Elegant Mischief, Part Four

Lan Wangji didn't look at Wei Wuxian. He inclined his head in a small bow and said, flat and even, 'Deliverance first, suppression second, destruction third. First move it with the memory of parents, wife, and children, fulfill the wish it held in life, and dissolve its obsession. If that fails, suppress it. If its crimes are grave and the resentment won't disperse, then root it out and let nothing of it remain. In all Xuanmen Orthodoxy work, this order must be followed strictly, without error.'

Everyone let out a long breath, thanking heaven and earth. Good thing the old man called on Lan Wangji and not them, or someone would've dropped a step or muddled the order. Lan Qiren nodded, satisfied. 'Word for word.' He paused, then added, 'Whether in cultivation or in conduct, you must be this solid. Anyone who's downed a couple of third-rate mountain sprites and ghouls in his own backyard, then gets puffed up on a bit of empty fame, cocky and wild, will bring shame on himself sooner or later.'

Wei Wuxian raised an eyebrow, glanced at the side of Lan Wangji's face, and thought, 'So the old man's gunning for me. Bringing his star pupil in to sit alongside, that was to make me look bad.'

He said, 'I have a question.'

Lan Qiren said, 'Speak.'

Wei Wuxian said, 'You put deliverance first, but deliverance is often impossible. Fulfill the wish it held in life, dissolve its obsession, easy to say. If the obsession's a new set of clothes, fine. But if it's wiping out a whole family for revenge, then what?'

Lan Wangji said, 'That's why deliverance is primary, suppression secondary, and destruction only when necessary.'

Wei Wuxian smiled faintly. 'Such a waste.' He paused, then said, 'It's not that I didn't know the answer just now. I was thinking about a fourth path.'

Lan Qiren said, 'I've never heard of any fourth path.'

Wei Wuxian said, 'This executioner dies a violent death, turns into a vicious corpse, that's a given. Now, since he beheaded more than a hundred people in life, why not dig up the graves of those hundred, stir up their resentment, gather a hundred skulls, and set them against this vicious corpse...'

Lan Wangji finally turned to look at him, but his brow was slightly knit, his face cold. Lan Qiren's beard was practically trembling. He barked, 'You have no idea how far over your head you are!'

The room was stunned. Lan Qiren shot to his feet. 'We subdue demons and slay monsters, exterminate ghosts and wipe out evil, all for the sake of deliverance! You don't give a thought to the way of deliverance, and instead you want to stir up its resentment? You've turned the whole thing on its head, with no regard for human decency!'

Wei Wuxian said, 'Some things can't be delivered no matter what, so why not put them to use? Even Yu the Great knew, when taming the floods, that damming is the lesser plan and channeling is the better one. Suppression is damming. Isn't that the lesser plan...' A book came flying at him; he tilted aside and dodged it without changing expression, talking nonsense right through it. 'Spiritual Energy is energy. Resentful Energy is energy too. Spiritual Energy stored in the Spirit Core can split mountains and fill seas for human use. So why can't Resentful Energy be put to use as well?'

Another book came flying. Lan Qiren snapped, 'Then I'll ask you this! How do you guarantee this resentment serves you and doesn't turn around and harm others?'

Dodging, Wei Wuxian said, 'Haven't figured that out yet!'

Lan Qiren exploded. 'If you ever do figure it out, the Hundred Cultivation Clans won't be able to keep you. Get out!'

Nothing Wei Wuxian wanted more. He got out at once.

He wandered all over Cloud Recesses, idling away half the day plucking flowers and grass. After the lecture let out, it took the others ages to find him perched high on a wall's eaves. Wei Wuxian was sitting on the green tiles of the wall, an orchid leaf between his teeth, his chin propped on his right hand, one knee drawn up and the other leg dangling, swinging lightly. Someone below pointed up at him. 'Wei-xiong! I'm impressed, truly. He told you to get out and you actually got out! Hahaha...'

'For a good while after you left he hadn't even caught up to it. His face went green as iron!'

Wei Wuxian, chewing the leaf, called down, 'Ask and I answer, tell me to get out and I get out. What more does he want from me?'

Nie Huaisang said, 'Why does the old man seem to come down so hard on you, calling you out by name to chew you out?'

Jiang Cheng huffed. 'He had it coming. What kind of answer was that? Spout this kind of garbage at home if you must, but you actually dared say it to Lan Qiren's face. Death wish!'

Wei Wuxian said, 'No matter how I answer he doesn't like me anyway, so I might as well say it and enjoy it. Besides, I didn't insult him. I just answered honestly.'

Nie Huaisang thought it over, and to everyone's surprise a look of genuine envy and longing crossed his face. 'Actually, what Wei-xiong said is pretty interesting. Spiritual Energy you have to cultivate yourself, grinding away to form a Golden Core. For someone with talent as lousy as mine, like a dog gnawed on it in the womb, who knows how many years it'd take. But Resentful Energy already belongs to all those vicious specters and Fierce Ghosts. If you could just pick it up and use it, how wonderful would that be.'

The so-called Golden Core is a core element that forms inside a cultivator's body once cultivation reaches a certain level, able to store and circulate Spiritual Energy. After Core Formation, one's cultivation surges ahead, and only then can it be refined higher and higher to scale the peaks. Without it, you're merely a third-rate cultivator. For a clan-born disciple to form a core too late is a complete loss of face, yet Nie Huaisang felt not a shred of shame. Wei Wuxian laughed too. 'Right? If you don't use it, it's wasted.'

Jiang Cheng warned, 'Enough. Talk all you want, but don't go down that twisted path.'

Wei Wuxian laughed. 'Why would I leave a perfectly good open highway to walk a single plank over a gutter? If it were that easy, someone would've done it already. Relax, he asked, I answered, that's all. Hey, you coming or not? Before curfew, come catch some pheasants with me.'

Jiang Cheng snapped, 'Catch what pheasants? Where would there be pheasants here! You go copy the Collected Precepts of Elegance and Rectitude first. Lan Qiren told me to pass it on, copy the Chapter of Supreme Righteousness from it three times, so you can really learn what the way of heaven and human decency mean.'

The Collected Precepts of Elegance and Rectitude is the Lan Clan Precepts. Their house rules are so long that, after a round of revision by Lan Qiren, they were gathered into one thick volume, with the Chapter of Supreme Righteousness and the Rites and Conduct Chapter making up four-fifths of the whole book. Wei Wuxian spat out the leaf he'd been chewing, brushed the dust off his boot, and said, 'Copy it three times? One time and I'd ascend. I'm not a Lan, and I'm not planning to marry into the Lans either, so why would I copy their house rules? Not copying.'

Nie Huaisang said quickly, 'I'll copy it for you! I'll copy it for you!'

Wei Wuxian said, 'Nobody fawns for nothing, it's either a swindle or a steal. Out with it, what do you want from me?'

Nie Huaisang said, 'Here's the thing. Wei-xiong, the old man's got a nasty habit, he...'

Halfway through, he suddenly went silent, gave a dry cough, snapped open his folding fan, and shrank off to the side. Wei Wuxian knew something was off. He turned to look, and sure enough, Lan Wangji, Bichen on his back, stood beneath a lush old tree, watching from a distance. The man was like a tree of jade, dappled with leaf-shadow and sunlight, but his gaze was far from kind. Under it you felt like you'd fallen into an ice pit. Everyone realized they'd been shouting back and forth across the air a bit too loud, and the noise had probably drawn him over, so they shut up on their own. But Wei Wuxian jumped down and went up to him, calling, 'Wangji-xiong!'

Lan Wangji turned and walked off. Wei Wuxian chased after him, gleeful, calling, 'Wangji-xiong, wait for me!'

That white robe with its trailing sashes flickered behind the tree and was gone in an instant, without a trace. Lan Wangji plainly had no wish to talk to him. Wei Wuxian got nothing but the man's back, came up empty, and turned to the others to lodge his complaint. 'He's ignoring me.'

'Yeah,' Nie Huaisang said. 'Looks like he really can't stand you, Wei-xiong. Lan Wangji usually... no, never gets this rude.'

Wei Wuxian said, 'That counts as can't stand me? I was actually going to apologize to him.'

Jiang Cheng mocked him. 'Apologizing now, too late! He's just like his uncle for sure, thinks you're rotten to the core, a bad seed, and won't deign to deal with you.'

Wei Wuxian wasn't convinced. He scoffed, 'Ignore me then, what's it to me, is he pretty?' Then, thinking again, he had to admit the man was good-looking, and tossed that little urge to sulk out of his head, all settled.'

Three days later, Wei Wuxian finally learned what Lan Qiren's nasty habit was.

Lan Qiren's lectures were endlessly long-winded, and every bit of it had to be recited from memory on the tests. The shifts of cultivation families across generations, how their territories were divided up, the famous figures and their famous sayings, family lineages...

Listening to it was like reading scripture from heaven; writing it from memory was selling yourself into bondage. Nie Huaisang copied the Chapter of Supreme Righteousness for Wei Wuxian twice, and right before the test he begged, 'Please, Wei-xiong, this is my third year coming to Gusu. If I don't pass grade B again, my big brother will really break my legs! All this telling direct lines from collateral branches, main house from offshoots, clan-born sons like us can't even keep our own relatives straight. Anyone past second cousins we just call aunt or uncle off the top of our heads. Who's got brain to spare for other families'!'

The fallout from cheat notes flying everywhere was that Lan Wangji burst in during the test and caught the ringleaders making trouble. Lan Qiren flew into a rage and sent letters off to every great family to report them. He hated it to the bone. Before, this pack of clan-born young men couldn't sit still, but at least no one had taken the lead, and they'd kept their backsides more or less against their heels. Then Wei Ying showed up, and the boys with the urge but no nerve got egged on and stirred up by him. Those who roamed at night roamed, those who drank drank, and the bad air just kept spreading. This Wei Ying really was exactly what he'd guessed, the number one menace under heaven!

Jiang Fengmian wrote back, 'Ying has always been like this. I'll trouble Master Lan to take him in hand.'

And so Wei Wuxian got punished again.

At first he didn't take it to heart. Just copying, and he'd never been short of people to copy for him. But this time, Nie Huaisang said, 'Wei-xiong, there's nothing I can do for you. You'll just have to grind through it yourself.'

Wei Wuxian said, 'What's wrong?'

Nie Huaisang said, 'The old... Master Lan said this time you copy the Chapter of Supreme Righteousness and the Rites and Conduct Chapter together.'

The Rites and Conduct Chapter is the most tedious of the twelve chapters in the Lan Clan Precepts, stuffed with citations, dull and endless, packed with bizarre rare characters. Copy it once and the life drains out of you; copy it ten times and you ascend on the spot. Nie Huaisang said, 'He also said that while you're being punished, no one's allowed to hang around with you, and no one's allowed to copy in your place.'

Wei Wuxian said, puzzled, 'Copy or not, how would he know? Don't tell me he's going to have someone watch me copy.'

Jiang Cheng said, 'That's exactly it.'

'...' Wei Wuxian said, 'What did you say?'

Jiang Cheng said, 'He's forbidden you to go out each day. You'll copy in the Lan family's Archive Pavilion, and reflect on your faults facing the wall for a month while you're at it. Of course someone will be watching you. As for who, I shouldn't have to spell it out, right?'

Inside the Archive Pavilion.

One green mat, one wooden desk. Two candlestands, two people. At one end, sitting straight and stiff. At the other, Wei Wuxian had already copied more than ten pages of the Rites and Conduct Chapter. Head spinning, bored out of his mind, he set down his brush for a breather and looked across at the other man.

Back in Yunmeng, plenty of the Jiang girls had envied him for getting to come study alongside Lan Wangji, saying the Gusu Lan Clan produced beautiful men generation after generation, and the Twin Jades of this generation's main house, the Lan brothers, were extraordinary. Wei Wuxian hadn't had a chance to study his face up close before. Now that he had, his thoughts ran wild. 'He really is good-looking. Can't fault his looks or his bearing. I just wish those girls could come see for themselves. If a man spends all day looking like the weight of the world's on him, glowering and grim like he's at a funeral, no amount of pretty face can save him.'

Lan Wangji was recopying ancient texts from the Lan family's Archive Pavilion, books so old and not fit for outsiders' eyes. His brush moved slow and steady, his characters upright and clean-boned. Wei Wuxian couldn't help blurting out genuine praise, 'Beautiful handwriting! Top of the top.'

Lan Wangji was unmoved.

Wei Wuxian had rarely kept his mouth shut this long, and it was killing him. He thought, 'This guy's so dull. Making me sit across from him for hours every day, for a month, isn't that going to be the death of me?'

At that thought, he couldn't help leaning his body forward a little.