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“The centralized power held by the Jin and Wen Families is systematically protected by their monopoly on Golden Core fabrication, which opens up a possibility to decentralize their power with the adoption of demonic cultivation as an alternative power source.” 

Chenqing, W. & Suihua, Z. (1839). Golden Core liberation: the use of demonic cultivation as an alternative to spiritual energy. Chenyun Works, 14(2), 112-134.

“While the use of demonic cultivation (Chenqing & Suihua, 1839) shows promise in the field of spiritual energy maintenance, it is still too novel a technique to be distributed on mass scale. Despite its obvious merits, our paper shows why the fabrication of Golden Cores is significantly more stable and, therefore, should not be traded for the much more novel and volatile option.”

Bichen, W. & Sandu, C. (1839). The dangers of novelty: a comparison between demonic cultivation and Golden Cores manufacturing. Gusu Publishings, 10(6), 23-48.

Gusu University, 1840

“Do you think they have beef in real life?” Lan Jingyi asks, half muffled by his mouthful of rice.

Lan Sizhui eyes the paper his best friend slid across the dinner table. He traces his fingers over the names of the authors, sighing when he realizes this is nothing more than another one of Lan Jingyi’s silly daydreams. His best friend was way too prone to delusions for a 20-year-old.

“I’m willing to bet they don’t even know each other in real life,” Lan Sizhui shrugs, sliding the paper towards Jin Ling and going back to his food.

His cousin makes an inquisitive sound, quickly skimming the paper before turning up his nose and scoffing.

“It’s pathetic, it’s what it is. Those are probably fully grown middle-aged adults, and they’re arguing on academic papers like children at a playground. Do they have no shame?” Jin Ling throws the papers back towards Lan Jingyi, full of disdain. “And why do you care so much? Don’t tell me you’re interested in this demonic cultivation vs. Golden Core bullshit.”

Lan Jingyi whines, scrambling to get his papers back before they fly off the table.

“You’re only saying that because your family owns like half of Golden Core manufacturing and you’d go broke if they ever went out of business,” Lan Jingyi pouts.

“For the last time, my dad gets no money from my grandpa and I could care less about what happens to the Jin company.” Jin Ling almost growls towards Lan Jingyi.

“Awnn, did I upset the princess? It’s okay, nothing wrong with being a spoiled little miss,” Lan Jingyi teases, reaching over the table to poke Jin Ling’s side, right where he’s ticklish.

Lan Sizhui knows his cousin enough to duck out of the way when he shrieks and tries to slap Lan Jingyi away from him. Unfortunately, his best friend is not quite so fast and gets a fist to his face before he can dodge.

Lan Sizhui only sighs, watching as Lan Jingyi unceremoniously falls to the floor, groaning and clutching his probably bruised nose.

“I told you I’m ticklish, bastard!” Jin Ling seethes, red creeping up his neck. Lan Sizhui wonders if he knows half the fun for Lan Jingyi is exactly because he’s so ticklish.

“I think you broke my nose,” the boy whines from the floor, too overly dramatic for Sizhui to take seriously.

“You deserved it,” Jin Ling tosses his ponytail over his shoulder, cheeks slowly going back to their normal color.

“You kinda did,” Lan Sizhui agrees, popping the last piece of stir-fried vegetables into his mouth and chewing appreciatively. He’s not really looking forward to returning home and having to deal with his baba’s ungodly spicy food. Maybe if he’s lucky, his a-die will do most of the cooking.

“Traitor,” Lan Jingyi shoots daggers at Lan Sizhui while he crawls back into his seat, hand over his bleeding nose all the while. “Am I gonna have to go to the medic again, you think? They’re gonna start thinking I’m in an abusive relationship at any moment now.” And he says that part straight to Jin Ling’s face who, again, turns bright red and splutters.

“You’d first need to be in a relationship, wouldn’t you?” Lan Sizhui finishes his food, pointedly ignoring his cousin and best friend doing their whatever on the other side of the dining table.

“Ouch! Sizhui, are you implying I can’t get a date?” Lan Jingyi fakes offense, but Sizhui ignores him, bringing his dishes to the sink.

“I’ll wash these later, gotta finish packing tonight or I’ll miss my train tomorrow morning,” he brushes invisible dust from his jacket and starts walking towards his room.

“You’re gonna leave me and my broken nose here alone with your murderous princess cousin?” Lan Jingyi calls out, but Sizhui can tell he’s doing it more to rile up Jin Ling than to actually call for help.

“I’m not a medic,” Sizhui says sweetly, “if you need anything go to the hospital. Have Jin Ling take you since he’s not going back home ‘till the weekend.”

“Why do I have to take him?” Jin Ling complains.

“Well, you did break my nose,” Lan Jingyi points out, gesturing to the bloody mess on his face.

“Oh my God, it’s not broken, you baby. You’d be crying on the floor if it was actually broken.” Jin Ling shoves a handful of napkins towards Lan Jingyi and gestures for him to mop up the blood.

“Maybe I’m just stronger than you give me credit for,” his best friend shrugs, but obediently cleans the blood, revealing a mostly normal nose. Just as Sizhui suspected. No real damage done.

“I give you exactly the amount of credit you deserve,” Jin Ling complains, but still gently takes Lan Jingyi’s face in his hands, carefully touching his injured nose. “Does that hurt?”

Lan Jingyi’s eyes are wide and now it’s his turn to blush like a tomato. Lan Sizhui rolls his eyes, electing to leave his friends to do whatever and go finish packing as soon as he can.

He doesn’t even bother saying goodnight, closing his bedroom door and locking it for good measure, before making his way to the open travel bag and staring at the piles of clothes lying all over the floor and on his bed. He debates the merits of just shoving everything to the floor and waking up early tomorrow to finish packing, but decides to take a page out of his a-die’s book and be organized for once.

Lan Sizhui drops onto his bed and begins the arduous task of sifting through his clothes and neatly folding them into little rolls. He’s maybe at the third shirt when his fingers graze something cold under the pile of clothes. Pushing the shirts, underwear, and socks out of the way, he finds himself face to face with a neat pile of papers and a very familiar highlighted sentence.

“Demonic cultivation is not only a more sustainable method of energy manipulation, but it also allows for the decentralization of power that’s been hoarded for years by the Wen and Jin Families.”

A sour taste blooms in Lan Sizhui’s mouth and he slams a pair of socks over the paper. It bends and wrinkles under the weight of his hand, but the words are still visibly mocking him from in between his fingers.

Right, he forgot he’s been reading about that before Lan Jingyi corralled them all for dinner.

Part of him wants to hate his best friend for being so obsessed with the apparent academic beef that exists between those two pairs of authors. He knows it’s unfair and Lan Jingyi has no way of knowing why the topic is so sensitive to Sizhui.

But he can’t control that bitterness, it’s been planted there long before he became Lan Sizhui, beloved son of Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, and straight-A university student. Because deep down, inside the marrow of his bones, he’s still Wen Yuan, the scared kid, clutching at Wei Ying’s pant legs, running away from what his mind still insists were the monsters that came knocking on his door.

It’s a hurt too deep to ignore, and a secret too big to share.

So he keeps his mouth shut and he keeps being Lan Sizhui and he studies and he goes to class and he has dinner with his best friend and his cousin and pretends everything is fine .

But on those dark nights, when the rest of the world seems to be asleep, he can’t help but hunger for those papers about demonic cultivation and the overpowering control the Wen and Jin seem to have on all their lives. He remembers living under the hell of the Wen, and then the misery of the Jin, both leaving him with scars too jagged to properly heal.

Back when Lan Sizhui had been a child, Golden Cores were what made the world go round. The precious metal found in the Jin mines was, initially, nothing more than pretty and golden shiny. It was only when the Wen patented a way to transform the metal into Golden Cores that the world truly changed. Golden Cores could store enough energy to power down entire cities, and what once was being done by a legion of highly skilled cultivators, now could be done with a single Golden Core and a line of easily replaceable cultivators required to pour their energies into the metal. 

Lan Sizhui recalls his birth parents telling him it had not always been so. That before he had been born, cultivators were not mere slaves to the whims of the powerful families. That they could hone their spiritual energy into whatever craft they desired. He was told tales of cultivators that could make beautifully colored glass murals with nothing but their bare hands and time. Of entire groups of cultivators, carefully working as a team to steer massive ships away from oncoming storms like their limbs and the sea were one and the same.

In his dreams, this world is more magical than anything any book could ever come up with.

Nowadays, cultivators were nothing more than cattle, forever working in the Wen factories, walking inside those big industrial doors only to pour their spiritual energy into the Golden Cores and then leave, exhausted, at the end of the day.

When Golden Cores first appeared, everyone had been ecstatic, believing it to be the solution to the world’s problems. Now that they could use Golden Cores as the main source of energy people would have more time to live, free of their endless labor.

Only, it hadn't happened.

Cultivators couldn’t compete with the efficiency and cheapness of a Golden Core, and slowly, ever so slowly, all the jobs were eaten up by the Wen Imperial Family and their iron hold on the manufacturing of Golden Cores, which left cultivators with no option but to integrate into the system and sign up as lower factory workers.

And the more individual cultivators lost their place, the more power the Wen Imperial family accumulated.

Lan Sizhui remembers that well. He remembers growing up in a bustling city, promised fortune by Wen Ruohan and his iron grip on the manufacturing and distribution of Golden Cores. He remembers his birth parents, starry-eyed and enamored with the leader that promised them greatness after so many years being known as the weakest country.

But the glory that had been promised to them never came.

Oh sure, the Wen Royalty grew rich and powerful. But the people didn’t.

His people didn’t.

He was only a child when he saw the hope in his birth parent’s eyes disappear. When they realized that Wen Ruohan had never wanted to elevate them all to power. He had only wanted that power for himself, and they, like fools, had fallen for his pretty words.

Lan Sizhui wishes he could say his birth parents had died honorably, but in truth, their end had been nothing but miserable. It was just supposed to be a flu, something so easy to control if the poor people of Qishan Wen had been given a scrap of the fortune and technology the Wen Royals had. But they weren’t cultivators and they weren’t from a higher class.

So, Lan Sizhui’s birth parents had died just as they had lived. Miserable. Trapped in a claustrophobic one-bedroom apartment in the middle of lower Qishan. Still praying for the man who drove them to such poverty to come and save them.

To this day, Lan Sizhui doesn’t know how the disease that took his birth parents’ spared him. All he remembers is lying on a bed, the foul smell of decay increasing each day, until his cousin, Wen Qing, rescued him from the brink of death and nursed him back to health.

He had survived, but a part of him had died in that house. The part that believed the world was fair. The part that believed any part of this fucked up system they lived in could be saved.

Still, he had been a child then, too afraid to put his feelings into words.

And then there had been Wen Qing and Wen Ning and Wei Ying and Lan Zhan and before he realized he wasn’t alone anymore. And he wasn’t a kid anymore. And his feelings were just as big and as complicated as all those years ago.

He had a role to play though. He was the Lan heir, with all the mess that the title entailed. He couldn’t let his anger get the best of him. He couldn’t let Wen Yuan’s voice scream louder than Lan Sizhui’s.

He groans into his own hands. He should really pack right now. Get his suitcase ready for the early train he has to get tomorrow. He shouldn’t read the paper resting under the pair of socks clutched in his hands. He’s Lan Sizhui and he has responsibilities and a life and he can’t let himself succumb to childish anger. 

Lan Sizhui takes a deep breath, folds his socks neatly together, and, before he can talk himself out of it, picks up the paper and starts reading.

-

He’s dreaming, he’s sure of it.

He hasn’t been in this house since he was a child, but the wooden slats of the walls held him before any human hands did, so he could never truly forget them.

He’s smaller in the dream, hands still pudgy from baby fat and feet wobbly in the way that they walk. It smells musty, like dust itself developed a distinct scent after being left alone to grow and infest for too long. The house is cold, there’s a perpetual draft seeping through the gaps in the walls and A-Yuan doesn’t know how to make his tiny feet stay warm when he’s not in the arms of an adult.

But his parents don’t have a lot of time for him these days. They are busy walking into that big scary factory, the concrete walls eating the light in their eyes day by day. A-Yuan knows he’s watching his parents die, and he can’t do anything to stop it.

He doesn’t want to be here anymore. He doesn't want to live through this again.

He closes his tiny eyes tight, and when he opens them again, Wen Qing is there, busy caring for her brother and a toddler Jin Ling. Sometimes A-Yuan is jealous of the kid. Jealous of watching someone get everything he always craved as easy as breathing. A warm embrace. Soft cooing. Undivided attention.

Parents.

A-Yuan wants to have that too.

He knows they aren't trying to leave him behind, that Wen Qing works hard to keep them all alive, that Wen Ning is too hurt after the accident to do more than lay there and groan in pain most of the days. But it doesn’t make his heart stop yearning.

The first time he arrives, A-Yuan is convinced he wished himself an angel.

Few people would call Wei Ying an angel, he later learned. A-Yuan was already 8 years old when the man came crashing down onto his life, picked him up, and then refused to put him down for the next 3 days. Sometimes, A-Yuan wonders if the man was clinging to him just as much as he was.

If they were both so starved for this.

He still remembers how Wei Ying smelled that first day, it’s a scent that’s been burned into the back of his mind. Salt, from the sweat of running all the way to their house. Spicy, from the food he always preferred eating. Warm, like the arms that wrapped tight around A-Yuan and refused to let go. Sour, from the fear they all lived under these days.

“Gege, are you leaving now?” A-Yuan asked when Wei Ying put him down for the first time since meeting him. Something that Wen Qing had said about being too attached and it being bad for the both of them swimming in his too-young head.

He didn’t get it then. How could it possibly be unhealthy to have someone to hold after so long being left in the cold? This couldn’t possibly be wrong when it felt so much like being warm after being abandoned in a freezing hale for years on end.

“Aiya, my little radish, of course I’m not leaving,” Wei Ying had rushed to console him, pulling him into his lap again.

Wen Qing made a face at that, something displeased about the turn of her lips.

A-Yuan didn’t care. A-Yuan couldn’t bring himself to care. Not when he could smell the sunlight and smoke that still clung to Wei Ying’s clothes.

“Never?” he asked, voice small and delicate.

“Never,” Wei Ying promised.

And he kept that promise. For all the years that came after, through all of the mess that the Wen and the Jin made of their lives and their homes, Wei Ying never abandoned him. Always protected him. Fought with all the tools he had to make sure A-Yuan was safe and happy and could dream of a better future for himself.

“Don’t leave me.”

“Never.”

And A-Yuan believed him.

-

Yiling, 1840

There’s chaos happening inside of Lan Sizhui’s house. He hasn’t even stepped inside his childhood apartment and he can already hear Wei Ying’s excitedly loud voice.

This is, by no means, a surprise. Growing up with Wei Ying and Lan Zhan as parents had prepared Laz Sizhui for all kinds of chaos. But he had grown used to the relative quietness of university life though. Lan Jingyi had teased him mercilessly when he mentioned, off-handedly, that university was a well of peace compared to his house.

“Dude, what kind of house do you live in that, University, of all places, is chill in comparison? Should I be concerned?” He’d mentioned, chewing on the tip of a pen.

Lan Sizhui had just smiled and shrugged his friend’s concerns away, explaining that his parents might be messy but they were the best thing in his life. Chaos included.

Still, months and months of hanging with friends and attending lectures and keeping up with assignments had made him forget to expect the craziness from back home. Which is why he elects to crack the door open before stepping inside his home.

The voices of his parents echo through the hallway and Sizhui can just about make sense of what they are talking about.

“Why must your family be the Lans?” Wei Ying whines, and Lan Sizhui can almost imagine his baba draping himself across his a-die’s lap. Dramatic as always.

“Mn, why must your family be Jiang Wanyin?” comes Lan Zhan’s clipped answer and Lan Sizhui slaps a hand over his own mouth before his laugh reveals him.

Luckily, Wei Ying’s laughter is loud enough to drown out any of Lan Sizhui’s sounds.

“Lan Zhan! That’s so mean! That’s my dear little brother you’re talking about. How would you feel if I said that about Lan Xichen?”

“My brother is wonderful. Your brother is Jiang Wanyin,” Lan Sizhui can hear the contempt dripping from his a-die’s voice, but Wei Ying is still giggling so Lan Sizhui can’t help but chuckle quietly to himself too.

“He’s not so bad!” Wei Ying insists, but he’s laughing so much it’s barely audible. “He just has a very specific way of showing it.”

“Mn, a bad way.”

Lan Sizhui can’t help but snort, but the sound may have been a little bit too loud, because the noises from the kitchen immediately quiet down. He has maybe enough time to stand up straight, and pretend he wasn’t just listening through the door, before said door is being wrenched open with violence.

“A-Yuan!” Wei Ying cheers, immediately pulling him into a tight hug. He returns it happily, silently mourning having grown taller than his baba and therefore losing the ability to be tucked under his chin.

“Hi baba,” he says to Wei Ying. Over his shoulder, Lan Sizhui makes eye contact with Lan Zhan hanging behind his baba, smiling warmly at Sizhui. “Hello to you too, a-die.”

Lan Zhan smiles, and waits patiently until Wei Ying is done with his hugging before pulling Lan Sizhui into one too. His a-die is still taller than Sizhui, and probably will be for the rest of their lives, so Sizhui takes some comfort in resting his head on his shoulder and inhaling the fresh linen and used books scent of Lan Zhan.

“Welcome back, Sizhui.” Lan Zhan’s voice is steady as always.

“Did you make a good trip? Did you say goodbye to Jin Ling? Jiejie came by yesterday, she’s worried about A-Ling being all alone ‘till the weekend,” Wei Ying pulls Lan Sizhui into the kitchen, already sitting him down and pushing a bowl and some chopsticks towards him. “We just finished eating, but you should have some. You look so skinny, have you been eating well?”

“Baba,” Lan Sizhui whines, but accepts the coddling gladly. It’s always good to be taken care of.

“You should eat, Sizhui,” Lan Zhan walks up behind him, carrying his travel bag. “Don’t worry, I cooked,” he whispers, only to Sizhui’s ears.

Lan Sizhui lets his grumbling stomach take control, shoveling rice and vegetables onto his bowl and digging in with gusto. It’s good to have homemade food after so long, even if he still finds his a-die tends to under season their food sometimes.

“How is school? Are you having fun? How’s Jingyi? Oh, how’s Jin Ling? Is he adapting to college life? Jiejie has been talking non-stop about her little baby going off to university,” his baba blabbers on.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan places a hand over the back of Wei Ying’s neck, “calm down, let him finish eating first.”

Wei Ying pouts, but obediently waits for Sizhui to finish chewing and swallow.

“It’s been good,” he sets his bowl and chopsticks down. “Lan Jingyi and Jin Ling are fine, they’re keeping each other company until Jin Ling comes home this weekend.”

“Mn, good,” Lan Zhan nods once.

“What about you? How has school been for my little radish?” Wei Ying places his head on his palms and leans forward on the table.

“It’s been good,” he lets the statement hang in the air while he takes another bite of the stir-fry. “I’ve been taking some Golden Core Manufacturing and Distribution courses, but nothing too serious.”

At this, both of his parents seem to sober up a bit. Lan Sizhui was scared of this.

“I didn’t know you were interested in that kind of thing,” Wei Ying recovers first and smiles awkwardly at his son. Lan Sizhui can tell this is a painful subject to breach.

“Not that much,” Lan Sizhui shrugs, because it’s technically not a lie. He’s less interested in the process of using a Golden Core, and more on the consequences of its invention to the world. To his people.

His parents seem to take this in quietly. For long minutes on end, the only sound in their little kitchen is that of Lan Sizhui eating.

Finally, after what seems like hours, Wei Ying speaks.

“Well, if you’re ever interested let me know! I know some very good Golden Core researchers. In fact I might get you in contact with an incredible one right this very second. You must know of him, he works for the at Gusu-Lan and has the dreamiest eyes and–”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan admonishes, placing a hand on top of Wei Ying’s.

Okay. This is better. This Lan Sizhui can do.

“What? It’s true. Ah, but if he meets this very handsome researcher he’ll have to meet his horrible research partner and I don’t know if I can subject my little radish to that torture.”

Lan Zhan makes a face at that, and Sizhui feels his eyes go wide.

“You have a research partner?” He gawks at Lan Zhan. His a-die has always been known for working alone. “Who??”

“No one important,” Lan Zhan brushes his curiosity off, “eat your food.”

Lan Sizhui sulks, but does as he’s told. He’s still hungry from the long trip after all.

“Hey! He’s important too! You can’t just brush him aside Lan Zhan, that’s terrible teamwork.”

“You know him??” Lan Sizhui can’t help but ask, mouth still full of rice.

“No talking with your mouth full,” Lan Zhan admonishes.

“Yes, I do,” Wei Ying interrupts while Sizhui hurries to swallow and not choke to death. “And I confess he’s much better than my research partner, at least in personality.” Wei Ying shoots a challenging look at Lan Zhan, which his a-die swiftly ignores.

“Your research partner is horrible on all fronts,” Lan Zhan says simply and Sizhui can’t help but gawk at the conversation happening right in front of his eyes.

It feels wrong somehow, like he’s missing a crucial piece of information that will make everything magically make sense.

“Wait, so you know each other’s research partners?” Sizhui gestures to both of them with his chopsticks.

“Don’t gesture with chopsticks,” Lan Zhan immediately corrects and Sizhui obediently puts them down onto his bowl of rice. “And yes, we do.”

“And your a-die here has a very strong opinion on both of them.” Wei Ying bumps shoulder with Lan Zhan, far too lovingly for the tension still floating in the air after bringing up their respective mystery research partners.

“Who– Who are they?” Sizhui asks when it becomes obvious his parents don’t intend to share this piece of information.

“Not important,” Lan Zhan waves off.

“Ah, radish, you don’t gotta worry about our work. It’s just boring stuff, don’t worry!” His baba laughs good-heartedly, but Sizhui can hear a little pearl of tension in his tone. 

“Right…” he looks back down to his bowl. The rice doesn’t seem as appetizing as before.

“Aiyah! What’s with the doom and gloom? Tell us about what else happened at school. Did Jin Ling do alright his first semester? Did he make any friends? Did you take good care of him?” Wei Ying brushes the heavy topic aside, leaning over the table and pushing the rice bowl more towards Sizhui. “And eat more! I know for a fact that University life does not come with healthy meals.”

Lan Sizhui reluctantly picks up his food again and starts munching.

“Jin Ling is doing fine. He’s 19 years old already, it’s not like he’s a helpless baby anymore. He’s made some friends of his own, but he mostly hangs around me and Lan Jingyi,” Sizhui chews on a piece of deliciously seasoned cabbage.

“Oh, I’m so glad! You have to invite Lan Jingyi over one of these days too. I’m dying to meet my son’s very own best friend,” Wei Ying beams.

“I will,” Sizhui says, because it’s easy to agree with.

His parents are still hiding something. Lan Sizhui can see it on the slope of their shoulders and the line of their mouths. But he’s just had an exhausting train journey and the food in front of him is tasty and he missed his parents.

Maybe tomorrow.

He can figure it out tomorrow.

“Seconds?” Lan Zhan asks when he sees Sizhui’s empty bowl.

“Yes, please.”

Tomorrow, for sure.

-

“A-Yuan, baobei, can you grab the book on my desk, please?” Lan Sizhui lowers the book he’s reading to see his baba, hair a mess and glasses askew, working furiously at a manuscript.

Lan Zhan is out today. Something about an important deadline for a project and him needing to see to it in person. He left early in the morning, a kiss on Wei Ying’s cheek and a hug for Lan Sizhui, and promised he’d come back for dinner. It’s just been him and his baba in the house for hours now.

Wei Ying had dutifully cleaned the kitchen from the breakfast Lan Zhan had cooked, and then kissed Sizhui on the forehead and said he’d need to do some work, before settling on the dining table with his trusty notebook and cracked glasses.

“Why are you working on a Saturday?” Lan Sizhui sighs, making a point of burrowing further into the couch where he had been comfortably reading for the better part of the afternoon.

“Not everyone can have the entire summer off,” Wei Ying brushes off, still focused on his notes. “Some of us have to work.”

“Workaholic,” Lan Sizhui complains, already putting his book on the coffee table.

“Hey! I resent that!” Wei Ying laughs, “I’m here, suffering to make the world a better place for you to live in, and you’re scorning me! And after I went through the trouble of birthing you myself! Shame! Shame on you!”

Lan Sizhui rolls his eyes, but he can’t help but smile fondly. His baba is always so dramatic, but Lan Sizhui can’t deny that he works hard, and he works hard for him specifically.

“What are you even working on?” He stalks behind Wei Ying, peeking over his shoulder to see the paper his baba has been writing for the last couple of days.

He only manages to catch a single sentence before his baba closes the notebook and spins around in his chair. Lan Sizhui has about a second to be suspicious before his cheeks are being squished and he’s being pulled into a hug.

“Ah, A-Yuan, did you miss me that much? Do you want to spend some time with your baba before going back to university? Well, since you asked so nicely,” and Wei Ying drags him away from the dinner table, pulling him away from his notebook and the mysterious paper. It’s definitely a distraction, but Wei Ying is so persistent that it’s kind of working.

“I did miss you,” Lan Sizhui confesses, too honest for the joking tone of Wei Ying’s teasing.

It immediately sobers up his baba, who turns to look at Lan Sizhui with nothing but warmth in those endlessly dark eyes.

“I missed you too, radish,” Wei Ying’s palm is a grounding weight against Lan Sizhui’s cheek. It’s a bit of a weird gesture from his baba. There’s a bit too much emotion behind that smile, something that Lan Sizhui hadn’t seen since he was a scared child and his baba had been running, nightmares nipping at his heels and Lan Sizhui shivering in his arms.

It makes him antsy, like whatever they were running from is still not done chasing them.

He wants to ask more, but words were never his specialty. They weigh onto his tongue, heavy like lead, so he just smiles and pulls his baba to the couch.

“Wanna play a game?” Lan Sizhui swallows the weight in his mouth and pulls a deck of cards from the drawer under the coffee table. “Loser has to wash the dishes tonight?”

“Oh, you are so on!” Wei Ying smiles, bright enough to almost convince Lan Sizhui that whatever he saw was nothing but his paranoia and fear. But he’s too smart for that. He’s far too used to having to recognize the danger signs before his world comes crumbling down not to trace them in the line of his baba’s smiles.

Something is coming. And he’s not ready for it.

“Baba,” Lan Sizhui says, watching Wei Ying’s skilled hands shuffle the deck of cards with ease.

“Yeah?” His baba’s eyes are focused on the cards in his hands, avoiding Lan Sizhui’s eyes with what he can only guess is fear. Fear that his son had seen the beginnings of a storm brewing under yellowed papers of his notebook.

“We’re okay, right?” He almost doesn’t want to ask. He almost doesn't want to know the answer.

Wei Ying’s hands stall, and he stands frozen, staring at the deck of cards like it holds all the answers in the world. His shoulders are a tense line, a stress that only he, Lan Zhan, and Jiang Yanli would ever be able to see. No one ever thought Lan Sizhui’s baba could be so human as to be afraid.

“Why do you ask?” His baba tries to laugh, but it’s weak this time, fragile like a baby bird’s wings. Something that Lan Sizhui can’t help but want to tenderly cradle in his own hands.

He shrugs, hoping his baba can sense all the fears he can’t seem to voice from that simple gesture.

Somehow, it works (it always does), and Wei Ying puts the deck down with a heavy sigh. Then, he pulls Lan Sizhui to his chest, letting his son bury his face into the well-worn hoodie. He’s been taller than Wei Ying for a couple of years now, and he still remembers when he finally passed his baba in height. The elation and sadness that followed imprinted on the inside of his skin.

Happiness for being older and bigger than the arms that always nurtured him. The grief of not being able to hide under his baba’s wings anymore, a baby chick without the protection of its mother. Like he had to face the world alone now.

But he never did. Wei Ying never let him. His parents never let him.

Always protected, always treasured, always loved.

It aches just as much as it shines.

“A-Yuan,” Wei Ying pets his hair, trying his best to soothe his son. “My little radish, you don’t have to worry about anything, okay? We’ll be okay. We’re always okay. I promised I would take care of you, and I always will,” Wei Ying’s voice is steady and his hands are solid while they hold Lan Sizhui.

“I know,” he says, burying the words in the fabric of Wei Ying’s hoodie. Because he does. Because his baba had never done anything but protect him. He sacrificed everything over and over again, always choosing Lan Sizhui above everyone and everything else. Including himself.

He knows Wei Ying would always take care of him.

But he’s taller now. He can’t hide beneath his baba’s wings. He’s not a child that needs coddling anymore.

Now, it’s his time to take care of his baba.

-

He really doesn’t mean to go snooping into his baba’s things, but the single line he managed to glimpse before Wei Ying closed his notebook has been haunting him ever since last Saturday.

“Therefore, the use of demonic cultivation can be a reasonable substitute for…”

Lan Sizhui knows where that thesis comes from. It’s been the biggest news at his University for at a least a couple of months now. A brand new researcher duo, publishing papers about using demonic cultivation as a substitute for Golden Cores. Lan Jingyi, endlessly bothering Sizhui with his crazy theories about the researcher pairs and how they must have fought in an alleyway after at least one conference.

His mouth is dry and his heart is pounding in his chest as he sifts through the files in his baba’s office, trying to find anything that might lead him to an answer. Because if his baba really is the one behind those papers, then that’s a bad sign.

Wei Ying was never the best at keeping himself away from danger. He was never the best at seeing a cause worth fighting for and not throwing himself head-first into danger. Sizhui would know, after all, he had been one of those causes. Only that one had ended up with a marriage and an adoption and neat happily ever after tied up in a pretty bow, and this one spells nothing but coming disaster.

Lan Sizhui can’t get rid of that memory of monsters – people – knocking at their door in the middle of the night. He’s grown so used to the peace and safety of being Lan Sizhui that he almost convinced himself Wen Yuan was nothing but a bad dream.

But he wasn’t. He’s right here. He never left. He's stirring awake with every passing second.

And right now, it’s not Lan Sizhui’s frantic hands that comb through paper after paper on Wei Ying’s drawers, but A-Yuan’s.

He sifts through folder after folder of nothing but boring spiritual energy scripts and talismans, slowly trying to convince himself that he had read wrong and his baba is not involved in something that could seriously turn dangerous for them. Only when he’s done looking through every nook and cranny of the office does his heart start calming down. There’s nothing there. He even looked through every single page of his baba's notebook, but the page he peeked earlier is mysteriously gone.

Maybe he was wrong after all. Maybe he read wrong. Maybe his baba's more cautious than he gives him credit for.

But there’s still something stirring deep in guts, a foreboding cloud above all their heads that he can’t seem to wave off.

He’s scared.

Not of his baba being in danger. Not of dipping his toes into danger. Not of exposing himself to what can only end in disaster.

No.

He’s afraid of being wrong.

He’s afraid his baba really has nothing to do with this. Because A-Yuan’s been sleeping for 15 years now, sleepwalking through life and watching the Wens and the Jin harvest more and more power, sinking their claws deeper and deeper into every single person he knows. He’s been waiting for a chance to rebel for so long that he’s afraid of it being taken away.

His hands are shaking. One glance at the clock tells him he probably only has minutes left before his parents come back from date night, so he needs to find something and he needs to find it now.

Think, think, think.

Where would his baba hide a secret that big?

He can’t help but let his gaze slide to the box sitting next to his baba’s notebook. It has a glass cutout on the top, where a photo of a much younger Lan Sizhui is tucked safely. He knows what that box is. Lan Zhan lovingly calls it Wei Ying’s empty nesting memory box, and Lan Sizhui is inclined to agree.

He knows what’s inside. A lock of his hair. Some of his baby teeth. Pictures upon pictures of Lan Sizhui growing. Nothing special. Nothing but a box filled with the love of a father for his son.

I promised I would take care of you, and I always will.

Lan Sizhui’s hands are opening the lid before his brain can process it. The trinkets inside are just what he remembers being, and he slides them out one by one, running his hands lovingly over the pictures of him as a child on Lan Zhan’s lap, or him being carried like a sack of potatoes by Wei Ying. His heart is weirdly quiet, like he already knows how this ends. Like he’s just going through the motions until he eventually reaches the conclusion he already expected.

Once the box is empty his fingers seek the bottom, poking and prodding until it pops off. And then, hiding under the wood slate, is a collection of several folded pieces of paper.

Lan Sizhui’s hands are steady as he picks one of the papers up and gently unfolds it.

He already knows what he’ll find printed there.

Draft 56

Golden Core liberation: the use of demonic cultivation as an alternative to spiritual energy.

Chenqing, W. & Suihua, Z.

Wen Yuan wakes up.

Chapter Text

In 1839, Lotus Pier registered the largest yearly increase in revenue since the Qishan unification, at 12.62%. Our main activity remains the exportation of goods and weapons to the Qishan armies at the unification front in the South, mainly by sea; followed by domestic transportation of agricultural products from the region of Qinghe to the rest of the country, via the Yunping river.

Jiang, Cheng. (1840). Lotus Pier Annual Press Report.

Jiang Cheng’s childhood had been a nice one. He, his big sister, and his brother. Ah, and his parents. He reckons they were there, too.

His adult self knows better than to resent his parents’ absence from home, in favor of the work that kept a roof above their heads—and a very luxurious one at that. Work is, after all, work.  Nowadays, the Jiang patriarch understands that responsibility better than anyone, ever since he’s been occupying that position in the family business at the grand Lotus Pier.

But as someone who was raised from a certain age having his basic needs met by servants, educational ones met by private teachers, and emotional ones by his older sister, Jiang Cheng was very aware of just how much Yanli must have sacrificed in order to take on the role of a parent. One that was even bigger than their own mother’s, at least to him and his other sibling Wei Ying. A large portion of their fondest childhood memories were made of Yanli’s occasional home-cooked meals, ever-present warm hugs, and infinite source of knowledge and patience for helping him with homework.

Things were not always like this. Sure, Jiang Cheng’s earliest memories were a bit fuzzy, the way a very young child’s were. But he recalled how his parents began to grow more distant around the same time Wei Ying came into their household. 

He was too young at the time to have made the connection. But for all the times Jiang Fengmian seemed to favor this other boy who was not even his own son, Jiang Cheng secretly resented his new brother for it. He resented him for his mother, who was never on board with the idea of this adoption and had her little feud with his father. It seemed to consist of her being ten, twenty times more stern with Jiang Cheng than she was with Wei Ying, every time she wanted to remind the boys’ father who their real son was. Who their real heir was. 

It was not until he got older that he began to understand that lack of acknowledgement towards Wei Ying as neglect. Through the eyes of his child self, all he saw in her ways was more favoritism, albeit a different kind than his father’s, towards his adopted brother.

And he resented not his parents, but his brother. Because Wei Ying was an easier target for that resentment, after all, than his parents.

It did not help that his parents made themselves less and less present in their lives, as if the more they drowned themselves in work, the more they could step away from the problems at home.

But Wei Ying was always there, so eager at the thought of having a new brother so close in age. 

As his brother continued being annoyingly insistent on becoming best friends, it became clear that he would not be going away. Over the years and under Yanli’s persistent mediation, Jiang Cheng started to open up to the presence of a second sibling. He learned that it'd be better than fighting against his brother to have him by his side. 

Wei Ying had the best imagination to make up stories about magical worlds to explore and monsters to chase. He was the best climber and the best runner, but Jiang Cheng was always the best swimmer.

Jiang Cheng had private lessons in wielding swords and riding horses. It was a thing for the rich to make hobbies out of these types of skills, and to make their sons partake in them, even without ever intending for them to leave the comfort of their homes for the battlefield.

Wei Ying did not take lessons, but Jiang Cheng would teach him. Neither did Yanli; she was a girl. But when the brothers woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t go back to sleep, no one could chase away the monsters quite like her anyway.

When the Jiang siblings—Wei Ying now counted himself as one of them—were young, mornings were spent at school, and afternoons at the lakes that surrounded the Yunmeng capital. It was where Jiang Cheng was the happiest. Because rather than being the clan heir, or anyone's perfect son, he was just himself. 

The other chunk of his childhood memories included being taken along with his father during his business trips to other nations. As the clan head and administrator of the largest harbor in a land of merchants and travelers, Jiang Fengmian was always invited to meetings abroad in the other Ally Nations—at the time when those were still separate nations.

He would often bring his children along: Jiang Cheng, on Yu Ziyuan’s insistence that their heir should get used to the trade and get acquainted with the other nations. Yanli and Wei Ying, because Jiang Fengmian was unable to tell them no whenever they asked to tag along, and because Jiang Cheng wouldn’t go if the two of them didn’t come with.

It was during those trips that Jiang Cheng learned how vast were the lands of Qinghe, how diverse and bustling the metropolis of Lanling, how wise the scholars of Qishan. And how majestic were the cities in Gusu, with its aqueducts and automobiles and shopping districts; the large and imposing buildings of the capital, the carefully planned streets and alleyways.

All of that, idealized and engineered and built by people.

Other people.

The world he knew was built by the farmers in the vast lands of Qinghe, the merchants and miners and artists in Lanling, the wise scholars of Qishan, and the genius engineers of Gusu.

But the place Jiang Cheng was one day to occupy in this world was not for building anything, as much as it was to simply run one of its less interesting parts: Lotus Pier.

Looking back at it now and recalling the things he learned in those trips, though they had only been a couple of decades away, it felt like they happened in an entirely different world. Because in a way, it had been an entirely different world a couple of decades ago.

Jiang Cheng had lived through an industrial revolution when he was a child. But in the world that existed back then, there existed the imminence of war, and in such a world, inventions would skip from a stage of incipience to being developed towards use in battle in the blink of an eye.

And incipient, those things were not.

Things had been changing back then. Those were times of unshakeable truths being proved wrong, times of things long believed to be impossible being proved to be quite possible. Times of hope, the sort of hope that would be shattered by the war when it erupted decades later. But when Jiang Cheng was still a child, those were, still, times of hope.

He was born one decade after an event History books now call the first Industrial Revolution. Until then, cultivation was believed to be nothing but a handy tool by which a highly skilled worker could bend energy at their whim, so long as the type of energy was kept the same. That the essence of a wave of energy could not be changed: this was the principle of conservation.

1794 was the year when they broke the principle of conservation for the first time.

Before 1794, harbors in Yunmeng were operated by cultivators who manipulated waves to move ships to and from the docks, redirecting kinetic energy from waves at the shores and river banks. This was why, despite the large number of falls and dams in the region, the waters everywhere else apart from the harbor were so calm. To create waves, one must take energy from another wave elsewhere. This was the way of things.

At night, the streets were filled with performers who would present tricks with light and heat using torches as an energy source. They would seem to create fireworks from their bare hands, lighting dozens of torches and then making the fire vanish, only to have it reappear in a daze of all colors and shapes and a whiff of very hot or very cold air at the performers’ will. But, really, all there was to it was the manipulation of light and heat waves through cultivation.

Even the latest Gusu technology, considered a breakthrough at the time, by which sound waves emitted from musical instruments could be used to create wind in the air and ripples in water, still abided by the principle of conservation at the end of the day: after all, sound, wind, and ripples were the same kind of mechanical waves formed when energy stretched and pulled matter in air or water in a particular way.

There were two things that changed in 1794: that there was relative political stability in the Allied Lands, and that cultivation was one of the least promising, most stable fields of science.

But that was the year the Wen cultivators discovered how to break the principle of conservation in cultivation.

It was first published by Wen Ruohan, who was only a scholar at the time, as a small experiment in which he was able to consume a speck of candlelight to produce small ripples in a glass of water. But the impossible transformation of electromagnetic energy into kinetic energy meant something big.

Back then, no one would have imagined how it would develop into the technology used to power war machines and wipe out entire cities. Or that the severely demilitarized Qishan even had the means to orchestrate an invasion in the first place.

But the more Wen Ruohan’s technique was fine-tuned, the clearer that sort of future became.

Until it became clear as glass, when they learned how to convert energy from the Sun in a reaction that could turn its light into any other type of energy. The results ranged from a small area around the cultivator growing slightly dimmer for a few seconds from the sunlight consumed for the energy reaction, to entire cubic miles becoming completely devoid of light for the whole duration of it.

And when one's power is enough to control the Sun, what are they but the Sun itself?

When Qishan learned how to become the Sun—that was the first revolution.

As the name implies, it was followed by a second one.

Powerful as it was, Qishan had a problem: they could only be the Sun for as long as energy reactions were actively held. And while cultivating sunlight into all sorts of energy was unprecedentedly powerful, it still had limitations when there was no known way to store that energy in large amounts for later use.

The second industrial revolution came with the invention of Golden Cores.

How powerful must it have made Qishan to be able to not only steal the Sun in whatever form you wanted its energy to be, but also be able to store immense amounts of it and be able to release all of it at once?

Golden Core technology made it possible for the Wen sect to plan out the unification of the Ally Lands into Qishan in 1815: that was just how powerful it made them.

But it was not only the unification and the war that came with it, as the Ally Lands first resisted being annexed, not only the casualties left by the war, not only the trail of destruction it left all over Jiang Cheng’s homeland.

People create technology in the form of inventions in response to their own wants and needs, but there is a threshold after which it is technology that shapes people.

Manual labor in the vast farms in Qinghe and mines in Lanling, scholars of all fields of knowledge in Qishan and engineers and inventors of all sorts in Gusu, bustling crowds of diverse and specialized merchants living in metropolis made by men and shaped to their image, and the Lotus Pier and Yunmeng City Jiang Cheng knew from his childhood: all of that belonged to a world where cultivation was restricted by the principle of conservation, and Golden Cores had not yet been invented.

The world after the second revolution was one of city outskirts filled with industrial parks, glass ceiling sheds for as far as the eye could see, where the sky would flicker from bright daylight to pitch black darkness as their cultivators stole the sun, for as long as it was day, every day. It was one where nine out of ten jobs for cultivators involved pouring that energy into Golden Cores, and nine out of ten jobs for engineers involved figuring out how to connect those energy deposits to power production lines, street lights, automobiles, trains, home appliances, war machines.

There was no denying that the history of modern cultivation was one tainted by blood,  with misery and poverty and thousands of deaths caused in its name. But since the Unification, times were changing, and Qishan was no longer at war. Things were getting better. They would get better, because as long as they all kept doing their part, Qishan as a unified nation would be strong and wealthy and able to repay its citizens and make their lives so much better than they were, even before the war.

Right?

It was what Jiang Cheng believed, and it was what he worked for.

“Did you know that before the Great Qishan unification campaign, oil lamps were used at night to light homes in the Ally Lands? Oil lamps were a primitive type of combustion-based light source that did not rely on cultivation at all. Nowadays, families can purchase modern, golden-core-operated lamps equipped with the finest energy canalizing technology imported from the Capitol. Contact Baifeng Lampwick Corporations via mail, telegram, or phone to get a quotation for your own home project today.”

Baifeng Lampwick Corporations. Advertisement for battery-operated lamps and home illumination projects. Published in The Daily Yunmeng circa 1840.

Lotus Pier. Yunmeng City, 1840. The present, 25 years after the invasion.

Jiang Cheng does not want to be sitting in Jin Zixuan’s passenger seat.

Jiang Cheng wants to be nowhere near Jin Zixuan by at least a five-mile radius, and definitely not in his passenger seat.

But there he is.

There was one particular incident months ago, and since then, he’s been alternating between seeking Jin Zixuan—which he does seldom—and avoiding him—which he does a lot. The avoiding part was usually easy enough, since the other man lived most of the time in Lanling. But his trips to the Lanling outpost in Yunmeng were getting more and more frequent, and Jiang Cheng suspects this has something to do with himself. It does make seeking Jin Zixuan easier, but it makes avoiding him much harder.

Today, as it has been for a couple of weeks, is an avoiding day.

Lately, he’s refused all of Yanli’s invitations to join her and Wen Qing for dinner. Visiting his sister and her wife, especially when Jin Ling was also present, means there is a great chance he’ll run into Jin Zixuan, given he is still her sister’s ex-husband and Jin Ling’s father after all.

Jiang Cheng’s been avoiding the market near the Jin observation tower, which isn’t Jin Zixuan’s most usual workplace, but there is still an off chance that he pays a visit—that overworking, micromanaging bastard.

And Jiang Cheng surely, absolutely canceled the family dinner he and his siblings host religiously on the first Saturday of each month at the Jiang estate, claiming he had a terrible cold (now that he’s the only one still living at their childhood home, he does have the right to have it for himself to rest the sickness away if he wanted, thank you very much; they can have lunch at someone else’s home without him if they so wish). On that occasion, Jin Zixuan offered a visit to check up on him and help around the house, which, of course, was promptly refused—it would defeat the purpose of having faked sickness in order to avoid seeing him at family dinner altogether.

This evening, as Jiang Cheng walked out of the Lotus Pier administrative building ready to go back home for the day, there was an automobile parked across the street. This did not strike him as unusual at first: even though these machines are still a luxury most ordinary people cannot afford, they have been growing in numbers over the past few years since the worst of the crisis has passed. What are the odds of this one being his ex-brother-in-law’s vehicle? Not particularly high. He keeps walking.

Then he hears the sound of a door shutting, and an all too familiar voice coming from behind him.

“Jiang Cheng! What a coincidence meeting you here,” Jin Zixuan exclaims.

He keeps on walking, having barely turned around to acknowledge Jin Zixuan's presence. “It's where I come to work every day. Good day.”

The other man rushes his pace to keep up, turning to face Jiang Cheng when he reaches him. “Is it?” A few strands have come undone from his rather impeccable hair from the motion. “I was just at the coffee shop across the street, and wanted to read a bit before heading home.” There is a stupid newspaper conveniently tucked under his arm. But it is way past six—the shop across the street is closed. “Going home too? Let me give you a ride.”

The Jiang estate is a fifteen-minute walk away, which he takes every day to and from Lotus Pier. Jiang Cheng does not need a ride.

“...I still need to head to the market,” he lies. “Thanks, though. No need to trouble yourself.”

“Oh, but so do I.”

Jiang Cheng grits his teeth as he is led by the arm toward the vehicle, and Jin Zixuan even stops to open the door for him as one would to a maiden.

They drove for a couple of minutes in blissful silence.

Which Jin Zixuan breaks by asking: “Well, answer me this. Why  can’t you court a bitch, a bitch who I assume is myself, when Wei Wuxian has married one?”

Jiang Cheng chokes on his air. He knows which conversation that was from. He does not know how the words have reached Jin Zixuan’s ears.

“...Pardon?”

“Is that not what you told your brother when he asked you about me?” Jin Zixuan does not take his eyes off the road as he speaks, looking straight ahead at the traffic, but for all Jiang Cheng feels exposed, he might as well have been staring into his soul. He remains frozen as the other keeps speaking. “Is that what we’re doing?” Jin Zixuan tries rolling the word over his tongue, “courting?”

“...”

“Oh, Wei Wuxian told me himself, before you ask. That when he asked you just what your deal was with me, you said, and I quote, ‘So what if I’m courting a bitch, when you’ve married one yourself?’”

The way it happened is this:

The last time Jiang Cheng saw his brother, it was in Gusu right after his meeting with Lan Wangji. Annoying, insufferable fucking Lan Wangji, who unfortunately was a brilliant engineer. Wei Ying had been there to come fetch his husband and ended up running into his brother as well.

Jiang Cheng had spent the better part of the meeting arguing with Lan Wangji—for all that man was commendable as a research partner, Jiang Cheng hated his guts as anything else—and he’d been admittedly irritated. So much so that when the two of them met his brother and one thing led to another and, next thing he knew, his brother was asking him about Jin Zixuan, Jiang Cheng couldn’t stop an insult to the man who’d been getting on his nerves all afternoon from slipping itself into his reply.

‘By the way’, Wei Ying said, ‘don’t you think I’ve suffered enough when Jiejie was married to Jin Zixuan and we had to be around him all the time? I was okay with putting up with that peacock for A-Ling’s sake, but then you two had to start courting each other? You must hate me. Why do you hate me? He is a bitch.’

Jiang Cheng’s response involved being allowed to court whomever he wanted, bitch or not, as long as his brother had a worse bitch for a husband. 

Still, that did not explain why Jin Zixuan knew about his particular slip of the tongue. His brother, to no one's surprise, must have been unable to keep his mouth shut. But if Jin Zixuan, who was probably Wei Ying’s least favorite person in the world, was meeting up with his brother again, that meant…

“You were with Wei Ying? Doing what?”

“That is beside the point,” Jin Zixuan eludes.

“If you two were working on another paper for that god-awful research of yours, then I swear—”

“—Stop trying to change the subject”, he says, and Jiang Cheng knows it is as much an attempt to stay on that track as it is avoidant of a subject that was particularly dividing, and thus avoided, within his family. 

“Are we going to talk about this or not?”

Jiang Cheng wouldn’t say there was much he yearned to talk about.

The incident happened during last month’s family dinner, after his nephews had already left the house to watch some play they’d been begging to go to, but still early enough that all other guests were still around. Yanli, Wen Qing, Wen Ning, Wei Ying, fucking Lan Wangji, and Jin Zixuan, they were all chatting about anything and everything now that the children weren’t around—well, even though those ‘children’ were of age now, some things never change. Those who drank were having wine.

Jiang Cheng didn’t know how many glasses he’d had. He stopped counting at around three or four. They were well deserved, okay? He had spent the better part of the day at the Harbor busy with work, even though it was a Saturday.

He had gotten home in a rush, barely in time to greet his guests. Thankfully, Yanli had brought them a huge pan of home-cooked stew, as she always did, and it tasted amazing, as it always did. There was even tangyuan for dessert, which Jin Ling helped make. Even though the rice balls were overcooked and falling apart a bit, his nephew really seemed to be using his University break for something after all, Jiang Cheng had thought.

And just as his family does every week, everybody ate, and they talked, and they drank, and then the boys left to go do their own thing, and all was good.

And then his menace of a brother started getting more handsy with Lan Wangji after a few glasses, the way he does every time.

Look, Jiang Cheng had already kind of settled on the idea of having to put up with Wei Ying for the rest of his life, and he was even mildly okay with it. He just did not remember having signed up for the sight of said brother dangling himself off the arms of some man , like some kind of damsel, as part of the deal. 

They had known Lan Wangji since their own University days. So, really, Jiang Cheng should know better than to expect any dignity from him by now—but, of course, the fucker did nothing to stop his husband’s antics, which only served to fuel Wei Ying even more into shoving their relationship into everyone’s faces.

This was, of course, intentional on his brother’s part and just to spite him. Despite his animosity with Jiang Cheng, bland-as-a-door Lan Wangji wouldn’t have the nerve to plan such a thing. But even though he knew this was the exact kind of reaction his brother expected of him, Jiang Cheng couldn’t help being mad. 

Especially not when there was another couple at the dinner table showing that you can, in fact, sit next to your significant other for more than a couple of hours without having to crawl into each other’s lap. “Why can’t you two be normal like a-Jie and Wen Qing?”

(And after that relationship had been going on for so many years, Jiang Cheng reckons he is finally able to look at Wen Qing and see his sister’s fiancée, not his own ex-girlfriend. It is great for him to be able to use her as an argument against his brother—a win is a win.)

“But we are normal, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Wei Ying said while spoon-feeding Lan Wangji a rice ball, which he took with a straight face. “This is barely even couples’ stuff. It’s just something you do with your mates. Right, Lan Zhan?”

Then he kissed his husband on the mouth.

Jiang Cheng drained the remaining contents of his glass in one gulp.

He looked around the room for someone to back him up on this. Yanli wouldn’t do it, she was always too keen to coddle Wei Ying like he was still her baby brother. He doubted Wen Qing would do it, either, since she always sided with her wife in these sorts of petty discussions. And Wen Ning always sided with Wei Ying. Which left him with…

“You! Jixuan,” he pointed, “don’t you agree with me?”

Jin Zixuan made a face and nodded. In retrospect, Jiang Cheng thinks this wasn’t really agreeing with what he said, as much as just trying to avoid conflict—of which they’d already had plenty when they were younger. He said, “I mean, it is a bit excessive, but I don’t really mind—

“HA!” It was all Jiang Cheng needed at that moment. “See? Even he thinks y’all are gross.”

“That’s not true”, Wei Ying argued, “and even if you hadn’t been coercing him to say it, which you totally were, who cares about what Jin Zixuan says?”

“Oh, but it is,” Jiang Cheng said as he stood up from his chair, “and the only reason you think this is normal is because you don’t see yourself doing it.” He walked up to where Jin Zixuan sat, his eyes still fixed on Wei Ying, “but I’ll show you how gross it looks.”

He didn’t know what he’d been thinking. It was the wine speaking, okay.

It was the wine that made his body yank Jin Zixuan up by the collar of his shirt, and kiss him ferociously.

What Jiang Cheng was sure did not come from any substance running down his own bloodstream, though, was how he felt when Jin Zixuan first turned surprisingly stiff under Jiang Cheng’s hands, and then all but folded him into a crushing embrace and kissed him within an inch of his life.

Jiang Cheng was too busy having his breath sucked out of his lungs by his sister’s ex-husband to really pay attention to his surroundings, but he waas pretty sure he heard someone dog-whistling. Actually, he’d be willing to bet it was Yanli herself. Fuck his life.

When he finally managed to wrangle himself and his bruised lips away from Jin Zixuan, it was all he could do not to explode on the spot. Jin Zixuan looked so pathetic then, looking at Jiang Cheng like his life had just been tilted on its axis. He was blushing adorably, and his eyes were glazed over and dreamy.

So, of course, Jiang Cheng couldn’t resist pushing the man away with a rough shove and then stomping outside. He refused to pay any mind to his brother's concerned eyes and his sister’s worried frown. He was a fucking adult, okay? He could make his own stupid choices and not have his older siblings looking like kicked puppies because of it.

Including kissing Jin Zixuan.

Oh fuck.

He had really kissed Jin Zixuan, hadn’t he?

Later that evening, his brother had found him still sitting outside (totally not because he was too much of a coward to rejoin them) and asked if he wanted to tag along with them to go to the theater.

Apparently, some people (Wei Ying) missed their babies and wanted to see if they could catch up to the kids and walk with them back home (sic).

Really, his brother had become too obvious with his empty nesting lately.

Jian Cheng, not so politely, declined, blaming it on cleaning the house and being too tired for the long walk. He’s pretty sure Wei Ying didn’t buy it, but his brother was merciful enough to leave him in the night air and go hunt his baby down with the rest of the family.

Really, Wei Ying was so lucky his kid was not like Jin Ling, or he would have wilted like a flower.

By then, all Jiang Cheng cared about was the massive headache starting to form now that he was sobering up a bit. It was several times more interesting than what had just happened between him and the only other person left in the dining room with him.

He grabbed a cloth and began wiping the table—because it was dirty with crumbs all over, and for genuinely no other reason.

He jumped when he felt warmth against his back. Then, Jin Zixuan was leaning over him, sandwiching his body between his own and the table.

He gestured at the pile of dishes sitting in front of Jiang Cheng, but made no further move to take it. “Don’t you have servants to help you with these things?”

Certainly not that late into a Saturday.

Jiang Cheng was only able to remain silent as his entire body burned .

“Well, if no one’s coming tonight,” Jin Zixuan got even closer than he thought was possible to get without an inch of their bodies touching, “let me help you.”

They were face to face now, thanks to how Jin Zixuan’s spine bent at an unnatural angle as he reached for something farther by the middle of the table, all while staring him up and down with a gaze that could eat a man up. Both said nothing. But then, he simply smiled at Jiang Cheng and slid his hand back, retrieving the pile of dishes that was sitting behind him. Then, he took them down the hall and disappeared.

Jiang Cheng decided, for the sake of his mental health, not to read much into it and blame the embers burning underneath his skin on the alcohol alone. He got the cleaning done, then folded the cloth and turned back to take it to the kitchen. Only when he did, he tripped over something blocking his way.

And fell into a pair of strategically placed arms.

Jin Zixuan slid a hand down his lower back, bracing his fall. “Careful now.”

His chest felt nice and warm against Jiang Cheng’s hand under that fine-pressed cotton.

“I was just done with the dishes. Need help with anything else?”, the other asked, and for all he had an annoying habit of staring right at your eyes all the time when he talked, his gaze pointed downwards. Jiang Cheng was suddenly very aware of the flush he felt creeping up his neck, one undone button on his shirt too exposed. 

He wanted him to move. To let go of him, what the hell was that? He was going to tell him that. Yes, he was going to say exactly that.

“Yeah, I do need help” was what came out instead.

And then those hands were traveling up his arm, painfully slow. He felt the hairs on his skin standing up on the cold trail left by Jin Zixuan's fingertips. And before he could process what that meant, those digits were resting right at his jaw, a thumb poking his chin inviting his lips to part.

“Tell me to stop,” Jin Zixuan said.

He didn’t.

“Tell me you don’t want this, and I’ll stop.”

He didn’t.

He didn’t, and then those lips were pressed against his own, and those hands were all over his neck and his hair and his chest, and he was kissed until he needed a break to breathe in some air lest he’d die, not that he didn’t already feel like he was dying anyway, as much as he felt alive , and then the mouth that’d left his lips was sinking teeth into his neck. 

And then Jiang Cheng’s own guilt and shame and sense of sound judgment washed over him and his stupid want.

He sent Jin Zixuan home.

He walked him to the door and watched his back as it got smaller and smaller the further he walked away down the street. When he finally turned around the corner, Jiang Cheng sat down on the doorstep. He remained there until he decided he needed to come inside and pour himself another drink, and that he also needed to never see Jin Zixuan ever again.

He hadn’t accounted for ‘not ever again’ to have a duration of approximately a week, when they’d encountered each other during some menial task he didn’t even remember what it was, and flung their bodies at one another into an embrace as soon as they were alone. An embrace that turned into a kiss, that turned into another, that turned into… Well.

It happened a few more times. But it always came to the same thing.

As much as Jiang Cheng wanted it, as much as his body ached with how much it yearned for this—his body was not the entirety of him, and he knew that the wanting alone did not make any of this right . 

Not right before his sister, who still had a life shared with this man, even though they were no longer romantically involved, for the son they had together. Not right before the boy, his nephew, either.

Not for the legacy of his family name: for all he tried not to mind that both his siblings had relationships with a partner of the same gender, he could not be just some cut-sleeve, for he was still the Jiang patriarch, and still had the responsibility to bear sons.

Jiang Cheng’s thoughts of Jin Zixuan swung like a pendulum between shame and desire.

This time, after being practically kidnapped by Jin Zixuan and taken on a made-up trip to the market to get a loaf of bread he does not even like and a jar of the same jam he already has four of at home, Jiang Cheng quietly let the other man take him home. They kissed goodbye at the door.

Jiang Cheng has by now already mapped and memorized some of the lines and curves of that body, like the outline of his jaw and the exact location of where his belt sits and how he can tug on it to bring him closer, and he hates it. He hates that he knows how the flesh around Jin Zixuan’s waist feels through his shirt as he squeezes it under his hand, how it would feel if he were to remove it, and that when he reaches to touch him there he finds exactly what his knowledge of Jin Zixuan’s body told him he would find.

He hates how insistent Jin Zixuan gets with this every time.

“...I told you,” he lets the words slip in between kisses, “that we need to— mmh, need to stop doing this.”

Jin Zixuan licks the words away from his mouth and swallows. “Why do you say that?” He still has a hand over Jiang Cheng’s chest pressing his back against the door, which he slides up slowly, painfully slowly, until his palm is pressing lightly at his throat. “You want this too, don’t you?”

It was not exactly a question: he knew Jiang Cheng did want it. He said it himself the last time he invited Jin Zixuan into his bed.

But at the lack of response, Jin Zixuan sighs and lets his hand fall.

“Could it be that it’s because I’m a man?”

“...”

“Lan Wangji and your brother are very happy and very publicly married, and he is the second in line to the Lan province.” 

“Please don’t speak of my brother when your knee is between my legs.”

“Oh, then we can quit talking about him right now, no worry at all”, he says, driving his knee further up and his body closer.

Jiang Cheng is somewhat able to suppress the embarrassing noise forming at the base of his throat. “Zixuan…”

“Ok”, he feels the word on the skin of his neck before he hears it, but then Jin Zixuan releases his breath and steps away. “I am serious, though. What difference does something like this make to your reputation? There is precedent, like I said, and besides, it’s not like everyone doesn’t know how smart you are. Competent, hard-working—”

“—It does not have to do with my reputation, screw that.”

“Then why?”

Jiang Cheng hesitates. “My family. Like, like, my sister,” he stutters. “You and her. And then you and me, it, it’s not right, and…”

“I don’t think she minds? She seemed to just find it pretty funny that time you kissed me at the family dinner—”

“God, don’t talk about that.”

“Ok, ok, sorry,” he laughs; the bastard actually laughs. “But I’ve said this before, we do see each other pretty often because of A-Ling. I haven’t told her directly, but she isn’t stupid. And I think we both know that if she thought there was something wrong with this, with us, she'd tell me. She’d tell you.”

He knew.

“And besides, hasn’t she been dating Wen Qing for years, and isn’t Wen Qing your ex?’

“How the fuck do you know that?’

“That is not the point.”

“Well, in a way, it is part of the point. Wen Qing was a teenage crush that lasted a month when we were kids, and I didn’t hear any more of her until she met Yanli. You two were married for five years.”

“Four.”

“You have a son!”

Jin Zixuan lets out a sigh. He reaches a hand toward Jiang Cheng’s, but he snaps it away.

He does not like this. No, he hates this.

For as long as he remembers, Jiang Cheng has always been the rational one. The think-before-you-act one, the one whose observation and critical thinking skills have rendered him great at knowing what’s objectively best in a variety of situations. Always knowing what’s best for other people, never thinking of what’s best for himself.

Always terrible with feelings and wants.

Want has never been a verb that goes together with I, not in Jiang Cheng’s vocabulary.

But every touch of Jin Zixuan’s hands seems to produce several kinds of I want . I want this. I want your kisses. I want your hands here where they do not belong. I want to think of myself for once.

“A-Cheng…”, he tried out the nickname. Jiang Cheng hated that he loved the shape of his lips curling around the sound of it.

It was all so very new. All so very hard.

“I don’t know. Let me give it more time.”