Chapter Text
They had ordered for his death.
Between the empty and hollow ache in him from his melted golden core and the lingering stinging from the lashes of the discipline whip, perhaps death would be mercy. Perhaps death would be a reprieve.
Of course, they were not going to let him go so easily. He bit down on his gums until they hurt as Wen Chao struck him, again and again, with the discipline whip once more. But he refused to make a sound. If this was to be his death, he would die with dignity- in this place, the halls of his forefathers, departing this world where his parents and his clan had fallen.
When he closed his eyes as the pain gave way to oblivion, he did not expect to open them again.
But he did.
He gasped awake, and could not shake the sudden feeling that something had gone very wrong.
“Jiang-gongzi?” Wen Qing murmured, standing over him with a long sharp needle in hand. The only time he had seen her here was briefly, when he had first been taken. She was a healer, after all, and there had been no reason to heal a prisoner.
“Wen Qing-guniang,” Jiang Cheng breathed, and froze.
Because the voice that came out was not the low timbre he had been accustomed to, but instead a high-pitched whisper.
“What-“ he said, and it came out breathily again; this time it was unmistakeable, it was definitely a woman’s voice, so-
“You died,” Wen Qing said bluntly, one hand gripping the needle and the other hand holding him down on his shoulder. “The body you are in now belonged to Wang Lingjiao.”
Just the mention of that name sent a shudder through Jiang Cheng’s body. But it was not his body anymore, was it? Because it was the body of the woman he hated the most in the world- Wang Lingjiao, the woman who got his whole family killed, took everything Jiang Cheng had known and loved and turned it to dust.
Jiang Cheng felt sick. He wanted to throw up.
Wen Qing let go of his shoulder and said nothing as he tipped his head over to the side and started to vomit all over the ground.
Light-headed, he could see it now- the too-slender wrists that he now controlled, and the long wavy hair that spilled over his shoulders, so different from his own straight hair. And he could feel the difference in anatomy too, something missing and something gained-
He heaved more violently as he threw up again. This time, Wen Qing manage to slide over a bucket in time as he threw up what was probably Wang Lingjiao’s previous meals.
“Why did you do this?” he asked hoarsely, lifting his head up to look at Wen Qing. He had been taller than her back then, would he now be shorter if he tried to stand up?
“It was a mercy,” Wen Qing answered, “You were dying out. Wang Lingjiao was dying, too, from her injuries sustained during the fight at Lotus Pier. They wanted me to transplant your organs to save her. There had been some theoretical texts, on how to also transfer spiritual cognition and consciousness-“
“So you transplanted me as well,” Jiang Cheng finished, his eyes widening in horror. “ What have you done ?” he hissed, “Why did you do this? You should have just let me die. This is not a mercy, this is- This is wrong. Let me out.” Jiang Cheng tried to push himself up, into a seated position, but his arms felt too frail and too weak. “Send me back. Please. I don’t care if I die. Just-Just kill me!” he begged, blindly reaching for Wen Qing’s wrist and gripping on to it desperately.
“Quiet,” Wen Qing hissed, her eyes darting to the door worriedly. As she turned back to look at him, her gaze softened slightly, in a bit of apology. “I’m sorry. I just- I wanted to give you another chance, Jiang-gongzi.”
“My life or death doesn’t matter. My whole family is dead and my clan is gone. My core had also been melted. What purpose do I have left?”
“Wei Wuxian and Jiang Yanli still live,” Wen Qing murmured.
At the mention of his siblings’ names, he stared up at her.
“They still cannot be found, but I’m certain they still live. I would know if they had been captured,” Wen Qing continued, giving him a meaningful look. “Wang Lingjiao’s mind had already been mostly gone. Perhaps I could have brought it back, perhaps I couldn’t have. But I wanted to save you, Jiang Wanyin. You can call it a momentary weakness out of old ties, or whatever else you wish to. But whatever you do, know that you now hold both our fates in balance. You can go and tell Wen Chao what I’ve done, and we will both die painfully. Or you can take this chance to live, and you may yet see your siblings again.”
Jiang Cheng gaped back at her. “You’re crazy,” he said, and immediately hated how his voice came out as Wang Lingjiao’s, “And how could I- How could I face my siblings with this face? With this body? You know what she did, you know how she caused Lotus Pier to-“
“I know,” Wen Qing said, her lips pressed together. “But is it not good enough to be able to see them again? Or even protect them from afar? I know that I would do anything to protect my brother. I thought that Jiang-gongzi had been the same.”
That was an argument he could not beat.
“Wang Lingjiao holds some power here, like it or not,” Wen Qing said quietly. “Wen Chao does not listen to my counsel, but he may yet listen to yours. Wen Ning tells me that your siblings are likely hiding out near Yiling. I can tell them that Wang Lingjiao is dead and sneak you out, or you can stay and do what you can to thwart them.”
“You’re a Wen,” Jiang Cheng blurted, “Why would you help me against your Sect?”
Wen Qing smiled bitterly. “They hold my brother hostage to control me,” she said, “Every day that my uncle remains in power is another day Wen Ning is in danger. And you are a good man, Jiang Wanyin. Maybe I just did not want to see you gone.”
“Jiang Wanyin was dead the moment his body turned to ashes,” Jiang Cheng said, “This is not a real existence. This is a twisted one, a broken one-“
Wen Qing swallowed. With a quiet sigh, she said, handing him the needle she had been holding, “You have been trained in sword fighting. You know which artery will kill you.”
Jiang Cheng did.
He knew, as he stared at the needle, that with one slice he could depart this plane and go to the next.
It was so simple. The chance was right in his hands.
When he had woken up, in this wrong body, that was all he had wanted, to be free of the twisted confines of this body.
But as he could hear his breaths, each syncing up with the slow beating of his borrowed heart, he suddenly was struck with a desire to live.
He closed his eyes as he let go of the needle, letting it fall to the ground with a soft clatter.
“What must I do to survive?”
“You will need to act. Act like your life depends on it, because it does. Act like Wen Chao’s mistress.”
—
Jiang Cheng had always had to play a part, all his life.
The part of the filial son, the part of the perfect Sect Heir, the part of the boy who had to put aside all his own wants but still was never good enough for his parents.
Now, he played the part of the dutiful mistress, saying words to stoke Wen Chao’s ego, and subtly influence his actions.
Thankfully, Wen Chao was an idiot who could not find his own shoe without help. He could not detect that his mistress had been replaced, and was more than happy to follow whatever she said as long as he was kept pleasured.
It was hard for Jiang Cheng to hold in his contempt and disgust for the other man, so what he did to survive was to bury the part of him that was Jiang Cheng deep within Wang Lingjiao’s physical frame, and let himself be swept away by what was happening in the outside, solely focussing on the now and nothing else.
He bided his time, quietly.
The remaining Great Sects had started some fight called the Sunshot Campaign. It was spearheaded by Nie Mingjue, and mostly consisted of the Lans and Nies, with Jin Zixuan bringing a small group of Jins under his command.
At some point, Wen Qing had been called away to set up a supervisory office and Yiling, leaving him a few long needles. And so the only one who knew his secret, the only one he could still be Jiang Wanyin around, was gone.
He continued to bide his time.
Idiot or not, Wen Chao was a very careful man.
Wen Zhuliu was always around. And when he was not, Wen Chao kept his sword strapped to him or at arms length at all times. And with the strength of a woman, there was nothing he could do. The only time he could safely dispatch the horrible man was when he lay asleep beside him. However, Yunmeng and its surrounding areas were all controlled by the Wen. If he had succeeded in killing Wen Chao in his sleep, there would be no doubt who had done it- even if he fled, Wang Lingjiao’s face would be circulated around the city before the sun rose and he would be captured as a prisoner.
He continued to wait, not sure what exactly he was waiting for.
But then salvation came.
One night, screams of men filled the air as a contingent of Lans led by a figure in black swept through Lotus Pier like a wave.
Wen Chao had rushed out to fight, flanked by Wen Zhuliu, but seeing the sheer number of cultivators present, they would both be dead by morning.
Jiang Cheng hesitated, wondering if he should stay and try and catch a glimpse of Wei Wuxian’s face, but he remembered whose face he bore now and all he could do was run.
So, shamefully, the former Sect Heir of Yunmeng Jiang fled from Lotus Pier in the night, in the body of the one who caused its destruction.
—
He had truly reached rock-bottom.
Without a coin to his name, without a golden core to cultivate with, with nothing but Wen Qing’s needles and the clothes he had fled in, Jiang Cheng found himself in the streets once more.
It had been just like the time after Lotus Pier had been attacked, only that now he did not have his siblings with him, and he was all alone.
Not just once, Jiang Cheng had debated whether to use the needles to end this miserable existence. There was no point of anything now, after all. He had heard news that his sister was betrothed once more to Jin Zixuan (how did that happen?) and that Wei Wuxian was trying to rebuild the Jiang sect. It would have been impossible to round up all the surviving scattered members of the sect, but with the fact that even the sect heir was lost, it became an even more insurmountable task.
But if there was someone who could achieve the impossible, Jiang Cheng had no doubt that it would be Wei Wuxian.
Each passing day, the needles in his sleeves grew more and more tempting, but he resisted- he told himself that even in this body, he would find a way to live. If he was to have killed himself, he should have done so at the very beginning, when given the chance. Now, after he had sacrificed so much and debased himself in ways he could have never previously imagined, it had to be for something. It could not be all for naught. He had to find purpose, somehow, even if it killed him.
Thanks to Wang Lingjiao’s soft and feminine features, it had not been hard to find work as a server in a restaurant. All it took was a sob story and a few well-placed smiles.
(In life, Jiang Wanyin had rarely smiled. But with all his strength stripped away from him, the only weapon he had left to him was Wang Lingjiao’s smiles- turns out most men were weak to the pleading smiles of a weak woman.)
Life became an odd monotony.
He would wake up in the small room he rented, go to work, and then return to his room to rest.
It had not been what he had envisioned his life to be. He had thought he would be going out on night-hunts, flying on his sword, and training disciples. But that was another life, another time, and now all that was left to him was this.
Sometimes, he would pick up a tree branch and go through the motions of his sword forms. There was no point, really, without a trained core nor a spiritual sword, those movements were useless, but it brought some solace to his heart each time he did them.
It was all too easy sometimes to get submerged in this life. To get buried by his soft voice and thin stature. To forget who he used to be.
In this small way, he could feel like he was still Jiang Cheng, Jiang Wanyin, the man his parents had raised him to be.
The war was not over. But the Sunshot Campaign seemed to be succeeding. He could feel the Wen presence in this small Yunmeng town gradually subside as time passed, but they still existed. He kept his face hidden under a veil, because Wang Lingjiao should be dead. But thankfully, no one was ever looking for a woman, so even as security checks tightened no one bothered to check him.
But one day, he ran into someone from his old life, who he never expected to meet.
“You’re Wang Lingjiao,” Lan Xichen noted curiously.
Jiang Cheng stared back at him, panicked. It had been a long time since he had last seen Lan Xichen. The years seemed to have treated him well, however. He had grown into his features, now a lean yet strong man who had people whispering ‘Zewu-Jun’ in his wake.
“I have to say I’m surprised,” Lan Xichen continued calmly, not making a move for his sword yet. Perhaps it was because they were in the middle of a busy street, and he did not want to attract the attention of the Wen guards who still occasionally patrolled the area. “You certainly look like the portraits Wei-gongzi had drawn, but nothing like what he had described.”
Of course- Wang Lingjiao had been a very hyper-feminine and arrogant woman, and would not have been seen wearing these commoner male robes without makeup in the middle of a small Yunmeng town. Then again, Jiang Cheng had been a proud and prideful young master himself, but the tough times had changed him irrevocably.
“Are you going to kill me?” Jiang Cheng asked simply, raising an eyebrow. It would be a shame, really, for him to persist this long only to die at the hands of Lan Xichen randomly. He still had not saved up enough gold to make a trip to Lanling and catch a glimpse of his sister.
“Should I be?” Lan Xichen merely responded, as though having small talk with the enemy was normal behaviour.
“I assume that Wei Wuxian still has a bounty on my head.”
“Indeed,” Lan Xichen agreed pleasantly, “He had been most disappointed when he had not been able to find your body. He is very angry.”
‘Very angry’ was likely a very light way of describing it. Jiang Cheng knew of the hatred that coursed through his blood at Wang Lingjiao, and knew for a fact that this same hatred likely lived in Wei Wuxian too. The only problem now was that the blood this coursed through his veins was precisely Wang Lingjiao’s blood.
“What brings Lan-gongzi to Yunmeng?” Jiang Cheng asked instead. “I highly doubt they would send the highest ranked in the most desirable bachelor list here just to help Wei Wuxian hunt down this one.”
To his surprise, Lan Xichen laughed gently. “Now that is two things I have not heard in a long time. I don’t think I have heard anyone call me Lan-gongzi in quite awhile.”
Oh. Right. Lan Xichen was the Sect Leader now.
“To answer your question, I actually am trying to find an old friend. I am quite happy that I chanced upon you, and hope you can answer my questions,” Lan Xichen said, still smiling pleasantly, but there was now a subtle steel in his tone that warned that there would be consequences if said questions were not answered.
“What is it you want to know?” Jiang Cheng asked.
But the question asked was one he had not expected.
“Where is Jiang Wanyin?”