Chapter 109: Hidden Edge, Part Twenty-Two: 3

Lan Xichen, shoved back several staggering steps and not yet grasping what had passed in that flash of lightning and flint, watched as Lan Wangji struck behind the temple's fair-featured Guanyin Statue, and the statue, trembling through its whole frame, flew toward the coffin. Nie Mingjue was still examining the body in his hands, its head already lolling askew, when a heavy Guanyin Statue came hurtling at him and battered him bodily back down.

Wei Wuxian leapt up and planted his feet on the Guanyin Statue's breast. The coffin lid was already split, so this Guanyin Statue would have to serve as a lid to seal in the suddenly risen Nie Mingjue. Below, Nie Mingjue struck at the statue blow after blow, trying to break out, and Wei Wuxian shook with every strike, tipping this way and that, nearly thrown off. He swayed a few times, found he could not get a hand free to draw a talisman at all, and said, 'Lan Zhan, quick, quick, quick, get up here with me—one more body's one more weight; two more blows and this Guanyin Statue is coming apart for sure...'

The words were not yet out when, all at once, Wei Wuxian felt his body and his line of sight tilt. Lan Wangji had taken hold of one end of the coffin and lifted it.

Which was to say, with his left hand alone he had raised off the ground that ponderous solid-wood coffin, the two dead men inside it, the Guanyin Statue atop it, and Wei Wuxian atop the Guanyin Statue.

Wei Wuxian was struck dumb, mouth agape.

He had long known Lan Wangji's arm-strength was astonishing, but this was... too astonishing!

Lan Wangji's face, though, did not change; his right hand flung out a silver guqin string. The string flew like a shuttle, whirring round the coffin and the Guanyin Statue dozens of times, binding the two things fast together. Then a second, a third... and only once he had confirmed that Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangyao were sealed in beyond escape did he abruptly let go with his left hand. One end of the coffin dropped to the ground with a great crash, and Wei Wuxian lurched with it; Lan Wangji moved to meet him, caught him square, and set him down steadily on the ground. Those hands that a moment before had borne a thousand catties held Wei Wuxian with boundless gentleness.

Lan Xichen stared blankly at the coffin bound round with seven guqin strings, still lost in himself. Nie Huaisang reached out, waved a hand before his eyes, and said in alarm, '...Xi—Xichen-ge, are you all right?'

Lan Xichen said, 'Huaisang, just now—was he really trying to strike at me from behind?'

Nie Huaisang said, 'I think I saw it...'

Hearing him stammer and hedge, Lan Xichen said, 'Think again, carefully.'

Nie Huaisang said, 'When you ask me like that, I can't be sure anymore... it really was only that it seemed...'

Lan Xichen said, 'No seemed! Was there or wasn't there!'

Nie Huaisang said, in distress, '...I don't know. I really don't know!'

Pressed too hard, Nie Huaisang could only repeat that one line. Lan Xichen buried his forehead in his hands, looking as though his head would split, and would say no more.

Suddenly Wei Wuxian said, 'Huaisang-xiong.'

Nie Huaisang said, 'Hm?'

Wei Wuxian said, 'Just now—how did Su She wound you?'

Nie Huaisang said, 'He was carrying sange on his back—carrying Sect Leader Jin as he fled, and I blocked his way, so he...'

Wei Wuxian said, 'Is that so? As I recall, the spot you were standing in didn't block the direction of their flight at all.'

Nie Huaisang said, 'Surely you're not saying I threw myself onto the blade on purpose?'

Wei Wuxian smiled and said, 'I didn't say that.'

Nie Huaisang said, 'Then what is it Wei-xiong means to say?'

Wei Wuxian said, 'I've only just strung a few things together.'

Nie Huaisang said, 'What things?'

Wei Wuxian said, 'Jin Guangyao said someone sent him a letter, threatening that in seven days they would tell the world everything he had done. Suppose, first, that he wasn't lying—that he spoke the truth. Then this person was simply going to needless trouble.'

He said, 'If you mean to expose a man's crimes, why not just expose them? Why go out of your way to notify the man himself: I hold the proof of your guilt?'

Nie Huaisang said, 'Didn't sange—didn't Sect Leader Jin say this person wanted him to take his own life in atonement?'

Wei Wuxian said, 'Wake up. Even a fool could tell Jin Guangyao would never choose to die in atonement—what would be the point? It looks pointless. But would a man who could dig up these long-buried secrets of Jin Guangyao's really make a wasted move? Such needless trouble must have had a purpose—to bring some matter about, to hatch some particular thing.'

Lan Xichen said, dazed, 'Hatch? What thing?'

Lan Wangji said in a low voice, 'Jin Guangyao's killing intent.'

On any ordinary day Zewu-jun could hardly have failed to reach this step himself, but at present he likely had no leisure of mind left to think it through.

Wei Wuxian said, 'Just so. It was this very letter that hatched Jin Guangyao's killing intent to a height never seen before. In seven days he was to await his death, was he? Then he would strike first and seize the advantage—within those seven days he would wipe out the assembled might of the Hundred Cultivation Clans at the Burial Mounds in a single pot, and see who died first.'

Lan Xichen said, 'You mean this is what the letter-sender was after? Only to spur him into acting?'

Wei Wuxian said, 'That's how I see it.'

Lan Xichen shook his head and said, '...Then what on earth did this letter-sender want? To expose Jin Guangyao, or to drown the Hundred Cultivation Clans in blood?'

Wei Wuxian said, 'Simple. Look at what happened after this siege failed. When everyone had gathered at Lotus Pier, at the very height of the general fury, in came Sisi and Bicao—I don't believe the arrival of those two witnesses was coincidence. And so everything piled up together and erupted all at once.'

Wei Wuxian paused, then said, 'What he wanted was not only Jin Guangyao's ruin and disgrace; he wanted to set Jin Guangyao against the whole world. And in a single fatal stroke—with absolutely no room for reversal.'

Nie Huaisang said, 'It sounds as though this person had been laying his plans from very early on.'

Wei Wuxian looked at him and suddenly said, 'By the way—wasn't the Chifeng-zun's body in Sect Leader Nie's keeping?'

Nie Huaisang said, 'It was in my keeping at first. But only tonight I had word that my dage's body, kept in Qinghe Town, had vanished without a trace. Why else would I be rushing toward Qinghe Town in such haste, only to be seized along the way by Su She...'

Wei Wuxian said again, 'Sect Leader Nie, I hear you often make trips to the Gusu Lan Clan and the Lanling Jin Clan—is that so?'

Nie Huaisang said, 'It is.'

Wei Wuxian said, 'Then do you really not know Mo Xuanyu?'

Nie Huaisang said, 'Hm?'

Wei Wuxian said, 'As I recall, the first time we came face to face after the sacrifice succeeded, you looked as though you didn't know me at all—you even asked Hanguang-jun who I was. Mo Xuanyu, back in the day, did at least pester Jin Guangyao; he was even allowed to read the manuscripts Jin Guangyao kept, and you, too, often went to Sect Leader Jin to pour out your troubles. Even if you and Mo Xuanyu weren't close, did you truly never once lay eyes on him?'

Nie Huaisang scratched at his hair and said, 'Wei-xiong, Koi Tower is so vast—I can't have met every single person there, and even those I met I couldn't possibly remember. Besides...' He looked a little awkward as he went on, 'You know what sort of standing Mo Xuanyu had—a bit... the Lanling Jin Clan kept all of that tucked away and hidden as best they could, so it's no wonder I never saw him. Xichen-ge needn't have seen him either.'

Wei Wuxian said, 'Oh—true enough. Zewu-jun doesn't know Mo Xuanyu either.'

Nie Huaisang said, 'Right? And I don't quite understand—even if I had met Mo Xuanyu, why would I deliberately pretend not to know him? What need would there be?'

Wei Wuxian smiled and said, 'It's nothing. It only struck me as odd, so I asked offhand.'

But in his heart he thought: 'To test, of course, whether this “Mo Xuanyu” was truly the real Mo Xuanyu.'

A Mo Xuanyu whom everyone called timid and faint-hearted—where would he have found the courage to kill himself and offer up his body?

And that left hand of the Chifeng-zun's—why had it been cast out? Could Jin Guangyao really have let it loose through some careless oversight?

And why had it appeared precisely at Mo Village, where the sacrifice was made, falling straight into the path of the just-reborn Wei Wuxian, rather than turning up anywhere else?

The Chifeng-zun's body had been laid to rest by the Qinghe Nie Sect; had Nie Huaisang, who had always revered his dage, truly noticed nothing all these years of the body being switched out?

Wei Wuxian leaned rather toward believing in a state of affairs like this.

Perhaps, before Nie Mingjue's death, Nie Huaisang had genuinely known nothing of any of it. But after Nie Mingjue died, he came to know everything—including that Nie Mingjue's body had been swapped, including the true face of that sange he had once trusted.

He set out to find his dage's body, and yet, over several years and no end of pains, he turned up only a single left hand.

He was stuck at this step, with no guidance toward the next. And this left hand was fierce beyond measure, hard to subdue, and to keep it by him would only stir up calamity of blood again and again. So he thought of a person—one most skilled at handling such things, at solving such problems.

The Yiling Patriarch.

But the Yiling Patriarch had already been torn to ten thousand pieces—what was to be done about that?

So he thought of yet another person: Mo Xuanyu, driven down from Koi Tower.

Perhaps, to draw words out of Mo Xuanyu, Nie Huaisang had once talked with him and learned, from the embittered Mo Xuanyu's own mouth, that he had read a tattered fragment of a forbidden-art scroll of Jin Guangyao's, one that set down a certain ancient and evil art. And so he egged on Mo Xuanyu, then suffering no end of abuse from his own clansmen, to take his revenge with the Sacrificial Body Forbidden Art.

And which Fierce Ghost to summon?

The Yiling Patriarch, of course, once again.

Mo Xuanyu, who could bear that life no longer, at last set the blood array working, and Nie Huaisang seized the chance to toss out the scalding hot potato he could barely keep hold of any longer: the Chifeng-zun's left hand.

From then on the plan was set successfully in motion; he no longer had to spend his own toil and care searching for Nie Mingjue's remaining limbs, but handed all the dangerous, troublesome business over to Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. He need only keep close watch on their movements.

That time when the younger ones—Jin Ling, Lan Sizhui, Lan Jingyi and the rest—met the strange business of the slain cats along their road: plainly someone had deliberately conjured the uncanny sight, and together with that “hunter” in the nearby village who pointed their way and did not in fact exist, there was no doubt the aim was to lure this band of worldly-innocent clan scions into Yi City. Consider: had Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji slipped even once back then and failed to keep them whole and unharmed, had any mishap befallen these clan scions in Yi City, that debt too would most likely have been laid at Jin Guangyao's door today.

In short, the more chips to convict Jin Guangyao the better; the more errors this cautious villain could be lured into committing, the more handles he could be made to leave behind, the better; and the more wretchedly he died in the end, the better.

Lan Wangji turned over the Black Box beside the coffin with the tip of Bichen, glanced at the incantation carved upon it, and said to Wei Wuxian, 'The head.'

This box must originally have been used to hold Nie Mingjue's head. After Jin Guangyao moved the head away from Koi Tower, he had most likely buried it here.

Wei Wuxian nodded to him and said, 'Sect Leader Nie, do you know what was originally kept in this coffin?'

Nie Huaisang said, 'How would I know that? Still, from the look of sange—ah, no, Sect Leader Jin—it must have been something very important to him.'