Pride, Part Three

Wen Ning bowed his head slightly, arms hanging at his sides, like a puppet waiting for its master's command.

His face was pale and finely drawn, even handsome in a melancholy way. But his eyes had no pupils, just a sheet of dead white, and with the black cracks crawling up his neck onto his cheeks, the melancholy curdled into something ghastly. The hem and sleeves of his robe hung in tatters, baring wrists as deathly pale as his face, clasped in pitch-black iron rings and chains, the same at his ankles. That clinking sound was the chains dragging when he moved. The moment he went still, everything sank back into a dead hush.

It wasn't hard to see why every cultivator there was scared out of their wits. Wei Wuxian was no calmer than the rest of them. The storm crashing through his chest had already gone over his head.

It wasn't that Wen Ning shouldn't be here. He shouldn't exist at all. Long before the Siege of the Burial Mounds, he should've been ground to dust and scattered to the wind!

When Jin Ling heard someone shout Wen Ning's name, his blade, aimed at the soul-eating goddess, swung off course on its own. She seized on his distraction, flung out a long arm with delight, and hoisted him into the air.

Seeing her mouth gape wide and lean toward Jin Ling's face, Wei Wuxian shoved his own shock aside and raised the Bamboo Flute again. His hands shook, and the tune shook with them, and the flute being crudely made, the low notes came out almost hoarse and ugly. Two long moans, and Wen Ning moved toward the sound.

With that one move he was in front of the goddess in a blink. Wen Ning struck out with his palm, her neck gave a sharp crack, her body didn't budge but the blow whipped her skull around in a full turn, her face now pointing where her back had been, still smiling. He brought down another bare-handed chop, and the arm holding Jin Ling was sheared clean off.

She glanced down at the wrist severed in a neat, even line, but instead of twisting her head back the right way, she spun her body around, facing Wen Ning with her front and her back at once. Wei Wuxian didn't dare slacken. He drew a breath, bowed his head, and drove Wen Ning into the fight. But before long, dread crept up on him, worse and worse.

A low-grade Walking Corpse can't think for itself. It needs his commands to steer it, and even the more lethal fierce corpses are usually witless and unaware. Wen Ning was different. He was refined by Wei Wuxian's own hand, and it's no exaggeration to call him the strongest fierce corpse of the age, one of a kind. He could think and reason, and apart from feeling no fear of wounds, fire, cold, poison, or anything the living dread, he was no different from a living man.

But the Wen Ning right now, clearly, had no will of his own!

While he was still rattled and unsure, cries of alarm rang out across the clearing. Wen Ning had kicked and beaten the goddess flat, pinning her to the ground, then hoisted up a boulder taller than a man and slammed it down on her, again and again. Thunderous blows rained down, one after another, until her stone body was pounded into shards!

Out from the scattered white rubble rolled a bead glowing with a snowy halo. That was the core she'd condensed after devouring the souls of more than a dozen living people. Recover it and handle it with care, and the ones she'd just fed on could still be restored. But right now, not a single person spared it a glance. Every blade that had been pointed at the goddess swung around toward him.

One cultivator shouted himself hoarse, 'Surround him!'

A few answered hesitantly, but more wavered, edging back step by step. The same cultivator yelled again, 'Fellow cultivators, whatever you do, hold him here, don't let him get away. This is Wen Ning!'

That snapped everyone awake. The Ghost General was hardly some petty soul-eating monster. No one knew why he was out here, but slaying a thousand Soul-Devouring Specters wouldn't match capturing one Wen Ning. After all, this was the most obedient mad dog under the Yiling Patriarch, the kind that bites without barking. Bring him down and your name would echo through every clan, your fortunes shooting straight to the sky. They'd come to Dafan Mountain for the Night Hunt in the first place to contest demonic beasts and fierce specters and build their reputations, so a shout like that was bound to stir a few hearts. But the older cultivators who'd seen with their own eyes how savage Wen Ning got when he turned still didn't dare move. So the man yelled again, 'What's there to be afraid of? The Yiling Patriarch isn't here!'

And come to think of it, true enough. Right, what was there to fear? His master had already been hacked to a thousand pieces!

A few shouts, and the ring of swords circling Wen Ning suddenly tightened. He swung an arm, the heavy black chains sweeping across in a wide arc, batting every flying sword off its line. Then he stepped forward, clamped his hand around the throat of the man nearest him, and lifted him clean off the ground with a light tug. Wei Wuxian knew at once the flute had pushed him too hard, too fast, rousing his savagery. He had to rein it in. Steadying himself, he carefully blew out a different tune.

This melody rose to his mind on its own, gentle and calm, nothing like the eerie, grating notes from before. Wen Ning froze at the sound, then turned slowly toward where the flute was coming from. Wei Wuxian stood his ground and met those pupil-less eyes.

A moment later, Wen Ning loosened his grip, dropped the cultivator to the ground, let his arms fall, and walked toward Wei Wuxian, step by step.

Head drooping, chains dragging across the ground, he actually looked a little crestfallen. Playing and backing away at once, Wei Wuxian drew him along, retreating into the woods, when all at once he caught a clean, cold whiff of sandalwood.

Then his back hit someone, a sharp pain shot through his wrist, and the flute cut off. Bad, Wei Wuxian thought, and turned to find himself looking straight into Lan Wangji's eyes, pale to the point of cold.

Not good. Years ago, Lan Wangji had watched him pipe corpses with his own eyes.

Lan Wangji had one hand gripping Wei Wuxian hard, while Wen Ning stood dazed less than two zhang away, peering around slowly, as if hunting for the flute song that had suddenly vanished. Firelight and voices spread through the distant woods. Wei Wuxian's mind raced and he decided on the spot: so what if he saw. Plenty of people can play a flute, and those who learned to drive corpses with a tune like the Yiling Patriarch are common enough to form a school of their own. Deny it to the death!

Without a care for the hand clamped on him, he lifted his arm and kept playing. This time it came faster, like a goad, like a rebuke, his breath unsteady, the end notes cracking, shrill and harsh. Then he felt Lan Wangji's grip tighten, his wrist about to snap in two. The pain was too much, his fingers slackened, and the Bamboo Flute dropped to the ground.

Luckily his command had been clear enough. Wen Ning retreated fast, slipping soundlessly into the dark woods in an instant, gone without a trace. Afraid Lan Wangji would go after Wen Ning, Wei Wuxian whipped his free hand around and grabbed him back. But Lan Wangji, from start to finish, hadn't spared Wen Ning a single glance. He just stared dead-on at Wei Wuxian. So there they stood, each clutching the other, glaring face to face.

Just then, Jiang Cheng arrived.

He'd been forcing himself to wait it out in Foshan Town for the result, hadn't even finished a cup of tea, when a disciple came tumbling down the mountain in a panic, going on about how fearsome and how vicious the thing on Dafan Mountain was. His heart lurched at that, and he rushed back up, shouting, 'A-Ling!'

Jin Ling, who'd nearly had his soul torn out moments ago, was fine now, standing solidly on his own feet. 'Jiujiu!'

Seeing Jin Ling unharmed, the stone in Jiang Cheng's chest dropped, and he immediately snapped, 'Don't you carry a signal flare? Run into a thing like this and you don't even think to set one off? Showing off, are you? Get over here!'

Jin Ling, who hadn't taken down the goddess, fired right back, 'Weren't you the one who said I had to bring it down? Don't bother coming back if you can't take it down, that was you!'

Jiang Cheng dearly wanted to slap the brat all the way back into his mother's womb, but those really were his own words, and he couldn't very well eat them, so he turned to the cultivators sprawled all over the ground and sneered, 'What was it, exactly? Slaughtered you lot so handsomely.'

Among these cultivators in their assorted robes, several were Yunmeng Jiang Clan disciples in disguise, sent on Jiang Cheng's orders to quietly back Jin Ling up, in case he couldn't clear this hurdle, this elder really had gone to no small trouble. One cultivator, eyes still glazed, said, 'Sect, Sect Leader, it's, it's Wen Ning.'

Jiang Cheng thought he'd misheard. 'What did you say?'

The man said, 'It's Wen Ning, he's come back!'

In an instant, shock, loathing, fury, and disbelief crossed and tangled across Jiang Cheng's face.

After a long moment, he said coldly, 'That thing was ground to dust and put on display ages ago. How could it possibly come back.'

The disciple said, 'It really is Wen Ning! There's no mistake! I couldn't have seen wrong!' Then he suddenly pointed off to the side. 'He's the one who called him out!'

Wei Wuxian, still locked in a standoff with Lan Wangji, became the sudden focus of every eye in the clearing. Jiang Cheng's two gazes, cold as lightning, slowly turned toward where he stood.

After a while, Jiang Cheng's mouth twisted into a warped smile, his left hand drifting again, on its own, to stroke that ring. He said softly, 'Well now. Come back, have you?'

He let go of his left hand, and a long whip uncoiled from it.

The whip was very thin, just as its name promised, a crackling, sizzling current of violet light, like a pale streak of thunder crawling across a horizon thick with storm clouds, one end gripped tight in his fist. When he swung it, it lashed out like a bolt of lightning, swift beyond compare!

Wei Wuxian hadn't even moved when Lan Wangji already had his guqin in hand. One careful pluck, and like a stone stirring a thousand ripples, the qin's note rolled out countless waves through the air, clashing with Zidian, each rising as the other fell.

Jiang Cheng's earlier reasoning, never cross blades rashly, don't make an enemy of the Lan Clan, seemed to have gone straight to the dogs. Over the woods in the night air of Dafan Mountain, violet light flared bright one moment, the next it was bright as day, then thunder roared, then the qin keened long. The other cultivators quickly pulled back to a safe distance and watched from the sidelines, hearts in their throats yet eyes glued to the scene. It wasn't every day you got to see two clan-leading immortals, both of famous lineage, cross swords, and they couldn't help hoping for something fiercer, more savage. Tucked in there was a certain unspeakable wish too, the hope that the Lan and Jiang clans really would fall out from here on, just for the fun of it. And over there, Wei Wuxian spotted his chance and bolted.

Everyone was aghast. The whip hadn't caught him only because Lan Wangji was blocking in front. Running off like that, wasn't he just throwing his life away!

Sure enough, as if Jiang Cheng had eyes in the back of his head, the moment Wei Wuxian slipped out of Lan Wangji's cover, there was no way he'd pass up the chance. He flung up a whip stroke, slashing it down at an angle, and Zidian snaked out like a venomous dragon, striking him square in the back!

The whip nearly sent Wei Wuxian flying, and if that piebald donkey hadn't braced him, he'd have crashed straight into a tree. But that one clean hit landed, and both Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng froze, equally stunned.

Rubbing his back, Wei Wuxian hauled himself up against the donkey and snarled from behind it, 'Big shot, aren't you! Suibian — your clan's Suibian, so you can just "suibian" hit people, can't you! Tsk tsk tsk!'

Lan Wangji: '...'

Jiang Cheng: '...'

Shocked and furious, he said, 'What is going on?!'

Zidian had one strange power: if it struck someone who'd taken a body by Soul Possession, body and soul would peel apart in an instant. The possessing soul would be knocked straight out of the flesh by Zidian, without exception. Yet this man had been struck and still moved as usual, bouncing around full of life. There was no other explanation but that he wasn't a soul-possessor.

Wei Wuxian, though, thought to himself, 'Obviously. Of course Zidian can't whip my soul out. I'm not possessed. This is Soul Offering Art. A forced one!'

Suspicion and alarm on his face, Jiang Cheng was about to lash him again when Lan Jingyi cried out, 'Sect Leader Jiang, that's enough, isn't it? That's Zidian, after all!'

An immortal weapon of Zidian's caliber simply couldn't fail once and then work the second time. Not whipped out means not whipped out, not possessed means not possessed. Otherwise its name would be all hot air. That shout cornered Jiang Cheng, who prized his face like his life, into staying his hand.

But if it wasn't Wei Wuxian, who else could summon Wen Ning?!

Turn it over as he might, Jiang Cheng couldn't accept it. He pointed at Wei Wuxian and said, face dark, 'Just who the hell are you?!'

At this point one of the busybodies watching the fight finally cut in, clearing his throat. 'Sect Leader Jiang, you probably don't keep track of these things, so you wouldn't know. This Mo Xuanyu, he was one of that Lanling Jin Clan's... ahem, used to be an outside-surname disciple of the Jin family. But his spiritual power was weak and he didn't work at his cultivation, plus there was that... harassing fellow cultivators, so he got thrown out of the Lanling Jin Clan. Heard he even went mad? If you ask me, more likely he failed at the orthodox path, got bitter about it, and turned to the crooked road. Not necessarily that... Yiling Patriarch taking his body by Soul Possession.'

Jiang Cheng said, 'That? That what?'

'That... well, you know, that...'

Someone couldn't help blurting it out, 'A taste for cut-sleeves!'

Jiang Cheng's brow twitched, and the look he turned on Wei Wuxian grew more disgusted still. There were a few more things no one dared say to Jiang Cheng's face.

However bad his reputation, it had to be admitted that before he turned traitor to the Yunmeng Jiang Clan, the Yiling Patriarch Wei Wuxian had been a renowned beauty, an elegant man accomplished in all six arts, ranked fourth in looks and bearing among the young clan lords, the kind people called 'striking and dashing.' This high-tempered Sect Leader Jiang happened to rank fifth, edged out by exactly one place, which was why no one dared raise the matter. Wei Ying had been flippant and rakish, fondest of carrying on murkily with beautiful women, and no one could count how many fair maidens fell prey to that wicked charm of his. But no one had ever heard he liked men too. Even if he wanted to take a body, to come back and kill... by Wei Ying's taste, he'd absolutely never pick a cut-sleeve lunatic like this, riding a donkey and munching fruit, his face earlier painted up like a hanged ghost!

Someone else muttered, 'No way it's him, look at him... and that flute, played so badly... copying it so clumsily too, that's exactly what aping your betters looks like.'

Back in the Sunshot Campaign, the Yiling Patriarch had stood on the battlefield and piped a single flute through the whole long night, loosing ghost soldiers and ghost generals like a host of ten thousand, sweeping all before him, cutting down any man and any Buddha who stood in his way. His flute song was like the music of the heavens. How could it possibly compare to this Jin family castoff's two whimpering wisps of ghost-piping just now? Even if Wei Wuxian's character was rotten beyond words, you couldn't draw a comparison like that. It was too much of an insult.

Wei Wuxian felt a touch sullen. ...You go a dozen-odd years without practicing, hack together a busted flute in two or three strokes, then play me a note? Play it well and I'll get down on my knees for you!

Moments ago Jiang Cheng had been certain this man was Wei Wuxian, all the cold blood in him boiling, but now Zidian in his hand told him plainly, clearly, that it wasn't. Zidian would never lie to him, never make a mistake. He calmed down fast and thought to himself: this is nothing to fuss over. Find some excuse to haul the man back first, then work him over by every means, and there's no fear he won't cough up something, no way the cracks won't show. He'd done this sort of thing before, anyway. Reasoning it through, he made a gesture. The disciples understood his meaning and closed in. Wei Wuxian quickly tugged the donkey and leapt behind Lan Wangji, clutching his chest in alarm. 'Ah, what are you all going to do to me!'

Lan Wangji glanced at him, enduring this thoroughly rude and noisy bit of theatrics.

Seeing that he had no intention of stepping aside, Jiang Cheng said, 'Second Young Master Lan, are you set on making things hard for me?'

Every clan knew the young head of the Jiang family guarded against Wei Wuxian to the point of near-mania, rather wrong a hundred than let one slip. Anyone who looked like Wei Wuxian taking a body by Soul Possession would be dragged back to the Yunmeng Jiang Clan for harsh interrogation. Let him tie this man up and haul him off, and he was bound to leave him half dead. Lan Sizhui said, 'Sect Leader Jiang, the facts are right in front of us. Young Master Mo hasn't been taken by Soul Possession, so why make trouble for a nobody?'

Jiang Cheng said coldly, 'Then might I ask why Second Young Master Lan has been so set, this whole time, on shielding a nobody?'

Wei Wuxian suddenly let out a couple of snickers.

He said, 'Sect Leader Jiang, ah, the thing is, you pestering me like this, it puts me in a real bind.'

Jiang Cheng's brow twitched twice, instinct telling him whatever this man said next would be nothing pleasant.

Wei Wuxian said, 'You're so eager, thank you. But you're overthinking it too. Even if I do like men, I don't like just any kind of man, and I'm certainly not the type to trot after a man the second he waves me over. Your sort, I've got no interest in at all.'

Wei Wuxian was needling him on purpose. The thing Jiang Cheng hated most was being shown up, no matter how trivial the contest. The moment anyone said he came up short against so-and-so, he'd seethe, lose his appetite and his sleep, and have to win it back at all costs. Sure enough, Jiang Cheng went livid. 'Oh? Then may I ask, what kind do you like?'

Wei Wuxian said, 'What kind? Mm, the kind like Hanguang-jun, that I like very much.'

Now Lan Wangji was the one who could least stand this sort of flippant, pointless joking. Once he was put off, he'd absolutely take the initiative to draw a clear line and keep his distance. Gross out two people at once, two birds with one stone!

But who'd have guessed, Lan Wangji, hearing that line, turned around.

He said expressionlessly, 'You said it yourself.'

Wei Wuxian: 'Huh?'

Lan Wangji turned back, courteous yet leaving no room for argument, and said, 'This man, I'm taking him back to the Lan Clan.'

Wei Wuxian: '...'

Wei Wuxian: '...huh?'