Chapter Text
Jiang Cheng had never been more angry by the time the train pulled up to the platform in Cloud Recesses.
For some reason, the train had stopped for at least thirty minutes at every station along the way. His particular car had been packed, so there was no escape from the particularly chatty man in the seat beside him who had rambled inanely about the weather the entire torturously long trip. And, worst of all, Jiang Cheng had spilled coffee on his shirt.
He shoved his way off to exit the train first, late as he already was, and settled his bag over his shoulder, straightening any wrinkles beneath it.
“Oh, um, hi - Sandu Shengshou?”
The man’s — no, man child’s — presence surprised him. On shorter legs, the young man hustled to catch up to Jiang Cheng as he wove his way through the crowd. Jiang Cheng glared at him suspiciously.
“They told me you’d be wearing an absurd amount of purple,” he continued when Jiang Cheng did not acknowledge him.
Jiang Cheng came to an abrupt stop. He resisted the urge to look down at himself. He knew what he was wearing - a violet button down tucked into pale gray trousers with a subtle blue pinstripe. Oh, and a coffee stain about the size of his thumb on the side of his shirt.
“Well, spit it out,” Jiang Cheng snapped impatiently. “What does Wei Wuxian want?”
“Oh,” The young man mouthed in stupid surprise. “How did you know?”
Jiang Cheng sighed long-sufferingly.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m in a rush,” Jiang Cheng replied, waving a hand.
“Oh, right!” The lightbulb going off in the young man’s brain could be patently seen, dim as it was. “Well, no need to rush any more! Your class assignment was changed.”
He smiled as though that was supposed to make Jiang Cheng feel better. It did not.
***
“Why are you still here?” Jiang Cheng spat out after the young man had followed him out of the platform and onto the stone paths that wove through the trees to Cloud Recesses.
The young man trailed along behind him like a lost puppy, making seemingly compulsive attempts at conversation. Jiang Cheng doggedly ignored responding, hoping it would make him go away.
“I’m your teaching assistant,” he chirped with pride.
Jiang Cheng stopped dead again, shoving the young man away when he almost careened into him.
“You’re what?” he asked.
“Your teaching assis -”
“No, I can hear,” Jiang Cheng interrupted scathingly. “You are not my teaching assistant, because my class assignment hasn’t changed. I am obviously the only qualified person to teach First-Class Spiritual Weapons, so at best this is some idiotic mix up. At worst it’s one of my brother’s infantile pranks.”
“Lan Qiren agreed to the switch,” the so-called teaching assistant insisted.
“Switch?” Jiang Cheng prompted.
“Senior Wei came down with something,” he explained.
Jiang Cheng’s jaw ticked at the honorific.
“He can’t teach his class tomorrow, so you are the substitute,” the young man barrelled on.
Jiang Cheng flinched.
“Substitute?” he echoed, racking his brain to remember what kind of shameful subject his brother had been assigned to this semester.
“Yes, for Intro to Dual Cultivat…” The young man trailed off as Jiang Cheng spun on his heel and stalked in a direct line toward Lan Qiren’s office.
***
“Yes, that is right,” Lan Qiren confirmed, not even raising his eyes from the paperwork on his desk to acknowledge Jiang Cheng. “You will be the substitute for Intro to Dual Cultivation for this week while Wei Wuxian recovers.”
“Lan Qiren -" Jiang Cheng began irately. Lan Qiren’s pen screeched across his paperwork. He started again, “Headmaster Lan, you know just as well as I do that Wei Wuxian probably just overindulged on liquor last night and is playing hooky specifically to fluster me.”
Jiang Cheng could envision it clear as day. Wei Wuxian groaning from the bed that he wasn’t well and pitifully holding his stomach as if he was capable of a hangover at all. Chief Cultivator Lan Wangji holding his hair back and fawning over him, rather than attending to his important duties. And when Lan Wangji’s back was turned, the demon would giggle at the idea of Jiang Cheng’s thin face at the news.
Lan Qiren’s expression darkened as if he was imagining the very same thing and his voice lowered an octave when he said, “In any case.”
Jiang Cheng tried a different tact.
“Surely another instructor could teach this class! Whereas First-Class Spiritual Weapons cannot be taught by any idiot off the streets,” Jiang Cheng appealed.
He was obviously uniquely qualified to teach First-Class Spiritual Weapons - in fact, students signed up specifically to learn from the wielder of Zidian, in spite of his equally legendary reputation as a harsh grader.
“First-Class Spiritual Weapons will be taught by Meng Yao in your absence,” Lan Qiren said.
“Meng Yao!” Jiang Cheng thundered, his vision going red. “That simpering weasel couldn’t power a spiritual weapon if he even wielded one, but given that he does not, he is a singularly unfit teacher for my course!”
“He does.” Lan Qiren glanced up testily. “And if you have an issue with the reassignment, I suggest you take it up with Wei Wuxian. He hand-picked you to substitute himself and Lan Wangji as the course instructor.”
“I can’t -” Jiang Cheng started, but then faltered.
He was uncertain how to even broach his complete inability to teach dual cultivation due to his lack of experience. He felt heat rise up his neck, and it fueled his rage further to be publicly embarrassed. The absolute insult of having to address it aloud at all.
The worst part about it was that Jiang Cheng wasn’t actually a blushing virgin, in spite of the rumors. But since he was a wealthy and powerful bachelor, gossip dogged him incessantly, alleging that no lover or spouse would ever touch him with a ten foot pole because of his bad personality.
He was certain that 100% of the enrollees in the elective summer course had signed up because of its celebrity instructors, not to learn magical sex ed from Jiang Cheng.
“How can I teach that subject when I do not have a cultivation partner?” Jiang Cheng finally managed.
Getting out the words was mortifying enough, and, of course, Jiang Cheng was a fool who did not close the door behind him in his rush to rail at Lan Qiren. So the “teaching assistant” was hovering in the doorway, wide-eyed.
“We have no instructors other than Wangji and Wei Wuxian who could teach the course from personal experience. Read the book, teach the theory,” Lan Qiren said with a dismissive wave of his hand, returning his attention to his paperwork.
Jiang Cheng fumed with impotence, standing stock still in the center of the headmaster’s office, ignored by the man himself. Finally, he turned and stomped out into the hallway, determined to hone his arguments and return.
His mind was whirling with unspoken retorts for several minutes as he paced the halls of the administrative building before he realized the young man from before was still trailing behind him.
“Why are you still here?” Jiang Cheng whirled around, once again shoving the young man away when he almost stumbled into Jiang Cheng. “You’ve already ruined my day. Are you here to spectate now?”
“Oh, um, no,” the young man said, shaking his head sheepishly. “I was just going to show you to our office when you’re ready.”
Our office. Jiang Cheng’s lips twisted sourly. Sharing an office at all was below his station, but with this empty-headed lemming? The humiliation was almost enough to send him straight on the train back to Yunmeng.
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry that the reassignment is so upsetting to you,” the young man offered, a tentative smile tipping his lips.
“It’s not worth much,” Jiang Cheng replied tartly.
“I’m used to that.” He shrugged.
“I bet you are,” Jiang Cheng retorted.
Undaunted, the young man bounced once on his heels and pointed a finger toward the upcoming hallway. “The office is that way.”
***
The office was… nice. Jiang Cheng was bitter to admit it.
He flung his shoulder bag down on the leather chair behind the larger of two wooden desks in the room and gazed out the large set of windows that overlooked the wooded paths of Cloud Recesses’ campus. It even had a view of the stream - he bet that if he cracked the window, he could hear it trickle by.
He crossed his arms over his chest and attempted to look forbidding, hoping to scare off the so-called ‘teaching assistant’ once and for all so he could mourn this disaster of a day in peace.
It didn’t work.
“I don’t think the first class will be too bad. Chapter one of the book is pretty tame,” his teaching assistant said cheerily, thumping a book down onto the empty wooden desk behind Jiang Cheng.
Jiang Cheng glanced down his nose at the book and snorted derisively when he saw the cover: an illustration of his idiot brother and that deviant he called a husband under the title Immortal Love: A Cultivator’s Tale of Power & Romance.
“I am not teaching that book,” Jiang Cheng replied, adding in his head, I am never reading that book. Never in a thousand years. A million years. Hearing more than his brother had already told him about his love life was the worst form of torture he could possibly devise for himself.
He touched his thumb to his ring, feeling a little zing of Zidian’s power responding to him. He felt his shoulders slowly unwind, and he sighed. This was just one class, right? And then he could teach the class he was meant to teach.
“Assistant,” Jiang Cheng called as he turned around.
“Lan Jingyi,” the young man supplied.
“Whatever.” Jiang Cheng waved a hand irritably. “Go to the library and get me a suitable textbook on dual cultivation. One written by an actual academic. Not some dime-store drivel like this.”
He picked up his brother’s book and dropped it into the garbage can on the side of his desk, already feeling significantly better about the day.
His teaching assistant looked mournfully down at the book in the trash.
Great, Jiang Cheng thought as he watched the young man obediently trudge out of the office, a Wangxian fan.
***
The next day, Jiang Cheng stalked into the classroom with zero explanation while his teaching assistant dropped his new chosen text book down in front of each confused student.
He opened up with his typical spiel on his zero-tolerance attendance and participation policies. He stumbled when he started to describe the weekly quiz he would assess, which he had always done for as long as he’d been guest auditing a course at the summer Gusu-Lan Lectures. He had decided the night before to assign absolutely no homework other than reading while he was the substitute. The prospect of grading the responses was more than he could bear.
In that barest of pauses, a student from the back called out, “Why are you here instead of Senior Wei and Hanguang Jun?”
Jiang Cheng sneered, “If you think you have it bad being deprived of today’s opportunity to swoon over true love or some other idiotic fantasy, imagine my disappointment to be here too.”
Finished passing out the musty tome Jiang Cheng had chosen entitled The Theory and Practice of Dual Cultivation, Part 1, Volume 1, Lan Jingyi sat down in the first row. He propped his chin into his hands and leaned forward, the only person of the dozen or so before Jiang Cheng who looked at all happy.
“Are they no longer teaching the class?” another student piped in, looking crestfallen.
“Wei Wuxian is sick. I’m the substitute. I’m sure he’ll be here to fulfill all your hopes and dreams next week,” Jiang Cheng huffed. “Now, if you’re all quite finished, you can call me Senior Jiang, and today we’re going to define dual cultivation and cover famous cultivation partners.”
Taking a talisman off the desk, Jiang Cheng used both of his fingers to send it off to the board behind him and take down notes.
“Dual cultivation is when two very closely-attuned partners are able to join essences in order to perform more powerful acts of cultivation together,” Jiang Cheng began.
A hand shot up almost immediately, and Jiang Cheng sighed heavily before raising an eyebrow at the student.
“Are essences bodily fluids?” the student asked.
Jiang Cheng froze mid-breath. He carefully controlled his expression and the pace of his exhale - he couldn’t show weakness here.
“No, essences are spiritual energy from your golden core,” he ground out. “Now, dual cultivation is often performed -”
Another hand shot up almost immediately and he stopped again. The student spoke the moment he paused, without being acknowledged.
“How do you know they aren’t bodily fluids? Isn’t that kind of what sex is?”
Jiang Cheng felt a steady throb pick up in his temple that would surely bloom into a killer headache. He took one deep breath then answered in a truly dangerous tone, “Because anyone is capable of exchanging -” Jiang Cheng cleared his throat, “bodily fluids, as you so crudely coined it, while only cultivators are capable of dual cultivation. And what makes cultivators unique is their golden core.”
He felt Zidian prickle along the back of his hand, glowing in response to the threat in his tone. Satisfied that he had scared them all into silence, he turned his attention back to the board, where the talisman was spelling the words Golden Core onto the board.
Then someone asked, “Senior Jiang, have you ever dual cultivated?”
Whirling around to glare at the student, Jiang Cheng hollered, “No personal questions! This class isn’t about me.”
And there, right before his eyes and the subtle crackle of zidian, a student leaned over to the question-asker and whispered, “That’s Sandu Shengshou, he definitely doesn’t have a cultivation partner.”
Jiang Cheng didn’t have time for this shit. He was an accomplished sect leader and among the most powerful cultivators alive. If he was going to be teaching the class for the whole summer, he might have made an example of the whisperer, dressing them down within an inch of their life, but he was just the substitute.
Instead, Jiang Cheng stomped behind the teacher’s desk and thumped down into the chair, declaring, “Since you’re all so concerned about my credentials, open your book to page 10 and read for the remainder of the class.”
Then he glared balefully at each student until every head was facing downward. Every face except his ridiculous teaching assistant. When he looked at Lan Jingyi, the young man shrugged apologetically and then, weirdly, gave him a thumbs up.
Jiang Cheng narrowed his eyes - he’d known the teaching assistant for less than two days and he was more and more convinced that there was something critically defective about him. His moods seemed to range only between confused and chipper, but always utterly oblivious to any scathing remark or blistering glare Jiang Cheng directed his way. He’d never met anyone who was less flustered by Jiang Cheng’s brusque mannerisms. It was… disarming.
***
“Well that… went,” Lan Jingyi declared, leaning his hip against the corner of the teacher’s desk while Jiang Cheng shoved items into his shoulder bag. The final student had trudged out the door just moments before and the class was blissfully empty except for them.
Jiang Cheng tried to pack up faster, determined to avoid whatever debrief his teaching assistant was trying to have.
“I guess Senior Wei will probably be back for the next class, so we won’t be back here again. It was good getting to work together, even if it was just for a class,” Lan Jingyi continued as Jiang Cheng threw his bag over his shoulder, taking an extra moment to make sure his button-down was sitting straight and unwrinkled beneath the strap.
“Sure,” Jiang Cheng offered, saying whatever would help him escape faster. He side-stepped the teaching assistant and started for the door.
“For what it’s worth, when I was still attending the summer lectures, I really enjoyed your class,” Lan Jingyi called behind him.
His hand on the door handle, Jiang Cheng paused. The words came to his lips once more, It’s not worth much. But the thing was, it actually kind of did mean something.
At least one person in that room didn’t just know him as uptight, prudish Sandu Shengshou. At least one person respected and even learned from him, or maybe Lan Jingyi was just a kiss-ass who understood the value of buttering up a powerful sect leader.
Maybe he was smarter than Jiang Cheng gave him credit for. After all, the summer Gusu-Lan Lectures were exclusive, only for the best and brightest cultivators, although… he supposed his teaching assistant’s surname was Lan. He hadn’t known Lan Jingyi long, but it was difficult to imagine the clueless look that seemed frozen on his face was anything but genuine. Maybe he’d gotten in because of his famous family.
“Thanks,” Jiang Cheng bit off the rarely-spoken word, then he left.