finish destroying that seal of yours, ah?”
Wei Wuxian’s eyes had closed at some point, but now he blinked, smiling ruefully. “Ah, I should have known you’d see that, Granny. This poor man has no face in front of you!” He grinned. “Jin Guangshan was so very, very interested in it. He’ll just have to get used to disappointment. It will build character.”
“Wait,” Wen Liqiu blurted. “I thought you couldn’t destroy the Yin Hu Fu. Not without killing your…self…”
She stopped. Closed her mouth. Swallowed.
Wei Wuxian shrugged, smiling wryly. “What can I say?” he said lightly. “I refuse to give any of that lot the glory of actually killing me. I’m spiteful that way, you know!”
Unexpectedly, He Changming laughed, soft and ominous. “Won’t destroying the seal also break the wards on the Mounds?”
Wei Wuxian’s smile was ice. “Will it? Oh no. A tragedy.” He shrugged again. “They’re the ones who are so eager to invade the Burial Mounds. I really think they deserve to get the full experience.”
That prompted similarly dark smiles all around. Wen Liqiu’s among them. Perhaps it was an unworthy thought for a trained cultivator, but… well. As he’d said. Anyone invading the Burial Mounds really should already know what they were getting themselves into. And given the history of the Mounds, faced with a choice between an invading force and weaponless defenders, it wasn’t hard to imagine which the Mounds would take greater offense to.
She doubted Wei Wuxian was actually as nonchalant about that as he pretended. Many of the people baying for their blood had been his brothers in arms once. Some, closer yet, for all that those ties had been cut and burned.
But one thing she had learned about the man who’d once been their living nightmare: when he committed to an action, he didn’t take half-measures.
Wei Wuxian straightened his shoulders. “But once the seal is gone,” once I’m gone, “the Burial Mounds won’t be safe anymore, and neither will our back door. Which means everyone who is going, needs to leave now.”
In the end, less than half of them agreed to try to escape. It sat hard in her stomach, and by the tight faces all around, she wasn’t alone. But it couldn’t be helped. Jiang Wanyin and Lan Wangji had both seen them, gotten a sense of their numbers. Hopefully the rising dead of the Mounds would be enough to hide how many were missing, but they could only risk so much. If anyone suspected, then everything would be pointless.
No. We tried. It doesn’t matter if we fail, we still tried, and that is never pointless.
Squaring her shoulders, she stepped forward. He Changming was at her back, quiet and steady and ready to stand beside her to the end, and she’d never loved her husband so fiercely. “I’ll…”
“You go.”
Granny’s voice was crisp and sharp, an elder’s command. “Of all of us, A’Qiu, you must go,” the old woman repeated, and slanted a pointed look at Wen Liqiu’s midsection.
Her hand closed over her still-flat belly, and she choked on something that was a sob or a scream or something in the middle.
Wen Qing had verified the pregnancy mere days before the invitation had arrived for the one-month celebration. They’d been so happy. It had seemed like an auspicious sign – a promise of a future at last. New life, taking root in a place that had seen nothing but death for so long.
Wen Qionglin had suggested the name An. Peace.
Now he was gone, and Wen Qing with him, and so many of their family and friends were about to join them…!
A light touch on her arm. She turned to meet Wei Wuxian’s smile.
“Someone needs to look after A’Yuan,” he reminded her. “And he does keep asking for a little sister or brother.”
Closing her eyes, Wen Liqiu drew in a deep breath.
Nodded.
Things moved so fast after that. They’d done fairly well for themselves over three years, but there had always been that sense of a sword held over their heads, ready to come down. It was hard to really think in permanent terms like that.
Which meant none of them had really accumulated much in the way of things they couldn’t leave behind. Which was just as well, because they couldn’t afford to take much. Not when they didn’t dare take so much as a cart, for fear of the tracks being noticed. All they had was what they could carry.
They couldn’t even take their names with them. That much, they’d agreed on. The name Wen was too dangerous. They would have to cast it away, find new names for themselves. Preferably somewhere far, far from the sect lands.
She only looked back once, at the edge of the hill that would take them out of sight of the sanctuary they’d lived in for so long.
Seeing them off, Granny and Wei Wuxian both waved goodbye.
Then she turned back to where He Changming was carrying the restless A’Yuan, and left them behind.
~Patience is a bitter plant that bears sweet fruit.~
Present:
Zhang Liqiu half-stumbled, half-lunged forward. Wei Wuxian laughed and caught her, completely careless of the soapy water soaking into his black robe.
“How?” she demanded.
Because she’d gritted her teeth as the cultivation world celebrated the death of Yiling Laozu through the entire long, grueling journey from the wild, out-of-sight places at the far side of the Mounds and across the mountains. The fall of Wen-zongzhu himself hadn’t been celebrated with so much smug self-congratulation.
Then again, the sects had actually earned their victory over the Wen sect. Maybe the experience of actual effort had soured the taste of victory for them.
There was also the minor detail that while this was unmistakably Wei Wuxian, it was not his body. For one thing, he wasn’t that much taller than she was!
“Ah!” Wei Wuxian pulled back a little to smile sheepishly. “I don’t suppose you remember the time Wen Qing yelled at me for trying to recreate the body-sacrifice ritual?”
She blinked. She did remember that. Mostly because that had been in the early weeks in the Burial Mounds, when Wei Wuxian had been a terrifying presence hidden away, only appearing for brief moments at mealtimes before disappearing back into the shadows with Wen Qionglin’s corpse. Most of them had been certain he would turn on them at any moment.
So she vividly remembered the shock when she realized that Wen Qing’s anger stemmed from the fear that the man might use that ritual on himself.
“If I recall correctly, you wanted to understand how it worked?” she said. “So that if you did succeed in bringing Wen-gongzi back, he wouldn’t be vulnerable to a simple exorcism.”
Wei Wuxian coughed. “Well. Long story very short, someone with a grudge got their hands on my notes and…” He spread his hands ruefully. “They summoned the most terrifying ghost they could think of!” He pouted. “Really, I’m offended. I was a very mild-mannered ghost, I’ll have you know. I didn’t even haunt anyone!”
She snorted. “I would have,” she countered. She had a whole list of people in desperate need of haunting.
She drew in a shaky breath, and fought down a laugh that wasn’t entirely humor. How very appropriate; the sects’ own hysterical rumor-mongering had ultimately undone the death it had caused in the first place.
Finally, she pulled back, gathering something resembling her dignity back into place. “You came here looking for us?” Of course he had, if only to find out if that last gamble had truly worked.
Wei Wuxian nodded. “I thought I recognized you when we got here, but I wasn’t sure,” he admitted. “But… there were signs. And then when the desert couldn’t get a hold on A’An – well, of course it couldn’t! The first human child conceived in the Burial Mounds since they came into existence? Of course they’d get stubborn.” He grinned, then tilted his head. “The relatives your husband is checking on…?”
“Some of the others,” she confirmed. “We thought it would be better to spread out. But we try to stay in contact.”
“Ah! And thus the inn. An information hub and easy contact point in one go.” Wei Wuxian nodded. “And I’m guessing some of you went elsewhere?”
She nodded. “Some joined the trade caravans. Others turned to the southern lands. We haven’t had any contact with them.” It had seemed safer not to know. So that if one group was found, not all of them would be lost.
Then she braced herself, and sank down to kneel on the floor
“Aah! What are you doing, the floor’s…”
Ignoring the puddles of spilled wash water, she bowed. Swallowed through a suddenly tight throat. “Master Wei. I have to tell you. A’Yuan… when we were leaving the Mounds… he ran away.”
She still remembered the icy, visceral shock. She’d taken her eyes off the boy for one minute, trying to fix a broken strap on the makeshift pack frame she’d been using. Only to look up, and he was gone.
And the terrible, gut-wrenching realization that they couldn’t go back for him.
For a moment, there was silence. Then, unexpectedly, hands tugged her upright again. “Wen… No. Madam He. It’s alright. I already knew.”
Startled, she looked up to find him smiling at her.
“He made it back to us," he explained. "Right before the attack started.”
She closed her eyes. It… was a strangely painful relief to hear those words. At least the boy hadn’t died alone—
“Actually, that’s part of why I came looking for you. Would you mind if I told A’Yuan about you? And Wen Ning? I think they’d like to know they aren’t entirely the last ones left.”
Her eyes flew open in pure shock. “What?!”
Wei Wuxian grinned at her. “I’ve learned some interesting things since I was called back…”
~Patience is a bitter plant that bears sweet fruit.~
He was not pacing. But his meditation was less than calming.
It could have been worse. Most of the listeners seemed to regard the stories of Yiling Laozu’s return as a tall tale, the sort to be told with the relish of a particularly far-fetched fantasy, utterly unbelievable and unbelieved but far too interesting to simply leave out.
That wouldn’t last. There had been too many witnesses, at Lanling and in the wake of the Second Siege. Eventually, the truth of the story would be known.
But… thus far, the stories had been positively inclined. Almost suspiciously so. Enough to make him think a grasshopper-hunting oriole was meddling again.
An apology, for getting them involved in his vengeance? A bribe, to stay in their good graces? Or a threat, to remind them that the Headshaker did not need cultivation to be dangerous?
To be honest, Lan Wangji did not pretend to understand Nie Huaisang. But he remembered the look of pure skepticism that had flickered across Wei Wuxian’s face when he’d first heard the term headshaker applied to the man. That alone was enough to make him wary. Anyone Wei Wuxian respected for craftiness was dangerous indeed.
Still. Wei Wuxian seemed content to let the matter be. Lan Wangji would follow his lead.
That did not mean he wasn’t relieved when a light knock in a familiar rhythm announced his partner’s return. Breathing out, he got up and opened the door.
Wei Wuxian wasn’t alone.
On the surface, Zhang Liqiu was the same brisk, composed professional as ever. But the hem of her robe was oddly damp, and there was a redness to her eyes that spoke of recent tears. However, she met his gaze with a clear, level stare of her own.
“Hanguang-jun.”
He inclined his head slightly. “Madam He.”
“I am still angry,” she said flatly. “I do not think I can ever forgive you.”
Before he could do more than blink in surprise at this unexpected acknowledgment of the hostility that had always gone unspoken, she continued.
“You let them call you Light Bearing Lord. A noble figure who is there when people are in need. But you looked at us as the world spat on us and you did nothing. When they gathered to pledge to kill us despite the promise they’d made, you were silent.” Her eyes narrowed. “Perhaps you had good intentions. But good intentions without action are nothing. And you did not act. In my eyes, there is blood on your hands.”
Then she drew in a deep breath – and to his shock, dipped into a deep bow.
“For the dead you might have saved, I hate you. I may always. But… Thank you for saving A’Yuan.”
What?
Zhang Liqiu straightened and turned on her heel, striding away down the hallway. Stunned, Lan Wangji turned wide eyes on his partner.
Wei Wuxian smiled slightly, stepping through the door. “It’s a long story. Close the door, and I’ll explain.”
~Patience is a bitter plant that bears sweet fruit.~
By the time the sky had paled to the odd translucent white of a morning without clouds just before sunrise, Lan Wangji had been meditating for well over a shichen. The pavilion in the guest garden was perfectly situated, open to the flow of air but sheltered from the rush of everyday life. Not truly secluded, but enough like it to share that sense of calm space.
Unsurprising. Most likely, it had been designed to serve that very purpose.
He had crossed paths with Zhang Liqiu briefly on his way to the garden; an innkeeper rose even earlier than a Lan disciple, something he had learned over the course of years of travel, but marveled at all the same.
She hadn’t said anything – just nodded, curt and brisk, and gone about her work. But some of the ice had… not so much thawed as settled, still present but without the searing sharpness he had come to expect.
Knowing her story now, he could only marvel that the sharpness had never manifested in more literal form.
Some of the Wens escaped. Survived. Thrived, even.
I never even suspected.
He should have. Wei Wuxian would have done everything in his power to save those he could. It was simply who he was.
Lan Wangji would not lie to himself. He had not considered the possibility of survivors beyond A’Yuan because at the time, he’d spared little thought for the Wens. He had been narrowly focused on Wei Wuxian, with little time for anything else.
Foolish, in hindsight. Trying to understand Wei Wuxian’s actions without thought to the people the man had protected was like attempting to navigate a maze array: no path would ever lead to the heart of the matter.
Not all the walls had been his doing. Without the secret of Wei Wuxian’s lost golden core, he would never have truly understood why the man had chosen the ghostly path in the first place. But he knew much of his blindness had stemmed from his own unwillingness to ask questions of his own assumed knowledge. And his unwillingness to look too closely, because if Wei Wuxian was not mad, was not somehow corrupted…
Perhaps it was no wonder he had not thought too deeply about the Wens. Had not acted, when on some level he knew something was wrong. Had taken a coward’s path of passivity and false neutrality. It was easy to help people when the enemy was a restless ghost or hungry yao. Far different indeed when action required confronting a rot in the very foundations of his world.
No, he did not blame Zhang Liqiu for her anger at his past inaction. He shared it, after all.
And he understood, now, why his partner had been so evasive regarding his interest in coming to Dunhuang. Most likely, Wei Wuxian hadn’t even remembered sending some of the Wens away until the Second Siege had jogged his scattered memories of the first. And even then, he couldn’t have been certain if they had succeeded, especially when A’Yuan had returned alone.
A slipper scuffed deliberately against the stepping stones. Looking up, Lan Wangji pressed his lips together in amusement at Wei Wuxian’s bedraggled appearance. The man hadn’t even bothered to properly secure the robe he’d dragged over the underrobe he’d slept in, and his hair had been left loosely pulled back, save for a few flyaway strands that had escaped the tie.
“It is early,” he noted. Not so early as it might have been – the dawn came late to Dunhuang – but still well before Wei Wuxian’s preferred hour to rise.
“Grmph,” Wei Wuxian grumbled in sulky agreement.
Lan Wangji did not laugh at him. He was all too familiar with the feeling of being too tired to sleep.
Wei Wuxian tilted his head slightly, looking blearily at where Lan Wangji sat on the wooden floor of the garden pagoda. “Thinking?” he asked.
“Mn,” he agreed.
Wei Wuxian nodded. “Need quiet?” he added, although it was almost swallowed by a yawn.
“…Yes,” Lan Wangji admitted. Later, perhaps, they would speak of his thoughts. But while Wei Wuxian often enjoyed the process of talking through a problem, Lan Wangji preferred to work through his concerns in silence first.
Wei Wuxian nodded, unsurprised. “M’kay,” he mumbled. And then promptly flopped down next to him, half-draped over Lan Wangji’s lap and back pointedly turned to the lightening sky.
“Wei Ying?” Lan Wangji said, amused.
“Too early,” Wei Wuxian insisted, shifting his shoulders slightly until they were both comfortable. “Sleeping!”
Breathing a soft laugh, Lan Wangji moved one of his hands to rest it on the man’s head. A light tug pulled the ribbon holding Wei Wuxian’s hair free; he wrapped it loosely around his wrist and began carding his fingers through the tousled black strands. Within minutes, Wei Wuxian’s breathing was soft and even, his weight across Lan Wangji’s lap boneless and warm and there as he drifted off.
Lan Wangji let his hand rest against Wei Wuxian’s head, fingers still threaded in his hair, gently stroking.
Back then. Did you also believe I’d turned against you?
He didn’t ask it aloud. In part because he already knew the answer. He remembered Wei Wuxian’s wariness in those early weeks, the way the other had desperately kept the mask of Mo Xuanyu squarely between them.
And was it such a surprise? Over a thousand cultivators attacking a single man, and he’d chosen to oppose the man rather than the army. Had blamed Wei Wuxian’s anger on his cultivation – because he knew Wei Wuxian was not evil, and he had been unwilling to face the blatant injustice of the sects. He’d done what was conventional and easy. Not what was right. Small wonder Wei Wuxian hadn’t trusted him at first.
Small wonder Zhang Liqiu hated him.
“I hate you. I may always. But thank you for saving A’Yuan.”
Lan Wangji huffed slightly. Zhang Liqiu was an admirable woman. He could think of more than a few people who would benefit by emulating that clear-eyed, fierce honesty.
Including several in his own family.
He sighed, absently stroking Wei Wuxian’s hair again. Because he would not lie to himself. They’d left so quickly after Yunping Temple because he could not stay. His brother had gone through something terrible. And as much as Lan Wangji loved Lan Xichen, there was a dark part of him that wanted to look his brother in the eye and ask, How does it feel to stand in my place now?
Because he’d lived for thirteen years with constant gentle – say rather genteel – nudging about how his grief was really inappropriate, shouldn’t you have accepted it by now…
It had been an object lesson in how easily concern could become condescension. He’d come out of the experience with a bitterly rueful understanding of Wei Wuxian’s frustration with him on the matter of his cultivation. In hindsight, it showed Wei Wuxian’s true and honest regard for him: in all of their arguments throughout the Sunshot Campaign and after, not once had the man tried to punch him in the face.
And his uncle… well. He’d accepted years ago that Lan Qiren had never been the stern but fair teacher that a much younger Lan Wangji had believed him to be. But to see him so utterly unmoved when the lies about the Wens were finally uncovered, without even the grace to be ashamed…
They would have to return eventually. For all his frustration with his brother’s willful blindness, his uncle’s refusal to recognize his own errors, the rot that still ran through the heart of the sects… it was still home. They were his family. He could be angry at them, and still love them.
Bright golden light caught his eye – the first rays of sunlight over the eastern mountains, catching on the peaks of the dunes and setting them ablaze with brilliant light. One would never think that those same dunes had been so ominous two days ago.
Ironic, as well. For all its deadly power, the anger of the desert had been simply, if not easily, satisfied. Would that human anger were so easy to resolve…
Lan Wangji’s fingers stilled.
A’An had a golden core. Small, yes – but that she’d achieved one at all spoke to her drive and discipline, and her mother’s teaching and support. And although it had put her in danger, her efforts to help had come from a place of bravery and responsibility.
Not to mention that she’d actually thought about what it would mean to be a good cultivator, not just a powerful one.
She more than deserved the right to a sword. To train openly.
Becoming Lan Sizhui had kept Wen Yuan safe. But it also meant that the Lans had been able to conveniently overlook the circumstances that had brought the boy to them. But A’An was very much Zhang Liqiu’s daughter. He had a hunch there would be no convenient forgetfulness on her watch.
It would take time, and careful negotiation. The Wen survivors were rightfully wary of discovery. He believed that A’An would not be without support – for one thing, given their reaction to A’Qing, he suspected the gaggle of juniors from Yi City would likely adopt her on sight. And while he did not know if his brother or uncle would genuinely defend her – and it hurt, that he could not be certain, but it was truth nonetheless – he suspected that it would not be hard to persuade Jin Ling to see it as a form of restitution.
They would have to discuss it. Not only with the girl’s parents and the girl herself, but with the other hidden Wens. And that… was something they could probably not accomplish completely before they had to leave, not with Anxi Pass soon closing. But they could at least make a start.
Wei Wuxian grumbled a little in his sleep, shifting as if to nudge Lan Wangji’s hand back into motion. Smiling to himself, he obliged, and settled in to watch the sun rise.
~Patience is a bitter plant that bears sweet fruit.~
NOTES:
There were three months between the battle at Nightless City and the Siege. We are told nothing about what happened in that time, and next to nothing about the Siege itself (and most of what we are told is from suspect sources). But what we do know is that even after a massive tragedy, Wei Wuxian bounces back quickly. He’s willing to do whatever he must to thwart an enemy, and if he expects to die anyway? Well. Look at his threat to Wen Chao. He’s willing to use his death if he has to.
“But they were under siege! How could anyone get out?”
Here’s the thing: a standard siege really only works with a fortified location with limited points from which to come or go. The Burial Mounds are a landscape. Implied to be too large to encircle, especially given the losses of the Sunshot Campaign and Nightless City, and with permeable boundaries if you can handle the environmental risk of just being there. Secondly, consider what the Second Siege looks like: a single invasion. As an aside, I know that the Japanese word for “siege” – which is either borrowed from Chinese, or constructed using Chinese elements – can also be used to mean “storming (a defended location).” Given that “storming” seems a much more accurate description of the Second Siege and also seems a much more realistic framing for how you would attack a location without defensive walls like the Burial Mounds? That’s how I’m reading the term here.
And as for Wei Wuxian’s mindset at the end of his first life… Given that there’s no indication that death is therapeutic (and apparently Word Of Author is that he was caught in a repeating nightmare while dead, although I’ve only heard that third-hand and thus consider the information suspect even outside of Death of Author principles), I take Wei Wuxian’s mindset when he’s resurrected as indicative of his mental state at death. Given that he’s cheerful enough to be cracking jokes a few minutes after waking up, I get the sense that his death must have been something that happened ultimately on his own terms, and that he feels like he used it well.
Speaking of, that body sacrifice ritual that he reinvented is a bit of a plot hole once you know that “the dread villain Yiling Laozu” was never what people claimed, because he really had no reason to mess with something like that. My head canon is what I have here: he remembered the whole “immune to exorcism” aspect and wanted to figure that out so that he could use the information when reviving Wen Ning.
Which… People talk so much about Jiang Yanli’s death. Can we please get some acknowledgement that Wei Wuxian would also be mourning his best friends – friends who also made an active choice to sacrifice themselves in order to save him, only to have that sacrifice be utterly wasted?
And on that note… One of my favorite lines in film is from Coco:
“I’m the love of your life?”
“I don’t know, I’m still mad at you!”
Anger you’ve been holding for years does not just go away, even if you find out that maybe you were wrong about what caused the anger in the first place. Which is part of where Zhang Liqiu’s characterization comes from. Because one of the things I wanted to play with, in her character – and to a lesser degree in Lan Wangji – is handling anger in a healthy way.
Now, is Zhang Liqiu being unfair to Lan Wangji? Of course she is. Lan Wangji owed nothing to the Wens or Wei Wuxian. He had no obligation to help them. He was twenty-one to twenty-three years old (depending on how you read the timeskips), confused and frightened and paralyzed by a moral quandary. And he did make some attempts to intervene… just, never where Wei Wuxian or the Wens would have known about it.
But he’s also a man with this shining reputation as a hero, he’d seen that the Wen survivors were no threat and wanted no trouble, Wei Wuxian treated him as a friend, and from her perspective he effectively stabbed them in the back through inaction. And then, by all appearances, actively, because Wei Wuxian had no way of knowing that Lan Wangji hadn’t been at the pledge conference from the start. And his response to the situation is to attack Wei Wuxian – and yes, we know he was aiming to disarm, but A: given that “disarming” involved sending a flying sword at his face – hello, flute – and B: being disarmed would have led to Wei Wuxian being killed, I don’t blame Wei Wuxian at all for seeing that as an unmitigated attack. Lan Wangji didn’t help Wei Wuxian until far too late (and at a point where Wei Wuxian was in no condition to remember).
She has reason to be angry… but she doesn’t let that anger become vindictiveness.
Because one of the major themes of the novel is and the disproportionate nature of retribution and how it manifests as the denial of personal culpability and scapegoating. Summed up in its most extreme form by Xue Yang: “Their lives are their lives, but my finger is my finger!” Jiang Cheng, Wen Chao, Jin Guangyao, Su Minshan, the gathered Sects of the Second Siege, even Lan Xichen, they all repeat this pattern in one form or another. I think that’s actually part of what’s important about Lan Xichen’s character. Sect Leader Yao et al are one thing – we all know pompous blowhards. Most of the others are jerks with issues at best and sociopathic at worst. But Lan Xichen is nice. We don’t like to think about how frighteningly easy it is for nice people to yield to a warped society, and the warped logic of “they hurt me/my people, I can do whatever I want to them.”