“We raised a child together,” Jiang Wanyin says, voice thick with pain. “You two were sworn brothers.” He swallows hard and oh. Oh, no. Lan Xichen is not ready for this conversation. He is never going to be ready for this conversation. “And because of what he did, there is nowhere outside this room that either of us can mourn him.”

Lan Xichen has been in seclusion for half a year, healing, he thinks, from the way his world was upended that night in a temple in Yunping City. Then, Jiang Wanyin comes to visit—breaking the fragile peace he has been building, but offering, perhaps, a better healing.

Nie Huaisang asks Jiang Cheng to plug him up after sex so he can be filled with Jiang Cheng's cum while presiding over a discussion conference. Halfway through the day, Jiang Cheng thinks he should check if Huaisang needs a refill.

When the time comes to transfer a golden core to Jiang Cheng a different choice is made.

“Do you understand what this means? For me?” he asks, eyes flicking back and forth as he searches her face. “And you approve?”

She smiles as she reaches out and cups his chin. “Our XianXian is very brave,” Jiang Yanli says, not quite answering his question yet. “I knew you would find a way to save him but you cannot make this sacrifice.”

He shakes his head. “There’s no one else,” Wei Wuxian says, tears already forming in his eyes. “I promised I’d look after him.”

“You cannot look after him if you don’t have a core,” Jiang Yanli says, gently. “But I’m not doing much with mine.”

Jiang Cheng requires a new suit. Wei Wuxian removes it.

An explosive misunderstanding leaves Jiang Cheng assuming he's escaped matchmakers forever and Yu Ziyuan assuming she can solve her son's singleness with the right young man. Only one of them can be right. But what will Jiang Cheng do when the last name on the matchmakers' new list is his friend, Nie Huaisang?

Talking at someone is only fun for so long. That's all being a sect leader is: talking and talking to people bound by courtesy to listen to you. It's so fucking dull. A relief, then, to face one’s equal, and no less an old friend who is inclined to interrupt you whenever you ramble. He likes it. It’s one of Jiang Cheng’s best qualities.

In the years after Guanyin Temple, Nie Huaisang attends to unfinished business.

Of all the prisons in which she's spent time, Lotus Pier may be the kindest.

They haven't really talked about what's going on between them, except this morning while Jiang Cheng was eating breakfast and Wei Wuxian was lying on the sofa with his arm over his eyes, Wei Wuxian said, "Are you going to be weird about it if I hold your hand in front of our friends?"

Jiang Cheng chewed his youtiao.

"Just let me know," Wei Wuxian said. "It's chill."

Oh, Jiang Cheng knew very well that it was not chill. But he wasn't like Wei Wuxian; he couldn't just do things like that, like it was nothing. Wei Wuxian could name his sword—gleaming now on the rack above his head—Suibian, he could do whatever he wanted. He got all the curses and the blessings of being always inside and outside the Jiangs, and Jiang Cheng got everything else.

"You can hold my hand," Jiang Cheng said after he swallowed, feeling like he'd just walked over a bed of hot coals.

The hot springs were deep enough here that the water lapped at Lan Jingyi's thighs. He couldn't see much of the man in front of him except that his hair was tied up and he'd been taller than Lan Jingyi before he got on his knees. To suck Lan Jingyi's dick. Because Lan Jingyi was having anonymous sex in the gay hot springs in Qinghe and getting his dick sucked by a stranger.