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Jiang Yanli’s first memory is of dying.
It’s a dream, the first she can remember, but not even Jiang Yanli’s real memories have ever felt so real. She is looking at herself from an outside, unknown perspective, unable to do anything but watch.
Her other self is on a battlefield, bleeding from some sort of wound. She’s dressed in mourning clothes, so it’s easy to see the alarming amount of blood spreading through her robes. A man in purple holds her in his arms, clearly panicked. The other Jiang Yanli isn’t focused on him, though. Her hands are cupping the face of another man, this one in black, and she gently wipes away a tear as she says something to him.
Behind the man in black, another cultivator moves forward, holding his sword in position to strike. Neither man notices him. Jiang Yanli does.
She realizes that the other cultivator is trying to kill the one in black, the one she is currently comforting. And suddenly, the Jiang Yanli helplessly watching knows exactly what she is about to do.
With a cry, Jiang Yanli pushes the one in black out of the way, putting herself in harm’s way. The sword goes straight through her heart and is pulled out just as quickly once the cultivator realizes what just happened.
Jiang Yanli crumples to the ground. She dies just moments after. The man in purple is staring at her body in horror, frozen in place. The man in black promptly kills the cultivator before falling to his knees. He screams, anguished and devastated.
With a gasp, Jiang Yanli wakes up in a cold sweat. She is trembling from all over and has to put a hand to her chest to make sure there is no sword sticking out of it.
She’s alive. She’s fine. It was just a dream.
But dreams are rarely ever just dreams. And even now, at the tender age of three, Jiang Yanli knows this.
Baby Jiang Cheng is born and Jiang Yanli welcomes him with an open heart. She thinks about her dreams of her mother spitting insults at her. She thinks about her dreams of her mother comparing A-Cheng to a different little boy she doesn’t know the name of. She thinks about the dreams of her father letting it happen and never once stepping in.
She thinks that she will love this boy with every heartbeat, every breath of air that fills her lungs.
Jiang Yanli keeps dreaming of a boy named Wei Ying. He runs from dogs, cradling food to his chest as he tries and fails to fend them off. She knows that Wei Ying is the son of Wei Changze, a former Yunmeng Jiang cultivator who eloped with Cangse Sanren. Neither parent appears in Jiang Yanli’s dreams, and she worries for the boy. She asks her father to keep a lookout for him.
The night before Wei Ying arrives at Lotus Pier—though Jiang Yanli didn’t know it at the time—she dreams of him in a tree. He is scared, terrified, and refuses to come down. He doesn’t want A-Cheng to send dogs after him. Jiang Yanli promises to protect him from any dogs. When A-Ying falls out of the tree, she carries him all the way home.
When this occurs exactly as she dreamed it, Jiang Yanli comes to realize that these dreams are not dreams; they’re visions.
Jiang Yanli, the pathetic excuse for the oldest child of the Violet Spider with a weak golden core and a talent for making soup, can see the future.
She tries to change things, after that. Later, when she dreams of Mother whipping A-Ying, she tries to step in before it can happen. Her interference only ensured the incident occurred just as the dream had.
Blessed with the ability to see the future. Cursed with the inability to change it. Jiang Yanli tends to the wounds on A-Ying’s back and recommends Wuxian to her father as a courtesy name.
As the years go by, Jiang Yanli’s dreams grow darker. She sees A-Xian become Head Disciple over A-Cheng, and she feels, rather than sees, her mother’s fury because of it.
She dreams of them going to Gusu Lan before it even crosses their minds as an opportunity. Jiang Yanli watches A-Xian get into trouble with Lan Qiren, fight a Waterborne Abyss, antagonize Lan Wangji—and when has he ever been so interested in someone?—and even punch Jin Zixuan for her. The last one will get him kicked out, but Jiang Yanli’s heart grows warm at her little brother’s attempts to defend her.
She tries to step in, when the event actually happens. She still fails. She always ends up failing.
(Mother was right about her all along.)
Jiang Yanli hears about the Wen Indoctrination. She begs Father not to send the boys, but he does anyway. When she hears about A-Xian handing over his sword, her heart falls to the ground. Somehow, she knows it will be the last time he will hold it and be able to use it.
She dreams of A-Xian and Lan Wangji fighting the Xuanwu of Slaughter only days before it happens. A-Cheng and Jin Zixuan join together to rescue them. Jiang Yanli has no way of knowing if they succeed—her dreams never show her the ending.
So she’s relieved when A-Xian is brought into Lotus Pier, feverish but alive. Jiang Yanli vows to do anything in her power to keep it that way.
Despite having no dreams to claim otherwise, she has a feeling that she’ll end up failing in that endeavor, too.
In her dreams, she watches the destruction of Lotus Pier. Of Mother whipping A-Xian, of the Wen Sect slaughtering everyone down to the children and stacking the bodies higher and higher. Of A-Cheng and A-Xian just barely making it out alive. Of A-Cheng getting caught anyway, and losing his golden core to protect A-Xian.
It should have been Jiang Yanli. She’s the one who can afford to lose it. It’s not like her core ever does her any good. What’s the point of these visions, of knowing what’s going to happen, if she can’t do anything to change it?
A-Xian rescues A-Cheng, but it’s too late. He brings A-Cheng to Wen Qing and Wen Ning, begging for their help. A-Xian risks a procedure to transfer the cores. Jiang Yanli wakes up in tears.
Take mine, she wants to plead. I can handle it. Take mine instead.
She tries to change this future as well. When the news of the Jiang Massacre reaches her at the Yu Clan, she knows that she has once again failed.
A-Xian is thrown into the Burial Mounds. A-Cheng and Lan Wangji search for him for three months. Jiang Yanli tries to get a message to them, saying that he’s there, he’s in the Burial Mounds, just look!
They never receive her letter, and the scouts she sends never make it to the duo alive.
Jiang Yanli would wonder if A-Xian succumbed to the same fate if it weren’t for her visions. They plague her like a sickness, leaching into her dreams like poison. She can never escape the burden of fate that rests on her shoulders, of knowing what’s to come and unable to do anything but brace for the inevitable.
It doesn’t stop her from trying. Maybe if she only tries hard enough, she can change it.
(Jiang Yanli stopped believing that a long time ago. But there’s nothing wrong with fooling herself, right?)
The war is over. It was A-Xian, really, who won it for them, but Jiang Yanli knows no one else will see it that way. No one will be able to look past his unorthodox cultivation.
But she can. She knows exactly why he had been forced to resort to such a thing. After all, he’d had only the dead to turn to. What else had he been meant to do?
Jiang Yanli doesn’t push him, about his sword, about his cultivation, about Lan Wangji. She knows her words will not help, or at least, not in the way he needs. She knows that her mother was right, and she will never be enough.
So Jiang Yanli makes her soup and wipes the tears off her brother’s face, and she smiles through it all. One day, agonizingly soon, she knows she will not be able to love A-Xian publicly. She will love him anyways, of course. Nothing in this world or the next could ever stop that.
Jiang Yanli has never truly minded Jin Zixuan’s attitudes, because she has always known she will end up marrying him anyway. She dreams of a night hunt, of a wedding gown, of a baby. Eventually, she knows, they will get there. This is one future, at least, she doesn’t want to change.
The night before the the Phoenix Mountain Night Hunt, Jiang Yanli dreams of an altercation between A-Xian and Jin Zixuan, and his cousin, Jin Zixun. It ends before she can see what happens next, after the argument, but Jiang Yanli wakes with a feeling in her gut that is as resolute as a stone. She doesn’t know how this particular moment will end, but she knows what she must do.
She will not allow herself to be discarded to the side, particularly if the conflict is about her, as she suspects it is based on the dream. She will not allow herself to stand by, idle and useless.
Jiang Yanli is the daughter of the Violet Spider, oldest child of the Jiang sect, and she will not stand for the disrespect of her brothers and her sect any longer.
So when Jin Zixun accuses A-Xian of cheating, this time, Jiang Yanli steps in. She may not be able to fight with her fists, or even her words, but she knows how to be diplomatic and defensive. She knows how to say the right thing at the right time, and that is a strength in its own right.
(If only words can save the ones she loves.)
Jin Zixuan confesses that he had invited her, and that he has fallen for her. Onlookers might think this came out of nowehere, but Jiang Yanli knows better. She smiles at him.
The next time he proposes, she accepts. Dreams of her wedding become more and more detailed, but she can’t help but notice that A-Xian is in none of them.
Jiang Yanli needs to tell him something, warn him, advise him, something. She can’t stand by and do nothing. She has to try to change the outcome.
But the next she hears of A-Xian, he has attacked Jin guards and freed Wen prisoners, and been labeled an enemy of the sects. It is too late. She has dreamed of this event, of course, but she’d thought she’d have more time.
Isn’t that the problem? People always think they have more time, when in fact, that is the one thing no one ever has enough of.
Jiang Yanli dreams of a fight between her brothers. A-Xian is stabbed, A-Cheng’s arm is broken. A-Xian is declared a traitor and is cast out of the sect. No more context is provided in the dream.
Thankfully, in real life, A-Cheng tells her it is just a ruse devised by A-Xian to protect Yunmeng Jiang from his subversive behaviors.
“He doesn’t want to drag us down with him,” A-Cheng huffed. “How stupid can he be?”
Jiang Yanli thinks A-Xian is actually very, very smart, and very, very self-sacrificial. Without the protection of a Great Sect, he is on his own. He is in the Burial Mounds, again, and she has no way to reach him. No way to help him.
She hugs A-Cheng a little tighter, that night.
Even with the commotion and fervor that comes with wedding planning, Jiang Yanli squeezes in time to sneak away to see A-Xian, and show him her dress. If he can’t come to the wedding, she can at least give him a glimpse. It’s the least she can do, after everything.
She tells him, too, of the child she has growing in her belly. It will be a baby boy, and she and A-Cheng want A-Xian to provide the courtesy name. When A-Xian decides on Rulan, Jiang Yanli pretends to act like she has never heard the name before. She has known for a long time that this would be the name of her son. She has known just as long that she will not be here to watch him use it.
It’s alright. She has had many more years to accept this.
They share soup and make jokes and enjoy each other’s company, just like in the dream Jiang Yanli had had several weeks prior. It is a happy memory. She has a terrible feeling that it will be their last.
The dreams of Jin Ling’s birthday party don’t come until after Jiang Yanli had an invitation sent to A-Xian. Once they do, once she sees what will happen, it’s too late.
She has had years of failing to change the future, but Jiang Yanli yet again finds herself begging, pleading, praying. Rescind the invitation, don’t go after Wei Wuxian, stay where you are, please A-Xuan!
Don’t go. Don’t go. Don’t go. Jiang Yanli doesn’t know if she’s talking to her brother or her husband or herself, but she knows it is futile. It always is.
So she is expecting it, when the news reaches her. Wei Wuxian has killed Jin Zixuan. Her brother has killed her husband. And she knew it was going to happen.
Does that make it better? she can’t help but wonder. Or is it worse, that she knew? That she tried to stop it and still failed? Does it even matter?
Of course it doesn’t. It never has. All Jiang Yanli can do is clutch her baby and scream.
Jiang Yanli keeps dreaming of death. That is nothing new, of course, but this time feels… different. A battle, she has gleaned, that takes place at Nightless City. Corpses, hundreds of them, both of the fierce variety and ordinary cultivators from every sect imaginable.
That’s not all, though. Jiang Yanli’s first ever dream keeps playing, over and over again. She watches herself die every time she closes her eyes. Her time is coming to a close, she knows. It pains her, to know she will have to leave A-Cheng and A-Ling all alone.
But what other choice does she have? Has she ever had a choice?
When she wakes, she knows it is her last day. The feeling of finality settles in her bones like dust on a coffin. A phantom blade sits in her chest throughout the day, as the future battle lingers over the air like a storm cloud. Still, Jiang Yanli continues.
She kisses A-Ling on the head and bounces him on her hip. She makes a pot of soup for A-Cheng—this day is hard for him, too. He doesn’t know it, but soon he will have to fight his brother and watch his sister die. It would be cruel to tell him, so Jiang Yanli doesn’t.
When the sects march on the city and A-Xian comes out to confront them, Jiang Yanli waits. She waits until the battle begins, until the scent of blood and death coats the air, and then she makes her move.
She has to see him, one more time. She has to tell him that it’s okay, that she forgives him, that she understands. It wasn’t his fault, he has to understand. It was never his fault.
Jiang Yanli spots him in the crowd, red ribbon flowing in his hair and Chenqing held up to his mouth. A-Xian. She calls out his name, getting his attention, but doesn’t see the blade before it comes falling down against her.
A-Cheng holds her in his arms as she bleeds, staining her mourning robes. It doesn’t matter. Not now, when everything is at stake, it doesn’t matter. A-Xian is crying, saying something. Jiang Yanli is saying something too, but she is not fully in her body. She is not fully here.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a little girl, still clutching a stuffed toy. Her eyes are wide, but she can’t look away from the scene. Neither can Jiang Yanli, as she catches the glint of a sword aiming directly at A-Xian.
Jiang Yanli knows how this story will end. She has seen the ending hundreds of times; she can picture it with her eyes closed. And for the first time in her entire life, Jiang Yanli also knows that this she, and only she, can change. All she has to do is stay still and let the blade pierce A-Xian. All she has to do is do what she has always done: know what will happen, and watch it unfold.
Her whole life, Jiang Yanli has done nothing. Not for a lack of trying, but a lack of agency. She has had no control over the events that have unfolded, but this one she can choose the outcome. Live, at the cost of her brother’s life, or die, and fulfill the prophecy that has been written since her birth?
Jiang Yanli can do nothing, as always. Or she can claim that agency for herself and intervene. Nothing will change. In fact, all she will do is ensure it happens.
But she will have done something. And, truly, that’s all she has ever wanted to do—something.
So as the sword comes swinging at A-Xian, Jiang Yanli shoves him out of the way. She knows how this story will end.
But it will be her that decides the ending. Jiang Yanli, the weakest of the Jiangs, the useless cultivator. Jiang Yanli, Madam Jin, daughter of the Violet Spider, prophet. This story has always been hers, and she will see it through.
She will have the strength to see it through.