Chapter 107: Sheathed Edge, Part Twenty-Two

Gritting his teeth, Jin Guangyao struck several points on his severed arm; having lost too much blood, dizzy and faint, he suddenly saw Nie Mingjue take a step toward him, eyes fixed dead upon him, and at once his soul scattered in terror. Beside him Su She coughed up another mouthful of blood and, his voice hoarse and spent, shouted, ‘Idiot! What are you standing there for? Stop him! Stop that thing in the doorway!’

Long lost in their own faraway trances, the several cultivators of the Lanling Jin Clan only now closed in with drawn swords; the first two were instantly knocked flying by a single sweep of Nie Mingjue's palm. Jin Guangyao scattered medicinal powder over the stump of his hand, but the powder was swept away at once by the flow of blood. Nearly weeping, he tore at his own collar, meaning to bind the wound and stanch the bleeding, but his left hand had already been scorched by the poison smoke from the coffin and the black chest and had no strength; trembling, he worried at the cloth for a long while and could not get it free, only adding to his pain. Su She scrambled and clawed his way over, ripped off his own white robe to bind it for him, and just then, as Lan Xichen guarded Nie Huaisang and withdrew to safety, Su She patted himself all over for any spare salve or powder, found none, and said to Lan Xichen, ‘Sect Leader Lan! Sect Leader Lan, do you have any medicine? Please help. He has always treated you with courtesy. Just count it a favor!’

Seeing Jin Guangyao in so wretched a state, all but fainting away, Lan Xichen let a faint reluctance show in his eyes. Just then, from over there came scream after scream as Nie Mingjue drove in a heavy fist and smashed three cultivators in one breath into a red, bloody pulp.

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji stood before Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling, and Wei Wuxian said, ‘Wen Ning! How did you come to run into him?’

Having reattached his hand, Wen Ning set to reattaching his broken leg, and said, ‘Young Master... I'm sorry... You told me to go back and find Young Master Lan. I went to the inn and couldn't find him, so I had to go out and search the streets. Before I'd even found Young Master Lan, I saw Chifeng-zun walking down the street, as if searching for something, and a band of wandering beggar children, not knowing how dangerous he was, went up and pestered him. Chifeng-zun was utterly out of his mind and nearly tore them apart with his bare hands... I could only fight him all the way here...’

Why he hadn't found Lan Wangji at the inn, Wei Wuxian had no need to ask. He himself couldn't sleep next door to Lan Wangji, so how could Lan Wangji sleep next door to him? Surely he too had gone out wandering at random, and only then had he met Fairy, who had slunk off with his tail down to fetch reinforcements. And this sudden thunderstorm must have begun after Wen Ning and Nie Mingjue had started to fight.

A ‘corpse’ was a thing that summoned the yin and gathered evil to begin with, let alone two Fierce Corpses far from ordinary!

Though the cultivators of the Lanling Jin Clan were no match for Nie Mingjue, they pressed forward valiantly and without pause; yet when their swords struck his body it was like striking fine steel, and they could not open so much as a single wound. Nie Huaisang leaned a little of himself out from behind Lan Xichen and said, fearful and yet hopeful, ‘D-d-dage, I, I'm...’

Nie Mingjue's pupil-less eyes glared wide open, and he suddenly seized at him; Lan Xichen bowed his head slightly, Liebing gave a sob of a note, and Nie Mingjue's frame went rigid.

Lan Xichen said, ‘Dage, this is Huaisang!’

Nie Huaisang said, ‘Dage doesn't even know me anymore...’

Wei Wuxian said, ‘It's not just that he doesn't know you. Right now he doesn't even know who he is himself!’ Nie Mingjue was already a corpse driven by sky-high rancor, violent and ferocious, attacking without regard for who stood before him; Wen Ning, after a moment's mending, came forward again to grapple with him. But Wen Ning's rancor ran less deep than his, his frame was less tall, and with Wei Wuxian's flute already cracked and unable to lend him support, he was slowly losing ground. The bleeding from Jin Guangyao's severed hand, lying on the floor, had only just been stanched; Su She scrambled up and hoisted him onto his back, meaning to flee in the chaos, and this motion made Nie Mingjue mark them again, warily, so that he flung Wen Ning aside and strode toward Jin Guangyao. Jin Ling cried out before he could stop himself, ‘Xiao-shu! Run!’

Seeing him actually call out a warning to the enemy, Jiang Cheng slapped him hard across the back of the head and shouted in fury, ‘Shut up!’

Only after the slap did Jin Ling come to his senses; but that was, after all, the xiao-shu who had watched him grow up, and over the past dozen-odd years Jin Guangyao could not be said to have treated him badly. Seeing him very likely about to die wretchedly under the hand of this Fierce Corpse, the cry had burst from him in the urgency of the moment. And Nie Mingjue, hearing that cry, turned his head as if somewhat puzzled. Wei Wuxian's heart clenched, and he murmured, ‘This is bad.’

Nie Mingjue was a Fierce Corpse now, and naturally his rancor ran deepest toward his enemy Jin Guangyao. But a Fierce Corpse did not tell people apart by its eyes!

Jin Guangyao and Jin Ling were close blood kin; to a yin-baleful dead thing, the breath and blood-vigor of these two living men bore certain resemblances. And to such a thing caught in a state of chaos, the two were harder still to tell apart. At this very moment Jin Guangyao had lost an arm and was bleeding like a fountain, his aura faint, half dead and half alive, while Jin Ling was hale and full of life; the dead, unthinking mind of Nie Mingjue naturally found the boy the more interesting of the two.

Lan Wangji loosed Bichen straight at Nie Mingjue's heart, and sure enough, the instant the point pierced his chest it stalled and went no further. Nie Mingjue looked down at the glittering blade, gave a roar, and reached to seize it; in a breath Lan Wangji called Bichen back, and with a ringing note it flew into its sheath, leaving his hand to close on nothing. Then his left hand turned over, flipping out the Wangji Guqin to cradle it in his palm, and without a moment's pause he drew forth a few clear, rippling notes. Lan Xichen, too, lifted Liebing once more to his lips. Wei Wuxian swept out more than fifty Paper Talisman in a single throw, scattering every one of them toward Nie Mingjue; yet before the Paper Talisman could even near him, his rancor set them ablaze, and they burned to ash in the air.

Roaring, Nie Mingjue reached for Jin Ling; Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling had both backed into the corner with nowhere left to retreat, and Jiang Cheng could only stuff Jin Ling behind him, draw Sandu, which for the moment could channel no Spiritual Power, and meet the blow with grim resolve. The guqin and flute had already sounded together, but it was likely too late!

Nie Mingjue's heavy fist punched clean through a body.

But this body was neither Jiang Cheng nor Jin Ling.

Wen Ning stood in the corner, shielding the two of them, his two hands gripping that steel-forged arm of Nie Mingjue's and slowly drawing it out of his own chest, leaving behind a great transparent hole, no blood flowing, only a little black scatter of shattered innards spilling out.

Wei Wuxian said, ‘Wen Ning!!!’

Jiang Cheng, for his part, looked as if he could have gone mad on the spot.

He said, ‘You? You?!’

The fist had carried too much force; it had not only punched through Wen Ning's chest but shattered part of his glottis along with it, so that he could not get out a single word before he toppled over.

By his position he fell squarely upon Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling. His body could not move for the moment, but his eyes were still open, staring at the two of them without a single blink.

Jin Ling had once hated to the very marrow this murderer, this murder-weapon, who years ago had punched a hole clean through his father's heart; from childhood he had sworn countless times that, given the chance one day, he would carve Wei Ying and Wen Ning into a thousand pieces and flay them inch by inch. Later, unwilling to hate Wei Wuxian, he had poured twice the force into hating Wen Ning. Yet at this very moment, watching this murderer, this murder-weapon, take a fist through the heart in just the same way before them, he could not even bring himself to shove Wen Ning roughly off and make him stop leaning against them.

He knew perfectly well this was a dead man, that a hole punched through him was nothing, that even being cut in two at the waist might do him no harm; but for some reason the tears simply would not be held back, and spilled over.

Having thrown that fist, Nie Mingjue too went still.

Lan Wangji and Lan Xichen played in unison, the guqin like an icy spring running, the flute like a high wind keen with slaughter. Both gave forth sounds that Nie Mingjue loathed, and in concert their grating sharpness multiplied, so that his whole body felt a kind of clogging stiffness, as if someone had bound him with an invisible rope that drew ever tighter; and he grew angrier and angrier, until at last he burst out all at once, forcing his way through the bonds of the Barrier-Breaking Melody and striking at the one playing the guqin. Unhurried, Lan Wangji spun his body in a single turn and slipped past the blow, the guqin's notes never faltering for so much as an instant. This fist of Nie Mingjue's punched through the wall instead, and just as he was about to turn, he heard two bright chirping notes.

He pulled his fist out of the wall and looked toward the place the sound had come from.

Wei Wuxian gave two more whistles and said with a smile, ‘Hello, Chifeng-zun. Do you know me?’

Nie Mingjue's wholly white, savage eyeballs turned quietly toward him, and Wei Wuxian said, ‘It's all right if you don't. So long as you know this whistle.’

Sheathing the Edge, the Twenty-Second

Lan Xichen moved Liebing slightly away and said, ‘Young Master Wei!’

He had meant to remind Wei Wuxian that the body he now wore had originally belonged to Mo Xuanyu, and that Mo Xuanyu too shared blood ties with Jin Guangyao, closer ones, even, than his own with Jin Ling. If Nie Mingjue should vent his rancor on him because of it, the corpse would only be harder to handle. But before he could get out his next sentence, Lan Wangji's gaze shifted over, and, looking calm and composed, he shook his head.

Lan Xichen understood at once: this was a sign that he need not worry.

Lan Wangji trusted that Wei Wuxian had it in hand.

Wei Wuxian whistled a loose, sliding tune, his feet treading steps as idle and unhurried as the name Suibian itself.* The whistling was light, almost contented; and yet, in the Guanyin Temple, where lightning split the sky and thunder rolled, wind and rain lashing together above a floor strewn with corpses, the sound, clear and bright as it was, rang strangely sinister. Wen Ning, fallen in the corner across Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling, heard it, and some uncommonly fierce impulse seemed to drive him to rise; whether he held it down or had simply not yet recovered the power to move, he struggled twice and then slumped over again. Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling both reached out by instinct to catch him, yet once they had, both wore the same conflicted look, twins in the sudden urge to fling him off again. *Suibian, the name of Wei Wuxian's sword, means 'whatever, as one pleases.'

Smiling as he whistled a tune that could only be called droll, hands clasped behind his back, Wei Wuxian retreated neither fast nor slow. Nie Mingjue stood where he was; when Wei Wuxian took the first step back, his reaction was cold; at the third step, still unmoved; but by the seventh step he seemed unable to hold that impulse in any longer, and took a step in the direction Wei Wuxian was retreating.

The direction Wei Wuxian was driving him toward was precisely that very ornate empty coffin behind the main hall of the Guanyin Temple.

So long as he could get him inside it first, Wei Wuxian had a way to seal him in.

Those white poison smokes had long since dissipated, too thin to pose any threat. His face a livid grey, Nie Mingjue was lured before the empty coffin, and instinctively shrank from such a thing. Wei Wuxian walked a circle around the coffin. Everyone held their breath and stared at this side of the hall, Lan Wangji most of all. Whistling leisurely, Wei Wuxian leisurely sent his gaze across. The moment their lines of sight met, he wore a flippant look and winked his left eye at Lan Wangji.

As if pricked by a fine sugar-spun needle, the guqin notes beneath Lan Wangji's fingers rippled with a tremor almost too faint to catch, then went calm in an instant. A little smug, Wei Wuxian turned his head back and, before Nie Mingjue, patted the mouth of the coffin.

At last, Nie Mingjue slowly bent down.

But just as he was about to tip his upper body in, a scream suddenly came from behind Lan Xichen.

Nie Mingjue at once checked his bending and, like everyone else, whipped his head around. There was Su She, the half-conscious Jin Guangyao on his back, one hand bracing the leg, the other gripping a sword whose blade showed blood. And Nie Huaisang lay collapsed on the floor, clutching his leg and rolling in pain.

Seeing this, a blade of sword-qi from Shuoyue struck hard against the hand with which Su She held the sword. Astonishment filled Su She's whole face, and the long sword flew from his grip. That sword had already wounded Nie Huaisang; a thread of blood-smell drifted through the air, and Wei Wuxian cursed inwardly, ‘Outrageous. To ruin my work at the very moment it matters!’

Nie Huaisang and Nie Mingjue were brothers by the same father but different mothers; when Nie Mingjue caught the scent of his blood, it would not rouse his killing intent, but it would make him exceedingly curious. And once curious, drawn that way, he was bound to notice Jin Guangyao over there again. And once he had killed a Jin Guangyao, his ferocity was bound to grow greater still, and harder to rein in!

Sure enough, a gurgling sounded in Nie Mingjue's throat, and his body turned away from the empty coffin; in a flash he had made out who that figure bowed low against Su She's back was, and Wei Wuxian's whistling could no longer hold him. Nie Mingjue rushed over like a gale, his palm descending toward the crown of Jin Guangyao's head!

Su She twisted sharply aside, flicked up with his toe the long sword just struck to the ground, summoned all his Spiritual Power, and thrust it at Nie Mingjue's heart. Perhaps because it was a moment of life and death, the thrust came strangely fast and strangely fierce, the blade flooded full with his Spiritual Power, its radiance flowing and turning, dazzling and brilliant, finer and more startling than the countless seemingly elegant strokes he had made before, so that even Wei Wuxian could not help wanting to cry a word of praise. Nie Mingjue too was forced back a great step by this explosive thrust. As the spiritual light dimmed a little, he came forward again, relentlessly grasping for Jin Guangyao. With his left hand Su She flung Jin Guangyao toward Lan Xichen's side, and with his right slashed at Nie Mingjue's throat.

Even though Nie Mingjue was, from head to foot, impervious as steel to blade and spear, the thread sewn around his neck was not necessarily so!