Searching for Perfection

7. Tiger Seal

Acknowledging that his symptoms were tentmate-induced did nothing to stop them from occurring. However, it did mean that he could reduce their frequency to something manageable by staying away from his friend.

Unfortunately, it seemed like the more he tried to avoid Lan WangJi, the more the older boy went looking for him.

Being closer to QiShan meant more battles and fewer skirmishes. Neither side was gaining an edge. An early snow storm halted the campaign and the allies looked for a place to set up for the winter. They found a town with a nice field nearby, large enough for the soldiers and heirs to set up tents. The Sect leaders appropriated most of the compound of one of the richer families in the town as their base of operations. The wife, and owner of the property, was very shrill in her demands that the cultivators leave her home. Nie MingJue looming over her, leaning on Baxia, shut her up. Not permanently, of course; her complaints continued throughout the winter, just loud enough to be barely heard.

The Sect leaders were more bothered by her son, an obnoxious boy named Mo Ziyuan. Though little more than a toddler, he shrilly demanded to be taught how to use a sword, to be taught how to cultivate, to be included in their planning sessions. On top of that, he was pampered and treated like he was a young prince, so being told 'no' only made him fall to the ground kicking and screaming. The Lan Silencing spell took care of the screaming at least.

For Wei WuXian, other than living in a tent still, life at Mo Manor was very similar to life in the Unclean Realm. He went on patrol for three days, then two days of education and practice. It was during saber practice that he learned exactly how the Nie cultivators were able to control the puppets. Nie ChaunLi was his instructor. Wei WuXian was using a regular saber to practice with. He really wanted to use a spiritual one so he could learn a bit of how the Nie used them. Nie ChaunLi refused to allow it. "WeiGongZi, our sabers aren't like your spiritual swords. Our founder was a butcher; it's not simply that the blades are different. The uses are different, too. They were originally forged to assist in culling yao endangering the area. The swords sort of eat resentful energy."

Wei WuXian almost dropped his blade in shock and abrupt understanding. "They eat resentful energy? But spiritual energy and resentful energy don't.... Do a lot of your cultivators die from Qi deviation?"

"Too many," Nie ChaunLi replied. "Especially the strong ones."

Wei WuXian now had his answer as to how or why the Nie were able to manipulate the puppets. They channeled spiritual energy into the sabers which... did what? Expelled resentful energy? Converted spiritual energy into resentful energy?

And that must have been how he'd managed to get a puppet to move his arm, too. He'd been frustrated that day, so he must have somehow (how?) managed to force the Yin sword to accept his spiritual energy and turn it into usable yin energy and the puppet responded to that.

Knowing that theoretically one channeled spiritual energy into the Yin iron or saber and then used the resulting resentful energy and actually managing to do it were two completely different things. On top of that, the Yin sword was, well, a sword. And covered in hundreds of years in nasty evil turtle guts. After his fourth trip to Wen Qing to have her Heal cuts before body parts fell off, he decided that the sword was going to need to be reforged. Which meant he needed a place of peace and quiet where he would not be disturbed for several hours....

Nie HuaiSang was more than happy to give him a key to the room he shared with his brother. "The porn is on a chest right next to my bed, WeiXiong," he grinned. "Help yourself. Just light some incense first and make sure you clean up well. DaGe understands we have needs; he doesn't like being reminded in his own rooms.

Wei WuXian picked a day when it appeared the Sect leaders were going to be arguing the whole day about where to attack once the spring thaws arrived. He'd decided on dividing the sword into two pieces. Separate, they would be practically useless. Together, they could be the reason the war ended. He'd need to have hold of both, mentally or physically, to cultivate with them, and decided on the yin-yang symbol. He'd paint one white later. He'd never really thought about how to reforge metal, so it was slow going. It took nearly the whole morning just to turn the blade into roughly two equal halves of melted iron. And the afternoon to get one of the pieces into an approximate shape. He was bemoaning that he was going to need a few more days of 'private time' to get the shape right when he heard voices in the hallway, specifically Lan ZongZhu and Nie ZongZhu. Wei WuXian quickly took a book from his friend's pile of spring books, opened it to a random page (hiding the iron pieces underneath), and pretended to be engrossed in it when the Sect leaders unlocked the door and walked in.