Nie Huaisang is the only Sect Leader not to attend the discussion conference.

That is, in itself, not entirely strange to the rest of them, or particularly unexpected. Nie Huaisang had not attended the last discussion conference a few months prior, either — though he had, of course, sent a written apology with his disciples that was politically balanced between formal and flagellating.

This time, however, there is no apology for him in-hand with his representatives. There is no-one from Qinghe Nie at all.

Those that had more openly derided Sect Leader Nie’s unreliableness at the first instance are now the quickest to give voice to the burgeoning distrust that has begun to sweep through them all in the wake of his absence. None of the ones running their tongues were present at Guanyin Temple. None of them are privy to the intimacies and intricacies of just what happened there.

Even though their disrespect rankles him, Jiang Cheng concurs with their sentiment. He’s closing ranks, he thinks. “Really?” is what he says.

The conversation scatters, leaving a terse silence. Jiang Cheng continues to sit, mindful of his appearance within the eyes of his clustered peers, even as he wets his mouth with a sip of tea and fumes beneath his skin. “Did none of you suffer enough losses in the strife that has just passed us all over?” he continues, after a steadying beat. “You’re that desperate for trouble that you’re looking to make it, and in the most unlikely place?”

“It is questionable—” Sect Leader Yao begins.

“—Sect Leader Nie is hopeless,” Jiang Cheng interjects, “harmless. A fool. Didn’t you say this yourself, during our last meet?”

“It was not only me who made such remarks,” he argues, though the cut of Jiang Cheng’s words has, notably, lopped the blustering volume from his voice. There is some murmured agreement from the crowd at his back, but none that identifies itself enough to be counted as outright support.

“It wasn’t,” Jiang Cheng agrees. He sets down his cup, thumbing with a deliberate casualness at the ceramic lip. “Still. Is it more plausible that Sect Leader Nie has come into a rapid proficiency for scheming over the last three months, or that he’s simply forgotten that he has this engagement?”

Jiang Cheng is careful to look on the room as he can see it from his seat, but not at Lan Wangji. Something else happened in that temple between Jin Guangyao, Lan Xichen, and Nie Huaisang. Something all the more terrible; something that Jiang Cheng witnessed but did not see.

If Lan Wangji feels strongly about Nie Huaisang’s hand in it, and the guilt and cruelty that can be ascribed to him, it is not strongly enough to feel any need to speak unfavourably of him here, where there’s an opportunity in want of taking.

Maybe that’s an indication as to the truth of what happened, or maybe it isn’t. Jiang Cheng has put that aspect of the night from his mind, as he has with many other thoughts of and around Nie Huaisang, to a place better left uncharted.

There’s something to be said, either way, of moments of anger and their aftermaths of sorrow. No-one challenges what he’s said, and so Jiang Cheng leans back, accepts another serve of tea, and leaves it where it rests.

“This is unexpected, Sect Leader Jiang,” is what Nie Huaisang manages to settle on, days later, after Jiang Cheng has made himself known at the gates of the Unclean Realm and demanded an audience by force and virtue of his presence. “But not unwelcome!”

“You missed the discussion conference,” Jiang Cheng snaps back at him, whipping his head up stiffly from his perfunctory bow.

Nie Huaisang’s smile doesn’t waver, his entire expression perfectly, painstakingly polite. He looks pale, but anyone of his mettle would, clad in the violent contrast of silver and black. It all relinquishes nothing to Jiang Cheng but the means to inflame his irritation for the situation and for himself. He had left the conference too quickly to contemplate his choice, and now, in Qinghe Nie’s main hall, he’s slowed down enough for the whiplash of regret to be both immediate and immense.

“Something came up,” Nie Huaisang explains, all too easily, tapping the leaf of his fan against his lips. “Ah, quite suddenly, at that. By the time it was resolved, it was too late to be punctual.”

“But not too late to come at all,” Jiang Cheng points out.

There’s a shade of something dark in Nie Huaisang’s eyes as he raises a shaped eyebrow, too chasmic to be a mere trick of the light. It only aggravates Jiang Cheng further, and the words that follow it do his temper no favours. “You’re right, Sect Leader Jiang. Was that all?”

Jiang Cheng allows himself the split second to suck in the breath necessary before he speaks to level his voice below a shout. “Am I to take it that I’m being dismissed, Sect Leader Nie?”

Nie Huaisang holds up his hands in placation, his smile shrinking. “Oh— I meant no disrespect, forgive me. I just don’t want to keep you away from more pressing matters of business.”

“You won’t be,” Jiang Cheng tells him. “Will I be keeping you away from more pressing matters of business, Sect Leader Nie, if I take the time to recount the conference you missed?”

He may not be as deft a hand at the game of talking as the other sect leaders, but Jiang Cheng has picked up some of their methodologies over the years. He knows how he’s seen, and that it’s not entirely untrue.

It’s worth it, to waste a later chance to take Nie Huaisang entirely by surprise, if only to see the way his mouth parts around a gasp that never quite leaves it. It’s there in one moment and gone the next, but the second in-between is long enough for Jiang Cheng to commit the sight to memory.

“Would you?” Nie Huaisang asks, appropriately awed, as he folds away his fan. “I would be indebted to you. Will you need a room?”

“For three days worth of talking?” Jiang Cheng scoffs. “I would think so.”

Nie Huaisang rises to his feet, one hand slipping his fan into his belt, the other smoothing out the skirt of his outer robes as he makes his way down the steps from his throne. “I’ll see it done. Would you like to start, while we’re on our way?”

He gestures with his hand, politely, for Jiang Cheng to join him at his side, and so Jiang Cheng does, gaze sweeping over him, from his thin wrists to the high collar swathing his throat. If there is something there to be seen, it is not seen by him.

“Now?” They both know it's a toothless protest, for Nie Huaisang only laughs softly, sweeping his loose hair back from his face, and as they both fall into step together, Jiang Cheng begins.

Few of his memories of Qinghe are ones that he would call good, and it is difficult not to reflect when he is left alone with them. Jiang Cheng has only known the Unclean Realm in states of war and mourning, and even Nie Huaisang, as its benefactor, brings little levity to its tall walls and sallow pallor.

No servants come to attend him in the morning, and so Jiang Cheng rises late, scrubs his face with cold water from the basin left on his table, and struggles, half-starved and hot-tempered, through taming his hair and bundling himself into his old robes.

Nie Huaisang laughs at the sight of him when he decides to make an appearance shortly after midday, and Jiang Cheng shoves him at the arm hard enough to make him stumble, scowling.

“Ah, sorry, I’m sorry!” Nie Huaisang sounds as delightedly unapologetic as he looks, his eyes crinkling as he crowds back into Jiang Cheng’s space. Jiang Cheng has an insult pressing against the backs of his teeth when he feels the flutter of Nie Huaisang’s fingers skimming down his hair, straightening it out, and he nearly bites down on the tip of his tongue instead to subdue the shudder that prickles up his nape.

Nie Huaisang, unreadable, whips the touch away as quickly as he gave it, hand dipping into his wide-brimmed sleeve as he props his elbows up on the balustrade. He plucks a kumquat from the loosened hem and holds it out, the corner of his mouth twitching as Jiang Cheng blinks at him.

“Is that your peace offering?” Jiang Cheng narrows his eyes into a glare. “How cheaply do you think I can be bought?”

“Would you like it with the skin on, or off?” Nie Huaisang asks by way of reply, and Jiang Cheng huffs as he snatches it from him.

It’s not escaping his notice, how he and Nie Huaisang have already fallen into a pleasant camaraderie that feels out of place between them. It’s more like the friendship that could have once been, in another lifetime, instead of anything they’ve actually built and should rightly have.

Jiang Cheng lifts the kumquat to his mouth and bites through it, nose scrunching at the sour juice that spills down his tongue and across the pads of his fingers. He looks out into the garden as he chews, but he doesn’t see anything his gaze manages to land on, Nie Huaisang’s arm warm through his sleeve where it’s brushing against him with every sway of his steady breaths.

When Jiang Cheng at last scrounges up enough of the scraps of his courage to spare a glance down at his side, Nie Huaisang meets his eyes, another kumquat pinched between his thumb and forefinger.

“Seriously?” Jiang Cheng swipes it from him and pops the whole of it into his mouth. “Do you keep a whole banquet in there?” he says around it, chewing. “Who needs so much fruit?”

“I get hungry during meetings!” Nie Huaisang protests, mouth prim. “Aren’t you benefitting quite a lot from my idea? It won’t kill you to admit to some envy.”

“It might,” says Jiang Cheng. He swallows, then, “Zidian sits better with huwan, anyway.”

Nie Huaisang bumps against him, just slightly, the feel of his arm frigid, wound tight, as though it was from a fuller range of motion, stopped halfway. “Of course, yes. Where were we?”

Jiang Cheng wipes his fingers clean on the underside of his bracer and lifts his chin. “Is there a point to telling you anything, if all you’re going to do with it is forget?”

“I haven’t forgotten! I just… need to be reminded!” Nie Huaisang pouts, brow furrowing from the pressure of Jiang Cheng’s scrutiny. He pats at the chest of his robe, hums, and pulls out a ripe creeping fig, the green fruit quickly making its way into Jiang Cheng’s palm. “I’ve run out of fruit.”

“And I’ve run out of patience,” Jiang Cheng retorts. He closes his hand around the fig and pushes up from the railing, turning away from the courtyard. Nie Huaisang follows his lead without the need for prompting, fan finding its way into his hand from his belt, fingers tapping nonchalantly at the black monture. “Moling Su.”

Nie Huaisang nods. “Right, the Gusu Lan pretender remnants. They’re still around?”

“More or less.” Jiang Cheng steps over the raised threshold, sparing a glance back at Nie Huaisang before he continues along. “They haven’t decided what should be done with them.”

“What do you think should be done with them?” Nie Huaisang asks.

They curve around a bend, striding into a narrow corridor, and pause, briefly, to acknowledge the salutes of two disciples approaching from the other side. Though what they’re discussing is hardly a matter that warrants secrecy, Jiang Cheng still waits until they’re out of sight before he answers. “End the misery of this waiting and disband them.”

Nie Huaisang hums, fanning himself lazily. “Not unreasonable. I imagine there’s no argument against that from Lanling Jin, Gusu Lan, or Hefei Tse.”

“Gusu Lan has been abstaining from offering their input.” Jiang Cheng considers, as the remark hangs between them, giving voice to further clarification, even though he knows it is unnecessary. Surely Nie Huaisang suspects, if he does not outright know, that Lan Xichen is still in seclusion. With Lan Qiren acting in his stead, and Lan Wangji refusing to intervene as Chief Cultivator, the matter has been left to stagnate for almost an entire year of ceaseless, circular conversation.

Jiang Cheng turns the fig over in his hand, sliding his thumbnail across it to split the skin, and decides against it. There’s no point in wasting words when he’s being called upon to use so many as it is.

“I suppose it’s really only Lanling Jin and Hefei Tse who stand to lose or gain with what happens with Moling Su, either way,” says Nie Huaisang. “Gusu Lan has never much cared for such things.”

It’s deliberate, his casualness. Jiang Cheng knows this; Nie Huaisang confirms it for him in the way he glances over to him, fan hitching slyly upward to shield his mouth. Nie Huaisang wants him to know that he has left something unsaid so that he will ask. Jiang Cheng wouldn’t, out of spite, if he wasn’t already certain whatever trap Nie Huaisang might have laid would also already be long sprung.

“You would know a lot about what Gusu Lan does and does not care for, would you?” Jiang Cheng asks, pointed.

It’s low enough to be unexpected; Nie Huaisang covers his instinctual flinch well, but not completely. Jiang Cheng isn’t sure, entirely, how to feel about landing a blow that should have rightly glanced off Nie Huaisang’s guard. “Only historically,” Nie Huaisang answers, tone airy, temperament believably unharmed. “It would be strange for them to suddenly care about gaining territory. That’s all.”

Jiang Cheng stops still, thumb jaggedly piercing through the fig, smearing seeds and juice up his hand. “Without Moling Su, it returns to sectless territory.”

Nie Huaisang laughs, the sound almost shy, shamed. “Right,” he replies. “Of course it does. It would be absurd for any of them to argue a claim to it, just for sharing its border. Even if Lanling Jin could say they granted the land in the first place, Hefei Tse could say they’d expanded so close to the border without reprimand before that they were all but promised it prior, and Gusu Lan could say that all the sects witnessed their cultivation techniques used by Moling Su, so why should it not fold into what is already theirs?”

He shuts his fan with a snap and stows it back in his belt before turning to Jiang Cheng. His smile is genial, kind, but there’s a tightness to his gaze that edges it dangerously close to a glare. “Truly a ridiculous notion,” Nie Huaisang concludes dismissively, cupping the back of his hand as he bows. “Excuse me, Sect Leader Jiang.”

An objection is on the tip of his tongue, but Nie Huaisang is quicker; he’s already slid out of Jiang Cheng’s reach before he can blink, and he’s off and out of earshot soon after.

They’re all stupid, hypothetical arguments, but to his frustration, Jiang Cheng can see how they can be spun into making sense. The longer Jiang Cheng is left alone with their half-finished conversation, the more his mood worsens. By the time the sun sets, he’s foul, and all but storms through the Unclean Realm until he’s turned himself around enough to happen back upon his room. His resentment bitterly roils into a rage that leaves him restless, and there is both no-one to turn it on and no-one to blame for it but himself.

Jiang Cheng wakes late once again the following morning, but there is, at least, lukewarm water in the basin for him to wash with, as well as a pot of tea and a plate of fruit to pick at and dull his hunger as he sulks. There are fresh clothes for him as well, folded over themselves, tidy silver layering over grey layering over white. Jiang Cheng weighs up his residual annoyance, but finds he’s already resolved to put what is left of yesterday behind him before he finishes leafing through the fabric. None of it fits precisely, but none of it was made for him, and the cuts aren’t all so far off that the way it warps his silhouette can’t be disguised by the drape of the outer robe.

Nie Huaisang’s build was never all that dissimilar to his; they're more than likely his clothes. Though he does make himself look quite small, through mannerisms and styling, Jiang Cheng has—

He nearly tears out his hair with his comb when it snags in a knot, and he scowls at himself as he works it loose, face hot with frustration. It has been years since he’s found himself truly idle, and it’s difficult, now, to shake the habitual urgency that sees his unpreoccupied thoughts race off in want of a focus. Nie Huaisang needn't be that focus, no matter Jiang Cheng's presence as his guest in Qinghe.

If Nie Huaisang holds any lingering negative feelings towards him for their last meeting, they are well concealed, even for him, when he finds Jiang Cheng observing drills in the early afternoon. “You can join them, if you want,” is how he announces himself as he draws up against Jiang Cheng’s side, gaze already swung outward to appraise his disciples.

“You think your juniors have anything to teach me?”

Nie Huaisang chuckles. “Regarding the sabre? They might.”

Jiang Cheng tilts his head towards him, brows raised. “Oh, they might? Good, we’ll go down there together, then.”

He can’t quite get the tone right for jest, but it comes out lacking enough sharpness to it that Nie Huaisang’s smile softens with relief. “Ah,” he murmurs, “but my form is so rusty— look, they are finishing up, anyway. What a shame.”

“What a shame,” Jiang Cheng mimics, and Nie Huaisang touches his hand to his throat, palm fanning over his high collar, as his head tips back with the blow of his laughter.

It’s too easy— Qinghe and Nie Huaisang are too easy, and it’s winding him up, setting him off towards the edge. It’s not supposed to be like this, all of his instincts are telling him: Nie Huaisang has never been fool enough, pretend or otherwise, to let a risk run unchecked. Jiang Cheng wouldn’t suffer the insult of not being thought of as a threat if he thought it to be the true reason he’s being granted so much free reign and companionable complacency. He’s still being watched, he knows, from the shadows, as any interloper would be, least of all amongst a sect as tightly bound together as Qinghe Nie, he just— there is no secret to it, and he can’t figure out its purpose.

“Where were we?” Nie Huaisang asks, prompting him from his reverie, and just as Jiang Cheng opens his mouth to snap at him, he holds up his hand. “Moling Su! I know, I know! Just, surely you’ve said all there is to say about them?”

“We’re done with them,” Jiang Cheng confirms. Before them, the disciples have begun to splinter apart, spilling off into different directions; a few of the closest stall as they notice Jiang Cheng, before they resume their stride, bowing mid-step: respectfully to Nie Huaisang, and then more reservedly for Jiang Cheng.

Jiang Cheng watches how Nie Huaisang’s expression gentles, so openly and so honestly, just for a moment, as he regards them and is regarded by them in turn, before they pass by and his features settle back into place. It’s— he breathes out, and it’s hard enough to yank Nie Huaisang’s attention back onto him.

“Are you tired?” Nie Huaisang asks, and Jiang Cheng feels his mouth twist into a scowl, hackles rising despite his better sense.

“It’s been an exhausting two days of doing nothing, yes.”

“Torpor can be quite taxing in its own right.” Nie Huaisang steps back and gestures towards Jiang Cheng invitingly, palm upturned. Jiang Cheng almost falls to the impulse to take his offered hand before he catches himself, hands curling back, fingers clawing within the shroud of his borrowed sleeves. He steps out, and Nie Huaisang lowers his hand once Jiang Cheng has joined him at his side. “We can resume later. I’ve been putting something off, anyway.”

“So you’re putting me off instead?” Jiang Cheng can’t help but point out, a bit too terse than what’s appropriate, even coming from him, but Nie Huaisang’s smile only broadens.

“You make me sound so irresponsible, putting it like that!”

“Aren’t you?” Jiang Cheng pauses as Nie Huaisang’s elbow smacks against his bicep with just enough strength behind it to lose its veneer of coincidence. “How would you put it, then?”

Nie Huaisang tilts his head, cupping the collar of his robe around his neck again absently as he casts a glance upward in thought. “Ah, well, I would put it as… I am behaving as a proper host, by showing attentiveness towards the needs and comfort of my guest. What do you think?”

“I think,” says Jiang Cheng, mouth curving, “that you’re full of shit.”

Nie Huaisang’s laughter is still lingering in his eyes when they part, some minutes later, and Jiang Cheng is left feeling somewhat lighter by the sight.

Later, when the hours have dwindled down to the fine line bridging the night and the new morning, there is a knock on Jiang Cheng’s door, loud enough to disturb but not enough to wake.

Nie Huaisang, hair loosened from its braids and garb stripped back to only his high-collared middle clothes, holds up two jars of wine twined together in the curl of his fingers. They’re relinquished swiftly into the snatch of Jiang Cheng’s hand, and he sidles past him to step into his room, fan wafting against his chest.

“Not one of yours?” Jiang Cheng finds himself asking, before he can catch himself, the remark striding boldly into unpermitted territory. Nie Huaisang parts his lips, momentarily speechless, before a complicated, shuttered comprehension dawns on his face, hastily shaded over with an amused smile.

“Ah, no. A gift from the merchant clans in Shanxi.” He turns his face away, the gesture easily permissible as an accommodation for taking in the room and how Jiang Cheng has made his home in it. Jiang Cheng is not nearly so forgiving as to call it anything but a blatant escape. “I never did quite get the hang of winemaking.”

It’s the confirmation Jiang Cheng doesn’t need and doesn’t especially want, between them, of what is forgotten and what is not.

He sinks to his knees at the low table, and Jiang Cheng joins him, setting the jars down a bit too harshly, the glass clattering against the wood as he crosses his legs and tries to swallow around the tightness in his throat, breathe through the hitch in his chest.

Nie Huaisang sets them each down a cup, and Jiang Cheng uncaps one of the jars, sniffing at it. A floral, sticky-sweet scent catches in his nostrils and he grimaces reflexively before he starts pouring it out, Nie Huaisang braced half across the table to hold the cups steady, his fan set aside. “It smells like a rose garden. Have you given them a reason to poison you?”

“I should hope I haven’t,” Nie Huaisang replies, “they broke my back this year. I think our vaults are the emptiest they’ve ever been, since… ah, it’s hard to say.”

Nie Huaisang lifts his cup, holding it beneath his nose as he sniffs it, nose scrunching minutely before his features smooth over. He touches the rim to his bottom lip, as if to take a drink, but he stops himself, glancing up from beneath the swoop of his dark eyelashes. “Core cycling functions better when it’s complementing traditional mithridatic practice, but— I could teach you?” He tips his chin, swallowing back the contents of his cup, before he sets it back on the table with a pointed clack. As if sensing Jiang Cheng’s reflexive refusal, he licks at his bottom lip and rushes to add, “As payment. A favour for a favour.”

Jiang Cheng takes a long pull from his cup, draining it. He circles his thumb in the basin of it absently, the tacky beads of the wine’s dregs smearing across his skin. “What, afraid I’ll call on you later for something I might actually want?”

Nie Huaisang huffs out, lips shaping around the laugh that doesn’t follow through, and he leans over to take the jar of wine in hand. “Is indenturing someone like me really that valuable to you, Sect Leader Jiang?”

“Of course it is.” Jiang Cheng scoffs, eyes drawn to the pull of Nie Huaisang’s fingers as he lifts his free hand to his throat to adjust the ruck of his collar. Everything he’s worn over the last few days has had under clothes with such a high-sitting collar; it’s unseasonal. “You know how this goes. You’ve been part of this game for long enough.”

He tosses back his drink as soon as it is poured, tension bearing down on his shoulders, an insistent, incessant brace of pressure, and it’s barely back on the table before Nie Huaisang is filling it for him again, his own refreshed cup left untouched. Jiang Cheng doesn’t know what he’s doing, even as he’s talking, or what he could possibly— hope to accomplish. Against any wisdom or self-preservation, he’s come to the tiger’s den, he’s stuck his hand in the tiger’s maw, and now he’s desperate to force its teeth to bite down to spare himself the anxiety of an expectation entirely of his own making.

“Then keep your favour, Jiang Cheng,” says Nie Huaisang, with a considered carefulness that stokes a shudder to slide down Jiang Cheng’s spine, “I’ll still teach you. Consider it what I owe you for—”

Jiang Cheng lunges half across the table, snatching Nie Huaisang’s wrist, the cuff of his palm winding so tightly in his rush that he feels Nie Huaisang spasm beneath him and hears his bones creak. He doesn’t know if Nie Huaisang would dare to— would even care to— it doesn’t matter what Jiang Cheng thinks when he’s already moved and can’t take it back.

Nie Huaisang’s eyes flash dangerously in the candlelight as he falls silent, and when he tests for any give in Jiang Cheng’s grip, it seems more for the sake of appeasing spite than abating suffering. “For our long… acquaintance,” he finishes, incisive, just as the pause is on the turn to unsettling, “unless Sect Leader Jiang finds that too presumptive?”

Jiang Cheng releases him, biting the inside of his cheek to scold away the looming scowl as he watches Nie Huaisang flick out his hand, exaggeratedly slighted. How could he know what is presumptive and what is not, when they have met so sparingly in their entire relationship that it seems as if the years of their mutual familiarity well outpace individual instances of conversation? When he knows how Nie Huaisang feels bearing down on his naked lap, knows the shape of his cock in his hand and how his breath shudders out when he comes?

“Fine,” Jiang Cheng concedes, clipped. “How could I deny Sect Leader Nie his gratitude?”

Nie Huaisang spirits Jiang Cheng’s empty cup from the loose pinch of his fingers and refills it before sliding it back across the table, the curve of the ceramic slotted against the webbing of his thumb, thin fingers curving back, as if he’s a maiden offering his knuckles out to be kissed. Jiang Cheng doesn’t need to push him away; the moment he reaches for the wine, Nie Huaisang resigns his grip and retreats.

“Let me think,” he says, heading off Jiang Cheng’s building impatience at the pass. He takes his open fan back in hand and taps the edge of the mount to his chin. “Step back through yourself until you’ve pared your awareness down to your core. Feel how every part in-between both joins and separates.”

“I have meditated before,” Jiang Cheng barks, churlish, and Nie Huaisang’s head lilts languidly as he fans his face, arching his brows.

“I’m not asking you to meditate, Jiang Cheng. This isn’t an exercise in cultivation.” He closes his fan with a pointed snap and sheathes it in his belt before he swoops forward, elbows bracing on the table, chin coming to rest atop his laced fingers. “The purpose is to distinguish between the map of your meridians, both jingmai and luomai, your dantian, your core, and the rest of your body. To learn how your blood feels when it flows, how your chest feels when you breathe, your stomach when you eat and drink.” Nie Huaisang drums his fingers against the back of his wrist, hands furling over themselves to veil the sliver of skin left bare on his throat. “If you can’t come to know that of yourself,” he concludes, “how will you ever be able to tell when something is wrong quickly enough to neutralise it?”

It takes Jiang Cheng a shameful moment to truly grasp what Nie Huaisang is saying. It is something Jiang Cheng knows, of course, inherently, but in Nie Huaisang’s voice and Nie Huaisang’s words, there is an impression that there is something other, beyond the encompassing three treasures, the segmentation of the souls. “The principle and extraordinary meridians are the body,” Jiang Cheng observes, vigilant, voice pitched low. “What do you actually mean when you speak of cycling your core?”

Nie Huaisang glances away, the motion a damning tell, before he brings his eyes back to meet Jiang Cheng’s, his visage soundly stoic, unflinching.

“There is more to the body than that.”

Jiang Cheng’s derisive laugh is shocked out before he can think to suppress himself. He shakes his head, temper flaring beneath his skin, and drinks his wine to try and quench the burn of it, before dragging the jar over to pour himself another cup. “You sound very sure of that,” he says, not meeting Nie Huaisang’s eyes, instead choosing to focus on his own fingers, the backs of his knuckles. He tells himself it’s not cowardice, denying himself the knowledge of how Nie Huaisang’s face must look, confronted with Jiang Cheng’s ridicule.

However he might appear, Nie Huaisang’s voice is, at least, unaffectedly even when he next speaks. “My ancestors were butchers. We knew, and still yet know, more than any other sect, how everything between this world and the next interconnects, and just what composes a flesh vessel.”

Just as Jiang Cheng sets the jar back down, Nie Huaisang thrusts out a hand, snatching it, and Jiang Cheng jerks his chin up, gaze forced to follow the violent swing of motion, catching on Nie Huaisang as he throws his head back, the arch of his throat cruel, the work of it harsh as he swallows his wine. When he lowers his face again, eyelids fluttering open, his expression is stripped back of all of his guises and his composure. He looks almost enraged, eyes wet, jaw clenched tight, skin mottling an ugly red, and Jiang Cheng feels an answering shudder rip up his bare skin, breath snagging in his throat, the white-hot shock of fear and something else, illicit and unbidden, sloshing down to pool at the floor of him.

“We take the qi from our meridians,” Nie Huaisang explains, the lightness in his voice a vicious, terrifying contradiction to the contortion of his face. Calmly, collectedly, his steady hands pour out another serve of wine, which he downs in one fluid motion, glass slapping back down to the table in the next breath. “Raise it out, direct it instead to the body that encases it, overhead. Then we flood out what is wrong and not welcome, and pull it back, with the qi, into the pathways, channelling it back to the core to be purified.”

“That’s—” the white-hot sensation curdles, flipping over itself until it feels like ice water, dousing him, and Jiang Cheng has to cut himself off, has to put every lick of his control left into attenuating the urge to seize Nie Huaisang by the throat and drag him over the table for his sheer contumacy. “You Qinghe Nie qi deviate on purpose in this way?! What,” and Jiang Cheng sneers, even as his better sense screams at him to stop, here, to not take the last, condemnatory step, “your sabre isn’t defilement enough?”

It’s too far, it would almost be too far for someone Jiang Cheng considered an enemy, let alone Nie Huaisang, who he isn’t entirely sure of, but knows, with absolute certainty, that he anything but hates. He wishes an ensuing apology was already on the tip of his tongue, but he’s not that good of a man, never has been, and so he only sits in stunned, excruciating silence, hostage to the sight of Nie Huaisang going terribly still, blinking, before tears begin spilling down his splotchy cheeks, drops catching in his eyelashes.

“Ah.” Nie Huaisang breathes out shakily, fingers creeping up to trace, numb, at the tears trickling down his jaw. “Excuse me,” he apologises, voice flat, rehearsed, and Jiang Cheng grips the edges of the table until his knuckles pale as he watches, useless, as Nie Huaisang gathers himself to his feet, staggers, then breaks into a run to flee him.

No matter who or what else he is tonight, Jiang Cheng is Nie Huaisang’s guest; he is not the angry child of his teenage years; he is trying to no longer be the angry man of more recent times. And so, when he at last stands, he does not proceed to wrap his hands around everything he can break in his room and set himself to the task of ripping it apart. Instead, Jiang Cheng extinguishes the candles, strips himself out of his borrowed robes, and bundles himself into the burrow of his bed to fill the hours before his body forces him into sleep with anything but the banefully familiar sight of Nie Huaisang shattering before him.

The refilled water in his wash basin is warmer again than yesterday’s, and there is a new set of robes, slate layering sage layering white, waiting for Jiang Cheng to change into. He scrubs his face, under his arms, between his thighs and down the backs of his knees, the swipe of his hand unduly rough, and then, in a mild fit of pique, Jiang Cheng takes a seat at his table, still damp and naked, and proceeds to sullenly pick at the plate of fruit that’s been left for him for the better part of an hour.

Eventually, though, he has to get over himself, and so he scowls through the clumsy comb and braid of his hair, pulls on his new robes, takes Sandu out of the weapon rack for the first time in as many days, and sets out. Finding Nie Huaisang, as it turns out, is a task that proves difficult to complete when the object of it, Jiang Cheng suspects, does not particularly want to be found. Jiang Cheng doesn’t want to take the chance on the unknown factor that is Nie Huaisang’s potential pettiness to risk asking any of his sect members where their leader might be, and so he loiters and lingers for hours instead, listing between the familiar retreads of the last few days.

Jiang Cheng eventually finds him addressing a small group of disciples outside the main hall just past midafternoon, and makes a very petty point of loudly announcing his presence before Nie Huaisang can extricate himself.

“Ah, Sect Leader Jiang,” Nie Huaisang greets him. His tone is faultlessly civil and his smile is snidely placid, which tells Jiang Cheng very plainly just how much of a grudge he is still bearing after last night.

Jiang Cheng steps in to join him, offering a brief nod in turn to the gathered disciples as they salute. Swathed in Qinghe Nie’s colours and hair fashioned in braids reminiscent of their traditional style, Sandu stands out in his hand just as Jiang Cheng stands out at Nie Huaisang’s side; with all the virulent disparity of a bruise.

“Sect Leader Nie,” Jiang Cheng returns, proper by way of practice. He is acutely aware of the tug of his features on his face and the resonance of his voice, as he is of all the eyes and ears trained on him. “When will you be free to resume where we last left off, regarding the discussion conference?”

Jiang Cheng expects it, even before it comes: Nie Huaisang’s lips shift into a demur moue as his brow furrows with commendable regret. “I’m terribly sorry, Sect Leader Jiang,” he says, “I’m afraid an urgent matter has arisen that must be attended to. Perhaps you could send me a letter summarising the remaining key points, once you have returned to Yunmeng?”

Jiang Cheng knows, with where they are, with who Nie Huaisang is, and with what witnesses they have, that he can’t simply argue. Instead, he smiles, polite, and angles his shoulder so that he can flatten his palm against the small of Nie Huaisang’s spine, just out of sight. Zidian’s chain clinks quietly, the cuff of it scratching at the lavish cloth of Nie Huaisang’s robe. “That’s unfortunate,” he says, convincingly regretful, face tipping towards Nie Huaisang’s ear, “but I must insist that I finish relaying them to you in person, given that they are confidential matters.”

Nie Huaisang holds all of the power in Qinghe, and could challenge him with no real fear of recourse, if he really wanted to. It would be an effortless matter for him to turn this encounter on its head and paint the Sect Leader of Yunmeng Jiang in the worst possible light. Jiang Cheng knows this, and he knows that Nie Huaisang must know that he knows this.

There is a long pause, and then Jiang Cheng feels Nie Huaisang’s back shift against the brand of his palm as he exhales. “You’re right, Sect Leader Jiang,” he concedes, then, “however, the disturbance near my ancestral halls won’t keep. You are welcome to join us, or you can choose to remain here.”

“I’ll go,” says Jiang Cheng.

The corners of Nie Huaisang’s mouth twitch, brow furrowing almost imperceptibly before he turns his attention back onto the five disciples clustered but a few short paces away. “Could you please bring an additional horse back with you for Sect Leader Jiang?”

“You go on night hunts, now, then?” Jiang Cheng stupidly, foolishly asks, once the disciples have left with their dismissal, his hand still on Nie Huaisang’s back.

Nie Huaisang hums; Jiang Cheng feels the echo of it rumble against his palm. “On occasion.”

And because Jiang Cheng really is an utterly, impossibly impulsive fool, he leans in, feels his hand slide further up Nie Huaisang’s back, until it comes to rest against his dantian, the crucible of his golden core. “And you think that’s wise,” he remarks, “given your cultivation?”

He pushes his fingers in, an idle tease of pressure more than anything, qi pooling at his fingers as if to prod against Nie Huaisang’s own meridians for emphasis, and Nie Huaisang whips out from under his grip in a dizzying rush. He puts a wide stride between them both before he finally turns back to face him, expression dark with a severity that seems strangely misplaced, even given their current friction.

“It is not a matter of wiseness, Sect Leader Jiang,” Nie Huaisang retorts, acerbic. “It’s my duty to my family and my sect.” He pulls out his fan and opens it with a measured flick of his wrist, the rivet pin balanced in the cup of his palm. His index and middle finger begin to tap against the obsidian guard in a haphazard rhythm as his expression settles into something wrung out, wan, gaze drifting to fall somewhere behind the hill of Jiang Cheng’s shoulder. “I’ve buried my brother twice already, after all,” he adds, quieter. “I’m loath to have to bury him again.”

It is truly meritable how Nie Huaisang avoids speaking to him again, after that, until well after his disciples have returned and their audience necessitates his return to participating in vague niceties. The cut of his offence simmers, foul, beneath Jiang Cheng’s skin, but he endures it benignly for the sake of biding his time.

Jiang Cheng does question the reason for the horses, at first. But as their ride takes the procession well past what Jiang Cheng knows to be the jutting outcroppings of Qinghe Nie’s little man-eating castles and further into the wilds, the bleak energy that seems to permeate all around them turns turgid, tangible, and that provides him with the answer he had committed not to ask for. Better to save what energy they can when the place they are going to will seek to sap it of its own accord by merit of their intrusion.

Jiang Cheng’s addition has broken the balance of their group’s formation, and so he rides alongside one of the disciples as Nie Huaisang rides alone, pincered in the middle of their paired rows. The conversation between all of the cultivators, which had started the moment they left the gates, jovial and sociable and even joined, at intervals, by Nie Huaisang, tapers off into reserved silence as the sky overhead grows dark, independent of the sun’s towering position in it.

They stop to dismount before the path becomes too cluttered and perilous, and Jiang Cheng watches as the disciples immediately cluster around their leader, the closest even extending a hand for him to take as leverage to lower himself to the ground. Jiang Cheng, admittedly, knows little of Qinghe Nie’s accoutrements to easily distinguish their ranks, but from faint recollections and general comparisons, he feels it is a very safe guess to conclude they are skilled, senior, and close enough to Nie Huaisang to treat him — and be treated by him — with casual intimacy.

The one that helps Nie Huaisang to his feet keeps their hands clasped together even after he’s steady, and leans in close, guarding both of their faces with the angled hitch of a broad shoulder as they exchange words. Something snarling and hideous snaps through his gut, and Jiang Cheng grits his teeth hard enough to feel them scrape uncomfortably against themselves as the disciple separates from Nie Huaisang with a bow and begins to approach him.

“Sandu Shengshou.” He salutes, and Jiang Cheng thins his lips, expression close to a glower. “Sect Leader Nie has requested I apprise you.”

Jiang Cheng shoves out his hand, fisted around his horse’s reins, for the disciple to take. “You are?”

“Nie Jianhong, Jiang-daren.”

The honorific is appropriately, politely stressed on all the right consonants. Jiang Cheng immediately takes a disliking to him. “Speak, then.”

Nie Jianhong obediently takes the reins, clicking his tongue against the sides of his teeth to call the horse over to his side before returning his attention to Jiang Cheng. “We are searching for a guchong. Our suspicion is that its master is a demonic cultivator that has so far thwarted our suppression attempts.” Jiang Cheng has to hold his tongue in check at that revelation, casting a glance off to where Nie Huaisang is speaking to his other disciples, back turned to him. “Such a creature poses no threat to Sandu Shengshou, but the cultivator is versed in dark tricks that can afflict one’s golden core. In the event he should surface, please ensure your qi is primed to reflect any such targeted curses.”

“Fine,” Jiang Cheng snaps dismissively, then, “thank you.”

If a demonic cultivator has gone to ground in Qinghe Nie territory, and so close to their ancestral halls, Nie Huaisang must have cause for abstaining from any measure that would involve dispatching men further into the forests and to all reaches of the Stone Castles to neutralise the threat. It may be an ill-thought and ill-sighted cause, but it seems it is not to be Jiang Cheng’s business to know, so he can’t confirm if it is so.

Jiang Cheng seizes on the opportunity to integrate with the group when it splinters, briefly, to tie up the horses, and places himself to Nie Huaisang’s left, eyes deliberately set towards the dark of the deeper woods before them.

“We would cover more ground if we separated.” Jiang Cheng levels his tone so that it seems as if it is a remark made in passing, and not the double-edged blade of both a slighting cut and a press for information.

He sees Nie Huaisang tip his face towards him in the corners of his periphery, but Jiang Cheng doesn’t turn to meet him halfway. “The caution is warranted here. Please stay close by.”

Jiang Cheng does, and tells himself it is because he’s neither stupid nor in possession of a death wish, not because Nie Huaisang considers it a danger enough to worry after him.

Each of the disciples adopts a formation around them, a loose circle with them as its heart, and Jiang Cheng does not consider the implications of it, how well versed and how practised all five men are at being Nie Huaisang’s bulwark. Not even twenty paces from their starting point, the dark swims so thickly around them that two of the disciples have to light torches to pierce the suffocating gloom, making the necessary sacrifice of subtlety for the sake of sight.

The further they go, the more Jiang Cheng feels tension coil around the rungs of his spine, drawing his shoulders in, tight, thrumming in his palms and down his thighs. It’s anticipation without fear, expectation without delight; the clutch of a body in waiting, held in the purgatory preluding the answer as to whether or not it will remain predator or if it will become prey. Nie Huaisang, in disparity, seems only calm when Jiang Cheng steals a glance at him; as though he has his confirmation, already, as to whether or not he is today’s hunter or its hunted.

They smell it before they see it: the rancid fetor of rotted blood sheeting over decaying flesh, and within seconds the disciples have drawn their sabres, torches doused to be replaced with conjured flame. The beast’s many eyes flicker and blink as it lumbers out from between the gnarled trees, it’s sprawling, coiling mass bent over itself from the drain of the many wounds and breaks in its hulking carapace, the skin around its gaping maw burned away by the acidic drool leaking out from between its teeth.

For such a massive, shambling thing, more nightmare than insect, it moves with startling speed. Jiang Cheng feels the hand on his shoulder shoving him away before he even hears the shout to move, and he feels the clip of claws through the hem of his robe’s skirt as the guchong lurches past in a blur, Zidian coming alive in his hand to counter with a jagged lash towards its vulnerable legs. It’s— it continues to move, screeching, more and more of its body spilling into the clearing after it, the length of it seemingly endless as it coils and writhes, threading through the group and forcing them apart.

Jiang Cheng, stupidly, jerks his head wildly amidst the commotion, eyes darting, until he finally catches sight of Nie Huaisang, forced to the far opposite of the clearing but safe behind the barricade of Nie Jianhong, the man’s sabre pointed outward, stance defensive. It costs him precious seconds that could be more sensibly spent, but it gives Jiang Cheng enough assurance to allow himself the leave to focus solely on the fight rapidly unfolding, the cacophony of human shouts above inhuman gurgles and cries reaching an ear-splitting pitch.

The beast is already flagging, worn down by its preexisting injuries to the desperate thrashing of the almost dead, but that only makes it more dangerous as it flails and leaps, its spit sizzling as it drips and splatters across the ground, burning through everything it touches. The smell of boiling flesh catches in Jiang Cheng’s nose before he hears the scream of pain that accompanies it, distant, muffled by the rush of his own blood in his ears. Through the gloom, he can see the guchong rear up, and he pivots his arm, flinging Zidian in a wide arc to lasso around its neck, grunting as he has to drop Sandu to grasp the pillar of his forearm, heels digging into the dirt with the effort of holding it prone for the others to attack its underbelly.

“Sandu Shengshou!” someone cries out, and Jiang Cheng whips his head towards the sound, vision filling out with the sight of the end of the guchong’s body swinging towards him. He knows he can do nothing to avoid it, even if he released Zidian from its collar on its neck to in turn free himself to run, and so he stays, wasting his last moment to suck in a bracing breath.

The blow doesn’t come: instead, a cacophonous note of sound made manifest screams past him, rending through the guchong’s body in one slice, reminiscent of Gusu Lan’s signature Chord Assassination Technique. Another sings out after it to shield him from the splatter of the beast’s corrosive blood, and Zidian goes taut, the electric rope of it crackling as the beast howls, sagging in on itself. Jiang Cheng finds himself flailing around again for the second time in as many seconds, at a complete loss to understand what he’s just witnessed.

His eyes soon find Nie Huaisang, his fan clasped oddly in his hand, fingertips still aflame with energy. He meets Jiang Cheng’s gaze, expression shuttering, and Jiang Cheng feels the earth tilt alarmingly beneath his feet, head swimming with more than adrenaline.

“Sect Leader!” all of the disciples shout as one, and Jiang Cheng can’t comprehend their sheer panic: they’ve won, and Nie Huaisang, the source of their concern, appears untouched, safe and clear of harm. Jiang Cheng swoops down, retrieves Sandu, and takes a staggering step forward despite himself as he watches Nie Jianhong pull Nie Huaisang’s fan from his grip, the rest of the disciples sheathing their sabres, uncaring of their own wounds, as they race to close the gaps between them and their leader.

Nie Huaisang’s mouth shapes around something incomprehensible to Jiang Cheng as he averts his eyes, brow furrowing. All at once, the blade-thin thread of tension strung through the clearing snaps. Nie Huaisang’s face grows ashen in warning before his whole body seizes, blood seeping from his eyes and staining his teeth as he vomits it onto himself. Jiang Cheng has vaulted over the guchong’s corpse and crossed the entire distance before the thought even registers that he needs to move, forcing himself through the wall of disciples without a care for how it looks or how it might be taken.

“What?” he hears himself spit out, falling into a crouch as Nie Huaisang buckles, going to his knees, the unsteady lurch of his spasming frame caught by the fan of Nie Jianhong’s broad palm against his sternum. “What happened? What hit him?”

Nie Huaisang’s head lolls back as he looks up at him, the whites of his wide eyes now red, tears mingling with the spidering tracks of blood dripping down his cheeks. He starts shaking his head, frantic, lips parting, but all Jiang Cheng sees is his tongue roll against his teeth before he starts retching again, chin dropping to his chest as he spits blackened globules into the litterfall, too thick and coagulated to only be blood.

“Get him up!” Jiang Cheng barks, the why of the situation and the source of its cause no longer mattering to him. He surges forward to clumsily grapple Nie Huaisang beneath his arms, tugging his sagging body up against his chest, Nie Jianhong’s hand sliding free. Somehow, Jiang Cheng gets himself to his feet, gets Nie Huaisang secured against his chest, arms draped around Jiang Cheng’s shoulders, his blood smearing against the collar of Jiang Cheng’s robes as he tucks his face weakly into the crook of Jiang Cheng’s neck before passing out, his wheezing exhale chilling Jiang Cheng’s sweat-damp skin.

He flattens his hand between Nie Huaisang’s shoulder blades and drags his palm down over his dantian, intending to immerse him in his own energy, impel his meridians to hasten its sure attempts to mend whatever hurt is lurking beneath the surface. His energy is rejected, expelled, and Jiang Cheng recoils from the disfigured shape of Nie Huaisang’s core that has been uncovered by his questing.

Jiang Cheng looks up and takes in the faces of all the other men gathered, rage budding at the first, in full bloom by the time he reaches the last; all of their eyes alight with recognition, all of their expressions flattened with recalcitrance. Their panic of minutes before, now given this context, no longer feels misplaced in retrospect: the worry had never been for a new injury unseen by Jiang Cheng, but a concealed one unknown to him.

He slides his palm up Nie Huaisang’s still back to cup his nape, his other hand fisting against Nie Huaisang’s thigh, rending at his robes, fingers wracked with angry shivers. He exercises no restraint on his venom as he turns his face to Nie Jianhong, lips pulled back over his teeth in a snarl. “You will come back with me,” he demands icily, “and you will tell me everything on the way.”

Truly, so few of his memories of Qinghe are good ones.

The worst of them, though, is not one Jiang Cheng carries with him from the times of the Sunshot Campaign.

It is this: one month after Nie Mingjue’s death, Jiang Cheng, en route to Lanling, had let an inscrutable whim carry him to Qinghe. Nie Huaisang, still in mourning white, had greeted him with the same simple smile Jiang Cheng remembered, the same one he now found no longer fit properly on Nie Huaisang’s face, no longer reached as high as his eyes. Jiang Cheng, clueless and adrift, had stolen only enough of Nie Huaisang’s time to keep his company until he could steal a moment of secrecy, backed into one of the many winding halls of the fortress that inevitably spilled out into the courtyard.

Jiang Cheng had never had a head for condolences, but there had been— something, about Nie Huaisang, then, that had urged him to take him by the arm. Had coaxed him to press until Nie Huaisang’s shoulders were flat to the wall, Jiang Cheng crowding over him, shielding him and them from sight. Had pushed him to tell Nie Huaisang the nonsense assurance Jiang Cheng had wanted someone, anyone, to give him, back when everyone he loved had been ripped from him, again and again and again, one and two and all after the other: It wasn’t your fault.

Nie Huaisang had shrunk in on himself, paling, and then they had both flinched at once, shocked, as Nie Huaisang began to cry, tears flooding soundlessly down his cheeks, his expression hauntingly serene. He had touched his hand to his own face, almost in wonder, brow furrowing, mouth slackening, eyes going wide when they at last met with Jiang Cheng’s. Jiang Cheng had, as much for himself as for Nie Huaisang, feigned blindness until Nie Huaisang had finished returning himself to some semblance of order, and had left not long after.