Unrestrained Heart

Chapter 17

"Jin Zixun is dead?" Jiang Cheng asks.

"They found a notebook?" Lan Wangji asks at the same time. "The one you lost before the Sunshot campaign?"

"Would someone really hold on to that for all this time, just waiting for an opportunity to use it?" Wei Wuxian responds.

"That might not have been the only reason." Lan Wangji says. "Someone could have been using it to study your early methods and ideas."

"Why Jin Zixun?" Wei Wuxian asks. "Why would I want to kill him?"

Jiang Cheng turns to stare at him as if he is missing something obvious. "As revenge for what he did to the Wens, plus he's always hated you."

"The Wens were over a year ago, if I was going to take revenge, I would have killed him then and openly taken credit for it. He always hated me? But I barely knew who he was before Wen Qing came to me and asked me to find Wen Ning." Wei Wuxian says.

"I think the important question is what do we do now? Are you two going back to the burial mounds?" Nie Huaisang asks.

"I think that is a bad idea," Wei Wuxian says. "For a long time, even before the Sunshot campaign, I have been having two different dreams. In the first one I am at the burial mounds, and it is under siege by all four major clans and the minor ones as well. Wen Qing and Wen Ning have been taken prisoner and executed. The mob plans on exterminating the rest of the Wens, even little A-Yuan. Lan Xichen and Jiang Cheng are among those against us. I thought because at first, I had the Yin Tiger Tally, if I destroyed it the dream wouldn't happen. After it was destroyed only that aspect of the dream changed, the rest remained the same."

"Why would A-Cheng and even Lan Xichen turn against the two of you?" Jiang Yanli asks.

Wei Wuxian thinks about the way Jiang Cheng had looked in the dream and the words he had said, "I think the original plan was to kill you, Jin Zixuan, and A-Ling. That would have triggered the first dream, even if Jiang Cheng hadn't believed I had a hand in it. If he believed that it was my fault because of my type of cultivation and taking in the Wens, he could still have been turned against me. Nie Huaisang ruined those plans with his timely letter. Whoever is behind the plans probably knew someone was on to them, and that would have made their position uncertain with the major clans. So, they changed their plans and killed Jin Zixun instead and did it in such a way that could easily be pinned on me in a way that would convince the smaller clans to join the assault. After all I am the evil Yiling Patriarch, it sounds like something I would do as far as they are concerned. The second dream isn't much different from the first one, with the exception that it is only the Jin clan and hundreds of small clan members and rogue cultivators."

Jin Zixuan looks pale at the thought that he and his family almost died.

"I think going back to the burial mounds now will be the catalyst that sets the second dream in motion. It would be a slaughter, fifty people against hundreds. I think we should bring the Wens here instead." Wei Wuxian says.

"Here?" Jiang Cheng says a little too loudly, "Are you insane?"

"Look at it this way, you always say you need more people and several of the Wens are cultivators." Wei Wuxian tells him.

"But they are Wens." Jiang Cheng has had a strong prejudice against anyone from the Wen Clan since Lotus Pier had been destroyed.

"They aren't the same as the ones that attacked Lotus Pier, you know that. They could come here as a traveling group of cultivators using another name. Maybe as distant relatives of the Liu clan." The Liu's had died out or disappeared during the Sunshot campaign. It felt fitting to name them after their disciple that died during the attack on Lotus Pier.