shijie – older martial sister

Lan er-gongzi – how most people addressed Lan Wangji before he was known as Hanguang-Jun, transliterated as 'Second Master Lan'.

Jinlin Tai - the Jin Sect's residence in Lanling

xiao shushu – uncle (father's youngest brother). Jin Ling calls Jin Guangyao xiao shushu.

jiujiu – uncle (mother's brother). Jin Ling calls Jiang Cheng jiujiu. He would have called Wei Wuxian jiujiu too if he hadn't severed his ties with the YunmengJiang Sect.

'Seriously? You were all lying around topless in front of my mother?'

Sect Leader Jiang was mad; all the YunmengJiang juniors were grounded for the entire week. Jin Ling suspected it had something to do with Master Jia's antics. Without Master Hu to join them, he and Wei Wuxian decided to train in Moling rather than travelling all the way to Yunmeng.

They said they were going to train, but neither of them were really on the lookout for a training spot as they walked through town. Jin Ling just wanted to talk to Wei Wuxian to hear more stories about his mother after his conversation with Master Hu.

'It was hot!' Wei Wuxian protested, 'and we didn't know shijie was going to come!'

'Please tell me you had the decency to put some clothes on after she arrived?'

'Well… The shier ones did run off to find their clothes, and Jiang Cheng and I would have too but shijie had a plate of watermelon so we… forgot.'

'I can't believe my grandfather let you get away with being so… so…' Jin Ling couldn't even find the word.

'Shameless?' Wei Wuxian laughed. 'When I was young, everyone called me shameless. Should there really be shame in complimenting the pretty girls, or exposing Lan er-gongzi's pretty virgin eyes to Nie Huaisang's limited-edition pornography, or…'

'Please stop.' Jin Ling shook his head. When Wei Wuxian was absorbed in telling stories from his youth, his face lit up as though he was that happily shameless teenager again. He liked seeing Wei Wuxian joyously reliving his memories, but he'd be lying if he said his heart didn't ache a little. In a kinder universe, he could have grown up in that family – his mother and his two jiujiu would have visited each other often, and they would have sat around a table eating his mother's soup as his two jiujiu bickered over who had rights to more meat. Instead, he grew up with no memories of his mother, a jiujiu consumed by bitterness, and a shushu he didn't want to think about…

'What about my father? Can you tell me anything about him?' Jin Ling asked. He had seen – had spent hours staring at – his father's murals along the path outside Jinlin Tai, but he didn't realise until recently he knew nothing about what he was like as a person.

'Your father?' Wei Wuxian's grinning expression changed to one of surprise. 'I'm not sure there are many good things I can say about your father.'

'Did you and jiujiu really not like him?' Master Hu did say they weren't a fan of him.

'He was arrogant and thought he was too good for shijie, of course I had to beat him up to set him straight. Jiang Cheng would have too if he wasn't a Sect Leader.'

'Surely he had some good qualities,' Jin Ling insisted. He had no memories of his father, but he wanted to think he would have been a good father and a good Sect Leader if he had the chance.

'I guess he did gain some of my grudging respect when we were all in the Xuanwu cave for indoctrination by the QishanWen Sect,' Wei Wuxian began talking about the only time he remembered thinking positively of Jin Zixuan. 'Wen Chao ordered for a girl to be strung up and bled as bait to lure out the creature. I wanted to help her, but Jiang Cheng was holding me down. Everyone was too scared to help, except Jin Zixuan and Lan Zhan who stood in front of her, refusing to let them get to her.'

His father was a good man. Jin Ling was glad he could be sure of that. 'What happened next?'

'Wen Chao ordered the two of them killed.'

Jin Ling supposed he shouldn't have been surprised. 'How did they escape?'

'I shook off Jiang Cheng and intervened. A fight broke out, everyone escaped…' Wei Wuxian broke off. How did telling Jin Ling stories from his childhood lead to this? He didn't want to talk about what that fateful day had led to.

Jin Ling had already guessed, sensing the shift in the energy of the conversation. 'Wen Chao attacked Lotus Pier because of it.'

Wei Wuxian sighed. 'Madam Yu always said I would bring nothing but trouble for the Jiang family. She was right.'

'Do you…' Jin Ling trailed off. Do you regret saving them that day? How could he ask Wei Wuxian that, when one of them was now Wei Wuxian's partner and the other was his own father?

He tried again, 'But it wasn't your fault that Wen Chao…'

'Does it matter? Jiang Cheng told me again and again to lie low and let them kill whoever they want, all we were there to do was survive. I can't expect him forgive me for his parents' deaths.'

'That's not fair,' Jin Ling protested, 'The Wen Sect had already burned down Cloud Recesses and had you all in the Xuanwu cave unarmed. Even if you did nothing, in which case I wouldn't even exist, they would have probably found reason to come after you all sooner or later.'

'In his mind, if it wasn't for me, Wen Chao wouldn't have set his eyes on Lotus Pier so soon and our whole family could have survived the Sunshot Campaign that would have happened not long after.'

Just like in Jin Ling's mind, a world untainted by Wei Wuxian's existence had been one where he grew up surrounded by loving family. For the first fifteen years of his life, he desperately dreamed of that world. He never even knew it was for saving his father that Wei Wuxian set off the chain reaction of everything that happened next. The dreams of what-could-have-been were only dreams; there was perhaps no alternative universe in which those dreams could have been true. Deep down, his uncle must have known that. He'd seen the way his uncle's face twisted when they passed by people gossiping about the way he killed the Yiling Patriarch. The expression had always held more pain than hatred – now that the hatred had been seared away, he could see it so clearly he couldn't believe how he'd missed it before.

'I'm hungry,' Wei Wuxian declared, changing the topic.

'Let's find a place to eat,' Jin Ling agreed. They could train after they've eaten and given their food some time to settle. Or not. He didn't come to find Wei Wuxian to train anyway.

As they sat down and ordered food and liquor, the loud voices of the men at a nearby table invaded their ears.

'Gentlemen, guess who I saw yesterday?'

'Who?'

'I saw Sisi! That scar-faced old prostitute Jin Guangyao spared to keep for his own penis!'

'I have a theory, he didn't kill the other prostitutes by sword. He fucked them all to death himself!'

Wei Wuxian felt his face scrunch up. It'd been over a year! Not only were people still telling tales about Jin Guangyao, they were adding disgusting details to the already-disgusting rumours.

Seeing Jin Ling's frozen expression, Wei Wuxian pulled his face into a mischievous grin. 'Hey, this isn't Yunmeng - it's not your jiujiu's territory. Say the word and I'll have them all scurrying out of the shop.'

Jin Ling said nothing.

'I'm telling you, all those Jin-dogs are the same. Good for nothing but infesting the world with their degenerate seeds.'

Wei Wuxian decided he didn't need a word from Jin Ling. He slammed his fist on the table. 'Listen up! You can shut up and let us all eat in peace, or I will shut you up for you.'

'Who are you?' A man asked.

Another man's eyes landed on the peony symbol on Jin Ling's robe. 'Ah, a pair of Jin-dogs I see. You really think you can keep playing the tyrant?'

Wei Wuxian considered holding back given the men had recognised Jin Ling's uniform, but on second thought, these men were never going to think or speak of the LanlingJin Sect in a better light anyway.

'As you can see,' Wei Wuxian gestured to his nondescript black robe, 'I've nothing to do with the LanlingJin Sect. But I will play the tyrant as you say if you don't shut your stupid mouth.'

'You—' The man's voice instantly muffled as a ghost clamped a hand over his mouth. No matter how he struggled, he couldn't break out of Wei Wuxian's version of the Silence spell.

Wei Wuxian laughed. 'I what? What were you gonna say?'

'You son-of-a—' Another man tried to complete his sentence, but he also found himself struggling out of the strong grip of a snickering ghost.

Soon, all ten-or-so of the men were red-faced, muffled-yelling as they grabbed at ghost hands clamped around their mouths. Wei Wuxian gestured for them to loosen their grips just a little.

One man immediately spat, 'Let us go now! Or we're gonna—'

'You're gonna what?' Wei Wuxian was having a good time. He didn't get to teach idiots a lesson like this in Gusu or Yunmeng.

'We'll call the cultivators—' The man threatened.

Wei Wuxian laughed. 'What cultivators? The MolingSu Sect fell long ago with the Sect Leader dead and the disciples scattered. Who are you gonna call?'

'Gusu is only a few towns away, the great Lan Sect—'

Wei Wuxian tipped his head back and howled in laughter. He waved Chenqing at them. 'Tell Hanguang-Jun his husband said hello.'

If they were more furious than afraid before, there were terrified now at the sight of the famous flute. Cultivators and common people alike had heard and spread legends of the flute and what its player could do. As soon as the ghosts loosened their grips on them, they fled the shop.

'Hey! You still haven't paid!' He called after them.

He snapped his fingers, and not even a minute later, a ghost appeared with the money pouch of the man who had spoken the most. He didn't know, and didn't care who was supposed to pay, he simply chose that blathering idiot.

Tipping the money into his palm, satisfied it was more than enough for the food he saw on their table, he handed it all to the shop-owner who had seen enough to be hiding in the kitchen.

Wei Wuxian flashed his signature smile. 'My apologies for scaring you, madam. There's extra money here for you. If it's not too much trouble, could you please invite some of the street children in to finish the food they barely touched?'

Seeing as Wei Wuxian didn't mean her any harm, the shop owner relaxed a little. Regardless whether she cared for street children in her shop, she still feared the Yiling Patriarch enough to agree and head outside to find them.

Wei Wuxian returned to the table, grinning, 'it feels so good to teach idiots a good lesson. We should definitely do shit like this more often.'

Seeing as Jin Ling was still sitting in silence staring into space, Wei Wuxian put a hand on his shoulder and comforted, 'hey, you don't need to take their bullshit to heart.'

Jin Ling looked up. He didn't expect Wei Wuxian of all people to comfort him over the horrible things everyone had to say about his xiao shushu. 'You don't believe what they're saying is true?'

'Of course not! Have you forgotten I used to be the world's most hated Yiling Patriarch? All they did was switch the names out of the same stories. Beware the Yiling Patriarch who kidnapped a thousand virgins and ravished them day and night in his demonic cave! I'll have you know, in my two lives, I have not so much as held a girl's hand.' Wei Wuxian chuckled.

'Don't you hate him enough to believe them anyway?' Jin Ling asked. That was how he processed all the stories about Wei Wuxian growing up. He figured that was how everyone did it.

'I've no reason to like Jin Guangyao, but I've better things to do than painting him as a comically evil caricature in my head just to entertain myself.'

'I guess,' Jin Ling muttered.

Sensing what was really bothering Jin Ling, Wei Wuxian said, 'Your xiao shushu is not the monster the world thinks he is. I don't hate him like that, and you don't have to either.'

I don't hate him like that, and you don't have to either.

Jin Ling fought to bite back the unexpected tears as the unexpected words echoed in his head. He didn't realise how badly he needed to hear those words since what happened at the Guanyin Temple. Sect Leader Yao had told him off for crying over his xiao shushu, while 'child' and 'brat' and 'idiot' were muttered among the seniors around him. His jiujiu never really liked his xiao shushu, and after the crimes were revealed, his jiujiu spoke of his xiao shushu with more venomous hatred than he used to speak of Wei Wuxian. He never expected anyone – let alone Wei Wuxian whose life one could argue was ruined by Jin Guangyao – to tell him he didn't need to hate him.

'Really?' He croaked.

'Of course, he's your xiao shushu,' Wei Wuxian reassured.

'But he…' Jin Ling couldn't begin to recall any specific item on the long list of his xiao shushu's crimes, and he couldn't trust his voice not to shake if he tried to finished the sentence.

'For all his crimes and lies, I do believe he genuinely loved you.'

He genuinely loved you.

Tears escaped from Jin Ling's eyes and rolled down his cheek. He missed his xiao shushu, and he hated himself for missing him. He missed the xiao shushu who gave him little Fairy, who let him hide behind him as his jiujiu yelled at him just for being a kid. Though he knew his jiujiu cared about him beneath the patronising lectures and threats to break his legs, he had poured his love out to his xiao shushu who enveloped him with the warm kindness he imagined his parents would have shown him if they were still alive. He couldn't take that back, and he hated himself for being unable to take that back.

Wei Wuxian reached out to gently wipe the tears from Jin Ling's cheeks. He grinned, 'hey, if Jin Guangyao was the only way I could take a break from Jiang Cheng's hot temper, he'd become my favourite person pretty quickly too.'

He knew Wei Wuxian was joking to cheer him up, but the words hit far too close to home. As he grew into his teenage years, it was always with his xiao shushu that he could take a breath from the constant, crushing expectations his jiujiu set for him. As a Sect Leader, he now faced the expectations of not only his jiujiu but also the entire cultivation world, with no one to break the fall. Perhaps that was why he was here, talking to Wei Wuxian knowing work was piling up at home.

Seeing as Jin Ling would not be cheered up by his jokes, Wei Wuxian gently said, 'no matter what anyone says, you're allowed to miss your xiao shushu.'

You're allowed to miss your xiao shushu.

Tears were flooding down Jin Ling's cheeks. How was he sitting here, bawling his eyes out in front of the man he passionately hated for the first fifteen years of his life? How did the man he vowed to tear limb to limb, become the man who understood him most? Who gave him permission to feel the complicated and jumbled feelings that kept him tossing and turning at night?

Wei Wuxian stood up and walked away to give Jin Ling some space. There wasn't much more he could say to comfort him, and he figured the boy didn't like crying in front of people. He decided to break up the fight that had broken out among the street children over the last few dumplings.

'I didn't get any salted duck!'

'But you had all the plum cake!'

'I did not! She had all the plum cake!'

Jin Ling watched through teary eyes as Wei Wuxian charmed the shop owner into bringing the rowdy street children more dumplings and entertained them with tunes on his flute. He'd picked up a small, crying child who had been too scared to join the brawl, and was rocking him on his lap to comfort him. Suddenly, he wanted Wei Wuxian to come and hug him.

He had no one whose arms he could run into. No one he could wholeheartedly love, and no one he could wholeheartedly hate for being in this situation. He couldn't hate Wei Wuxian whose first crime on his uncle's list turned out to be saving his own father; he couldn't hate Wen Ning without whom his uncle might not even be alive. He couldn't hate his xiao shushu. He could hate Su She who cursed his bofu Jin Zixun – but he'd seen Su She's brutal death with his own eyes, and that brought him no comfort at all. He could only wish Wei Wuxian would read his mind and come and hold him like he imagined his mother would have, knowing those wishes were in vain as Wei Wuxian held the now not-crying child nibbling on a dumpling. The sight sent a new stream of tears flooding down his cheeks.

After they finished their food in silence, Wei Wuxian paid their bill despite Jin Ling's protests to at least split it.

They found their way to a clearing. Jin Ling didn't really feel like training, but he welcomed the distraction and shift in energy from his emotional outburst earlier. Wei Wuxian fought with a limited repertoire of moves, but he chose each move with thought and executed them with precision. Jin Ling's chaotic world faded away as he focused on each move, feeling Wei Wuxian watching for the slightest lowering of his guard. Swords whistled through the air, clanging against one another again and again. After a while of fighting at a stalemate, Jin Ling found a risky but possible opportunity to attack. He won.

'You're a very skilled fighter, A-Ling,' Wei Wuxian smiled. 'Too bad your uncle's gonna take all the credit when you become known as the best swordsman of your generation.'

It was a compliment, but Jin Ling found himself alarmed. It was true he could now wield the sword more skilfully than any junior he knew – he could probably take on most senior cultivators too. But training had been his weekly excuse to get away from Jinlin Tai to see Wei Wuxian and Master Hu – what would he do without that excuse?

'But— but the GusuLan juniors have been training with Hanguang-Jun, especially Lan Sizhui, he's older than me and he's been getting extra lessons from Wen Ning,' he rambled. The last time he sparred with them, he was able to hold off Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi at the same time. He was pretty confident he could win against them one-on-one, and he judged Lan Sizhui to be the strongest fighter of their group. But it was the argument he came up with.

'You're scared of Sizhui?' Wei Wuxian laughed. 'His attacks are less predictable, because he uses both Lan techniques and Wen techniques, but there's a reason high-level cultivators always stick to one style. It's impossible to switch seamlessly between styles without leaving weaknesses.'

Jin Ling nodded. He'd already figured out that much.

'I need to get home, Lan Zhan's making dinner tonight.' Wei Wuxian grinned. 'Next week, I'll teach you to secure sweet victory over his juniors.'

In Mo Dao Zu Shi (for those who haven't read it):

Instead of practising, the YunmengJiang boys lay shirtless atop wooden boards to cool off from the summer heat. Jiang Yanli brought them watermelon. (Chapter 125)

Jin Guangyao's mother became less 'desirable' as she got older, causing her to be abused by her clients and fellow prostitutes alike. Sisi was the only one who stood up for her. Wei Wuxian learned this through Empathy with a prostitute ghost, and realised Jin Guangyao spared her because of this. But of course rumours say otherwise. (Chapter 105)