JC adopts stray/rouge cultivators after the war au to cope with the destruction of lotus pier. also i love your writing so much!!
Gratuitously Acquired - ao3
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1
At first, he took anyone who would join, needing numbers – needing people. There were plenty of cultivators that wanted to be associated with a great sect. Plenty, too, that were barely more than criminals, wanting to use the smoke and ash of war to obscure the past, to cover up old crimes and wash themselves clean.
Jiang Cheng wasn’t in any position to refuse them. Soldiers were soldiers.
After the war ended, though…
Some he cast out. Others, even more despicable, he slaughtered for what they’d done.
A few –
“Yan Qiao.”
The female cultivator in question, who had been sneaking out of the still mostly ruined Lotus Pier at night in flagrant violation of curfew, froze in her tracks.
“Uh,” she said. “Sect Leader Jiang. Fancy finding you…here…now…at this time…”
Jiang Cheng looked at the basket of buns in her hands. “You’re stealing leftovers from our kitchens to feed orphans among the common people,” he said. “Again.”
She blushed. “No one wants them now that there’s better available, Sect Leader! Really, they’ll only go stale, and then rot – and I never stole when it was the army eating them!”
“That’s not the point,” Jiang Cheng said irritably. “Tell me, how in the name of heavens did you really get branded as a criminal? Distributed too many alms? Did too much charity?”
Yan Qiao coughed, turning red. “I told you before, Sect Leader. I killed a man.”
“He must have done something particularly heinous, then. You’re shitat killing.”
“Now I am. Sect Leader, if you don’t mind…”
“You’re one of the ones who wants my surname, right?” he interrupted. “Consider it granted.”
Yan Qiao – no, he supposed he’d better start thinking of her as Jiang Qiao – gaped at him. “But…Sect Leader!”
“I’ve barely granted it to anyone, so you’d better live up to it, you hear me?” Jiang Cheng said in his best threatening voice. He’d been assured by several people that it was really quite threatening, anyway. “I don’t want any excuses. Now go feed your damn orphans, and in the morning I want a report on how you think we can do it in a more structured manner. I can’t have you sneaking off every night anymore! Now that you’re a Jiang, you’re going to have work.”
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2
When they were done with war and started firmly on rebuilding, the Jiang sect’s name was firmly reestablished as a Great Sect once more, it was the opportunists that came.
Smiling faces, sycophantic voices, cowards one and all – like beetles crawling out of the woodwork, not willing to risk their lives, but willing enough to beg for scraps and advantages later on when it seemed safe enough to do so.
Jiang Cheng wanted to chase them all away, but his sect was still weaker than he wanted to admit, still rebuilding, still more army than civilian operation. They had valiant soldiers by the dozen, but they needed more than that. They needed administrators, supervisors, artisans, smiths, merchants, laundry-women…
They needed workers. The ones they got – well, cowards they might be, but skills they had.
He still rejected most of the worst of them.
Most.
“Bo Zhou,” he said, inspecting the surprisingly flush list of taxes they’d collected that quarter, and the man in question turned to grin unrepentantly at him. “You’d tell me if you were a con artist in a previous life, right?”
“A previous life, Sect Leader?” Bo Zhou said. He was still grinning, but then, he was always grinning. He had a crooked leg and an even more crooked heart, and he’d probably steal candy from little children if he happened to have a hankering, but he was amazing at getting people to do what he wanted. Too amazing, really. “Why limit yourself? What about thislife?”
“…Bo Zhou. Tell me you aren’t a former con artist.”
“I may or may not have had a sideline selling snake oil and protective talismans before I became a cultivator,” Bo Zhou admitted cheerfully, and Jiang Cheng pinched the bridge of his nose – less out of actual irritation and more to keep from actually laughing. The only person he knew that was more shameless than Bo Zhou was Wei Wuxian; he couldn’t wait to introduce them once Wei Wuxian stopped skulking around in wine shops long enough to get back to doing his job as Jiang Cheng’s head disciple and right hand. “Who would’ve known that making all those fake talismans ended up making me pretty good at making actual talismans when I became a cultivator? Really, who could have called that?”
Jiang Cheng rolled his eyes. “Who taught you how to cultivate, anyway? Can I – I don’t know – seek vengeance on behalf of the rest of the world or something?”
Bo Zhou rolled his eyes right back at him. Shameless! “Is this about the taxes? Just be happy I got them all!”
“I can’t just be happy! What if this money is stolen property?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Sect Leader. They’re what we shouldbe getting, and from all the right people. You told me this was the right amount yourself!”
“Yes, but no one ever actually pays the full amount!” Jiang Cheng enjoyed the way Bo Zhou’s jaw dropped. “I just wanted to see if you could actually do it.”
“I’m hurt at your lack of trust.” Bo Zhou paused, considering. “Also a little impressed at you for keeping a straight enough face to trick me. Well done, Sect Leader.”
“Yeah,” Jiang Cheng said. “You too, Jiang Zhou.”
“It’s Bo…” He trailed off, comprehension arriving and speech departing, and this time he didn’t have a quick retort. He’d been nagging Jiang Cheng on and off for the Jiang surname for the last few weeks, more joking than anything else – he knew that Jiang Cheng hadn’t given his surname to the vast majority of the new people in his sect, only the very few he thought were worth it.
Jiang Cheng enjoyed the newly dubbed Jiang Zhou’s moment of speechlessness thoroughly, since he was moderately sure he wasn’t going to get another one anytime in the next – ever, possibly.
“You proved your worth and your trustworthiness,” he said, patting Jiang Zhou on the shoulder. It occurred to him that he should probably come up with a courtesy name for the man, although he wasn’t sure the man would want one. “Also, congratulations, you’re now the person in charge of tax collection. See if you can think up some new thoughts about supplementing our income, will you? We have so many costs, and I don’t want to rely on Lanling Jin more than I can help it, not like Gusu Lan…”
“Oh, really?” Jiang Zhou interrupted, abruptly excited. “I have so many ideas! How ethical do you want to be about this?”
Jiang Cheng paused. “…very?”
“Be reasonable, Sect Leader!”
“…moderately?” he tried, a little more desperately.
“I can work with moderately. I don’t suppose you’d accept ‘thin and barely plausible veneer’?”
“No.”
“Oh well. Moderately ethical it is!”
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3
Most of the Jiang sect was slaughtered during the attack on the Lotus Pier. Disciples Jiang Cheng had grown up with his whole life, had expected to see by his side in the future, his friends, his family, even his petty childhood enemies – all gone.
Well, not all gone. There were some Jiang disciples that had been away from Lotus Pier at the time, whether on some errand or a night-hunt or other reasons; they rushed back to his side as soon as they could, of course, and formed the core of Jiang Cheng’s new Jiang sect. When he’d felt utterly alone, when even Wei Wuxian was missing, they had been there for him. They’d preserved their lives and then they’d promised them to him, and it wasn’t until they knelt before him that he really felt like a Sect Leader.
There was no way he could give any of them up now.
“Jiang Meimei, you can’t go,” he said, having completely abandoned all shame in favor of clutching at her robes as if he were a child. “I need you!”
“I’m not even a proper Jiang disciple!” she exclaimed, exasperated – or possibly just annoyed that her grand plan to sneak out in the middle of the night had been stymied by his ambush. “Just because my surname is still Jiang doesn’t mean I didn’t get kicked out, remember?”
“I thought you just left,” Jiang Cheng said, temporarily distracted. “No one ever really talked much about it, actually, but to the extent anyone did, they said that you’d decided that your inclinations were more suited to being a rogue cultivator. That you didn’t want to be weighed down by sect expectations –”
“Hah!” Jiang Meimei tossed her head. “As if it wouldn’t be better to be a roving sect cultivator than a rogue cultivator! I won’t deny that I had a fair bit of wanderlust in my youth –”
“You’re only ten years older than me, you’re not that old.”
“Shut up, brat.”
“You can’t tell me to shut up, I’m your sect leader.”
“You’re my baby cousin is what you are, and, again, I’m actually not part of the Jiang sect!”
“That’s ridiculous,” Jiang Cheng argued. “You’ve been at my side during the entire Sunshot Campaign.”
“I wasn’t going to let my baby cousin get himself murdered, now was I?” Jiang Meimei sniffed. “But I’m still a rogue cultivator. They kicked me out when I wouldn’t accept a marriage, and I’m still firm on that.”
Jiang Cheng blinked. “Wait, you don’t want to be married? Really?” he asked, concerned. “But what about poor Liu Lingling? You shouldn’t be sleeping with her if you don’t intend to be serious about it! I’m pretty sure she’s just waiting for the current project you’re working on to finish to find a matchmaker to exchange birth characters –”
“They wanted me to marry a man,” Jiang Meimei clarified, but her habitual frown had eased considerably; she looked almost on the verge of a smile. “A-Cheng, you’re being dense again. You’re the Sect Leader of a Great Sect now. You know that that means you need to have alliances, marriage contacts with other sects, and that means using your subsidiary branches.”
“Jiang Meimei, you’re the one being dense,” Jiang Cheng said. “You think I’d force you into a marriage? I don’t have subsidiary branches. I barely have a sect, even after all this time. I’m not Wen Ruohan, handing out my surname to anyone who wants it – I only give it to the ones that matter, the ones I want to keep, and those of you that actually share my blood are even rarer, even more precious. How could I give you away?”
Jiang Meimei pursed her lips.
“I really do need you,” Jiang Cheng said quietly. “You weren’t part of the Jiang sect at all, not really, but you still came to help me – you were there from the beginning of the Sunshot Campaign, and you’ve never strayed, never left. You’re my right hand. I can’t do without you.”
Jiang Meimei turned her head away. “It’s not that I want to leave you,” she said. “But becoming a rogue cultivator was hard enough the first time. I couldn’t rely on any of the things that I had always had, everything always changing. I was young and angry then, I could handle it, but things are different now. I’m less flexible, less compromising, older, more tired – I can’t just walk out on a whim and just rough it anymore. I have a girl who, yes, I want to eventually marry; I want to have children. I need certainty. Are you going to give it to me?”
Jiang Cheng looked down at his hands. He’d known it was going to have to come to this, but he’d been dragging his feet, not wanting to succumb to a reality that already existed. Had existed for longer than he wanted to admit, as if simply denying it would mean that it wasn’t the truth.
Like a child.
“Yes,” he said, though it tore his heart out of his chest to do it. “I will. Jiang Meimei…will you take the position of Head Disciple?”
Wei Wuxian wasn’t coming back. Jiang Cheng had already cast him out of the sect, just like Jiang Meimei had been, except in Wei Wuxian’s case it had been something that Wei Wuxian himself had demanded. He was living in Yiling now, and by all reports was quite happy there with his little Wen sect family that he’d picked over Jiang Cheng and all his family.
He was never coming back.
It was time to move on.
“Yes,” she said, and shoved her pack into his chest. “Now go unpack that for me. Consider it payment for driving me to extreme measures!”
“I’m your sect leader, you know,” he grumbled. “Officially, now. You could show me some respect.”
“Would you rather pay for my wedding down the line?”
“I’m going, I’m going!” And then, as he scurried over away, he shouted over his shoulder: “As if I wouldn’t be paying for it anyway! You think my Head Disciple’s going to be married in anything other than top style? Better start planning…”
“Don’t rush me! Brat!”
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4
Jin Ling wasn’t surnamed Jiang, but he was the most important person in all of the Lotus Pier – and Jiang Cheng wanted to make sure everyone knew it. It hadn’t been easy for him to get the chance to help care for Jin Ling, especially here, so far away from home; Jiang Cheng had expected to barely be allowed to visit, to have to cool his heels outside of Lanling City begging just for a glimpse of him. Being able to take him home to raise for half the year, even if it was due to the dangerous infighting amongst Lanling Jin, was more than he’d ever dreamed.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t clear that Jin Ling himself agreed.
“He’s still crying,” Jiang Cheng muttered, rubbing his eyes. “Surely he’s got to stop sometime? I mean, just – physically?”
“They say a boy resembles his mother’s brother,” Jiang Meimei said, echoing the gesture. “If he’s got your lungs and stamina, Sect Leader, we’re doomed.”
“I’m rethinking the whole having children thing,” Liu Lingling said blearily, having fallen asleep on her soon-to-be wife’s shoulder several times, only to be woken up by the next round of crying. “I need sleep.”
“Go get some, both of you,” Jiang Cheng ordered. When his cousin scowled at him, he scowled back. “I’m serious. If he keeps this up, we’re going to need to go into shifts. I can last a bit longer.”
“That’s a filthy lie.”
“It is not. Your sect leader has given you an order – get to it!”
It was a filthy lie.
Jiang Cheng opened his eyes when the crink in his neck grew too irritating to ignore, at which point he realized he’d been asleep – and, more importantly, that Jin Ling was somehow not crying.
He sat up with a start, suddenly terrified: had something happened to him? Had he been silenced forever? Had Jiang Cheng failed this one last duty he had to his sister?
“Shhh, little one,” someone was whispering, not far away. “Let me tell you the one about the Weaver Girl and the Cowherd, yeah? You seem like someone who’d appreciate stars. It all started –”
Jiang Cheng went to go look.
A teenage girl was rocking Jin Ling in her arms and telling him a story in murmured tones, and Jin Ling was yawning and trying to gnaw on her shirt. She wasn’t even a cultivator, as far as Jiang Cheng could tell. Her clothing suggested some level of poverty, her accent the countryside – how’d she even end up here?
He wasn’t sure he cared.
Jiang Cheng didn’t want to disturb her, but he did anyway; a shift of his weight, a scuffling of his feet, and the floor creaked. The girl jumped, startled, but luckily Jin Ling was already most of the way asleep and just grumbled a little instead of starting to screech.
“How’d you do that?” Jiang Cheng asked, nodding at Jin Ling. “Make him stop crying.”
“My mother had seven kids after me,” the girl said, answering automatically. “And her sister had six. Someone had to learn to deal with all those babies, and it ended up being me. Think it’s just habit after this long.”
Jiang Cheng couldn’t handle one baby. He couldn’t even imagine.
That’s when the girl seemed to remember herself, and bit her lip. “Uh, sorry,” she said, hanging her head. “I heard him crying and I couldn’t resist...I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to be here. It was an accident.”
“How did you get here?” Jiang Cheng asked, because accidental or not, a security breach was still a security breach. “And who are you, anyway?”
“My name’s A-Hua. I’m here to work in the kitchens, just got hired this morning; the fourth cook is my uncle’s wife’s cousin, she got me a job, said it was a good place to start – I was trying to find my way out so I could go to the servant’s quarters to get some sleep, but then I got lost…”
More likely she’d decided it was better to try to stay somewhere indoors than go out in the pouring rain to try to find her way to the right set of quarters, Jiang Cheng thought to himself. “Give me your hand.”
“Uh. What?”
He ignored her stare, took her hand and felt her pulse. There was a little bit of natural talent there, though not much; she might, if she tried hard enough, become a cultivator, but she’d never be more than a servant.
Unless, of course, she did something unusual to impress someone.
“Forget the kitchens,” Jiang Cheng told her. “You’re hired on a provisional basis to keep an eye on Jin Ling.”
The girl nodded, eyes wide as saucers. “Can you – do that?”
Jiang Cheng rolled his eyes. “Yes, I can. What’s your surname? You can’t go around being called A-Hua, we have at least seven people that I know of that go by that name.”
The girl looked distressed.
She probably didn’t have a proper surname. Some people in the countryside didn’t.
But they really couldn’t go around shouting “A-Hua” every time Jin Ling was crying, which was basically all the time.
“Fine,” he said, giving in. “Do well, and I’ll consider letting you use mine. But only if you do well!”
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5
Jiang Cheng was covered in mud thanks to a successful-but-at-what-cost night hunt and angry about it, stomping around the lotus pools on his way back to town, when he heard the familiar sounds of someone having a panic attack.
He slowed, involuntarily, and took a look: it was some teenager dressed in black, heaving miserably by a tree.
Jiang Meimei had once said that Jiang Cheng was a bit weak when it came to teenagers.
Jiang Cheng said that was nonsense.
Jiang Hua chimed in, quite loyally (if perhaps not with the best timing), and said he wasn’t.
Jiang Cheng yielded the argument at once to keep Jiang Meimei from laughing herself sick.
In view of that, he was better off ignoring the kid. After all, what was it to him that some kid was having a fit of anxiety right next the same old lotus pool that he used to have his own teenage fits of anxiety next to, under the shade of the same old tree that had sheltered him – one of the few places that remained untouched by the Wen sect’s aggression, one of the few places that was exactly the same?
Jiang Cheng groaned and walked over. “Okay, fine. What’s your problem?”
The kid looked up at him. He had dark circles under his eyes. “I think my heart’s about to explode.”
“That’s just the anxiety,” Jiang Cheng said, and sat down next to him. “What’s causing the anxiety? Don’t say that someone is better than you and your parents are disappointed in you.”
“What?” the kid blinked. “No, it’s not – it’s not that. I’m about to screw up the very first job I ever got.”
Jiang Cheng considered that. It was just different enough from his own issues that he didn’t suspect a plot, and yet close enough that he might actually be able to offer some expertise.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked reluctantly.
“Not to some mud-man,” the kid said, and – hey! It wasn’t that bad. He thought, anyway. Actually, it probably was that bad. “I just…I’m the only one left. I have to make something of myself!”
Jiang Cheng’s eye twitched. “What do you mean, you’re the only one left?”
The kid stuttered through his story. It wasn’t as bad as Jiang Cheng had initially feared, but it was still pretty bad – his small village had had bad harvests, and there had been starvation, a bad winter; the kid had been sent out to get help, but it had taken too long and he’d arrived back to find them all already gone. He’d been lost, but some traveling cultivator had agreed to take him on as a disciple provided he proved himself, had taught him all sorts of skills, cultivation and talisman-writing and music –
“Music?” Jiang Cheng asked. “Not the sword?”
“There was only the one,” the kid explained. “Obviously he kept it for himself.”
Jiang Cheng didn’t think much of that – surely this cultivator, whoever he ws, could have shared, just long enough to teach? – but he didn’t comment. It seemed fairly clear that the kid didn’t actually think very highly of his teacher, although he was very earnestly trying to be appropriately filial.
It was a little cute.
“…and I was supposed to wait here for someone when they came by here, some fancy rich person, and then get them to follow me, but it’s been ages and no one’s come by at all!” the kid wailed. “I’m such a screw up!”
“You don’t even know who you’re waiting for?” Jiang Cheng asked, and the kid shook his head. “How were you supposed to get them to follow you, then?”
The kid scratched his nose. “My master said that if I showed off some of my cultivation, they’d follow me right away.”
Jiang Cheng suppressed a smirk. “It must be very impressive cultivation, then.”
“…not really. I only know one trick,” the kid admitted. “But it’s not that hard, and it looks impressive – here, see, wait; give me a second, I just need to whistle –”
Zidian crackled to life on Jiang Cheng’s finger before the kid finished the first stanza.
“Stop that!” he cried out, leaping to his feet, and – startled – the kid stopped, blinking owlishly at him. “Is that what your master taught you?!”
“Yes?” the kid said. “Did I do it wrong?”
Jiang Cheng gnashed his teeth. “That’s demonic cultivation. Never do that, okay? Ever.”
“But then how am I supposed to get the fancy rich person to follow me, assuming he ever showed?”
Jiang Cheng’s eyes narrowed. If he hadn’t tripped over that branch and fallen into the mud – if he hadn’t taken an extra half-shichen to struggle out of the mire – if he’d walked by in all his usual finery, rich person that he was, and seen some kid practicing demonic cultivation…
He’d have given chase in a heartbeat.
More to the point, everyone knew he would. His reputation had been pretty much set in stone by this point.
“Let’s go find that master of yours,” he said. “Right now.”
Of course, that ended up leading Jiang Cheng straight into the bastard’s trap, which would have been a problem except that he’d taken the time to send someone to tell Jiang Qiao, who’d been waiting for him back in town, that he’d be a bit late and not to worry, just wait where she was.
She’d ignored his instructions and arrived just in time to knife the demonic cultivator – a human trafficker whose operations Jiang Cheng had shut down with extreme viciousness only a few months before – right in the belly, gutting him like a fish in a swift easy motion.
“I think I’m getting the hang of it again,” she said, smiling at the knife, and Jiang Cheng made a mental note to ask exactly how manymen she’d killed to get that criminal brand of hers, except the poor kid was sinking down to his knees with a horrified look and, shit, that horrible bastard, evil as he might have been, was probably the last person the kid had in this whole rotten world, wasn’t he?
“Does Jiang Hua still have those beginner manuals we dug up for her?” Jiang Cheng asked, and Jiang Qiao nodded. “Good. Tell her that starting today, Jiang Jianwen here’s her little brother. She’s been pining over raising someone ever since Jin Ling got to be too old to snuggle.”
The kid looked up with wide eyes.
“No, you don’t get a choice on the name,” Jiang Cheng told him. “Whatever name this piece of crap gave you, just forget it, you hear me? You can do better than him. But no more demonic cultivation!”
-
+1
“I wish I could visit the Lotus Pier,” Wei Wuxian mumbled, looking wistfully downriver. They were very close by, but he still didn’t dare, even though Jiang Cheng had grumpily extended an invitation through Jin Ling. So much had happened – he just didn’t know where to even start.
He didn’t want to get into all that messy history with Jiang Cheng.
He just wanted to visit, that’s all.
He missed Jiang Cheng, but he missed the Lotus Pier, too. The food, the places, the air…
“I just need a secret way in that even the sect leader doesn’t know about,” he sighed. He’d once known them all – but there was a different sect leader now, and a different Lotus Pier. He couldn’t risk it: Jiang Cheng might find out that he’d snuck in and feel hurt, thinking that Wei Wuxian was avoiding him, when he was just avoiding the conversation; that would just make everything worse.
Lan Wangji would have distracted him, but Lan Wangji himself had been distracted – some man in Jiang sect colors with a heavy limp and an excited sort of air had rushed over, shouting something about wanting to talk about tax policy and possibly also games of chance, and Lan Wangji had all but fled. It had been so funny that Wei Wuxian had nearly laughed himself sick.
“I know one,” someone said, and Wei Wuxian glanced over: it was a young man in Jiang sect disciple robes, little more than a teenager – only a few years older than Jin Ling, if he had to guess. He was smiling, ducking his head a little; he looked proud of himself. “I mean, if you really want. But only if you don’t mean any harm!”
How adorable, Wei Wuxian thought, and grinned at him. “I just want something spicy without having to go through the whole process of greeting people, is that a crime?”
“Not at all!” the kid exclaimed, beaming, and Wei Wuxian almost felt bad for conning him. Almost.
“Do you really know a secret way in?” he asked, pretending to be doubtful. “Really?”
Sure enough, the kid – Jiang Jianwen, apparently, he must be the kid of one of the ones that survived the massacre – was easily lured into insisting that he did know, and then to agreeing to act as guide.
And, moreover, it turned out he really did know his way inside, which made this the easiest infiltration ever.
Or so Wei Wuxian thought right up until he felt a knife point touch his ribs.
“Well done, Jianwen!” a young woman – also in Jiang colors – said, reaching out and ruffling Jiang Jianwen’s hair.
“Aw, it was nothing,” he said, just as bashful as he was when he’d been talking to Wei Wuxian. “I couldn’t have done it without shixiong luring off Lan-er-gongzi.”
Wait, that’d been part of this, too?
That was worrisome.
“Hardly nothing,” the older woman standing behind Wei Wuxian said. She had a certain sort of rock-hard steadiness that was more worrying than the knife she was holding on him – she was a powerful cultivator, familiar with killing and scarred with a criminal’s brand, and yet she seemed entirely at ease in a way that suggested a strong sense of righteousness, with no guilt or weak points he might exploit to make an easy out. “You successfully conned the Yiling Patriarch into following you right into a trap.”
Wei Wuxian wondered if he could deny it.
“I don’t know, shijie, that doesn’t seem that hard,” the first woman said. “Isn’t he the kind of person to run head-first into danger at the first instance?”
“Head-first into danger, and like his tail’s on fire away from dogs,” the older woman agreed, and – damnit. There was clearly no denying it; they actually knew him. Though from where, he had no idea. “A-Hua, Jiangwen, let’s go – we don’t want to be late for our meeting.”
“I don’t suppose I can convince you to tell me who we’re going to go see?” Wei Wuxian tried, putting on his most charming smile. “Or, perhaps, who you are, and what you have against me…?”
“Jiang Jianwen you know,” the woman said, rather unexpectedly. “I’m Jiang Qiao, and this is Jiang Hua. Our shixiong is Jiang Zhou – he’s the one that makes Lan-er-gongzi lose his wallet every time he’s forced to visit Yunmeng.”
Wei Wuxian was almost distracted with the tantalizing prospects of stories about Lan Wangji. Almost.
“You’re all surnamed Jiang?” he asked, surprised: he might have believed it for Jiang Jianwen, maybe, he was young enough to be the son of someone in the last generation. But Jiang Hua and Jiang Qiao looked absolutely nothing alike either to each other or to Jiang Cheng, and at least Jiang Qiao was old enough that he should’ve recognized her if she’d been a Jiang. There’d been a lot of people in the old Jiang sect, even if you limited it to those surnamed Jiang, but he’d been Head Disciple back then – he’d known almost all of them.
“We’re adopted,” Jiang Jianwen said. He looked very proud. “Sect Leader Jiang took us into the family as part of the branch lines.”
Wei Wuxian had never once in his life wanted to have the surname Jiang, not even when he’d been mocked for not having it. He’d never even thought about it. Not ever.
He felt a stab of envy at the word family, though.
“He gave you his surname?” he asked, and tried not to feel jealous when they all nodded. “Oh.”
It made sense, he tried to tell himself as they walked through the back streets of the Lotus Pier. The Jiang sect had been demolished, and Jiang Cheng practically the only survivor but for whoever happened by coincidence to not be at home – the Jiang sect would need branch family members, and adoption made sense. There was no reason to resent the idea of Jiang Cheng giving the name he had always treated as being so precious to a branded former criminal, to a con man, to a commoner from the countryside, to a –
“You were a what?” Wei Wuxian exclaimed.
“A demonic cultivator,” Jiang Jianwen said bashfully. “Not a very a good one, though.”
Wei Wuxian wanted to say something to that. He didn’t know what, but something.
“Enough chatter,” Jiang Qiao said. “We’re here.”
Jiang Hua opened the door and Wei Wuxian stepped inside.
Then he tried to step back out, only to be crowded in by the others.
“No, no, no,” he said. “No, I was willing to play along until now, but this is a step too far. You don’t understand! She’s going to eviscerate me!”
Jiang Meimei – older than the teenager he remembered her being when she left the sect, but still unmistakable – grinned with her teeth bared.
“Oh good,” she said. “At least your brain is still working. Now come on and have a seat, and we’re going to talk about how you’ve been treating my baby cousin recently…”
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