At the end of July, three weeks after the massacre of Lotus Pier, Jiang Cheng took over as the Sect Leader. At the swearing in ceremony, he gave a speech of unity and how he planned to devote the new achievements and the future successes in tribute to his murdered parents.
The first funeral was a cruel media frenzy, as was the massacre itself. Blood spilled over the headlines and the articles were full of condemnation and unanswered questions.
No one talked about the Wen Sect. Never mentioned the obvious connection.
It was the sect funeral and as per tradition, only the clan attended. Wei Ying was hollow eyed and defiant as he put an arm around both his siblings, guarding them. Security guided them from the car, tightened over the potential threat of reprisal from the 'unknown attackers'.
They wore their violet Jiang Sect uniform coats, belts of white silk and a thin cotton white cloak which was tradition for mourning in sect culture.
On the second day, anyone who wished to pay their respects could, but only friends came to the first.
Lan Xichen and Lan Zhan came as friends and wore mourning white, not their sect uniform as asked. Nie Huaisang was already there and Nie Mingjue and Meng Yao came to support him and to pay their respects. Jin Guangshan sent his condolences but didn't attend, apparently for 'health reasons'. Several Jin sect members came to support Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli, including a teary-eyed Lady Jin who had been close friends with Lady Yu.
There were no other sect representatives, that came. Everyone else sent messages of condolences, even Wen Xu in a moment of cruelty.
Wei Ying remained with his siblings for the entire time, his face blank and his silence was somehow both condemning and grieving. At the end, he took Jin Ling for Jin Zixuan and went off with his nephew before Lan Zhan had an actual chance to properly give his condolences.
In August, the prosecutions they could secure went ahead.
Not a single one mentioned the Wens and barely spoke at all, with an air of defiance out of bloodied loyalty or out of terror. Not that Lan Zhan was surprised only resentful. He had learned about the Wen methods, trying find justice for Gusu.
For as long as no one confessed or fingered the Wen Clan for the crime, their families would be kept out of it. Kept alive and even paid compensation for the loss of their loved one.
Everyone involved knew it was the Wens, anyone who disagreed was thought of as naive. Everyone in Caiyi SCD knew it was the Wen Sect, the Tribunal knew it was the Wen Sect. But there was nothing.
Every hint was gone, every thread burned before it fully made it to their door.
Wen Chao was apparently at an expensive spa at the beach five hours away. Wen Xu was on business in Caiyi.
The records that Lan Zhan had bitterly expected appeared a week after the massacre. Wen Zhuliu had been thrown out of the Sect for unknown reasons and so the Sect was 'ashamed' but not responsible.
It was a pathetic thing to give the Jiang siblings, but Jiang Yanli had held his hand and told him frankly, that she knew, had known for years about his fight for justice and that she knew he had fought for them. She came with Jiang Cheng or her husband, for the trial of the men who kidnapped her. An arduous, painful trial that dragged on far longer than it should have.
Wei Ying never attended and apparently stayed with his nephew if Jin Zixuan wasn't there.
Photos surfaced all over the internet of the grieving family. The photos of Wei Ying showed Lan Zhan clearly how badly he was doing. His face was beautiful, always beautiful, but he had lost so much weight he was gaunt, his eyes sharp and tired. He was also usually in the company of one of his siblings or Nie Huaisang who remained with them despite his own family tensions.
According to Brother, that was rife with scandal.
It turned out that Nie Huaisang had changed his medical proxy to Meng Yao, the second of Qinghe Nie. He had been shot twice by the time he was found, nearly drowned four miles from Lotus Pier in the river.
In his official statement he had told investigators that he and Wei Ying had been separated. Wei Ying had handed him off to Jiang Yun, to take through the back-up escape tunnels. But they were cornered a little way off and Nie Huaisang and Jiang Yun had realized that the shields were failing.
The main shield fell too quickly, but the separate smaller shields on the escape routes were being broken open by a smaller group of Wens.
Nie Huaisang had gone back to the outer perimeter of the Jiang Compound to the back-up array formation. He and Jiang Yun had poured power into the secondary activation system. It was the reason that during the attack, the rest of the disciples managed to get the Juniors to safety and clear the homes around the main compound.
The celebration had meant that few Jiang disciples had been present in the actually Jiang Compound, and the separation of training grounds and living quarters had meant that until Nie Huaisang hit the signals, many of the people around the Compound had been unaware of the attack.
The Wens had compromised the system every Sect has in place after Gusu, something Nie Huaisang clearly counted on, hence the back-up. It called the police and alerted the Jiang Sect that they were under attack.
Rather than return to Qinghe, Nie Huaisang stuck with the Jiang family and moved back in with them as soon as he had left hospital.
At the end of August there is another shock. Well to everyone but Lan Zhan apparently.
Jiang Yanli destroys her father-in-law's hopes and instead of becoming a quiet figure, and is appointed the CEO of Furong. She takes on her mother's role with determination and a host of qualifications Lan Zhan didn't honestly know she had.
Jiang Cheng already balancing the Jiang Sect, becomes the Chairman of the mega corporation and Wei Ying is promoted to Deputy Chairman and the Head of Technologies Division. Nie Huaisang is promoted to R&D Director a day later.
They are a united front and have already begun repairing Lotus Pier.
It's a comfort to think that Wei Ying will have gone right up the law, maybe beyond, to protect Lotus Pier in case of a reprisal attack.
At the next sect conference, Jiang Cheng brings Wei Wuxian with him as his Head Disciple and post a photo of themselves at the airport. Both are wearing the white sashes of sect mourning but they smile and Jiang Yanli sends him the photo through WhatsApp.
In the first week of September, Wen Qing and her brother apparently died.
She had something on Wen Xu, what Lan Zhan didn't know, but he was certain she did. Something he didn't want leaked or given to the police.
They went to a building in Da Fan and it was deliberately set fire to sometime in the early hours of the morning. Possessions and DNA confirmed that the siblings had been present and had died with the fire.
Two weeks later most of the records with Wen Qing's face disappeared. It was obvious that system had been hacked and an altered picture put in their place.
Wen Qing had been educated by the Wen Sect and those records were not public accessible unless with a warrant. Her medical school records and career documentation were with the Wen funded hospital right next to their Sect lands and these had been changed.
Eight days after the fire that killed them, two familiar faces appeared with the Jiang family.
Ke Qingzhao who somehow manged to look identical to Wen Qing appeared holding Jiang Cheng's hand outside a restaurant, posted to Weibo. With a surname that meant 'axe handle' and new name that still meant clarity, she was taking a bold risk.
She was also now working at Yunmeng city hospital. Ke Qingzhao had the same qualifications as Wen Qing, perhaps more, apparently transferring from Yiling teaching hospital.
By the last days of September, Wen Ning appeared at Wei Wuxian's elbow as his personal assistant. Ke Yu Ning. With tailored clothing and dyed hair, he was hard to recognize as Wen Ning, but it was there. Not helped when Wei Ying in reference to his assistant, called him Ah-Ning freely.
Lan Zhan checked and either they paid an enormous sum of money he doubted they had, as the Da Fan Wen family were barely getting by, someone had cleared house, purged records and rewritten things as they saw fit.
Someone like Nie Huaisang or Wei Ying himself.
The equally good explanation was that, Wen Qing and her brother had been living two lives. Ensuring that the second identity had qualifications and money that was theirs, ready for the right moment.
On September 29th, it was announced that Wen Chao had died.
Lan Zhan had been in the middle of a briefing with his superiors when the news broke and Lan Xichen had called him some ten minutes later.
He had been in Qishan in the apartment above the strip club he owned, having a private showing or at least that's how Xichen had phrased it. Someone had broken into the building, two or three people according to the confused witness reports and sent the girls out of the room at gunpoint.
All of his guards were dead. Clear, quick kills that didn't match Wen Chao's murder.
A talisman array was activated as the girls were running down into the main floor for help, knocking out nearly everyone in the building except for the assailants. They barricaded the room with talismans and a type of defensive shield no one had ever seen before. And in that room at two in the morning, Wen Chao was tortured for over two hours and eventually left to bleed out.
The police arrived possibly just before the assailants left and the victims of the knock-out talisman only woke up a day later in hospital. They couldn't tell anyone much, only that they wore black, could have been male and never spoke.
There were no fingerprints, no shoe prints and nothing was left behind.
Lan Zhan had sat down at his desk, hardly able to believe it. Rather than wait to be proven correct that Wen Chao was going to get away with the massacre, that he would never spend a day in prison for all his crimes and certainly not face the death penalty....
Someone had decided to ensure that death happened on their terms.
The files spread across his desk, all related to Wen Chao. Snippets of information and a growing cache of evidence that could at least convict the man if they had kept going, of corruption and assault.
Now, Lan Zhan had ashes and a body, a murderer no one wanted to find. Revenge was the motive and not one single innocent had been harmed, but the damage done to Wen Chao before he was allowed to die, was stomach churning even for the most experienced homicide cop.
He had died eventually from blood loss, beaten bloody and gutted on his white leather sofa. Blood had pooled across the once white carpet, was streaked across the walls and all the remaining furniture.
This was rage. This was hot anger and vengeance, with enough cold calculation to use the right cultivation methods to clear any trace of themselves. Enough humanity to prevent anyone one else interfering and dying with Wen Chao. Everyone else had been knocked out but they recovered without any issues and conveniently, all the CCTV footage was scrambled.
Lan Zhan looked at the photograph he kept in his wallet, staring down at the face on the left. The warm grey eyes that sparkled even in the poor lighting, the way he looked so young and so mature at the same time.
He looked at his own face on the right, the arm slung across Wei Ying's shoulders and the joy even he could read in his own eyes.
That day in Gusu they were completely unaware of the twists and turns that life was going to hurl at them. The tragedy and despair that was coming.
One thing he did know, he thought as he folded it carefully back into his wallet.
He had already been in love with Wei Ying then.