Chapter Twenty

The Sword of Truth

continued content warning for discussions of sexual assault.

"I haven't seen this many corpses since …" Jin Ling trailed off. Since the Burial Mounds.

"We can handle them," said Lan Jingyi.

"The fact that you feel the need to say that does not fill me with reassurance," replied Jin Ling.

Lan Sizhui, meanwhile, wasn't even focused on the undead. He stared at the ruined city, slightly disappointed that it didn't seem familiar at all.

He wondered if he'd even been born here. Wen Ning told him that his father died during the Sunshot Campaign, and his mother from birth.

Without her medical supplies, my sister could only save one of you, and your mother chose you.

He hoped his mother didn't regret it, wherever her spirit was. He hoped he made her, and his father, proud.

But he was still glad he'd been raised by Wei Wuxian and Hanguang-Jun.

A low growl from Fairy startled Sizhui back to reality. "Can you feel it? There's tremendous resentful energy coming from the palace."

"We can't let my aunt stay there any longer," said Jin Ling, pointing his sword in the direction of the palace.

"We won't." Ouyang Zizhen lifted his sword.

They were halfway to the palace when Jin Ling realized that, for each corpse cut down, they only seemed to multiply. "Um."

He struggled against a severed hand that clawed his face. "Fuck you!"

Ouyang Zizhen had tripped over a fallen pillar – they were likely in a former marketplace. Empty stalls were now alive with the fright of night – wriggling with wormlike ghouls, hung with cobwebs, caked in blood.

"Zizhen!" Jin Ling rushed to save him.

Fairy leapt up to seize the throat of another corpse that appeared behind Jin Ling.

Jin Ling gulped. If it weren't for Fairy, they would all be dead several times over.

Meanwhile, Lan Sizhui merely touched a corpse, and it sank dutifully to its knees, like a servant.

"Lan Sizhui! Why aren't they after you?" cried Lan Jingyi, ducking a swipe from a corpse as tall as ChiFeng-Zun had supposedly been.

"You know why!" Jin Ling shouted back, firing an arrow into the ragged sun symbol across one corpse's chest. "They're Wens! They won't attack other Wens! Fuck!"

Ouyang Zizhen swung wildly, cutting off the head of a corpse. It rolled to his feet, licking his boots. He shrieked and leapt away, allowing the body to pick up its head and reattach itself.

"A-Yuan." Jin Ling seized his arm. "If we can hole up in one of these houses, we can probably stay away long enough to survive. Can you make your way into the palace? Can you find Hanguang-Jun and Wei Wuxian? Tell them we need help."

"Meishi should be fine if she's held with Wens," added Lan Jingyi.

Sizhui's eyes met Jin Ling's. "I can't leave you."

"You have to, or we're all gonna die," insisted Jin Ling. "Don't worry, please. Just hurry!"

Lan Sizhui reluctantly turned away, but before he could go, Jin Ling pulled him back and kissed his lips. He promptly shoved him. "Now off with you!"

The most Wen Ning had been hoping for was that his cousin wouldn't cringe at the cold feeling of his dead flesh. Instead, his heart nearly restarted when she threw her arms around him, hugging him so tight that he might have died of asphyxiation had he been alive.

"We'll keep you off the ground, Meishi. All of us. Your family," said Wei Wuxian. "And – for what I've done, please forgive me, or at least, accept my apology."

"I've already done both," Meishi admitted. "I can't hate you. You're nothing like the demon I expected."

"That's one of the nicest things anyone's ever said about me. Lan Zhan, when we die, can that be written on my tomb?" Wei Wuxian grinned.

"Don't talk about that." Lan Wangji pulled Wei Wuxian closer to him.

"Oh right, right, because I've already died once, that's true…"

Lightning cracked outside. Wei Wuxian sighed. "With all the resentful energy in this coffin, you've stirred up all the mass graves here."

"Yes. That was the goal," Meishi said.

"An army of corpses? It doesn't usually end well," said Wei Wuxian.

"Who said I wanted it to end well?" Meishi asked.

Wei Wuxian raised his eyebrows.

"Fine, I did…but I really just wanted to frighten people, not to kill anyone," Meishi admitted. "I've…I've only killed four people, and I regretted it every time."

"Four?"

"You know…him. And before that, when I escaped the palace. Three Nie Sect soldiers. One for each family member they took from me. It didn't make me feel much better." That was why she had warned Nie Huaisang when they hatched their plan. Killing Jin Guangyao won't help you. She wished he had listened.

"Take it from me, Tao – no, Wen Meishi…you won't be able to control the dead," said Wei Wuxian. "No matter how he reacts, I don't think Jiang Cheng would forgive himself if you were torn apart by a backlash."

"Come back to Lotus Pier with us," said Lan Wangji, echoing the words he told Wei Wuxian all those years ago.

Meishi looked at the ritual arrayed about her. "I…"

"Let him go. Do you really think the world is better with Wen Ruohan?" asked Wen Ning.

"Mine was," she said honestly. How could she deny the truth? But how could she deny what she'd planned from age twelve?

When you grow up, you put away childish things. Wen Mao once said that. She wondered if he was still taught in cultivation schools. He seemed a good, wise man. But that wouldn't stop people's prejudice.

Wei Wuxian waited.

Meishi whispered. "I just…I just wanted the chance to tell him I love him again. A hug. I don't know. I just don't want to be alone."

"I'm here. Even if Jiang Cheng leaves, you still have family," said Wen Ning. His eyes almost looked alive, as if he had found a purpose again.

Meishi smiled tentatively. Maybe Wen Mao was right. Or maybe childish things could be rearranged for value.

The ill-advised plan of the juniors, the one that had exposed the first of her secrets, filtered into her thoughts.

Wei Wuxian tugged her out of the circle. For a moment, he thought they were safe.

"Master Wei, can I?" Wen Ning looked to Wei Wuxian. A-Yuan.

Just then, Meishi waved her hand, and the torches reignited.

"What are you doing?" Wei Wuxian cried.

"It wouldn't be right," Meishi said fiercely, distracted as she looked around the ritual. "To waste this blood."

"I can't let you dig your own grave," Wei Wuxian replied, seizing her.

"I gave my entire life for this. I'm getting something out of it, I'm summoning your spirit and body –" Meishi muttered to herself. She sent her knee between Wei Wuxian's thighs and dove back for the vial of blood.

Lan Wangji moved to stop her, but she had already cried out, "Summon your spirit and body, Wen Ning!"

To everyone's surprise, she had sent the blood showering onto Wen Ning.

Wei Wuxian's jaw hung open.

A red glow surrounded the Ghost General. The blood seemed to seep in through his every pore.

He gagged, and with a rushing sound, his chest expanded; the force doubled him over.

The heat nearly scorched everyone surrounding him. Wen Ning's limbs were no longer able to hold him up; he toppled to the ground. And when he looked up, as the red glow faded like the sunset, blood began to trickle from his qiqao.

Wei Wuxian grabbed him. "Wen Ning, how do you feel?"

"I feel…sore," he said. There was a flush to his usually pallid face.

"So you feel pain." Wei Wuxian felt his palm. Warm.

"Yes."
Lan Wangji pressed a hand over Wen Ning's heart. "Beating."

"I – what? You really?" A mixture of blood and tears rushed down Wen Ning's cheeks. "Meishi."

"I'm sorry," said Meishi. She had wanted her father, she still did. But Wen Ning was in front of her – trapped in a body he couldn't feel with – and somehow, though she could never atone, if she wasn't going to resurrect Wen Sect she should at least resurrect the last conscious member. Even if she was executed, she wanted him to have the chance to live.

"Apparently, Master Wei, your technique works," Meishi said. "And I'm sorry for striking you."

"Our technique, really," said Wei Wuxian. He hurried to help Wen Ning stand on shaky legs. "You could have told me what you planned, you know."

"I was afraid you wouldn't approve," Meishi confessed.

"I mean, yes, I'm protective of my sister-in-law. But I think you just wanted to be dramatic. How like a Wen." Wei Wuxian made a face at her, and to his relief, she even laughed.

A female voice rang out from the center.

"Madame Jiang!"

Everyone spun around to see Luo Qingyang standing with Jiang Cheng by her side.

"I'm actually not good at fighting. That wasn't a pretense," Nie Huaisang admitted. Ghouls and fierce corpses prowled around Nightless City, raising the hair on the back of his neck. The sounds of a battle struck fear into his heart, just like a sword, or the useless saber that hung by his side.

"I believe you," Lan Xichen said dryly. "I recall Brother insisting you be placed away from the front lines."

"I can picture his tone," Nie Huaisang said, his tone dejected.

Lan Xichen shook his head. He deepened his voice to imitate Nie Mingjue's. "'Huaisang has many years to practice a saber. For now, time is of the essence. He must be placed where he is most useful.'"

Nie Huaisang blinked. Useful? Him?

Lan Xichen continued, "You were the mastermind behind his strategy for Hejian, were you not? It was the one time I ever saw him brimming with happiness."

Nie Huaisang's mouth fell open. "He…really? He really listened to me?"

"Challenging Wen Xu, who was so proficient in hand-to-hand combat with that sword he took so much pride in, to battle a saber, then showing his dismembered body to the Wens? Our brother won that fight, yes, but with your advice. Did you really not understand that?" Lan Xichen looked towards him with pity. Why couldn't ChiFeng-Zun have told his brother how much he loved him?

Was everyone blind to the people they loved?

No, not at all. Nie Huaisang was not. Lan Wangji was not.

"I…I didn't dare think…" Nie Huaisang shook his head and changed the subject. "By doing that, I took Mei's brother from her."

Now Nie Huaisang thought he knew why Mei had made out with Xue Yang for the sword, if it was that dear to Wen Xu.

"Yes." Lan Xichen raised Shuoyue. "And on, and on, the taking of brothers and sisters went. But we're here to stop it now."

In the distance, a dog yowled.

Jiang Cheng's eyes took in the dark ritual, the coffin, the cuts on his wife's arm and her swollen face. To him, it was obvious that some Wen-dog had tried to sacrifice her.

Meishi stared at him. She looked terrified, and Lan Wangji quickly surmised that, for all her cunning, she had never recovered how to act in situations she could not control. Whether that was a result of the trauma with losing her family, or how she had always been, he could not tell.

"Mei? Mei?" Jiang Cheng looked confused. "Why – how – why are you embracing Wen Ning? Did he rescue you?"

Wei Wuxian cursed under his breath. This was about to get ugly.

"Nothing of your concern," she answered in the same acerbic tone as during their first confrontation.

Lan Wangji looked as though he wanted to hit his head against the walls.

"Stop it," Wen Ning pled.

Meishi felt ill. She wasn't prepared to see him. And now she had made things worse. The words tore out of her. "I'm sorry."

Jiang Cheng's fear rose. Why would she respond this way? He strode forward and grabbed her by her shoulders. Her stomach still looked flat, though he supposed that wasn't surprising. But her hair was a mess, her clothing torn, and there were bruise on her neck he hadn't left, like someone had choked her. "Are you hurt? Tao Meishi?"

Meishi was at a loss for words. Yes, but not as much as I'm about to hurt you.

Jiang Cheng noted the shame on her expression. Dread filled him, so he changed the subject. "Is it true? That – that we're having a baby?"

Meishi's face crumpled. She nodded.

Jiang Cheng pulled her close to him. "Your golden core, it's fine? They didn't melt it?"

Meishi shook her head. She wasn't – how could she tell him?

"Good, because I'd hate to ask Wen Ning to give you mine. I hear it's painful." Jiang Cheng offered Wei Wuxian a slight smile, grateful his brother had found her. He stroked his wife's hair.

Meishi choked. Her arms wrapped tightly around her husband, embracing him for the last few moments he would ever love her.

"Mei?" Jiang Cheng noticed, then, the ritual surrounding his wife. The bloodstained vial hanging around her neck. The blood-soaked rag with the sun symbol wrapped around her hand.

And Wen Ning, inhaling, exhaling. Alive. "What is going on? Who did this to you?"

Meishi shrank back.

Her face, he noted, was white. Very white. She looked paler than Wen Ning. The dead Wen Ning, not the living, breathing one beside him.

She looked more guilty than relieved.

"What is going on?" He thought she had stopped demonic cultivation. No, no, he was too suspicious. Wasn't he?

Wei Wuxian bit his lip, and Lan Wanji swallowed.

"Meishi?" prompted Wen Ning.

"Do not lie to me." Jiang Cheng meant to sound encouraging. It came out condemning. Fuck.

"I'm not," Meishi said.

The calm, earnest tone to her voice. It broke him. As if everything he had ever feared was about to happen again, and he wasn't even sure what everything was.

"You're lying to me!" he exclaimed.

Meishi hung her head. For once in her life, she actually wasn't. Not that it mattered.

Jiang Cheng shouted, "Can't you at least look at me?!"

She met his eyes.

"Are you responsible for this?" Jiang Cheng whispered.

She whispered back, "I am."

"Why? What are you doing? I thought you had stopped demonic cultivation!" His voice rose. He sounded scared, like a boy of seventeen begging for his parents before his torturers.

"She brought Wen Ning back to life," said Wei Wuxian.

"That's all well and good," said Jiang Cheng with a nod towards the flabbergasted Wen Ning, because his days of hating that corpse or man or whatever he was were long over, "but how did you know to do this?"

"What about Master He? It's not like you would be working with Wens. Explain." Jiang Cheng paused to steady his voice. "Please."

"With what Wens? They're all dead, except him, just now!" she burst out, pointing towards Wen Ning. "Except…except…"

"Except?"

"I imagine it's the secret the Taos said they would turn themselves in over once Sect Leader Jiang left," said Luo Qingyang, with a light of recognition in her eyes.

"They what? They can't!" Meishi gasped. "They can't be hurt for my sake!"

Why had she been so foolish? She tried to push past Jiang Cheng, to demand what exactly they had told Luo Qingyang, but her husband blocked her path.

"Jiang Cheng! Don't let my parents be hurt, please. I won't lose my parents again. Blame me. The Wen-dog…is me." Meishi grabbed his sleeve. "I've been deceiving you from the start! But not them, they had no ill intent, I swear. The Wen-dog is me!"

For a moment, he thought he hadn't heard right. Only when he noticed the tears in her eyes, and streaming down Wei Wuxian's cheeks, and the grimace on Lan Wangji's face, did he recognize what she had said.

Jiang Cheng tore his sleeve away. He felt almost numb. Almost calm. "The Wens are gone."

She's resurrected Wen Ning because he was a good person. Not because she had nefarious intentions. He refused to believe it.

Meishi sank to her knees before him. "Jiang Cheng. Wen Ruohan was my father; Wen Xu and Wen Chao were my brothers."

"No." He knew Wen Ruohan had a daughter with the same name as his wife. Jiang Cheng remembered hearing about her birth; her mother had died from a fever the next week, and, in a fit of grief, Wen Ruohan had ordered all the physicians tortured to death. Father's friend was among the dead, and Mother was furious that he did not demand retribution from Wen Ruohan.

But the child was presumed dead in the chaos resulting from Wei Wuxian's use of the Stygian Tiger Seal. Sect Leader Taos had made a name for himself as one of Nie Mingjue's most trusted warriors. He wouldn't harbor a runaway, even if they were a child.

"You saw the sword! What didn't I do to recover it?! What more proof do you need?" Meishi screamed.

Jiang Cheng lurched back, as if she had stabbed him instead of Master He. "You – what? What?!"

I've been kissing a Wen? I've held a Wen at night? The sister of the sniveling bastard who took my parents? Our baby is a Wen? I waited all these years to be seduced by a Wen?

"Please, I don't blame you if you hate me, but please don't fault the Taos."

"You dare ask for a favor?!" The numbness was wearing off, replaced by the firm belief that he ought to have died at the hands of the Wens, because that would be easier, and Wei Wuxian would have never died, and maybe if Wei Wuxian was in charge of Jiang Sect, nothing of the last fifteen years would have happened.

"It's not that I think I'm worthy. I just – can't lose another family member. Surely you understand that." Meishi felt nausea rise again, reminding her of the life growing within her.

Jiang Cheng laughed. He laughed and laughed, and the sound was darker than the screeches Wei Wuxian had heard when he'd been thrown into the Burial Mounds. Well, he had sure fucking done the impossible – providing the Wen Sect an heir. "It seems I am the most foolish of Sect Leaders."

"No," Meishi whimpered. He hated himself again, and she had caused it.

"What was your goal? To take everything I cared about?! To show me how unworthy I am?" His eyes focused on the bruises on her neck. "Who did that? Is your child even mine? Or is it Master He's? Nie Huaisang's, maybe? The man whose blood you took for this ritual?"

Meishi covered her face and bowed lower, as if by prostrating herself she could undo her sins. She hurt too much to cry.

"You sure did a good job playing innocent," he spat. "Exactly how many men have you been with?"

Jiang Cheng seized her chin, forcing her to look to him.

She had no more reason for secrets. "I've done many things with many men. Including Xue Yang, whose blood this is. That time I kissed Nie Huaisang? The same day I met you. But fully? Just you – and – and Master He."

"Jiang Cheng, she won't tell you, but I will: Master He forced himself on her. Because she was a Wen, and people say anything can be done to them. I saw it through empathy! Don't fault her for that," cried Wei Wuxian.

His breath caught.

By 'people say,' you mean, I said that.

It wasn't only him.

But he'd supported the sentiment.

He hated her, he hated her, he hated that their life was ruined. But he couldn't help but think they had destroyed each other.

Because he would never have wanted anyone to violate her.

Wen Ning was done being silent in his new life. "She didn't scream because she thought that, once you knew the truth, you wouldn't help her."

Jiang Cheng had thought finding out his beloved wife was a traitor was the worst pain since he'd found out the truth about his core. But this topped it.

She thought – I would let –

Meishi hadn't failed; he had.

He tasted bile. He wanted to strike himself with Zidian, with a discipline whip, until he could claw out his golden core and throw it back at Wei Wuxian, and die.

A sob tore from his throat. For the second time in his life, he was opening crying before Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji.

"Hanguang-Jun! Wei Wuxian!" A junior ran in, panting heavily.

"Lan Sizhui!" Wen Ning sighed with relief.

"Tao Meishi! You're all right!" He gasped.

"Why are you here?" yelled Jiang Cheng, furiously wiping his eyes, perfectly aware that where Sizhui was, the other juniors would also be – including his nephew.

Lan Sizhui goggled at Jiang Cheng, whose eyes were redder than his wife's. "Pardon me, Sect Leader Jiang – we – we thought with you arrested, Hanguang-Jun and Wei Wuxian might be outnumbered, and we were the only ones who could help."

"Arrested?" Wei Wuxian frowned.

Meishi gasped, as if she still cared. Jiang Cheng interrupted, because he didn't want her to care. He didn't even want to entertain the possibility. "Where's Jin Ling?"

"They're in some sort of market – these corpses keep swarming – he told me to find you all," Sizhui said.

"Do you even know the way back?" yelled Jiang Cheng.

"Better than any of us, at least," said Luo Qingyang, who, frankly, had not signed up for this, but was not going to avoid battle now.

Meishi spoke. "Is there a sun mosaic in the center?"

"Yes! Well, what's left of one. Did you see it on your way in?" Lan Sizhui asked. He thought Jin Ling's aunt looked alive but miserable in every other sense. Something awful had happened.

"That's Taiyang Market. I used to sneak away there often." Meishi struggled to her feet. "Jiang Cheng, I can lead us there. You can kill me later."

Jiang Cheng wanted to scream. I wouldn't kill a pregnant woman! Instead he said tightly, "You better hurry."