from soil….
summary: albedo has learned many things, and yet sometimes it feels like he knows nothing at all.
word count: 3.9k
-> warnings: massive spoilers for albedo lore… bottom text
taglist: @samarill || @thenyxsky || @valeriele3 || @shizunxie || @boba-is-a-soup || @yum1x || @esthelily
< masterlist > || part 2 >>
as a synthetic human, albedo wasn’t raised as most were. he was ‘born’ fully grown, the shaky knees that let him stand those of an adult. rhinedottir hadn’t wasted any time, immediately beginning his training in various forms of alchemy from the moment he was oriented enough to try and speak.
he was taught the periodic table before he was told the names of colors, he was told how to tell which solvent was best for an experiment before he even understand the nature of his creation. he could recite the best methods for creating hydrogen gas by heart, he knew how to make carbon dioxide go supercritical and even experimented with ferrofluids on the side, but he didn’t know what it meant to be ‘burned’ until curiosity got the better of him and he put his hand over a flame.
he was told not to, like so many other things embedded in his memory, but never why. he knew fire was hot, of course, but.. even as his hand jerked away of its own accord, he found himself wondering what the odd feeling under his skin was.
rhinedottir was disappointed to learn of what he’d done, but had simply given him the instruction of ‘don’t hurt yourself, it’ll set you back.’
‘hurt’. thats what this was?
as he waited for his ammonia to drip into the iron solution, he picked through the many bookshelves in the room. many were scientific texts, with a few encyclopedias, but he wasn’t looking for those.
pulling down the lone dictionary with his now-bandaged hand, he flipped through the pages, keeping an eye on his experiment in his periphery as he did so.
hurt
(v) cause physical pain or injury to
(adj) physically injured
(n) physical injury; harm
how strange…
he shifted the book in his hands, staring at his wound through the bandages. carefully flexing his hand, he stopped right on the cusp of something sharp, the skin of his hand… was hurt.
albedo continued to read through various definitions, his experiment shifting in color to a dark brown without his notice.
why would he divert his attention from something so thrillingly new?
albedo was no longer a stranger to pain.
it took him far too long to realize he should probably be buying borosilicate glass equipment to handle the sort of experiments he was carrying out, only ever noticing when his third watchglass cracked under the heat of manganese heptoxide. his hands were permanently covered in little nicks, each carefully wrapped in bandages as to not get anything into them, some deep enough to scar but most barely enough to annoy.
slowly, he began to learn. he learned the safest ways to clean up shattered glass, he learned how to wrap his dominant hand and had become somewhat ambidextrous as a result. he learned when he needed to stop and take a break before he got a headache, he learned to tell when his hand was cramping from notes and took the time to practice with his other. pain was no longer unfamiliar, but it was still just as strange.
he was learning.
though he didn’t fully understand why this wasn’t taught to him, why he wasn’t told how to make a salve for burns or given a set of gloves to prevent it happening in the first place… he sort of could see why he wasn’t. pain was the result of failure, of a broken piece of equipment or a too-hot burner. it made sense.
did it?
he carefully poured water into a beaker, not paying attention to the conversation behind him. one of rhinedottir’s friends was over, as was becoming increasingly common, and he’d stopped listening once it turned to her daughter. a few compounds caught his attention, but he couldn’t afford to be distracted. the ratio of acetone and water had to be just right, and he was nearing the balance point, the solution fizzing less and less with every addition.
“she’s quite the- klee, don’t-”
without warning, something heavy crashed into albedo’s back. the bottle in his hand tipped and jerked, splashing into and over the rim of the beaker. the heater beneath it hissed as the ice cold water dripped down the side, and though he stood quickly, reaching to unplug it, it was too late. sparks flew as the wiring shorted, the red glow of the plate beginning to fade.
something hot and sharp rose in his chest, buzzing in his hands, the air turning thin. his jaw tightened with the feeling, the cord in his hand biting into his palm.
he’d knocked over his stool in his haste, and beside it was a small child, wide red eyes staring up at him. with bright blonde hair and long, pointed ears, it was clear she was the woman’s daughter.
and she had ran into him.
the woman—alice, his mind supplied, though he didn’t quite hear it—crouched besides her, pulling her up and dusting off her clothes, “klee! what did i say about running in the lab? you know it’s dangerous.”
rhinedottir sighed, leaning against the wall and looking at the failed experiment. “another failure…”
the sharp spikes of feeling turned on him in an instant, and the cord fell from his hand in surprise. he didn’t mean to mess it up! it wasn’t his fault klee was running around! why was he to blame?
“gold, it’s not his fault. i should have watched klee closer.”
“nonsense. he shouldn’t have even been using a bottle. pipettes are much more precise, and if he wished to have any sort of credibility to his findings, he should have used those to better track how much he was putting in. ‘add water until it stops foaming’ isn’t much of an instruction, you know.”
alice stood, some sort of response already forming in the draw of her brows, but albedo turned towards his mess. his hands shook as he moved the too-full beaker to a bin, the heating plate heavier than usual. he ignored the increasingly heated conversation behind him, letting his hands go through the familiar motions of disposal. his chest felt heavy, an odd pulse between his ribs reminding him of the reason he was wiping water off his desk.
he didn’t hold it against the girl, of course. she was too young to even be thought of chastised, and… rhinedottir was right. he probably should have used a pipette to add the water, or at least something less volatile than an open bottle. after this long, he should have known.
his vision blurred, the wad of towels in his hand washing into one mass. he threw the towels into the trash, his free hand coming up to wipe at his eyes. had vapor gotten into them? that wouldn’t be good if that were the case, but though they stung it wasn’t as sharp as it would be from chemicals.
albedo wiped up the last of the water, absentmindedly wondering why his chest ‘hurt’ if he hadn’t been injured.
alice visited often, usually bringing her daughter along as well. he wasn’t sure why, as she was surely too young to learn much in the way of alchemy, but she evidently had learned not to run in the lab, thankfully. she sat on a stool at her mother’s side, carefully drawing in a small notebook.
albedo stood at the sink, doing his best to focus on removing the caked sediment from his glassware. alice was talking, again, telling a story of a place he’d never been or heard of, and his thoughts admittedly wandered when he wasn’t careful. he’d wonder about the knights she was talking about, the cavalry led by a man in frosted blue, and he glanced over his own outfit. plain white, as typical, but he wondered about the dye that would have been used. he always wore white—“easier to tell when you’ve spilled something,” rhinedottir always said—and his few attempts at making dyes always ended up splotched and uneven. how did they dye clothes? or did they dye the thread first? would that be more or less efficient? was it harder to work with dyed thread, maybe, because it could wear during the weaving process?
curiosity bubbled within him as he rinsed off a stir rod, scraping off the leftover sediment with his nail. it would take too much time and space to try what he was thinking, not to mention that he didn’t even know how to go about it, but…
he turned to put it on a towel and paused, seeing klee looking up at him from her stool. she waved, shyly, pen tucked against her palm, and he hesitated for a moment before waving back. it was small, barely a raise of his fingers as to not draw attention, but she lit up anyway. her feet kicked against the stool in excitement and she hid her smile in her sketchbook, and albedo felt his own begin to form. he felt warm, a gentle feeling starting to rise. he tried to pin it down, running over the list of emotions he’d learned, but it didn’t match. it wasn’t the sharp, white-hot spike from when he’d ruined his hot plate, nor the slow but insistent press of curiosity. he felt… soft, almost, a delicate heat pushing him to smile back, gently-
“albedo.“
the sharp call of his name scattered the feeling like fish recessing deep into a lake, repulsed by the word.
rhine had cut off alice, evidently, the latter’s hands still raised mid-gesture.
“are you finished? why are you looking at klee like that?”
though it didn’t show on his face, albedo felt as confused as alice looked. her hands had moved to her sides, eyes flicking between the two of them with an odd twist to her mouth.
albedo swallowed something cold and bitter, taking a breath. “like what?”
he tried to put as much genuineness into his words as he could, but rhinedottir just shook her head.
“you know how.”
“i-“
“get back to work, albedo.”
she looked away, cutting the conversation short despite the argument still on his tongue.
he didn’t know. she never told him. none of the books in his lab ever described what it meant to be alive, to feel, to grow. he’d read all of them, cover to cover and back again, but none of them described what he wanted to know.
albedo turned back to the sink, wondering if there was a name for the cold pit in his stomach.
the next time alice comes, albedo has the time to look and properly greet her. he doesn’t have anything important or time sensitive going on, simply waiting for a dish to crystallize, and it was clear that the short wave he gave, pencil still in hand, had made her happy.
“hey albedo! what are you working on?”
almost subconsciously, his eyes flick to rhinedottir, searching for her approval, but she’s turned away, inspecting some random report on his desk. his chest feels cold as he lifts his sketchbook in lieu of a response. he’s drawn a cecelia, a kind of flower he saw on his last expedition, only ever growing near the top of a cliff.
he wonders of rhine would be proud of its accuracy, if nothing else.
“oh, a drawing?” klee seems to stand a bit straighter when she registers that the notebook in his hand is for drawing and not for research, and alice chuckles at her enthusiasm. “could we see?”
again, albedo seeks his master’s approval. he doesn’t find it.
he takes a quick look around the lab but knows there isn’t anything dangerous. the only active and open chemicals are the one in the beaker behind him, and that’s both well away from an edge and covered with a watchglass. so he nods, spinning his pen from his hand and into a pocket as they carefully move across the lab. he notes the caution with which klee steps over a fallen pen, the hand not in her mother’s tightly gripping her bag.
he tilts the book up for her to take—his heart had picked up at some point and he can see a quiver where his thumb digs into the binding, when did that happen?—but she just peers down at it from where she is, not reaching. it only takes a moment for something bright to reach her eyes, unfamiliar yet not unwelcome.
“cecelias, right?”
hesitantly, albedo nods. “i was exploring the eastern edge of mondstat, looking for valberries, but… i found these instead.”
she hums with a nod, her expression shifting slightly. “you need to go further north if you want valberries. cecelias grow on starsnatch cliff, and you want to go to stormbearer point.” albedo made a note to ask rhine where that was. “still, this is very impressive! the detail is remarkable despite not having a reference; you must’ve been blessed by the creator themself!”
her eyes glitter in a way that tells him it’s supposed to be something said in jest… but he doesn’t get the joke. behind her, rhinedottir’s head snapped up, eyes narrow, the report long discarded, and albedo takes the risk before his master can speak.
“who?”
alice’s face falls.
albedo looks over at klee for the nth time, checking that she was still happily doodling on her own paper. rhine had been swift to pull alice into a side room after her comment, so it was just them left in his lab. her, on the stool he’d offered her after her mother was pulled away, and him, still on the same chair he’d been for the past few hours. his pen felt cold in his hand despite the fact that he should have been producing more than enough body head to keep it warm, something… uneasy bubbling in his blood.
words pushed to the forefront of his mind, the same as they did every time he checked on klee, and this time he let them go.
“do you know who was alice talking about?”
she stops, the room falling silent as her pencil stills, and he feels oddly exposed in front of her wide red eyes. she reaches up to adjust her hat, the clover on it smudging lightly with graphite. “the creator?”
albedo nods. “rhine never calls people ‘creator’s of things, even masters of k-…. masters of alchemy are simply ‘alchemists’ to her. i’ve never heard of such a title before.”
klee pouts, stuffing her pencil into the rings on her notebook and settling it in her lap. between her fingers, he swears he sees something shaped suspiciously like a cecelia.
“the creator made everything! mama says that they are older than even her, and that they gave klee this!”
the stilted grammar of her words throws albedo off, but not as badly as when she reaches for her bag—nearly falling in the process—and unhooks a large glass-looking jewel inset in silver. it glitters red, a pattern of a flame engraved within, and he finds himself leaning closer. questions spring to his mind—‘how did you get it? what does it do? does it have a name? how is it made? how were you acknowledged by somebody so important at such a young age? is there even a significance to it at all? why doesn’t rhinedottir have one? does alice?’—but she speaks before he can voice them, voice unnaturally cohesive for somebody so young.
“i got my vision after i tried to make the biggest bomb ever!” after she what- “i made a mess out of my station… but mama says it’s okay! she helped me rebuild it and everything, and even stitched back on dodoco’s ear!” she points to a small plush charm hanging off her bag, leaving him with still more questions than answers.
“didn’t your mama teach you about them? why are you asking klee?”
albedo fell short.
was this something that parents typically taught their children? he supposed rhine would technically be his ‘mother’…. but even that was more in the literal sense. she was his mother as in she created him, but she was his master in that she taught him about and guided him through alchemy.
(but was that even for his sake? or was it hers?)
before he could say anything, alice had come back, a crease between her brows and a heavy frown on her face.
“come on klee, we’re leaving.”
klee quickly hooked the ‘vision’ back onto her bag and stuffed her notebook inside, slipping off the stood with a ‘bye bye albedo!’ before he even understood what had happened. her hand folded into her mothers, having crossed the room swiftly, free hand tucked under the strap of her bag.
alice gave albedo a long look, filled with a feeling he couldn’t begin to decipher, before her jaw set and the door opened, a wash of cold air sweeping in as they left.
rhinedottir nearly slammed open the door, shutting it just as harshly behind her, but albedo didn’t flinch from where he was weighing out sodium. she’d been returning from expeditions more and more irritated lately, the domains she’s been searching somehow turning up less clues each time. he’s not privy to her work, so he simply keeps his mouth shut, never offering his advice or help even when he knows it helps to talk puzzling things out.
he tapped his stir rod on the edge of his beaker, knocking off the excess solution, and listened to her go through her routine. boots off, shoes on, coat off, lab wear on. bag down, notes up, then the bang of her door.
he stifles a smile at her predictability. most of her actions are prescribed, a routine she likely follows unintentionally, but it brings him a small bit of comfort. she did the same things when she returned today as she did every other day, no mater the size of her discovery, retiring to her room to review her findings. he learned quickly to shut down any attention-sapping experiments as quickly as possible after she returned to be able to dedicate as much as he could to listening to her ramble, leaving space on his table for her diagrams. he rarely got a word in, but that just made him all the better listener, able to concisely say everything he wanted to in the moment’s space of her breaths.
with all of this in mind, he covered his beaker. the solution would be fine overnight, so long as it was chilled, and he was quite looking forward to tonight’s talk.
albedo stood from his stool and began to clean up, listening to the clock tick down.
a few hours later, rhine returns with a heavy sigh. he hears papers flap in her hands as she shuffles through them, the sound growing louder as she approaches. she sits in the chair he’d set out for her in preparation and drops her papers on the table in a messy pile, various diagrams drawn across them.
she picks out one seemingly at random, depicting a diamond-shaped sigil inset onto a large set of doors. a complex web of patterns wraps around it, ending on eight smaller sigils. below the diagram, she wrote out a quote, presumably the one inscribed across the top of the door, “when seeking those who have lost their faith / there’s not much one can do but wait / you take the swiftest trail at once / and try until your hopes prevail.”
he doesn’t know what it means, but he keeps the words in his mind as she shoves aside the rest of the papers, setting down that one and beginning to talk about how she tried to solve it.
“there’s over 40,000 combinations—i did the math—and i wasn’t going to sit there for however long it took. the geo slime condensate only had enough elemental energy preserved in it to activate all of the sigils twice, and that didn’t account for actually killing the things.”
albedo propped his arm on the table, resting his chin in his palm and staring at the paper. he took in and registered her words, of course, hearing and understanding them, but a majority of his mind was focused on the paper. each of the winding paths started at the center sigil and twisted out, quickly becoming hard to follow- likely due to erosion, since the domain seemed embedded into a cliff face.
still, he pulled at the puzzle, picking at the edges. the inscription played on loop in his mind, producing ideas just as quickly as he shut them down. it couldn’t be that they had to leave to a secondary—or more—location, since six separate places for a domain was too complex and highly unlikely. it couldn’t be that there was some sort of prayer or hymn they needed to follow, due to the same argument as the first. there had to be a simpler solution….
“have you tried activating them in the order of the pathways?”
silence.
he looks up at her lack of response, finding her with her hands raised, clearly mid-ramble.
“i apologize for inter-“
he’s cut off with a wave of her hand as she picks up the paper, flipping it towards her. “dont, you already said it. what do you mean by ‘order’? actually, don’t answer. you can tell me tomorrow.”
just as quickly as she arrived, rhine left, picking up all her papers and leaving with a swish of her coat, her door nearly slammed shut.
albedo’s eyes flicked to the clock. she was barely there for ten minutes.
why? he’d spoken up before… granted, never interrupted, but… surely that wasn’t a large enough offense that she left?
he looked around his desk, empty of any equipment or glassware in preparation for the usual hours-long talk. it was earlier than he normally went to sleep, and though he could in theory return to work…
an unusual hesitation had seeped under his skin, pulling at his hands when he tried to stand. what had he said to make her leave? he’d just wanted to help…
after a moment, he stood, awkwardly pushing in his stool. ‘tell her in the morning’…
something odd and unsettling curled around albedo’s limbs as he went through the motions of preparing for bed. his fingers felt stiff where he ran them through his hair, the sheets on his bed cold despite the fire. an unmovable weight had sat itself on his chest, telling him that he’d done something wrong, but couldn’t tell what.
he hadn’t done anything. he’d just offered his help. she was the one that broke routine.
the weight told him that he was wrong.
he didn’t know why.
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Could someone tell me where the interpretation that, in book canon, the promotion Nie Mingjue gives Meng Yao made Meng Yao's life worse than it was before, came from?
I have seen that claim made multiple times now and I've looked at the text over and over trying to see where the basis for it is and I. Can't find it? Don't get me wrong, it absolutely spells out that it does not and cannot fix everything for Meng Yao, but the idea that it was actively bad for him?
Lacking other evidence, I kind of have to assume that it comes from cql canon being sort of projected backwards onto book canon. In cql canon, meng yao is suffering active and explicit bullying and abuse from the captain while under the nie, and does so because the capain believes he has risen above his station via nmj's promotion of him. (In book canon this... isn't happening. It happens with the captain in Langya instead) However, in cql canon he has also been with the nie for years and is openly close to both Nie Mingjue and Nie Huasiang, whereas in book canon he has only been working with nie mingjue for a few months (though has, in that time, apparently become close enough to him for Lan Xichen to explicitly state Meng Yao is able to calm nmj down in ways no one else can? Ofc he does this... Right after that stops being true. But. Food for thought. Not what this post is about tho.) So, if you project the much more explicit abuse from the nie sect captain in cql back on novel jgy who has a presumably much less stable position in the sect overall you get... a meng yao for whom the promotion only means a bigger target on his back and virtually no protection from nmj, who we must assume he can't trust to talk to his about because he never mentions it. (This also explicitly violates book canon when it comes to meng yao's general behaviour, we'll talk about that in a sec)
And look. We all do frankencanon in this house. I get it. And for fanfiction that is very fun. But for a serious reading of the character, his situation, and the actions that lead from that this... doesn't make much sense, in my opinion.
So. Why is that? Why did I say this was out of character for the novel? Because Meng yao spoke up about the jin captain mistreating him. Multiple times! It's just that none of it mattered because no one cared to listen to him. This is a pretty important line for his character because it flatly shows that meng yao is not and has never seen murder as something trivial. He's not trigger happy. He will only do it if he sees no other way out that doesn't end in himself being seriously harmed. (Whether he's right or justified in these cases is not the point of this post.)
If anything remotely similar was happening in the Nie sect, he would have said so. Cql Meng Yao doesn't do this because cql Meng Yao is a different character, and also the plot wouldn't work if he did. Cql Nie Mingjue, by extension, comes off as a fundamentally less trustworthy figure in cql Meng Yao's life because apparently for whatever reason, he cannot be trusted with the information that the deputy he has already publicly defended is still being harassed, and doesn't notice even when it is really blatant. The assumtpion the audience is given is that, like a middle schooler getting the principal involved when being bullied, it would only make the harassment more viscious.
This... actually has a somewhat solid basis in the book. Because after nmj yells at the bullies in question Wei Wuxian says this.
And it is important to keep in mind that this is Wei Wuxian saying this. Not Meng Yao, not an omniscient narrator. Wei wuxian is drawing on his own experiences, likely from the Jiang family, to conclude that if someone is angry at you and thwarted by someone defending you, this generally does not make them less angry at you.
This is leaving out two crucial things, though.
Firstly, this worry isn't about the promotion at all.
The promotion hasn't even been brought up. In the novel it doesn't ctually happen immediately, it takes another few battles where meng yao continues to do his job well and nie mingjue continues praising him for him to eventually go "yeah, you deserve a raise."
This is another aspect that is being projected from cql canon onto book canon I presume, because it does happen quite quickly there, and it's a throwaway line in the books so it's easy to miss. I can't be mad about anyone forgetting the difference, but it is important to mention for this particular analysis.
Which is the second point: change in status
Wei Wuxian couldn't exactly change status within the Jiang family. (And if he could, that would just fuel rumours that he was jfm's bastard even more and make madam yu even angrier at him, etc etc.)
This isn't comparable to Meng Yao. The worry Wei Wuxian is talking about is explitly about Nie Mingjue's initial very loud defense of him. Before he has any idea Nie Mingjue is going to promote him.
Promoting him would likely decrease his chances of cultivators coming after him because now he was in a higher standing in the sect than they were. If applied to that earlier metaphor of middle school bullying it's like if the bullied kid suddenly got hired as a teacher. Which. Doesn't work with the metaphor at all. Touché. But what I am trying to say is that any payback they would have planned for him relied on the fact that they could make sure that Nie Mingjue wasn't going to be within very convenient earshot a second time, and as a random disciple Meng Yao couldn't just go complain to him every time.
But as his right hand man? Who spends most of his time working directly alongside him? Lmao. Good luck. Oh, sure, it is very likely that they feel offended a son of a whore has been raised in status above them, and many will continue to do so as jgy rises through cultivation society (in fact, Wei Wuxian's observations are absolutely on point for how Madam Jin will be treating jgy later on). But as we can also see from the way jgy is treated and how he treats others throughout the story: you can be upset all you want, but if that person is higher than you in status there's jack shit you can do about it.
If I am correct and Wei Wuxian is basing this on his experiences with the Jiang family, it makes sense why he'd miss this. Madam Yu gets to be way angrier at Jiang Fengmian as his wife than some random disciples can be at Nie Mingjue. Insulting Meng Yao, suggesting that he didn't deserve his promotion or that he earned it through less than proper means (you know who is mother is) is also an insult to Nie Mingjue and the way he chooses to run his sect. They can't do that.
Another thing I see brought up in this regard would be the tea scene. There may be no explicit harassment like in the show, but cultivators still don't respect him! The disrespect is just quieter and more subtle.
Tiny detail: these are actually not Nie cultivators
They're cultivators Lan Xichen is escorting with him, making a pitstop in heijan.
The book confirms this by basically outright stating that this is the first time they see his face, and recognize him as Jin Guangshan's bastard son.
Now, just because there is no proof that it happened doesn't mean it definitely never happened. Mdzs is a novel that often leaves stuff out or up to interpretation. Similar stuff to the tea situtation could very well be happening in the background. But I do think it is pretty significant that there is no mention whatsoever of Meng Yao having any negative treatment from Nie cultivators betwen him and Nie Mingjue meeting and him executing them while spying for Wen Ruohan, and the most we get is Wei Wuxian's personal speculation, after which he immediately goes to wax poetic about how surprised he is that Meng Yao and Nie Mingjue are getting along super well.
And, again, novel Meng Yao would have said something. He doesn't say anything about the tea scene. - Or? Does he? Notably 3zun have some very long in depth conversations that Wei Wuxian zones out from because he's busy thinking about Lan Zhan again. But let's not rely on what-ifs. Let's say that neither he nor Lan Xichen find it worth bringing up. Major reasons for that would be that a) these are not nie cultivators, nie mingjue wouldn't really have the authority to scold them. Especially because b) it's such a subtle offense it could easily be handwaved as coincidence. "They just always brush their cups clean like that!! It's wartime you know, and they were traveling! They're used to drinking from vessels that aren't thoroughly washed everytime! It's just a habit!" And would therefore not be worth reporting.
But anything worse than that? A "price tens or hundreds of times greater" like wwx mentions? He'd report it! I do understand that "well if it was happening why didn't he say something?" would, in real life, be victim blaming. This is not real life, and I am not talking about this in a matter of blame. If Meng Yao was being mistreated in the Nie and stayed silent about it, it would still not be his fault. I am talking about this in a manner of character consistency.
His admission of seeking help in the Jin sect shows that at that time and prior to it (a very good argument can be made that he loses faith in this idea) he believes that if he is being mistreated and someone with the authority to say something about it takes his side, things can improve. If Nie Mingjue standing up for him in Qinghe only made things worse, he would not have tried to ask for help in an even more hostile environment. You can call Meng Yao many things, but naïve isn't one of them.
Meng yao's later habit of completely isolating himself and lying to everyone around him comes from the fact that revealing his suffering would mean explaining several horrible things he's become complicit in and he does not feel safe admitting to that. But he's done nothing wrong here!
The reading where he says nothing would imply an either correct or incorrect belief in Meng Yao's eyes that Nie Mingjue did not much care for his wellbeing or safety. Oh sure he defended him once but doing so again multiple times would be such a bother. This also contradicts his later behaviour, where he banks solely on Nie Mingjue's protective instincts to seal his qi and escape during the confrontation in Langya. After having been caught murdering a man, he is still convinced Nie Mingjue will immediately try to help him when he is in serious danger.
And even if you very badly want to characterize Nie Mingjue as a blundering idiot who is apparently less trustworthy in Meng Yao's eyes than the jin cultivators who had already resoundly rejected him by the time he tries to ask for help with the langya captain. He doesn't say anything to Xichen either! Lan Xichen, who has explicitly and exhaustively been portrayed as kind and understanding to Meng Yao's circumstances and very willing to talk to Mingjue if Meng Yao wants something from him he doesn't otherwise think he'd get. The conversation Mingjue overhears where Meng Yao's new position in the Nie is explictly brought up would be kind of the perfect time to go "yeah I've been promoted but I'm not treated well by other soldiers" aaaand. Nothing. So unless you come to the conclusion that Meng Yao trusted the Jin he told about the captain's abuse more than Lan Xichen you kind of have to conclude that Meng Yao's treatment after his promotion improved significantly. And that even if people still disliked him they could not openly do anything about it because he was high enough in status for that to be socially inappropiate. Which is, explicitly, one of his main motivators over the entire course of the story: Avoiding mistreatment by getting high enough on the social ladder it doesn't matter what people think of him, they can't hurt him.
And I'm not sure how to reconcile that character journey with the idea that he would, at any point, have preferred to keep his head down and stay where he was. When he was so desperate to crawl his way out.
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