Lilium {Mo Dao Zu Shi}

Poppy [Chapter-14]

Those words might as well have made Jiang Cheng's brain black out, because that was the face he was making. One of extreme dumbfoundedness. 

"I..." Jiang Cheng finally was able to produce a sound after what felt like an eternity, "I...mother...you..." He couldn’t say a coherent sentence.

He had always longed to hear praises from his parents, yet they never gave him so properly. And in the end, they died.

Now, as he heard his mother say what he had wanted to hear all his life, his brain all but shut down.

Yu ZiYuan felt even more hurt seeing the expression on his face. Her heart twisted in guilt and pain.

She moved over to Jiang Cheng's side, and hugged her son with everything in her, every feeling of affection poured down, "I am so sorry child. I was a lifetime late to ever express how much I love you, how much you mean to me, and how much you make me proud. I am sorry."

Jiang Cheng, in the hug, was stiff as a piece of wood. He didn’t know how to react, but hearing such words made his eyes water without his consent.

Yu ZiYuan caressed his head and back, "I am so sorry. Will you forgive your mother?" she softly kissed his forehead.
"Yes...yes...A-Niang..." Jiang Cheng, a grown man in his thirties, sect leader of one of the four gentry sects of the cultivation world, was now, just a child in front of his mother.

A child who had harbored bitterness, pain and anger all his life, guilt that he couldn’t pin down on anyone but himself. His anger came out as want for revenge, but in the end, he knew it was never Wei WuXian's fault.

It was never him.

A whole incense time time passed, and Jiang Cheng calmed down, wiped his eyes and looked at Yu ZiYuan, "So..."

Yu ZiYuan who was quietly hugging him, wiped her own teary eyes too, then she looked at him with a serious gaze.

Jiang Cheng knew this was the time to spill the beans.

"A-Cheng, can you answer me something?"
"Yes? Ask, A-Niang." He steeled his nerves.

"How did A-Xian lose his golden core?"

Thunder as if crashed on Jiang Cheng's head, his eyes widened apart like saucers, "You...how do you..."
"I figured it out myself. A-Xian didn’t tell me anything. He didn’t want to." Yu ZiYuan narrowed her eyes. In this moment, he truly felt like he was talking to his mother. The Violet Spider, the lady that would strike terror within people just with a mention of her name.

"Do you know?" Yu ZiYuan probed.
"......"

Jiang Cheng's silence and ever so slightly paranoid expression gave away the fact that he did.

"What happened?" Yu ZiYuan asked a little more harshly. Her fingers started fisting thenselved slowly in nervousness. This was it.

The time for truth to be revealed.

"I...well...in a nutshell, I lost my golden core to...Wen ZhuLiu..." Jiang Cheng took a deep breath. Yu ZiYuan froze on the spot, she didn’t like where this was going. Having someone's core melted...it must have been so painful. After a couple seconds, she swiftly held one of Jiang Cheng's now ice cold hands, "It must have been very painful..." her eyes showed sorrow.

"...Wei WuXian..."

Jiang Cheng felt the pain eating him away from inside. He steadied a breath to just tell in one go.

"Whenhefoundoutaboutithegavemehisowngoldencore!"

There, he said it.

In one breath.

Yu ZiYuan barely managed to register what he said. But she listened enough to understand.

Her eyes were still like stones never picked up, as she looked at him, "How is that even possible? How can someone transfer a golden core to another person?"
"Wen Qing...it was her."

Yu ZiYuan scowled, "I knew it! It was her after all!"
"No, no, mother." Jiang Cheng held her, a frown of hurt on his handsome features, "You misunderstood. Wen Qing was the one who did the surgery, but it was Wei WuXian's idea to transfer his own core to me. Wen Ning and Wen Qing were very much against it."

Yu ZiYuan swiftly turned at him, "It..was him? What..."

Yu ZiYuan wanted to bang her head. She steadied herself with sheer willpower, and asked one question, that she wanted the answer to be 'yes' without any doubts, "At least she gave him an anesthetic, right?"
"..."

Wei WuXian was widely known to be self sacrificial even in his youth. It was no secret by now even to Yu ZiYuan that he didn't have much regard for himself. When she thought about it for a second, something else, from a very distant time, came into her mind. A very, very fleeting, distant moment, that forever changed the course of her thoughts.

"𝑊𝑒𝑖 𝑌𝑖𝑛𝑔, 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑡𝑒𝑐𝑡 𝐽𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑔 𝐶ℎ𝑒𝑛𝑔! 𝐸𝑣𝑒𝑛 𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑜𝑤𝑛 𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑒!"

Yu ZiYuan sat flat on the floor, her pupils dazed, her hands flew to her mouth, her eyes started watering again. She asked, "How long did the surgery go on?"
"......." Jiang Cheng felt his stomach churn and turn. He took several deep breaths before answering, "Two days and two nights."
"When did you know this?" Yu ZiYuan asked almost immedietly.
"Three months ago."
"So you were unaware of this until three months ago?"
"Yes...Wei WuXian, he lied to me saying he restored my core with the held of Boashan Sanren." Jiang Cheng closed his eyes in agony, his eyelashes slightly shaky.

In front of his mother, he truly, truly couldn't bring himself to stay strong.

Yu ZiYuan suddently grinned, self depricatingly, "Baoshan Sanren is an immortal. And no one knows where she lives. But Wei WuXian's mother was her disciple, of course...him saying that...can be believable..."

Even so, how can Wei WuXian know where Boashan Sanren is? If he did find out about her residence later, wouldn't he have left the Jiang sect already?

But Jiang Cheng was also just a fifteen year old traumatised boy. Something like that, he must not have thought of it.

Even for Wei WuXian it was true. He could have used someone else's golden core instead of his own. But, she figured that he didn't have the mind to think that far ahead in the dire times that were back then.

Maybe, if she would have been alive, she would have been able to guide them through it.

Instead, not only did she die, but ordered Wei WuXian to protect Jiang Cheng even at the cost of his own life. Those words must have been driven him to the edge even more.

Yu ZiYuan's expression progressively worsened, she laughed and she cried, understanding the weight of what could have been done, if, only if, she knew what to do.

"A-Niang?" Jiang Cheng noticed the despair in her behaviour.
Her eyebrows scrunched up in a painful look, her hands muffling her broken voice, "What have I done?"

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Note: Poppy represents death and sacrifice.