Chapter Text
Jiang Cheng picks up an embroidery needle forty three days after his sister’s death.
It’s Jin GuangShan’s idea to host a Two Hundred Day banquet for Jin Ling since the child’s Hundred Day celebration went so poorly. Jiang Cheng almost killed the messenger in a fit of rage when he received the invitation.
Jin GuangShan is going to host a banquet to celebrate the fact that he still has a surviving heir a mere ninety days after his daughter-in-law’s death. The message is clear. Jiang YanLi was nothing but a tool for an heir in Jin GuangShan’s eyes, and that he would celebrate infant Jin Ling to make sure the other sects knew who his rightful heir is despite Jin GuangYao’s constant head-lowered presence at his side.
And Jiang Cheng is expected to show up with a mountain of gifts for his nephew, expected to hold his head high against the side glances and whispered venom that is going to saturate the halls, expected to show his love for the nephew his own brother orphaned, the nephew that he had once hoped would reunite the last of the Jiang’s.
Hatred is his welcomed companion ever since his home burned. It burns with a renewed joy as it fixates on a new target when Jiang Cheng imagines Jin GuangShan’s blood dripping down SanDu.
Jiang YanLi’s room in Lotus Pier is in perfect order, forty three days after her death. The maids still clean it every morning, perhaps because they fear what Jiang Cheng would do if he ever found it in disarray, or perhaps they too, are desperately trying to keep a bit of her alive in their hearts.
When YanLi was pregnant, she had lived for two moons at Lotus Pier, gently placating Madam Jin’s frantic babbling of “travel will weaken the baby” and “Jin tower will be more comfortable”. Jiang YanLi’s child may carry the Jin name, but she had wanted him to carry YunMeng in his blood like she did.
She had laughed warmly and kissed his cheek when she found a room already ready for her in the only just rebuilt inner courtyards of the still constructing Lotus Pier, but it was her lack of surprise at how easily she slotted right back in Lotus Pier that filled Jiang Cheng with the aching surge of hope. Perhaps, after all they’ve been through, RuLai would see fit to let the three siblings live in peace once again.
Hope is such delicious, sweet poison.
Jiang Cheng made sure Jiang YanLi had a place in Lotus Pier in it’s reconstruction. He can’t regret the decision, not even now that her room sits cold and silent, a shrine to the days they never had.
Forty-three days after Jiang YanLi’s death, Jiang Cheng walks into the room he prepared for her.
Jiang territory is barely four tenth of what it used to be, and it is steadily shifting north west towards what used to be Wen land. The villages there are desperate, willing to pledge loyalty with their words for the Jiang name’s protection, but Jiang Cheng knows their hearts would never forget their new lord is the one that sieged their cities in the name of vengeance. On the opposite end, Jin GuangYao is a scheming bastard who is pushing the Jin territories southward which in turn pushes the Zhou’s into YunMeng’a borders, and Jiang Cheng does not have the manpower to even think of retaliating on such blatant disrespect.
He only has enough gold left to spare to prepare maybe half of the amount of presents that would be appropriate for his nephew’s celebration set in fifty days, and MeiShan Yu has sent word that unless Jiang Cheng return ZiDian to her ancestral home, they will take back Yong Xing, his mother’s birth city that was gifted to be under Jiang rule as part of her dowry. Jiang sect only has disciples numbering in the ten’s, and is only a gentry sect in name until Jiang Cheng inevitably fails at the role he’s born into but is utterly unqualified for.
As the day tips from day into dusk, Jiang Cheng dismisses his useless advisors and ZiDian flashing, informs the terrified servants no one is to enter the inner courtyard for the night. Forty-three days after Jiang YanLi’s death, exhausted and head pounding, Jiang Cheng walks into the room he prepared for her with his fists clenched and angry tears unshed. He finds a room in perfect order, a shrine masquerading as a bedroom. Something primal is pushing up and out of Jiang Cheng, the urge to smash the stupid, beautifully arranged room sizzle on his fingers as violet lightning, but when he reaches out a hand to the delicate tea set on the nearest shelf, his touch is soft, trembling.
He makes his sister’s favourite tea with her tea set, and sets three glasses down on the sitting table before he even realizes what he has done.
Jiang Cheng sits anyways, burns his throat with the scalding tea, and asks the air “JieJie, what do I do?”
The dead give no answer.
“You’re right, stupid question. One thing at a time. What shall I bring to Jin Ling? Jie, what do you want him to have?”
Jin Ling is a Jin by name, but the blood of the best of the Jiang’s flows through him. He should receive a gift that is tied to his blood, of course.
During YanLi’s stay in the new Lotus Pier, she had sewed a perfume pouch meant for Jin Ling’s pillow, and cheerfully embroidered lotuses and peonies onto it. Her fingers flew like swallows as Jiang Cheng sat with her, talking into the night. “Oh, shall I also add orchids? May my child be blessed, with a name like RuLan, he shall walk a flowering path.”
Jiang Cheng cleans her tea set before he leaves, and heads back to his own quarters holding her embroidery needles and threads left from her last visit. He doesn’t spare a glance at the other empty room opposite, an alter to a demonic flute masquerading as a bedroom in the heart of Lotus Pier.
The gossip gleefully grows as YunMeng Jiang slowly rises from where it had been beaten down.
“I hear SanDu ShengShou took DaBa Cun by force! He wanted the Fu River mouth so badly he just went in and slaughtered the lord there.”
“No, no, I hear DaBa had trouble with ghouls and went to Lotus Pier willingly to pledge their loyalty but SanDu wouldn’t offer protection unless they offer their fisheries and water merchants! I hear the Lord Feng died from rage at the disrespect and his son signed the deal!”
“What a tyrant Jiang WanYin is turning out to be, I heard he went to his own nephew’s celebration and his personal gift to the babe was a jade bracelet. What an uncaring man, such a common gift for your only living relative?”
“We all remember what the Purple Spider was like, the fruit really does not fall far from the tree.”
“I hear that Jiang WanYin also gave the little Jin Master a YunMeng bell, I think he’s going to steal the Jin Young Master away.”
“Ha- well old man Jin has more than enough bastards! He has heirs to spare!”
As his nephew passes two hundred days, an unfinished QianKun pouch is burned in Jiang Cheng’s personal quarters. The stitching on it is uncertain and messy, what was supposed to be lotus flowers are utterly unrecognizable, and the silk is dotted with blood from where Jiang Cheng was not careful enough. Jiang Cheng burns it and hates himself just a little, but he doesn’t store away the needles and thread.