a moon bloodied with cruelty

by Meiyun

Content warnings: graphic depictions of gore & violence

When Nie Huaisang took Jiang Cheng into his home, it felt like becoming an exit wound; the coreless man could only look at his old friend with an indescribable ache masked with the cold look of hatred swept across his face.

Normally, Nie Huaisang would tell him to smile, fan wide open before his face like curtains shielding guests from a scene of murder. Jiang Cheng can already feel unease begin to collect in his gut.

He merely shakes it off. Nie Huaisang is a friend. Friends trusted each other. He didn’t want to let his mind wander into the reality that enemies wore the faces of friends in times of desperation.

Jiang Cheng couldn’t let himself believe it, not when Nie Huaisang was known for his cowardice before his wit; evenings spent soaking in Gusu’s cool breezes as Nie Huaisang’s fingers trembled against the pages of books he hid and indulged in. Quite shameless, really, but Jiang Cheng didn’t bother to humor the weaker cultivator in those days.

Now that he thinks of it, he wishes he did.

There isn’t time to spare for warmer memories, not while heaven crumbles under the weight of smoke collecting in the air from sects burned to ashes and blood thickening the air. Jiang Cheng’s hands are raw with viscera and revenge.

Maybe that’s why he’s sitting across from his old friend, silence strung out between them like spider’s silk thinning before snapping. He can barely stand the ache of stillness, too vibrant to simply sit and wait for instruction like a dog to its owner.

Nie Huaisang cuts the tension in two when he clears his throat, “Apologies for the inconvenience, Jiang-xiong. And I apologize tenfold for the state of my sect; you know, it’s been quiet lately, what, with Wen soldiers slithering into every nook and cranny of the Unclean Realm. It’s a shame, really,”

He punctuates his words with a click of his tongue.

“It’s a real shame.”

The statement in itself sends a shiver rolling down Jiang Cheng’s spine. The fraught discontent that collected in the pit of his stomach only worsens when the shallow glimmer of a knife against the spilled moonlight from a window catches in the corner of his eye.

“I really brought you here because I was interested in the fame you’ve collected; beastly killer of Wens and survivor of the Yunmeng massacre, hm?” Nie Huaisang’s voice is steady, almost sing-song. It’s a hymn of war and wrath growing louder and more gnarled with every passing second. “I want to teach you.”

The too-quiet creek of a floorboard amidst the silence fills the pause of his words.

“I’ll teach you how to be agile—” with a flick of his wrist, a knife tucked into Nie Huaisang’s robe sleeve pierces flesh like a pin to fabric. “—to be graceful.”

Blood dribbles and pools under the limp body of a Wen soldier who had caught sight of Jiang Cheng in the sect leader’s quarters; he isn’t dead, rather, suffering.

( A lamb to slaughter, teeth piercing its throat as it struggles and cries. Nie Huaisang never prided in the idea of playing the wolf in sheep’s clothing, but this way of living is barely adaptable, killing anything that can’t fit in its mold. )

Fury is the first thing that glints behind Jiang Cheng’s eyes the same way the stars flicker and burn in the sky. The mere sight of a Wen soldier calls upon a wave of resentment that billows over him. A tide colliding against the sand. Thunder crashing into the tip of a tree. Fire catching sight of timber and reducing it to ashes.

He feels visceral fury deep in the marrow of his bones, contorted and malformed as it twists into the depths of his sorrows.

“I see that you’re angry, Jiang-xiong,”

The snap of Nie Huaisang’s fan pulls him out of his self-induced daze. His eyes are notably kind, kinder than most. It’s almost odd; the sect leader branded as frail and fickle-minded had left a man paralyzed with so much as a grin and toss of a knife. He was never the type to help himself, always falling behind and flailing over the shoulders of his classmates.

It all feels like a facade. Maybe Jiang Cheng’s memories are nothing more than delusions of simplicity.

“You’re barbaric in your killing. It’s messy and traceable,” a sigh escapes Nie Huaisang, incense smoke tightening the tension and clouding the faded hues of his eyes in pale shades like ghosts. “You’re violent in your grief, Jiang-xiong — it’s showing in your actions and it’s not at all beautiful.”

He snaps his fan shut, then turns on his heel in the direction of the Wen shoulder. There’s cruelty in Nie Huaisang’s eyes, similar to the gold hues of a violent sun casting drought upon villages. Jiang Cheng could feel his throat bob with a tense swallow.

“You do not wield the weapon; you are the weapon.”

It isn’t a secret that his weak golden core stopped him from wielding a saber with the same poise and fervor as his older brother— in fact, he is nothing like Nie Mingjue.

Perhaps their differences in idealism and devotions is what split them into pieces that could never fit in the right places. The elder had his head in a haze of bloodshed, warfare gracing his every step as the heavy blade of his sword slashed through the same bone and steel that created him.

The younger brother was epitomized grandeur, his fingers long and lithe as they rested against the delicately painted paper of fans he adorned with love. He knew from the start that he wasn’t meant for the role of a sect leader, but what could he do?

And now that he is, he wants nothing more than to watch his own sect prosper with the blood of Wens.

While he can’t swing his weapon with the same dexterity as a strong cultivator, he uses every inch of the blade for the same brutality. The cold metal lays against the Wen soldier’s throat, his eyes wide with terror; Nie Huaisang almost relishes in it.

“Kill swiftly, gently,” His saber breaks through bone, the soft cry of flesh splitting the air as his eyes fix on the Wen soldier. “As if you’re putting them to sleep. Everyone longs for a restful slumber, mm? Jiang-xiong?”

The question is rhetorical, almost mocking in its manner; the way that Nie Huaisang purrs out his words like honey against silk, a slight hymn comparable to prayer rings in the back of his throat where his truths lay dead and cold. Nie Huaisang’s blade draws blood like a brush wet with ink, slaughter and calligraphy becoming the same art.

“Of course. Though, you talk as if you’ve slept peacefully within the last couple of years. I can’t name anyone who has, to be completely honest.” Jiang Cheng lets a smile tug at the corners of his lips. He’s nervous. He’s ill with something incurable festering in the pit of his ribs like an infection nestling in an open wound.

Nie Huaisang offers the same look of delight, “It’s true, it’s true. It’s hard to sleep when you don’t have so much as an idea what’s happening outside your sect, if your sect even is yours after the Wens have claimed their place over it. Sick people they are.”

He punctuates his words with chuckles, but Jiang Cheng knows from the moment Nie Huaisang gestures that his smile barely reaches his eyes.

He’s the image of the moon, Jiang Cheng thinks. A cruel, cruel moon that wants to outshine the stars.

— and maybe he’s right, maybe the grin that graces Nie Huaisang’s face is macabre, dark and adoring of everything wrong in this war-ridden world. He kills like it’s instinct, after all. he kills and there’s not a single doubt in Jiang Cheng’s mind that he doesn’t enjoy it.

What a sick sect leader. Nie Mingjue would be ashamed, frankly.

But he doesn’t say this, he wouldn’t dream of it.

Silence stretches between them and Jiang Cheng considers putting his hand on his friend’s shoulder, but he isn’t sure if that’s the other man’s idea of solace. The Wen soldier lays cold on the floorboards, his blood staining the wood a deep shade of red.

Nie Huaisang feels as if his head is being held underwater. Blue is the color of prosperity but all he can see is red, red, and more red; red on his hands in visceral, adoring tragedy draped in velvet; red marring the delicately carved floorboards of his room; red like the blood on his blade and between too-large teeth that hollows the skull and rips flesh apart the same way rabbits are left to die amid the maw of a wolf; red in its beauty, red in its misery.

It never suited the visage of affluence— almost like Nie Huaisang, who never quite fit in the mold that success is created from.

He replaces the seed of prosperity that refused to bud with something more cruel, something that rooted itself in the fissures of his bones and become overgrown with abhorrence blistering with every image of the red sun rising high in Qinghe’s skies.

Sweat slicks down Nie Huaisang’s powdered face as his eyes crack open to the sound of bones snapping. He barely flinches at the sight of the corpse beneath him, stabbed and beaten until all there is to spare is carnage. He’s barely recognizable — immediately, disgust curls in the pit of Nie Huaisang’s stomach and reverberates through him like stars burning out under the gaze of the moon.

Jiang Cheng can only watch in horror.

Nie Huaisang— his friend, his Huaisang —had become a slaughterhouse of a man within minutes. The delighted look on his face falls slack like his smile, it’s all unraveling at the silken seams and he can’t piece himself back together fast enough to save for an excuse.

Jiang Cheng’s words slip out gracelessly, emotion trickling out with every utterance of a syllable, “Nie Huaisang, you—“

“Shut up. Don’t look at me.”

Eyes brighter than two suns blistering across the sky stare back at the man, burning with the apathy of molten gold. Jiang Cheng feels caught under the gaze of a wolf starved for slaughter.

“Do you understand? The lengths that war will take you? Do you truly know that there is more to killing than the drawing of blood?” Steady words hiss out between heavy gasps for air. Nie Huaisang’s trembling hand wipes blood off the surface of his cheek. “There is a loss in humanity. Life is given to humans and it’s selfish for like those Wen clan animals to take something so precious.”

And we’re no better than them, essentially. We’re all the same flesh and bone weaved together adoringly and poisoned with ire.

The energy to growl out his words leaves him abruptly when the distance between the current and lost sect leaders are no more than a few centimeters. Nie Huaisang’s lashes fall low despite the wideness of Jiang Cheng’s eyes. He grins with the feigned elegance of a god splitting his maw wide.

“To conclude myself, I hope you enjoyed your lesson, Jiang-xiong. You should start killing for me if you love the look of those Wen soldiers dead and gone under your heel. It suits you. Execution suits you.”

It seems to suit Nie Huaisang better, like a halo wrung around the soft tresses of his hair — Jiang Cheng bites his tongue before letting those thoughts slip. Friends trust each other not to let secrets as cold as blood run deeper than sinew, and Nie Huaisang is his friend.