Wen RuoHan's Heir

4. Year 3: The Burial Mounds

The Burial Mounds were just as cold and forbidding as they had been the year before. The village detritus were just that much more derelict. The muddy remains of the failed lotus attempts just as weedy as the former vegetable fields. This year, she was allowed into the Demon Slaughtering Cave to look for evidence that the Yiling Laozu had returned.

A rock with molding hay might have served as a bed. Another flattish rock might have served as a table. Broken bits of pottery and partially burned wooden boxes littered the floor. This cave was treated no differently than her mother's manor in that respect. The Allies definitely had a thing they liked to do: take someone's home and completely trash it. No... not just the actions of the Allies alone were they? Her father and uncles' armies had done the exact same thing to the sects and clans they decimated.

Take what was valuable. Rape, torture, and murder the survivors, most likely. Destroy what was left. The actions of the conquerors to the conquered. Such actions appeared to be universal regardless if one was seen as the so-called 'good guys' or the bad.

And if the same actions were performed by both the 'good' side and the 'bad' side, how was one to objectively tell the difference between 'good' and 'bad'? 'They' started it first, therefore 'they' must be the 'bad' ones? Right and wrong seemed so simple when she was a child....

No... not so simple.... Back in the Nightless City a boy had thrown a rock at her and called her a bad name. So she had punched him in the nose. His mother had only seen the punch, and not her son's preceding actions, so Wen ChaoXing had been spanked.

Was it possible that Wen Xu's attack on the Cloud Recesses was provoked by something the GusuLan Sect had done? Highly unlikely.... Wen Chao's attack on Lotus Pier was definitely retaliatory in nature.... But in his case, he started that fight, too, starting in the Indoctrination Lectures and continuing to the Xuanwu's cave. Was there something Wei ChianBei had done before the Indoctrination Lectures to her father that started that mess?

What, then, was the difference between her father destroying Lotus Pier and the Allies destroying the Nightless City? Both were taking something that didn't belong to them. Both murdered the leader of those sects. Was one justified and the other not? Why? How? Rage filled her mind, her soul, amplified by the endless, persistent, agonizing resentful energy pervading her body. How many innocent people died because of her grandfather's quest for power and control and her father's and uncle's viciousness? How many innocent people died because the Allies wanted to regain their power over their own lands by destroying her family and people?

It seemed easier, somehow, to accept that she was on the side of righteousness during the war. Even as a Runner, she heard of the atrocities committed by her grandfather's army, saw occasionally what that army left behind of the smaller clans in their way. Their brutality, the carnage. Jiang YanLi had tried to shield the Runners from seeing the battles raging, hearing the slick sounds of swords slicing through flesh or the meaty thugs of arrows hitting their targets. Hearing the wounded and dying calling out for mercy or their mothers. It was impossible to keep the children away from everything, though. In the aftermath of a battle, everyone was recruited to carry the allied dead to pyres and the wounded to the healers. The dead Wen were left to Wei WuXian to deal with as he pleased....

Xie An gathered her thoughts to the present. What in this cave had been valuable? Wei ChianBei was always tinkering with arrays and talismans in the rare moments when he wasn't teaching or drunk. And sometimes even when he was drunk. It was highly unlikely he had changed habits when he abandoned the YunmengJiang. That table, those wooden boxes, must have been filled with his notes and creations.... Who had taken them? The Jin, probably.... They were the most injured. And the Jiang could no longer make any claim towards their former head disciple's belongings.