Not modern/corporate AU, but:
The very last place searched for evidence of Jin Guangyao’s crimes was the small estate on the outskirts of the city. Distant enough for privacy, but close enough for the Sect Leader to be reached in a hurry if something happened at Carp Tower. Every Jin Sect Leader had made use of it in some way and Jin Guangyao was no different.
It was where he’d murdered his father.
With the truth of Jin Guangshan’s death was revealed, no one was exactly eager to visit and find some remnant or evidence of the ignoble and horrifying death. Especially after that Lan Jingyi had loudly wondered if perhaps Jin Guangyao had a secret stack of portraits of the hideous and disfigured prostitutes he’d ordered to do the deed.
Jiang Cheng certainly wasn’t going to make Jin Ling be in charge of it, so here he was.
There were thankfully no portraits or still stained sheets or any other gruesome things that he’d heard speculated in the past days. As he’d expected, the estate was impeccably clean and inviting, ready and waiting to recieve the Sect Leader for a day of leisure. Giving the grand bedroom only a cursory look, Jiang Cheng focused on the study.
The desk yielded a handful of documents that would need to be reviewed, but what caught his eye most strikingly was the tall bronze mirror afixed to the wall.
A twin to the one Nie Mingjue’s severed head had been discovered in after Lan Wangji suddenly burst into the banquet and leveled his accusations.
Flicking Zidian with his thumbnail, Jiang Cheng tilted his head and addressed his head disciple.
“What are the chances, this is just an ordinary mirror?”
Liu Lang narrowed his eyes at the seemingly innocuous copper surface. “Very low Sect Leader.”
Spreading his fingers to shake off the urge to split the damn thing in half with Zidian, Jiang Cheng got to work. Half-way through, he thought This would be faster with Wei WuXian, and felt a tide of anger at himself, an old habit, but then a new wash of some unnamable emotion as he remembered Jin Guangyao’s frenzied, self-pitying confession to framing him.
Sixteen years of grief and guilt and guilt for his grief, and Wei WuXian had been something like innocent all along.
Jiang Cheng nearly cracked the mirror.
Taking a long, slow breath like his sister had taught him, focusing his qi like his parents had taught him, and reasoning through the problem like he’d learned from watching Wei WuXian, he bent all his furious will to opening the mirror’s doorway.
If he could do nothing else to make up for it all, he would see the man who’d set both his sibling’s deaths in motion stained with every last puddle of mud he could find.
Hours later, he stepped through it, unsurprised to find all the accommodations of a torture dungeon. Chains and hooks and blades of varying shapes and sizes, more than a few still proudly embossed with the Wen clan emblem. Curling his lip and resisting the urge to just destroy it all, Jiang Cheng moved further into the room to let Liu Lang follow, then froze as he realized there was a body chained against the far wall.
Not a corpse he realized when the chest rose and fell, but a living body. Emaciated to the point of skeletal, the man could almost have escaped by slipping the manacles off like bracelets.
It had been two weeks since Jin Guangyao had been discovered as a patricidal, incestuous maniac. Who knew how long it had been before that since he’d come to this place? It was a miracle the man lived at all. It would be an even greater one if he continued to do so.
“Get a healer!” Jiang Cheng snapped as he rushed forward, hands reaching out to check breath and pulse as his disciples began to scramble behind him.
The man’s skin was cold and clammy. A shiver went down his back at how well he could feel the bones in his wrist, at the rasp he became aware of with every breath. Without any real hope, Jiang Cheng shoved qi into him. This wasn’t like the comfortable cage of rooms Sisi had been kept in; this man had certainly seen things, knew things, that would be vital to the investigation. If there was any chance at keeping him alive to speak them, Jiang Cheng would try it.
A soft groan came before the man shifted, barely a twitch, the sort of thing that would usually herald a corpse rising. Jiang Cheng could feel the pulse under his fingertips, and so spoke a distracted attempt at reassurance as he puzzled over weither the Lan would deign to lend a healing song.
“Jiang Cheng?” Breathy and faint, he would have missed it if he’d leaned back just a handspan. Jiang Cheng froze as if it had been shouted, qi cutting off in shock.
Slowly, hesitantly, he reached up and tilted the mans face up, brushed back his hair, and immediately felt his throat close up and his eyes sting, his heart galloping a painful beat in his chest.
“Wei WuXian?” he whispered, then loudly, frantically. “HEALER! Where is that healer? Get them here, NOW!”
Wei WuXian’s lips curled up into something fond and his eyes slipped closed, and Jiang Cheng’s chest squeezed with dread.
“No! No, don’t you dare you bastard!” Jiang Cheng screamed, Sandu shrieking with him as it left it’s sheath and crashed through the chains holding Wei WuXian so he could lift him up (he was so light, too light) and rush out. If the healers weren’t coming to him fast enough, he’d go to them. “You can’t die! You don’t get to leave me twice! No man can die twice, not even you! I won’t let you, you hear me Wei WuXian?! You are going to live damn you!”
If there is any chance at keeping him alive Jiang Cheng swore he would try it.
