Backlash Part 1

Chapter 182: It Could Be Worse

All things considered, Wei Wuxian thought this was actually going quite well. Wei Wuxian had been accused of fathering a child when he was fifteen and fucking off while abandoning the mother. Then someone who was able to count, and realized there were two children, accused Wei Wuxian for taking advantage of a young woman. Something about stringing her along while taking no responsibility for her or their children. Then someone decided it sounded more believable for him to have just been fucking around with multiple women in the same town. So now Wei Wuxian was supposed to have been finding the time to regularly, over the last five years, come all the way to Dafan to... fuck his way through the family tree?

Wei Wuxian was certain he had explained that this was a clan village. That was half of what they were pissed about. They knew that, 'all of them are wens' and blah blah blah. Wei Wuxian was now desperately curious to see how many of them thought that a woman would be perfectly gracious about the man she had slept with leaving her to go fuck her sister. It's just... Wei Wuxian is desperate to know how many of them are going to find themselves slapped, or injured in a very sensitive area, within the next five years. Seriously, he's dying to confirm that stupidity is genetic in the Jins.

'So yah... Apparently I'm a slut.' This actually isn't even the first time he was accused of that. Wei Wuxian had died a virgin amidst rumours that he was...

'Defiling young maidens and eating their hearts. Or some such nonsense.' Wei Wuxian had sort of lost track of most of the rumours. He just remembers some of them getting exhaustively specific in the creative debaucheries his virgin ass was apparently getting up to.

To be perfectly honest it had been a long running assumption. Wei Wuxian had always liked to flirt. It was a kind of joking and teasing that made people feel good about themselves. It was great, but apparently flirting means he must be kissing and fooling around with them? Wei Wuxian didn't really get it, but most of the time people seemed to have already accepted it as fact.

Wei Wuxian was a flirt, absolutely a true statement. Wei Wuxian has absolutely no arguments against being a flirt. He was a flirt, and he was promiscuous. Wei Wuxian is pretty sure that saving your first kiss for twenty years and only ever kissing one person, is not promiscuous by any definition. But, everyone else has decided that Wei Wuxian is extremely experienced, and apparently completely irresponsible about what children he may be leaving behind.

Wei Wuxian doesn't get it, but he supposes, with a leader of a major sect being known for such behavior, that the cultivation world just takes this type of behavior as normal. So Wei Wuxian is really only upset about the implication that he would spare no consideration for the women or children he would be abandoning.

'So... Okay, there were a lot of accusations about my dishonourable treatment of women. Then even more for being so irresponsible and abandoning my children.' Wei Wuxian acknowledged. He completely expected this and Lan Wangji, may not like it, but should have known to expect it too.

Then there was the Dafan Wens. Wei Wuxian was thrilled with the plan Jiang Yanli, Lan Xichen, and Nie Mingjue came up with. Wei Wuxian is one hundred percent convinced it was entirely Shijie's idea, and she got the other two to agree to it. He hasn't actually gotten around to asking since Wen Nuan insists on having him in line of sight at all times, and Wen Yuan has started to become almost as clingy as his jie.

Wen Yuan does not quite reach her in anxiety. He asked casually a few times for their older cousin, who had been taking care of them last. He didn't seem particularly shaken or surprised when Wen Nuan said that cousin wouldn't be coming back again. Wen Nuan said he cried after they lost their Gugu and Shenshen. Wei Wuxian is heart broken to think that this is when Wen Yuan may have started to think that people you love disappearing forever, was normal.

The Dafan Wens are trained healers. Everyone old enough to write has at least started to learn the basics of medicine. They're not all master physicians like Wen Qing and San-yi, but they would all be welcome additions to the infirmary. The need for medical staff is great, and the Dafan's lands were full of medicinal plants that they cultivated. Those stores and anything well enough to harvest can be brought back to help bolster the supplies in camp.

Jiang Yanli specifically requested having the Dafan Wens housed in between the Jiang and Lan cultivators. Everyone in camp knew that this was not going to be received universally well. Jiang Yanli felt confident in her ability to ensure the Jiang cultivators treated the Dafan Wens with respect and ensured their safety. She felt confident in the Lans to have the self-control that even those who may be angry would still protect the Dafan Wens and show them every courtesy.

The young children would hardly be the first children in camp. There weren't many, but not all the sects fighting in the war currently had their lands to occupy. There were families and children of cultivators and servants already being looked after. It would not be much effort to accommodate the young DafanWen children.

Jiang Yanli even had a back up plan of setting up two infirmaries. She would ensure that her Yunmeng Jiang cultivators went to the one that the DafanWens were working out of. Other sects would either open up to allowing them to help, or let their disciples suffer while waiting to be seen by a healer. Jiang Yanli still wanted to at least try to integrate them into the existing infirmary.

Wei Wuxian was not surprised by the protests about allowing Wens into camp. Wei Wuxian had heard the accusations and arguments before. He had heard them and he had heard them while innocent Wens were brutally slaughtered. Wei Wuxian was not exactly okay, but he was weirdly handling this much better than he expected.

Wei Wuxian was focusing quite a bit on keeping the toddler and four year old in his presence calm. It at least gave him a reason to keep himself calm. Calm enough to hear other people come to the defence of the Dafan Wens. Wei Wuxian was not prepared for what it would feel like to actually hear that.

Wei Wuxian was actually pretty sure he was going to cry like an absolute baby about it later. In a lot of ways, all Wei Wuxian had desperately wanted in his last life was for anybody else to step up and speak out about the treatment of the Wen civilians. He felt like he had been screaming into the world for someone to do the right thing and no one could hear him. A mounting tension and desperation and knowledge that he was failing.

Wei Wuxian was trying so desperately to keep innocent people alive and he could feel that it was not working. He knew, deep in his gut, that they were all going to die and her couldn't stop it. Coming from that, where right until the end he had tried and no one listened and no one else stood up and demanded people listen. Wei Wuxian knows Lan Wangji did not believe the Dafan Wens should die, and he is certain that Lan Wangji tried to stand up for them. Lan Wangji was trapped, limited in what he could do in a way that was different, but not dissimilar to Wei Wuxian.

So to hear people... People with authority commanding all those hate filled voices to acknowledge the truth. To speak out against lumping children, doctors, civilians with the cruel cultivators commanding and army that these people have no control over. It was like suddenly taking in a deep breath when you hadn't realized you had actually been holding your breath the entire time. Wei Wuxian felt a bone deep relief, and for the first time really believed that it might be possible to save his family.

So yes, Wei Wuxian was definitely going to sob into Lan Wangji's arms like a baby about this because he did not know if he could possibly process that feeling of hope sliding firmly into place in his chest. Next to that, the same accusations and threats hardly mattered. He had even used the Yin Hufu and he knew the rumors had already started to leak back through the other cultivators. What he did in Dafan was not the sort of thing that would be kept quiet, but so far no one had accused him of anything drastically new. No one even accused him of making an evil weapon and started demanding he give it to them.

So yes. All things considered, Wei Wuxian thought this was going quite well.