Chapter 102: Hatred Reborn, Part Twenty-One: 5

Though he had taken a sword to the chest, Jiang Cheng was not in mortal danger — only that, for the moment, he should neither move nor force his Spiritual Power. He disliked being held up, and said to Jin Ling, 'Get lost.'

Jin Ling knew he was still angry about his running off, and feeling himself in the wrong, did not dare talk back. The black-maned spirit hound's frenzied barking carried from far away, then broke off in a sudden yelp of pain; Jin Ling started, remembering what Jin Guangyao had said earlier, and cried out, 'Fairy, run — they mean to kill you!'

A moment later Su She came charging back through the pouring rain, beside himself with rage. Jin Guangyao said, 'What — you didn't kill it?'

Su She's face was venomous. 'Your subordinate failed. The cur hasn't an ounce of backbone — fierce as anything when something stands behind it, but the moment the odds turn against it and it cannot win, it bolts, and faster than anyone else!'

Jin Guangyao shook his head. 'I fear it will bring others here. This side of things must be settled quickly.'

Su She said, 'This pack of good-for-nothings! I'll go in and hurry them along.'

Jin Ling, for his part, let out a breath of relief. Seeing Jiang Cheng seated on the ground, his face an iron grey, he hesitated a moment, then said to Lan Wangji, 'Hanguang-Jun, are there any more cushions?'

The four cushions they had been sitting on were ones Lan Wangji had found himself, but in all this Guanyin hall only four were to be had. After a moment's silence, Lan Wangji rose and pushed his own across. Jin Ling said hurriedly, 'Thank you! There's no need — I'll just bring my own—'

Lan Wangji said, 'No need.'

With that he sat down beside Wei Wuxian. The two of them, perfectly composed, shared the single cushion, and somehow it was not even a tight fit. Seeing the place had been cleared for him, Jin Ling scratched his head and dragged Jiang Cheng over to sit. Pressing the pressure point at his own chest to stem the bleeding, Jiang Cheng, once seated, lifted his lashes to glance at Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji over there, then quickly lowered them again, his face grave, none knowing what he was thinking.

Just then, from behind the hall came a cry wild with elation, 'Sect Leader! We've dug it out! A corner of it is showing!'

Jin Guangyao's face eased greatly, and he strode back behind the hall. 'Keep at it, quickly — and be careful, by all means. There is little time left.'

Seven or eight pale veins of lightning crawled writhing across the edge of the sky, and a moment later the thunder came in rolling peals. Over there, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji sat together, Jiang Cheng to one side, and Jin Ling dragged his own cushion across as well. Amid the hiss of the rain there hung a long, awkward, deathly silence, and no one was first to speak.

Yet for some reason Jin Ling seemed eager to make them talk to one another; glancing this way and that, he suddenly said, 'Jiujiu, it's thanks to you cutting off that qin string just now — otherwise it would have been a disaster.'

Jiang Cheng's face darkened. 'Shut your mouth!'

Had his own composure not failed him, he would have pinned Jin Guangyao down and given him no gap to slip through and strike at this side — and he would not have fallen into the enemy's hands himself. Besides, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji could perfectly well have dodged that qin string on their own. Even now, with Lan Wangji's Spiritual Power gone and Wei Wuxian's grown faint, their skill remained; unable to attack, they could still evade. Jin Ling's clumsy effort to put in a word for his jiujiu was so plainly deliberate that it only made the moment more awkward.

Rebuked, Jin Ling shut his mouth, abashed. Jiang Cheng pressed his lips together and said no more. Wei Wuxian, too, said nothing.

In the old days he would have mocked Jiang Cheng at least a little — losing his head at a few goading words and letting an opening be taken — but now, turning over what Jin Guangyao had said, what was there left that he did not understand?

Jiang Cheng already knew the truth.

Just then Lan Wangji stroked his back twice more, and Wei Wuxian lifted his eyes; seeing in his face no trace of shock, his gaze something one might almost call gentle, something stirred in him, and he could not help murmuring, '...You know?'

Lan Wangji nodded slowly.

Wei Wuxian let out a soft breath. '...Wen Ning.'

Suibian had been in Wen Ning's hands before, yet now it had ended up in Jiang Cheng's. And on the road away from Lotus Pier, Wen Ning had not breathed a word of it.

Wei Wuxian said, 'When did he tell him?'

Lan Wangji said, 'While you were senseless.'

Wei Wuxian said, 'Is that how we left Lotus Pier?!'

Had Wen Ning not yet still to find his way here, Wei Wuxian would surely by now have shot him a glare.

Lan Wangji said, 'He felt very sorry for it.'

With a faint trace of vexation Wei Wuxian said, '...I told him over and over not to speak of it!'

Out of nowhere, Jiang Cheng spoke. 'Not to speak of what?'

Wei Wuxian started, and turned to look along with Lan Wangji. Jiang Cheng sat with one hand pressed to his wound, and said with a chilling coldness, 'Wei Wuxian, how selfless of you, how great. You have done every good deed there is, and borne the shame in silence so no one would know — truly moving. Should I kneel down and thank you through my tears?'

Hearing how merciless his words were, his tone steeped in mockery, Lan Wangji's face turned cold. Seeing his ill expression, Jin Ling hurriedly threw himself in front of Jiang Cheng, terrified that Lan Wangji would strike him dead with a single blow, and said urgently, 'Jiujiu!'

Wei Wuxian's face, too, grew somewhat grim.

He had never expected that Jiang Cheng, knowing the truth, would let their old grievances melt away like ice; but neither had he expected his words to still be so cutting. After a silence, he said in a muffled voice, 'I never asked you to thank me.'

Jiang Cheng gave a 'Ha.' 'Of course not — doing good and asking nothing in return, what a lofty state of mind. Nothing like me, naturally. No wonder my father, when he was alive, so often said you were the one who truly understood the Jiang family precepts, the one with the Jiang family's bearing.'

Wei Wuxian could not bear to hear more, and cut in, 'Enough.'

Jiang Cheng said sharply, 'Enough what? You say enough, and that is the end of it? You know best! You surpass me in everything! Talent, cultivation, spirit, temperament — you all understand it, and my state of mind is low — then what does that make me?!?!'

He flung out a hand as if to seize Wei Wuxian by the collar; Lan Wangji's one arm swept around Wei Wuxian's shoulders, drawing him safely behind, while his other hand struck Jiang Cheng's aside hard, anger already glinting faintly in his eyes. Though the blow carried no Spiritual Power, its force was great enough to tear the wound on Jiang Cheng's chest open again, and blood at once came surging out. Jin Ling cried in alarm, 'Jiujiu, your wound! Hanguang-Jun, have mercy!'

Lan Wangji said coldly, 'Jiang Wanyin — guard your tongue!' [Jiang Wanyin is Jiang Cheng's courtesy name.]

Lan Xichen took off his outer robe and laid it over Nie Huaisang, who was shivering with cold, and said, 'Sect Leader Jiang, do not let yourself be roused. Shout a few more times and your hurt will only worsen.'

Jiang Cheng shoved away the helpless Jin Ling who was holding him up; though he had lost blood, the heat of it surged unstoppably to his head, and his face went white, then red, by turns. 'By what right? Wei Wuxian, by what fucking right?'

From behind Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian said stiffly, 'By what right what?'

Jiang Cheng said, 'How much did our Jiang family give you? I was the one who was his son, I was the heir of the Yunmeng Jiang Clan, and all these years you bested me at every turn. The kindness of being raised — and even lives! My father's, my mother's, my sister's, and Jin Zixuan's lives! Because of you, all that is left is one Jin Ling, with neither father nor mother!'

Jin Ling shuddered through his whole body, his shoulders drooping, the spirit gone out of his face. Wei Wuxian's lips moved, but in the end he could say nothing, and Lan Wangji turned back to him and took his hand. Over there Jiang Cheng would not let it rest, railing at him, 'Wei Wuxian, just who was it that first broke his own oath and betrayed our Jiang family? You tell me yourself — one day I would be clan leader and you would be my subordinate, supporting me all my life; the Gusu Lan Clan has its Twin Jades, so the Yunmeng Jiang Clan would have its Twin Prides of Yunmeng, never to betray me, never to betray the Jiang family — who said those words?! I am asking you, who said all that?! Have you swallowed every fucking word of it?!'

The more he spoke the more worked up he grew. 'And what came of it? You went and shielded outsiders — ha! The Wen family's people, no less. How much of their rice did you eat?! Without a moment's hesitation you turned traitor and were gone! What did you take our family for?! Every good deed you did to the full, and yet every time you did wrong it was never your own doing! You had no choice! Forced into it! Some bitter secret too hard to speak! A bitter secret?! You told me nothing, treated me like a fool!!!

'How much do you owe our Jiang family? Have I no right to hate you? Am I not allowed to hate you?! By what right do I now somehow seem to be the one who has wronged you?! By what right must I feel that all these fucking years I have been like some clown?! What am I? Do I deserve to be so blinded by your dazzling brilliance that I cannot even open my eyes?! Have I no right to hate you?!'

Lan Wangji rose abruptly to his feet; Jin Ling, frightened, threw himself in front of Jiang Cheng. 'Hanguang-Jun! My jiujiu is wounded—'

Jiang Cheng struck him with a slap that sent him sprawling. 'Let him come! As if I am afraid of Lan the Second!'

Yet, having taken that slap, Jin Ling froze.

And not only he — Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji, Lan Xichen, all of them went still.

Jiang Cheng was weeping.

As the tears ran from his eyes, he ground out through clenched teeth, '...By what right... by what right did you not tell me!'

Jiang Cheng clenched his fist as if to strike another, as if to strike himself, and in the end brought it down upon the ground.

He ought to have been able to hate Wei Wuxian without a backward glance. But here and now, this Golden Core turning his Spiritual Power within him left him unable to hate with a clear conscience.

Wei Wuxian did not know how to answer.

At the very start, it was precisely because he did not wish to see Jiang Cheng like this that he had decided not to tell him.

What he had promised Jiang Fengmian and Madam Yu, he held firmly in his heart: to look after Jiang Cheng well, and to support him. A man so fiercely competitive as to verge on the extreme — were he to learn of this, he would, all his life, be wretched and unhappy, in pain and unable to face himself. There would forever be a threshold in his heart he could not cross, the thought always nagging at him that everything he had achieved today rested on another's sacrifice. That it was not truly his cultivation, nor his achievement, at all. To win would be to lose; he had long since forfeited any right to compete.

Later, it was because Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli had died on his account, and he had even less face to let it be known. To tell Jiang Cheng of it after that would have been like shrugging off the blame, like rushing to prove he too had done his part — telling Jiang Cheng, do not hate me, look, I gave for the Yunmeng Jiang Clan as well.

Jiang Cheng wept without a sound, yet the tears already crawled this way and that across his whole face.

To weep so wretchedly before others — for the man he had once been, this would have been utterly unthinkable. And yet, from this moment on, in every hour to come, so long as this Golden Core remained within him and could still turn his Spiritual Power, he would remember this feeling forever.

He choked out, '...You said it — one day I would be clan leader and you would be my subordinate, supporting me all my life, never to betray the Yunmeng Jiang Clan... You said that yourself.'

'...'

After a silence, Wei Wuxian said, 'I'm sorry. I broke my word.'

Jiang Cheng shook his head and buried his face deep in his hands, and after a long while, suddenly let out a 'tch' of a laugh.

In a muffled, mocking voice he said, 'Even at a time like this, it falls to you to be the one telling me you're sorry. What a precious, priceless creature I must be.'