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Jin Ling didn't know what was going on, but this definitely wasn't Lanling.
He was standing in the center of a mountain field, which would be unremarkable if it were not for the fact that just a moment ago he had been standing in the center of a seemingly abandoned manor in the heart of a densely-packed forest. There was smoke in the distance and a horrifying stench in the breeze, one that he would not have recognized if he had not been going on more of Wei Wuxian's terrible night hunts. Death. Death, blood, rot, and burning flesh, in a terrible miasma that stuck to everything it blew past.
There were people in the distance. Toward the west, there was a camp, with tall tents stretched out in rows for the length of city blocks, and to the east, a dense group of people marching toward him. He didn't have a good feeling about the people, coming from the direction of that horrible smell, but he also didn't want to approach the camp, having no idea where he was or who they might be.
As the people got closer, he could make out their robes. YunmengJiang purple, GusuLan white, and QingheNie green, with a few LanlingJin golds interspersed. They were streaked dark with mud and blood, looking almost exactly the way all the cultivators had after fighting fierce corpses for hours at the Second Siege of the Burial Mounds. There had clearly been a battle.
Something was seriously wrong, then. He was the clan leader of LanlingJin! If there were any battles in the jianghu, especially battles involving his clan members, he would know about it.
Just as he was considering getting the fuck out of there and at least hiding if not high-tailing it back to Lanling, the people spotted him. There was pointing and clear whispering among them, and as they got closer, Jin Ling could see the anger and suspicion written across their faces.
Some very familiar faces.
He could see his Jiujiu, whispering to someone in black robes that he didn't recognize. There was Hanguang-jun, alongside the man in black and Zewu-jun not far behind. And next to him... was Nie Mingjue.
Alive.
Nie Mingjue alive, and not dead. Or buried in a coffin with his Xiao-shushu, like he had been the last time he saw him.
Jin Ling was frozen still as the crowd got closer and closer.
What the fuck was going on??
He didn't realize he had spaced out in shock until the cultivators were right in front of him. He heard the metallic scrape of a sword being drawn and all of a sudden there was a LanlingJin cultivator pointing his sword at his chest.
"Mind telling us who the hell you are why you're impersonating one of my clan members?" The man sneered.
Jin Ling was frozen. The cultivator standing over him was someone he had never seen before, but his face, though twisted in anger, was inexplicably familiar. He had seen those eyes before, that brow and that nose, on someone else's face. There shouldn't have been anyone in his clan that he didn't recognize, unless these were some kind of imposters, but then he glanced down and figured out the reason.
Pointed at his chest was an all too familiar sword. This cultivator was holding Suihua.
Jin Ling could still feel his sword, his Suihua at his waist. There couldn't possibly be two, but there weren't a lot of explanations for what was going on inside the known realm of possibility.
This Jin man was the owner of Suihua. From a time when Nie Mingjue was alive.
There was only one person this could be.
But how could this possibly be...?
The other people around them were getting closer, crowding in around them, but he couldn't hear what they were saying. There was a ringing in his ears drowning out the voices around them, closing down on him and narrowing everything down to the face of his father, alive, in front him.
He couldn't see anything else, he couldn't hear, he couldn't breathe.
A hand shot out and ripped his sword away from his waist, snapping him out of his trance.
"Hey!" He yelled, swiping blindly at whoever had taken it, just to be grabbed from behind, both arms pinned behind his back.
He tried to struggle, but it was no use. These men all looked to be around his same age, but they were battle-hardened and tougher, and he was unfortunately, more like a young mistress compared to them.
He looked up, realizing his father was no longer pointing his sword at him, rather, he had been the one to take Suihua off his waist and had drawn it from its sheath. He couldn't see the man behind him, but he felt the familiar press of zidian in its ring from against his arm where he was gripped, so it must have been his jiujiu.
"Wei Wuxian!" The voice of his jiujiu behind him barked, though less deep and gruff than Jin Ling knew it to be. "What is going on?"
The man in black, now standing in front of him, scoffed. "What are you asking me for? Obviously he's a Wen spy. They must have made a replica of your sword when they had it in their custody and thought you wouldn't notice. We should just kill him and get this over with."
Wei Wuxian? This wasn't Wei-qianbei! Wei-qianbei wasn't this tall or broad, and he was always smiling, and he would never tell anyone to kill him!
But then he remembered: the past Wei Wuxian wasn't his Wei-qianbei. The past Wei Wuxian was the right-hand of Sandu Shengshou, the first disciple of the YunmengJiang Clan, the Yiling Laozu who slaughtered every Wen-dog on the battlefield and brought their corpses back to fight again.
And he wasn't younger than this Wei Wuxian, who couldn't have been older than eighteen, yet whose face was battle-hardened and blood-splattered. Of course he wouldn't think twice about killing a Wen-dog his same age.
"No," Jin Zixuan said. He gazed at the sword in wonderment. "It's responding to my spiritual energy. This is Suihua."
"How can there be two of one sword?" Called someone from the crowd.
"There can't." Wei Wuxian said. He looked Jin Ling up and down, none of the warmth or love that he used to see was in his eyes. He didn't even treat him this coldly back before he knew he was Jiang Yanli's son.
"Oh? What's this?" Before he could see what Wei Wuxian was looking at, he reached down and snapped the clarity bell off his waist.
As Wei Wuxian held it up in front of his face, the grip on his arms twisted tighter, until Jin Ling thought they might break.
"Where did you get this?" The voice of his jiujiu bellowed in his ear. He had never heard him this angry before. "Which YunmengJiang cultivator did you kill to get this?"
He tried not to scream, but he could feel the tears welling up in his eyes. His jiujiu would never treat him like this! He thought back to those times that his jiujiu had yelled at him, said that he would break his legs, and the few times he slapped him for disobedience. He had found it scary at the time, but now he knew that wasn't real anger.
He heard a laugh. He looked up to see Wei Wuxian with a crooked smile on his face. But it wasn't Wei-qianbei's smile, that was full of joy or mischief. This one was cruel, only enhancing the fury in his eyes. And his laugh, which usually was able to lighten the mood, only made a deeper fear settle within Jin Ling.
"He didn't get it from any of our cultivators, Jiang Cheng." Wei Wuxian said as he stalked slowly closer. "This is a special clarity bell."
"Oh yeah?" Jiang Wanyin asked. He didn't release his grip in the slightest.
Wei Wuxian hummed an affirmative. "I designed this enhanced clarity bell to ward off stronger spirits. I was going to show it to Jiang-shushu, but I never finished the finer details. The notes were in my room at Lotus Pier."
At this point Wei Wuxian was standing directly in front of Jin Ling. He towered over him, menacing, and slowly wrapped one hand around Jin Ling's throat. "So how did you find them, hmm?"
Of course, this was the special clarity bell that Wei Wuxian had gifted Jin Ling. The one he had perfected in the Burial Mounds and attempted to bring to his 100-day celebration. He had remade it and brought it to him once when he was at Golden Carp Tower, and he wore it now everyday, after getting his jiujiu's permission. The grip around his neck grew tighter with every word. "Were you one of the Wen-dogs that sacked Lotus Pier?"
Jin Ling's eyes widened. No! No, he wasn't a Wen! He wasn't supposed to be here right now! He didn't even exist when this was all happening!
He shook his head frantically, as much as he could with the grip that both his uncles had on him.
"You... you g-gave it to m-me," he rasped around the hand crushing his windpipe.
Wei Wuxian sneered, and opened his mouth to say something else, but was cut off by a cry in the distance.
"A-Xian!" A young woman's voice called out. "A-Cheng!"
"Shijie?" Wei Wuxian loosened his grip slightly in surprise, at the same time as Jiang Wanyin did. "A-Jie?"
A young woman was rushing toward them, light purple robes standing out against the darkened evening sky. She was small and fragile-looking, all the cultivators around her towering over her, but she pushed through the crowd determinedly.
Jiujiu's sister... this was...
This was his mother!
"A-Jie!" Jiang Wanyin called again. "What are you doing here? It's not safe!"
Jiang Yanli shook her head, a hazy look in her eyes as he stared ahead, not at her brothers but... at Jin Ling?
"Let go of him!" She cried out as she finally broke through the last of the cultivators trying to hold her back.
"Shijie! What are you doing?" Wei Wuxian gasped as Jiang Yanli ran over and pushed him away. Her push didn't budge him even slightly, but he still dropped Jin Ling's throat in acquiescence.
"Do you know him?" Jiang Wanyin asked, also letting go of Jin Ling's arms to face his sister.
But without the two holding on to him, Jin Ling felt like a puppet that had its strings cut. He almost slumped forward, but his mother caught him and folded him into her arms.
He stared unseeing as her warm arms wrapped around him and he leaned onto her soft body. She was shorter than him, but she didn't sway an inch under his weight.
"No," she said. Her voice swam in his ears. He was spiraling again, he could tell this time. But he couldn't stop. This was his mother. Holding him.
"Jiang-guniang..." The voice of his father trailed off. Jin Ling willed his eyes to move back to him, and he saw that same hazy look in his father's eyes as he held Jin Ling's Suihua limply.
"You feel it too, don't you?" She said. She reached out hesitantly, then brushed the hair back from his face.
"A-niang..." Jin Ling muttered, so low almost no one could hear.
But the people closest to him did. Wei Wuxian and Jiang Wanyin both startled looking like they were about to jump at him, but Jin Zixuan called out. "Everyone get back!"
The crowd turned to him, bewildered, but he didn't spare them a glance. "Back to camp, now!"
People hesitated for a moment, but then began to continue their march forward the way they had been going before. Then it was only Jin Ling, his parents, his jiujiu, and his shi-shu.
His father came toward him, straight past his uncles. "What's your name?"
"J-Jin Ling," he stammered out, still amazed to actually be looking up at his father. "Courtesy Rulan."
Jiang Yanli smiled. "I always did want to name my child that, if I had a boy."
"So you're saying you're their child? From the future?" Jiang Wanyin demanded, then spun to Wei Wuxian again. "Wei Wuxian! How is this possible?"
Wei Wuxian sputtered. "How am I supposed to know?"
"Let's go sit down and talk about this," Jiang Yanli interrupted them. "I already prepared soup for you three. It's all waiting in my tent."
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"I don't understand... how could you travel through time?" Jin Zixuan wondered out loud.
Everyone turned to look at Wei Wuxian.
He threw his hands up. "For the last time, I have no idea how this could be possible!"
"You're the one with all the crazy inventions..." Jin Ling muttered.
The five of them had gone back to Jiang Yanli's tent where they were sitting around the table, bowls of pork rib and lotus root soup laid out for them. Jin Ling had almost cried again when he tasted it, and Jiang Yanli had promptly positioned him to sit squeezed between his parents.
Jiang Wanyin and Wei Wuxian sat across from them, still looking somewhat suspicious but ultimately subdued by Jiang Yanli's easy acceptance of the situation and the bowls of soup in front of them.
"It's nothing that hasn't been theorized about before," Wei Wuxian said. "It's not like I'm some mad genius that knows everything about the dark arts..."
Jin Ling scoffed. At least this banter with Wei Wuxian felt somewhat familiar, even though he was looking at a different face, he was so expressive in the same ways. "What about the Yin Hufu? I don't think anyone had ever thought of that before."
"The what? What is the Yin Hufu?" Wei Wuxian almost laughed. "I just told you I don't know everything. I don't know anything about what dark arts the emperor and his military are experimenting with."
"The Yin Hufu is your invention!" Jin Ling exclaimed. "You know, the sword you found in the Xuanwu of Slaughter's cave and turned into a weapon to control armies of fierce corpses?"
Wei Wuxian startled. "I was only just thinking about that! I actually did it? How did it work?"
In the momentary passion of arguing with Wei Wuxian, Jin Ling didn't think. 'It didn't! You couldn't control it and killed people on your own side! You tried to destroy it and failed, and now it's sealed, but there's still a risk of it being stolen again."
Wei Wuxian frowned. "So it sounds like it didn't work. I guess I shouldn't make it then."
Jin Ling paused. What the fuck? Just like that, Wei Wuxian wasn't going to create the Yin Hufu? Then, what if Jin Guangshan never went after him to get it? What if the siege of the Burial Mounds never happened?
What if his parents never died?
Could he change the future? Could he tell them what would happen, so they could prevent it? Could tell them about Jin Guangyao and Jin Zixun, so his father would never be killed? If the bloodbath at Nightless City never happened, then would his mother live?
"Wait." Jiang Wanyin interrupted. "How do we know what will change if you don't invent it? We shouldn't change anything about the future."
"No!" Jin Ling interrupted. "No! Don't invent it! If you use it, they'll come after you! Jin Guangshan wants it, and he'll turn everyone against you, and you and the Wens will be stuck in the Burial Mounds, and Jin Guangyao will trick you into killing my dad and then they'll execute Wen Qing and Wen Ning and you'll fight 3,000 cultivators at Nightless City and my mom will be killed and then all the sects will come to the Burial Mounds to kill you all.
The four of them stared at him.
"What?" Jiang Wanyin said.
Jin Zixuan clasped a warm hand down on his shoulder. "Breathe, Son."
Jin Ling took a deep breath. The panic swirling around his mind began to settle with the comforting touch of his parents.
"I'm sorry," he choked out. "I just don't want to lose you."
"Oh, my poor baby," Jiang Yanli breathed out, stroking his head. "You must have grown up without us, didn't you?"
Jin Ling nodded. "Jiujiu and Xiao-shushu raised me since I was an infant."
Jiang Yanli had a pitiful look on her face, but Jin Zixuan screwed up his brows. "Xiao-shushu?"
"Jin Guang--er, Meng Yao," he amended. When there was no recognition on anyone's face, he elaborated, "He's one of Jin Guangshan's illegitimate sons. He came to Jinlintai one year, but he was kicked out, and he became a cultivator in the QingheNie Clan. But now he's left to work with Wen Ruohan, where he's been a spy helping GusuLan. And then he is recognized by Jin Guangshan and eventually becomes his successor."
"After my death." Jin Zixuan accurately guessed.
Jin Ling nodded.
"And he tricks me into killing Jin Zixuan?" Wei Wuxian asks, his face paler than Jin Ling had ever seen. "How could that happen?"
"I'm not really sure..." Jin Ling tried to explain. "I wasn't there--no one who was there really lived to talk about it, honestly at least. Wen Ning explained to me one that while he and you were on the way to my 100-day celebration, Jin Zixun laid a trap for you at Qiongqi Dao because he though you cursed him. You were outnumbered and cornered, and then Jin Guangyao, who helped set up the trap, sent my father in to stop you from fighting. He didn't know what was going on, and you thought he was with Jin Zixun, and you lost control of Wen Ning and he killed him."
"Lost control of Wen Ning?" Jiang Wanyin repeated.
"Oh." Jin Ling didn't realize how much of the timeline he was confused about. They really hadn't explained much to him; even after finding out the truth about Jin Guangyao and clearing Wei Wuxian's name, neither he nor his jiujiu wanted to talk about the past. "You turn Wen Ning into a sentient fierce corpse."
"Sentient?" Wei Wuxian muttered in wonderment.
"I thought you said he is executed by LanlingJin after Jin Zixuan's death." Jiang Wanyin said.
"Oh no, he died way before that." Jin Ling clarified. "He's taken to be executed again after that, but they don't actually execute him. Jin Guangyao keeps him locked up under Jinlintai for Xue Yang to experiment on."
"And Wen Qing?" Wei Wuxian asked, his voice heavy.
Jin Ling shook his head.
Jiang Wanyin turned to look at him. "Since when did you care about some Wen-dogs? We're here to kill them, why would bring one back to life?"
"They saved our lives," Wei Wuxian said forcefully. "They betrayed Wen Ruohan, they're not like those dogs we fight on the battlefield--they risked everything to save us."
Jin Ling nodded, looking at Jiang Wanyin. "In the future, Wen Ning saves us too."
Jiang Wanyin paused at that, then narrowed his eyes at Jin Ling. "What do you know about our golden cores?"
Jin Ling blanched. The look in Wei Wuxian's eyes had switched from sorrowful to dangerous again, like he was reminding Jin Ling the predicament he had been in just before his mother ran out to save him.
He looked to his mother. Surely with her around Wei Wuxian wouldn't do anything to him, and Jiujiu wouldn't break down as hard this time, right?
Jin Zixuan caught on quickly. He shot both the Jiang cultivators an equally frightening warning glare. "Don't even think about doing anything to silence him."
"This is a safe, private space," Jiang Yanli said, trying to diffuse the tension. "Whatever secrets are shared here, no one outside has to know unless it's truly necessary. If it's possible, I would like to know what has happened to my didis' golden cores, and if there's anything we can do to help them or stop A-Xian's death."
Wei WUxian sighed. "There's nothing that can be done."
"Yes, there is!" Jiang Wanyin interjected. He turned to Jiang Yanli. "The truth is, after the Wens sacked Lotus Pier, Wen Zhuliu melted my golden core. But Wei Wuxian took me to Baoshan Sanren's mountain, and she restored it. Surely we should be able to go back and explain to her the situation of whatever happened with you golden core and she'll be able to mend it."
Wei Wuxian just shook his head.
Jin Ling was confused. "How is that possible? When Baoshan Sanren restores the missing pieces of a person, she takes those pieces from the person who brought them."
"What?" Jiang Wanyin said.
"That's not true!" Wei Wuxian hissed. "How would you even know that?"
"In the future everyone knows it!" He fired back. Talking to Wei Wuxian like this might have been too familiar. This wasn't the same Wei-qianbei he could provoke as he pleased. "When Xiao Xingchen, the disciple of Baoshan Sanren who descended the mountain, brings his friend Song Lan back to her to recover his sight, she demanded Xiao Xingchen's own eyes as a sacrifice. And besides, what would you know about Baoshan Sanren anyways?"
Wei Wuxian was about to fire back at him, but Jiang Wanyin grabbed his wrist, digging his fingers into his pulsepoint while Wei Wuxian struggled to pull back.
Once he found what he was looking for, he threw Wei Wuxian's hand away. "I can't believe you."
"A-Xian gave his golden core to A-Cheng?" Jiang Yanli clarified, her eyes welling with tears once again. At Jin Ling's nod, she held back a sob. "Is there any way he can cultivate a new one?"
Wei Wuxian shook his head, looking utterly defeated. "Not that anyone knows. This has never been done before."
"We'll find Wen Qing and ask her." Jiang Wanyin said. "She was the one who did it, wasn't she?"
Wei Wuxian nodded.
Jiang Wanyin scoffed. "Just how long were you planning on keeping this a secret? And what made you finally tell me, huh?"
When Wei Wuxian said nothing, Jiang Wanyin didn't push.
Jin Ling frowned. "This is so weird."
Jin Zixuan barked a laugh at that. "This has been weird."
Jin Ling blushed. "I know, but I mean, it's so weird to see them getting along. In the future, it was only when Wen Ning was sick of seeing Jiujiu attack him that he intervened in one of their fights and he revealed the secret."
Jin Zixuan looked confused. "Oh... I was under the assumption that Wei Wuxian is also dead in the future."
Oh. Jin Ling hadn't given them a very good explanation for anything, had he?
"He is..." Jin Ling started. "But everything I know started the day he came back to life..."
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The sun and long since and set and was about to rise again when there was a disturbance from outside the tent. Jin Ling was sleepy, warmed from the firelight and elisting against his parents sides as they talked over their second round of tea.
The curtain pulled back, revealing a shorter man clad in black. The three men shot to their feet, ready to draw their swords, until they saw Jin Ling turn to him.
"Hello, Wei-qianbei."
The man grinned at him. "Hello, Jin Ling. I see you've been very productive during your time here. You know, it was very hard for me to find you."
The others stared in wonder at the man Wei Wuxian would become. He himself didn't look like he could believe it, but he couldn't deny his familiar demeanor, nor the presence of Chenqing at his waist.
"Thank you," Jin Ling said. "How did you find me?"
"Well, I happened to be on my way to Jinlintai to pay you a visit when I heard the Clan Leader hadn't returned from a nighthunt." Wei-qianbei explained. "I went to investigate and came here. You've been gone for a little while now. Are you ready to come back now?"
No, not really. Not yet.
"A-Xian," Jiang Yanli cut in.
Wei-qianbei's eyes cut over to her, and Jin Ling could see a familiar pain in them.
She reached out a hand to him. "Come sit. Join us for one more bowl of soup before you go?"
Wei Wuxian swallowed hard. But he sat down, wordlessly, next to his Shijie.
She wiped a tear from his face that Jin Ling hadn't even realized was there.
"It's okay, A-Xian," she told him in her gentle voice. "I know you have to go back home. And I know it will be hard, but it will be okay. Over here and over there."
She was right. Even though when the sun rose, he would have to back to his world, where parents were gone and the only people he had left of them wouldn't speak, where he was forced to grow up too soon and all alone, this world would still exist. This world where his family wouldn't die too soon. Where another Jin Ling would be born and have his parents with him, and a jiujiu and shishu that be there for him, together. Maybe it wasn't for him, but it was there. And he could live with that.