Chapter 89: Loyal Heart, Part Nineteen — 11

It was a long moment before Jiang Cheng, still dazed, found his voice and shouted, 'What nonsense are you spouting?!'

Wen Ning said, with what looked like composure, 'It is not nonsense.'

Jiang Cheng said, 'You shut your mouth! My Golden Core — my Golden Core is —'

Wen Ning said, 'Was restored for you by Baoshan Sanren.'

Jiang Cheng said, 'How would you know that? He told even you of this?'

Wen Ning said, 'No. Young Master Wei never breathed so much as a syllable of it to anyone. I saw it with my own eyes.'

Bloodshot threads webbed Jiang Cheng's eyes, and he laughed. 'Lies! You were there? How could you possibly have been there! Only I went up that mountain that day. There is no way you could have followed me!'

Wen Ning said, 'I did not follow you. I was already on that mountain from the start.'

The veins stood out blue at Jiang Cheng's temple. '...Lies!'

Wen Ning said, 'Then hear whether I am lying. When you climbed the mountain there was a strip of black cloth bound over your eyes, and a long branch in your hand; near the summit you passed through a forest of standing stones, and it took you the better part of an hour to wind your way clear of them.'

The muscles of Jiang Cheng's face twitched faintly, and Wen Ning went on, 'Then you heard a bell, and the sound of it startled a whole flock of birds into flight. You gripped the branch tight in your hand, the way one grips a sword. When the bell fell silent, a blade was set against your heart, and you heard a woman's voice command you to come no farther.'

Jiang Cheng began to tremble from head to foot, and Wen Ning raised his voice. 'You stopped where you stood at once, looking very tense, and beneath it, faintly, something like excitement. This woman's voice was pitched very low; she asked who you were, and how you had found your way to that place. And you answered —'

Jiang Cheng roared, 'Shut up!'

Wen Ning roared back, '— you answered that you were the son of Cangse Sanren, Wei Ying! You spoke of your house brought to ruin, of the great upheaval at Lotus Pier, and you spoke of how Wen Zhuliu of the Core-Melting Hand had melted away your Golden Core. The woman asked you, again and again, certain questions about your father and mother, and just as you reached the last of them, all at once a fragrance reached you, and you lost consciousness —'

Jiang Cheng looked as though he longed to clap his hands over his own ears. 'How do you know this? How could you possibly know!'

Wen Ning said, 'Did I not already say it? I was right there. And not only I — Young Master Wei was there too. And not only he and I; my sister, Wen Qing, was there as well. Or rather, on that whole mountain there were only the three of us, waiting for you.'

'Sect Leader Jiang, did you truly believe that was some — some hidden retreat of Baoshan Sanren? Young Master Wei himself had no idea where to even begin looking for such a place. His mother, Cangse Sanren, never let slip a single word of her teacher's house to a child so small! That mountain was nothing more than a barren hill in Yiling!'

Jiang Cheng repeated the same words over and over with all the strength left to him, as though to mask his sudden poverty of speech behind sheer ferocity. 'Nonsense! Enough of this, damn it! Then why was my Golden Core restored?!'

Wen Ning said, 'Your Golden Core was never restored at all — Wen Zhuliu melted it away utterly long ago! The reason you believed it restored is that my sister, Wen Qing, the finest physician of the Qishan Wen Clan, cut Young Master Wei's Golden Core from his body and gave it over to you!'

For an instant Jiang Cheng's face went blank. 'Gave it over to me?'

Wen Ning said, 'That is right! Why do you think he never used Suibian again afterward, why he always travelled without a sword at his side? Was it truly some reckless pride of youth? Do you imagine he liked having people point at him, openly and behind his back, and prod at his spine, calling him discourteous and ill-bred? It was because even if he carried it, it was of no use! Only because… if he had worn his sword to those banquets and Night Hunt gatherings, there would always have been someone who, on one pretext or another, wished to cross blades with him and test his skill, and with his Golden Core gone and his Spiritual Power failing him, the moment he drew the sword he could not have held out for long at all…'

Jiang Cheng stood rooted where he was, his gaze gone green, his lips quivering, forgetting even to call on Zidian, and then all at once he flung Suibian aside and struck a palm hard into Wen Ning's chest. 'Lies!' he bellowed.

Wen Ning took the blow, fell back two steps, picked Suibian up from the ground, slid it home into its sheath, and pressed it back against Jiang Cheng's chest. 'Take it!'

In spite of himself Jiang Cheng caught the sword, but he did not move; instead he looked, lost and rudderless, toward where Wei Wuxian lay. Better had he not looked, for at one glance the sight of Wei Wuxian — face ghostly pale, a smear of blood still at the corner of his mouth, all of him gone limp — struck his heart like a hammer-blow, and Lan Wangji's gaze chilled him to the bone besides, as though he had plunged into a pit of ice.

Wen Ning said, 'Take this sword. Go to the banquet hall, go to the Training Ground, go anywhere you please, and have every single person you meet try to draw it. See for yourself whether there is anyone, anyone at all, who can pull it free! Then you will know whether I have lied! Sect Leader Jiang — you, a man so set on winning, who has spent his whole life measuring himself against others — do you understand that there was one you could never have surpassed?'

Jiang Cheng kicked Wen Ning square in the body and, gripping Suibian, went stumbling and staggering off toward the banquet hall.

He ran and roared as he ran, the whole of him near to madness. Wen Ning, kicked into a tree in the courtyard, rose slowly and turned at once to look at the other two. Lan Wangji's lovely face was bloodless now, his expression cold past all measure; he glanced once more at the Yunmeng Jiang Clan Ancestral Hall, hitched Wei Wuxian's body higher on his back until it was secure, and walked off in the opposite direction without once turning his head.

Wen Ning said, 'La — Lan-gongzi, where, where are you going?'

Lan Wangji's figure paused at the foot of the steps. 'A moment ago, he asked me to take him away.'

Wen Ning hurried after him, and the two passed out through the great gate of Lotus Pier together.

At the wharf they found that the great fleet of boats, large and small, that had carried everyone here had each gone its own way home once its passengers were set down, and only a few unattended old ferry-boats remained before the dock. The ferries were long and slender, shaped like willow leaves, able to carry seven or eight, their two ends turned up a little, two oars laid aslant across the stern. With Wei Wuxian on his back, Lan Wangji stepped aboard without hesitation. Wen Ning sprang quickly to the stern, took up an oar of his own accord, gave two strokes, and the ferry drifted out smoothly several yards. Before long it slipped away from the wharf along the current and drew toward the heart of the river.

Lan Wangji let Wei Wuxian lean against him, first feeding him two pills and making sure he had swallowed them well down, and only then drew out a handkerchief and slowly wiped the blood from his face.

All at once Wen Ning's anxious voice came from behind. 'La — Lan-gongzi.'

Lan Wangji said, 'What is it.'

The hard edge Wen Ning had carried before Jiang Cheng had long since vanished without a trace; he steeled himself and said, 'Please — please do not tell Young Master Wei, for now, that I let out the matter of his core being cut from him. He warned me very sternly that I must never speak of it. I know it likely cannot be kept hidden long, but I...'

After a silent moment, Lan Wangji said, 'Set your mind at ease.'

Wen Ning seemed to let out a breath of relief, though the dead have no breath to let out. Earnestly he said, 'Lan-gongzi, thank you.'

Lan Wangji shook his head, and Wen Ning said, 'Thank you for speaking up for my sister and me at Koi Tower, all those years ago. I have never forgotten it. Later I lost control of myself, and I... I am truly sorry.'

Lan Wangji made no answer. Wen Ning went on, 'And thank you, even more, for looking after A-Yuan all these years.'

At that, Lan Wangji's eyes lifted a fraction. Wen Ning said, 'I thought every last one of our people was dead, not one left alive. I truly never imagined A-Yuan could still be living. He looks so very like my elder cousin did, in his twenties.'

Lan Wangji said, 'He hid too long inside the hollow of a tree. He took a high fever, and fell ill for a time.'

Wen Ning nodded. 'I knew it must have been illness. He remembers nothing of his childhood. We talked a long while, and he spoke of you the whole time.' A little forlornly he added, 'In the old days it was Young Master Wei he would speak of... never once, at any rate, of me.'

Lan Wangji said, 'You did not tell him.'

Wen Ning said, 'You mean of where he comes from? No, I did not tell him.'

He turned around, his back to the two behind him, and as he rowed hard he said, 'He has a good life now. To know too much of other things, to call back some of what is too heavy to bear... it would only leave him less well off than he is.'

Lan Wangji said, 'Sooner or later he must know.'

Wen Ning was startled a moment, then said, 'Yes. Sooner or later he must know.' He looked up at the sky and said, 'Just as with Young Master Wei and Sect Leader Jiang. The matter of the core — sooner or later Sect Leader Jiang was bound to know. He could not have hidden it from Sect Leader Jiang a whole lifetime, after all.'

The night lay still, the river running deep and heavy.

All at once Lan Wangji said, 'Did it hurt.'

Wen Ning said, 'What?'

Lan Wangji said, 'The cutting out of the core. Did it hurt.'

Wen Ning said, 'If I told you it did not, Lan-gongzi, you would not believe me.'

Lan Wangji said, 'I thought Wen Qing would have some way.'

Wen Ning said, 'Before we went up the mountain, my sister prepared a great many anesthetic drugs, hoping to ease the pain of cutting out the core. But she came to find they were of no use at all. Because if the body is in a numbed state while the Golden Core is cut free and parted from it, the core itself is affected too, and there is no telling whether it will scatter, or when.'

Lan Wangji said, '...And so?'

Wen Ning's hands faltered at the oar. 'And so the one whose core is being cut out must be fully awake.'

Awake throughout, to see the Golden Core that joins with the Spiritual Meridians peeled away from the body, to feel the surging Spiritual Power settle by degrees into calm, into stillness, into nothing at all. Until it became a pool of dead water that would never stir to a ripple again.

It was a long while before Lan Wangji's voice rose at last, faintly hoarse, the first two words seeming to tremble. 'Awake the whole time?'

Wen Ning said, 'Two nights and a day. Awake the whole time.'

Lan Wangji said, 'At the time, how sure were you of success.'

Wen Ning said, 'About half.'

'Half.' Drawing a deep breath without a sound, Lan Wangji shook his head and repeated, '...Half.'

He tightened the hand that held Wei Wuxian close, the knuckles already gone white. Wen Ning said, 'After all, no one had ever truly performed this Golden Core Transfer Technique before. My sister had once written a treatise on the transferring of cores, but it was only conjecture; there was no one she could try it upon, and so the conjecture stayed conjecture, and the elders all called her notions wild fancy. And it was utterly impractical — everyone knows there could never be a person willing to have his own Golden Core cut out and given to another. For to do so is to become, in effect, a cripple who can never reach the summit, suspended forever between high and low. So when Young Master Wei came back to us, my sister at first refused outright, warning him that an essay was an essay and the doing of it another thing entirely, and that she had less than even odds.'

'But Young Master Wei would not let go, clung and pressed and would not give up. He said half was good enough, an even chance was an even chance. Even if it failed, with his core ruined he need not fear being left with no road to walk — but a man like Sect Leader Jiang could not bear it. He was too set on winning, too caught up in the gains and losses of such things; his cultivation was his very life. If Sect Leader Jiang were left an ordinary man, suspended between high and low, his whole life would be finished.'

Lan Wangji lowered his lashes, his eyes pale and clear as glaze fixed on Wei Wuxian's face, and put out a hand. In the end he only brushed, with the very tips of his fingers, a stroke too slight to be seen, along one of Wei Wuxian's cheeks.

Wen Ning glanced back, and could not help saying, 'Lan-gongzi, you do not seem very surprised. Did you... did you know of this too?'

'...' Lan Wangji said, his voice gone dry, 'I knew only that his Spiritual Power was damaged in some strange way.'

He had not known the truth ran so deep as this.

Wen Ning said, 'If it had not been for this...'

If only there had truly been any other road to walk.

Just then the head tilted against Lan Wangji's shoulder stirred faintly. Wei Wuxian's lashes trembled, and slowly, slowly, he came awake.