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ibijau · 2 years

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Like every six months, time for some more half demon nhs

also on AO3

It was nothing unusual for Lan Xichen to be made to wait at the gate of the Burial Mounds when he came to visit. Since he rarely ever saw the Wens who lived there, he strongly suspected that they were sent to hide away whenever there was a visitor, on the off chance that this time Lan Xichen might remember they were supposed to be his enemies and he ought to slaughter them.

Lan Xichen had long ago stopped being offended by that lack of trust. If that was what these people needed to do to feel safe, if it was the cost of seeing his brother, then he would let them have this.

Still, this time the wait struck him as rather longer than usual, something confirmed when Wen Ning returned and apologised for the delay, explaining that they already had a guest. Lan Xichen naturally offered to return later in the day, or at a different date entirely, but Wen Ning meekly assured him it wouldn’t be necessary, that it was perfectly fine for him to meet that other visitor. As they walked toward the Demon Slaughter Cave, Lan Xichen wondered who else might be there.

He knew he was hardly the only one to secretly come to Yiling sometimes. Jiang Cheng and him usually coordinated to make sure they didn’t come at the same time to avoid rumours of a coalition if they were discovered. Thus, Lan Xichen knew for a fact this visitor couldn’t be his fellow sect leader, whom he'd been in touched with recently. But it might have been Jiang Yanli and her husband, who felt a little less the need to keep their connection to the Burial Mounds hidden… though surely Lan Xichen would have heard about it from Jin Guangyao, wouldn’t he? His sworn brother always worried and fretted when Jin Zixuan did such reckless things, especially with his health still impacted from that incident some years prior... but of course, Jin Zixuan still did things his own way whenever he could.

When he entered the cave, Lan Xichen found no Jiang Cheng, nor did he see Jiang Yanli and her husband. Instead there was a complete stranger, a man with a face so ordinary that it was forgotten as soon as one stopped looking at him.

A face a little too forgettable, in fact, Lan Xichen thought after his eyes glanced over at the stranger a few times and he still couldn’t say what he looked like. It had to be an illusion, a disguise of some sort. But if Lan Xichen could spot it, so could Lan Wangji, who seemed to have no problem with that guest’s presence. Seeing no reason to cause a scene, Lan Xichen greeted the man just as politely as he’d greeted his brother and brother-in-law.

“Lan Da-ge, you are just the man I wanted to see,” Wei Wuxian exclaimed, offering him a seat at their table that Lan Xichen took with only mild reluctance after noticing the sadly unavoidable filth.

“Wei gongzi, did you already run out of hot pepper?” Lan Xichen asked with a smile, acting as if the stranger’s presence changed nothing to their usual banter. “You go through it so fast these days. I only have a little today, I will have to bring more next time.”

“No, I’m afraid it is something a little more serious than that,” Wei Wuxian replied, glancing toward that stranger, who hadn’t even been introduced to Lan Xichen. Or had he, and the name hadn’t stuck? There was something about that man that made it difficult to think about him for long, as if he needed to be forgotten. How odd. Hiding a face was one thing, but to make oneself so utterly forgettable required great power. “Lan Da-ge, we’ve just received some very concerning news. Some people want to eliminate me and get rid of Nie zongzhu by blaming us for the upcoming murder of Jin Zixuan and his family.”

“Are you sure?” Lan Xichen asked, too shocked to think of any other question, only too see Wei Wuxian glance again at the stranger. Before Wei Wuxian could reply, he made himself look at that stranger, forcing his unwilling mind to keep his gaze on him even when every part of him only wanted to look away.

“Are you truly sure?” he insisted, guessing that stranger to be the source of that information. “Jin gongzi and his family are in danger?”

The stranger confirmed it. He had to have confirmed it, though Lan Xichen couldn’t recall it, not even when it had only just happened. It would have been impossible to say if his voice was soft or deep. In fact, Lan Xichen couldn’t even be quite sure the stranger was a man.

“Do you have proof?” Lan Xichen insisted, still staring at the person. “It is not that I think such a possibility unlikely. I know the Jins have their enemies. But I can hardly take action based on rumour alone. However if you have proof I will warn my sworn brothers and…”

But he wouldn’t, it couldn’t be allowed, a protest rose in his mind, though it was not his own voice which had spoken it. That protest sounded quite urgent, but also irritated. Somehow, that irritation stuck with Lan Xichen in a way nothing else about that forgettable person could. It felt… familiar, nostalgic almost, as if Lan Xichen had already seen displays of annoyance from that stranger, but not in a long time.

“Well, he can and should warn Nie zongzhu,” Wei Wuxian remarked to the stranger. “But on the Jin side…” he grimaced, and turned back to Lan Xichen. “Lan Da-ge, neither Nie zongzhu nor I are on good terms with the people of Lanling. The less the Jins know about this, the better.”

The stranger said something that Lan Xichen didn’t quite get, an insult of some sort, but which Wei Wuxian understood without problem and which made him laugh joylessly. Whatever was going on with that man, it appeared to affect only Lan Xichen. It had to be someone he knew, then, or someone who expected to be known by him at least, but also someone who both Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji trusted enough to use that sort of camouflage in their presence.

Jiang Cheng came to mind again, but why would he feel the need to hide from Lan Xichen? And why would he suddenly distrust Lanling Jin, when he’d always been on good terms with them, better even than Lan Xichen himself, whose brother’s bold marriage to the Yiling Patriarch had put in a difficult position with that sect.

It couldn’t be Nie Mingjue either, who wouldn’t have bothered with such disguises, and who held for Wei Wuxian little more affection than he had for the Jins. To this day, he unreasonably still believed that his brother might have continued living a relatively peaceful life if only he hadn’t so openly taken Wei Wuxian’s side. An opinion that Lan Xichen had long shared, though he was now too invested in the survival of the people of the Burial Mounds to allow himself such thoughts.

Besides, even hidden like this, it was obvious the stranger just wasn't tall enough to be Nie Mingjue.

“I understand that you wish to keep certain details from me, and from others,” Lan Xichen said, smiling as amicably as he could when he was so worried. “But please understand as well that it will be difficult for me to help if I do not know anything about this plot, except that it exists. Do you know who is behind it? How the murder is to be attempted? Anything at all?”

It would be demons killing them, said the stranger, and Lan Xichen got a sense of anticipation in that voice, as if his reaction to this revelation would be carefully watched. At some other time, it might have irritated him to be watched in such a manner, but right then the shock of such an accusation was too great.

Demons!

And yet, it made sense. In a tragic, horrific manner, it made sense. It was well known that Wei Wuxian had been friends with at least one demon. Lan Xichen knew that his brother-in-law might not have easily forgiven Nie Huaisang’s attack on his shijie. But anyone accusing him of attempted murder would probably argue that Wei Wuxian simply didn’t hold any real affection for Jiang Yanli, making it easy to work now with demons, supposing they didn't blame him for that incident that had disfigured her. And of course it was equally easy to accuse Nie Mingjue of colluding with demons, when he had tried so hard to protect his brother.

“That is a rather cunning plan,” Lan Xichen stated with a frown, feeling the eyes of the faceless stranger on him. “But would it really be demons doing it, or humans pretending to be demons? I can’t imagine demons wanting to be involved in the affairs of cultivators. They never did before.”

During the sunshot campaign, was what Lan Xichen meant, when power hungry demons (or flesh hungry ones, if some tales were to be trusted) could so easily have joined either side and changed the course of the war even more dramatically than Wei Wuxian’s new cultivation method had.

But Lan Xichen, perhaps, thought also of Nie Huaisang, of the way his human friends had turned on him, while no demon had ever reached out to him even when his true nature had been revealed. Surely if demons had taken interest in the politics of the cultivation world, they should have done so when Nie Huaisang was still alive to give them the perfect excuse?

“An attempt was made to hire demons,” Wei Wuxian confirmed, glancing at the stranger. “But…”

But no demon would harm Jin gongzi and his family, Lan Xichen felt, thought, heard, the stranger sitting very straight, determination obvious even through whatever spell made it impossible to truly remember him. Jin Zixuan and his family would in fact be protected by demons, if at all possible, as would be Nie Mingjue.

“Why would demons protect…” Lan Xichen started asking, before an idea hit him. “For Huaisang?” he wondered, only to feel how ridiculous that idea was. “No, it’s impossible. Or is it? I understand that demons live by different rules than humans. Is it possible that perhaps Huaisang’s mother would consider herself indebted to the sect that raised her son, that she would make sure nobody would unjustly accuse Da-ge?”

It sounded naive even to his own ears, yet unexpectedly it provoked a strong reaction in that odd stranger: for less than a heartbeat the man’s magic wavered, just long enough for Lan Xichen to notice a familiar red mark on his forehead.

It wasn’t exactly a shock that the stranger should be a demon. Few humans would have been powerful enough to mess with Lan Xichen’s senses that way.

And yet just a glimpse of that mark shocked Lan Xichen.

“You’re of the same clan?” he gasped. “Huaisang’s clan? It’s what demon marks show, isn’t it? You’re Huaisang’s family?”

Something like that, the stranger conceded, and now Lan Xichen could almost hear his voice. The stranger then expressed his surprise that this would be the detail he cared about, when surely he should be more worried about that murder plot against his friends.

“He was my friend too,” Lan Xichen replied. “I bear some guilt in what happened to him, and I am sorry for what he did, and sorrier still for what happened to him, but that doesn’t change the fact he was my friend.”

A friend, a little brother, and perhaps something else too toward the end, not that Lan Xichen had ever dwelt on it much, be it then or now. Then, they’d both had too much on their mind, too much to deal with in the aftermath of the sunshot campaign. Now Nie Huaisang was dead, and any lingering feelings didn’t really matter.

“He was set up, you know,” the stranger said, his voice still unrecognisable, and yet he’d lost his self control enough that Lan Xichen could actually hear him now. “It was a trap.”

Lan Xichen stared at the stranger, whose words were at once shocking and entirely within what Lan Xichen had long believed. Of course Nie Huaisang had been set up. Why else would he have killed Nie disciples that terrible day, when his only quarrel was with the Jins? Why attack Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli, both people Nie Huaisang liked, unless he’d been pushed to it? But if there had been a trap, someone must have laid it, and that was not something Lan Xichen particularly wanted to think about, fearing what realisations would arise from it.

“If he was set up, then I hope someday the true culprit can be found,” Lan Xichen told the stranger. “I hope his name can be cleared. If you can help with that, come to me when this current business has been dealt with, and we’ll see what can be done to restore Nie Huaisang’s name.”

Whatever glamour hid the stranger flickered again, enough to get a better glimpse of his face. There was something familiar about him, making Lan Xichen wonder if perhaps Nie Huaisang had siblings among demons too, siblings who perhaps cared about him just as much as his human brother did, enough to wish to protect his friends and defend his memory.

But that moment of weakness in the stranger passed, and his determination strengthened. All of a sudden Lan Xichen found himself once more unable to truly hear his voice, and barely able to remember what he’d looked like in that brief moment, the demon’s aura strong enough to affect even memories.

Now was not the time to worry about those who had been lost, the demon must have said, and they should focus instead on protecting those who still lived. Something they could only do if Lan Xichen did his part, if he contacted Jiang Yanli, Nie Mingjue, and absolutely nobody else.

“I will do that,” Lan Xichen promised, a little annoyed at the demon’s insistence, and yet far more annoyed by the feeling that if he hadn’t just heard about Nie Huaisang being manipulated, he might have been tempted to share that secret with Jin Guangyao too and ask him for ideas on how to proceed. Now, though…

Now, even if it turned out that Jin Guangyao had played no part in what had happened to Nie Huaisang (as Lan Xichen believed, as he hoped), then at least there was someone near him who had, someone who must have been an enemy of the Nies, and so he could not be involved in preventing that plot against Jin Zixuan and Nie Mingjue.

It had to have been that, Lan Xichen told himself when the urge to be suspicious made itself felt. It had to have been someone close to Jin Guangyao who had found out his plan to let Nie Huaisang make friends again, and used it to almost plunge them all into another war by using Jin Zixun to cause chaos. Jin Guangyao, who had loved Nie Huaisang nearly as dearly as Lan Xichen or Nie Mingjue, who had always done his best to protect Nie Huaisang and prove that his revealed nature did not make him dangerous, could never have been accused of plotting dark schemes against their young friend.

Or at least, he couldn’t be accused without some strong proof. And Lan Xichen didn’t have time to investigate right then.

As that demon was saying, what mattered at the moment was to protect the living. Bringing justice to the dead would have to wait.

#demon nhs #nie huaisang #lan xichen #wei wuxian #mo dao zu shi #mdzs #jau writes

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