Chapter Text
Jiang Cheng was seated at his desk in his office, dealing with the usual stack of paperwork that came with being the Sect Leader of Yunmeng Jiang, when a knock came at the door. Without so much as pausing, he called for them to enter. There were only a select few people who dared to interrupt him, one of them being Jin Ling. And seeing as he was currently at Koi Tower, running his own sect, he thought it safe to say that it wasn’t him. Although, it wouldn’t be the first time his nephew had abandoned his own sect to make a surprise visit.
First Disciple Jiang Guo entered, and crossing the distance between them, bowed his head in respect to his sect leader. He was a tall, strapping man in his late thirties, dressed impeccably in the colors of his sect. All in all, Jiang Cheng had little to complain about the man. Unlike most of the rest of the disciples, Jiang Guo had been serving Yunmeng Jiang since the days before Lotus Pier fell to the Wen’s, having been off visiting family to the south. He had been one of the first to join him when he set to rebuilding and had been with him every step of the way since.
“What is it?” Jiang Cheng asked, sparing his first disciple a quick glance. He immediately noted the tenseness of his shoulders as well as the stiff set in his jaw. Neither of those were good signs. “Spit it out.”
The first disciple cleared his throat. “Sect Leader Yu has arrived to seek an audience with you.”
Jiang Cheng froze in his movements, brush hovering inches over the papers on his desk for an extended moment before he set it aside. “I will meet with her in the throne room,” he instructed as he stood from his desk and started past him. “You are dismissed.”
Jiang Guo nodded his head. “As you wish, Jiang Zongzhu.”
Stepping out of his office, he strode towards the throne room with determined yet even steps, not allowing his growing panic to reveal itself. This wasn't the first time his grandmother had come to seek an audience with him. She never stayed long, nor did she ever come merely to visit him. There was always a reason, and he had his suspicions he knew what that reason was.
He arrived to find his grandmother already there, waiting for him. The spiders were nowhere in sight, but regardless he knew they were there. Taking a deep breath, he stepped forward to greet her, bowing his respect before taking his seat upon the Lotus Throne. Upon the throne that was his birthright. The throne that she had once contested his claim to.
“I assume all is going well in Yunmeng Jiang?” she inquired.
“As if I'd have it any other way.”
Yu Meiying hummed her agreement. “Your mother trained you well. It's a shame you have chosen to disrespect her so.”
Jiang Cheng had to fight back the urge to roll his eyes at her, choosing not to answer as he knew it wasn’t necessary for him to do so.
“Here you are, thirty-seven years old, and yet you refuse to perform the most basic and crucial role of a sect leader by marrying and providing the sect with an heir.”
It was nothing he hadn't heard numerous times before, and yet her words never failed to stoke his anger and further fuel his insecurities. “I've told you before, I'll get married when I'm ready.”
She scoffed at that. “And when will that be? In another forty years from now when you're old and sterile? Don't think that I haven't noticed how you sabotaged all courtship attempts that were presented to you. You shoved one of the young women into the lake, for God's sake!”
The date in question had taken place when Jin Ling was eight. Needless to say, his actions had ensured that he was blacklisted from all matchmakers in the surrounding sects.
“She demanded that I send Jin Ling away to make room for her!” he retorted, rising to his full height to meet her gaze straight on.
“As she had the right to do,” Sect Leader Yu insisted. “Jin Rulan holds no claim to the Lotus Throne, and should never have grown up here in the first place!”
Zidian sparked in his hand, a sure sign of its master’s waning temper. There were admittedly a lot of things that could succeed in setting off Jiang Cheng's anger, but none more than when someone insulted his nephew.
“Say that again and I will throw you out!”
“You wouldn't dare.” Unfortunately, Yu Meiying, having a temper of her own, had never been fazed by his threats.
Seeing that things were getting nowhere the way they were going, Jiang Cheng started to stalk off with the intention of cooling himself down. However, he stopped short when he felt his whole body lock up, a silent spell washing over him and rendering him trapped. And though he fought against it with all his strength, the spell was too much for him. Not for the first time in his life, he was completely at another person’s mercy. And he hated the feeling of it with an undying passion.
“Let me go!”
“I'm afraid I can't let you leave yet, grandson,”she said as she came up to stand before him once more. “Not until I accomplish what I came here to do.”
“What do you want from me?” he ground out. Thankfully his ability to speak hadn't been taken from him.
“I have tried to be reasonable with you, Jiang Wanyin. I have tried to be patient with you all these years, but you've forced my hand. I refuse to let our bloodline die just because you're afraid. You refuse to give Yunmeng Jiang an heir by conventional methods, so I have no choice but to resort to using my magic.”
Jiang Cheng felt an unnatural cold sink into his skin and pierce his bones. It was a well known fact that Sect Leader Yu was a practitioner of powerful magic. It wasn't Demonic Cultivation, but it wasn't natural either. Her abilities were said to be twisted and monstrous. That she had once lashed out at her own husband and transformed him into an actual rat, which she then fed to her pet cat.
He himself had never known whether said rumor was true. Then again, he had never known his grandfather, so perhaps it was. Either way, it didn’t fare well for him. There was no doubt in his mind that she could literally do anything to him.
The sound of her footsteps echoed in his ears as she started towards him, crossing the few steps that stood between them. Raising a hand, she reached out to take his face into her hands, forcing him to meet her cold gaze that was so much like his mother’s that it gave him goosebumps.
“You will give this sect an heir,” she ordered. “If not through a wife, then I will have you bear an heir yourself.
“After all, isn’t it the motto of this sect to ‘attempt the impossible’?”
Jiang Cheng barely had time to comprehend the full meaning of what she had said before he felt his grandmother’s magic begin to stir, winding its way around his body like tendrils meaning to ensnare their prey. Unable to move, he could only scream, hoping that someone would hear him, be it his guards or even his disciples, and come save him. The fact that no one had burst in on them yet, seemed to insinuate that Yu Meiying might have taken precautionary measures to ensure they remained undisturbed.
No matter how loud he yelled, no one would come to his aid…
Retracting her hands from their grip on his face, she trailed them down to his stomach, pressing them firmly against the cloth of his robe there as she poured out her magic into him. He could feel the reaction in an instant, the core pulsing violently inside him as it tried in vain to fight against the onslaught. In the end, even Wei Wuxian’s strong core was unable to stand up to her and eventually bent to her will.
A sharp shot of pain pierced through him, causing him to scream out in pain instead of terror. He could feel his insides being twisted around, pushing at his organs from all directions. It felt like his insides were on fire, begging to be put out. He briefly wondered if this was how Wei Wuxian had felt when he had his own core surgically removed? Had he been screaming in pain the same as him, hot tears streaking down his face as he begged for it to stop.
No, he reminded himself. This was not at all the same circumstance. Wei Wuxian had chosen to undergo that procedure, and had trusted Wen Qing and Wen Ning enough to take care of him. Jiang Cheng didn't have the choice. He had never had the choice. Throughout his entire life, people had always been making choices for him without his consent. And he had to wonder if it would ever stop. If he would ever be able to trust anyone not to betray him again.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the pain began to subside, the flames inside him seeming to die down. With a satisfied look, Yu Meiying retracted her hand fully away from him, taking a step back as she released him from her control.
Jiang Cheng crumpled to the floor in a heap, his body left feeling numb in the wake of the barely lingering pain. “W-What did you do to me?” he asked, his voice hoarse from screaming and gasping to catch his breath.
“I merely altered your anatomy to allow you to carry an heir yourself,” she stated as if it was nothing of consequence. “Of course, even I am not powerful enough to be able to create a child out of nothing but magic alone.”
He pressed a hand to his abdomen, flinching at the tenderness of the mere contact. Reaching out with his qi, he searched within himself to see if what she claimed was true. His finding left him both horrified and astonished. From what he could see, his organs truly had been rearranged, a new organ forming in the space left behind. He couldn't tell what it was for certain, as he was hardly an expert in the field of medicine, but still.
“Also, because I don't trust you to actually go out and perform the act of creating a child, I have cast a spell that will ensure an heir regardless.”
“What do you mean!?”
“I would be careful who I come into contact with if I were you. The first person who touches you skin to skin will trigger the spell, thus causing you to conceive.”
Then, without further delay, she turned and swept out of the room, leaving a wide-eyed and trembling Jiang Cheng in her wake.
Jiang Guo found him about an hour later, and upon seeing the rumpled state of him, immediately rushed forward to help. He had just crouched down in front of his sect leader and started to reach out a hand towards him when Jiang Cheng came to attention, his grandmother’s parting words echoing in his ears as he flinched away from him.
“Don’t touch me!” he snapped, his body still trembling uncontrollably even as he sought to distance himself from his first disciple.
Jiang Guo furrowed a brow in confusion, but fortunately listened and pulled his hand back. Instead he took to searching his sect leader, thoroughly examining him for any sign of physical harm. That’s when he saw it, his eyes going wide with alarm. “Jiang Zongzhu, you’re bleeding!”
Blinking, Jiang Cheng glanced down at himself to find a puddle of blood had formed at his legs. He was confused by this at first, as he couldn’t remember receiving any wounds from the ordeal. Then he moved his legs and realized that the blood was dripping through the fabric of his pants. Once again he remembered his grandmother’s words, as well as the proof of what she had done he sensed inside of himself.
“Fetch the healer and bring her here!” he began to bark out panicked orders. “And close the doors behind you when you leave! No one else is allowed to see me like this!”
Jiang Guo hesitated for a moment before nodding his head and scrambling out of the room to do as he was told.
“It is indeed as you suspected,” Ren Zhihui confirmed, reaching out with carefully gloved hands to pull her patient’s robes back into place. She had managed to help him over to the lotus throne for the examination, without touching any of his skin on his express orders. “Not only do you now possess a womb, but also a birth canal to go along with it.”
Jiang Cheng felt his heart sink in his chest. Deep down he had already known that was the case, that his grandmother truly had cursed him in the way she claimed she had. Still, he had clung to the foolish hope that perhaps she had been lying, that she had merely tricked him into thinking she had. He should have known better. Of all the things he knew his grandmother to be, a liar was unfortunately not one of them.
Jiang Guo, who had stood off to the side, averting his gaze while the elderly physician performed her examination, turned once more to face them. “Is there any way to reverse it?”
Ren Zhihui shook her head, casting a regretful look to their sect leader. “I’m afraid to say that this is likely something you will have to learn to live with.”
Jiang Cheng said nothing as he adjusted his robes to make sure they were once more fully covering him. The bleeding had thankfully since stopped, and the pain dulled to a more manageable ache.
“What about the spell?” Jiang Guo asked. “Is there any way to break it?”
“I admit, my knowledge of such magic is lacking, particularly that of Sect Leader Yu’s. I’ve never encountered anything quite like it. However, I doubt she would tell us even if there were.”
Of course she wouldn’t, Jiang Cheng thought to himself. His grandmother was calculated in all of her actions, rarely leaving room for error. He wouldn’t be surprised if she had specifically made it so that it could not be undone by anyone else. Still, he was desperate.
“Send out a team of our best spiders to track down any and all such magic practitioners they can find and bring them back to me,” he turned to his first disciple.
Jiang Guo bowed his head and went at once to do so.
If there was anyone who could find such a magician and convince them to help him, it was his spiders. They were a group of highly skilled spies and assassins coming from various backgrounds, having sworn their allegiance to Yunmeng Jiang on pain of death. They were a secretive group who kept mostly to the shadows. Most of the other sects didn’t even know that they existed. Lanling Jin was the only one who did, and that was only because he had sent a group of them there with the order of protecting Jin Ling at all costs.
Moments passed in an uneasy silence between the two remaining, as the sect’s physician got to work discarding her blood-stained gloves as well as the blood-stained strips of cloth she had used to clean him up with. “What do you intend to do if you can’t find a way to break the spell?”
He clenched his jaw, doing his best not to give in totally to despair even though he already feared such an outcome. “I’ll do what I do best and keep everyone at arm’s reach.”
She raised a brow at him. “Even your own nephew?”
He found himself faltering at the mention of Jin Ling. He hadn’t stopped to consider what that would mean for his relationship with his nephew going forward, or if the spell even applied to him. As much as he would have liked to think that his grandmother wasn’t that twisted, he knew that he couldn’t. Yu Meiying had always been ruthless, even more so than his mother. She didn’t care for such seemingly minor details. As long as her will was achieved, that was all that mattered.
“You should let him know at the very least.”
“Absolutely not!” Jiang Cheng shot her a warning glare.
Jin Ling was the one person who could never be allowed to find out the truth of what had happened to him, even if it pained him deeply to have to hide it from him. His nephew, whom he had raised as his own son. His nephew, who had been the sole light in his life for so many years. The only family he had left who actually loved him and had never betrayed him.
It would be difficult for him to push Jin Ling away, but he knew he had to do so. Jin Ling no longer needed him anyway. He was all grown up, a sect leader of his own right, with a reliable group of friends and advisors to support him. And he had Wei Wuxian. The spiders he had sent with Jin Ling had reported back to him that his nephew had been going out on quite a few night hunts with Wei Wuxian and his friends in the last year. They had apparently been getting along quite well.
It bothered Jiang Cheng to no end, but there was nothing he could do about it. If Jin Ling wanted to have a relationship with his former shixiong, then that was his choice. He wouldn’t get in the way. Not unless he thought Wei Wuxian was a danger to him. He’d do anything to keep his nephew safe.