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The raised voice of the Grandmaster shattered the quiet serenity of the Cloud Recesses and startled the passing disciples. They broke out into a quick trot in order to leave the area as fast as possible, stopping just short of a run, after all running was prohibited in the Cloud Recesses. Some knew however, that Wei Wuxian had a meeting with Lan Qiren that morning. Nothing good ever came of the two crossing paths and with Hanguang-Jun absent on a particularly challenging night hunt and Zewu-Jun still in seclusion, who knew what the fallout would be.
Meanwhile in Lan Qiren’s office:
“You have ruined my nephew!” Lan Qiren bellowed. “He was never so defiant and unruly before he met you!”
Wei Wuxian scoffed. “I don’t claim to deserve Lan Zhan, but he has chosen to love me, and I love him. I’m trying to make peace with you, and you won’t even give me a chance.”
“Peace? Peace! What would a demonic cultivator such as you know of peace?” Lan Qiren asked with contempt.
Abruptly Wei Wuxian felt exhausted. All his efforts over the past two years of his marriage to pacify the man before him was for naught. When he remembered what he had suffered and the role that people like the Grandmaster had played in that he grew angry.
“You are a hypocrite.” Wei Wuxian stated. The Grandmaster was so shocked that he could not even respond. That this wild boy would even dare to speak to him in such a manner, to call him, Lan Qiren, a man who had devoted his entire life to being a righteous person, a hypocrite, the audacity!
With his face flushed unattractively and mouth agape, for a moment Wei Wuxian thought he might go into qi deviation. He had come to have a civil conversation, but he was tired of bowing his head. All his life he had tried to make peace and what had that gotten him? Two dead sisters, a brother who hated him, and a brother who was forever trapped between the world of the living and the dead and hated by most of their society, even though he had one of the sweetest dispositions that Wei Wuxian had ever had the good fortune to encounter. Almost as sweet his as his dear departed Shijie.
“I meant what I said, you are a hypocrite. Causing noise is prohibited. Do not succumb to rage. Do not treat others with contempt. Do not disrespect the younger. These are the rules inscribed on the Lan Sect’s Wall of Discipline, but in the first class that I had with you as my teacher, you broke all of these rules. You yelled at me, threw scrolls at me, kicked me out of the lecture hall, and punished me for challenging the orthodoxy. Knowing what I know now about resentful energy, I can understand why you reacted so strongly, but I was a foolish child, and you were Grandmaster Lan, the foremost teacher of the cultivation world. Scores of young cultivators have sat in your lecture hall to be educated. Have you no concept of how to gently guide your students? How to provide proper reasoning for why there are certain things cultivators don’t do and lines they don’t cross? If not, you should have never become a teacher.”
Lan Qiren sputtered in disbelief. “This is preposterous! Every decent cultivator knows resentful energy harms the mind. There has never been a righteous demonic cultivator. They are all bad seeds!”
Wei Wuxian smirked. The intended insult was not lost on him. “There have been plenty of terrible cultivators who were bad seeds as well. Jin Guangshan, Jin Guangyao, Su Minshan, Wen Ruohan; I could go on. They all used their spiritual cultivation to hurt others long before they tried their hand at demonic cultivation. However, I’m not talking about them, I’m talking about you. You have disliked me since we first met simply because I reminded you of my mother, but your rules say do not hold grudges. You believe yourself to be righteous and believe that you treat others fairly, but I know, even if you don’t realize it, that you are no different from the rest of the gentry. You wouldn’t have dared to throw anything at a sect heir.”
Here Wei Wuxian smiled ruefully. “The son of a servant however, who would care? I was the fourth ranked young master of my generation, surpassing countless sect heirs, but whenever anybody wanted to insult me that’s the first thing that they would talk about: how I’m the son of a servant. Even if you believe that you were different, you were just the same. You would have never treated any sect heir the way you treated me. Not even Nie Huaisang, who repeated your lecture course more than once and was almost as much of a troublemaker as I was, just sneakier about it.
No one ever mentions that I’m the son of Cangse Sanren, and through her related to famed immortal Baoshan Sanren. No, the first thing I am is the son of a servant whenever I cause problems or surpass my betters.” Wei Wuxian finished bitterly.
Lan Qiren jumped up and slapped the table with force, shaking the tea set and almost overturning his own cup, his tea long grown cold. “Wei Wuxian! You go too far!”
Wei Wuxian tilted his head to the side, a condescending smirk on his face that he knew drove others crazy. “Too far? I’m just getting started. Gusu Lan is famous for your Wall of Discipline and its four thousand rules. Do not take advantage of your position to oppress others. If others lose to you, do not look down on them. Do not bully the weak. Was the Lan Sect following these rules when you sat back and watched the Jins use Wen prisoners of war as live bait for entertainment?”
Lan Qiren remained quiet and slowly sat back down.
Wei Wuxian continued, “The same Jin Sect that sat back for almost the entire war and let the rest of us fight and die trying to defeat Wen Ruohan before joining at the last minute to reap glory. Their version of help was shooting unarmed Wen civilians in the back and calling it justice. They set up labor camps where they beat and starved and killed civilians in the name of justice. I found A-Yuan at Qiongqi Path you know. He was only two years old. What part did he play in the war? Who did he kill to deserve to be in that place? When Lan Zhan rescued him from the Burial Mounds after I died and raised him as his own, did you ever look at him and feel a single moment of shame? I don’t think you did. Your sect helped participate in the slaughter of his entire family for a second time. Do you realize that he was the last child in that prison camp? If I hadn’t rescued the Wens, he would have died there like all the rest. Is this what the Lan Sect means when they say morality is the priority, make sure to act virtuously, shoulder the weight of morality and uphold the value of justice?”
Wei Wuxian could no longer keep calm. The more he spoke, the more memories of the past overcame him and the angrier he became until he was screaming.
“Jin Guangshan was the most immoral man I’ve ever met! He was a known lecher, greedy, and power hungry. Your rules say, do not be a follower of the rich and powerful. I know that the Lan Sect was rebuilding and couldn’t afford to take on the Jin Sect, but what’s the point of being renown for your righteousness if you only practice it when it’s convenient or easy?! The Lan Sect stood back and allowed a man like that to be named Chief Cultivator, but helped drive me to my death for trying to stop his cruelty? Our society is broken! Would I have been put in the position to hurt so many people, out of a need to defend myself, if others weren’t so greedy for the power I had? Would Jin Guangyao or Xue Yang have committed the atrocities they did if they were treated with respect and courtesy? We were all painted as villains and yes, we did monstrous things, but we did not get there on our own. If those in power had not felt so comfortable treating us as if we were lesser, treating Wen civilians as if their lives were toys to be played with, many of the things that happened would not have. Cultivators create their own monsters and blame us when we bite. Then they band together to kill us and congratulate themselves for being righteous!”
Lan Qiren looked down and couldn’t meet his eyes. He wanted to scream at the man before him. He was everything he thought of as bad in the world. He knew no boundaries, refused to hold his tongue, and believed rules existed to be broken. He wasn’t wrong about this, however. Lan Sizhui was a credit to their sect and everything he could have ever wanted in a student. A bright light that embodied the best parts of what it meant to be a Lan, and his story had almost ended before it truly began. If Wanji had not been so insistent in chasing after Wei Wuxian, the Jins would have been able to hide the fact that they had children in that wretched prison camp, just like they had hidden every other terrible thing they had done, for no one would have known he existed. He wanted to rage at the way Wei Wuxian was making him confront his own inadequacies, but he could not. The Wall of Discipline stated that one should discipline your own words and behavior, so he remained silent.
He wondered what more Wei Wuxian would say. What other rules he would cite to chip away at the foundation of righteousness that he had believed that he had firmly built his life upon. He was talking about Qiongqi Path again, about dead Wens left out to rot in the mud, the Jins not even having the courtesy to put their spirits to rest. About the Ghost General, before he became the feared attack dog of the Yiling Patriarch, who was left die in the dirt with his kin, a spiritual attraction flag pierced through him as a sick experimentation to see what evil could be drawn near. He took a deep breath. Wei Wuxian might have been right about everything else, but in regard to his demonic cultivation, there was no excuse for that. The Jins might have been rotten, but they would have never gotten as far as they did, if he hadn’t opened the door. As much as he hated to admit it, Wei Wuxian had always been a brilliant student, and a great inventor. The things he did with resentful energy surpassed even Xue Chonghai and many people had committed much evil trying to replicate his methods.
Lan Qiren cleared his throat and drew the tattered remains of his own righteousness around himself. Wei Wuxian stopped speaking and watched him with an implacable gaze.
“Even though what you have said here today is true, the Wall of Discipline also says stay on the righteous path. Reject the crooked path. Follow the righteous way, don’t take crooked ways. Do not associate with evil. Do not fall to evil. Your demonic cultivation has done more damage than the Jin Sect would have ever been able to do on their own. You cannot deny this.” Here was one argument Wei Wuxian could not defend against Lan Qiren thought.
Wei Wuxian nodded and glanced thoughtfully to the side. “You’re right, I can’t deny that. I also can’t deny that no Lan cultivator said a word to me about the crooked path, besides Lan Zhan, not even Zewu-Jun. It’s funny how no one cared about my demonic cultivation when I was winning the war for them.” At this he met Lan Qiren eyes once more. “Is that how you reject the crooked path? People can choose not to associate with me because I’m seen as evil, but it doesn’t stop them from using my inventions, not even the Lans.”
“Arrogance is forbidden.” The Grandmaster reminded him.
“Do not tell lies.” Wei Wuxian returned. They lapsed into silence for a few moments, each lost in their own thoughts. It was not an understatement to say that Wei Wuxian won them the Sunshot Campaign. Without his demonic cultivation overpowering Wen Ruohan’s they would have all been slaughtered or been made slaves of the Wens. Lan Qiren nodded to himself. He was willing to accept this. He was not so set in his ways that he would deny Wei Wuxian this. He knew what their world was like however and even though it wasn’t right, there was nothing that the Lan Sect could do about it. They could only lead by example. If others chose not to follow, they could not force them.
It was hard to change anything in the cultivation world. All that they knew and practiced was built on hundreds of years of tradition. Innovators were not truly elevated in their culture and Wei Wuxian who asked questions others dared not, attempted things his elders could not dream of, and invented like he breathed, frightened them. They could not even claim his genius as due to his superior blood like they did with Jin Guangyao with him being the son of servant and a rogue cultivator. What else could the gentry do but scorn his brilliance, even while they eagerly used the inventions it spawned. He didn’t help matters by not even giving them face by carrying his sword.
“I’m willing to concede that what happens in wartime…” Lan Qiren paused. “Soldiers must do what is needed to win no matter how unpalatable. However, you had to know that you would be judged for what came after. You never cultivated the sword path again. I know demonic cultivation was needed to defeat the Wens, but you should have returned to proper cultivation techniques after.”
Wei Wuxian could feel the shift in the air. It felt like he was on the precipice of something. That maybe there was finally a possibility of true understanding between himself and the Grandmaster. He took a deep breath and chose to bare his vulnerability before his one-time teacher and hoped he would not be disappointed. He didn’t have to tell him the whole sordid story but maybe…
“I didn’t have a golden core.” Then there was silence. You could hear a pin drop in the room before the Grandmaster exclaimed, “What? Impossible! The things that you did… you… what?!” Lan Qiren floundered, unable to complete a full sentence. No golden core? It seemed unthinkable that all the power Wei Wuxian had wielded, the things he had accomplished was all done without a golden core. He thought he understood the man before him a bit better now. With his sect decimated and the Jins circling like vultures and no other sect, great or minor, in a position to check them, of course he would not give up the crooked path. “Impossible.” He muttered almost to himself.
“The Jiang Sect motto is ‘attempt the impossible.’” Wei Wuxian smiled sadly. “Have a strong will and anything can be achieved.”
Lan Qiren huffed; another rule thrown in his face. Thinking back on how many rules Wei Wuxian had broken during his first stay in the Cloud Recesses, he was surprised that he knew them so well. Or maybe he shouldn’t be. Wei Wuxian thrived on being contrary. Do not make assumptions about others, he reminded himself. For all of his sins, Wei Wuxian loved his brother and sister and would never have left them unprotected. Anyone who threatened them would have met a swift end. Considering what he did after they destroyed the Wens for the last time, would he have done any less for the siblings he had known longer and loved more fiercely.
Lan Qiren closed his eyes and tried to calm his raging emotions. He took a few moments to get himself under control before standing and moving back from the table until he had enough space to sink into a kowtow and stayed in that position for a few moments over Wei Wuxian’s protestations. Honor good people. Do not be haughty and complacent. Be strict with yourself. Be easy on others. Do not argue with your family, for it does not matter who wins. Whatever bad blood existed between them, Wei Wuxian was Wanji’s husband and therefore family no matter how much he had tried to deny it before today.
It was hard to let go of his animosity; he had carried it for nearly two decades. However, the rules said do not give up on learning and as Wei Wuxian had reminded him, they also said have a strong will and anything can be achieved. His will was strong, and he would learn to let go of the hate that it poisoned his heart against the man sitting before him.