Wei WuXian took a few deep breaths as he fisted his hands tightly. Lan WangJi held his wrist, "Wei Ying, we can go back if you do not want to do this now."
"Ah...Lan Zhan...it’s okay." Wei WuXian smiled, albeit a little forcefully, "It's just that...this part of burial mounds has some very awful memories for me."

He flinched slightly at the incoming darkness of the resentment. He didn’t ever come to this part of the burial mounds after getting out from this place because of the amount of painful memories he faced in here. From cannibalism to horrific illusions to painful memories.

"I had a bad time in this place, that's all." Wei WuXian whispered, "But this place matches the energy I felt back then. They must have extracted the energy from here."

Lan WangJi tried to not sigh sensing the enormous amount of resentment energy.

"Are you sure?" he asked for some clarity.

Wei WuXian cheekily smirked, "Are you doubting me, Lan Zhan?"
"Never." he immediately refused.

Wei WuXian felt his heart go wild at the reply. He immediately felt delirious with love, but right now, he had to keep it in his pants.

"I am so eating you tonight when we get back." he announced proudly to his lover, to which Lan WangJi said nothing, but his eyes turned into molten gold due to desire.

"But now, let's get this over with." Wei WuXian looked ahead at the swirling resentment, but now, he was no longer wary of it.

He could never feel fear with Lan WangJi by his side. 

_________________________________________

"It's still the same...yet so different..." Yu ZiYuan had finally returned to Lotus Pier in the guise of Jiang Cheng investigating the case with Zidian. Seeing the place that was once her home, she suddenly felt strangely reminiscent of her early years.

Then again, she didn’t live a good life even back then. She wasn’t a good person after all.

"I tried to keep the design just the way it is. Except for a few minor changes." Jiang Cheng smiled proudly, showing around the sect he had built from scratch.

"You truly have accomplished something impossible. A true Jiang indeed." Yu ZiYuan praised, her chest filling with warmth and pride.

The sect was burned to the ground with no survivors except for Wei WuXian and Jiang Cheng. The fact that he managed to build it up from that low point and even restore it to its former glory, was something no one else could have done.

"You really have grown up to be a wonderful sect leader." she praised.

Jiang Cheng flushed slightly, "Th-thank you."

He still wasn’t used to getting praises from his mother.

"Well then, when is the meeting?" Yu ZiYuan brought the topic of their actual business.

"Tomorrow. At 3 in the afternoon." Jiang Cheng informed curtly, his face turning serious.
"Wonderful." Yu ZiYuan smiled mysteriously, "I wonder if I will see my relatives."
"Are you looking forward to meeting them?" Jiang Cheng asked away, curious.

"Not really. I uh...I didn’t get along with them much." Yu ZiYuan masked away her actual thoughts.

Yu ZiYuan wasn’t really fond of her relatives, she didn’t have much closeness to them. But above all, she didn’t like her sister, who had always tried to take away everything that belonged to her, including her spiritual weapon.

Ironically, she was the one who actually became the Madam of the Meishan Yu sect. The reason was very simple. She was the elder child.

Meishan Yu sect had two daughters; ZiYuan and HeiYuan. Yu HeiYuan was the older sister, while Yu ZiYuan was the younger.

Both trained to become cultivators, and they definitely proved to be competent.

But obviously, fate had some plans to make in motion.

Yu HeiYuan was a great cultivator as a youngster, but Yu ZiYuan?

She was a prodigy.

Come to think of it, the situation there was very similar to the situation of Wei WuXian and Jiang Cheng, with their ages being reversed. However, Yu ZiYuan could have become the heir to the sect, unlike Wei WuXian.

Yu ZiYuan's parents were affected by a plague that had taken place shortly and died by the time their children had come to age for marriage.

Yu HeiYuan, as the elder daughter, took the reigns of the sect, and blissfully married Yu ZiYuan off of the sect so that she could reign free in the Meishan Yu sect.

Yu ZiYuan couldn’t say no to the faces of her relatives also supporting the marriage, that even with a gentry sect like Yunmeng Jiang.

Even so, when she was married to Jiang FengMian, eventually, she had come to like him romantically.

Which led to her jealousy in the first place.

Remembering all of her past, she sighed. Jiang Cheng noticed as they stopped at the docks, "What happened?"
"Nothing, child. It's just...it really has been a lifetime since then." Her voice was heavy and melancholic.

"Your past life?"
"Mhmm." She sat at the docks, Jiang Cheng sat with her.

The wind blowing by the docks was comforting, as if slowly caressing them to sleep away. The soft blow of the sunset only made the scenario ahead of them that much beautiful. The boats in the distance were the perfect touch to the otherwise almost still water.

"It's alright. Wei WuXian fixed the mistakes he made in his past life. If he can, so can you."

Yu ZiYuan smiled to herself as she stared into the horizon of the waters. At a faraway distance, the horizon of the sky mixed with the water's, "I hope so. I hope that I can."
"You will. If someone like that guy could, you will as well." Jiang Cheng snorted.

Yu ZiYuan gave him a side eye, "Why are you speaking like that though? Was his reputation that bad?" she became slightly worried.

Jiang Cheng shook his head as he complained out, "You have absolutely no idea how bad his reputation was. It was literally in the gutter. Everyone used to curse him, saying that Wei WuXian was an evil person."

Jiang Cheng felt his heart soften as the next words slipped out of his mouth, "Me included. I actually fell for their nonsense too."

Jiang Cheng looked down at the water near his feet, "Besides, we had a really bad relationship before his death in his previous life."
"I heard that you led the siege." Yu ZiYuan lamented.
"I did...but Mother believe me, I didn’t kill him. I don’t know how he died."

This made Yu ZiYuan turn her head to him, "Wait, if you didn’t kill him, how exactly was he dead? Was it a backlash?"
"Probably." Jiang Cheng shrugged.
"So he did have backlash." Yu ZiYuan noted in her mind, "So you need a weak core to control resentment energy properly. That's...incredible actually. Because imagine how much people with weak cores can do if they know how to control it well." Yu ZiYuan suddenly felt a bout of excitement.

Jiang Cheng made a face, "Are you really saying more people should practice demonic cultivation?"
"Why not? I mean, even a spiritual cultivator can be very evil, Wen Ruohan is a perfect example of that. So why can't good people use demonic cultivation?"

Jiang Cheng felt gears turn in his head. What his mother said wasn’t exactly wrong either. There was nothing wrong with using demonic cultivation as long as one could control it well.

But the next moment, he still made a fact that made Yu ZiYuan think for a little, "The world is not ready for it yet, Mother. People don’t approve of demonic cultivation so much yet. Look at Lan Qiren, he still doesn’t approve of it even though his nephew actually loves the inventor of it, and said inventor actually is the reason why the cultivation world didn’t suffer a huge blow."

"Jin GuangYao...he really had it all, but he couldn’t expect the return of the grandmaster of demonic cultivation." Yu ZiYuan smirked.
"The thing is that, no one really knows how he got brought back. Mo XuanYu, the original owner of the body shouldn’t know a forbidden technique like bringing someone else's soul to his own body." Jiang Cheng again fell into a deep thought, which was apparent on his face.

Yu ZiYuan nodded, "I will ask A-Xian. He should know something of it." she furrowed her eyebrows a bit in thought.

Jiang Cheng threw a rock into the water,  "Are you suspecting that your revival is somehow connected to this entire fiasco?"

A nod.

"I feel like we are getting into something that doesn’t seem like a big problem, but it definitely is."

Yu ZiYuan also threw a rock into the water, "Just like this rock. You can see it going into the water, but no one knows how deep it went into the water. We don’t know how deep this matter is. We can only scratch it from the surface and see only a little. If we want to see the truth, the depth of the truth..."

Jiang Cheng completed the sentence, slightly swinging his legs, "We have to be the rock, not the spectator."
"Exactly." Yu ZiYuan stood up, the wind blew her long hair, her robes fluttering.

"I have to know what happened completely. So, I have no choice but to become a rock."

_________________________________________

A/N: Azalea represents family.