Jin ZiXuan sent the butterfly message to Lan QiRen. After some more debate and protests of innocence, it was decided that the group would go to Qiongqi Path to verify who was currently residing there. Jin GuangShan was gloating as his fellow sect and clan leaders wandered around: it was quite obvious that there were only Wen cultivators there.
Jin GuangYao sidled up to Wei WuXian. "It is odd that, even now, you would neglect to bring your sword and instead rely on HanGuang-Jun for a ride.
Wei WuXian grinned evilly at the shorter man. "Who else would you have me ask? You?" And he grinned even wider to hear a growled "No," behind him.
Jin GuangYao, and his smile, never wavered. "It is odd that Jiang WanYin allows your continued blatant disrespect."
"My shidi knows that respect is shown by actions, not by simply carrying a sword." The tone was mild, but the statement could be taken as a politely inane statement or as an insult. Jin GuangYao knew which one it was, but bowed slightly as if it was simply a statement.
Wei WuXian turned his back on the little man, irritated at the blatant attempt to belittle him, and started walking up to where he had found Wen Ning's body. "It was raining the night I stole them from here," he quietly mentioned to his follower. "Wen Qing was frantic to find her brother. A'Yuan was here in the mud with Grannie trying to protect him." He paused at the top of the hill and looked into the past. "I found Wen Ning up here. The guards killed him and threw his body away like trash. Just like they killed the civilians we saw here last month."
"They're buried here?" Lan Zhan's voice was quietly furious.
"Just over there," Wei WuXian waved what he hoped looked like a careless hand to one corner of the plateau. "There's a mass grave. Some weren't even buried, just thrown down the back of the hill and covered with leaves. At least that's where they were the last time." He waved towards another corner of the plateau.
"Do you know how they died?"
"No. I can feel their resentment. Their anger. Some of them will rise sooner rather than later if no one pacifies them."
Lan Zhan walked away from Wei WuXian. "Return to your brother. Ask my brother and Nie MingJue to attend me here."
"What are you planning on doing?"
"Uncover those graves and keep you from being implicated."
Wei WuXian stared at his friend. Keep me from being implicated? He started walking back towards his brother. There's a pile of dead bodies just waiting to rise as walking corpses. Of course I'm going to be implicated even if I was still back in Lotus Pier!
Wei WuXian quietly let Lan XiChen know of his brother's request. Lan XiChen was not quiet at all in asking Nie MingJue to go with him to see what his brother found. So Wei WuXian watched helplessly as everyone followed the Lan Sect leader up the hill. He shrugged and followed as well, staying well behind the last clan leader. If he was going to be accused of something nefarious, it was better to be there at the start of the accusation than arrive in the middle or after the judging was already over.
Lan WangJi was seated with his WangJi on his lap, fingers playing a few notes, then listening to the response. Lan XiChen stood near him head hung low. "Disemboweled," he translated. Then, "She died while being raped by a man in blue after being raped by a man in gold." He looked over where the mass grave lay. "WangJi, tell her we will punish her rapists. I promise." Lan WangJi nodded and continued playing. "Stabbed in the back with a spirit attraction flag and left to die." Lan XiChen looked ill. "This one was also stabbed but...." he swallowed. "Stabbed."
Lan WangJi's hands stilled. "The correct interpretation is impaled, not stabbed," he corrected.
Jin GuangShan laughed rudely. "This is fun! Inquiry tells us the answers, but isn't it interesting that we have to trust that we're being told the truth! When the truth is right before our eyes down that hill. Who knows when those poor people were killed? It could have been years ago for all we know! What is absolutely known is that the only prisoners here are cultivators!"
Lan XiChen looked at a man a few paces away from the Jin sect leader. "A'Yao. With WangJi playing inquiry, the spirits cannot lie to him. You know I'm truthfully repeating what they tell him."
Jin GuangYao smiled faintly. "I'm sure you're telling a truth, ErGe. But like my esteemed father has said: there is no way to determine how long these poor souls have been dead."
Wei WuXian grinned and folded his arms over his chest. "Well, I'm quite sure the state of decomposition might give us a clue there. If they look newly dead, they were killed recently, weren't they?"
Jin GuangYao smiled and bowed towards the back of the crowd. "I'm sure Wei GongZi is used to digging up graves, but the rest of us.... It's better to purify the bodies and allow them to enter the reincarnation cycle."
"Better for whom?" Wei WuXian countered. "Better for those guards down there? Better for us to not see that these bodies are newly dead? Because that might contradict the story the Jin are telling. We're all experienced cultivators here; it's not like we're not used to the sight and smell of decomposing bodies. Let's dig them up. You can even have the Wen prisoners do it if you want to keep your fingernails clean."
That started a whole new verbal altercation. Jin GuangShan was loudly proclaiming his innocence, and those who suddenly remembered they needed the goodwill of the LanlingJin, started to support him on one side, and Lan XiChen and Nie MingJue on the other asking that the truth, whatever it may be, be revealed. And that meant, yes, disinter the bodies buried here and interrogate the guards. The sun rose high overhead with neither side making headway. Wei WuXian wanted to interject his thoughts; he was pulled away from the discussion by Lan WangJi and rudely informed to stay out of it.
"But I can help!" Wei WuXian protested. "I know a trick called Empathy. You can relive important events in a person's life."
"No."
"But it works! And it's only a little bit dangerous. Jiang Cheng's clarity bell should work just fine as a recall measure and that's really only where things go wrong, you know. If the practitioner doesn't escape the memories."
"No."
"But."
"Wei Ying! Have you forgotten who you are? Have you forgotten what they did to you in your other life? Interjecting yourself into this investigation is not going to end well for you! Jin GuangShan still wants your Tiger Amulet, and every time you open your mouth in front of him, he remembers. Even I can see it in his eyes. I have no doubt that even now he's thinking of a way to pin these murders on you, so he can imprison you or demand that you and your amulet be separated."
Wei Ying's face grew thoughtful. "Pin murders on me?" He looked at the crowd of sect and clan leaders. "Pin murders on me.... Lan Zhan? Let's say that Jin ZiXuan gets killed and so does his despicable cousin Jin ZiAsshole. Who is next in line to rule the LanlingJin?"
Lan Zhan mmed thoughtfully. "There are a few distantly related male cousins of their generation. But with Jin GuangYao being legitimized, I would suspect that he would inherit the position before Jin ZiXun. Obviously, his courtesy name was given as a deterrent to inheriting, but that won't matter much once Jin ZongZhu is dead. Why?"
Wei Ying turned back to look at Lan WangJi. "Because in my last life I was on my way to Koi Tower for the one month celebration of ShiJie's son, Jin Ling. It was down there, in Qiongqi Path that Jin ZiXun and a bunch of other people attacked me. Then Jin ZiXuan showed up, I lost control somehow, and Wen Ning murdered Jin ZiXuan. A few days later, there was a conference of sorts at Nevernight where the allies determined to hunt down and kill me and every last one of my Wen remnants. There was a fight," he glossed over the fight between him and his friend, "and I lost control again. Then ShiJie was killed protecting me. I don't remember much after that. I woke up in my cave and decided to destroy my amulet. And, well, you know what happened next."
Lan Zhan looked puzzled. "How did Wen Ning kill Jin ZiXuan? You said he was killed here before you stole your Wen?"
"Oh, yeah, that," Wei WuXian waved careless hands around. "I sort of figured out a way to restore him as a fierce corpse and return his consciousness to him." At Lan Zhan's glare, he hurried to protest, "I only did it because I promised his sister to save him. I owed him, you see. When Jiang Cheng was captured by Wen ZhiLiu, I was trying to think of a way to steal him back. Wen Ning was there, and he helped me not only get my shidi away, but he also removed Uncle Jiang's and Madame Yu's bodies so we could bury them properly. I couldn't just let him... die like that. Don't worry! I don't plan on doing that again.
"I made sure Wen Qing and Wen Ning and the rest of their people would be safe from all..." his hands waved helplessly, "this." He grinned, unrepentant. "So no more Ghost General Wen Ning!"
Lan XiChen won the argument by default. He ordered the two Lan guards to disinter the remains. Jin GuangShan was practically frothing at the mouth over that, but couldn't overrule the Lan sect leader giving an order to a subordinate. It was obvious the bodies were rather fresh and had only been dead for a few days. "How long have these people lived here?" he asked the guards.
"Since the end of the SunShot campaign."
"Who ordered their imprisonment?" Lan XiChen's voice was icy.
"We were just told they were prisoners. We weren't told who captured them or what their crimes were."
"Who?" Lan XiChen demanded.
One of the guards pointed a shaking finger at Jin GuangYao. "He brought them here."
"No! He's lying!' Jin GuangYao's voice was firm in his denial. "I have never had oversight of any prisoners, neither civilians nor cultivators!"
Lan XiChen's shoulders briefly sagged. "We will find out the truth of that statement once my uncle arrives." The rest of the interrogation was short and ugly. Most of the women had been raped. A few of the men, too. The infant died most likely of starvation as the mother ran out of milk, and the guards were not required to obtain a wet nurse for it. The order to murder the civilians was brought by Jin ZiXun who brought the Wen cultivators with him as their replacements.
Standing alone, now that the guards were confessing to Jin ordered misdeeds, Jin GuangShan was maintaining a stony look on his face. Wei WuXian scoffed at it. "He's probably trying to figure out how to keep himself from being implicated in this little bit of nastiness," he whispered to Lan WangJi. "Do you want to bet he claims it was all his bastard son's doings? Aided, of course, by the asshole? And he, the innocent and overly trusting man that he is, knew absolutely nothing about it?"
"No need to bet," Lan WangJi answered. "Uncle will make him tell the truth. Jin ZiXun is not smart enough to come up with this idea on his own."
Nie HuaiSang sidled up to the duo. "I completely agree, LanXiong. Jin ZiXun was following orders, but Meng Yao? He's smart. Almost as smart as me, I think." That earned him double snorts of disbelief. "I am smart! I'm just not good at cultivation stuff. Where do you think I learned about our spy rings? I went through his notes for his subordinates. He's meticulous in what he writes down. Unfortunately for us, he keeps most of what he knows in his head and not on paper."
"Fortunately for us, my uncle is very good at the Truth spell."
The trials continued apace. Lan QiRen interrogated two or three suspects per day. After each interrogation, the clan leaders deliberated on punishment. Orders to detain more cultivators from a rather large number clans for suspicion of murder and rape went out on almost an hourly basis as the guards told everything they knew.
Suspiciously, even though Jin GuangYao's and Jin ZiXun's names were mentioned over and over in the accused's testimonies, they alone were not detained for further questioning.
However, Wei WuXian was not there for the proceedings after the first day. Jiang Cheng informed him that he was to return to his duties at Lotus Pier. Wei WuXian was prepared to make a fuss until he was also informed that Nie HuaiSang and Lan WangJi were also being sent home. Since neither of the younger brothers had any voting power nor anything to contribute to the trials, there was no need for them to stay.
The trio first made their way to Lotus Pier as Wei WuXian couldn't fly on a sword and so needed Lan WangJi to give him a ride, and because Nie HuaiSang was not strong enough to fly all the way to Qinghe in one trip. Jiang YanLi immediately invited Lan WangJi and Nie HuaiSang to stay until after the New Year. "Why should you go to an empty home for the celebration? Stay here and celebrate with us."
Hello dear readers!
Such a bletchy day. Rain, rain, and, just to liven things up a bit, more rain.
Where oh where is spring hiding???
Sorry to disappoint, but there's no kissing in this chapter. Or the next few. Must move the story somehow, and kissing, while fun and exciting, just stays in place.
I do have some scenes playing in my head for when the kissing does resume, though. So...
Dear readers? How spicy should I go? Hints and innuendos with all the good stuff playing out in your imagination?
Or should I attempt to write smut? I've tried it before, and honestly blush my entire way through it.
- Aitch