Chapter Text
He woke. Slowly. Excruciating pain threaded through his bones, though he could not tell whether real or merely an inertia of pain. His back burned as if that traitorous little snake still had his blade stuck between his ribs. Shallow breaths burned their way into his lungs, but he heaved them in anyway. It took him a moment to understand why such a thing seems so surprising to him.
Because he breathed?
And therefore, he… lived?
He lived!
He took in his bearings through heavy-lidded eyes, rolling his head to fully examine the room. He’d been tucked away in a small shack, filled with the remains of broken furniture. And, beneath him, a bloody array. He rolled over to look at it, huffing in amusement; he recognized the construction, for all it had been sloppily drawn by a weak hand. Whoever had summoned him back—a young man from the glimpse he caught of himself in a nearby bronze mirror—hadn’t much talent when it came to cultivation nor, from what he could see, makeup.
He pushed himself upright, and his sleeve slid back to reveal five deep gouges on his arms; three on his right, two on his left. A pittance, then, to address whatever revenge the summoner demanded and then fully claim this weak and useless body for his own. He staggered to his feet and studied the meagre contents of the room. His body’s previous occupant had left a series notes, a messy collection of rambling misfortunes written in ‘Mo Xuanyu’s’ trembling hand. Given the shocking frequency in wich he collected offense, the greatest challenge would be identifying exactly upon whom such violent revenge needed to be rendered.
Then again, he thought as the door slammed open and a stocky youth charged inside screaming purple with rage, perhaps not.
He left the body of Mo Xuanyu’s cousin and his servants cooling and went in search of the rest of the household, one of the marks on his arm already healing. He couldn’t have been too terribly displaced from the time of his death; less than twenty years, he decided as he passed by a small gaggle of servants dressed in similar attire to when he’d perished.
“Little beast,” Madam Mo spat when he came upon her in the main receiving room. “I sent my son to fetch you up about this Discussion Conference you’re to attend. Where has he gone?”
“To hell, madam. Not to worry.” He smiled. “I shan’t leave him there long.”
“What nonsense are you speaking? Where is my son?”
“I’ve already answered your question.”
She stood. While not a tall woman, she still had some height on him and an air of superiority she likely relied on to give herself presence in absence of true authority.
“I think you’ve forgotten the consequences of speaking out of turn,” she hissed. Trite. Uninspired. Pathetic.
“Remind me.”
She crowed for one of her servants, who rushed in with a horsewhip already raised in preparation. A frequent occurrence, then. Her husband seemed disinclined to interfere. Presumably they accounted for two more of the open wounds.
This was decidedly beneath his dignity.
The servant twitched the whip in his direction. She wouldn’t even raise a hand to him herself? While he’d never personally punished his servants before, he’d never allow his own family to be disrespected by letting others discipline them on his behalf.
Mo Xuanyu had left him with a pathetic little core, barely formed. Fortunately, he’d brought back with him certain talents that allowed him to overcome the disadvantage to which it might otherwise place him; he’d outstripped the need to rely on his core long ago. Mo Village wasn’t built on soil enriched by death, but there was more than enough resentful energy to make it a piffling matter to snap the servant’s spine and leave him twitching from the neck down.
The Mo matriarch gaped at him while her husband stumbled back and away from the table, finally realizing he was in the presence of his better.
“Really, Mo Xuanyu,” he sighed. Did the young man who’d summoned him truly have need for a vicious ghost to fight his battles when his only obvious foes were pathetic young men and their self-important mothers?
“You…” Madam Mo began, paling. Her tone landed somewhere between frightened and confused. “How…? You’re nothing. Your own father threw you out of Koi Tower because you failed at everything.”
“Did he? Pray, tell me: this father of Mo Xuanyu, did he encourage his son’s foray into demonic cultivation?”
Madam Mo’s face lost what colour remained. “Jin-zongzhu would never—”
Ah. Now he considered it, his new features did have a certain soft, pleasing quality he’d long associated with the Jin family.
Guangshan, Guangshan, Guangshan. He might’ve known: creating a mess and then expecting it to disappear of its own accord without any significant inconvenience to himself seemed so fantastically in character.
He twisted his hand and the servant’s body stood to obey his silent command to rip apart Mo Xuanyu’s aunt and uncle. By the time he left this place, he’d have more than enough bodies to suit his purposes; mutilating this couple beyond use was a waste he could bear.
Once their twisted flesh smeared the floor, two cuts remained on his arm. Presumably one for Guangshan. The other to be determined, but likely someone in his old friend’s employment. Easily resolved if he killed everyone in Koi Tower.
The Mo family, while apparently wealthy compared to others of their standing, had little to interest him. Their most important assets were the servants and civilians in the surrounding village, to which he would see shortly.
He spied one other minor thing of note sitting on the table they’d shared when he entered the room. He wiped a smear of blood off an invitation to an upcoming Discussion Conference in Koi Tower, written to Mo Xuanyu directly by the wife of the Jin sect heir and dripping with saccharine warmth. Despite the sheafs of complaints Mo Xuanyu had left behind to indicate he’d been forcibly removed from the tower, the woman seemed to be under the impression he’d left of his own accord.
The affection was boring, but that all the sect leaders and their strongest disciples would be gathered in one place was convenient.
Perhaps Mo Xuanyu had not been as incompetent as he suspected after all.
He slowly took the Koi Tower steps on spindle-thin and weak legs, the ferocious dead dogging his heels. One or two brave cultivators tried to get in his way; the sound of their squelching mutilation made for an appropriate anthem for his ascent. The smarter ones watched their compatriots die and chose to flee or, in one case, throw himself from the top of the steps to dash his brains upon the ground below rather than face a prolonged death.
When he reached the top, he held up a hand and the dead stopped in their tracks. Waiting. Had he wished it, they would have remained still as the air from their disturbed graves. He did not wish it. They clawed and foamed and raged, silent but unignorable.
A flick of spiritual energy opened the doors.
And there, at the front of the room in a spot which rightfully belonged to him, Jin Guangshan. His dear old friend stared at him, uncomprehending. The years had not been kind. Too much wine, sex and rich food combining with his general sloth to create a piggish caricature of who he had been in his youth.
“You—!” Jin Guangshan bit off whatever might come next, staring at him in confusion. “What are you doing here?” He looked nervously through the open doors towards the gathered dead. “Mo Xuanyu?” Jin Guangshan finally gasped out.
“No. Your bastard son is dead. Decided to skip the queue.” He wondered how this sweet new face of his looked when twisted with a cruel smile. He kept his attention on Jin Guangshan as the man’s eyes scanned him. This man, who had once known him better than even his own wife.
It allowed him to mark it the moment Jin Guangshan realized who now stood before him.
“Wen… Wen Ruohan?”
The silence in the hall cracked further, not a soul drawing breath. He cast a gaze about the room. Prior to the events leading to his death, he’d only half paid mind to the changes in leadership as his people took territory. In retrospect, his disinterest had likely been due to the effect of the Yin Iron on his mind, an unfortunate affair he only now appreciated with the clarity of retrospect.
Happily, having been among the dead for so long, he no longer needed trifles to control them.
The younger Nie brother sat where Chifeng-zun should have. This, he found, he regretted more than expected. He’d been looking forward to cracking open the man who’d stolen A-Xu from him and scraping out the wet bits.
And as for the murderer of his other son…
“Where is Wei Wuxian?” he demanded.
Uneasy looks passed between the gathered clan leaders.
Ever the staunchest enemy of silence, Yao Bang spoke up for the party, “Who?”
After a moment of shock, Wen Ruohan barked out a laugh, a growing sound which started in his gut and crept up, echoing through the hall. How wonderful; the one person capable of standing against him written out of existence. He found no other explanation for the blank and confused looks of those around him.
He had decided to be magnanimous and not begrudge the boy his victory. After all, when offered such power, who wouldn’t take advantage of it? It filled Wen Ruohan with an almost paternal pride. And now it seemed he had lost all three of his sons.
(Or had he? Something to consider. The Jiang siblings were still in attendance, the woman huddled up between Jin Guangshan’s oldest and a teenager bedecked in Jin heraldry. If nothing else, their presence gave him leverage to bring his erstwhile lamb back to the fold, assuming he still lived.)
Speaking of lambs... He caught sight of his own barely-domesticated little pet cowering behind Jin Guangshan, as though the Jin sect leader was capable of and interested in protecting him. This one, he realized, knew him even though his father did not.
“Send your lesser disciples out,” he ordered. “They are not fit to hear the words of their betters.”
“You cannot—” Jin Guangshan shut up before finishing the words, apparently remembering that this was no easily bullied little milksop standing before him.
Unsurprisingly, one of the Nie disciples decided to chance an attack. She jumped to her feet and charged forward, bringing her sabre to bear. Wen Ruohan flicked his fingers and sent her crashing back into the wall, her bones crushed to pulp with the force of the impact. Her body slid to the ground, leaving a snail’s trail of blood in its path.
“All of you currently live at my forbearance. Send your people out before it runs too thin for me to bother. If I wanted them all dead they’d already be serving at my whim.”
The sect leaders obeyed. A berobed rainbow of cultivators stood and walked out the door. The first of them braced themselves as they stepped within reach of his collected army, but when they remained unharmed the others hastened to follow, the threat of reprisal for sluggishness overcoming their fear of the corpses before them. He waved a hand and closed the door on the last of them, catching the Lan disciple’s foot in the door. The heavy wood audibly broke the bone but did not sever the limb, and barely muffled the scream.
It left the sect leaders, their senior disciples, and their families. A gratifying number of hostages to ensure the compliance of any disciples left behind in their respective seats. Or, more satisfyingly, sufficient bait to lure in more fodder for his army.
Jin Guangshan. Lan Xichen. Jiang Wanyin. Nie Whatever. And the host of lesser sect leaders who lived in whatever territory they’d cobbled together after the fall of QishanWen. Embarrassing. He remembered what true competence looked like, having stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Nie Niubai, Qingheng-jun, Yu Ziyuan. Real powers who left behind this sad collection of children, and Jin Guangshan, as unworthy inheritors to their legacies.
He said as much to watch their reactions.
Lan Xichen,
(“He will trust me, zongzhu,” Meng Yao had promised. “I’ve made sure of it.”)
unflappable save for the way his hands clenched in his lap. As a child, he’d spent hours playing with A-Xu in the rock gardens of Nightless City, though always much too delicate and concerned about propriety. Now he looked scared, his attention constantly flicking in Meng Yao’s direction, his stern-faced brother silent and taciturn at his side, prepared to strike at a moment’s notice and only held in place by his unwillingness to risk Lan Xichen and the wide-eyed boy sitting behind them.
The younger Nie brother, hardly worth considering. Hiding behind his fan, eyes wide with terror and looking as though he might faint at any moment. Nie Mingjue should have beaten him more and toughened him up.
Jiang Wanyin. His mother’s son. The Violet Spider glaring back at him the same way she had when she’d refused Wen Ruohan’s offer to become his second wife. All but begging Wen Ruohan to turn his back and provide an opening in which to strike him down.
And Guangshan. Meng Yao had inched up next to him, rightly pale with fear.
“A-Yao,” Wen Ruohan said. He snapped his fingers and pointed to the ground before him. He’d never made the younger man crawl to him before; disappointing his good faith had been so ill-placed.
Meng Yao dropped to his hands and knees, slowly inching his way forward.
“You dare!” Jin Zixuan leapt to his feet, Lan Xichen not far behind. Jin Zixuan’s wife, Jiang Yanli, grabbed his arm but did not seek to hold him back, though to the naked eye it may have seemed that way. From the fire in his eyes, and hers, Wen Ruohan realized she bolstered him. Dangerous. Especially since their interference made Meng Yao pause in his slow shuffle forward.
“Be quiet,” Guangshan ordered.
Jin Zixuan cast a betrayed look at his father. “You can’t,” he said.
Wen Ruohan looked back and forth between father and sons. How, after all, could he have chosen between A-Xu and A-Chao? Forcing anyone to do so would be sadistic.
“Guangshan, I’m going to give you the opportunity to keep one of your sons. Which one will it be?”
Without a moment's hesitation, Jin Guangshan predictably put his hand on the shoulder of his heir. Meng Yao cast a betrayed look at his father over his shoulder, his face twisting into something bitter and outraged before he brought his expression under his control.
He continued making his way forward until he knelt at Wen Ruohan’s feet. “Wen-zongzhu,” he whispered, pressing his forehead against the floor.
“A-Yao, I am very disappointed in you,” he said. “When I allowed you to release information regarding the troop movements, it was with the understanding I would be the one capitalizing on it. Not… them.” He waved to the general assembly.
He could hear the wry twist of Meng Yao’s lips in his response, “I am an opportunist, Wen-zongzhu. I believe you appreciate that about me.”
“I did,” Wen Ruohan agreed with a nod. “But you’ve nothing to offer me now.”
Meng Yao straightened. “I would not say so. Since being legitimized as Jin Guangyao, I have done everything in my power to assume control of my father’s disciples and ascend as sect leader after his death."
"Guangyao!" Jin Guangshan screamed, outraged. As though this was a thing he had not expected.
Perhaps Jin Zixuan now regretted having defended him. That he lived when Meng Yao—now Jin Guangyao, he supposed—had such ambitions implied a certain amount of fondness for his half-brother. Wen Ruohan doubted it would last through his sudden change of seasons. Affection wasn’t generally an indulgence in which opportunists safely indulged.
Jin Guangyao pressed on, "You’ll find many of them will follow my orders. Those who are not loyal can be bought. Those who do neither can be blackmailed. The rest killed. I can bring them all under your power.”
“A-Yao,” Lan Xichen choked in a much different tone than Jin Guangshan.
Jin Guangyao did not waver his attention on Wen Ruohan. “You need more than an army of the dead. Zongzhu knows they lack dexterity and intelligence. The Jin cultivators will provide that and more.”
Wen Ruohan looked back to Jin Guangshan, smiling at the satisfying shade of purple colouring his old friend’s face. “And what will your father think of this?”
“Given he has made his choice as to which of his sons he prefers, I do not believe his opinion concerns me any longer.”
Wen Ruohan slipped his toe beneath Jin Guangyao’s chin, tilting his head up to meet his eyes. “If you betray me again, there will not be enough left of your rent soul to be reborn as a beetle. Do you understand?”
“Yes, zongzhu.”
“Good. Keep your face on the floor, I don’t care to look at it.”
Jin Guangyao lowered his head so quickly his forehead practically rebounded off the stone. He stepped around the man, half hoping he’d strike again at his back and not believing for a moment he would dare.
No strike came. As he’d claimed, Jin Guangyao was an opportunist; with Wen Ruohan returned to assume power, there wasn’t anyone else more powerful to whom he might ingratiate himself. Especially not with the sect leaders all gathered in one place and now intimately acquainted with his habitual treachery.
Now for the rest of them. “I imagine you’ve all been congratulating yourselves these past years for your success in the ‘Sunshot Campaign.’” How irritating, to hear it called this in the villages he’d passed through on his way to Koi Tower. “The sun has risen again.”
He had no need of pageantry. Without so much as a snap of his fingers, he willed the dead to action. The screams of the cultivators outside as they were torn apart filled the hall with such elegant music as to remind Wen Ruohan of the home he’d enjoyed these past sixteen years at least. He spared the Jin disciples, at least, to see if Jin Guangyao’s words held true.
The Nie sect leader fainted, collapsing against Lan Xichen’s side.
He made sure the screaming lasted long enough to make his point, and abruptly had it cut off.
“As I recall, Guangshan, you have quite extensive dungeons,” he said.
“Currently occupied by my father’s experiments in demonic cultivation,” Jin Guangyao offered, helpfully.
“Oh? Guangshan, still using frames I’ve built to help yourself bloom.” He glanced back at Jin Guangyao, his eyes momentarily pausing on Lan Xichen and the man’s desperate heartbreak, laid bare across his face as he stared at the man still kowtowing on the ground. Pathetic. “Has your father done anything particularly clever?”
“Not himself. Jin-zongzhu is not as inspired as you,” Jin Guangyao reported. “But he has relied on others—myself, Mo Xuanyu, Xue Yang—to forward his ambitions.”
“Xue Yang? My little brat still breathes?”
“Yes, though his location is currently unknown.”
“Hmm. He’ll be one of the first orders of business, then, given he still has a piece of my Yin Iron.” He nudged Jin Guangyao with his foot. “Bring me whatever you’ve been working on and then move them all to their new accommodations. Then, as your first demonstration as to whether the people you’ve offered me are any good, have them send word to every major town and city: Wei Wuxian has a fortnight to return to Koi Tower before I begin killing the Jiang family, starting with the woman.”
The teenager sitting next to Jiang Yanli lunged, stopped by Jiang Yanli’s hand clamping down on the back of his robes. She looked disappointingly unafraid. Those Jiangs. What to do with them?
Wen Ruohan did not slump in his seat. He removed the numerous unnecessary pillows which had cradled Jin Guangshan’s substantial ass and sat properly as he looked out across the hall. Nightless City, he’d confirmed, had been left to ruin. It made Koi Tower, unfortunately, the most tenable place for him to preside over his rightfully reacquired domain.
Jin Guangyao had made all necessary arrangements with gratifying haste, and had set his loyal disciples to removing the Jin heraldry from the hall. They would need to commission new banners. For now, bare walls felt appropriate. A new beginning.
“Tell me,” he interrupted as Jin Guangyao reported on their numbers, “Why was my back turned to you when you killed me?”
Jin Guangyao frowned, as though puzzling out the meaning and intent of his question. “Because you trusted me.” He had the good grace not to look ashamed. He’d always appreciated that about Jin Guangyao: he only feigned shame when he felt it would get him somewhere and had long ago learned that Wen Ruohan had no use for it.
“Obviously. But what drew my attention?” He could still see the boy before him, claiming to come from hell as the Stygian Tiger Amulet circled him. The feeling of his fragile little neck in Wen Ruohan’s hand and how easily he might have crushed it all together, had his curiosity not overcome his good sense.
Well, this time Wen Ruohan knew for certain that only one of them came from hell, and it wasn’t Wei Wuxian.
“I—” Jin Guangyao frowned. “…The gathered forces?” His face twisted as though in pain, though he shook it off only a moment later. “I’m sorry, zongzhu, I seem to be lacking clarity of memory.”
“No matter. I was wondering what you remembered, and you’ve answered.” The wonderful memory he enjoyed seemed to be his purview alone. “It seems you’ve broken Lan Xichen’s heart.”
“Er-ge is kind and good. If… if there is room for him to be spared…”
Wen Ruohan sniffed out a chuckle. “Tell him what you did to Nie Mingjue.” A confession Jin Guangyao had made in hoping of further advancing himself in Wen Ruohan’s esteem. Ah, how the younger man knew him well. While he wanted to begrudge the denied pleasure of killing Chifeng-zun himself, the delicious irony of his death sat well enough to satisfy. “And see if you still consider him ‘kind and good’ once you see his response.”
“As you say.”
Jin Guangyao dipped into a bow and removed himself from the room.
Wen Ruohan looked out across the hall, the gathered puppets, the bloodstains on the wall and landing outside. The dead cultivators had been pressed into service, destined to be joined by their fellow sect members once he felt assured that no overeager young thing would come to stand in his way.
A fortnight.
He could spare a fortnight.
But no more.