Well he picked up on that. He remains unclear about why Jiang Cheng is crying and why Lan Zhan agreed to buy alcohol for him!

“Alright, alright, alright, let’s go. Why are you both still staring at me like that, go on!”

Gladly.  

They leave the way they entered.  It's still grueling and unpleasant, but the undead immediately along the path have already been taken down.  Getting back to the edge of the Burial Mounds is simply a matter of wading through the foul-smelling mud and tripping roots and unnatural screaming fog.  Wei Wuxian is kept safe between them.

The sky is dark when they get out, and they make their way to the Yiling Inn without further challenge.  

He tears himself briefly from Wei Ying's side in order to pay for a room upstairs and a solid meal: rice, soup, steamed buns. One order of tea and two bottles of wine.

Wangji carries a tray of the tea and wine over to their table, sets it down. He gives both bottles of wine to Wei Ying and pours him a generous cup of tea. "Food coming."

Jiang Cheng has been sitting quietly.  Thinking.  Brooding, if he were being honest.

He'd wanted to be the one to tell Wei Wuxian, but now that it was approaching a point where he had to he is also dreading it.  Not enough that he'd let Lan Wangji be the one to do it without him.  Still.  He's gone through enough diplomatic dinners and unpleasant conference meetings that he hopes he can manage this one.  Lan Wangji is maybe not as bad as Sect Leader Yao?

He keeps glancing at Wei Wuxian, looking so thin and pale.  Remembering the future, watching him collapse.  Jiang Cheng feels the wrongness of Wei Wuxian being anything but strong revolving in his chest and in the weight of the two swords which he'd set well out of arm's reach so Lan Wangji would let him sit down next to his brother.  

The wine is decent. Wei Wuxian is playing a fun game called: how much wine can he drink before someone tries to talk to him about his Problems. So far he's fucking acing it.

Wangji is staring fixedly at Wei Ying. The innkeeper brings over their food and he barely notices.

Right here. Alive, Wei Ying, right here. Those are his eyes, eyebrows, lips. That is the correct movement of his throat as he drinks. This is all Wei Ying, truly, right here. Really here.

Yes, alive.  As he's been for the past two months or so of the future.  Much of which was in Lan Wangji's presence.  Now that their primary shared goal is finished Jiang Cheng is going back to finding Lan Wangji a bit creepy, staring like that.

"Let's start at the beginning and go in chronological order," he states with a sigh once the innkeeper is out of their way. 

"Right around when you were captured, the Sunshot Campaign began - all of the other great sects against the Wen.  Lan Wangji and I retrieved our swords, then started looking for you together.  We originally found you later than this, after you'd left the burial mounds.  You were in the process of killing Wen Chao."  That'll have to happen again, one way or another.  Something he is looking forward to getting to do again.  

"You had... new abilities.  A black flute and a stygian tiger seal, which assisted in the war.  We... weren't careful enough.  Demonic cultivation corrupts the user.  Though - that was later."  He's struggling to stay chronological, and he hasn't even gotten through the first year.  They'll get back to that in a moment.  Jiang Cheng takes another breath.

"Anyway.  The war ends.  Jin Guangshan wound up with the Chief Cultivator position, because he's a coward who held back and let everyone else do the dirty work, meaning they were still at full power.  Gusu Lan and Yunmeng Jiang were rebuilding, but fragile.  

"The Jin were abusing their prisoners - the last of the Wen.  Including Wen Ning.  None of us had the political power to stand up to the Jin and survive.  

"You did anyway.  You broke them out, travelled to the Burial Mounds with them.  I told you I couldn't protect you from the fallout, and you told me that - that I shouldn't.  You defected.  We staged a fight, enough that everyone in the Jiang sect would be safe from the Jin.  You lived in the Burial Mounds again, for a while.  Long enough that A-jie got married.  To Jin Zixuan.  Had a son."

“The peacock? How’d you let that happen, Jiang Cheng, and why, were you sleeping?”

Wen Ning. The idea of Wen Ning held prisoner in any capacity, after he’d done nothing but help and risk himself, makes his fists clench and tremble. His ears roar.

Kill them first. Kill them all. Wei Wuxian, don’t you want them ruined?

"She loved him.  I couldn't stop her from going.  I never could stop anyone from going.  You both just... left."

Breathing.  This isn't even the worst part.  They need to get through all of this.  Convince Wei Wuxian of this.  Jiang Cheng doesn't know how to fix anything, but Wei Wuxian can do anything.  He'd never really stopped believing that.  Not when they became enemies.  Not when Wei Wuxian died.  He'd kept looking.

"And he did improve, over time.  Before he -"

"I mentioned that there were side effects to demonic cultivation?

"Over time, you'd been getting less and less stable.  Angrier.  Less reasonable.  I mean, I always said you were unreasonable before, but it was worse.  Really, leaving to go back to the burial mounds in the first place might have been the first sign.  I hadn't seen the pattern, then.  

"A-jie invited you to Jin Ling's one month celebration.  Jin Rulan, you named him.  We'd visited, in secret, months before.  So you could give him a courtesy name.  A-Ling hates it, by the way.  You hadn't gotten any better at naming things since you named your sword." 

Jiang Cheng realizes he's putting it off.  

"On your way there, you met up with Jin Zixuan and his retinue.  And Wen Ning was with you.  He'd died, at the camps.  You'd brought him back as a fierce corpse.  Damn, why can't I tell this in order?  A new kind of fierce corpse - stronger, and able to think.

"You lost control, and attacked them.  His entire retinue was killed.  You ordered Wen Ning to tear out Jin Zixuan's heart."

More wine. More wine is the appropriate course of action here.

“He lost control. You do not know what he ordered.”

"Fine.  He ordered Wen Ning to do something and Wen Ning tore out Jin Zixuan's heart.  Maybe that was Wen Ning's idea; he's surprisingly vicious.  Afterwards, Wen Ning and Wen Qing left the burial mounds to turn themselves in.  For all the good that did.  Jin Guangshan wasn't satisfied.  He called everyone to Nightless City.

"And you.  Or the Yiling Patriarch.  Whatever you were, by then.  You showed up.  Fought.  I was there - the group of Jiang cultivators I brought with me were initially just standing there, trying to stay out of it.  We thought we were recognized, at first, but then we were attacked too.  

"And A-jie ran onto the field, looking for you.  One of your fierce corpses struck her."

He chokes on his wine. "No. No, that wouldn't happen."

"Did you think I was joking when I said that demonic cultivation corrupts a person's mind?

"As for the rest.  Once A-jie was dead, you... I'm not sure what it was you did.  Something with the stygian tiger seal that shattered half of it and sent the other half into the milling crowd.  It made the living people start attacking each other.  Hanguang-jun was there too.  Attacking his own side.  I think that might have been before then?  It was more evidence that you'd developed something to control living people too."

"There wasn't anything left.  Of you, once you did that.  I knew you wouldn't if you weren't already gone.  No way left to bring you back.  Just a danger to everyone else still alive.

"I killed you."

He drinks more wine.

He laughs, eery in its unsteadiness. Tosses his head back over the chair and sprawls with his eyes on the ceiling. "Good. Good, very good, Jiang Cheng."

He keeps giggling.

Jiang Cheng isn't lying. He knows about the Stygian Tiger Seal when nobody in this present but Wei Wuxian should know that name. He might be wrong, but he isn't lying.

"Wei Ying."

"Ah, sorry, sorry Lan Zhan, I'm -- being loud during a meal, and also being a mass murderer, those are against your rules aren't they! How uncourteous of me! I -- ha, I --

Why are you here, Lan Zhan, did you come to punish me?" He clicks his tongue. "So presumptuous. Lan Wangji, correcting my course is Jiang business and not Lan, no one asked for you --"

"I was not under your control."

"-what?"

"Never was I under Wei Ying's control." Magically speaking. "I chose to fight for you." (Late. Too late, too late, too late.)