It's been thirteen years since Lan Zhan was last in a room with Wei Wuxian, but its been five minutes since he saw Wei Ying teaching art online. Devising a complex plan to save Wei Ying from being framed from murder, Lan Zhan throws his life and he...
The same woman who claimed A-Yuan as her nephew, Granny Jiang, formerly also Wen, as her grandmother. The same woman who lives in Lotus Pier, across the courtyard of the family home and who will very soon, be marrying Jiang Cheng.
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Its a sad proof that you can live in a house, play happy families and still distrust one another.
But Lan Zhan understands something Jin Zixuan hasn't fully accepted. Wen Qing will always put her family first and if the Jiang are truly to be her family, not in only name but in the beat of her heart, as they are in his, then he knows that she will do anything and everything to protect them.
He reflects at the traffic lights as they enter Yunmeng properly, the vast city sprawling into the ancient waterways, that Jin Zixuan is in an unenviable situation. Wei Ying has never hidden his distrust and dislike of him, an animosity that goes back to their student days. The nickname Peacock is a prime example of that, even if its now said with tolerance rather than rancor.
Jiang Cheng never hid the fact that he disliked Jin Zixuan either. He's made overtures of tolerance, but that was it. He reigned in Wei Ying's animosity somehow and at the wedding, a grand affair that both he and Xichen were invited to, the brothers looked more resigned than happy. Switching on patently false expressions when their parents looked in their direction and only truly came alive when they were with their sister.
It could have been a party for a relative they barely knew. Lan Zhan sighed quietly, thinking of that time. If the man died tomorrow, neither Jiang Cheng or Wei Ying would likely cry at the funeral.
By comparison, Jiang Yanli adores Ke Qingzhao as a sister and openly admires her career. Her entire family is living at Lotus Pier, adopted by the Jiang. Wen Qing is the woman Jiang Cheng loves and she is Wei Ying's best friend, another sister to him. It doesn't even sting when he thinks of that, because there is a fundamental understanding between those two, or as his Uncle might say, two halves of a whole. They are very similar, although most would say that the extroverted Wei Ying and the antisocial Wen Qing couldn't be more unalike. At their very core Lan Zhan knew, the two of them are identical.
Jin Zixuan has Jiang Yanli as his ally and no one else. Wen Qing has Lotus Pier.
He's been nothing but gracious and polite about her, until he was alone in the car with Lan Zhan, and admitted he doesn't trust her. But he leads the way into the hospital, keeping at the same pace as Lan Zhan, who purposefully came with his crutch. He loathes having to use it, the humiliation of needing an aide to walk his own crisis to bear and he knows that its his Gusu instructors to blame.
Because this is a social call and Jin Zixuan has enough power even here in Yunmeng to his name, they avoid the queue backing out into the street and cut in through a side-door, following one of Jin Zixuan's people. A man in a grey suit, who leaves hem in the white hallway with a nod.
