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#shit NOT happening we know JC was just doing his job as sect leader because otherwise
robininthelabyrinth · 3 years
Note
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
-
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.”
-
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!”
-
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!”
-
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!”
-
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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crossdressingdeath · 3 years
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The fact that JC kills people who he personally knows is innocent but leads a facade and try to convince others especially even to his own nephew that the victim is him and that he tortured "demonic cultivators" because they're a blight to society is cruel and unjust. This is why I find him deplorable because he never takes accountablity for his own actions instead he uses the excuses of the death of his parents, the death of his sister and after more than a decade gone by still insisted that WWX still alive and none of the sects do shit to stop the madman. I get that this is his own territory but honestly I doubt he does much to help his own people and would rather have a lavish lifestyle. I kind of get on why some of the common people pursue demonic cultivation and the Yiling Laouzu inventions. If you look at the pov of the villagers it's understandable. Demonic cultivation doesn't require a golden core and if it helps to get the ugly spirits away and help them survive a beastly encounter or to protect their family then by all means do it. After all because the land their under is by a sect leader who doesn't do their jobs and just recklessling pursuing WWX.
Oh, we know he doesn't help the people of Yunmeng, because we are specifically told that they will not go to him for help unless there is literally no other option. Because he keeps getting caught torturing people to death and such. Also... odds are the numbers of demonic cultivators are considerably lower than JC's activities might suggest. Remember, WWX destroyed as much of his work as he could and the great sects snapped up whatever was left; some of his inventions made it to the smaller sects, but it doesn't necessarily follow that they made it to civilians. And it feels... pointed, that as far as I remember the only demonic cultivators we see in the story (just MXY and XY, if memory serves) are people directly given access to WWX's research by a high-ranking member of a great sect. This isn't actually information that just anyone could get their hands on, and even if they could a lot of people either wouldn't dare use it or wouldn't be able to make it work. So yeah, ten to one most of the people JC tortured weren't even demonic cultivators! I do feel bad for the people of Yunmeng; not only is the sect that's supposed to be looking after them not helping them, there's a fair chance that if they happen to run into the sect leader and annoy him he'll just accuse them of demonic cultivation and drag them off to be tortured to death.
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dyabolos · 4 years
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I have been very vocal on this subject on twitter but since @hisohiso enabled me, here is why JFM is the worst and you should all hate him.
MDZS is filled with awful fathers. We have the Lan father who literally abandoned his family, we have JGS who’s JGS so like...it’s a lot. And we have JFM. All three of them have this thing in common. They are awful fathers (I mean, if even WRH looks more like a better father than you, you should start questioning yourself) and awful husbands. JFM, tho, JFM is one of the worst cause he does in a way that isn’t as oblivious at first sight. Because you know, as long as you’re good to the MC, it’s okay to be the worst asshole to others, especially if those others aren’t head over heels to said MC. (yeah, I’m salty, so what?) Let’s start with his treatment of Jiang Cheng. Jiang Cheng, who if you remember well, is his only son. JFM might have dreamed to have WWX as his son but he wasn’t. Even WWX says it himself. And yet, he favors him all the time while blaming his son and criticizing him, never once offering him kind words. Even when he says “Good job” when WWX reminded him JC helped during the whole cave thing, he only says so while looking at WWX completely dismissing his JC. It could look like he saw how different JC and WWX were but....1) it wouldn’t make it right. You have kids, you treat them equally!!! 2) he was already acting this way towards JC BEFORE he brought WWX to LP. 
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Can you imagine? All his life until then JC probably thought that his father was just a distant man, that it was his personality and there, he sees that it isn’t true. JFM is distant only to him. Everyone knows it. JC knows it. Madam Yu knows it and even WWX knows it. He might downplay it but he admits it in the end. 
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Now, I know a lot of people hate Yu Ziyuan for her treatment of WWX and while it was bad (but widely overexaggerated imo, the way she is depicted in fics is just...well, I guess that if you are not the “hot dad”, then you are a bitch), she was as much as a victim in this whole family dynamics. Does she pass on the abuse? yes definitely, she was an adult, she should have handle it differently, that doesn’t mean she wasn’t a victim of this whole mess too. Because listen. A lot of people see the marriage between JFM and YZY as a choice from YZY, like she was the one who trapped him into it. It wasn’t. She was the third daughter in ancient China society. So when her parents decided she had to marry him, then she did...even if they didn’t like each other and JFM was probably in love with WWX’s mother. So they were married. They don’t like each other but they could have had a civil union but instead, YZY had to suffer from gossips because of the way JFM always REFUSED TO EXPLAIN HIS SHIT. He never ever did. Let her live through all this bullshit ALONE. She bore his two children just to see him dismiss them completely. She tells him she was as much mistress of LP than him (and frankly, she probs could have beaten his ass, eyes closed, hand behind her back) but he always diminishes her authority (we see it each time he frees WWX from his rightful punishments). Can you imagine? JFM had nothing but his sect. I mean it in a bad way. It’s not the same way as JC later. JFM just inherited the sect and that’s all. He was known as a Sect leader, an average one with that...But Yu Ziyuan? She was the Violet Spider, she had won her reputation. Woman cultivators and powerful ones are a rarity and yet..but because of him, she was reduced to the awful woman JFM married. Also, I highly recommend you to read this thread and here on why the way he acted towards her was even worse than you think when you know more cultural/contextual information.  Back to JC now. JFM doesn’t like JC because he looks like his mother. Can you believe this? Something Jiang Cheng had literally no say in, and yet, JFM treats him like a lower son because he looks like his mother. As if it weren’t fucked up enough, the man keeps telling JC that he doesn’t understand the sect motto but who better than JC to know what it means????? Like I said earlier. JFM inherited the sect and for all his talk about “attempting the impossible”, he didn’t do shit to actually attempt it. He did nothing. YMJ didn’t thrive under his command. Worst, YMJ was burned to ashes. JC, for all his insecurities, inherited YMJ...what was left of it. AND HE BROUGHT IT BACK ALONE. I put an emphasis on alone cause neither WWX nor YL had a thing to do with it. After JC “got his core back”, WWX disappeared for 3 months, and yet, by the time he reappeared JC already had gathered a new war force, alone at 17. After the SC, he had to rebuild LP the way he remembered it and had to see his brother leave him for the Wen. Shit happened and he was left alone, no more brother, no more sister....and a nephew to care for. And yet??? JC thrived, thanks to him, YMJ went from nothing back to the place in the 4 top Sects. It’s even more impressive when you think that the 3 other Sect were lead by the 3zuns. They were allies, JC was alone against the world...and yet he raised his nephew, led his sect, made it thrive so much that he could loose 400 nets and not care about them being refounded. And by the end of the novel, no other sect thrives as much as YMJ. Gusu has a sect leader in seclusion, the Jins have to rebuild everything and regain a reputation and everyone still thinks Qinghe is lead by a headshaker. This isn’t attempting the impossible, this is crushing it altogether. JFM WHO ???  JFM will go down on history for being allegedly cheating on his wife. History will only remember Jiang Cheng, the Sect leader who went above the sect motto. And finally, he’s ugly. We know, for a fact, that JC is handsome, he’s described this way in the novel. We also know he looks like his mother, which means, she was a gorgeous woman. But then, we also know, Yan Li is described as average. Where does that come from you ask? From JFM’s ugly ass, that’s where it comes from. 
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crossdressingdeath · 3 years
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I saw people talking about the Lan sect rules and how only LWJ was noticed to break them, did you all not notice that LQR, the elders, even LXC and QHJ broke the rules? The thing about the rules is that nobody can follow them 24/7, all the damn time. Who knows what rules you break and didn’t break? That’s not on anyone really. LQR broke the rules in front of everyone regarding the resentful energy debate and everyone excused him! As an educator, he doesn’t practice what he preach. The rule LQR broke? Morality is propriety. Also he talks shittily about wwx’s parents like bruh. Nobody in the Lan think about Madam Lan situation precisely like why she killed QHJ’s teacher, etc. QHJ himself also didn’t investigate and just marry and imprison her. The rule broken? Don’t make assumption. LXC also listens to gossip all around him, so he shouldn’t have the gall to act like the holier than art thou because he sees LWJ broke rules for WWX. LWJ did that, LQR did that, LXC and his father also did that, the whole elders I am sure broke rules too. Not all the rules broken are within their right and sometimes it is important to know that with rules like these acting as governing body discipline (like rise at 5 and sleep at 9 pm is a basic healthy life style for working people commuting) but others such as no killing, don’t lie, it’s supposed like common decency and what humans need to uphold as principles, not rules in the wall where it prevents everyone from lying in situation needed (like absent of gc or gc transfer). Though canonically, everyone even Lan disciples like LJY broke rules too. Even LSZ. Moreso, non Lans like NHS, JC, and other visiting disciples (JZXun, JZXUan etc). didn’t they insult wwx’s parentage and jfm’s rumors thing? And no Lans stopped them and just listen to the gossip or fight going on? Well I could go on but only WWX is punished for every thing in the end. LQR surely isn’t blind that he doesn’t know NHS doesn’t cheat or smuggle porn alcohol etc but he only singles out WWX. It just means they are somehow using the rules to cover up hypocrisy we are supposedly seeing.
though I agree the rules are not harsh, some are unnecessary such as no killing and no lying, but if the authority upholding and witholding the rules are not just, then it’s gonna be corrupt or biased assertion of sort.
I mean, to be fair we don't actually know that QHJ didn't investigate what happened with his teacher because we only know the most basic of basics regarding that situation. And I don't remember LQR talking about CSSR at all beyond maybe a sort of "Just like your mother, she was a troublemaker too" type thing, which is... y'know, accurate, not talking shit. And I don't think LXC really does listen to gossip (accepting the word of trusted associates as fact is not the same as gossiping). And he does not have a holier-than-thou attitude towards LWJ breaking the rules for WWX! His issue is that LWJ is committing treason and could end up heartbroken or dead! Concern for your sibling is not the same as being holier-than-thou! LXC's issue is with the fact that as far as he can tell WWX is toying with LWJ's feelings, not the fact that LWJ's breaking rules!
As for "others such as no killing, don’t lie, it’s supposed like common decency and what humans need to uphold as principles, not rules in the wall where it prevents everyone from lying in situation needed"... anon, allow me to introduce you to a little thing called laws. There are laws that are only on the books so that people know where to assign fault if something goes wrong, and there are laws that are in place so that people know what the punishment should be. Name one society that doesn't have rules in place regarding things like killing. And the rule against lying is a principle thing? It's more like... "you are expected to hold to these principles as a Lan cultivator". It's setting out expectations. Like a dress code; you go into a job knowing that you are expected to wear a certain sort of outfit, and by taking the job you are saying that you understand that and will wear that sort of outfit. Same deal here; Lans are honest, this is a known thing, if you want to join the Lan sect you have to be honest and if you're not prepared to do that you shouldn't join the Lan sect. Also uh... there is no evidence that the Lans can't lie in situations where they absolutely have to, what? We know Lans can break the rules in circumstances where that becomes necessary! Unless you're arguing that every Lan who participated in the Sunshot Campaign then had to be punished for all that killing. Which I hope you're not, because that would be... stupid. And we know they do lie; LSZ would be in deep shit if Lans couldn't lie, because it would be impossible to keep the fact that he's a Wen quiet if LWJ had to tell everyone who asked where he came from! It's not a fucking magical compulsion, it's a rule they choose to follow to the best of their abilities! Like how murder is illegal but self-defence is okay, there are times when breaking a rule is the best option and there are additional rules in place to allow for that.
And you say only WWX was punished for the cheating and the smuggling of alcohol and smuggling porn, but a) WWX is incredibly open about it, b) WWX is the only one mentioned as smuggling alcohol, c) WWX isn't actually punished for smuggling porn because only NHS is mentioned as doing that and he's VERY VERY GOOD AT HIDING THE FACT THAT HE'S DOING IT SO HE'S NEVER ACTUALLY CAUGHT (you say that LQR "surely isn't blind" like that means he must have noticed, but you're forgetting that 1. LQR isn't actually omnipotent and 2. NHS's whole thing is being insanely good at hiding what he's doing; don't assume he was obvious enough to get caught, especially when he's been through these classes multiple times and presumably knows all of LQR's usual tricks for catching troublemakers), and d) there's... nothing to say the other disciples weren't punished for cheating. LWJ caught all of them. WWX is specifically mentioned as being punished because a) he's the protagonist so of course he is, b) he's a repeat offender and repeat offences generally do lead to a heavier punishment, and c) LQR (correctly and definitely understandably) pegs him as the ringleader; WWX is being punished for heading the thing while the others are just punished for participating. That's... not unreasonable. (And yes it was NHS's idea but LQR doesn't know that, now does he?)
The guest disciples probably get away with more because they didn't sign up for how strict the rules are, not because the Lans are being hypocrites. Hey, remember how WWX blatantly breaks a bunch of rules right in front of LWJ on his first night only to get off scot-free because he claimed (likely falsely!) that he didn't know the rules yet and the only real consequence was that LQR then read out all the rules the first day of class so that he could ensure everyone knew the rules? WWX benefits from the laxer standards on guest disciples too, it's just that he's far more determined to cause trouble than everyone else! Also the other disciples don't insult WWX's parentage or talk shit about JFM's supposed favour? Because WWX is in fact incredibly popular? Like, I think you're underestimating just how much people liked WWX before the Sunshot Campaign! This man was insanely well-liked by his peers! It is only the Jiangs and assholes like JZXun who have an issue with him based on his parentage or position in the Jiang sect! Hell, the novel expressly states that him being head disciple and the son of the sect leader's childhood friend in addition to how young people aren't as bothered about status and ancestry meant that he was pretty much accepted as an equal right away! The closest thing to someone talking shit is JZX's "Doesn't [JFM] treat you better than his own son or something?", which he clearly doesn't even fully believe himself (the "or something" suggests he's parroting someone else's words in an effort to hurt, not stating something he believes wholeheartedly himself), and the Lans aren't so much standing around listening to the gossip as they are trying to pull JZX and WWX off each other. Also I don't think JZXun is even mentioned as being there but whatever, he might have been one of the nameless disciples in that scene.
Basically... are the Lans all perfect paragons of justice and honour? Of course they aren't! They're people! People are going to be petty and harsh and unfair, that's just what people do! But people seem so determined to treat them as this awful, hypocritical, cruel mess of a sect who use their reputation to bully people and I just do not get it! "Strict but fair" is the most accurate summary of how the Lan sect works, and yes, sometimes individual members are petty about it and everyone in the sect sometimes breaks the rules because again, they're human, no one can uphold all those rules all the time, but everyone in the sect signed up for that and if they find they can't handle it they leave the sect. Like... guys. Strict does not inherently mean they're hypocritical and awful. Come on.
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crossdressingdeath · 3 years
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The thing that kills me with all those "JC doesn't mean it! It's just that he can't communicate with people he cares about!" arguments is that... LWJ did that too. As a teen he didn't know how to express his emotions and called WWX boring a bunch and generally acted annoyed with him, but HE CHANGED THAT. Because he realized that it hurt him. But JC changed NOTHING in DECADES of story time because he meets absolutely nobody halfway, and his stans apparentely don't get that it's a bad thing
Yes! LWJ realises after WWX’s death that not being able to communicate his wishes and feelings hurt people he cares about, so he tries to improve on that; he doesn’t do a perfect job, but he’s improved enough that he does make it clear to WWX that no, he does not hate him and in fact wants to help him. Meanwhile... if JC really didn’t mean the things he said he should’ve been horrified at what his words led to. I mean, him declaring WWX a traitor was pretty much the biggest factor in WWX’s destruction, not counting the various accidental murders. The biggest factor that was a deliberate decision on the part of the person who did it, let’s say. Do not try to tell me it was something he said on impulse, he tells literally everyone that WWX is a traitor and he’s a grown man and sect leader, either that was a deliberate choice or he should not be allowed anywhere near any position of power. Not to mention that it for sure played a major part in setting up the situations that ended in people dying. But he clearly isn’t horrified; he actively takes credit for WWX’s death and uses that to improve his reputation! And he doesn’t stop saying horrible things having realised how badly that can fuck over the people around him, in fact if anything he gets worse; telling a fucking teenager to beat an enemy that no one knows anything about and JC himself wouldn’t stand a chance against at that age (and quite possibly even as a grown man) by himself and that if he can’t do this pretty much impossible feat he can never come home, anyone? 
And of course, at the end of the day... JC isn’t a child. He’s a grown-ass man in his mid-thirties during the present day arc, and even in the first flashback arc he’s fifteen, which is in fact old enough to know how to be a halfway decent person. I swear, JC stans talk about him like he’s an infant who hasn’t learned what basic human decency is yet! He shows less awareness of the fact that other people’s feelings matter than fucking A-Yuan does! There is a difference between “fucking up a lot of social situations because you’re bad at people” and “being so actively cruel that you may as well be playing an RPG and be picking all the mean options just to see what happens for all the consideration you’re showing other people”, and shit like threatening to break a child’s legs or kick him out of his home for not being what you want him to be or attacking your brother with his literal worst fear because you’re mad at him for him not being cool with genocide (and your sister dying to prevent the exact thing you did immediately after she died to prevent it) falls very firmly in the latter category. Like... “he doesn’t know how to communicate with people” works for someone like JL, who’s cruel because he’s young and hasn’t had any friends before and was never taught how to deal with peers (and learns better when he does start making friends and regularly interacting with peers who aren’t massive dicks), or for someone like LWJ, who’s stiff and distant because he’s never been close to anyone outside his family (more specifically his brother who learned how to read him (good) and never actually helped him learn how to interact with other people and make friends (less good)) and never had any friends his own age before WWX showed up (and again learns better when his lack of social skills has serious consequences and he realises that he has to get better at communicating to avoid hurting anyone else). JC spent his childhood surrounded by people his own age, his social peers in the wider cultivation world and his shidis (shidi? I just realised I don’t actually know what the plural is) within his own sect, and that’s without considering that his closest companion was WWX, who is so damn good at people that he’s the fourth most eligible bachelor in the sects despite having zero actual rank when everyone else we know of on that list is either in line to run a sect or already running a sect. There is no excuse for JC to be as downright cruel as he is; he’s no more sheltered than the rest of his (infinitely kinder) peers, his siblings (the people he spends pretty much all his time with) are both kind and friendly people, he’s constantly surrounded by people his own age who he interacts with all the time... The only negative example he has in his life is YZY. One person among everyone in his life teaching him cruelty with his beloved sister who he adores pretty much above all others showing the opposite and his father for sure teaching him fucking diplomacy because that’s his job, and he goes for cruelty every time. Just. can we please stop acting like a grown ass man being incapable of showing basic decency to a single fucking person in his life is normal and okay and not a really good reason for everyone in his life to eventually give up on him? This world has enough of that as it is, let’s not add to it.
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crossdressingdeath · 4 years
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Okay I’ve had a very long day and people are being super defensive of JC on my dash so uh. I’m gonna talk shit about him for a bit. Because it’ll make me feel better. And I don’t want anyone arguing with me about this so I’ll put it behind a cut and if you don’t want to read someone talking shit about JC in a super unstructured manner then... don’t click read more, I guess? 
So here’s one thing, to start. In The Untamed specifically, I can argue with near-absolute certainty that JC killed WWX. LWJ had him, and that guy is insanely strong; I don’t doubt for a second he could’ve pulled WWX up if he’d been given the chance. Maybe JC didn’t put a blade through WWX’s heart himself, but if he had stayed out of it WWX probably would’ve lived. I don’t know how long he would’ve lived, and I doubt he would’ve thanked LWJ for saving him, but he probably wouldn’t have died on that cliff. Hell, killing him quickly might have been a kindness; I’m not an expert on how far you have to fall to die instantly on impact and I don’t know how high that cliff was, but depending on how he landed and if he bounced off anything on the way down it’s possible (though maybe not likely) that WWX wouldn’t have died right away. If I had to choose between a quick death via a blade through a vital part or a more lasting death via serious internal damage from a very long fall... Yeah, I’d take the stabbing. Obviously I’m not saying that not being able to go through with killing his brother makes JC a bad person; I’m just saying that when his choices were doing nothing (which, reminder, here means letting LWJ pull WWX up (or at least try to)), helping LWJ save his brother, finishing WWX off quickly (JC is trained in combat, I’m sure he knows where to stab for the most merciful death possible under those circumstances), or letting WWX fall to his death... I just find it interesting that JC chose the latter.
Hell, even before that, if JC had done something sooner a whole lot of pain could’ve been avoided. (We’re out of the Untamed-exclusive stuff, by the way.) Now, I get that as a very new sect leader of a sect that was almost obliterated JC’s position is... precarious, to say the least. However! An awkward position doesn’t automatically mean he can pretty much abandon his brother! That is not how familial ties work! Especially when he never takes WWX’s position (which was equally precarious if not more so) into account while talking about how WWX abandoned him.
Put yourself in JC’s shoes for a moment, here. Most of your family is dead. Your brother, you know, was thrown into a hell pit and hasn’t been seen for three months. Then, joy of joys, you find him again! Except now your ever-cheerful, ever-kindhearted brother can raise the dead and, oh yeah, has spent all his time since escaping the hell pit that no one survives torturing people to death with demonic cultivation. What do you do in this situation? I’m fairly sure your answer was not “Throw him on the front lines as your most valuable weapon without giving him so much as a chance to come to terms with all the horrible things that have clearly happened to him”. Yes, yes, they were in the middle of war, but you don’t get to throw your very obviously messed up brother onto the front lines and then be shocked when there are serious consequences for doing that.
Also, going back to positions: People talk a lot about how JC’s position was so difficult, and I’m not saying it wasn’t, but... here’s the thing. WWX’s position was so much worse. JC is the sect leader of an old and powerful sect. The Jiangs might have lost a great deal, but there are still alliances he could call on, favours he could probably cash in, treasures reclaimed from the Wens he could use... He’s not exactly helpless. He has to be careful, but he’s not entirely defenseless. Meanwhile, WWX is the incredibly powerful demonic cultivator with a dangerous weapon everyone wants to get their hands on and a brother he’s known to have a somewhat strained relationship with. We see in canon that the sects are actively hunting for a chance to get their teeth into him after the Sunshot Campaign wraps up. All WWX has is his own power and JC’s support. I keep coming back to what JGY says at the temple, about how JC made WWX an easy target by making it obvious their relationship was rocky, and... he’s right. I doubt JC intended to do it, but he made it very easy for the sects to split WWX off from him. And while JC was still a sect leader and largely untouchable, WWX was infinitely more vulnerable. Again, I doubt he meant to paint a target on his brother’s back, but the fact that he missed it in favour of getting pissy about WWX being better than him yet again says something about him.
The fact that he says there’s nothing he can do after WWX absconds with the Wen remnants says... something else. Now, I’m terrible with politics; while he definitely should have supported his brother in a perfect world, with a sect to look after and JGS hunting for weak points I genuinely don’t know if he could have at that point. (Again, I really do think he should’ve tried to step in before things got to this point, but... well, he didn’t. No use crying over spilled milk and all that.) So okay, he couldn’t do anything. I’ll take him at his word; if nothing else, I can believe he was too bad with both politics and people and too inexperienced to find a way to step in. But he then takes his brother’s request to remove him from the Jiang sect to avoid any trouble coming to their doorstep and goes off and tells the sects that his brother is a traitor. Let me put that another way. He tells the people who are looking for an excuse to murder his brother and take his writings and inventions for themselves that his brother has betrayed them. I think we have reached the point where malice and stupidity become impossible to tell apart. Honestly, I can only see two possible thought processes for this: Either he actually wants to bring the sects down on WWX’s heads (unlikely) or he’s so terrible at politics that he genuinely didn’t realize what the logical result of his words would be (more likely, but means his parents did a terrible job of teaching him how to be a sect leader). Although, given he apparently spent enough of the 13 years between WWX’s death and resurrection spending so much time torturing demonic cultivators to death because either he thought they might be WWX or they just reminded him of him that most of the citizens in his territory are too scared to go to Lotus Pier for help unless they’re in imminent life-threatening danger I don’t think you can argue he was a good sect leader by any stretch...
Oh! Speaking of parents and teaching: Jin Ling. Now, part of this might be a cultural thing that I’m not familiar with, but JC is an absolutely god-awful guardian. Pretty much all he does is insult JL, belittle him, or threaten him. Yeah, he cares in his own way, but take it from me: When your parents (or uncle, in this case) spend most of their time insulting you but also keep you safe from any external danger and do their best to help you grow, you don’t end up a happy, well-adjusted adult; you end up miserable and confused because you can’t hate or like the person raising you and get stuck between love and resentment. JL is clearly desperate for affection, but he can’t admit that to anyone. It’s no surprise he mourns for JGY so deeply even after everything; the guy was pretty much the only one in the poor kid’s life to treat him with open, honest affection before he met WWX! The comparison between him and Sizhui (as the only other child raised by the main cast) is striking; even though LWJ seems like he should be just as bad a parent, he raises Sizhui with love and kindness, and so did WWX before him. And the result is... so very different. Sizhui is the very goodest of boys and I love him with all my heart. Anyway, it’s no wonder JL gravitates towards WWX and defends him once he’s gotten past his initial reaction of stabbing the guy; WWX is so open and explicit with his affection! Is he a perfect parent? No, probably not. But he focuses more on making it clear to his army of juniors that he loves them and respects them as people and wants them to be happy with where they end up in life than he does on making them fit his image of what they should be. Of course someone who’d be raised with JC copying his mother and constantly getting on their case about not being good enough would gravitate towards someone like that.
Okay, this is getting long. Last point: WWX has to put in so much emotional labour in their relationship even before everything goes tits up? The best example for me is the scene where WWX promises they’ll be together forever, Twin Heroes of Yunmeng, the huge promise that both JC and an annoyingly large portion of the audience think he should’ve kept no matter what. Yeah, out of context it’s very sweet, but in context? WWX has just barely recovered from the fight with the Xuanwu. He’s been conscious for... maybe an hour, at most? He nearly died. And yet he has to drag himself out of bed to chase JC through Lotus Pier to comfort him because JFM was paying more attention to WWX. Who, again, almost died. JC is so busy being pissy about this that he forces his brother, still recovering, to chase him through Lotus Pier to comfort him for something their parents did. Most of the time, JC has a right to be upset that JFM so obviously prefers WWX. Looking in from the outside the situation is clearly more complicated than he paints it, but I don’t blame him for not seeing how bad things are for the rest of the family. ...I know that sounds sarcastic, but I do mean it. His siblings are very good at hiding how badly their family situation has hurt them. Anyway, though, on this one occasion I am entirely on JFM’s side here. WWX threw himself into danger so JC wouldn’t have to go to the indoctrination camp alone even though he didn’t have to, then some time later JC returns alone and informs him that WWX is trapped in a cave with the Xuanwu of Slaughter, then when JFM finally manages to reach him the Xuanwu is dead and WWX is all but dead. I 100% do not blame him for focusing on WWX in this situation! He did something fully-grown cultivators with far more experience failed at and almost died in the process! Given JC must be... what, 16 at the youngest, probably older by this point? I would expect him to grasp that. He’s old enough to have developed empathy. Hell, he should be right there with his father and sister, proud of WWX’s accomplishments and relieved to see him awake and recovering. Instead, WWX has to drag himself through Lotus Pier and swear to stay by JC’s side for the rest of their lives just to get him to stop sulking because WWX was better than him yet again.
...Yeah, as you might have grasped, I don’t think WWX had any obligation to uphold that promise. He shouldn’t have been expected to be tied to Lotus Pier by a vow he made as a teenager to get his brother to cheer up. In fact, a very large part of me wishes he’d broken it sooner. Comparing the way JC treats him to the way the Wens and LWJ treat him (setting aside that those are of course very different kinds of love) I can’t help but think things might have gone infinitely better for him if he’d found a different family a lot earlier.
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