The great Sandu Shengshou walks up a mountain alone, Sandu in one hand and Zidian on the other. Step by step he breaches the sky. The air becomes thin, but still he continues. Tell me, dear reader, for what does a terrible man cry? Sandu Shengshou can strike a man down with nary a thought; is famed for killing his sect brother who was raised at his right hand; hunts practitioners of the monstrous way with a near single minded ruthlessness. What could bring a man such as this to tears?
Jiang Wanyin kneels in the ancestral hall of Lotus Pier, silent and solitary. It has been this way every time he’d visited the hall for the last year now but this time is different. He is in white again, for the last time. This time he isn't at war while he should be mourning, he does not have to scavenge white clothes from empty villages with their fields ruined and their people ruined too. This time his home has risen from the ashes, empty as his shixiong's grave. There is no one left to fight for, except a tiny baby with no parents who belongs in the golden cage of his father’s family and not the open lake of his mother’s. Jiang Wanyin is kneeling here mourning, alone, the last one left of his family.
Jiang Wanyin is the last and he is alone.
At the peak of the mountain is a shrine, barely more than a pile of stones sheltering a cluster of wooden tablets. He reaches to the back of the shrine and pulls out a tablet. It is old and clearly made by an amateur. Sandu Shengshou polishes the tablet. For whom would a man like this mourn? He places offerings before these hidden ghosts. Is this the fruit of duty? Of love? Of regret? Dear reader, you tell me.
Jiang Cheng's knees ache as he kneels. He tells himself it is in penance, for not having protected his sister. He tells himself this pain is not for him. He is lying. He does not address his father, he knows his father does not care. He addresses his mother, apologies and pleading drip from his mouth in time with the tears dripping from his chin. He addresses his sister, regrets seizing up his muscles until he can barely place the incense sticks in their holder. He thinks of his shidi and shimei and brushes the tears away. Sometimes he wishes he had rebuilt Lotus Pier differently. Memories press thick and heavy in every corner. Here a memory of a shidi, there a shimei. This was where one of his shishu taught him how to eat peaches, there was where a kitchen girl taught him to peel lotus seeds. Everywhere there is Wei Wuxian. Everywhere there is his family. His heart aches.
His disciples are in awe of him. They watch him train. They are afraid. Jiang Wanyin does not know how to make them like him. He is like a ghost or a monster, untouchable, but unlike monsters there are no valiant heroes to slay him, no Hanguang-jun to calm his chaos. He is untouchable. He is a stone statue, crumbling into dust.