Live Again, Love Anew

Chapter 8- Diving into the Archives

Summary

Wei Ying looks for Mao Fenfang and Lan Zhan's parents in the archives... or tries to.

Beginning Note

The plot thickens... Enjoy!

Wei Wuxian

They end up having to wait a day before Wei Wuxian can sneak into Uncle's office for long periods of time. They still have lessons, so it's a delicate art, and usually takes a few days of sneaking in and out and back in before they find what they are looking for.

This time, the delay is because Uncle set aside a day for just office work and a few short meetings. Obviously, he couldn't sneak in with the man sitting right at his desk, and the meetings were so short- Lan Zhan informed him they were brief check-ins to some of the clan's inner workings and quick checks with some of the merchants from Caiyi town- That Wei Wuxian lacked the time to even take any stuff from the packed shelves of the room before he was scrambling to put everything back again. They only tried that twice before they called it a day.

Uncle has been extra busy as of late, which is why today is a perfect day for research. All of Wei Wuxian's breaks are lined up with Uncle's meetings, which means he has literally as much time as he's ever going to get to look into Lan Zhan's parents.

The first thing he does is look more deeply into Mao Fenfang. Lan Zhan had to look up nearly 50 different people, so it's not that he doesn't trust Lan Zhan, because he does, but it's likely that Lan Zhan overlooked something in his scramble to look up 50 different people while trying not to get caught.

He looks up the basic stuff first, just to get a feel of what kind of person she is. He exits the office carefully and goes next door, to the archive room, and looks up Mao Fenfang's name.

He startles a little when he finds an entire tiny section on her. It turns out that Elders and Elders-in-training are closely watched and documented, which helps their research, but doesn't help when they are limited on time. Most of the stuff is tests scores and written notes by her Master about her progress.

He decides to look into her family first, and breathes a sigh of relief when he finds only a few pages.

Her records state she was adopted by the Mao Clan Head as an infant. The Mao Clan Head is unmarried, which explains the adoption. Wei Wuxian initially questions why a Clan Heir would become the Elder for another clan, because it's clear by the records that the Mao Clan Leader has no other children, but a deeper look into the records show that the Mao Clan has had many members become Lan Elders. It must be because of some long ago agreement, like 'You serve our clan and we'll protect you.', or something. There are even three current Elders that come from the Mao Clan.

Her childhood and family life look pretty normal. Raised as a cultivator, taken to the Lan Clan to train after age 15, and then there's her sudden change to being an Elder at 26.

He looks through some of her personal reports of night hunts around that age, but besides stopping abruptly, which is understandable, as Elders can't night hunt, there's nothing important enough to warrant her change to being an Elder.

No one died, no one was hurt, she didn't get an injury or ailment, her life was boring, but seemed fulfilling enough. There's just nothing.

At a dead end with Mao Fenfang, he decides to switch to the people he came here for in the first place.

He finds the 'current' Sect Leader easy enough. Birth name: Lan Shanyuan. He's the first son of the former Sect Leader and Madam Lan. They had their first child when they were older, and Uncle two years after. They both died within a few months of each other a few years ago from complications with old age. They had moved off clan lands by then, and their funerals were quiet and only for family.

That date of their funerals is also marked as one of the few dates Qingheng-Jun left his self imposed seclusion. He left for his mother's and father's funerals, the births of his two children, and a few random dates that could either be unannounced visits for tea with his wife, or the conception of his children. Wei Wuxian quickly skims over the rest of the dates and resolutely ignores those few specific ones.

There's nothing else of interest in Qingheng-Jun's section. He's like Mao Fenfang in that most of his section is stuff from when he was being trained to take on his future role.

With Qingheng-Jun out of the way, he moves on to Aunty Yue.

Except that he can't find her section. With a puzzled expression, he thoroughly searches the spaces around her husband. Nothing.

Maybe they have a separate section for spouses? He looks deeper into the archives, and while he does find a section detailing the marriages of women from subsidiaries of the Lan Sect to members of the Clan, there's no Aunty Yue.

She was a cultivator, so she must have written up at least a few night hunting reports, right? He goes to a separate section of the archives and searches through the night hunting reports, looking in the relevant dates for one written by Aunty Yue. Absolutely nothing.

Okay, Wei Wuxian , he thinks to himself. Take a step back. What do you know and what are you missing?

Aunty Yue is married to Qingheng-Jun and they have two kids, so it's not like her entire existence is hidden. If that was the case, then the Clan would probably hide the fact that Qingheng-Jun is married and find some convoluted way to explain the kids.

Which means her existence is known, but her identity is not. Lan Zhan has said that the Elders hate her, and that her family, a servant, and the Elders are the only ones who know who and where she is.

And she's obviously mentioned in Qingheng-Jun's section-

Ah. Another clue.

Now that he's putting all the facts together like this, Aunty Yue was never mentioned by name in Qingheng-Jun's section. It always referred to her as 'Madam Lan', and called her home 'The Gentian Cottage'. It never said her name, never mentioned her family, and never said where exactly her home was, even if it was implied to be outside of Cloud Recesses, and Wei Wuxian knows for a fact that that's a lie.

He sighs and starts to put all the papers and scrolls he looked at back in their places. He'll need to meet back up with Lan Zhan and brainstorm where her section could have gone.

As if summoned, the little Lan he's looking for appears at the door and sends him a look. Uncle must be getting back from his meetings soon.

Looking for Aunty Yue's records is top priority, but Wei Wuxian has a feeling that finding them might take awhile.

So in the meantime...

Maybe they can pay a visit to Mao Fenfang's personal quarters. Call it intuition, but he has a feeling that the reason behind her sudden Elder-in-training promotion will solve a huge chunk of this mystery.

Clan records and personally kept diaries and letters are a lot different after all.

End Note

I'd like to hear from all of you guys what you think is going on.

Who's out to kill Aunty Yue? Why do they want to kill her? How are they going to kill her? Anything else on your mind about this whole mystery?

I'd love to see if any of you guys are close.