Unruly (Between a rock and a hard place 4)

Chapter 5

Lan Qiren came out of his quarters in a set of fresh robes. He had luckily managed to calm down completely by now and no one would be able to tell that he had had such a reaction just now. He had missed the morning lesson, as he had expected, he was glad that he had sent instructions to the guest disciples that today would be a day of self-studying. Luckily, he had thought about it even before he had set off to the Jingshi.

He did not have to worry about teaching for the day and could concentrate on matters at hand. Namely, Wei Wuxian and his transgression which just screamed for him to be punished and sent back to Lotus Pier.

But, he only realized it now, he did not know where the boy could be. He had fled too quickly before, leaving everything to Lan Xichen. That being the case, he should go ask him where he had put Wei Wuxian. For it was clear that he had not sent him back to his room to cause more troubles. The boy must have been confined somewhere where he would not be able to escape his inevitable punishment.

Lan Qiren did not lose any time and he immediately headed to Lan Xichen's quarters where he expected his nephew to be just before lunch. He had no patience left to ask around and search for him so he had decided to go directly to the source.

When he knocked on Lan Xichen's door though, he did not receive any response. Was his nephew still somewhere outside, dealing with the mess? Just to be sure, Lan Qiren knocked again, more firmly this time, in case the owner of the rooms had not heard his first attempt.

He listened carefully, trying to catch anything from inside the building. He was just about to leave and go look for his nephew around the Cloud Recesses when he finally heard mumbling and some muffled words from behind the door. It did not sound like Lan Xichen was inviting him into his home, but those noises were so out of place that Lan Qiren was afraid something had happened to his nephew. He did not wait for any other invitation and he stormed inside the room.

The sight that greeted him took his breath away once again this day. It was not Lan Xichen who was occupying the space but instead, there laid a sleeping Wei Wuxian in his nephew's bed, shamelessly sprawled with his arms and legs far apart and the covers half on the ground. To Lan Qiren's horror, his lower half was the one more uncovered and he noticed that the boy had no pants on!

Had it not been enough for him a few hours earlier? Had he not learned what his mistakes had been? He was still behaving as shamelessly as ever. And the worst of it, he was now doing it on Lan Xichen's bed! He was breaking at least a hundred of different rules all at once.

Lan Qiren could feel a vein in his temple pulsating with anger. Not only had Wei Wuxian already ruined one of his nephews, he was now apparently on his way to cause the same shame to Lan Xichen as well. Lan Qiren could not allow it. It really seemed like the boy was completely incorrigible. That, or he held some kind of a grudge against the Gusu Lan clan and wanted to destroy its reputation, thoroughly and entirely.

As Lan Qiren was looking at him, Wei Wuxian seemed to have realized that he was not alone anymore and opened his eyes to small slits. He was clearly still sleepy and was mumbling something under his breath. Lan Qiren could not make out the words but it was not like he actually cared. Nothing Wei Wuxian would say now could excuse his unseemly and terrible behaviour.

The Yunmeng Jiang sect head disciple slowly sat on the bed, surely doing so just because he wanted to give Lan Qiren a heart attack by exposing even more of his nude lower body. The elder was looking as he coquettishly moved his eyelashes and smiled at him suggestively. Was he now trying to seduce Lan Qiren when Lan Xichen was not in the room? What insolence! Moreover, his eyes were somewhat hazy and unfocused, was he drunk on top of everything?

Lan Qiren's mouth came open for a second. He could not believe that the boy was even worse than his mother who had already been a disaster. He did not even know what to do about him, he had never encountered such a serious offender to the rules until today. Was he perhaps getting too old to deal with this?

No! It was his duty to protect the reputation of the Gusu Lan sect and to punish and evict any perpetrators to the peace of the Cloud Recesses. That was it; he was going to punish Wei Wuxian and he would then take him back to Lotus Pier himself. And the sooner the better, he did not want this shameless disaster of a human anywhere near him or his nephews ever again.

"Wei Wuxian!" he called the boy strictly, finally managing to find his lost composure in face of such blasphemous behaviour.

Wei Wuxian's movements were very sluggish and his eyes were still dazed over. That confirmed Lan Qiren's suspicion that he was actually drunk. No matter, he could sober up while waiting for his punishment. Or, even better, Lan Qiren could beat it out of him. Perhaps it would serve him as a good lesson that being drunk is no excuse to avoid righteous punishment for his acts. Not even talking about drinking alcohol was prohibited in the Cloud Recesses on top of everything else.

"Get dressed and come with me!" he ordered and waited for the boy to obey, he was out of patience.

Luckily, Wei Wuxian did not seem like he was about to protest. He looked around, clearly having a hard time remembering where he had put his robes before he had invaded Lan Xichen's bed. Lan Qiren did not know if it had been his nephew's decision to have the boy wait for his punishment in his own rooms or if Wei Wuxian had escaped wherever he had been kept and decided to play another nasty trick. In his eyes, it would still add to his sentence either way, none of those options were acceptable.

It took quite a while before Wei Wuxian had managed to put his clothes on more or less presentably. Lan Qiren had to scold him several times for messing with him and purposefully delaying. He was eager to have all of this done with so he would be able to go back to his peaceful life where Wei Wuxian did not exist. He would leave the most of the punishment to Jiang Fengmian, he would give his recommendations though. In that way, he would be able to assure that the boy would be discouraged to try anything similar ever again.

One good thing was that apparently Wei Wuxian was already sobering up as he started moving around and having Lan Qiren glaring and yelling at him. Although he did not look repentant in the slightest, at least he did not act blatantly ignorant to being scolded. He did not look so arrogant anymore. Good, hopefully Lan Qiren would be able to teach him a lesson before sending him off.

Once the boy finally stood fully clothes in front of him, his head lowered and his hands respectfully joined in front of his stomach, Lan Qiren gave him one last glare and turned around on his heel, expecting the other to follow without a fuss. Wei Wuxian did, silent and subdued as ever.

He was finally showing some humble behaviour, probably just realizing in how deep of a mess he had buried himself into. It was too late though, there was no talking himself out of this. Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan were going to hear about this still today.