He raised his voice, “You killed the Xuanwu of Slaughter together with Lan WangJi, bathing in blood! How great is that?! But what about me?!”
He punched his fist into a pillar in the hall, clenching his teeth, “… I have also been running around for days, completely exhausted, with not one second of rest!”
Wei WuXian, “So what if there’s the motto?! Do you have to follow it just because it’s a motto? Look at the rules of the GusuLan Sect—there are over three thousand. If people followed every single one of them, would they even be alive at this point?”
He hopped off the fence, “And, who said that being a sect leader means that you have to go along with the style of the sect? There have been so many sect leaders in the YunmengJiang Sect, I don’t believe at all that everyone was the same. Even the GusuLan Sect had an outlier like Lan Yi, but who would deny her position and her abilities? When talking about the famous cultivators of the Lan Sect, who could skip over her? Who could skip over her Chord Assassination technique?”
Jiang Cheng was silent, as though he had finally become calmer. Wei WuXian put his hand on his shoulder again, “In the future, you’ll be the sect leader, and I’ll be your subordinate, like your father and my father. So what if the GusuLan Sect has its Two Jades? The Yunmeng Jiang Sect will have its Two Prides! So, shut up. Who said that you don’t deserve to be the sect leader? Nobody can say this, even you can’t either. If you do you’re looking for a beating.”
Jiang Cheng snorted, “You see how you are right now? Who can you beat up?”
As he spoke he slapped right at the middle of Wei WuXian’s chest. Although medicine and bandages had already been applied to the branded wound, being slapped out of the blue still brought immense pain. Wei WuXian roared, “Jiang Cheng!!! Come to your death!!!”
Jiang Cheng ducked from his strike and shouted, “You’re hurting so much now, but why did you play the hero back then?! Serves you right! Teaches you your lesson!”
Wei WuXian, “Was I playing the hero?! I had no other choice either, I was moving faster than I could think! Stop running, I’ll let you off this once. I need to ask you something! … I had a perfume sachet somewhere around my waist. It was empty. Did you see it?”
Jiang Cheng, “The one that MianMian gave you? I didn’t.”
Wei WuXian exclaimed his regret, “I’ll find her for another one later.”
Jiang Cheng frowned, “You’re at it again. You don’t really like her, do you? The girl does look fine, but it’s obvious that she doesn’t have much background. Maybe she isn’t even a disciple. She seems like the daughter of a servant.”
Wei WuXian, “What’s wrong with servants? I’m also the son of a servant, aren’t I?”
Jiang Cheng, “How can you compare to her? Whose servant is like you, having your master peel lotus seeds for you and boil you soup. I didn’t even get to have some!”
Wei WuXian, “If you want some just ask Shijie to cook you more. Right, we were talking about Lan Zhan. Did Lan Zhan not leave a message for me? Has his brother been found? How’s the situation at his sect?”
Jiang Cheng, “You expected him to leave you a message? You’re lucky that he didn’t leave you with a stab. He went back. Lan XiChen hasn’t been found yet. Lan QiRen is exhausted from working.”
Wei WuXian, “What about the Lan Sect’s leader? How is he?”
Jiang Cheng, “He passed away.”
Chapter 57 Poisons—Part Two
Wei WuXian paused, “He passed away.”
All of a sudden, Lan WangJi’s tear-streaked face, reflecting the firelight, flashed within his mind. He blurted out, “How’s Lan Zhan?”
Jiang Cheng, “How could he be? He went back. Father originally wanted to ask people to take him to Gusu. He refused. Judging from how he was, he should’ve known long ago that the day would come. After all, with the situation at hand, no sect is better than any other.”
The two sat down on the wooden fence again. Wei WuXian, “Then what’s going on with Lan XiChen?”
Jiang Cheng, “The Wen Sect was going to burn down their Library Pavillion, wasn’t it? Tens of thousands of ancient books and music scores. The Lan Sect’s people saved some. They probably gave them to Lan XiChen and told him to run away with them. They protected whatever they could, or else everything’d be gone. This is what everyone is guessing.”
Looking at the sky, Wei WuXian spoke, “How disgusting.”
Jiang Cheng, “Yeah. The Wen Sect is too disgusting.”
Wei WuXian, “For how long are they going to jump around like this? We’ve got so many sects. Can’t we join together and…”
Suddenly, a series of footsteps came. A group of boys wearing training clothes leaped across the hallway like monkeys, shouting, “Shixiong!!!”
The youngest shidi beamed, “Shixiong!!! You’re alive now!!!”
Wei WuXian, “What do you mean I’m alive now? I’ve never died to begin with!”
“Shixiong, I heard that you killed a beast over four hundred years old?! Is it true? You killed it?!”
“Compared to this, what I really want to know is, Shixiong, did you really go without food for seven days?!”
“You really haven’t secretly practiced inedia behind our backs?!”
“Just how big really was the Xuanwu of Slaughter? Would it fit inside Lotus Lake?!”
“The Xuanwu of Slaughter was just a tortoise right?!”
“Shixiong, you spent the entire seven days with Lan WangJi from Gusu? And he didn’t beat you to death?!”
The atmosphere that had been somewhat solemn was immediately smashed into a ruckus.
Wei WuXian’s injuries weren’t too heavy to begin with. He just didn’t apply medicine in time and suffered from both fatigue and hunger. But the physique of his body was quite good. After medicine had been applied to the brand mark on his chest, his fever soon died down. He was lively again with just a few days of rest. After the chaos of the Xuanwu of Slaughter in Dusk-Creek Mountain, the ‘Sector of Indoctrination’ that the Wen Sect had set up at Qishan had disintegrated completely. All of the disciples returned to their sects. On the other hand, Wen Chao didn’t follow up immediately either. Taking the opportunity, Madam Yu gave Wei WuXian a harsh talking-to and ordered him not to take one step out of the gates of Lotus Pier, not even to play in the lake. Thus, he could only shoot kites with the Jiang Sect’s disciples, day after day after day.
No matter how fun a game was, playing it every day would eventually become tedious. And so, about half a month later, the boys’ interest dwindled. Wei WuXian hadn’t been in the mood, either. He shot without any care and even let Jiang Cheng get first place a couple of times.
On one day, after the last round had been shot down, Wei WuXian used his right hand to form shade between his brows and looked into the sunset, “Let’s wrap things up and stop playing this. Food’s waiting at home.”
Jiang Cheng, “So early today?”
Wei WuXian tossed the bow to the side and sat on the ground, disappointed, “It’s boring. Let’s stop. Which ones were last in the round we just did? Go get them with our sixth shidi.”