Elegant Disturbance, Part Four

The Lan Clan's immortal abode lay cradled within a Deep Mountain beyond the walls of Gusu.

Through gardens and water-pavilions arranged with a careless grace, mountain mist clung year-round to the long sweep of white walls and dark tiles, so that to stand among them was to stand within a fairyland of clouds and sea. In the early morning the fog spread thick and the first light hung dim and uncertain, fitting its name to perfection — Cloud Recesses, the place where clouds run deep and none can find the way.

The mountain was still, the people still, the heart like water come to rest. Only from the high tower drifted the steady tolling of a bell. It was no monastery, and yet it held the lonely, frost-cold serenity of a Zen retreat.

That serenity was abruptly torn through by a long, wailing sob, which set more than a few of the disciples and students at their morning reading and sword practice shivering, unable to keep from glancing toward the mountain gate where the sound rose.

Wei Wuxian stood at the mountain gate clutching his spotted donkey and weeping, and Lan Jingyi snapped, 'What is there to cry about! You said yourself you liked Hanguang-jun. He's brought you back, and now you're howling?'

Wei Wuxian wore a face of wretched gloom.

After that one night on Mount Dafan, he had been given no chance at all to summon Wen Ning again, no chance to look into why Wen Ning had lost his mind, still less any notion of why he had returned to the world of the living — before Lan Wangji simply carried him off.

In his youth he had been sent here with disciples of other families to study for three months, and had learned firsthand the dreary, joyless air of the Gusu Lan Clan. The three thousand and more house rules, packed wall to wall across the Discipline Stone, still gave him a lingering dread. Just now, dragged and hauled up the mountain, he had passed the face of the Discipline Stone and glanced at it — and found a thousand more had been carved in. Four thousand and counting now. Four thousand!

Lan Jingyi said, 'Enough! Stop your racket. Loud noise is forbidden within Cloud Recesses!'

It was precisely because he did not want to go into Cloud Recesses that he was making such a racket!

Once dragged in, getting out again would be no easy matter. In the old days, when he had come to study, every family's disciples had each been issued a Jade Passage Token; only with it worn at one's side could a person come and go freely, for otherwise there was no passing the barrier of Cloud Recesses. More than ten years gone, the guard would only be tighter, never looser.

Lan Wangji stood quietly before the mountain gate, deaf to it all, watching with a cool eye. When Wei Wuxian's voice had dropped a fraction, he said, 'Let him cry. When he tires of it, drag him in.'

Wei Wuxian hugged the little spotted donkey and wept all the harder, knocking his head against the animal.

Bitter luck! He had thought that, having taken a lash of Zidian, every last suspicion against him was washed clean; carried away on the feeling, and with a mouth that had always been flippant and fond of teasing, he had let slip one line meant to needle Lan Wangji — only Lan Wangji refused to play by the old rules at all. What sense did that make? Could it be that, parted these long years, his cultivation had risen so high while his temper had grown narrower instead?

Wei Wuxian said, 'I like men, and your family has so many beauties — I'm afraid I won't be able to restrain myself.'

Lan Sizhui reasoned with him, 'Young Master Mo, Hanguang-jun has brought you back for your own good. If you don't come with us, Sect Leader Jiang won't let the matter rest. All these years, the people he's hauled back to Lotus Pier to interrogate are beyond counting — and not one of them has ever been let out again.'

Lan Jingyi said, 'Just so. You haven't seen what Sect Leader Jiang is capable of, have you? Vicious in the extreme—' Here he remembered the rule against speaking ill of others behind their backs, stole a glance at Lan Wangji, and only when Hanguang-jun showed no sign of punishment did he find the nerve to mutter on. 'It's all the crooked, evil wind the Yiling Patriarch stirred up. Too many people aping his methods instead of cultivating properly, and Sect Leader Jiang sees ghosts in every shadow. Could he ever finish hauling them all in? And look at you — playing the flute in that sorry state. Heh.'

That one 'heh' said more than a thousand words. Wei Wuxian felt a defense was very much in order. 'Ah, well — you might not believe it, but I'm actually quite decent on the flute, ordinarily...'

Before he could finish his defense, several white-robed cultivators came striding out through the great gate.

These few wore the Lan family uniform, each in robes plain as snow, their soft sashes drifting lightly. The one at their head stood tall and jade-straight, and at his waist, beside his sword, hung a xiao of white jade. Seeing him, Lan Wangji bowed his head a fraction in courtesy, and the newcomer returned it, then looked toward Wei Wuxian and said with a smile, 'Wangji never brings guests home. And this is?'

This man stood face to face with Lan Wangji as though before a mirror. Only Lan Wangji's eyes were of the palest hue, faint as glazed crystal, while his were a deeper, gentler, more temperate dark.

This was none other than the head of the Gusu Lan Clan, Lan Huan — Zewu-jun, Lan Xichen.

A land shapes its people, and the Gusu Lan Clan had always been acknowledged as a family that bred beautiful men. The twin jades of this generation's main line were more striking still. Though the two brothers were not born twins, their faces were alike to eight or nine parts, and one could hardly set the one above the other. And yet — one hue, two manners of grace. Lan Xichen was clear and warm, gentle as sunlight, his tenderness unhurried; Lan Wangji was too cold and severe, holding all comers at a thousand-li distance, wanting in approachability. So in the rankings of the young lords of the Cultivation Clans by looks and bearing, the former held first place, the latter second.

Lan Xichen was a sect leader worthy of the name: seeing Wei Wuxian clutching a spotted donkey, he let not the slightest awkwardness show. All smiles, Wei Wuxian released the donkey and went forward to meet him. The Gusu Lan Clan held seniority and station sacred; let him talk a little nonsense at Lan Xichen and the Lan family would surely cudgel him down off Cloud Recesses. But just as he prepared to put on a grand performance, Lan Wangji shot him a glance, and his two lips would no longer come apart.

Lan Wangji turned back and went on, in perfect earnest, conversing with Lan Xichen. 'Is gege off to see Lianfang-zun again?'

Lan Xichen nodded. 'To discuss together the next discourse gathering below Koi Tower.'

Unable to open his mouth, Wei Wuxian sulked his way back to the spotted donkey's side.

Lianfang-zun was the present head of the Lanling Jin Clan, Jin Guangyao — the one bastard son Jin Guangshan had ever acknowledged, Jin Ling's little uncle, the half-brother of Jin Ling's father Jin Zixuan by a different mother — and, at the same time, the elder half-brother by a different mother of the very identity Wei Wuxian now wore, Mo Xuanyu. Bastards both, and worlds apart. Mo Xuanyu had slept on the floor tiles and eaten the scraps at Mo Village, while Jin Guangyao sat at the highest seat in the cultivation world, calling up wind and rain, summoned Lan Xichen at his pleasure, convened discourse gatherings as he liked. No wonder the heads of the Jin and Lan houses were on such intimate terms — they were sworn brothers, after all.

Lan Xichen said, 'The thing you brought back last time from Mo Village — uncle has taken it away to examine.'

At the three words 'Mo Village,' Wei Wuxian's attention pricked up despite himself, and just then he felt his lips part: Lan Xichen had lifted his sealed-mouth spell. To Lan Wangji, Lan Xichen said, 'It's rare for you to bring someone home, and to be so pleased besides. You must treat your guest well, not like this.'

Pleased? Wei Wuxian studied Lan Wangji's face with care.

How in the world could anyone tell he was pleased?!

Having watched Lan Xichen go, Lan Wangji said, 'Drag him in.'

And so Wei Wuxian was dragged, alive and protesting, into the very place he had sworn never in this life to set foot in again.

In the past, those who came to the Lan family's gate had all been people of standing from the great houses; never had there been a guest like him. The young ones jostled and shoved him along, finding the whole thing fresh and amusing, and had the house rules not been so strict, the road would surely have been strewn with their laughter. Lan Jingyi asked, 'Hanguang-jun, where are we dragging him to?'

Lan Wangji said, 'The Jingshi.'

'...The Jingshi?!'

Wei Wuxian made nothing of it. The others, though, exchanged glances and dared not make a sound.

That was the study and bedchamber Hanguang-jun had never once let another soul enter...

The Jingshi was furnished with great spareness, nothing in it to spare. Across a folding screen, clouds drawn in fine brushwork drifted and shifted in slow procession, and before the screen lay a qin table set crosswise. In the corner, upon a three-legged incense stand, a hollow-carved censer of white jade breathed out a thread of fine smoke, and the whole room was steeped in the clear, cold air of sandalwood.

Lan Wangji went off to discuss his proper business with his uncle, and Wei Wuxian was pressed inside. Lan Wangji had no sooner left than Wei Wuxian was out. He made one small circuit of Cloud Recesses and found, sure enough, just as he had guessed, that without the Jade Passage Token, even if he scaled walls several zhang high, the barrier would fling him straight back down and swiftly draw every patroller nearby.

Wei Wuxian had no choice but to return to the Jingshi.

Whatever befell him, his heart never truly grew anxious; he paced the Jingshi back and forth with his hands clasped behind him, trusting that sooner or later a way would come. That heart-stirring sandalwood air hung cold and clear, and though it did not cling, it had its own way of moving a man. Idly he let his mind wander: 'So this is the scent Lan Zhan carries on him. It must soak into his robes when he sits in stillness and plays the qin here.'

Thinking so, he could not help drawing nearer to that incense stand in the inner corner. Drawing near, he felt one floorboard beneath his foot give clearly differently from the rest. A strange thing, he thought, and bent to begin tapping here and there. Having done so much grave-digging and pit-hunting in his former life, it took him hardly a moment to pry a board up.

To have found a hidden cache in Lan Wangji's own room was, in itself, more than enough to astonish Wei Wuxian — yet once he saw clearly what lay stored within, he found he could be more astonished still.

When the board came up, another mellow fragrance, until now blended into the sandalwood and hard to catch, spread out: seven or eight round, glossy black little jars crowded together in a small square cellar.

This Lan Wangji had changed indeed — even hiding away wine!

Wine was forbidden in Cloud Recesses, and it was over this very thing that the two of them had come to a small fight at their first meeting, when Lan Wangji had knocked over the jar of Emperor's Smile he had carried up from the city of Gusu below.

After returning from Gusu to Yunmeng, Wei Wuxian had never again had the chance to drink that Emperor's Smile, the private brew of a famous Gusu house; he had remembered it all his life, forever saying he would go back to taste it given the chance, and the chance had never come. The wine hidden here he did not even need to open and taste — one breath of its fragrance told him it was Emperor's Smile, the very thing. Who would have thought that Lan Wangji, a man who kept rigidly to every rule and never touched a drop, would one day be caught with a pit dug in his own room to hide wine in. Truly, the Way of Heaven turns round and round.

Wei Wuxian sighed over it even as he drank a whole jar dry. His capacity was excellent and his craving great; thinking it over, he reckoned Lan Wangji owed him one jar of Emperor's Smile, and after so many years some interest was surely due — so he drank a second. Just as the drinking warmed him, a flash of inspiration struck. As for the Jade Passage Token — what was so hard about that? Within Cloud Recesses lay a Cold Spring of many marvelous virtues, kept for the male disciples of the main line to cultivate in, said to still the mind, purify the nature, and drive out unholy fire. To enter the Cold Spring one had to undress — and with his robes off, what was a man to do but carry the token clenched in his teeth?

Wei Wuxian clapped his hands, drank the last mouthful from the jar in his grip, and looked about for somewhere to toss it, only to find there was nowhere; so he filled two of the empty jars to the brim with clear water, sealed them up as before and tucked them back, and laid the board over them. The work done, out he went to find a token.

Though Cloud Recesses had been burned to the ground once before the Sunshot Campaign, its rebuilt layout was no different from of old. Wei Wuxian wound through the deep, secluded paths by memory, and before long found the Cold Spring lying in its hidden quarter.

The students guarding the spring kept far off. The Fairy had its own grounds marked out elsewhere in Cloud Recesses and did not come to use this water, and no one of the Lan family had ever dared do anything so shameless as to lurk and spy about the Cold Spring; so the guard here was not strict, easily fooled — just convenient for Wei Wuxian to go and be shameless. By rare good fortune, upon the white stone behind the layered orchid grass lay a set of white robes. Someone had already come.

This set of white robes was folded with a tidiness fit to set one's teeth on edge, like a block of snow-white tofu, even the forehead ribbon creased without a single thread out of place. Reaching in to rummage for the Jade Passage Token, Wei Wuxian almost could not bear to disturb it. Past clump after clump of orchid grass, his eye swept the spring at random — and all at once his gaze froze.

The water of the Cold Spring was bone-piercingly cold, unlike a hot spring; no steam rose to veil and beguile the eye, and so the upper half of the figure in the water, turned away from him, could be seen with perfect clarity.

The figure in the spring was tall of build, fair of skin, the long black hair gathered wet to one side, the line of waist and back smooth, lovely and strong. In a word — a beauty, surely.

But it was by no means the shock of watching a beauty rise from the bath that held Wei Wuxian's gaze. However beautiful, he would not truly take to a man. It was, in truth, the thing upon this person's back that he could not look away from.

Dozens of scars, crossing and crisscrossing.

These were the marks left by the Discipline Whip. Among the cultivation clans there was a whip used to punish a family's own disciples who had committed grave wrongs, and once the sentence was carried out the scars never faded. Wei Wuxian had never taken the Discipline Whip himself, but Jiang Cheng had; he had exhausted every means and could not lighten that mark of shame by a hair's breadth, and so Wei Wuxian could never mistake scars of this kind.

Ordinarily, one or two strokes of the Discipline Whip were already a grave lesson, enough to be branded into the punished for life so that they never dared offend again. The Discipline Whip Scar marking this man's back numbered, at the very least, more than thirty. What monstrous, unforgivable wrong he must have committed to be flogged into such a state, there was no telling — yet if it had truly been so heinous, why not simply kill him outright and cleanse the clan of him?

At this moment the figure in the spring turned about, and below the collarbone, near the heart, there was also a clear, branded mark. The instant Wei Wuxian saw that brand, his astonishment surged in a heartbeat to its very peak.