He isn't even doing anything.

If something weird was going to happen to him, you'd think that it would go ahead and happen when he's exploring an abandoned building he's not supposed to be in, or poking power-infused rocks, or sneaking into several-hundred-year-old wine cellars with their owners' submissives at formal dinners. Or at least touring an experimental physics facility.

But he is in his room, practicing the flute, like a totally good and well-behaved music camp attendee who is even not planning to sneak out after lights out tonight. (Because he's planning to read a book with a flashlight, but that's not the point. Though unnatural things happening to submissives who sneak out after lights out mostly happens in books for six-year-olds).

He closes his eyes for a moment to feel the music, sitting in his chair in front of the music stand exactly where he's actually supposed to be.

And then he isn't.

He hits the ground, not hard enough to really hurt but hard enough to be a bit of a shock given that he didn't first fall off of anything. His brain is still sorting out sensations - his sense for power seems to have felt something but what is a great question. But his regular senses are also returning new information, and probably it's a good idea to pay attention to that first. He opens his eyes.

He's outside. It's sunset. It's cold. He is next to a giant pile of wood and also a path. If he looks up a bit, he can see a cluster of houses with lit up windows, which is hopefully good news for his prospect of getting somewhere not cold in the near future. ...And also look kind of like he's landed in a historical reenactment village.

And there is - his brother? His brain produces a wait what and he blinks but. He looks a bit different in a way Wei Wuxian can't quite place, and he's wearing different robes than he usually does - same color - and he's ...carrying ...a ...sword(?!?). But it's not like he can fail to recognize Jiang Cheng just because he's dressed differently and carrying objects, and no that is definitely his brother. 

Who doesn't look to be in a great mood (not that Jiang Cheng often looks to be in a great mood). He has absolutely no idea what's going on, which doesn't give him much to go on in figuring out if and how much Jiang Cheng is about to be mad at him. ...How about he doesn't say anything yet, and leaves it to Jiang Cheng to start things off. And meanwhile tries to stand up and not fall over onto the wood pile. There, that sounds like a great first step plan. 

Jiang Cheng also recognizes him.  "Wei Wuxian." 

His face goes through a number of emotions: Surprise, outrage, confusion, exasperation, anxiety.

"What do you think you're doing here?  How dare you show up like this, blatantly out in the open where anyone might see you."

Well if he had any doubts this was his brother, saying his name in that tone would definitely sort that out.

That's more and partially different facial expressions than Jiang Cheng usually has around him these days, but mostly not really surprising ones otherwise. Not really helping him enough with the how-angry-is-he question.

??

Ok, first part is only to be expected, it's not like Jiang Cheng's likely guesses for how he got here are going to include 'sudden nonvolitional teleportation'. 'blatantly out in the open where anyone might see you'? ...Is he at some kind of fancy dom event location he's not supposed to be at and also not dressed for it?

"It was an accident! I know this is going to sound super unlikely but I did not sneak out, I was in my room and then I was here and I didn't do it! Sir." ...Ok there are like 10 ways he could have said that better. In his defense, random teleportation into historical reenactment village that is maybe a fancy dom event. He still may or may not be about to be told to hold his hand out.

There is absolutely no way that Jiang Cheng is going to believe that Wei Wuxian traveled from the Burial Mounds to Lotus Pier by accident.  By teleportation, maybe.  Such talismans exist even if they aren't usually strong enough to make it that far, and Wei Wuxian is a master at creating and improving talismans.  Not by accident. It's far too much of a coincidence.

More importantly, he doubts anyone else will believe it.

They're close enough to the edge of Lotus Pier that Jiang Cheng could just kick Wei Wuxian the rest of the way out, and he is very tempted to.  Wei Wuxian didn't want to be Jiang Cheng's problem any more.  He should kick him out, and then Jiang Cheng will be alone and stomping around on dark winter paths by himself again. 

He'll do it in a minute.

Wei Wuxian hadn't felt like explaining himself for years.  Even before he left Wei Wuxian had given nothing but a litany of excuses when he bothered to show up at all.  Jiang Cheng isn't going to ask why Wei Wuxian showed up tonight.  Wei Wuxian is just going to double down on claiming he came here by accident. 

Maybe he can get some kind of answer out of him if he picks a different question.  Like - what is he even wearing?  "That's a terrible outfit.  Were you hoping it would distract from your face?"

???

He looks down at his robes automatically (he doesn't have a mirror, so he can't really look at his face) - did the sudden weird teleportation also do something to his clothing? - but no he's still wearing the music camp uniform submissives' robes. Which Jiang Cheng has absolutely seen him in before. That is not even slightly the weirdest part of what Jiang Cheng just said.

(Come to think, he would probably have noticed sooner in most other situations but "How dare you show up like this, blatantly out in the open where anyone might see you" is also not a normal thing for Jiang Cheng to say - in terms of like, words, not sentiment - entirely aside from how he's still not sure what the problem was).

...Did Jiang Cheng get really drunk? Did he get drugged with something, did he accept some drink because that was the Proper fancy dom party thing here and then it was drugged? Is that why he's out here all by himself walking around woodpiles?

That's probably a really stupid idea but he is not coming up with any better ideas (aside from 'Jiang Cheng just looks like himself, really he's himself but 8' and that's not actually an idea).

...Great, he does not even a little bit have 'what to do when your dom is super drunk' experience. He definitely has friends with the experience who've ever said anything! He's definitely seen TV shows and even not all of them were comedies! Unfortunately most dominants are not Jiang Cheng, and also his brain is completely blanking on useful suggestions and is instead producing 'when your dom is drunk is a good time to ask them for expensive presents!' and a random article he once read about the tendency for abusive doms in media to get drunk before they did whatever the climactic moment was going to be. 

This is not fair, he would have way more fun with random teleportation or drunk Jiang Cheng if they didn't happen at the same time.

Come on Wei Ying's brain, think of useful things.

He drops his eyes. "I'm sorry, sir. I can change clothing and wash my face" (is there actually something on his face? He runs his hand over his face but it doesn't hit anything unexpected or come away covered in anything) "if we go home or to a private room?" There, conciliatory and behaved submissive and trying to plant a good idea for next actions without being insubordinate, hopefully that's right. (...Private room might not actually be a good idea given that they'd be closer to the other fancy doms, but also they'd be closer to someone he could ask more questions and also he is in summer robes and it is cold.)

Of all of the things Wei Wuxian could have been conciliatory about, he chose this?!?  What the hell!  Is Wei Wuxian mocking him?  Wei Wuxian is acting strange.  A new, different kind of strange.  Jiang Cheng doesn't like it.

He wants to storm off.  If he does, Wei Wuxian is still going to be here, doing... whatever it is Wei Wuxian was planning to do here, which can't end well.

There is a part of him that was wishing that Wei Wuxian would just be normal.  Like he was before everyone else died.  And he would say something like 'What do you mean, these robes are amazing.  I would go to meet the Emperor in robes like these' and then punch Jiang Cheng in the arm and they would be brothers again.

"Unless washing your face gives you a different face that isn't going to help," he snaps.  "But if I can't be rid of you we should at least go somewhere private before someone else shows up and catches you here."

He doesn't in reality react in a way people looking would see. Probably. Definitely. (At least people who aren't Lan Zhan.)

It shouldn't surprise him, right, that if Jiang Cheng has lowered inhibitions so he actually says things is drunk and mad about him, he'd say he wants to be rid of him.

It's not like he asked for him.

(It's not like Wei Wuxian doesn't know what kind of sub he is. It's not his fault this time but it's not like it'd be weird if it was his fault and he had to be dragged off to a private room to stop him from embarrassing House Jiang, again. He needs to be dragged off, he needs to behave, he needs to do the right thing, except he can't most of the time. And everyone already knows that nothing's going to help. Not any more than washing his face would give him a different one. Of course anyone would want someone different.

It's not like he's somehow finding out something new or unexpected or weird.)

...Aaaand how about he stops thinking about this now. That sounds like a great idea. And ideally thinks about it before the next time he gets beaten into subspace because that would be much less fun. Nooope, not thinking about it!

Eyes down, this path is kind of weird, oh look that piece of wood has a cool swirl on it. "Yes, sir. I apologize for being where I shouldn't, sir." It's not his fault!! But Jiang Cheng hasn't even declared an intention to punish him yet, and he didn't say it was his fault so no lying either way, and how about he deals with his problems one at a time. He'll follow promptly and obediently in whatever direction Jiang Cheng leads or directs him. 

Jiang Cheng spent years running and sneaking around Lotus Pier with Wei Wuxian, and rebuilt as close as possible to the original design.  The narrow gaps between the barracks.  The blind corner beside the laundry building where they'd once interrupted an illicit tryst by accident and Wei Wuxian managed to wheedle them into paying for his silence with candies all the way from Lanling.  The gardens outside of the library that they once trampled during a scuffle and were told 'at least you had the good sense to get out of the library before roughhousing' after getting caned, which is practically a compliment as far as his mother was concerned.  He obviously avoids the dining hall and kitchens as they are going to be occupied at this time of night.  It's new wood, different paint, but the same layout.  He could sneak them past his seven hundred new disciples in his sleep.

His shoulders visibly untense once they get through the gate into the Sect Leader's section, which has managed to accumulate far more detail and opulence. Every door is painted with lotus blossoms and more are carved into every support beam and piece of furniture.  A few trusted servants come in to manage the cleaning in the early mornings, but no one is going to just wander in here.

He shuts the door to his house once Wei Wuxian is inside.  Jiang Cheng then goes to the table and sits down.  Absentmindedly, he pulls out a high-level privacy talisman and flicks the glowing symbol up towards the ceiling to cover the room.  This is probably going to devolve into shouting.

Jiang Cheng is acting weird, but Wei Wuxian still knows his brother all sorts of well. He can tell that Jiang Cheng is tense, and also taking them by a really specific route. Probably one for avoiding people, since they don't meet any. ...He knows what his part of that is. Stays quiet, and follows closely, and keeps his head down so if anyone does see them at least Jiang Cheng can look like he has his trespassing submissive in hand. Which gets unfortunately harder when they stop being near woodpiles and start being near buildings, because this still looks like a historical reenactment village, but also like a really cool historical reenactment village.

Not that historical reenactment villages are his area of expertise! But sometimes he's bored and picks up random documentaries and books and bothers his friends who are into one thing or another and bothers whoever he has to bother for outing permissions. And, it's hard to tell when he can't stop and look but he's pretty sure they used all historical wood cutting and carving and fastening here. He's not seeing any machined nails. He thinks they've used all historical paint! (...Is this the kind of historical paint that's toxic? You'd think his brain would bother remembering that part. Probably it's not the kind of historical paint that's toxic. Though it'd be kind of cool if it was and they were just that committed).

He definitely fails at not looking around, but he doesn't duck off down any side paths or hallways (even when - is that a library? Did they do it inside too, does that mean they have all the scrolls and everything) and he mostly catches himself getting distracted staring at woodjoinings before Jiang Cheng has gotten more than a few steps ahead. So points to him. (Given the 'no one had better see you' Jiang Cheng is probably not going to threaten to thrash him in the hallway, but getting physically dragged off instead of metaphorically would still not improve the situation).

The other thing he's distracted by is that he's really confused. Again, by more things, which he might have thought would be hard in a sequence of events that started with sudden teleportation. Why is the historical reenactment village entirely done up in House Jiang colors? And also House Jiang's style, if you adjust it a bit for the historical reenactment, and also House Jiang's symbol which is literally historically hand-carved into stuff. 

They cross through a gate - which he's guessing is the private 'room', because Jiang Cheng relaxes - and there are even more House Jiang symbols, and - ok, he's being silly. Just because sudden teleportation is really weird doesn't mean that everything is that weird. Maybe Jiang Cheng is ...funding part of the fancy historical reenactment village, and so to recognize him they've done it all up in House Jiang's honor. Jiang Cheng would totally go for something like that. Probably there are other sections done up in someone else's colors. And he didn't know about this because he was at music camp, or else because Jiang Cheng thought that if he knew he'd try to sneak into looking at the plans and bother the architects, which to be fair he probably would have. And now it's - the pre-grand-opening, so they're having a fancy dom party, and Jiang Cheng gets to use the nice rooms.

There, see, very sense-making.

He's busy enough looking at the profusion of historical lotuses that he doesn't see Jiang Cheng getting out some power thing until the power is flying around and he's entirely missed what it was. Hopefully it wasn't important.

He isn't sure if he should kneel. Decides not to for now. Stands in front of the table and does look down at the floor and not at the like 500 cool woodcarvings. (Is Jiang Cheng going to let him have just a little chance to look around once he's done yelling at him, probably not.)

Jiang Cheng isn't yelling.  He's scowling in general, which means scowling at Wei Wuxian because Wei Wuxian happens to be in front of him.  When Wei Wuxian decides to just stand there for some reason, he gets confused.  Tea, maybe?  Probably.  Wei Wuxian hasn't used the tea set in this room and wouldn't know where Jiang Cheng keeps it. 

"There's a tea set in that cabinet," he points beside the door.  "Bring it over if you're going to, then stop looming over me and sit down."

Wei Wuxian is totally used to Jiang Cheng scowling at him while he stands in front of him. He still didn't do anything this time! But for once he thinks he has a pretty good chance of proving that he didn't do anything - all Jiang Cheng has to do is call the music camp, right, and he'll have Official Dom Testimony that they saw him twenty minutes ago and so there is no way he had the time to - sneak onto a train? What would his counterfactual self have even done - and get all the way out to wherever they are. So what he needs to do is just avoid doing anything else that he then will have done until he can figure out drunk Jiang Cheng enough to tell him stuff.

?

"Yes, sir." Sure, he can get tea. On the scale of things he could be sent over to get from a cabinet, a tea set is a pretty good one! He goes over to the cabinet. (Do they have historical reenactment tea sets? Do they have historical reenactment tea? He wants to try historical reenactment tea. Is Jiang Cheng going to let him drink the tea or just serve it?) (Is he actually supposed to sit at the table? Probably even drunk Jiang Cheng doesn't want him to sit down in the middle of the floor?)

The tea set and tea are what a local would expect, made with the finest craftsmanship and predictably patterned in yet more lotus.  Conveniently there is also a fresh sealed jug of water along with the container of tea leaves.

There are a few other objects in the cabinet.  A non-matching bowl placed beside the water and tea set has a few pieces of late autumn fruit.  The shelf below has some paper (coarser and cut less perfectly than modern paper), some folded cloth (purple), and a few unlabelled boxes.  Things that Jiang Cheng will need regularly topped up or replaced, without the need for someone to rifle through his desk and mess things up to check if he's low on paper.  Even inside of the cabinets everything is handcrafted with traditional methods.

Jiang Cheng does want him to sit at the table, but considers that specification so obvious that it isn't going to occur to him to say so.

Oh they so have historical reenactment tea sets. And historical reenactment paper, and historical reenactment boxes - and unless he wants to find out if they have historical reenactment disciplinary instruments he needs to not start rifling through Jiang Cheng's cabinets. (...He kind of does want to find out. Just, ideally by seeing them.) He takes the tea set. He's not used to tea sets coming with jugs of room-temperature water, but the jug is clearly part of the set and picking it up is enough to establish it's got liquid in it so he'll bring it over with the rest. 

He kneels to set everything out, and - is completely failing to remember where hot water is supposed to come from in this version of the process. Did Jiang Cheng ring for a (historical reenactment) servant? (He does know how to serve tea, obviously - isn't going to reach Lan Zhan's levels at it, but he wasn't that bad at listening to his tutors. Also does know the longer way, but presumably Jiang Cheng is not looking for him to do that one right now.)

...If Jiang Cheng doesn't say anything about the hot water he's going to have to ask, but he'll see if Jiang Cheng says something first.

Jiang Cheng does not know what the problem is.  They're cultivators.  So either Wei Wuxian managed to tire himself out with the teleportation so much that he can't heat water, or this is yet another instance of his refusal to use anything except demonic cultivation.

...His imagination decides to provide him with the image of Wei Wuxian doing demonic cultivation to his tea, and the resulting cup growing a face and trying to bite him.  This is probably best avoided; Jiang Cheng breaks enough cups on his own and he likes this set.

Jiang Cheng gives Wei Wuxian a flat unimpressed look, rolls his eyes, and moves his hand close to the water for a moment.  The jug warms and light steam drifts out of the top as the water inside becomes exactly the correct temperature for steeping his favorite tea variety far faster than putting it over a fire would manage.

?! What

...No, that's brilliant, that's cooler than all the wood fastenings put together. He does know that rich people used to use power artifacts for stuff like this - and this is definitely a rich person historical reenactment room. That doesn't mean he was expecting Jiang Cheng to have one. These people are committed. How did they even get it, is someone actually still making historically accurate ones or did they have to compromise on the production at least for this. How much funding did they get?

And where is it, doing it with the hand motion is a fantastic trick, he wants to know all about it, but does Jiang Cheng have it on his hand somehow? Sewn into his sleeves? ...The water jug? Damn good thing he didn't pick today to go dropping water jugs. But no he was just carrying the water jug and there's no reason to conceal that the jug does water warming. Unless rich people used to do that?

He wants to poke the jug with his sense for power. He wants to grab Jiang Cheng's sleeve and poke that with his senses for power but even if he decided that historical reenactment disciplinary instruments were worth the intimate personal introduction he doesn't want that much of an introduction and also he isn't insane. 

...Speaking of, what did he even just do that annoyed Jiang Cheng so much. Was he supposed to somehow know that Jiang Cheng had a water-heating power artifact up his sleeve? How would he know that! This is Jiang Cheng's fault for not telling him about any of this. ...No, he's already established that Jiang Cheng is drunk or something. Thinking that everyone should already know about his expensive power artifact sounds exactly like something drunk Jiang Cheng would do.

...Right, tea. He's supposed to be making tea. He does that (he maybe pokes the water jug with his sense for power a bit. He's holding it anyway! It doesn't even really slow him down. Doesn't get anything though. Doesn't poke anything else. Rules about how to respect dominants are unfair to him personally and should come with exceptions for possible cool artifacts). He serves tea. ...Jiang Cheng didn't object to there being multiple cups, and he really wants to try the tea, so he's just going to try pouring himself a cup too unless Jiang Cheng interrupts him to tell him to cut that out. And then try sitting down at the table. Jiang Cheng did literally tell him to sit, and there's no one else meeting with Jiang Cheng here so kneeling by like an attendant submissive would be weird.

This is a smart move as Jiang Cheng would be more upset if he'd refused the tea. 

It is a dark tea with a rich earthy flavor, taken from the same stock that Lotus Pier keeps in the kitchens for all of its disciples.  Cultivators have eclectic tea tastes and many go out of their way to buy bricks from other regions for themselves, but younger disciples typically drink whatever the sect buys in bulk.  Lotus Pier has a few farms that they traditionally buy from and Jiang Cheng has continued that arrangement.  Given how many of their cultivators are still developing their golden cores, that main stock of tea is depleting faster than he'd predicted, having taken into account only the population number and not its demographics.  He'll need to buy more before winter ends.

Having considered the growing of tea, Jiang Cheng has finally thought of something to say to Wei Wuxian.  "So.  What really brought you here.  Did you run out of food at that hellhole you went off to and decided to come to me to beg for more?"

Tea connoisseurship is definitely not his area of expertise (despite that one tutor’s efforts to the contrary!) but the tea tastes good and it’s the concept that counts. (Did they just process it differently or did they go all the way to historic tea growing? That’s probably too much even for whoever these people are. But maybe historically accurately grown tea is just already a thing, that sounds like a thing some fancy doms want. And then they could just get in on it with all their important dom connections.)

Aw and they were doing so well at avoiding the subject. (Hearing Jiang Cheng talk like that is still so weird. He kind of misses it. Maybe he can get Jiang Cheng this drunk at home sometime somehow.)

”Food was fine, sir.” He is so stalling. “I really really really didn’t do it, sir. I was at general commons -“ how long has it been since he got here, he’s not sure anymore. Well, doesn’t really matter, wherever they are it’s not walking distance from music camp. “- less than an hour ago, everyone saw me. I was in my room doing practice -“ he gestures at his flute, which he has been trying to be careful with even though the case hadn’t come along. “and I closed my eyes for two seconds and I didn’t do anything. And I didn’t know you were out here!” And he didn’t know here existed, but he can’t figure out a way to say ‘I didn’t sneak around into your secret project plans’ without making it sound more like he did do that. 

Does he need to add that he wasn’t, like, keeping contraband teleport-related components at music camp, or trying to personally design unilateral teleportation? No, that’s dumb, Jiang Cheng is drunk and acting weird, that doesn’t mean Wei Wuxian needs to assure him that he doesn’t own a supersonic jet and didn’t parachute out of a rocket and didn’t convince a face-shifter to impersonate him at music camp. 

“I really didn’t mean to trespass and disturb you, sir.”

If Wei Wuxian would just come back to the Jiang Sect instead of living in the Burial Mounds, it wouldn't count as trespassing for him to be here. 

"So you were doing magic with your evil flute and it teleported you?  If that's true you're lucky it didn't send you into a volcano or the middle of the arctic ocean."

He looks at the flute when Wei Wuxian gestures at it.  It's not Chenqing, or a variety of flute that Jiang Cheng has ever seen for that matter, though the aesthetics of the instrument are the same.  It is unusual that someone would throw away a spiritual tool and replace it with another, but given that Wei Wuxian has already abandoned his sword, doing so again isn't out of the question.

??!?!?

"Sir, I think you're under the influence of an intoxicating substance and this one would ask to respectfully suggest you don't make any important decisions until morning." ...Oh he is so about to get slapped. He puts his cup down so he doesn't spill the tea if Jiang Cheng slaps him.

(Does Jiang Cheng actually not like his flute? What's wrong with his flute? Does Jiang Cheng actually not like the music camp? That is so not the important question right now.)

(That is a really good point that as random sudden teleportation goes he got a pretty friendly version here. Also, continued on how did that even happen. He definitely needs to think more about that when he is not in the middle of Jiang Cheng suspecting him of having an evil magic teleporting flute.)

???

"What?"

The formality of it is throwing him off more than the sentiment.  If Wei Wuxian had just claimed he was drunk or being unreasonable that would be... still incorrect, but less infuriating.  He stands up, grabbing the collar of Wei Wuxian's robe and pulling him up as well.  Jiang Cheng holds Wei Wuxian's entire weight with little effort.

Jiang Cheng's voice raises to a proper shout.  "I'm not drunk!  You don't get to question my sanity!  I am being entirely reasonable about your flute!  It is evil, and corrupting, and you need to carry a sword instead!"

Points to him for good teacup decisions!

Being dragged up is not a surprise. Usually Jiang Cheng's more deliberate about it but that goes with the talking like this, right. He's expecting the next part to be getting dragged to the nearest wall - or bench, or (did they have discipline racks back whenever he has super forgotten that's what he gets for not watching higher quality historical dramas). Which isn't great news for his next twenty minutes but that's also what he gets for dropping his brain to mouth filter and, you know, what happens when you go making presumptuous comments at already annoyed doms. And hey, Jiang Cheng could have slapped him and then dragged him up.

Fun fact he now knows personally, this kind of grabbing and getting yelled at literally is actually really startling and his heart jumps for a moment there. (...TV show formulas: actually giving doms good advice for once?) But that's fine, Jiang Cheng might get that way he gets about not being important Jiang dom enough 'manner unbefitting his station and position' tomorrow and it's going to be awkward, but he can take being hit a bit harder for an evening. Lots of doms are like this all the time and their submissives mostly come out the other side with bruises same as he does. It doesn't actually mostly go with throwing submissives through windows. This room doesn't even have glass windows.

Fuck fuck fuck shit fuck, right, nope, he was wrong, this is bad, this is a problem this is very seriously bad. (What did this party put in their alcohol. Did the historical architects forget something important and get psychoactive spores into their woodwork.)

Right.

Priority one, keep Jiang Cheng away from literally all other people especially the servants. 

Priority - no, wait, priority also one, he'd better look out for physical symptoms, he can't try for an ambulance now that will not go well but if Jiang Cheng tries to walk on the lake or something or starts throwing up or gasping for air he's going to have to risk it, and if Jiang Cheng passes out he's getting an ambulance.

Priority two, call - who does he even call. ...Priority two, call Lan Xichen, no landing someone into usurpation accusations like if he gets one of the House Jiang subject doms but they're gonna be related by marriage it's not really throwing family business to strangers.

He can still take being hit a bit harder for an evening, he's got a foundation being thrown through a window won't kill him.

He wasn't fighting Jiang Cheng before, obviously, but time to go as far in the opposite-from-fighting direction as he possibly physically can.

"Sorry sir, sorry sir. This one apologizes for questioning you, sir." This is a really stupid time to be reluctant to drop his flute but probably he shouldn't touch it anyway. He holds his hands away instead. "I won't play the flute without your permission, sir." (Sword?! Whatever, it doesn't matter, not the point.) Is he legally allowed to have a sword? Doesn't matter, if Jiang Cheng says he's supposed to have a sword no one's going to cross House Jiang about it. "This one apologizes for forgetting his sword, sir, this one requests punishment sir." Is this a good idea? Who knows, and Wei Wuxian is about to find out!

"Punishment?  Whatever the fuck you mean, fuck your punishment!  Who says I have to give you anything you want?" he shouts before he can think about it, temper far too lost to notice that this is not, in fact, making sense.  Since when does Wei Wuxian talk like that?  He sounds like a fucking Lan. 

Jiang Cheng is not making any moves to cause physical pain beyond the incidental discomfort to Wei Wuxian of being held in place by the front of his robes.  He isn't being held high - Wei Wuxian can get his feet back under him, he just can't move.  Jiang Cheng stares intensely into his eyes, and readjusts his grip to stop him every time Wei Wuxian tries to break eye contact and do his infuriating new habit of looking downwards.

Everything about Wei Wuxian's behavior tonight is strange and wrong.  It's confusing, and Jiang Cheng is upset.

He wants desperately to believe that Wei Wuxian is telling the truth - that he's here to give up the flute.  To pick up Suibian.  To do whatever is necessary to dismantle the Stygian Tiger Seal and defuse the tensions and pacify the rest of the cultivation world.  But this is too easy.  If he'd come here after making such a decision, why be so vehement in claiming that he just happened to show up by accident?  Why double down on that claim? 

His face slowly shifts from anger to a desperate sort of pleading for Wei Wuxian to really mean it.  "You were supposed to be mine," he says, voice quiet again.  "Be at my side."

He got his feet back under him - keeping your feet when being dragged is an important skillset when you're him. He can't say he has any idea what he's doing but 'if a dom is physically restraining you they want you not to move' is within even his 'what do doms even want' interpersonal abilities. This would be a really dumb time to have feelings about how much trouble it is to punish him all the time, therefore he isn't.

His heart starts jumping again, which is objectively really stupid when Jiang Cheng is saying he isn't going to punish him. Autonomic nervous system: super useless as always!

(Jiang Cheng is going to have to keep readjusting his grip. He's not trying to be uncompliant but it's going to take him and then his reflexes a while to catch on to the new and unusual expectation about what his eyes are supposed to be doing.)

He is, in fact, definitely leaning on all his time hanging around Cloud Recesses. (...Lan Zhan will be so upset when he finds out what Wei Wuxian was doing here. But Wei Wuxian knows what his personal advantage is when it comes to doms, and every other way of causing doms to decide to spend time around him is not it.)

He - no -

Jiang Cheng being mad him, he could get a certificate of highest experience in Jiang Cheng being mad at him. And fed up with him, and irritated with him, and most other relevant words and sometimes the worse ones. Usually comes with more orders and less really literal shouting, and being told his flute is evil and he needs to carry a sword does. not usually happen. But Jiang Cheng is less than happy with him more often than he isn't, and mostly it only goes up from there.

This - Jiang Cheng doesn't do this! Absolutely definitely Jiang Cheng doesn't do this in front of him.

(Objectively he knows this is a thing - doms get insecure just like subs get insecure. But he knows it the way he knows the Imperial Jewels are a thing. He knows they exist, he's not going to be surprised that someone has them, and that doesn't mean he's expecting Jiang Cheng to take them out in front of him and give show them to him!)

"Course I'm yours sir." (Unknowingly to Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng in front of him will probably recognize this voice. This look in his face and eyes). "Whose else's would I be?" (Lan Zhan's, he's also Lan Zhan's. But that's different.) "- Who else would put up with me?"

That wasn't a denial, and therefore worlds better than a declaration to leave back for the Burial Mounds, but did Wei Wuxian have to sound so resigned about it? 

Guilt claws at him as he lets go.  Jiang Cheng hates how Wei Wuxian has been avoiding touch since coming back.  He wants a hug.  Wants any reassurance from his older brother.  Wants a conversation that doesn't devolve into an argument because all of the things they spend their separate days doing is actively repugnant to the other - Jiang Cheng hating demonic cultivation, Wei Wuxian furious with the other sects' actions in a way that Jiang Cheng isn't allowed to be. 

It was so much easier when they had classes together to complain about and free time they could spend hanging out in town.  Jiang Cheng had even suggested that they fly out to a town known for it's spicy food, once, not long before Wei Wuxian left.  Jiang Cheng had two days free for the trip (if he skipped sleep to organize his ledgers at night).  Wei Wuxian had refused and had spent the time drinking alone at the docks.  There had been no reason for him to turn Jiang Cheng down except that he no longer wanted to spend time with him.

He doesn't feel like finishing the tea but it would be a waste to ignore it.  Time to be embarrassed about his outburst and pretend it didn't happen.  Jiang Cheng sits back down and picks up his cup, gesturing for Wei Wuxian to join him.  Now it's Jiang Cheng who doesn't try to meet Wei Wuxian's eyes.  He looks at one of the familiar old carvings in silence. 

He's not sure if he's supposed to fix his robes and be House-Jiang-submissive presentable, or if he's supposed to not fix his robes because that was sort of punishment adjacent and he wasn't given permission. 'Not' is easier to correct if he's wrong; he goes for that one. Sits down obediently. (…Attempts to remember to keep not touching his flute.)

(It's not going to occur to him to read anything into Jiang Cheng not looking at him, but he can tell Jiang Cheng still doesn't look happy. And hasn't gone back to 'fed up with him'. Might be thinking about not having shown ‘appropriate dom behavior’, or maybe that one will take longer tonight.)

...What even helps doms feeling insecure? What helps doms-who-are-your-sibling feeling insecure; why are all the examples he’s thinking of romances, that’s not useful to him at all. What helps specifically his brother feeling insecure. In his experience beating him makes Jiang Cheng feel better, but apparently he doesn’t want to right now, and Wei Wuxian is pretty sure misbehaving is not supposed to be how you get doms to feel secure about you.

He could get out his ID card but probably Jiang Cheng is not feeling insecure about the government knowing Wei Wuxian belongs to him.

In lieu of currently better ideas, he watches Jiang Cheng drink his tea so he can get the timing right on the refill, like a real attentive attendant submissive. Which Jiang Cheng may or may not notice at all, and is more likely to notice if he didn’t manage it, and he knows he wouldn’t be able to keep it up, but. He’s learned anything from all his lessons, he can keep himself paying attention for one teapot.

(He’s learned anything from all his lessons, and he knows perfectly well that he’s an absolutely terrible candidate for attendant submissive. His notes aren’t fit for anyone except him, he misses cues even when he’s trying not to miss them, he’s more likely to forget things than to be able to remind a dom about them, and the only way he can kneel still for any length of time is if he’s had a whipping in about the previous two hours. And if he has to be quiet while important doms talk for long enough eventually he will do not that and a whipping in the last two hours will seem really fun by comparison.

Obviously Jiang Cheng uses the household subject submissives and this is a much better idea for everyone. That’s not what ‘be at my side’ means, that wouldn’t even make sense. Neither of them will have fun if Jiang Cheng decides to order him to do it. Why is he thinking about this!)

Wei Wuxian is also thinking about hugs. Those being a pretty obvious idea for what he’s looking for. He mostly only tries hugging his brother after he’s been really severely punished, but that does kind of imply he has standing permission? It’s pretty hard to hug someone over a table, but he’s a bit worried that if he waits something else will happen in between. 

He succeeds in getting the tea refill right. (This means he hasn’t really been able to drink more of his own tea, but that’s fine. He already had some anyway.) He puts down the teapot and attempts to edge around the table and recreate asking-for-a-hug nonverbals while sitting down. (He hasn’t actually been really severely punished, so there are some missing elements, but it should be pretty clear what he’s doing.)

Jiang Cheng has noticed how little tea Wei Wuxian drank.  Even though they're only drinking tea because Wei Wuxian was standing around and clearly wanting something before sitting down.  Why is he like this.

Jiang Cheng also notices the nonverbal cues.  Wei Wuxian always just puts his arms around Jiang Cheng's shoulders.  It's strange that he isn't doing it now, and it makes Jiang Cheng hesitant to breech whatever invisible wall that Wei Wuxian thinks is between them.  He leans towards him like a plant in a window, but isn't sure himself that his general prickliness isn't going to lead him to shrug away Wei Wuxian after a few seconds if he actually tries.

At least Wei Wuxian has bathed thoroughly between leaving the Burial Mounds and coming here.  Jiang Cheng can't detect the place's smell on him at all, only an unfamiliar scent from wherever he was last.

He didn't drink that little tea, he's a fast tea drinker! And he would have drunk more tea if he hadn't been dragged up from his seat in the middle! (Yes yes, he brought it on himself, but he was totally trying to think of the good of House Jiang! Jiang Cheng could give him a bit of an exception on the insolence. Wei Wuxian's not the one with the discretion about what to drag him up about.) (Why is he like this: always a great question.)

Hug! It occurs to him immediately afterwards that prooobably given the not-actually-severely-punished he should have waited for Jiang Cheng to get all the way to hugging him first, or else actually asked permission. Ah, too late now. Maybe the leaning and the sort-of-standing-permission is going to be enough permission, and hey, maybe leaning-only is what insecure doms do and it'll make Jiang Cheng feel better to have Wei Wuxian do the next part. Or maybe this is how they can get to beating him making Jiang Cheng feel better.

(Jiang Cheng might notice the hug is a bit different from what he'd have been used to. But it's definitely a hug, no invisible walls here.)

Hug!  A half hug, with one arm, since he's still feeling embarrassed and that makes Jiang Cheng worse at hugging.  He missed this.  He wasn't sure if he'd ever get to hug Wei Wuxian again.

Jiang Cheng's need for physical affection is matched only by his self-consciousness.  He gets a few seconds of calm and connection before it catches up to him and he disengages.  He's going to pretend that that didn't happen either, or if it did happen that he was only humoring his brother since Wei Wuxian has been acting so off.  Sect Leader Jiang is an adult and a war veteran and he does not have emotions other than anger. 

It's time to get things done. Someone might have seen them and it is important to do a quick patrol to check for any mobs forming or people running around screaming.  Food will need to be arranged. 

"Come with me," he orders, standing up and grabbing his sword.  "All of your things are still in your room." 

Should he instead move Wei Wuxian to some other room where it will be less obvious, like the Lady's quarters or the nursery?  But no, all of the unused rooms are aired out on the same schedule.  He'll need to check that, too, and re-arrange the schedule if necessary. 

...Is Jiang Cheng feeling self-conscious about wanting a hug? That is so what's happening. Fortunately for his brother, Wei Wuxian has never felt self-conscious in his life, and can act accordingly! Jiang Cheng can get as much of a hug as he'll stand to allow. 

He does disengage almost as soon as he's disengaged from - needing to end a hug by telling off the person hugging you does not seem like it would be good for the hug experience. Looks a bit contrite, just in case.

?? his what things are still in his what room? 
(Also, where are they going?) Well, he can guess he'll find out both those things soon!

He - oh, hey, tea, he didn't finish his tea. He drinks the rest of the tea in his cup in one swallow, then stands up. "Yes, sir." He'll follow along to wherever Jiang Cheng takes him this time.

He does feel better after the hug he continues to have no emotions.

The Sect Leader's family's quarters are built around an open central courtyard, as houses often are.  Jiang Cheng's rooms take up the northern side.  Wei Wuxian's room is halfway down one of the adjacent sides.  Cutting through in a diagonal they reach his door in mere moments.  Jiang Cheng walks quickly; probably no one will see them but the faster they go the less likely it will be.  It's fully dark now so Jiang Cheng brings along a candle.  There should be a few left in Wei Wuxian's room but he hasn't checked recently and he doesn't want to make extra trips.

Jiang Cheng opens the door and ushers Wei Wuxian inside.

It is a bedroom with a single bed and a variety of other furniture. The design of the walls and wooden furniture matches with the rest of Lotus Pier (plus a few additions carved in by Wei Wuxian).  Other components like the bedding are entirely Wei Wuxian's style.  There's a flute stand and a sword stand, both empty.  Some spare red ribbons hang on the little mirror over the clothing trunk.

A large desk sits beneath the shuttered window.  Servants have organized it far better than Wei Wuxian himself ever did, meaning the dark wood of the desktop is actually visible for once.  Inkstone and brushes and other supplies are lined up in a neat row.  Stacks of Wei Wuxian's scrawled notes and ideas and rough drawings are next to them, left unsorted.  Jiang Cheng steps into the room for just long enough to set the candle down, then steps back towards the door.

"I'll be back in a few minutes.  Do not leave this room, Wei Wuxian."  He does his best Very Serious Sect Leader Voice for it.

Hey, Jiang Cheng didn't even give him a look about the tea! Maybe hugs are good for him.

(Candle!) He follows at the desired speed.

This room probably has lots of cool details, that he currently doesn't notice at all, because short term problem, Jiang Cheng is trying to leave him here.

(He's less worried than he was when Jiang Cheng first yelled at him about how he needs to carry a sword because his flute is evil. (...Should he have offered to leave the flute behind or something like that? No, how about no reminding Jiang Cheng of that topic unless Jiang Cheng brings it up again.) Jiang Cheng hasn't done more things like that, and maybe whatever's going on causes that and then causes hug-wanting and doesn't run in the opposite order. But he's still worried, and a few minutes is less time for anything to happen than more minutes, but it's still enough time for Jiang Cheng to run into some poor servant and accuse them of conspiring with the evil magic orchestra.)

"Could I come with you sir?" Is that likely to work: no. But it's worth a try!

"No!" he hisses, careful to keep the volume down while outside.  "I have to check if your arrival was seen by anyone.  You going out again will only give them more chances to see you, you idiot.  Step one foot outside of this room before I get back and I'll break your legs!"

All Jiang Cheng needs to do is go to the kitchen and back.  The dining area is the only place with a crowd at this time of day and everyone will know it; someone who saw Wei Wuxian would probably have gone there to spread word.  If they're safe, Jiang Cheng can bring back food.  If they aren't...

Jiang Cheng is too worked up to take the long, slow path.  Wei Wuxian is absolutely going to get distracted and wander off.  The roof will provide a higher vantage point and a shortcut.  He effortlessly jumps straight up twelve feet and disappears from sight of the door.

Nope, fuck, he should not have been less worried. 

He attempts to run directly after Jiang Cheng (in a very technical sense that does mean he didn't step one foot outside the room.) "Sir! Wait for me! Jiang Cheng!" 

Adrenaline does stuff to senses for power. Wei Wuxian read a study about this recently actually! Not all the stuff is good, but some of it is. 

For instance, Wei Wuxian is currently well positioned to notice that a) (no power senses required) his brother just jumped twelve feet onto a roof (scale: also a big deal for senses), which is not a thing, and b) no power artifacts were involved at all, and in fact no power crafts were involved either, and in fact that was more like a foundation except that it wasn't.

This is what he gets for getting distracted from being randomly non-volitionally teleported. He is going to be telling Lan Zhan this story, and he's going to say 'Lan Zhan, I got randomly teleported in a way that felt really weird, and then it was a different time of year and my brother looked different somehow and was carrying a sword around and talked differently and lived in a historical reenactment village and thought I could do magic with an evil flute and didn't punish me for insolence and said I also lived in the historical reenactment village and really wanted me to stay in the room but didn't even close the door, and then he jumped onto a roof and I realized something might be going on'. And Lan Zhan will look at him the way Lan Zhan looks at him and then kiss him because Lan Zhan likes him too much to tell him he's an idiot.

(Wei Wuxian is currently not running after - possibly not his brother - or shouting anymore, though he continues to be not inside the room.)

Jiang Cheng glanced back two rooftops away to make sure Wei Wuxian wasn't immediately coming up to chase him, but otherwise did not stop or shout back when Wei Wuxian did and is now far out of sight, swearing quietly to himself as he hops from roof to roof.  He lands and makes the rest of the way on foot shortly before turning onto one of the more populated thoroughfares.  He walks swiftly but doesn't run.  He is in public and therefore adopting the perfect posture and stride of a gentleman with a purpose.  Running would only draw attention. 

No one else is in the courtyard with Wei Wuxian.  It's just him and the cold winter night air. 

He's already outside the room, no point in going back into it. (This is a great time think about whether the 'break your legs' was a real threat. But he's already outside the room either way.) 

He might learn anything poking around the courtyard, but anyone walking out will be able to see him, and he only has the one place to duck into. And he can't see that much. But he and Jiang Cheng had walked all the way here and he hadn't noticed anyone else up on the roof, and if anyone looks toward the roof from right below it's harder to see who happens to be on it if he does it right.

He can't jump twelve feet, but he can totally climb a building. He clambers up, then keeps himself low to the roof, keeps it easy to hide his face if he needs to. (...No one here's going to know the music camp uniform means him, are they.) Looks around.

The buildings are mostly single story and there are no tall trees between them so he'll be able to see a good distance away in every direction except north (the dark building behind Jiang Cheng's room is one of the few taller ones).  It's a decent-sized village with hundreds of people, built in a sprawling fashion with plenty of gardens and ponds.  There's a road in the direction Jiang Cheng headed that is more well-lit than the rest, but it's all much darker than someone used to electric streetlights would expect.  The opposite direction is especially dark; it's hard to tell but it might be a lake.  The lack of streetlights, cars, or any other electrical light continues into the distant hills. 

Above, the sparse clouds are mostly only visible as places where the stars are not.  There are no airplanes or satellites.  The moon isn't currently visible.

If he wants to continue scrambling around on the rooftops, the buildings around the courtyard have connecting covered walkways but there is a good-sized gap between them and the next building out.

He wants to move around the rooftops (carefully! He is being careful!) enough to look down into anywhere - ?other Jiang Cheng? - didn't already lead him through. Anything different there?

The building isn't as large as a mundane family's historical manor would be; Cultivators have much smaller families, servants seem to be housed separately, and other places in Lotus Pier are more suitable for hosting gatherings or housing guests.  The only lit rooms around the courtyard are Jiang Cheng's sitting room and the bedroom that Jiang Cheng tried to get Wei Wuxian to stay in.  One of the rooms on the southern side might be a kitchen?  It's hard to tell what is inside of rooms with translucent material instead of clear glass for their windows. 

With a bit of moving around, Wei Wuxian will be able to spot an outdoor clearing for sword practice hidden within the layer of ponds and short trees separating the building he's on from the next one over. 

If he makes his way to the opposite roof he can see that there is indeed a lake there.  And a gazebo built out onto the water at the end of a series of narrow walkways.  Other docks and walkways litter the other edges of the lake.  A handful are occupied with tiny distant figures and their lanterns.

(Wei Wuxian is very lucky he landed here in the year that he did.  Cultivators, with their abilities to leap arbitrarily high and their excellent night vision, are prone to taking roof shortcuts and running around in the dark.  But this batch of disciples did not grow up in a cultivation sect and even the ones who have formed their golden cores already have not yet developed the habit of using their abilities as a standard way of interacting with the world.  Reinforced patches of roof tiles are still built into certain roofs like stepping stones where the most common paths once went.)

(If there'd been more people jumping around the roofs he wouldn't have climbed the roof!)

He makes his way around.

He's figured out the no electricity and other signs about the technology (chances that he's been teleported somewhere-else and also to a historical reenactment village: he doesn't think so.) He's not going to recognize a clearing for sword practice in specific, but helpfully the clearing comes with swords. 

Other things he can figure out: there's some alternate-whatever version of his brother here. Who might have different ideas about what makes befitting dom actions, but is not-differently also mad at him. Sounds about right. There's some alternate-whatever version of him here. Alternate version of him is not supposed to be here-here? Alternate version of him does magic with a flute. It may or may not be an evil magic flute. Alternate version of him has a room here-here.

He has good enough night vision to notice the reinforced roof tiles, and can figure out what they mean, but no way to know if that means everyone here jumps around roofs or that the people who do are just important enough.

(Is his flute magic now? He pokes it with his senses for power; gets nothing. He successfully resists the impulse to take it out and try playing it. First of all, he's trying to avoid being seen, and second of all forget Jiang Cheng, Lan Zhan and Shijie would both hit him if he did that.)

The disciples were talking about their most recent night hunts and plans to go out drinking, neither of which had anything to do with Wei Wuxian.  Assuming that Wei Wuxian doesn't somehow hear about the plans and try to join them.

Jiang Cheng brings back a meal of warm rice, vegetables, and a few slices of pork with a spicy sauce.  All in one bowl because carrying multiple would be awkward.  Only one person's worth, as Jiang Cheng ate right before leaving on his walk.  Hopefully no one is going to question why he wants two dinners tonight.  It occurs to him that Wei Wuxian might have also eaten before showing up, but Jiang Cheng doesn't trust that anything grown in the Burial Mounds will be good, and A-jie always made sure there was food around without asking and it always seemed to go well for her.  Maybe if Wei Wuxian can have a proper meal he'll remember that it's in his best interests to stay.  The whole thing is currently making Jiang Cheng feel like Nie Huaisang sneaking food to his illicit pet canary when in Cloud Recesses. 

He leaps quickly back and returns to Wei Wuxian's room.  Which is missing it's Wei Wuxian.  Food is set down on the desk with an annoyed growl, but not surprise. 

Then, Jiang Cheng jumps onto the roof to look around.  Spots Wei Wuxian looking out at the lake.  Flies towards him and grabs him and pulls him back down towards the courtyard.  He uses his cultivation to slow them a fair bit on the way down.  A cultivator, even surprised, would have more than enough time during the fall to react.  Someone only slightly better than a baseline human will not, and this will lead to them tripping even with Jiang Cheng holding a decent amount of their weight.

Ow ow ow ow ow. He does have time to react a bit, which is good news for most of his body, but his ankle really didn’t like that landing. He trips, which depending on whether Jiang Cheng keeps holding onto him will lead to him either hanging from Jiang Cheng’s grip, or falling on the ground at his feet. (If it’s the latter and Jiang Cheng is watching, he’ll notice the presence of training and practice at falling, and the absence of any cultivation use, demonic or otherwise).

Ow. In retrospect, ‘other Jiang Cheng dragged him up very suddenly to yell at him’ and ‘other Jiang Cheng can jump 12 feet’ could have been put together to give him ‘being on the roof when other Jiang Cheng comes back might not go great for him’. His heart rate is going off at him again, which is still dumb - other him is still alive even though other Jiang Cheng is definitely mad at him, therefore other Jiang Cheng is still not going to suddenly murder him. Hey, other Jiang Cheng didn’t even really toss him off the roof! 

He climbs back to his feet (ow, ouch), gives other Jiang Cheng a cheerful smile. Time to be told how much this serves him right for disobedience, and what else is going to serve him right. (…He had better not be in a universe telling a moral story about disobedient submissives, he will object.)

"Don't actually break your leg, Wei Wuxian!  Are you trying to get A-jie to kill me?" Jiang Cheng snaps when Wei Wuxian nearly pulls them both down.  But Wei Wuxian's leg is holding his weight when he stands back up. 

There is, of course, no reason to assume that a cultivator would be hurt by something like this.  He and Wei Wuxian have been wrestling on and pushing each other off of roofs since they were twelve, and wrestling in less fraught locations since they were ten and were newly taught how to fall properly so they could start training their fighting instincts in play even before they developed golden cores.

Jiang Cheng's overall mood doesn't change much.  Jiang Cheng has been anxious since Wei Wuxian arrived.  His mind keeps coming back to what will happen if Wei Wuxian is seen and word gets back to Jin Guangshan.  There were already rumors about them, no matter how good their fake fight when Wei Wuxian left was.  And he can't go out to check without leaving Wei Wuxian alone, and with A-jie married off there's no one he can really bring in.

He gets to Wei Wuxian's room and shuts the door once they're both inside.  "Sit down.  There's food, if you want it." 

Jiang Cheng is going to lean against the wall next to the door and grouchily watch with his arms crossed, because Wei Wuxian is not leaving his sight.

Aw, other Shijie steps in sometimes for other him too! Of course she does! He wants to meet other Shijie. 

Good news about certain earlier threats! He’d mostly (after the first bit) not been thinking about it while he was making his way around the roof. Maybe it was just the local version of doms delineating how much of a thrashing you’re getting in years - you’re not supposed to think they’ll actually do it. And why think about it ahead of time, that’s just making his own punishment worse for no reason. He’s pretty glad other Jiang Cheng is not really planning to do that though.

"Sorry, sir."

(If this was his Jiang Cheng, he would figure Jiang Cheng would think it was the correct dom thing to do to have someone look at his ankle before he got on with punishing him. But his Jiang Cheng also can't jump 12 feet and wouldn't yank him off a roof, and if this is what's done around here then no reason to expect some other thing.)

His leg is holding his weight and is almost definitely not broken! He limps (ow, ow) only a little when he follows (or precedes, whichever) other Jiang Cheng back into the room. 

Aw, other Jiang Cheng brought him food! And is going to let him eat it before he gets the punishment part of the consequences-of-his-actions! That's really nice of him! "Thank you, sir." He did have dinner, but that was a few hours ago, and music camp sadly does not believe in extra snacks so he only has so many. The room is warmer than outside, but he's still shivering a bit, which makes warm food sound extra great! He sits down and digs enthusiastically into the bowl. (Wherever-he-is makes a good spicy sauce, he approves of this trait of wherever he is!)

Jiang Cheng wants to hit Wei Wuxian, but thanks to Wei Wuxian tripping his desire to hurt Wei Wuxian has already been overwritten with his unhappiness at seeing his brother hurt.  Which is a very inconvenient set of traits for Jiang Cheng to have!  He is very angry about it!

It is now the time for lectures.  Another privacy talisman is placed. 

"All I asked was for you to stay out of sight!  For five fucking minutes!  What were you even doing on the roof?  Did you forget that there's a reason you aren't supposed to be in Lotus Pier?  You are terrible, and absolute shit at remembering anything!  We had a plan!  You go to the Burial Mounds with everyone you broke out of prison and that disgusting undead abomination you turned Wen Ning into, and leave Lotus Pier out of your mess!  Us sneaking in to visit you was not an invitation to show up unannounced.  Not unless you're planning on dismantling the Stygian Tiger Seal and prostrating yourself in front of the whole world."

He falls back against the wall.  "Maybe not even then.  Yet.  Jin Zixuan has ideas."  The thought of Jin Zixuan thinking...  "...I know.  But he is part of the Jin sect, and so is A-Jie now.  He has the freedom to invite you to things.  He was thinking the hundred-day celebration for his first child.  No word on that yet, but they are-"

Trying, he cuts off before finishing.  Jiang Cheng hopes he'll feel differently about it once the kid is born, or at least exists, but for right now any thoughts of A-Jie having children is the thought of her and Jin Zixuan- 

Surely Wei Wuxian understands his horror.  They are A-jie's little brothers together, right?

He looks with interest toward the privacy talisman now that he knows it’s alternate universe magic. Even he isn’t going to be able to tell what it does from all the way over here though. Maybe he can take a look at it later, assuming other Jiang Cheng leaves it here. Also assuming other Jiang Cheng doesn’t think the leaving the room and disobeying-a-direct-order-and-warning combo warrants getting out Zidian and leaving him unable to walk unaided for a bit.

Time for lectures, yep. …Is other Jiang Cheng not going to make him stand properly or kneel for the lecture?

Several sentences in, this lecture turns out to have different content than he was expecting this lecture to have.

Other him did what to Wen Ning?? Other him led a prison break?? (Other him led a prison break, and other Jiang Cheng is letting him and the prison broken people just hang out in some other place, and snuck in to visit him, and there’s a plan involved Jiang Cheng says ‘we’ about(!)?(!?)) 

Prostrate himself in front of the whole world?

(And other Shijie still married the peacock, why couldn’t that be different. And other him is going to have to accept help from the peacock, now that’s a horrible fate.)

…he did not actually mean to cause other Jiang Cheng (or other House Jiang) real political problems.

...does that mean he needs to change plans for what he was about to do? (If he was getting a dom lecture on being teleported to alternate universes, they would totally tell him he should tell other Jiang Cheng everything right now. He was not going to do that. First of all, he didn't know enough yet (including which option was more likely to cause other Jiang Cheng to lock him in his rooms and not let him out), and sort of second of all 'about to be punished for disobeying direct orders' is a terrible time to try to bring up 'sir really I'm from another universe'. And if he did tell other Jiang Cheng this him would still have disobeyed the direct order so it's not like he'd get out of punishment. Might as well get it over with!)

- No, he's fine. He wouldn't have thought he'd be getting an impulse to tell other Jiang Cheng after all. But turns out knowing that other Jiang Cheng is going along with other him doing a prison break will do that! He still shouldn't though, should find out more first. And if he does tell him he'll still have done what he did, and it might make other Jiang Cheng feel better if he's already punished him.

He looks down at the table. "I'm sorry, sir." (Jiang Cheng may or may not notice it sounds different than the previous time he said it). "I should have been more careful."

Wei Wuxian is listening.  Which is very strange and somehow only makes him more uneasy. 

"What were you doing on the roof?  You'd better be finished with it.  Can I leave you alone for long enough to fix the problems you've been causing?"

"Yes, sir." He had absolutely been planning to sneak and/or break out after Jiang Cheng left again if he could. But that was when he'd thought Jiang Cheng was having some important dom party and didn't want him interrupting or something like that. "I'm sorry for causing problems, sir."

He takes off his sash and ties his wrist to one of the table legs. (Which won't do anything, the table isn't bolted down or heavy and he can untie it more easily than that. But, statement of intent.)

That is a very weird thing to do!  Strangely, though, Jiang Cheng finds it comforting.  A physical mark of being tied to Lotus Pier even if it is easy to break.  Either way, if Wei Wuxian wants to tie himself to furniture that is... not disastrous?  Certainly better than some of the things he could choose to do with his time.  Maybe if he forgets and goes to leave it will stop him in confusion trying to remember how it happened. 

He pokes through Wei Wuxian's desk.  Most of the writing supplies are there, but not the water for mixing the ink with.  Maybe Wei Wuxian will stay put for a while if he can draw.

Jiang Cheng leaves with the empty jar, clearly intending to fill it.

He's not sure where other Jiang Cheng is going. Is going to guess 'to get whatever other Jiang Cheng plans to punish him with', since wanting him to stay in this room and not leave precludes sending him off for it. 

He doesn't have an idea what the jar's for - is there some local punishment involving jars? - but, he'll find out when other Jiang Cheng gets back, won't he.

Jiang Cheng gets water from the large barrel in the kitchen.  And a stack of extra candles, since he didn't check for those.  Brings them back and puts them on the desk.

He is torn between multiple actions.  He wants to sit down and demand that Wei Wuxian explain his plans immediately, so they can maybe be on the same page.  But if anyone is currently flying out to tell Jin Guangshan, Jiang Cheng is going to have to find out now if he is to have any chance of chasing them down.  He needs to be in two places at once.  Or, better, have Wei Wuxian back working for him, so Wei Wuxian could go track down possible spies while Jiang Cheng... did whatever the second problem would be in that hypothetical since by definition it wouldn't be handling Wei Wuxian.  

"I'll be back in an hour or so.  Assuming that no one decides they have an emergency that needs my attention, so probably closer to three - I swear, none of the new disciples seem to have even heard of delegation before coming here.  It's infuriating! 

"Have you still been keeping late hours at the Burial Mounds?"

This does not cause him to understand what the jar is for. (Is there soap in it? Is he supposed to rinse his mouth with it? He didn't even say anything! No, he did, that was earlier.) He's just going to wait for orders (and/or impatient snapping) on this one. ...He's going to hope the candles are for the same thing as the already burning candle, and not for some local punishment with candles.

Waiting for punishment sucks. He deserves it and he's not complaining. "Yes, sir. 

May the affairs be exact and prosperous for you sir!" Huh House Jiang has disciples here(?) "Ah, I'm sure they'll learn more with practice, sir?" Maybe they're all adult dom disciples. Not much more he can do about it. His brother does not like it when he gets overstepping about what his brother does with House Jiang, and he's not going to assume other Jiang Cheng will like it any better.

…Is other Jiang Cheng going to tell him off for staying up late in the place he lives after leading a prison break. Also, how does he answer that. "…Yes, sir." (Why is there a place called the Burial Mounds. Should he be worried about other him and people he broke out of prison (and Wen Ning?) living there? Other Jiang Cheng did at least make it sound like living there.)

"At least you don't have the Lan sleep schedule, no matter how much you've been talking like them.  'May the affairs be exact and prosperous'?  And calling me 'sir' like you've forgotten my name," he mutters, rolling his eyes even though that last part hurts.  It's Wei Wuxian putting distance between them, like he's just some random rogue cultivator showing up.  As if Jiang Cheng would be going through all of this trouble if Wei Wuxian were instead an ex-member of any other sect.

"Try to occupy yourself quietly.  You have drawing supplies, or you can organize your things - no one can read your notes so they took the mess you left in here and put everything in a pile together.  Just don't go back onto the roof." 

Jiang Cheng goes to leave without waiting for a reply.

...Right, they'd have different etiquette locutions here, because it's a different universe (and different provinces have different etiquette locutions). He's not going to guess the right ones, that's not how etiquette works. Also different what-you-call-which-doms rules? ...He can maybe guess that one?

"Sorry, Master Jiang." 

...Other Jiang Cheng isn't going to put him to stand at a wall or kneel on rocks or anything while he's away? Maybe he doesn't want to send someone to watch him and doesn't think he'll stay put on his own. Which, not like he can say that's wrong. He's learned by now that agreeing that he deserves to stand at a wall for a few hours doesn't very much help him be able to do it. (…Being in the same room with other-his notes would definitely make him worse at standing at a wall. But other Jiang Cheng doesn’t know about that part.) "Yes Master Jiang."

Judging by Jiang Cheng's frown that isn't the right name either.  He leaves without further comment. 

At least his obvious bad mood will keep anyone from trying to bother him with petty complaints.

He has a moment of what-did-he-do before he realizes the obvious thing. He can't keep guessing more, other Jiang Cheng will think he's doing it on purpose. (What other forms have a name in them, is he supposed to say Jiang Wanyin?) ...Other Jiang Cheng won't be back for a bit, he can deal with that later.

He unties himself from the table. ...Did other Jiang Cheng lock the door this time? (He's not going to go out, he's not even going to open the door. He just wants to know.)

The door is not locked.  The door does have a physical lock, in the form of a simple hook which can be set over a protrusion on the wall to stop it from sliding open.  It isn't the kind that can be locked from the outside, nor can it keep someone inside.

It’s really weird to order him so strongly to stay in the room, and not even lock him in it. Maybe other Jiang Cheng expects other him to magically pick locks, or kick through doors. He thinks his Jiang Cheng would still have locked it. But he knows other Jiang Cheng is different some ways.

He is having a really hard time wrapping his head around the fact that other him led a prison break and other Jiang Cheng is going with it. And not because the politics got violent and House Jiang threw in with the side that wants a new government, or the prison was across an unfriendly border. Other Jiang Cheng didn’t seen happy about whatever other him was doing. But he had made a plan with him.

As opposed to beating him half to death, chaining him to the foot of his bed, and calling the authorities so he could do it again in front of them as soon as he recovered enough that two halves wouldn’t add up to one. Which is about what he would expect, if he led a prison break and then ever got within literal or metaphorical distance of Jiang Cheng in the rest of his life.

Maybe other him’s notes will have something, or he’ll find a book in the room. First, though,

He checks his pockets, finds two pens and a pencil but no paper. Other Jiang Cheng mentioned drawing supplies, is there paper in the room?

There is!  A small stack is visible as part of the drawing supplies on the desk.  A cabinet by the door in a similar design to the one in Jiang Cheng's sitting room will also have paper if he opens it up.  (Along with the non-edible components of a tea set and a folded towel, but anything that can go bad over time is missing.)

…It’s probably a good thing he figured out the being in an alternate universe before he really looked around this room, because he thinks he might not have liked it when he thought he was in a historical reenactment village Jiang Cheng was keeping secret.

Haha, visible paper! He grabs some and starts scribbling down his best attempt at a charting of what he remembers of other Jiang Cheng’s jumping thing, and also the teleport. The former isn’t very good and the latter is basically different forms of question marks, but, that’s how you start!

Next up, he can’t leave the room but that leaves the whole room to him. Time to throw himself (ow, ankle) kind of limp around the room and touch at everything with his sense for power.

Most removable magical objects have been removed.  Other Wei Wuxian took some of them.  The magically-imbued talisman ink does eventually go off and was taken away when they were cleaning out everything else with an expiration date.  A few, including Wei Wuxian's sword, were grabbed by Jiang Cheng and thrown at Wei Wuxian's face when the former went to visit the latter in the Burial Mounds for their staged confrontation. 

The clothing trunk contains two full sets of clothing, each with three layers of robes as well as trousers, shoes, socks, and belts.  The inner lining of the outermost robes has a protective array embroidered into them which will make them especially resistant to damage.  They're out of energy, but the array is still intact and able to be recharged.  A qiankun pouch has been forgotten at the bottom of the trunk, similarly drained and currently only able to hold something of its actual size, not much larger than an apple.

Under the wooden floor is a block of stone wider than Wei Wuxian is tall with an array inlaid into it.  It is receiving power from elsewhere but not currently active.  The full array is impossible to see without moving all of the furniture and removing the floor boards.  A segment accessible via trapdoor (not blatantly obvious but not hidden) has a rotating piece of stone that can be shifted to complete or disrupt the pattern of lines.  Depending on how well Wei Wuxian's sense of power works on local arrays, he may be able to tell that it's for heating the room.

He can feel the residue of power in the robes and the pouch, but won't be able to make anything out of it. He copies the arrays out for cross-comparing with anything else, scribbling immediate ideas in the margins.

Here's an idea, he can change into other him's robes before other Jiang Cheng gets a close enough look at his clothes to notice more than that he doesn't like them. He's partway through pulling off his robe when his mind produces the fact that he hasn't seen any local subs, and has a good chance of getting the signifiers wrong somehow. But his current robes also can't possibly have the right signifiers. But his current robes are also not likely to have something that's likely to look like some other local signifier if arranged wrong. Ok, no changing clothes. Maybe that would just make other Jiang Cheng look at his current clothes more anyway. He fixes his robes, digs some more into the chest.

Since he's digging through clothing anyway, he'll check out the seams and other obvious parts like that. He can't remember much of the history of clothing, but he thinks he can spot a handsewn seam. Check out local belts for chances one way or the other that this place does the subs-wear-belts-they-get-punished-with version.

Ooh trapdoor! Trapdoor with giant artifact access! Oh hey artifact light switch thing! What a great feature for a magic system to have! ...He is not going to move all the furniture and remove the floor boards, no, bad idea Wei Ying, not doing that. Flipping the switch, also bad idea, not doing that either, no. He's not going to be able to tell what it's for right away, but that's also not going to stop him. He'll figure out the 'receiving power, not currently active' with only some crawling around over the floor and a few additions to the pile scattering-over-the-floor of notes. Figuring out what it's for will take longer and involve more paper, scraping up his hand trying to get it between the stone and the floor, and nearly dropping the candle trying to get a look there instead, but heating the room does end up as one of his top guesses. (Yes it would really help and be really cool to flip the switch, no he is not doing that.)

All of the clothing is handmade from hand-dyed silk in black and red.  There continues to be no sign of modern technology here.  It makes the details even more impressive, even if Other Wei Wuxian's robes are less ostentatious and intricate than Jiang Cheng's outfit had been.  The belts don't look especially well optimized for use as punishment tools, though anything that can be picked up can be used to hit someone and they aren't likely to fall apart. 

Not turning on the heat means the room continues to be cold.  Not as cold as outside, but uncomfortable.

Not House Jiang colors. He wonders if it's a uniform. Which would explain why other-him didn't take the clothes with him to should-that-name-be-concerning prison break destination. There's any grey area, especially if one includes hand straps, but it's not that hard to tell the difference between a belt that could be used to hand a whipping out and one that's probably not for that. He puts the clothing away neatly before going on. He'll find out at least one whatever-they-use-here just as soon as other Jiang Cheng is back unless it's Zidian, and guessing is not going to be one of his problems. 

Spending this much time thinking about room heating does cause even figuring-out-alternate-universe-power Wei Wuxian to notice that cold, yeah, that's something he's feeling. He could turn the artifact switch, and then he'd be able to check his guess and warm up! He can very easily imagine Lan Zhan's face if he has to explain that yes, he set himself on fire with an alternate magic intruder defense system but he really thought it was the heating system. Also for all he knows it lights up an artifact generator dashboard somewhere. Which technically wouldn't make him not quiet, but he's not trying to be technical he's trying to not cause House Jiang political problems. Conveniently, this room also contains some low-magic-tech and switchless heat solutions. He wraps himself in some inner less fancy robes and the blanket off the bed. 

Checking out the alternate universe magic he has great justification to be touching, check. None of it set off alarms or felt like it was transmitting information to a creator or caught fire even though he didn't flip any switches, also check. Time to check out what other Jiang Cheng put on the wall!

The privacy talisman has burned through its supply of magic and is now inert.  The complex lines and symbols are still there and able to be read, if one knows how to read them.  Privacy talismans are a specialized form of barrier talisman so it has some shared similarities with the array on the robes.  One section is set up to identify and link itself to the walls around a space.  Another part cancels out sounds attempting to pass through said walls.  Around the edges are additional components and details, safety features and other interactions.  They last a decent amount of time when the room is sealed but break quickly once a door opens and the movement of open air and solid objects passing overwhelms the fragile web.

Aw, this one not being touchable anymore either, but - do they have paper artifacts here? Do they have single use paper artifacts here? He likes this magic system and he wants to know everything about single use paper artifacts. Could he make some? …Maybe at that point that just counts as a way of doing power manipulation? He can’t tell from here if the paper was premade. He wants to know everything either way.

He does not know how to read them (yet! He’s working on it!) He copies out this one too, cross compares to what he already has. It won’t help him know what anything means, especially without knowing what either of them were doing, but he notices the similarities. 

And, unless he’s missed something, that’s everything in the room he can use to get his own first uninfluenced alternate magic impression. Step two, where are other him’s notes? Any books he can see?

Unfortunately there are no books on magic.  Most would have been the property of Yunmeng Jiang as a whole and returned to the library, and any books on acceptable cultivation owned by Wei Wuxian have been loaned to the library to help train the hundreds of new disciples. 

Wei Wuxian does have a private collection of poetry that has been left untouched.  They are joined on a shelf by one of the many, many copies of the Lan rules Wei Wuxian was forced to write, kept as a memento.  Somewhat better hidden (out of tradition rather than anyone forbidding it) are a few thin volumes of pornography.  It is the room of a young man, after all. 

Other Wei Wuxian's notes are on the desk, placed in a tidy but completely unsorted pile by whoever cleaned the place after Wei Wuxian left.

Some of the notes seem to refer to mundane things.  Shopping lists.  A few lists of what looks like people's names.  Page with lines like "35 degrees, 1.4 standard" and a picture of a rounded-corner trapezoid and the word "root", the meaning of which is not obvious without context.  Some math equations that were a bit too complicated to do entirely in his head, and a few scattered numbers with their units and uses missing.  Small snippets of poetry or jokes.  List of trees and their traits, some of which are then crossed out.

Many have doodles on them, where Wei Wuxian got distracted when writing.  One has a bunny nibbling at the bottom edge of an unfinished sentence and a little picture of Wei Wuxian being mad that there's a bunny eating his work.  There are quick sketches doing silly things - a Jiang Cheng chasing a chicken as big as he is, a tiny Lan Qiren looking disapproving at a patch of accidentally dripped ink.  

Some pictures, often but not always on their own pieces of paper, are more detailed.  A portrait of Lan Wangji, robes and ribbon and hair swirling around him as he spins dramatically, face intense.  Jiang Cheng, relaxed and cheerful and maybe 15 years old, riding on a sword like it's a skateboard.  Nie Huaisang, Wen Ning, Jiang Yanli, others both familiar and not.  

By far the most interesting and numerous are the notes on magic.  

Talismans!  The ones that Wei Wuxian was working on are very complicated ones with dozens of radicals and variables. 

This one in particular might be plans for a talisman for making things cold?  Maybe?  Or at least started out as one, and Wei Wuxian was trying to make it do something else.  Almost half of the original parts have been crossed out and new ones added next to them, and then some of those are crossed out and replaced with third options or described with tiny margin notes in opaque jargon. 

A few pages are reference copies for finished talismans.  Small notes in the margins helpfully list variations.  This talisman repels mosquitoes, but it's possible to add a line in a certain spot to instead draw them in.  This other one is an alarm that can go off at one of several possible triggers depending on which symbol is placed in the bottom center. 

Music!  Music that is very definitely magic, and very definitely for the flute, and may or may not be evil.  Sadly or thankfully, it doesn't look like "just repeat the notes and magic happens" is how demonic cultivation works.  From the way it's described it seems like the music is being used as a protective layer, like tongs which are manipulated to in turn manipulate a hot object.  Said hot-object-equivalent is a kind of energy given off by the dead, especially those who weren't given proper burial or whose graves were desecrated. 

Aw no books on magic. And he can't even sneak out and look for some somewhere else. He'll figure something out! Maybe other Jiang Cheng will bring him books if he asks politely. (...And can figure out how to ask for the specific ones without being really suspicious). He'll figure it out!

He's curious about other him's poetry but he'll look at that later. He laughs when he sees the Lan rules, a sudden feeling of connection and right-at-home with his other self. Of course no version of him could get through being at Cloud Recesses without that. He wonders if the rules are the same but he can check that also later. Other him's pornography! Also curious, also later. He can save that for after punishment.

And here are other him's notes! He throws himself on the bed with the pile. If he was feeling like being organized, he could try to sort them before getting into reading in some kind of order. Which is to say, Wei Wuxian dives right in in whatever order he happens to see things or spot something he wants to look at immediately.

Shopping lists: good for seeing what sort of things this world has. People's names: possibly good for seeing who else this world has that he knows versus doesn't know, if the names are familiar at all. Math equations: he attempts to use them to guess at what math this world has. He has no idea why other him was interested in trees (or if trees are magic) but puzzles over it a little in case he can figure it out.

Aw bunny, he pets the little doodled bunny. The other Jiang Cheng doodle is a bit weird to see. Not that he hasn't drawn his own share of Jiang Cheng doodles that would not go great for him if his brother saw them! But - he can't quite put his finger on it. But, this Jiang Cheng does probably run around more than his does, what with the jumping. Lan Qiren! Of course Lan Qiren is looking disapprovingly at Wei Wuxian spilling ink around, some things can't change.

Lan Zhan!! He's so glad to see Lan Zhan!! He wants to meet other universe Lan Zhan. ...Do they really do that with swords here. He wants to ride on a sword. Shijie! And there's an other Nie Huaisang too. (...He's still worried about what other Jiang Cheng had thrown out about Wen Ning but he's not going to figure it out from a picture of him so he will think about that later.) He spends a little time trying to compare little Lan Qiren and Jiang Cheng and Shijie's robes and hair against Lan Zhan's and Nie Huaisang's and little other him's to see if he can figure out the local signifiers, but isn't surprised when he can't; other him isn't doing commercial illustration anymore than he does, no reason to be sure to draw those in.

And, magic! Complicated and assorted works in progress or pieces of the same are not exactly what most people would consider the best material for learning an otherworldly magic system, which isn't going to stop him at all. He takes more notes, traces over pieces with his finger, tries to make out the margin notes. (Other him does magic! The well of course he does and the delight for the other him mix up under his more momentary feelings as he makes his way through notes).

Reference copies for finished things are great and very useful for him. His own pile of notes grows some more. (Also, the artifacts before were suggestive but at this point it's basically certain that this world has desired-instructions type magic and Wei Wuxian is very excited about this). He does not try drawing out any not-notes paper artifacts and sticking them to a wall like other Jiang Cheng had, or try any other 'can he make this work' ideas coming to him. It probably wouldn't work, and if it did work that would be worse, no Wei Ying.

...That is. Not what he was expecting. (...Is that why Burial Mounds). Right, ok, energy-from-the-dead magic. Is all the magic like that? Do you need to not bury people properly nearby if you want to jump on a roof? What he was getting from his senses for power before didn't feel like that was happening, but how would he know, it's not like he has a basis for comparison.

He also doesn't try playing any of the music. Even though it wouldn't do anything directly and he could play very quietly. So much magic and he can't even try it out, this world is very unfair to him personally. Next time he gets randomly teleported he wants one of those worlds where he has to immediately do a magic tournament. He takes notes on the music, and does lift his flute to his lips, tracing out the finger motions in complete silence. 

Wei Wuxian is definitely going to be absorbed in this for long enough that unless Jiang Cheng was incredibly off in how long he'd be away, it'll take up the rest of the time before Jiang Cheng's return.

In a deliberately non-rushed pace, Jiang Cheng checks the orders for cleaning.  It looks like the unused rooms aren't scheduled to be cleaned for another five days.  By then, Wei Wuxian will either be here officially or long gone.

Another sweep of the dining area (Lingering outside.  He doesn't want more questions or impertinent comments about extra dinners.)  There continue to be no rumors flying around.  The guards are questioned and everything seems normal.  That doesn't preclude people fleeing in secret by swimming under the water, or sending variants of message talismans designed to not leave visible trails, or any other number of more covert things.  Jiang Cheng once again debates whether it might be safer to hide Wei Wuxian somewhere less likely to be searched if people show up later with accusations, but he can just imagine Wei Wuxian's reaction at being told to stay in Jiang Cheng's treasure vault. 

Jiang Cheng returns. 

Slipping into the room without knocking is very rude but they are being sneaky.  Standing around outside until Wei Wuxian answers the door is not conducive to stealth.  He enters in complete silence and spends a minute watching Wei Wuxian from just inside the door.  Wei Wuxian is entirely absorbed in his notes and adding to the pile.  For a moment, he lets himself pretend that this is normal - that this is just another day like hundreds of others where Wei Wuxian is home and safe, like how they lived before.

Eventually he snaps out of it, and clears his throat.  "Well, you managed to avoid fucking up too badly."

Ah, fuck. He had made sure to pay attention to his surroundings when he was actually touching his flute, given other Jiang Cheng's flute-related objections. But he had totally failed to think about if other Jiang Cheng would just walk in the rest of the time.

He half-tumbles out of bed and kneels on the floor away from it. (His notes are still all over the bed but they'll just have to stay there). (He hadn't been planning ahead, would probably have tried to decide if he should kneel or not if Jiang Cheng had come in the normal way, but this sounds like a good time for kneeling.)

...He also failed to think about how this world probably doesn't have pens or pencils, does it. Good time to think about that: before he maybe got caught using one. 

(Oh, good, though, other Jiang Cheng is back. It isn't fair to the household subjects and servants, having his brother go deal with the household while mad at him and before he's gotten to feel better about it by punishing him. Not much point in thinking about it when he hadn't thought of anything to do about it, but at least that problem he should stop having soon. Possibly to be replaced by other problems, but that's how punishment goes. And he still deserves it.)

What does he say to that? And oh right, the appellative situation. He could leave it off and hope the resulting what-do-you-call-me reprimand contained the answer. No, it won't, and then what'll he say. ...He'll go for letting other Jiang Cheng think he's mixing them up on purpose, maybe he can get his reprimand with the answer that way.

"...Thank you, shidi."

He stands in confusion for several long moments, watching Wei Wuxian kneel on the floor.

Shidi.  Not something Wei Wuxian usually calls him but better than anything else he has tonight.  It's a sign of belonging to the Yunmeng Jiang.  But he doesn't know how to interpret it when combined with the unusual formality and supplication. 

He wishes A-jie were here.  She always knew how to get them to talk without fighting.  What would A-Jie do?  Whenever one of them was upset, she would always come up to them and touch their hair and say something comforting.

Jiang Cheng needs to try finding gentle words?  Somehow, despite years of her comforting him being his most precious memories, as soon as he tries to think of some exact words to say his mind manages to go completely blank.

"Hey.  Why are you being weird?"

He gets the feeling that this is not what his older sister would have said here, and if he'd tried to add head pats they would not have helped. 

...He is getting it so hard for lying if and when other Jiang Cheng finds out what's going on. Technically he isn't lying! He'll leave that one for future Wei Ying.

"Ah, am I ever not, shidi?"

"Yes, but usually in a different way!"

As much as he'd like to storm off and wait for Wei Wuxian to come to him, Wei Wuxian is not supposed to leave his room and has been way more prone to leaving instead of following him.  Jiang Cheng isn't going to sit on the floor no matter what Wei Wuxian is doing.  (Whatever he's doing).  He takes a seat at the desk, still close enough that they can talk.  There are no more privacy talismans in his sleeves - it isn't like he walks around with dozens of them - so he'll have to keep his temper in check and treat this more like an official meeting.  There is a subtle shift in his demeanor as he takes a deep breath, straightens his shoulders, and tries to pretend that this is something that he'd have an official meeting about even though if Wei Wuxian were anyone but family he'd have been dragged off to the Jin by now.

"So.  By now you must have realized that staying in the Burial Mounds isn't good for a long term solution.  Even if you are holding the borders and growing food, you still have enemies.  Are you here because you realized how stupid it would be to stay in self imposed exile instead of trying to find a solution that will let you come back?"

He braces himself for stubbornness.

He feels the shift in demeanor. Lowers his head a little more.

Can he just be punished already, why does there have to be questioning first. He won’t have a better time with questioning after he’s been beaten into subspace and he knows that.

No being told to sit so he doesn’t. Does turn to keep his kneeling facing in other Jiang Cheng’s direction.

Things he knows now: other him is holding borders (and growing food). 'Enemies' sounds maybe different from 'the government trying to arrest you because of the prison break'? Other Jiang Cheng doesn't like what other him is doing, even given the prison break already having happened. And is dealing with this by asking if he's realized things? (He does know there are doms who do that! But.) ('Self imposed' exile? A solution that would let him come back? How would that even work. Is this just, the government might let other him off with 10 years and then partial confinement if House Jiang does politics about it?)

He doesn't want other Jiang Cheng to think completely inaccurate things about what other him is doing, that would be bad for both of them.

"I told you, shidi," that one hasn't gotten a bad reaction yet, how about he just sticks with it for now, "I didn't do it. It wasn't me."

???

"You didn't do what?"

Jiang Cheng thinks back on what he just said, trying to figure out what that could possibly have been referring to.  Wei Wuxian's power is the only reason the other sects haven't stormed the Burial Mounds, even if they are leaning on the unnatural terrain for an advantage.  Jiang Cheng saw the farms himself, and Wei Wuxian was caught taking the Wen prisoners out of the Jin prison camp by Lan Wangji and the surviving guards.  Is the thing that Wei Wuxian didn't do realizing that he can't keep holding the Burial Mounds? 

Or... oh.  Is he still insisting that he teleported here at random.  Of fucking course he is skipping the important questions entirely. 

"Wei Wuxian!  Answer the important fucking questions!"  he snaps.  Slightly louder than intended.  More quietly, leaning forward, "However you got here, you're here now.  You can think about it now.  What are your long term plans?"

He still jumps a little at being snapped at. But he thinks he's getting better at it!

...He's going to assume from the second part that other Jiang Cheng figured out the answer to his own first question.

Time to see how not saying anything works out for him. He looks at the floor and squeezes his lips shut a bit and doesn't say anything.

Several long minutes pass, and the room is silent. 

Jiang Cheng tries waiting Wei Wuxian out, at first keeping his composure.  It's not like he can't sit still for five minutes - having to keep being polite during even the most obnoxious self-aggrandizing speeches during all of the sect leader meetings after the war had been plenty of practice.

It had rarely been completely silent for so long, though.  There's nothing to look at that he hadn't seen a hundred times before, as he subtly re-adjusts his posture for the third time.  The whirls of detailing on the walls, the much more subtle whirls in the wood of the furniture are as familiar as his own fingerprints.  Only Wei Wuxian's behavior and strange clothing are new.  Did he sew them himself?  But no, he couldn't have gotten that much practice, could he?  Jiang Cheng spends a great deal of time focusing on clothing on himself and others, and the seams look perfectly even from this distance.  It's just another mystery that Wei Wuxian isn't talking to him about. 

He stews over everything he wants to say.

Eventually, his patience snaps.  Wei Wuxian is lunged at!  He is pushed until his back hits the side of the wooden bed frame and is pinned there.  Jiang Cheng once again tries to force eye contact.  The position they end up in isn't a comfortable position in general and especially not for Wei Wuxian's still sore ankle.

"Take this seriously!  A-jie is going to be sad if her father in law executes you.  Don't you dare upset her."  This time he at least manages to keep his voice down.

Letting him kneel in silence before he reveals what exactly he’s going to do to him is one of the less surprising things other Jiang Cheng has done so far.

He kneels, and looks at the floor. At least it’s an interesting floor.

With his Jiang Cheng he could expect some escalating reprimands, and then the ‘you’ll tell me in the next minute or’ part, and then the punishment for the refusing to answer if he kept doing it, because apparently that’s what they teach in dom school. No way to know what dom school other Jiang Cheng went to, or if they teach from the ‘don’t let defiant submissives get away with it, keep up until they stop that’ side. Or if dom schools have a separate lesson plan for submissives who do prison breaks.

He hits the side of the bed.

(Still room for improvement on this part! That's fine, other Jiang Cheng is giving him lots of practice, right? And he didn't at any point do anything that would be a huge problem like 'resist', so basically all good.) Ow ankle. He doesn't quite stop a visible flinch. Partially reflexively tries to get his weight off that foot (is he going to be told off for that, he'll find out).

He continues to be acquiescent to force but to not have internalized the memo about unusual eye demands.

Execution, also still on the table. Now he knows that too. (Jin Guangshan is running executions. Wow that's terrible who thought that was a good idea.)

...his Jiang Cheng has never used this particular method of telling him off. As balls out of left field for the day go, this one hits him in the solar plexus. So maybe his Jiang Cheng might want to try it sometimes, because it immediately and effectively makes him feel bad. ...Even though he didn't do any of what caused the situation other Jiang Cheng is upset about, and it's been true just as much the entire time before he showed up.

But he can't tell other Jiang Cheng what he wants to know, and he's not going to tell other Jiang Cheng what he doesn't know he wants to know. Going with the prison break and whatever plan other him has is great to know about (...still hard to wrap his head around, but), but he doesn't know enough else about other Jiang Cheng, and other Jiang Cheng is definitely not happy about the prison break and plan, and Wei Wuxian can't say he usually or very often feels like good-submissively leaving everything up to his dominant to make decisions about, but he doesn't think he's feeling that now.

(Also, no way to know if other Jiang Cheng might decide that alternate versions of his refractory submissive brother need to be locked in the confinement rooms for some reeducational prophylactic before they get to prison breaks.) (Which, he'll do the being locked up, if that's just what it is, for whatever's going on not ending in mass executions and not letting House Jiang be dragged into more of anything. But it'd be nice if he gets to do not that.)

(His plan, or at least the series of next actions he's orienting to right now, are to keep trying not to tell other Jiang Cheng things, and see if eventually other Jiang Cheng wants to send him back to Ominous Location (it did sound like he had a way to get there). And then he can explain what's happening to other him, and other him presumably will know much better how and what to be telling other Jiang Cheng.)

(Other Jiang Cheng will need to reimpose his prevention of looking-down reflexes again.)

“Sorry, shidi. I’m taking this seriously.”

Jiang Cheng doesn't keep trying to force eye contact for long, just looks upset that Wei Wuxian doesn't think he's worth looking at.  Also that Wei Wuxian has once again decided to not fight back.  Jiang Cheng could use a good fight - no swords or cultivation, just punching.  He shoves at Wei Wuxian, not in a painful sort of way but in the way of a little brother trying to provoke a reaction. 

"You still aren't saying my name!  Why not, shixiong?  Yiling Patriarch."

He gets a bit of a wince as the push unbalances Wei Wuxian on his ankle a little so shortly after it had last been jarred. 

He's actually supposed to say Jiang Wanyin? No maybe he's supposed to say Jiang Wanyin but also some title. He's not gonna guess the title, is he. (Why is this so hard, this is a very stupid problem and he thinks inter-universe teleportation should not come with stupid problems like this.)

'Yiling Patriach'?? That has to be at him, right?? Does other him have a title? Was Yiling the prison? Does other him have an outlaw name that would be pretty cool.

Noticing what someone's emotions look like when you're not supposed to look up at them is a challenge, but it's a challenge he is very experienced in (...also he's more willing to do the glance-up thing than some submissive are.) ...Other Jiang Cheng looks upset. Looks upset. (Because he's thinking about upsetting Shijie?) And he's back (...modulo a universe) to his Jiang Cheng doesn't-do-this-definitely-not-in-front-of-him, and he, what does he do, he wouldn't know how to make his Jiang Cheng less upset, how does he make other Jiang Cheng less upset, he can't even guess his title.

"...Jiang Cheng?" he blurts out. If you don't know how to get the right answer and you keep trying similar things you should try something definitely wrong and different to learn more, he totally read that in some math book. If Jiang Cheng is, instead of whatever he's thinking, fed up with him and telling him to put a hand out that'll solve both their problems right?

"Yes!  Was that so difficult?  You'd think someone who could invent a whole new form of cultivation would be able to remember more than a handful of names at a time."

Knowing that his name was not somehow removed from Wei Wuxian's mind to make space for Wen Ning's is enough to get him to back down.  In retrospect, he's a little disappointed that Wei Wuxian didn't start guessing obviously wrong answers in order to bait him into a fight.  He still really wants one.  ...That will probably need to wait until he has more privacy talismans.  Jiang Cheng rolls to the side, sitting on the floor near Wei Wuxian for a moment as he stops to think if there's anything else that needs to be taken care of.  He checks his knees and the lower portion of his robes; it doesn't look like there are any visible dust marks from the floor.

That was actually right!? Wei Ying bows to the math book whose author he doesn't remember, he would not have ever guessed that one! 

"invent a whole new form of cultivation" - fuck yeah, holy fucking gods other him! Get your ass in gear Wei Ying, other Wei Ying is leading prison breaks and holding borders and inventing whole new forms of cultivation, gotta be worthy of the name! (Other him invented a new way of doing magic and the government still wants to execute him, sounds like dom priorities! Not that he thinks being tortured into teaching magic would be fun, but it's the principle.)

Right he needs to answer other Jiang Cheng. "Sorry, Jiang Cheng." That is very weird to say! He almost stumbles a bit over it. But, success! Now he just needs to never confuse who he calls what.

Jiang Cheng sitting on the floor next to him is weird. He stays in the position he was left in; he'll kneel at other Jiang Cheng properly again when other Jiang Cheng goes back to being somewhere reasonably kneelable-at.

Jiang Cheng does not go back to the desk to get kneeled at.  He remembers countless nights exactly like this, sitting next to each other on the floor.  Indoors to avoid rain or cold, or because A-jie had just finished bandaging Wei Wuxian's back and didn't want him undoing her work by moving around too much.

He should stay and listen to Wei Wuxian talk about talismans until he falls asleep on the floor, like he did back then  He should go back to his own quarters like a responsible Sect Leader.  They are close enough together that Jiang Cheng leans over and nudges their shoulders together before rising, to make up for not staying.  But he does stand up.

Judging from the mess of papers that Wei Wuxian has already managed to cover his bed in (why his bed, he has a desk) Wei Wuxian had been in the middle of something.  "Don't run off.  I'll bring breakfast in the morning."  He kind of wants to grouse as he leaves about how much trouble it is, and does Wei Wuxian know how much work he's always put into making sure they had dry clothes to change into on the far shore every time they snuck out by swimming underwater?  But.  Sneaking.  He needs to stay quiet so he can hear if there's anyone likely to catch him on the other side of the door. 

His brain has a moment of ?what-is-other-Jiang-Cheng doing? before brain connections that don't usually go with his brother but do go with people who are sometimes upset around him connect up. He - ?returns the motion. (That's allowed right, like whatever kind of dom you have if your dom puts out a hand for a high five you can high five them without asking, he's just all not used to this here.) Smiles brightly at other Jiang Cheng. Here he is, all alive and not-executed, and Shijie would not have anything new to be sad about. (That's not false reassurance, other him is also not-executed, from what he's finding out that wouldn't happen without the whole country knowing).

Standing is a way to be properly kneelable at; he gets back to kneeling properly. "Yes, Jiang Cheng, thank you," he says, half reflex and half so weird and then catches up with

- wait, is other Jiang Cheng leaving?

Other Jiang Cheng is leaving.  He isn't paying attention to Wei Wuxian's proper kneeling posture.

(of course he's not, the thing doms pay attention to is improper kneeling posture).

...Is he not getting punished?? That's not going to be the most surprising thing to happen tonight, because he got teleported to another universe with roof-jumping and other Jiang Cheng went with other him doing a prison break. Totally more surprising than other Jiang Cheng just jumping twelve feet. Did other Jiang Cheng just come back here to ask him questions, not even punish him for not answering the questions, and then leave again?

Wei Wuxian has a creative mind and has no trouble immediately coming up with several dozen incredibly reasonable explanations. Maybe there's a local rule that punishments happen at some time of day. Maybe there's not a rule and other Jiang Cheng just likes it that way. Maybe other Jiang Cheng wants to punish him during the day when no one's asleep and it's less quiet. Maybe other Jiang Cheng knows that waiting for punishment sucks and thinks that's great. But other Jiang Cheng didn't even say anything!

...Did he get married off somewhere in all the going to live somewhere else with a prison break? No, then other Jiang Cheng would have responded differently to the I'm-yours from before. Did he get loaned out to someone? Loaned out the way where only they're allowed to punish him for now? (His brain produces 'Wen Qing', probably because Wen Ning had come up already, and he stuffs his sleeve in his mouth so he doesn't laugh too loudly.) ...He hopes other Jiang Cheng isn't heading out to write a message to whoever it is.

He can't ask other Jiang Cheng. How-other-Jiang-Cheng-might-feel-about-him-getting-impudent-about-his-dominant's-decisions aside, other him would obviously already know how this works. Well, he's not going to figure this one out by thinking about it very hard either. Tomorrow morning other Jiang Cheng will show up and either punish him, or tell him what he's got coming, or. Or Wei Wuxian can figure something out then. He can do impudent! 'Sir Jiang Cheng, it isn't nice to make me wait so long for punishment like this'. That might work (to get him a few extra lashes, but that's how it goes)!

Meanwhile, he still hasn't looked at all of other him's notes, let alone figured out all of them, and now here he is with the new 'invented a whole new form of cultivation' question! He shakes out his robes a little and jumps (oops, ow) back onto the bed. Time to see if he can figure out what exactly other him invented!

(The answer, given that he's seen less than five examples of local magic that aren't from other him's notes, is definitely no. But he devours more assorted magic (and not magic) notes, and scatters more of his own notes all over anywhere within his arm's reach, and the journey's the important part!)

(Wei Wuxian has had a considerably more exciting and fuller evening than he was planning for, and music camp believes in early rising for submissives, and he spent part of his previous night not sleeping. And he is not particularly likely to stop looking at magic notes for any of these reasons. Wrapped in robes and the blanket over his clothes again, eventually he drifts off over the stack of notes.)

Barring emergencies (and things that other people could absolutely take care of for themselves but which are for some reason brought to him), most of Jiang Cheng's official Sect Leader business is conducted in the morning and afternoon, leaving night to himself.  This doesn't mean it isn't kept regimented and organized.  Jiang Cheng works through the list.  He switches to a high-intensity sword drill instead of a precision one and his meditation to a quick mundane variety, but everything on the list is checked off in the end.

He sleeps.

It's a bit past sunrise when Jiang Cheng wakes.  He goes through his usual morning routine, tallying up all of the incidental things he uses during it (soap, razor, comb, tea, water) that will need to be handled for his secret guest.  Hopefully this secrecy will pass soon and he can go back to letting the staff manage those things.  His cabinet does contain enough spare toiletries to cover him falling in the mud and needing to wash up a second time, which means there's enough for Wei Wuxian.

Did Wei Wuxian bring his own comb and razor?  Or have his old ones still in his room? 

It would be safer to use cultivation here than risk yet another trip to Wei Wuxian's room to ask.  Jiang Cheng picks out a messaging spell.  There are hundreds of different kinds, thanks to the constant arms race between people attempting to send covert messages and those attempting to intercept them.  A few constraints are universal - messages take time to travel, require energy for the distances crossed, and can only be sent to those one is very familiar with.  Not that any of those should be an issue with Jiang Cheng sending a message to Wei Wuxian.  This one is very short range and makes noise, but is invisible while traveling and simple enough to make in the air. 

He speaks into the glowing sigil in front of him.  "Wei Wuxian, are you awake yet?"  Or possibly still awake, knowing Wei Wuxian.  It would be hard for anyone to sleep with their bed covered in papers.

The energy shoots towards its target, fading from sight when it gets about a foot away.  Heading west. 

Wei Wuxian's room is to the southeast.

Jiang Cheng curses and stomps his foot.  Of course Wei Wuxian wouldn't stay in his fucking room.  He hopes that Wei Wuxian was far enough out of range that the magic ran out before it reached him.  They don't need Jiang Cheng's voice announcing Wei Wuxian's presence skulking around in the rafters of the dining hall or wherever he wound up.  Probably a roof.  Hopefully he got startled enough to fall off.

He doesn't want to cart around what he's already gathered while on his new mission to figure out where the fuck Wei Wuxian went, so he goes to Wei Wuxian's room to drop them off on whatever clear space might still exist in there.  Maybe Wei Wuxian left a note?

Barring wake-up bells or household members knocking on his door or other variations of people invested in him doing so, Wei Wuxian does not wake up at a bit past sunrise time.

Here is Wei Wuxian, totally successfully asleep on his bed covered in even more papers than previously.

If Jiang Cheng is still being quiet, Wei Wuxian will just continue sleeping through his presence.

???

Did his talisman... miss?  Can they do that?  They fail to travel at all sometimes but he's never had one go in the wrong direction before.

No.  Wei Wuxian presumably got his message and decided to run back and pretend to sleep, because he is Wei Wuxian and the most ridiculous person on the planet.  In a fit of pique, he decides to send another message talisman right in the room itself, just to make it obvious how Wei Wuxian was just caught.  "I can tell you're faking." 

And the talisman goes...

Through the western wall?

...

What?

There might be a good explanation for this.  If there is, Wei Wuxian still deserves to be hit for starting trouble will understand Jiang Cheng taking the precaution.  If message spells are not going to a person when they ought to, the person might not be there.  That this is either a doll of some kind or an imposter.  The Burial Mounds are to the west.  If Wei Wuxian had never been here-

Zidian sparks to life and Jiang Cheng sends it out to wrap around "Wei Wuxian's" body, pulling his arms against his sides and pinning them there.  It catches the blankets and extra robes Wei Wuxian covered himself in, resulting in an awkward wrapped bundle.  Zidian in this mode feels bathwater-warm and slightly buzzing in the few places not too insulated by the layers of cloth.  It's intelligent enough to shift as needed to prevent attempts to escape without being too tight, and the feeling is much like being climbed on by a purring snake. 

Once his quarry is fully immobilized, Jiang Cheng steps forward.

From his perspective, Wei Wuxian experiences something sufficiently like being shaken awake. (Usually people just knock on his door! But sometimes for various reasons they do come inside.)

“mmm I’m awake,” he mumbles out toward whoever it is. But, people who are taking steps to get him awake are usually pretty committed that he get awake. He opens his eyes. 

…Right, alternate universe! He hopes he didn’t crumple any of other him’s notes, oops. Aaaaand other Jiang Cheng got into his room without him noticing again. (Yes, yes, heads of household can go wherever in their household they feel like.)

”Sorry, Jiang Cheng!” (Ha, right one, A+ Wei Ying!) As it transpires, he cannot get out of bed and kneel - or get out of bed and stand - because he is tied up with Zidian. …Why is he tied up with Zidian? It’s not even hurting him. And he’s wrapped in a blanket, it’s going to be very hard to hit him like this!

Well, hey, no need to figure out how to ask when he’s getting punished! He knows that’s gonna stop feeling like a bright side very soon, but, this was going to happen sooner or later and at this point he’s been seeing the pros of sooner.

He'd cocooned himself enough in his sleep not to really leave any unisolated places. Moving, even wrapped in Zidian, shifted some layers of cloth enough to change that here and there. He can feel the buzzing and warmth through thinner layers. ...Aw, Zidian is being nice today. (Other Jiang Cheng is having Zidian be nice.) The purring snake effect is weirdly kind of nice, like being petted.

He tenses anyway. Can feel that. It's not that he's gotten new information! He already knew other Jiang Cheng had an other Zidian. If anything being tied up with Zidian should make it less likely he's going to be punished with Zidian. (So he's afraid of his (alternative universe) brother's horrible lightning whip. It's very reasonable to be afraid of horrible lightning whips. That's most of the reason to even have a horrible lightning whip.)

(No escape attempts to prevent here. He doesn't know anything about alternate universe punishment rules but he thinks he can safely bet that one's a universal.)

With Zidian occupied Jiang Cheng pulls out his sword.  His face is angry, and scared, and pleading.  His hand is steady.  Sandu glows a faint purple at the edges; it is not quite the same shade as the whip.

"Who are you?  What did you do to Wei Wuxian?  Anything you did to him, I will repay it tenfold."

He thinks back to all of the things that he should have taken as clues earlier.  Wei Wuxian needing multiple hints before calling him by his name.  Acting deferential and subservient like Wei Wuxian was supposed to but never did.  The strange clothing, the unusual writing implements he had just thought was Wei Wuxian being his usual inventive self and making due with whatever he scrounged up in the Burial Mounds.  Failing to turn on the heating array to the point of choosing to bundle in too many layers of robes instead.  His flute was gone, replaced with one only superficially similar. 

Jiang Cheng imagines Wei Wuxian giving a good explanation and him feeling stupid about reacting this way.  He also imagines Wei Wuxian hurt or trapped somehow, waiting for hours as Jiang Cheng failed to notice the signs.  There's really no way this is going to end well.

The sight of other Jiang Cheng angry like that, and also pointing a (magic) sword at him turns out to be bare heart and nerve fucking scary enough that he almost tries to push back a few inches in the bed before being preempted by Zidian.

Right. Well. Fuck. (...In retrospect he should maybe have thought earlier that if and when other Jiang Cheng realized he wasn't the right Wei Wuxian it would be very obvious to suspect he'd done something to the right Wei Wuxian. Hindsight is really 20:20.)

He considers (very quickly!) his chances of trying to keep pretending to be other him when other Jiang Cheng has guessed he isn't. No, that won't work at all. He wasn't even doing that great and he has no idea how other Jiang Cheng figured it out.

...He considers his chances of successfully pretending that he also hadn't guessed yet until just now. No, bad idea, not that.

If he makes other Jiang Cheng literally torture him for information, neither of them are going to have a good time, his Jiang Cheng will kill him (not literally), it won't help whatever's going on with other him or House Jiang at all, and Shijie will definitely be upset.

"I didn't do anything to him! He's wherever he was before, I've never seen him! I did get teleported here, it wasn't me, but it was from another universe. I'm Wei Wuxian, I have a you, sir," (it slips out with the 'you'. What is the correct title for your alternate universe brother who currently thinks you did something to his actual brother, he has no idea.) "and a Shijie. I'm sorry, I should have told you earlier, sir, I didn't know at first but then I shouldn't have pretended, I'm sorry."

Given that "Wei Wuxian" did not respond to being called out by revealing that his true form was a giant face-stealing eel and slipping out of Zidian, Jiang Cheng probably does not need his sword.  Sandu is kept up for the moment, just in case that is still a possibility and this is another lie designed to get his guard down.

"You're saying that there's another universe.  With a copy of Wei Wuxian, A-jie, and I, but different clothing."

Jiang Cheng's mind keeps coming back to the clothing.  Not surprising, given how much time he spends researching trends and making certain that he is properly dressed for the ever-shifting cycle of fashion.  (Or even without it.  Good looking clothing is its own reward.)  Powerful cultivators stay young-looking for a while.  It's possible that ...that... is just what everyone is going to be wearing in thirty years.

Which would mean that Wei Wuxian would have seen Jiang Cheng walking around in wildly outdated robes and not said anything?  How dare he be better dressed by future standards than Jiang Cheng!  Also how dare fashion standards drop that low - that looks like some kind of uniform.  No, that isn't important.  Wei Wuxian telling him a way to avoid real Wei Wuxian being executed for 30 years might be important, but there's no way of guessing if he's from the future or something more exotic.

Or lying.  There's no reason to assume that this is the real story.

Jiang Cheng approaches further, sword still drawn but angled downwards, posture ready to jump back at a sudden move.  With his other hand he lightly scratches at the side of Wei Wuxian's face with his fingernails, looking for the edge of some kind of mask.  Does anything seem wrong up close?

His eyes keep going to the sword. Not very useful of them - other Jiang Cheng is not going to be more or less able to stab him whether or not he's looking. But he has learned a new fact about swords, which is that they're so much more attention drawing when they're unsheathed and pointed at you.

Clothing?? Right that's what other Jiang Cheng will have seen so far, he hasn't seen the magic or the tech difference. "Yes, sir. And more people, sir, and other differences." This feels like a speak when spoken to occasion but he still doesn't want other Jiang Cheng to end up with the wrong idea.

He successfully doesn't flinch at all, go him. No sudden moves; he is as still as Wei Wuxian can make himself for whatever other Jiang Cheng is doing right now.

(Nothing seems wrong or unusual or different from what Jiang Cheng would expect if he touched someone's face.)

"Which differences have you noticed?"

While he's still there, Jiang Cheng grabs a few of the notes that look like they were made by the non-brush implements.  Then he walks backwards to a safer distance where he can skim their contents without being in range of an attack, and coincidentally "Wei Wuxian" can be less menaced by Sandu.  Do they seem to support his story?

Sharp sword: farther away from him. He likes this trait in sharp swords.

That's a very broad question! He's just going to go with how his Jiang Cheng likes his reports until told otherwise. (...Nothing like giving an account while tied up with Zidian and held at swordpoint to make one appreciate more usual ways of giving account, like on his knees with his hand stinging!) His Jiang Cheng likes his reports concise so he can ask more if and where he wants; does not like being rambled at. 

"I think we have more technology sir, and you have power use we don't." Is he supposed to mention all the etiquette and dom-befitting-actions stuff? Nope he is so absolutely not touching the second one. "Etiquette's different sometimes.

Different events happened? Here than where I'm from, sir, I don't know about the other way yet."

(More things he should have thought of earlier: if he suspected him of, for instance, doing something to the right Wei Wuxian, other Jiang Cheng would probably not be polite about not reading his notes! He doesn't think he wrote anything terrible? Just going to have to hope he didn't doodle 'prison breaks are awesome' while falling asleep or something like that.)

(Wei Wuxian's notes are in fact devoid of celebrations of prison breaks. Assuming Jiang Cheng can make out Wei Wuxian's personal-notes handwriting, he can read what very much looks like someone who has no idea how talismans or any cultivation demonic or otherwise works (but does seem to have some ideas about how something not completely dissimilar is expected to work) attempting to figure it out entirely from local Wei Wuxian's notes and the contents of this bedroom. There are some doodles in the margins - Wei Wuxian in more weird robes riding a sword (not even slightly in a manner anyone actually rides swords), a sketched figure Jiang Cheng won't recognize saying 'you're a genius Wei Wuxian'. Some scratchpaper level math, including notation he may not recognize.

From notes to doodles, modulo the different writing implement, everything looks exactly as though it could have been made in his Wei Wuxian's hand.)

"Was one of the differences you getting taken in by the Lan instead?" Jiang Cheng says without thinking, tone irritated and insulting, not looking up from the notes.  The phrasing reminds him of Lan Wangji, on the rare occasions that man spoke at all. 

Jiang Cheng knows that to speak concisely and with as few words as possible is elegant, but it isn't Wei Wuxian.  Jiang Cheng has seen Wei Wuxian in worse situations than merely tied up and held at sword-point, talking everyone's ears off and making grand sweeping gestures all the while.  Not that Jiang Cheng condones that behavior, nor does he want to give the other Wei Wuxian lessons on how to pretend to be Wei Wuxian, so he shouldn't say anything more.

He is more than capable of reading Wei Wuxian's messiest and most casual handwriting, he's just in the habit of complaining about it anyway.  His eyes linger on the assumptions about magic.  With real Wei Wuxian possibly being okay, he focuses on the fact that these are Yunmeng Jiang techniques.  Alternate universe Wei Wuxian or not, this person is not a member of the Jiang sect!  Given that he did so only when Jiang Cheng personally set him into a room containing the notes and all but ordered him to go through them, he can't say anything about that, either. 

Given that the notes aren't, say, attempts to master Wei Wuxian's handwriting, or fake repeated lines that some kind of mimicry monster could produce, this narrows down the possibilities.  And the conclusions about talismans are, he will grudgingly admit in his head, brilliant on the level that only Wei Wuxian makes even if some of the base assumptions are off.  Jiang Cheng takes far better notes and would not be able to make connections like this with them.  When he needs a second hand to adjust the papers, he puts away Sandu.  Zidian alone is enough.

"You think you can walk in here, read about our proprietary techniques, then provide so little information of your own?  I wanted an explanation, and that was at best the table of contents for one.  Start with the different events."  With one of them tied up, etiquette is out the window already.

?? If he had his hands free, he could check his forehead to make sure he hasn’t suddenly materialized a ribbon, but he’s pretty sure he hasn’t! (And he saw that picture of Lan Zhan so it’s not that Lans here actually all wear music camp uniforms.) He’s already mentioned shijie!

“No, sir. House Jiang took me in, sir.”

(He cannot even slightly pull off what Lan Zhan does. And can mostly only pull off submissive eloquence if he’s either doing locutions or quoting something.)

How was he supposed to know there were proprietary techniques! He knows the answer to that is going to be ‘do not in your self-willfulness conceal things from and lie to your (alternate universe) dominant, and also don’t impersonate his brother.’ Well he’s definitely not getting away with it at this point and couldn’t have really thought he would for any length of time; it probably doesn’t really matter what ‘it’ exactly he’ll be getting his beating(s) for. (He’s really working up a collection here! They wouldn’t have so many to get through if other Jiang Cheng had just punished him last night!)

“Sorry, sir.” Hey, great, he got a more specific question! Telling you what they do want when they tell you off; always great when doms remember that part. (Not knowing what he was supposed to be doing is not usually his problem, but it is totally his problem now! One of his problems.)

“…I didn’t break anyone out of prison, sir, and I live with House Jiang. And I didn’t invent anything with power use, sir.” Yet! But he is getting on that one! Other him didn’t even have the benefit of two worlds’ power systems so he’s really got some catching up to do here! If he’s about to be spending a lot of time at walls or whatever it is they do here, he is spending all that time (…that he isn’t spending being whacked for being terrible at standing at walls) on power analysis. (Maybe he should apologize to his recitation tutors. Though it’s not like they were thinking of alternate universes when they told him to memorize boring things he could look up in a book!)

Jiang Cheng takes a seat at the desk looking closed off and formal, shifting his arms so his sleeves fall symmetrically and straight.  His guest can remain tied up for the moment.  Other Wei Wuxian might still be a threat and there's no way of arranging him into a sitting position without untying him that wouldn't involve a lot of awkward limb wrangling and fabric getting caught under them in the attempt, even if Zidian is smarter than a mundane rope.  Besides, there is something upsetting about Wei Wuxian reacting to Jiang Cheng like he's his mother - someone to be avoided rather than talked into following his schemes.  There's a petulant part of him feeling momentarily smug about making Wei Wuxian lounge rather than kneel.

He hadn't been serious when asking if he was of Gusu Lan and is thrown off to have had it taken as a legitimate question to be answered. 

With only a list of things that haven't happened, it sounds like a past Wei Wuxian somehow sent to the future.  That wouldn't explain having more technology or different etiquette, though.  How long ago would things have had to diverge before those would change noticeably?

"You mentioned power usage being different.  What differences have you seen so far?"  Just because he's skimmed through Other Wei Wuxian's notes doesn't mean he can glean the differences through the underlying assumptions.  Wei Wuxian could have, but Jiang Cheng is not as smart as Wei Wuxian.

That's familiar enough to be almost homey!

...He's not getting let out for a while, is he. He attempts to wiggle himself into a somewhat more comfortable position, ideally not-annoyingly enough that he doesn't get too told off for it. 

Being tied up where the dom’s decided you’re gonna be is pretty much the same idea as kneeling really! It’s not like he’s being dragged struggling. Wei Wuxian is not feeling very lounge-y right now, but not in a way that would be improved by kneeling. (Mostly it's Zidian. And he's going to guess that the 'remember I have this horrible lightning whip' is totally intentional.)

He can absolutely answer that question! Where he's from, people can't jump twelve feet, and they don't have single use paper artifacts or whatever that was, and they don't have writing symbolic instructions for power effects. And they don't have the energy given off by the dead thing. And, would other Jiang Cheng like a bunch of technical descriptions and theorizing about power qualities and attributes and flow, about half in jargon only some of which he's ever heard before and half in enthusiastic informal metaphor? Because he's about to get that! Zidian is going to need to do slightly more work than previously as Wei Wuxian forgets his position and attempts to gesture before being preempted again.

Jiang Cheng utterly fails to understand the jargon.  Knowing he can't get much out of the technical terms, Jiang Cheng stops focusing on the words and instead listens to the rhythm of Wei Wuxian's voice.  It's so familiar, though he hasn't heard his Wei Wuxian speak like it in so long.

Zidian's hum gets louder when pushed against too hard.  That's the only response Wei Wuxian's squirming gets from either the whip or its master.

Putting the existence of resentful energy in a list with jumping and talismans is strange.  His mind keeps coming back to it.  "Do you mean that you don't have methods to use resentful energy, or that it doesn't exist?"  Because the phrasing seemed to imply the latter, but that is impossible. 

He jumps a bit at the first louder hum. Zidian: apparently now deputized to tell him off for not keeping still! …He can’t deny that that is very practical and a nice and friendly way to use Zidian (as they go), really. He thinks he still kind of prefers Jiang Cheng doing it himself. But he’s gotten the message thank you sir, sir’s lightning whip! He will try to keep his squirming to below causing-louder-humming levels. (He will not necessarily always succeed in this, but louder humming will be promptly followed by (at least temporary) cessations of squirming - also the only sign of any of this thought process that Jiang Cheng might notice.)

If resentful energy is that energy given off by the dead/unburied that it isn’t a good idea to touch directly or something like that then nope they don’t have that at all.

After hearing him ramble about cultivation theory for a while Jiang Cheng is convinced that this is in fact a Wei Wuxian.  He doesn't call Zidian back to his hand yet since Wei Wuxian seems to be normal gesturing and not attempting to escape.  Wei Wuxian will get him back later, no doubt, but he wants to get through the conversation first before it gets derailed. 

(The increased noise is merely a side effect of Zidian automatically reacting to the movement by putting more energy into its coils so it can thwart a possible upcoming escape attempt.  That it acts as a warning to the wielder that the captive might be trying something, or the captive that they're moving too much, is a bonus.)

"How?  If resentful energy doesn't exist what would cause your undead to rise and attack, or create monsters?" 

Not to mention what this would mean for normal spiritual energy, but he isn't feeling confident enough about his knowledge of the underlying theory to try guessing.  He wishes he understood what other Wei Wuxian had been saying earlier in his theories, and then he'd already know the differences.  His Wei Wuxian should be here to do this!  Understanding cultivation like this was Wei Wuxian's job.

He is not attempting to escape! That is not one of the ways of making things way worse on himself he generally engages in, and that instead of household members who’d drag him back to his brother and then police who’d drag him back to his brother there’d be household members who’d super better not see him and then people who want to execute him and also apparently undead and monsters, is not making it sound like a better idea!

…They also don’t have those things! Either of them!

(…Is that why everyone has/is supposed to have swords? Well, hooray that they’re doing the version where dominants and submissives get to have the swords. He wonders belatedly why other him got personally opposed to having one. Though if resentful energy is what makes undead and monsters, and other him plays resentful-energy-controlling flute music, that sounds like it should work perfectly well! And also sounds really awesome. He wants to learn the magic flute music. (Benefits of magic flute music: he can already play the flute, which is much more than he has with respect to swords!))

That does neatly solve the issue, but now he feels stupid for having made a guess and not been right.  He draws back slightly, shifts back to proper posture from where he'd begun shifting to something more relaxed.

"What does the Jiang sect do to earn money in your world?" Jiang Cheng asks.  For clarity he adds, "In this world, cultivation sects are paid to stop supernatural problems like monsters or curses."

Jiang Cheng can't imagine that any Jiang Cheng could be anything but a cultivator, but cultivation alone isn't a service that anyone is going to pay them to do.  Not unless cultivators are all street performers in the other world?  Which seems unlikely, and given how he's already feeling embarrassed he isn't going to try guessing any more.  He's just going to ask questions, get answers, then try to figure out what to do with them. 

He has no idea what he did this time! Or didn’t do. This is the problem with interuniverse doms.

Right, sect, they have disciples here because they’re a sect. His brain puts together the (guess at) the picture of the world - sects teach their disciples ‘cultivation’/the local power use, and then then the sects use that to solve power-type problems and that’s what they get paid for. (Alternate universe partial matching is weird.)

“- House Jiang’s not a sect in my world, sir.”

He is so not the submissive for this question.

They - own stuff, and have and invest in business interests, and sponsor people with Gifts and power use capacities, and more owning and investing and sponsoring... (And he hopes other Jiang Cheng is not about to ask him for a detailed financial report because he does not even slightly have one.) (He can give a very detailed account of a random assortment of things he happened to be around, do work for, read about, listen to someone talk about, or be yelled at for disrupting, but he is guessing other Jiang Cheng is not looking for one of those).

Jiang Cheng would very much like to know more about other universe Jiang Cheng's business!  Judging from the tone Other Wei Wuxian used, he isn't going to be any better than Jiang Cheng's Wei Wuxian at explaining the details.  It isn't likely to be important.  Not unless one or both of the Wei Wuxian find a way to teleport between worlds on purpose, after which he can just ask the other Jiang Cheng himself.

He is momentarily distracted by the horrifying thought that there are two Wei Wuxians.  One is already more than he can keep in line!  Not that his Wei Wuxian wants anything to do with him, and is officially not Jiang Cheng's problem (even though he will also always be Jiang Cheng's problem whether either of them likes it or not).  This Wei Wuxian seems more tractable.  (Why?  What did he do wrong, to make Wei Wuxian run away?  Is the other Jiang Cheng a better brother than him?)

So, other Jiang Cheng makes money by lending it and getting it back, either with interest or in something worth more than they paid.  That level of explanation will have to do for now.

"What are Gifts and power use capacities?  So far everything you've mentioned is about what your world can't do." 

Now he knows more things this world doesn’t have. At least about Gifts; it’d be pretty hard to have Gifts and not know about it. Is power use capacities the kind of thing it makes sense at all not to have? No yeah sure he can see it (can see all sorts possibilities and he bets he hasn’t thought of all of them!) But also could be it’s just the concept they don’t have (yet). (He can’t remember how exactly the history went in his world.)

- so you know how sometimes power pools in stuff, and 

(no Wei Ying that was not the question right now!)

Ah, sorry sir. Gifts are when someone can do basically one specific power-enabled thing, and they don’t have to learn it or work on it it’s just something they can do. The part of his world House Jiang is in has less of that than some other places but they still have some. Sometimes they’re really straightforward like ‘healing better than other people’ or ‘breathing under water’ and sometimes they’re kind of weird.

In his world there’s some power uses that anyone can learn if they can get through all the learning, and there are some that only some people can learn no matter what anyone else tries to do about it. Power use capacity is what they call the ‘can’ part even if someone hasn’t actually done it yet.

People with unique powers...

The memory of a hand reaching out towards him flashes through his head.  Intense tearing pain, sudden weakness and emptiness that feels like a black pit capable of pulling him in where he could never get out. 

Jiang Cheng covers for his momentary loss of composure by checking the door.  It was still slightly open since he hadn't expected to take more than a minute when he'd entered.  He shuts and locks it.  It's fine.  Wen Zhuliu is dead, and Jiang Cheng isn't thinking about him at all.  Obviously he doesn't think anything dangerous could come through a door in the heart of Lotus Pier right now.  Jiang Cheng is paying attention to the present, and to dangers that exist in the present.  Like his disciples wondering where he is and showing up and thinking that the Yiling Patriarch is in Lotus Pier.  That's worth keeping the door shut to avoid. 

He still has to respond.  Right.

"There are people with skills no one else has, but that has more to do with techniques being kept secret."  At least so far as Jiang Cheng knows.  With the Zhao sect long gone and the looted libraries of Nightless City providing no information, the mystery of Wen Zhuliu's powers is unlikely to be solved.  "Non-cultivators never have anything like Gifts and there's no reason to assume cultivators are different."

"Assuming that the cultivator's golden core is strong enough and isn't malformed they're able to learn any technique.  As well as anyone with hands can learn a musical instrument, at least.  Talent and competence varies."

Jiang Cheng knows that he should be thinking of further questions but is still feeling a bit thrown-off by his memories.  He lapses into silence expecting Wei Wuxian to think of some brilliant insight and start chattering about it.

He has another ‘what did he say’, this time in a completely different way, because that’s Jiang Cheng’s ‘having a personal encounter with the fact that deciding to just not be distressed by pretty awful stuff doesn’t really work’ reaction (not the kind of reaction most anyone would notice, but Wei Wuxian gets to be a different sort of exception here) and covering for it, and Wei Wuxian does not know how talking about Gifts and power use capacities that don’t even exist here would cause that.

He’s just going to guess the usual previous owners of the horrible lighting whip and the title Master Jiang were involved here, because that’s usually it. Maybe there was something about learning the local power uses.

Unfortunately, the only thing Jiang Cheng dislikes worse than having a break in composure is his submissive brother seeing him having a break in composure. No reason to think this one is different about that, or that it’ll help much that he’s not the right universe’s submissive brother. So the best thing to do is going to be the same thing, which is pretend he didn’t notice.

He casts around for a way to pretend he didn't notice and comes up with a very genuine one. "What's a golden core, sir?"

...Does he have asking-questions allowances? He doesn't does he. (Though other Jiang Cheng is telling him things now, which is nice!) "Sorry, sir. Can I ask, sir."

New alternate universe rule, he should get to borrow other him’s allowed-to-ask-questions. Though maybe other him doesn’t have that standing anymore, because prison break. Or maybe he didn’t to begin with, if other Jiang Cheng had different priorities on ‘telling him he can ask stuff every time is annoying’ and so is dealing with him forgetting that part about half the time. 

Well, his goal here was pretending-not-to-notice, so, probably he still has that covered.

"Their existence isn't a secret," he says, tone sharp because Wei Wuxian is not being helpful.  Jiang Cheng knows more about golden cores than just that they could be destroyed but that keeps rising to the top of his mind and there's no distraction to bury it under.  He gives in to the impulse to focus energy in his hands to prove to himself that he can.  It's still there.  The result is a bit of purple light.

"A spiritual organ formed through meditation and specific exercises, capable of creating and storing large amounts of spiritual energy as well as letting us see the energy."  His voice feels flat as he recites that, and he wonders if it sounds wrong too.

"Tell me more about what your world has."

Sharp tone is not surprising here, however well he might have done pretending-not-to-notice! ?? at the contents - he’s glad this one’s not a secret, but if other Jiang Cheng is implying he should have gotten that information elsewhere and not be bothering him with the question, then he would like to point out that he is tied up on the bed and previously was told not to leave the room! (He totally does not point this out, go him.) “Sorry, sir, thank you, sir.”

Unhelpfully for himself, Wei Wuxian has one association with purple light at Jiang Cheng’s hands. He tenses into a flinch - no that doesn’t make sense, other Jiang Cheng cannot be calling up Zidian he is literally tied up with Zidian right now. His heart should stop doing unhelpful things. Also that must be a local power use thing ooh what’s other Jiang Cheng doing. (…Could they do reprimands or even punishment with power use here? He’ll take some reprimands to see that!! Unless it’s like Zidian he doesn’t want any more of those (stop that his heart rate!) But, alternate universe power! …Well other Jiang Cheng does not seem to be doing anything to him with the purple light right now.)

Ooh, see the energy, that’s so cool he wants that! …He puts what other Jiang Cheng just said together with what other Jiang Cheng had said right before that. No, that can’t be right. Can that be right? No other Jiang Cheng had definitely said that if someone who did the golden core thing’s golden core is strong enough they can learn any technique. 

?!?!!!!! Holy shit, unification convergence, holy shit 

“You have the unification convergence?! 
- sir”

- no Wei Ying, other Jiang Cheng doesn’t like this topic right now and you just got a direct order about what to talk about! “Sorry sir sorry sir!” But, but, unification convergence!!!! Shut up Wei Ying!! Do you want to talk about ?!possibly unification convergence?! to specifically other Jiang Cheng specifically right now or do you want more chances of finding things out and to spend more time on alternative universe power and less time at walls, because you only get one of those! He wants to talk about possibly unification convergence!!

“Sorry, sir.”

…This sounds like a great time to tell other Jiang Cheng about electricity. Electricity 101! Lightning! No don’t think more about Zidian Technology! Their world has a lot of technology using electricity! 

Jiang Cheng doesn't know what 'unification convergence' means or why other Wei Wuxian is so surprised about it.  Given the context it sounds like what they call golden cores?  Whatever it is, it can wait for now.  He lets the purple light fade, takes a deep breath, and forces his own heartbeat to slow.

Listening to Wei Wuxian talk about electricity is the perfect distraction.  Without conscious thought his posture slowly shifts from defensive, to formal, to what it was the night before.  Being the wielder of Zidian has lead Jiang Cheng to take an interest in electricity even though such constructs don't behave the same way as normal electrical arcs.  ...Speaking of which, he belatedly wills Zidian back to his hand.

Aw, he doesn’t usually get to be this successful. It’s nice?, to make his brother feel better, sometimes, at least a little, rather than the opposite. Or his alternate universe brother.

Wei Wuxian looks down at himself when he feels Zidian move. On one hand he very supports this development; not being tied up with a horrible lightning whip, he is such a big fan of that. (Aw, is he getting acknowledged for helpful behavior/is other Jiang Cheng being nice to him.) On the other hand, he was just having that thought about the mutual exclusiveness of being tied up with Zidian, and the way more obvious uses of Zidian.

…Get yourself together Wei Ying. Other Jiang Cheng is… probably not going to hit him with Zidian while he’s interrogating him, right? (He’s being really cooperative!). Ah, other Jiang Cheng probably wants to be able to reprimand him when he runs his mouth without all the blankets in the way.

Ah, well, can’t keep lying in the bed when he’s not tied up there. He shouldn’t keep the blankets should he. But it’s cold! He does keep the robes but shakes off the blankets, climbs out of the bed to kneel down on the floor. Tries to get some not super obtrusive stretches in there as he goes. (He’d totally thought about just stopping and stretching - he’ll be even worse at kneeling still without that, it’s helpful, really! And the problem with asking for permission is that doing stuff after getting a no is definitely worse than doing stuff without asking. But right now is feeling like not the time actually.)

Kneeling!

Other Wei Wuxian is kneeling again. ...He is technically captured for impersonating Wei Wuxian so kneeling is not incorrect here.  Trying to figure out where this Wei Wuxian fits into Jiang Cheng's categories of people is even harder than local abandoned-him-to-go-live-in-a-graveyard Wei Wuxian, but if it had been other-universe A-jie who had landed in Lotus Pier she would be family for all that she also left the sect.

Jiang Cheng straightens his already straight robes.  A cultivation sect leader can't run away from conversations about magic, and he was genuinely curious about where the previous topic had been heading.  Time to bridge the gap between the two topics and get back on track.  "Are power uses and technology closely linked in your world?"

…He’s not sure he understood that question. But he has noticed that this Jiang Cheng hasn’t yet told him off for talking more and has told him off for talking less.

“I’m sorry, sir, I’m not sure I understand the question, sir.” But he’ll continue -

Modern technology was really good for power use research and increase and furthering and all that, right, so there’s way more stuff getting figured out per unit time than there ever used to be, and some of it does things with technology, like people who figure out why machinery’s not working or do chemical detection. …Does chemical detection count there he’s not sure. Because on one hand -

(No Wei Ying that is how you do get yourself told off for talking more!)

Sorry sir - but there was still thousands of years and then some before modern technology which is way longer, and everyone’s sure there are a lot of lost techniques but there are also a lot of not lost techniques, and obviously no one figuring them out had modern technology around. And some techniques turned out to have new applications actually, like detecting when water’s unsafe, and some things still just do whatever they always did.

Though there’s this really cool thing he read about, where you’d think a bunch of techniques would be less useful now because technology, but actually in the past mostly just rich people could have the stuff they made, so that wasn’t that much by numbers, and now by numbers mostly people use the technology produced version, but the power use version is still useful in specific niches and the niches are often not smaller, since also there’s more people now.

Like mostly only rich people had heating artifacts, and now almost no one uses heating artifacts for regular heating, but heating artifacts don’t need a power source and don’t malfunction for the same reasons, so they’re really useful for someone going off grid for a while or being backup in ‘without heat you’re going to freeze to death’ situations.

(…thaaat may have gone a bit too far on the talking. Ah well, what’s a conversation with doms without a reprimand or a few!)

Jiang Cheng didn't understand his question either.  He knows so little about the other world that he doesn't even know what would be useful to ask and is essentially throwing low-level light talismans into a vast darkness in the hopes that they'll somehow help give him the shape of it.  If nothing else, he is at least getting a lot of information for it even if he doesn't know which parts are potentially important and which are Wei Wuxian rambling.

The mention of heating does remind him that the room is cold and other Wei Wuxian is currently wearing far too many robes.  Also, that the Jiang Sect are rich and use their own form of magic for heating.  He goes to open the small trap door and twist the piece of stone that completes the built-in array.  It won't make an immediate difference, but the floor will slowly start warming over the next few minutes. 

"Is knowledge and practice of power use common among the population?  In the lands I'm familiar with, cultivators are around one in a thousand.  ...Less than that, after the war," he amends, though he doesn't have a number for it.

No reprimand seems to be forthcoming. Other Jiang Cheng doesn’t even look more annoyed. …Man other Jiang Cheng is being kind of weirdly patient with him. With him, he was not so kind of patient when he thought Wei Wuxian was other him. Is that more different what-befits-a-dom in this world? (It’s probably also the prison break.)

Or other Jiang Cheng is just saving it for later some more. (He is not going to be having a good later.) If it’s the second one he has to say he likes the way he’s used to better.

He follows other Jiang Cheng’s movements when he gets up, starts up a bit and cranes his head when other Jiang Cheng stops by the trap door and opens it. - Oh, other Jiang Cheng is turning the artifact lightswitch! what’sitdo what’sitdo was he right.

Wei Wuxian knows perfectly well what he’s supposed to do here, which is to stay kneeling where he is, and bite down on his ‘can I see, sir’ unless he’d really like to get other Jiang Cheng more fed up with him after all, and keep answering questions when he gets asked them until he’s told to do something else. There are some pretty good arguments in favor of doing that, like ‘not getting other Jiang Cheng really annoyed’ and ‘not getting himself into more trouble than he’s already in’ and ‘he can poke at the giant artifact again later, or in some other room some other time, or get other him to show him all the giant artifacts, at a time that is not ‘right now when he is in front of other Jiang Cheng getting interrogated’’.

There are some arguments against, like, ‘but later is all the way over then’ and ‘he doesn’t even know what’s going to happen later, maybe other Jiang Cheng will put him in a different room (for instance, with a door that locks) without any giant artifacts with artifact lightswitches under the floor, or chain him to the bed, and not want to let him see other him any time soon’.

But that’s not even the thing really. The thing is that other Jiang Cheng is kind of being weirdly patient with him, maybe, and he doesn’t know why and doesn’t have an alternate universe set of habit intuitions for where all the lines are. And other Jiang Cheng just still won’t say anything at all about what he’s got coming. And at some point it’s stressful on a submissive, okay. It’s not like he thinks he’s got a good chance of getting through this without getting himself in more trouble, so might as well do it for something he wants to do? (Fuck around and find out).

Which is all to say that while Jiang Cheng is turning the stone, Wei Wuxian bounces up to his feet (ow? - right, ankle) and dashes over to kneel back down by the trap door (he is careful to stay out of other Jiang Cheng’s personal space), hand pressed down against the floor. “Can I see, sir?” (He’s not expecting anything like a yes, to say the least, but that’s what the hand’s for).

…It occurs to to him kind of belatedly (on that topic of pretty good arguments) that the really obvious thing for other Jiang Cheng to do here is to tie him back up with Zidian again, and maybe not have Zidian be as nice this time. Maybe it would have been a better idea to provoke other Jiang Cheng in way that didn’t involve jumping across the room. - But he’s here now, so, he’ll just try to push that over to ‘why make it worse for himself by thinking about it first’.

"There's nothing to see."  He rolls his eyes as his body moves without conscious thought to make room for Wei Wuxian, though this might not be obvious as the amount it moves is what his Wei Wuxian would have taken by leaning on Jiang Cheng's shoulder without regards to personal space - focused more on securing his balance so that a sudden weight won't topple him into the wall than actually moving.

Jiang Cheng really should have seen that question coming.

"It's a heating array."  It is the simplest and most basic array known to the cultivation world.  This at least means that it isn't a Jiang Sect secret.  "Given how much like my Wei Wuxian you are you will no doubt start poking at it as soon as I leave.  Don't waste my time doing it while I'm still here.  We need to get back to discussing-" he pauses.  His own question that Wei Wuxian ignored was also not very practical, was it.

"-Anything important that needs to be handled this morning."

Yes there is! It’d be better if he could be all the way closer, but this is close enough, he can make do. He felt the what’s-under-the-floor before, and he can feel it now. It is different (it’s so cool!!) - he tries to get a better sense of the difference; he updates several interconnected theories in his head. - did other Jiang Cheng do anything with power or did he really just turn the stone? It’s so cool that they can do that. 

He wants to know all about how it works (connections to maybe-unification-convergence?(!)), he wants to see five more artifacts-with-lightswitches - and also at least five without to compare. He wants to get back to other-him’s notes, he bets this will help him understand something he didn’t quite…

It’s a heating array - ha, he was right! See he could have turned the switch himself just fine no Wei Ying that’s not how that works. Oh, what makes it an array rather than some other thing? Is the size important, is the size about power - can they make them small and stronger and run a stove? Could they run a generator? 

(Wei Wuxian does not notice anything in particular about Jiang Cheng slightly changing position.)

Well, he has successfully gotten other Jiang Cheng to tell him off again. (Hey, does sound like he’s not going to be chained to the bed!) Unfortunately, he was trying to get other Jiang Cheng to in any way indicate what he was going to do about it, and he has not successfully gotten that at all. This sucks. He doesn’t like this part of this world.

Did other him have to deal with this all the time? Nah if you’re used to it it’s probably not so bad, just like knowing he’s getting it when they get home. Knowing it’s noon or the evening before Cleansing Day or whatever it is (…it better not be something like the evening before Cleansing Day, that would actually genuinely suck). And other him would know what other Jiang Cheng tended to go for. His problem is not knowing. (There is probably not an existing expected punishment for impersonating people while from another universe. But still he could know more than he does!) 

Some part of him suggests that if he just stayed being stubborn and wouldn’t listen or get back to what other Jiang Cheng wanted, at some point other Jiang Cheng would have to do something about it right then. Whyyyyy does he think of things like that. Next he’ll think it’s a great idea to swim across the ocean because the next island looks not so far away. Some things have not become a better idea just because he’s in another world! 

He stalls a bit in picking his hand up, but he does it, straightens up back to proper kneeling. (Just stays where he is for the moment.) “Sorry sir, I apologize sir. Thank you sir. Yes, sir.” He casts his mind back to what other Jiang Cheng had asked (wages of a lifetime of getting lectured, he’s got great practice at ‘what did I just say’ memory!) 

(”Common across the population” - oh they’re probably doing the guild thing here, keep the power use and its knowledge in the sects.)

“Knowledge would be everyone, sir, it’s in the public education.” …He’s not sure what the numbers are for power use. Not any given thing and not all together. “…It has to be more than one in a thousand, though, sir.” And even in their part of the world where they’re rarer, Gifts are more than one in thousand. 

(“...Less than that, after the war” That sounds bad. (If most of what they do is fighting undead and monsters, not hard to see why any government would want ‘cultivators’ for their war.) But that wasn’t a question.)

It doesn't seem like Jiang Cheng did anything except turn the switch.  A small trickle of energy is diverted from wherever is powering the array and converted into heat within the stone.  A smaller version of the array concentrating the same energy into a smaller area would get much hotter but this one is far too spread out to risk burns.

Jiang Cheng notices the straightening and apologies and is confused.  Wei Wuxian isn't usually suddenly formal and apologetic for no reason.  The perceived nervousness is infectious.  He turns around to get a better look at Wei Wuxian, and makes an abortive gesture to poke him in the shoulder about it because he looks so much like Wei Wuxian but isn't really his Wei Wuxian and he doesn't know if poking him is appropriate.  He puts his hand down.

"Hey, what's wrong with you, Wei Wuxian.  Heating arrays are safe.  And you can turn it off if you'd rather sit covered in blankets all day.  It doesn't take a golden core to turn the switch - this is a room suitable for children and the Jiang sect expects them to manage their own heating early." 

"Should I call you something other than Wei Wuxian?"  Jiang Cheng probably should have asked earlier.  The repeated 'sir'-ing finally prompting him.  "A ...guest... would commonly refer to me as Sect Leader Jiang.  Or Sandu Shengshou."  He likes his title that he earned in the war.  That almost no one has called him since the war ended and he's become just the youngest and most inexperienced of the sect leaders, constrained by needing to not start any new conflicts.  He's not going to ask to be called it though.  That would feel pathetic. 

He also won't ask this Wei Wuxian to call him Jiang Cheng, even if anything except 'Jiang Cheng' with Wei Wuxian's voice is wrong.  Wei Wuxian seems intent on not using Jiang Cheng's name.  Possibly he doesn't want to call him the same thing he called his own other-universe brother.  But, no - Wei Wuxian had been calling him 'sir' when he'd first arrived.  Before he'd claimed to know he was elsewhere.  Who the hell calls their shidi by a formal address in private.

Wow, Wei Wuxian actually remembered what he asked earlier!  His first thought is that it makes sense that if someone doesn't have to go through the entire process of forming a golden core to learn a single talisman, that information might spread more easily.  He isn't willing to make sweeping guesses and possibly be wrong.  He nods and makes an agreeable sound at the information, and tucks it away into the back of his mind as another piece of information about the other world.

So cool!! (He does not currently have enough knowledge or experience of the system to know what effects size might actually have.)

Is he about to be dragged by the ear? Nope looks like he is not. 

Is he being told off for not doing dumb reckless things? …Ok, if he saw someone sitting in the dark in a room with a lightswitch, he’d probably think that was weird and pretty silly before it occurred to him that someone from another universe would have no way to know what the lightswitch was or did. But still!

He thinks you can call me whatever you want, sir? for a somewhat puzzled moment before it occurs to him that other Jiang Cheng is obviously not addressing that ‘should’ at him personally. 

Being told what address he’s supposed to use is great, but why is he being told two? Is he supposed to alternate? Having something so formal/distancing feels weird, even though he knows other Jiang Cheng is not really his own brother. Sandu Shengshou is a very cool title though. 

“I didn’t know it was a heating array, Sect Leader Jiang!
- I thought it might be!” Because of these things about what he could figure from his sense for power, see, and also this thing and this idea he had and this other idea and - “…Sorry, Sandu Shengshou. But we don’t have these at all. I’ll manage it myself from now on.”

“I’m called Wei Wuxian at home, Sect Leader Jiang.” Among other things and apparently other Jiang Cheng is doing more formalness, but if other Jiang Cheng wants to make things complicated with etiquette he can order that himself, Wei Wuxian is nooot doing that if he doesn’t have to. “Cool title, Sandu Shengshou!” …Other Jiang Cheng probably did not really want his opinion on that. Oh well, it’s true anyway.

Other Wei Wuxian is going to alternate between the two options he was given?  That is the most annoying possible choice, which means Jiang Cheng should have expected it.  Any annoyance is swiftly overwritten by how pleased he is about his title.  Which Wei Wuxian also likes!  Not that he needs anyone's approval much less Wei Wuxian's.  (He does his very best to keep control of his face, but he's no better at hiding when he's pleased than when he's angry.)

"Wei Wuxian, then."  That is at least easy to remember, even if it's going to have them both turning their heads to look if he tries to call out to him whenever he manages to find time to take him to the Burial Mounds.  But they don't have time for other Wei Wuxian to earn a title and Jiang Cheng is hardly going to start calling him Xianxian or anything of the sort.  "Does other me have a title?"

If Wei Wuxian isn't going to say anything about what might be bothering him, then Jiang Cheng isn't going to push.  Maybe it's nothing, anyway - something that is strange for his Wei Wuxian might just be normal in the other universe. 

Time to stop sitting on the floor.  He closes the trapdoor, rises, and takes the things out of his qiankun pouch that he brought and sets them down before he forgets.  The bowl of fruit from his room will be Wei Wuxian's breakfast.  He feels bad about not managing to bring hot cooked food to his secret guest for all meals and says something to the effect of 'be glad your eating at all, do you have any idea how difficult it is to do all of this' about it.  He made sure to bring extra paper, because an unoccupied Wei Wuxian is one that's going to make his own entertainment in potentially destructive ways.

Aw, other Jiang Cheng actually likes that he complimented his title.

Yep, that’s me. And also other him, here. Which might get confusing if they’re in the same place later? Maybe they can get numbered or something. 

“He’s Master Jiang, Sandu Shengshou. Or High or Eminent Master Jiang if someone’s got to distinguish or it’s” a really fancy dom event “important and formal.”

It isn’t obvious right away, but then - he blinks at the bag and the fruit for a moment. - !! They have a what they can do what!?! He wants one! How does that work? He wants one to poke about this and also because he wants one. If he had one it wouldn’t be a secret so it wouldn’t really be good for hiding anything - not that he has anything to hide right now. He wants one anyway! Could you fit a person in there nope nope not thinking about that.

That gets something almost like a flinch. He stops looking at the bag and its previously-contents, gets his eyes back down to the floor. (…He doesn’t actually know how difficult it is or anything about what’s going on outside his room, but that didn’t sound like an allowance for questions even a little bit.) “I’m sorry for causing difficulty, Sect Leader Jiang. I’m grateful, I’m glad to be eating, thank you, Sect Leader Jiang.” (He is gonna have such a not good noon or evening before Cleansing Day or whatever it is. Which he’s absolutely known this entire time, but somehow it’s different to be reminded like this in particular.) He still glimpses the paper; wonders if he’s going to be left with lines this time.

Jiang Cheng is winning at titles!  He will be sure to lord this over other Jiang Cheng if they ever meet.

At Wei Wuxian's flinch, a memory flashes through his mind of nine year old Wei Wuxian when he'd first arrived in Lotus Pier acting grateful with every meal.  Jiang Cheng looks away.  But this Wei Wuxian does have a Jiang Cheng back where he came from.  He surely has to know how Jiang Cheng just says things. 

There are a few other things around the room that needed his attention, and then he gets back to Wei Wuxian.  "I'm not going to be able to fly you to my Wei Wuxian until I can free up my schedule.  Probably two or three days from now.  I need you to stay out of sight and quiet until then."  He then goes into a fairly long lecture on staying put, and how important it is for him to stay put, and what will happen if he doesn't stay put where he once again forgets not to exaggerate.  Something about burying him up to his neck in a pit full of mud?  Jiang Cheng is used to warning Wei Wuxian about things and his mouth can do it almost on its own even after so long. 

"Keep yourself busy writing out what you know about your home world's power usage, or anything else you think might be useful.  My Wei Wuxian will want to collaborate."  And Jiang Cheng can read about whatever other Wei Wuxian had been talking about earlier (something about something called a 'unification convergence'?), because as curious as he is, it is not time sensitive.  His presence at the main hall is, and that means he needed to leave several minutes ago already.

For once Wei Wuxian keeps his eyes on the floor and doesn’t sneak glances at other Jiang Cheng as other Jiang Cheng moves around the room. 

The mention that he’s going to meet other him, and also maybe get to see or try out the flying on swords(!) (or some other kind of flying, do they have some other kind of flying?) will effectively perk him right back up though.

Aaand lecture. He stays properly kneeling and still mostly still for the lecture, says ‘yes, Sect Leader Jiang/Sandu Shengshou’ and everything else like that at the moments for it. Tries to sound sincere and like he means it when other Jiang Cheng goes into how important it is. He does mean it, he doesn’t know what’s happening but he got the point, he is not dragging other House Jiang into the kind of political problems that get people executed. 

He doesn’t usually go around wishing he was being more explicitly and specifically threatened while he’s getting lectured - not even for something he’s planning on doing so it’s not like there’s a cost benefit analysis - but he is wishing it on this one. But it’s not hard to guess this is one of those times when he’s not getting what he wants.

(…Is that a real threat? Unlike the break your legs, he mostly can’t figure out what the point of that would even be. Unless he has to dig the hole himself and then do his own laundry, but then it’s still very unclear what the point is of the part in the middle. Lan Zhan wouldn’t like it, but he personally is way more likely to be in trouble for jumping in mud. And maybe it’s kind of like standing at a wall, but standing at a wall is obviously worse, no one could see if he was  shifting around if he was buried in mud. And if he has to be in this room where would other Jiang Cheng find a pit of mud.

…Do they correspond to the real ones somehow, would other him hear ‘bury in a pit of mud’ and know it’s ‘caned nightly for three days’ or something. Or whatever they do instead of nightly. He can ask other him in a few days!)

Ah, well, he has full confidence in whatever Jiang Cheng’s ability to give him something he’ll really really wish he wasn’t getting when he gets it. And he’s not going to do this one and if it turns out this world has a heavenly law that alternate universe submissives may not be punished for leaving rooms he’s still not going to do it.

…Sigh, no he’s going to be left with essays. That’s probably better than lines? It’s not even on obedience or good submissive behavior. And he can think about meeting other him! He hates essays though. (He’d be all for writing out power use and tech notes for other him! but if other Jiang Cheng is assigning it he can’t just write whatever he wants, he’s gotta be Proper Report about it. Why are doms like this, other him probably doesn’t even like Proper Reports either. He’s going to put in a complaint about it in one of his own invented hidden message systems and see if other him notices.) “Yes, Sandu Shengshou.”

Good! 

Jiang Cheng nudges the door open slightly to check that the courtyard is clear.  It is.  Outside looks like a beautiful morning with a perfectly cloudless blue sky, though beneath it the plants are all dormant and it is still quite cold. 

The door is closed swiftly behind him as he exits.  Should he seal it?  But no, you just don't lock people in buildings - what if there's a fire?  No one would know other Wei Wuxian was there to get him out and telling anyone would defeat the whole point.  After a moment he presses his hand to the closed door and sets up a spell, pushing the glowing symbols into the wood until they're no longer visible.  It's something of a tripwire.  Attached to it is a messaging spell aimed at Jiang Cheng.  The tripwire part will break if the door or windows are opened, releasing the message.

He leaves, posture straightening even further as he prepares himself for the daily ordeal of going through his actual sect leader duties.

He’s close enough that he can tell something is happening there. Other Jiang Cheng is not in the room anymore, yes? yes. He jumps to his feet - remembers for once not to jump onto his one foot, go him - and dashes over to the door. Was this a done-and-gone kind of thing or can he feel something he can try to figure out?

There is in fact something still hanging around!

A thin filament now runs across the edges of the room at just below shoulder height, fragile and kept intact and completing the circuit only because the walls and closed windows and door are keeping it together.  It's nearly invisible.  The latch is easier to spot: a simple component holding back another spell, along with a reservoir of energy to feed the contraption so that it doesn't fail early.  Without a proper paper-and-ink talisman the spell is bleeding away energy at a steady rate like the white fog off of a chunk of dry ice.  To a cultivator's senses the movement of the spiritual energy out and away from the reservoir would be the most obvious part, though Wei Wuxian's form of magic sense may work differently.  If he wishes to calculate the remaining time by the rate of evaporation he will find that it will last into the mid-afternoon.

The message spell is much more complicated - a construction almost akin to the inner workings of a firework.  The initial component locates the assigned target.  Once aimed, the next layer accelerates towards him.  Upon reaching the target the message is activated.  There is nothing in the message beyond a default drawing of attention - distinctive as what it is but holding no words or further information - and Wei Wuxian will not be able to retrieve it out of the tangle.  The identifier of 'Jiang Cheng specifically' is an incomprehensible knot.  This spell has its own reservoir of energy.

It would be child's play for a cultivator to break the tripwire without sending the message.  Even a non-Wei Wuxian cultivator could do it.

He does find the ‘latch’ first but he’s searching around more broadly before he tries to figure out more details; he finds the filament. …oh, did other Jiang Cheng actually lock him in this time? It feels like the room is smaller around him. He wants to run away. That makes way more sense than the previous not that! (Why is that new? Can’t be any kind of local how-it-looks thing, since no one’s supposed to know any version of him is here. Maybe it’s just what he thought before, other Jiang Cheng expected other him to get though anything he put up, and doesn’t except the same thing of actual-him. Just wait, if other him can do it he will totally figure out a way sooner or later - and then not use it because he is staying right here in this room.)

He'll find the bleeding-away, but won't be able to be sure what it's doing. He's not going to be able to figure out the latent spell like this. He spends a while poking at the whole thing and its parts.

...Alright, so he thinks the part over here is powering(!) the local room bondage lock approach (haha), and also doing this other radiating thing which is maybe doing something he can't figure out and maybe just a side-effect. And then if - something with the room bondage - that'll trigger this other thing (can they really do that? It's so cool if they can do that!) Probably if he tries to get out of the room, then - can't be an alarm, that wouldn't be secret. Could be an alarm to other Jiang Cheng personally. Or maybe it'll shock him or stick him to the floor or tie him to the bed, who knows what they can do over here! 

He knows how he could find out what it does! He wouldn't have to actually leave. NO Wei Ying. That will not go well for you! He wants other Jiang Cheng to know he's taking this seriously, he really is. (He is.)

He does end up noticing the evaporation aspect of the bleed-away, as well as the steady rate. At which point he does want to time it and do the math. It'll get him the amount of hours, though since he doesn't actually know what time it is or if the time his watch is showing is the right time here, it won't give him a time of day.

Sadly for himself (in the general case, since he is not going to break out of this room), this Wei Wuxian is not a cultivator and has no more way to do anything to the tripwire than he would, upon identifying an instrument in a piece of music he hears, be able to decide he wants it to be a different one and have that happen.

But, speaking of things he can do - at some point he's gotten as far in figuring out this door construction as he's going to be getting. At which point he is going to go right ahead and fulfill other Jiang Cheng's prediction a bit belatedly, and head right over to the heating array. 

He'll spend a bit of time poking at it in its on form - after a bit of where-did-he-put-those-ones finds his notes from the night before, scribbles developments. (Right, he should get down notes on the door construction! He does that).

And then he'll try the turning it off himself!

The heating array is much simpler than the tripwire.  A person from a technologically advanced world might recognize the array's design as being similar to how electric stoves work, except with spiritual energy instead of electricity.  Some property of this particular kind of stone causes it to resist the power the array is sending into it in a way that converts it into heat.

Flipping the switch turns if off, and he can turn it back on again too!  Turning it off doesn't instantly re-cool the stone, which by now is comfortably warm like the sun has been shining on it.  Given the long heating process and low power (and the unusually cold weather this month) it is unlikely he'll need to touch it again until it's about time to leave.

He has a foundational study object in the floor of his room, it’s great! This world’s power use continues to be weird and a trip to get in his head and so cool. (It’s very convenient that he knows things like how electricity works or he would probably have a way harder time getting what’s even going on with some things here.)

He will absolutely turn the switch on and off a few times to observe the effects and the aftereffects . Also because he CAN. 

…Poking at the array reminds him of his investigation of the room yesterday. …Didn’t that one bag look a lot like the bag other Jiang Cheng pulled too many fruits out of? …He’s going to go re-find the bag.

It is not a teleporting bag so it's right where he left it.  It's nearly identical to the one Jiang Cheng had been carrying, even down to the pale cream color that stood out against the red and black of the robes in the same chest.  As a spiritual tool created in Lotus Pier, there's a bit of extra embroidery around the top done in purple thread and the little charms at the ends of the drawstring are amethysts carved into the simplified shape of lotus flowers.  Drained as it currently is, it behaves like a normal cloth bag.

He might have missed those details, but he’s examining the bag all over so he doesn’t. He checks that the Attestedly Other House (sect) Jiang bag is not currently bigger on the inside - it would be a surprise if it was, given what he got with his senses for power, but he needs to check. He’s still only figuring the beginnings out here! He could be wrong. Or there could be concealment.

Bag: not currently bigger on the inside. But he can still feel that there was something.

He didn’t think of this last night, but he’s had more examples now of this world’s power use having all this fuel analogy. …Maybe it’s rechargeable.

He hunts around the room, checking the walls (and floor and ceiling and furniture) for potential magic wall sockets.

Failing that, he is going to attempt a sequence of ideas to connect the bag up to the heating array. Starting by method ‘hold the bag up to it’ (it would be stupid not to check if that works, hey what if it did) and proceeding to ‘make the array lines match up at the edges’ ‘make the array lines match up at the edges across the light switch’, ‘use some strands of his hair as a connection’, ‘use a piece of paper with a line drawn across it as a connection’, ‘use a piece of paper with some shapes he has some maybe theories about’, and ‘search for what other him used to write, find the ink, perform operation: ink (nooot his favorite part but he knows the process), and repeat the previous attempts with local ink in case that part’s important’.

(The fact that if any of this was the kind of thing that could work, then he is currently doing the equivalent of sticking metal forks in an appliance while it’s running, has on this occasion failed its ‘occur to Wei Wuxian before he does the thing’ check.)

There's no wall socket equivalents.  Nor do any attempts to charge it with the array work.  Qiankun pouches aren't built to be plugged in to places of power, and even things that are take much longer than a day to set up.  On the bright side, he didn't cause any negative effects either.

He could try with the door contraption, if that wasn’t off limits which it definitely is. He could try with just that radiating part no, off limits.

Aww. He sticks his tongue out at the not recharging at all bag. Oh well. Other him will know how this really works. Maybe other Jiang Cheng will even tell him! 

Having exhausted the practical magic in the room again, it’s time to get back to the theoretical. (Unification convergence!?) He’s realized by now that he may have jumped the gun there. Other Jiang Cheng had said that someone with a strong enough golden core can learn any technique, not just do any technique. Maybe it’s the other way around and that’s a prerequisite here? (Also, didn’t other Jiang Cheng say something about creating and storing large amounts of spiritual energy? That might have to do with the fuel analogy here.)

Back to other him’s notes! This time he scans through them, looking for anything mentioning golden cores. Or learning techniques and stuff like that.

Local Wei Wuxian did not intend for his notes to be used as a basic guide on cultivation so nothing is laid out in neat reasonable ways.  Some of them are notes on ideas in progress and contain theories that are later confirmed or dropped; Wei Wuxian did not timestamp his notes or put them in chronological order at any point, and also didn't often go back and add notes to his personal notes if a theory was later invalidated. 

There's a page mentioning that Jiang Cheng is getting frustrated with how few of his cultivators have formed their golden cores, even though they both know it takes four years on average - not everyone is as fast as them!  They are formed in the lower dantian.  It definitely involves meditation, and needs instructors to watch over them as they do it "so the kids don't make their cores upside down just because they can't see what they're doing yet."

Wei Wuxian makes occasional references to learning techniques but he doesn't go into detail on something so obvious to him.  There are no references to learning a technique then not being able to use it.

"For concerns: Demonic cultivation is similar to using talismans in being too difficult for the mundane to learn, due to senses needed to see energy only granted by a golden core even if one isn't needed for its use," is written on one page otherwise dominated with sketches of decorative tassels.

Possible theories for rebuilding golden cores in people who had theirs destroyed are circled around to multiple times but don't seem to have gotten anywhere.  "sending Jiang Cheng off to see Baoshan Sanren is a trick that would only work once, and there might be others around somewhere who can be brought in."  (Because Local Wei Wuxian does in fact know that Jiang Cheng can read his note-taking handwriting and might one day do so.  You just don't leave incriminating notes around!  And local Wei Wuxian knows what he means.)

Memorizing lots of techniques makes someone more versatile!  But apparently most cultivators find this hard.  There's a reference to "the usual set everyone in Yunmeng Jiang learns," but not a list of what that is.  Methods for communicating with ghosts, exorcising harmful spirits, and purifying areas are mentioned at various points and can be assumed to be included.  Also lots of sword fighting techniques, some of which sound like magic. 

He is not expecting a basic guide on cultivation (maybe he should have asked other Jiang Cheng for an actual basic guide - though maybe other Jiang Cheng would have told him to focus on his report or told him off for trying to pry into secrets - but he didn’t). And he knows what his notes are like. This is what he’s got! (On the bright side the notes are not likely to contain really stupid theories by overly important doms!)

The notes on golden core formation sound very ‘yep, learning power stuff’ to him. Ha, he was faster at local power use too. And so was other Jiang Cheng - what with local power use being what other House (sect) Jiang does, naturally he was. Was he faster though?

...apparently Baoshan Sanren is in some way an entity you can currently go see here? ...Ok he has no idea what that entire note means. 
Also apparently golden cores can be destroyed, which feels very weird! Other Jiang Cheng did say they were an organ or something like that right? And they’re in a place. Which is also really weird!

This is not going to be enough to let him definitely distinguish between his theories, though he does come up with some more theories and updates in various directions to the previous ones and acquire a bunch more material for his own not especially neat notes.

(He is guessing that, given other Jiang Cheng accusing his flute of evilness, the flute-playing-for-controlling-‘resentful energy’, and that name, that demonic cultivation might be the flute one.)

Wandering around the room with a sheaf of notes (he’s limping less now, though still some - Lan Zhan might have scolded him a bit, but he has been being (mostly) still for a while today, ok) his eyes happen to fall on the fruits other Jiang Cheng had left. Oh, yeah, fruit breakfast, he should eat those.

Somewhat later, finished with a set of notes, he sees and remembers about the fruit again. Right, food! This time he gets all the way over to the fruit. Are they at all interestingly alien fruit? Historical fruit? Somehow-affected-by-different-power-use fruit?

Historical fruit!  If his world has the same flora as Earth he will be able to recognize the approximate genus of the plants if not the specific cultivars - persimmon and pear and so on.  They're far from wild but have had fewer iterations of selective breeding than he might be used to, their seeds a bit larger and more numerous.  There's nothing magical about them.  Lotus Pier harvests its eponymous lotus but other than that cultivators don't do much in the way of farming food and farmers don't have magic. 

At some point in the morning a servant crosses through the courtyard to deliver supplies to Jiang Cheng's room, but they have no reason to pass particularly close to Wei Wuxian's door. 

(Unless it happens sufficiently loudly or sufficiently magically-with-a-range, Wei Wuxian is going to have no idea of what is or might be happening beyond his door.)

'Fruits and their cultivars and history' happens, in fact, to not be one of the random areas he knows much random amounts of information about. It's not obviously alien fruit, like sparkly crystal fruit or coiled-spiral fruit - probably predictably, given everything else, and also he would have noticed that earlier. Coming all the way up close and picking up some fruit fails to reveal any more subtle obviously alien fruitless, and it turns out it's kind of hard to tell the difference between 'same basic fruit but different because historical' and 'different fruit but similar because fruit evolution'. But it is different from the fruit he usually has, which is neat. (He does check it all for magic - he's not expecting magic fruit that much, but if it is magic fruit he's definitely not going to miss it!)

He munches on some fruit wandering around the room some more, then comes back to sit on the floor against the bed, tosses his next fruit up and catches it before taking a bite. The picture of Lan Zhan from other him's notes has ended up face up partially on the pillow at some point; he smiles at it with his next bite of fruit-breakfast.

...and then it hits him, really hits him, that from the point of view of everyone back in his own world he vanished into thin air or bizarre magic out of his room at music camp, and no one is going to know where he is or what happened to him or be able to find him if they look for him.

He swallows. (He isn't actually sure if there's fruit in his mouth or not). Fuck. 

He - has no idea one way or the other if the nonvolitional-and-it-turns-out-interworld teleportation left any trace from the other end, or even if it did how long a trace would last. If there's no trace - the music camp is going to think he's snuck out, again, and look for him or wait for him to show back up. He can't remember at which point in him not showing back up they have to tell Jiang Cheng, but at some point they're going to have to tell Jiang Cheng.

Who will probably think he snuck out and then got into something stupid. Or else is going to think he's actually run off. - That's fine, really, it's not like a bulletin about him being a runaway is going to do anything to him while he's here and he didn't run off and he can prove it. 

He closes his eyes and feels like he can still see that picture, see his own Lan Zhan's face. Lan Zhan. Someone is going to tell Lan Zhan, and Lan Zhan will think he - just decided to do it, and didn't even talk to him first, didn't even tell him first. And - his Lan Zhan is too good to him, always thinks better of him than he deserves, his Lan Zhan is going to think he must have had a reason, must have had a good reason to suddenly change his mind so much and then just go ahead and do it right then. (Lan Zhan - Lan Zhan has to know, right, he wouldn't just disappear, he wouldn't just leave him, that if he did suddenly decide he had to get out that he'd find some way to contact him, somehow, just as soon as he could...) 

If there is a trace, if it's as what-is-this as what he got from his end - or even if it somehow isn't - no one's going to think he did that. (OK some people might think it a little. But not really, not for real). So everyone's going to think he was kidnapped, by someone with fucking teleportation. 

- Lan Zhan will worry so much. He wants to hope it's the other one, just for that. Except Lan Zhan will worry about him anyway, even if everyone says he ran off will worry he actually snuck out and ran into something, will worry about him off being a runaway submissive, will think he had a reason and will worry about what happened.

Shijie will worry.

(His Jiang Cheng will worry. If he got to see that he'd expect to find it somewhere behind 'wanting to fucking kill him' (not literally) in the first case and 'wanting to fucking kill whoever took him' (absolutely literally) in the second case, but - he does in fact know that.)

(Uncle Jiang will - think he's failed in his duty to his parents. And worry.)

- He tries to remember what the betrothal rules are. How long are the terms if something happens - does it matter if he's a suspected runaway, if it's different does there need to be proof, does it matter if it looks like something happened but no one can find him -.

It has to be a while, that's how contracts like this work. It has to be a while, so no one's going to be trying to get Lan Zhan to marry someone else, because he can't just be gone for that long anyway, that's too long, Lan Zhan will, Shijie will -

He draws his knees up to his chest, puts his arms around them. Maybe everything's fine, really, and this is one of those interworld travel setups where time doesn't pass in his world while he's here and when he comes back no one will even know he was gone anywhere. Or time passes really slowly and it'll have been an hour and one of the doms will be yelling 'Wei Wuxian, if you're up there again -' into the attic with all the abandoned instruments.

What if it's the other way around and even if he and other him figure out the way back really soon it'll have been a hundred years -

He sits up, sets his jaw. No, absolutely not. He does not care what interworld travel rules turn out to say, that is not going to happen. He's in another world, so he got here, so that happened somehow and it's possible, and he's got two worlds' power use systems, and other him is holding borders and invented a whole new form of cultivation, (and he knows he understands computational power analysis better than at least half the doms who get themselves published about it, and that's not counting what he hasn't even seen published anywhere). They're going to figure out this interworld transportation, and if time thinks it should have been a hundred years he's going to invent a version with time travel, and if that's not how interworld travel is supposed to work then it can go and drown itself in a lake and he's going to get back to his Lan Zhan. 

He stands up. (The fruit, partially eaten, ends up somewhere by the bed, and he has basically forgotten about it.) Stacking up a pile of other him’s notes, he heads for the desk, where he applies himself to the pile with a new line of fervor.

For the next while, the room will have no activity other than Wei Wuxian absorbed in the notes with Wei Wuxian intensity, mostly at the desk, occasionally pacing again or in some stranger position.

He first notices that he has a problem when on his latest turn of pacing he - must have gone higher intensity pacing without noticing it - and sets his foot down hard enough to jar his ankle. That gets him a jolt of pain strong enough to get through his (currently extra heightened!) threshold of ‘ignore all that’ and stumbling enough he almost trips onto the floor. Ow. He lifts his foot and bends down to rub at his ankle. (Yep, Lan Zhan would definitely scold him. And help him kiss it better.) (- Nope, no sadness, he’s going to get back to his Lan Zhan and tell him all about his other world adventures.)

Alright, he maybe needs to take a break with the pacing. He goes back to the desk, sits down to refocus on the notes.

Refocusing on the notes turns out not to work very well.

Sitting back at the desk also turns out not to work very well. He wants to get up again immediately. He wants - 

He moves two notes, picks up another page. His brain does not cooperate with the next step of the process. He feels like there’s a wire running through him, through his body and his head. He wants to get more up then getting up.

- in retrospect now he can notice this is one of those been-building. Yep, here are his more recent notes gaining more doodles escaping the margins as they go on, drawings getting more aggressive. If he’d been using ink he knows his brushstrokes would have been going everywhere. As it is he may have almost dragged a hole through his paper. His pacing didn’t leave that kind of physical evidence, but while his ‘noticing stuff while absorbed’ is, exhibit one, possibly not so great, his ‘what he did ten minutes ago’ memory isn’t that bad.

Kind of unfortunately, he is now not too absorbed to notice stuff. 

He wants to get up, he wants to get more up than getting up, he wants to walk - he wants to walk and keep walking.

He does stand, paces a round across the room, favoring his other leg. He turns at the wall, he turns at the other wall, at the bed, at the door. He wants to walk and keep walking, he wants to walk through the wall, he wants to shove himself through the door if he has to. 

The walls feel like they’re kind of closing in on him again. He wants to jump out of his skin. 

He throws himself down on the bed (gets up again a few seconds later). Ah, fuck. - It isn’t fair, he’s not even standing at a wall or anything, it’s not like he’s having to copy horribly boring etiquette lectures, this is other him’s magic notes that’s as much directly opposite from boring as you can get!

(He tries to pick up some notes again and do something beyond the step of looking at the piece of paper and wanting to jump out of his skin some more. This continues not to really work at all.)

- And it would be fine if he could walk and the door wasn’t in the way. If the air was moving, if there was something to see and listen to, if he could do something, if he could talk to someone - he doesn’t even need to actually do it. He is 100% confident that if he were looking at these same notes sitting on the roof everything would be working just fine. Unfortunately -

He knocks his head back against the wall. It’s not like he doesn’t get confined to his rooms all the time at home! But - first of all his rooms are bigger, which he doesn’t usually think about in this context but apparently turns out to matter. And have his belongings in them, some of which he has on some level selected to be good for this kind of situation. And he’s usually allowed out in the courtyard. And sometimes even allowed very specific phone privileges, or to talk a bit to the servants. And usually he does not have to be quiet on pain of execution-worthy political problems for people around him, so if he decides to turn cartwheels while singing themed credits music the most that’s going to happen is someone shows up with a ruler.

- And generally when he’s confined to his rooms he’s had his hide tanned first, which he also doesn’t usually think about as an important factor but also clearly turns out to matter.

(And if he really does need to (also if he doesn’t) he can in fact go ahead and just leave, and if he doesn’t get caught that’ll solve his problem, and if he does get caught that’ll solve his problem a different way.)

He glances at some of his doodles as he goes past the desk again. Note to self, next time you get transported to another world make sure you spend the preceding several days running around and climbing random buildings you’re not supposed to, and not sort of partially behaving yourself at music camp, maybe that will help!

- Well. He’s not going to get anywhere by complaining inside his head, is he. 

(There isn’t any question that he’s going to stay in the room and quiet. (Maybe some doms who’ve ever met him would have their doubts, but some doms just really really think that subs obeying whatever rules they came up with is literally the most important thing in the universe.) It would sure be nice for him if he got to help out local Jiang sect by taking a beating or something (he’s great at that!) but sometimes life isn’t nice like that!

Unfortunately, among magic he has not invented, there would be ‘fast forward things because you already know what’s going to happen.’ So instead he still has to be here the entire time.)

He goes over to the door again, checks the dissipating part. Recalculates. Right. That’s how much time he’s got left, and after that probably other Jiang Cheng will show up again. …If not he is going to replan when that happens.

(He feels like there is something running under his skin.)

He paces back and forth across the room again. He jumps back and forth across the room on one foot (just the one, not the other one). He does some (quiet) physical exercises. He bites down really hard on one of his fingers.

He considers if this might be a good time to look into other him’s porn collection - or same thing minus the porn collection - but he is not actually in mood and also other Jiang Cheng keeps walking in on him and he has read enough intercultural contact to remember that sex things is one of those places you really need to check the rules first if you don’t want all sorts of new and not usually exciting problems.

He does some more physical exercises. He picks a random object in the room he can throw and some random locations he can aim for and tries to get the one into the other. 

He tries writing about his world’s power use because other Jiang Cheng is probably going to want to see it when he comes back. Very nonsurprisingly this doesn’t go very well. He gets some notes down but no part of anything even slightly resembling a Proper Report. 

He crumples up a piece of paper and throws it across the room. He goes after it.

(It’s very tempting on some level to just - do something to the door enough to set off the whatever it was, and hope it was something like shocking him and not something like paralyzing him or else that other Jiang Cheng showed up to actually thrash him this time. He’s not going to do that though. He’s going to try not to do that.)

He does some more exercises. He bites down hard on his finger again. He eats some more fruit. He makes a paper airplane and tries to toss it around the room.

Meanwhile, Jiang Cheng's day has been fairly typical other than the constant worry in the back of his mind about having left a Wei Wuxian unattended.  This turns out to take a surprising amount of his concentration, leaving him occasionally staring blankly at the person in front of him and having to ask his second in command for his opinion under the guise of testing him so Jiang Cheng doesn't have to show how little he was listening by having to ask them to repeat what they said.  It's good practice for his second, anyway.  The man is not Wei Wuxian, but other than not being the second that Jiang Cheng wants he is adequate enough at the job.  It's good to know that things won't completely fall apart if he steps away from Lotus Pier for a day.  Not that that will stop him from worrying.

In between scheduled meetings Jiang Cheng re-arranges his next few days to free up time for a short trip.  An elderly scribe nods approvingly at Jiang Cheng's claims about taking some time to meditate more deeply than the brief hourly sessions will allow.  He'd considered claiming to go on a night hunt, but those are kept track of and a Sect Leader isn't permitted to hunt without backup anyway.

It's getting into the afternoon when the last of the meetings end.  Jiang Cheng still has to look over the most recent drafts of some documents, and there's reading he'll want to look into regarding the comparative advantages of whether or not disciples should have to learn separate fire and light talismans... but as long as he gets to them by the next morning it doesn't matter exactly when or where.  He packs the relevant papers up and takes them with him.

Jiang Cheng takes a walk through the nearby marketplace to pick up supplies and food.  Favorite foods of the local Wei Wuxian, specifically, since how dare anyone imply that Lotus Pier is not completely welcoming (even if that person was sort of Jiang Cheng himself.)  Careful tucking things away in his qiankun pouch whenever he isn't being looked at and it isn't hard to get two people's worth of various dishes and jars of two of the better wines.

Black and red things are on sale here and there.  Jiang Cheng's hands itch to pick them up but it would be too obvious that he wasn't buying them for himself.  Instead, he finds the needed supplies for Wei Wuxian in purple and blue and the gray woods that match them.  It isn't hard - the town beside Lotus Pier has nearly as many lotus-carved things as Lotus Pier itself does.  

Eventually, he reaches the end of the market and loops back.

Jiang Cheng looks every which way as he crosses the courtyard of his house.  Left and right, at all of the corners between the buildings, and up on every visible roof.  He shut and locked the main door leading to the courtyard from outside as soon as he passed it, which should deter most non-emergencies.  He makes it to his room unaccosted and picks up a small table and a pair of cushions after a mental debate with himself whether or not it would be worth it.  No- he can carry a table a few meters quickly and quietly, and he'd rather not eat on the floor.  If anyone sees him and asks, he's using Wei Wuxian's old room as a storage space for excess furniture.  He slides the heavy furniture under his arm and walks towards where he last left Wei Wuxian.

The coast continues to be clear.  He knocks, but after a moment's notice tries sliding the door open without waiting for long.  Catching a glimpse of Wei Wuxian changing or something would be embarrassing, but significantly less bad than Jiang Cheng getting seen waiting at that particular door.  Besides, there is a latch on the inside if Wei Wuxian wants to keep him out.

The alarm he'd placed on the door is running low on power but is still there.  The second the door moves, the tripwire releases and pelts him with the vague yet unmistakable sensation of been-sent-a-message-that-says-nothing.  

Jiang Cheng startles and lets out a quiet yelp.  He only barely manages to catch the table as his arms try to flail upwards in defense.  Cultivator reflexes let him catch it before it strikes the ground.  It leaves him in a somewhat undignified posture of having to hold the table partially with his knee as he gets it back to a stable carrying position.

Sheepishly, he opens the door the rest of the way and quickly shuffles in.

Is Wei Wuxian there?  Did he see and is now going to laugh at Jiang Cheng?

He’s going back and forth across the room again when he hears the knock. Huh, other Jiang Cheng is knocking this time! …Orrrr that’s someone else. 

…He should super have come up with a plan for that ahead of time. And also asked other Jiang Cheng. Great timing for thinking of that, Wei Ying!

Options in the room (he’s pretty well acquainted with the room by now). He’s not going to fit in or behind the clothing trunk. Not the kind of door he could stand behind at all. 

Really just the one option here (hey, it’s better than just standing in the middle of the room!) As quickly and quietly as possible, Wei Wuxian is going to drop and then roll himself under the bed, trying his best for an angle where he won’t be visible from the door but he can still see out. (Having left the blankets partially draping over the side of the bed is going to help him here.)

(He does hear some sounds from outside, but is not going to be able guess what they’re corresponding to.)

It's a good thing that Jiang Cheng was already reaching for his newly restocked privacy talismans with his free hand when he notices that the room is empty, because upon finding that Wei Wuxian isn't in sight Jiang Cheng is going to throw a very loud tantrum.  And also the table.  There is a crash as the edge collides with the clothing trunk, then another as it smacks onto the floor upside down. 

This Wei Wuxian wasn't a cultivator; not only should he have no way of getting past the alarm but he wouldn't have even been able to see it to try to get around it.  That meant the most likely thing was him vanishing back to his own world.  Good for him.  But that means that Jiang Cheng is never going to know anything more about it.  He had lost his entire chance because it happened when he was required to be elsewhere, because the universe hates Jiang Cheng specifically, and Jiang Cheng is going to wordlessly scream about it while throwing the cushions at the wall.  One lands on the bed.  The other bounces far enough off of the wall to land on the floor, and Jiang Cheng picks it up and flings it back at the wall again until it lands on the bed with the other one. 

Then he stands there and stares at the wall.

Things you get out of looking down a lot, he can absolutely and with no trouble recognize other Jiang Cheng by his shoes and the hem of his robes. Yep, that's other Jiang Cheng.

Aaand fuck. Apparently with all the repeated total shifts in what he knew was going on here/what was actually going on, he'd kind of stopped thinking about how other Jiang Cheng does things like this! (He has - kind of flinched partially into a ball. Why does he even have that reflex, it's not like doms throw furniture at him a lot.)

Fun fact, doms yelling and throwing furniture turns out to be so much more affecting in real life than not real life.

Well, his nervous system is still not helpful and he's still got his foundation and other him isn't dead and this room doesn't even have glass windows or cast iron pans or anything, so he's totally fine and has nothing to worry about! And if other Jiang Cheng is going to throw furniture at people and not just other furniture, then here he is, definitely the right person for that.

He is going to just wait here a little until other Jiang Cheng isn't throwing furniture right at that moment, that sounds like a good idea. The room doesn’t have much furniture.

The silence is very silent. See, great timing Wei Ying! He gets out from under the bed. This feels like probably a kneeling then talking situation. He tries to kneel very quickly.

"Wei Wuxian!"

Jiang Cheng is filled with relief that other Wei Wuxian is here and safe?  Embarrassment at having been caught throwing a tantrum?  Anger at Wei Wuxian for hiding from him.  That must be it.  "Why are you always playing games?"

The cushions are on the bed but he's standing close enough to grab them.  He peevishly decides to pick one of them up and throw it at Wei Wuxian's back when he's still crawling out, then pick up the other and start bopping Wei Wuxian repeatedly with it.  They are pillow-like and full of fluff so this does very little to impede Wei Wuxian's movement.

- there, see, cushion, very nice thing to have thrown at you as things to have thrown at you go. (He already flinched at the flying object before he realized what it was.)

He braces a bit when other Jiang Cheng comes closer to him. 

…?(?) It takes him a moment to figure out what is physically happening, and that does not really help him figure out the more important questions like ‘what is other Jiang Cheng doing, what’ and ‘is this the sort of thing where he’s supposed to do something and also supposed to know what it is.’ …ok, when doms are doing things to you usually they want you to stay there and other Jiang Cheng getting so close feels like other Jiang Cheng wants to make the decisions here. He stops trying to finish getting out from under the bed or to his knees. 

“I’m sorry, Sandu Shengshou, I wasn’t sure it was you when I heard someone.” He’d mostly stopped expecting physical reprimands before, though on some level he was really still expecting them. What he can expect now sounds like the thing he is about to find out.

(Part of his brain is wondering if this is the kind of place where everyone thinks screaming and throwing furniture is just totally fine for doms to do, or if it’s more the ‘you really shouldn’t but of course it happens sometimes, everyone understands that’ kind. …If it’s the second one this is still probably going to be really awkward later but how about he deals with that when later happens.)

When Wei Wuxian just lies still and stops moving, Jiang Cheng backs off.  At first he's hurt at the rejection.  He wants to pull Wei Wuxian up again and demand answers.  Why aren't you fighting back?  Why are you ignoring me?  Then he remembers that this isn't his Wei Wuxian.  Caught up in his panic and emotions he'd forgotten - it was so easy when they looked identical to each other.  This other dimensional Wei Wuxian is serious and formal and strange, but that might be for actual logical reasons, not terrible demonic cultivation reasons.  Reasons like wanting to be a proper guest. 

Now what is the proper formal thing to do in response?  Does Jiang Cheng have to apologize?  Damn it.  He really hates apologizing.  The cushion is tossed onto the table, which is very sturdy and survives the impact with the cushion just as well as the collision with the wooden chest.  Jiang Cheng braces himself.  If this Wei Wuxian wants formality, he'll get formality. 

"Jiang Cheng would like to offer apologies for mistaking you for h- for the local Wei Wuxian.  Such a display was unbefitting and does not reflect the intended hospitality of the Yunmeng Jiang Sect to its honored guests, even in these unusual and limiting circumstances."  His bow is perfect and precise, and he even manages to keep from sounding sullen.  He has had a lot of practice since becoming sect leader.

(Part of his brain has continued on wondering things, like, if doms throwing furniture is ok here, do other doms he knows also do that? …He cannot imagine Lan Xichen throwing furniture. Even if doms were supposed to throw furniture all he can imagine is Lan Xichen picking it up carefully and setting it somewhere else. Grandmaster Lan would totally throw - not a book. Something the same size as a book. Probably at him personally if he ever sees him. He’s kind of worried about Lan Zhan’s father now. Wen Qing does not feel like she would throw furniture. …Heee wouldn’t put it past Wen Qing’s relatives to throw furniture in his world.)

Ahh shit ahh shit. Right, really obvious in retrospect, no prize Wei Ying, just because it’s fine enough here to throw furniture around your submissives doesn’t mean it’s fine here to throw furniture around other people’s submissives. He scrambles the rest of the way to his knees, gets himself into Good Proper submissive kneeling. …Now he also has to do etiquette, pout. (He does not actually make any Impolite facial expressions because he is representing House Jiang here). He bows.

”This one knows that the House Jiang of his world knows the value of and gives gratitude for the hospitality of the Yunmeng Jiang Sect, all the more so in these unusual and limiting circumstances. This one knows that House Jiang desires good relations of harmony, honor, and benefit, to House Jiang and to the Yunmeng Jiang Sect.”

…This is still sort of his brother, he doesn’t have to be completely all etiquette, right? (May be getting himself finally whacked across the hand or whatever it is they do here, but if not getting whacked across the hand was his priority very much, his conversations with doms would go very differently!)

“- He won’t be super mad, Sect Leader Jiang. He’ll accept the apology. I’ll talk to him.” Local Jiang Cheng might recognize a flavor of Wei Wuxian smile. “Ah, he’ll probably think to himself it might be good for me.”

Jiang Cheng didn't study for alien etiquette and he hates being unprepared.  That doesn't mean he's going to let Wei Wuxian beat him at it.  ...Should he be letting Wei Wuxian kneel during this?  Eh.  He doesn't have much choice - manhandling someone up during an apology for attempting to roughhouse would only show he didn't understand his lesson.  Besides, if people were supposed to be standing to receive apologies in the other world it is Wei Wuxian's job to know it and not Jiang Cheng's problem if Wei Wuxian fails to. 

"Yunmeng Jiang also values and wishes for good relations of harmony, honor, and benefit between House Jiang and the Yunmeng Jiang Sect.  Peace and the opportunity to strive for mutual understanding are goals which the Yunmeng Jiang Sect desires, both between the Yunmeng Jiang Sect and House Jiang, and between our two worlds." 

That seems like a good enough sentiment even if Jiang Cheng isn't sure why Wei Wuxian is bringing up inter-world relations right now.  Is it part of the standard response for an apology or a change in subject?  Sure, Jiang Cheng had invoked his entire sect, but Wei Wuxian is being hidden in Lotus Pier.

The less formal addendum only confuses him further.  At first he thinks it's normal enough, but at 'I'll talk to him' Jiang Cheng realizes Wei Wuxian isn't simply speaking in third person but referring to someone else.  Who- Local Wei Wuxian, presumably.  There's no one else here who can be told anything.  Why is Jiang Cheng being expected to also apologize to local Wei Wuxian?  It's not like he and Wei Wuxian had ever had an agreement that they could only ever attempt to initiate cushion fights with each other.  And Wei Wuxian was always going off and giving friendly nudges to other people, so he'd hardly be able to complain even before he left!

In the quiet tone of a private aside back:  "You would know better than I how a Wei Wuxian would react.  I'd expect him to be confused as to why he's being apologized to over this more than anything, but then again Wei Wuxian has never been easy to predict."

"Anyway, sorry." 

He averts his eyes in embarrassment, looking at the wall and wanting this to be over with.  Apologies are terrible because they're a long drawn out process of going over everything he did wrong, and his own mind does this more than enough on its own.  Hopefully alien etiquette isn't going to involve any extravagant rituals.  He'll just have to wait and see whether Wei Wuxian demands anything or switches to some new topic.

Wei Wuxian also didn’t study for alien etiquette (and does not really want to; one etiquette was enough for him, thanks!) (Will doms who think he should learn more etiquette care about that in any world, he is guessing not!)

But that definitely sounds to him like it finishes off the etiquette conversation, all the doms can be very happy about it! Which is great because long etiquette conversations are terrible. 

(Except for how other Jiang Cheng is probably not happy, because his Jiang Cheng hates apologizing and he isn’t guessing other Jiang Cheng likes it any better. But he also isn’t guessing other Jiang Cheng will like it any better if he draws more attention to it, so he is going to not.)

He bows again.

?

What is other him reacting to? And why is he supposed to know better about it? Sure he can play a lot of ‘what would I do if’ but if he wants to get right answer out of that for this other him he’s going to need way more on all the ifs. He hasn’t even met other him! Anyway they just had some nurture effects evidence here, see, furniture. (…ok other Jiang Cheng doesn’t actually know his world is different on that.) (…Speaking of furniture, he notices that the table lying upside down on the floor - wasn’t in the room before? Did other Jiang Cheng just… bring a table?)

Wait, why is he supposed to apologize to other him. Is he supposed to apologize for being so annoying other him’s dom threw furniture around him.

”-I’m sorry, Sect Leader Jiang, I think we have different etiquette here. I’ll apologize to other me if I’m supposed to! But someone’s going to have to tell me - sorry Sandu Shengshou - this one will need instruction about why he’s supposed to. Ah, this one means, about what is proper and correct for him to do.”

???

"I'm apologizing to you.  You were the one who brought up local Wei Wuxian and told me to apologize to him.  Or that you were going to pass on my apology to him?  I have no idea why you think he needs to be told about it at all." 

Jiang Cheng can't quite remember Wei Wuxian's exact words, and is now wondering if he'd misheard.  'I'll talk to him,' had definitely been part of it.  That had been phrased too sincerely to be like his Wei Wuxian's old childhood teasing.  Something like 'Ha! Jiang Cheng, I finally got you to admit how much of a troublemaker you are. The other me will totally want to hear about this,' and Jiang Cheng would expect it to be just a joke.  Maybe it had still been a joke, and Jiang Cheng was making everything awkward by thinking too much, as usual.

(Not drawing more attention to other Jiang Cheng apologizing: he is not doing great on that.)

“I didn’t, Sect Leader Jiang!” Why does other Jiang Cheng think he said that. He tries to remember what he said. It can’t have been the etiquette part, he was definitely talking about House Jiang and there is no way other Jiang Cheng would think other him is in House Jiang somehow. …Other Jiang Cheng thought he was talking about other him when he was talking about his Jiang Cheng?? He… has no idea how that could have happened, but he can’t think of any other options. (Note to self Wei Ying, when in other worlds always say who you’re talking about with words!) (Also whatever is going on with other Jiang Cheng and other him is really weird but he already knew that.)

“I’m sorry, Sandu Shengshou, this one apologizes, Sandu Shengshou. I meant my brother, that he would accept the apology. This one should have been clear when he spoke, I’m sorry, Sect Leader Jiang.” He lowers his head. Why does he just come up with new ways to get versions of his brother this fed up with him when he’s not even trying to do anything like that. (Other things he is not guessing other Jiang Cheng likes any better than his does, feeling embarrassed in conversations.)

He did not tell other Jiang Cheng to do anything though! He definitely didn’t tell him to do that! “I’m sorry for my insolence and presumption, Sandu Shengshou.”

Ah.  That makes more sense.  Jiang Cheng imagines what he would feel if his Wei Wuxian had wound up in alternate universe Lotus Pier (or whatever House Jiang calls their residence, if it even has a name) and other Jiang Cheng was being familiar with his Wei Wuxian.  He'd be very unhappy about it!  Not that Jiang Cheng is the sort of person who would be jealous.  Why would he be jealous?  Just... unhappy for some other reason that is definitely not that.

"I don't see why you keep apologizing.  You've been so good at being proper and formal," he says, the words coming out bitter.  Is other Wei Wuxian trying to show him up, like his Wei Wuxian was always doing?  How does Wei Wuxian manage to be better than Jiang Cheng at everything. 

"In any case, I hadn't meant it for anyone else."  So you should just drop it now.  And then they can move along to Jiang Cheng being awkward about some other topic. 

He winces a little. Nooot very hard to tell he’s not really being praised, here. There should be a multiuniverse dom rule that doms are not supposed to tell you off sounding kind of like they’re saying you’re being good. (Apparently he has not been appreciating the doms in his life enough for how straightforward they are! Maybe he should write them nice letters. Except for how he’d probably just sound insolent some more. Maybe Lan Zhan can help him.) (Or maybe doms in his life would make just as little sense to subs from other worlds! Ah, he’ll figure it out once he can talk to other him.)

But he’s probably not supposed to apologize about it, if other Jiang Cheng just said ‘I don’t see why you keep apologizing’ two sentences ago?? Even though he’s probably just being told off for being terrible at apologizing. Is he supposed to say thank you?? 

“Yes, Sect Leader Jiang.”

He’s gonna go for strategy: say less things. And - kneel here and see if other Jiang Cheng is going say more things or do something else or thinks they’re done with this topic now. At least until Cleansing Day or whatever it is. Or wants to start talking about whatever he wanted to talk about, when he came back.

It looks like they're finally finished with that confusing mess.

Jiang Cheng distracts himself from it by setting up lunch.  He's almost tempted to give Wei Wuxian a random half of the dishes and flee to go eat the other half alone but he might as well go through with his plans.  The table is unflipped and set down properly and gently this time.  He goes to the cabinet and brings out the tea set to put on the table, adding water and a container of fresh tea to it.  It gets joined by Jiang Cheng's set of plates and the food from his qiankun pouch.  Some have cooled a bit and he re-heats them with the same wave of his hand that he uses to get the water for the tea up to proper temperature. 

It's hard to think of any conversation topics that aren't going to lead to yet more awkwardness.  The lives of random Yunmeng Jiang cultivators doesn't even interest local Wei Wuxian any more, so why would other Wei Wuxian want to hear about some stranger getting married or forming their golden core or giving birth to a daughter?  Jiang Cheng hasn't been on any night hunts recently. 

"The weather's finally starting to warm back up," he mumbles into the table as he fishes two sets of chopsticks out of his bag.

It doesn’t take long to realize that first, other Jiang Cheng brought him food, and second - other Jiang Cheng brought them both food and is planning to eat with him.

That’s - 

Maybe that’s a dom duty thing here.

“Thank you, Sandu Shengshou,” he says quietly. And - jumps over to help set the table. This only questionably makes anything go faster, given that other Jiang Cheng is the one who has everything that needs to be put on the table. (…And if he was supposed to get permission he didn’t get it.) And he doesn’t actually know local table setting. But he can try to figure it out!

Why is other Jiang Cheng remarking on the weather. Does that mean ‘we’re having an informal conversation now’ here? Does that mean something else here?

But it doesn’t take a genius (hi, Wei Ying at your service!) or a high etiquette expert (not Wei Ying) to figure out what he’s supposed to do here. He’s supposed to answer the question - he doesn't know anything about the weather but that's not really a problem - and sit at the table and eat the food that other Jiang Cheng was (- really nice, seriously) and brought him. And then - he can notice a pattern - other Jiang Cheng will probably leave again, and leave him here. And not tell him anything. 

…Hey, other Jiang Cheng did just demonstrate there’s no need to worry about the food getting cold. Ah, they’ll have a better lunch afterwards, anyway.

Other Jiang Cheng seems to be out of table setting. He gets up. He kneels down, eyes where they should be, proper distance.

“Can you just whip me already,” sir “Sect Leader Jiang?” …That is not how Lan Zhan would have said it at all. Well, he is very literally asking for a whipping, may as well do it figuratively. (He catches sight of the ring by accident, and kind of wishes he’d picked any other word, but he doesn’t really think whichever version of his brother is going to make the decision like that.)

Wei Wuxian's attempts to set the table really aren't helping, no.  Jiang Cheng will indulge this and hand him the plates to set on the table anyway.  Maybe this is an other-world cultural thing, where guests are expected to set the table?  Or maybe Wei Wuxian just wants to make sure the best looking dishes are closer to his own side.  Jiang Cheng will pay attention to this perceived preference but points out that they should each get half of each dish no matter where Wei Wuxian puts them.

And Wei Wuxian is back to kneeling again.  Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes even though Wei Wuxian not looking at him makes this pointless.  He is pretty sure by this point that everyone in the other world is just constantly kneeling whenever they aren't walking.  Or maybe they have little wheeled boards they propel themselves around on so they never have to stop.  It's probably less annoying if everyone is doing it and no one is standing and having to look at the top of the other's head.  Jiang Cheng sits at the table to be at eye level with him, and also because sitting at the table is the thing that normal people do when they have just set the table and are preparing to eat, Wei Wuxian.

?

"What?  Why would I whip you?" 

He catches Wei Wuxian glance at Zidian.  This doesn't answer any questions, other than perhaps why Wei Wuxian expects him to have a whip on him.

Actually if anything Wei Wuxian looks to be putting the best looking dishes closer to Jiang Cheng’s side. “Yes, Sandu Shengshou,” he says to the local rule (which he will definitely try to remember!)

(Wei Wuxian’s brain has partially wandered off wondering if they beat people with sheathed swords here. He definitely read something with everyone having swords where that was a thing, but he can’t remember if that was a real thing or something whoever wrote it made up because if sounded cool.

...If both subs and doms get swords here, would that be a ‘the dom uses theirs’ or a ‘the sub hands over their own’? Other Jiang Cheng did say other him should carry a sword.)

He is pretty sure that was not meant as a form of telling him to recite why he deserves what he’s getting. And aha, they do sometimes do immediate punishment here! How long would it have been before he stumbled into one of those. 

“I’m sorry, Sandu Shengshou.” He thinks where he’s from is different in how they do discipline. (Other Jiang Cheng likes it when he elaborates right away.) They do more punishment immediately, or just at the end of what was happening, or someone says when it’ll be. (Hopefully immediate discipline outside of whatever they do with it isn’t one of those things the locals here find extremely appalling. There’s going to be something like that, he’s read enough intercultural contact, but it would be very convenient for him personally if what the locals find appalling is like, doms and subs wearing the same underwear, and not something he needs to deal with!) “Ah, this one asks to be told and to better understand what is done here.

Please?”

"We also do punishments that way."  Jiang Cheng isn't sure why Wei Wuxian seems to think they don't.  Does Wei Wuxian think he's broken any rules?  ...He did impersonate his local counterpart for however many minutes Wei Wuxian had between him figuring out he was in another world and Jiang Cheng leaving him for the night.  'Do not impersonate alternate universe versions of yourself' isn't even on Cloud Recesses' Wall of Discipline as far as Jiang Cheng knows, but it's reasonable enough as a rule that any authority figure could be expected to enforce it.

-Is Jiang Cheng being treated like an authority figure here?  Even though he is currently an accomplice to the "hide other Wei Wuxian and sneak him to Yiling" plan.  Except that Wei Wuxian doesn't usually listen to anyone who tries to tell him what to do, so no matter what other Wei Wuxian has decided to think of Jiang Cheng as that's still confusing.  Is he trying so hard to keep Jiang Cheng and his other universe version separate that he's over-compensating? 

In either case, it is in fact far too awkward to punish him for that after so many hours, even if Jiang Cheng wanted to.  Which makes it inconvenient that Wei Wuxian brought it up.  Jiang Cheng would rather not be talked into the utterly useless act of hitting Wei Wuxian and its not like he can set Wei Wuxian to scrub pots in the kitchens in this circumstance.  He looks around.

"Fine.  Your punishment can be cleaning.  Not right now because it's time for lunch, but I do expect this room to be clean before we leave so it isn't obvious you've been here.  I'm already having to handle supplies, laundry and garbage disposal.  I'm not your maid to tidy up your papers and make the bed too when you can do those yourself."

???

He is so confused. It is giving him a headache to try to branch through what other Jiang Cheng might mean and what he is in that case confused about! But it all comes down to: he is so confused. 

He winces a bit at the maid part. It’s not his fault other Jiang Cheng just walks into his room whenever! Given that other Jiang Cheng just walks into his room whenever, this is very unreasonable, what if he was just in the bed or looking at the papers. “Sorry, Sect Leader Jiang, yes, Sect Leader Jiang.”

Cleaning as part of his punishment, now that’s very familiar. But what does that mean his punishment can be cleaning?? And it’s really obviously not a punishment (for which thing? Did he just do another thing? Ok he just did several things but which one of them is other Jiang Cheng thinking of) to tell him he is supposed to do something that other Jiang Cheng thinks he should do in general and is mad about him not doing, which will take five minutes, and, if he takes other Jiang Cheng literally, he’d need to do in two days! Did other Jiang Cheng just get reminded of it when he mentioned cleaning??

(…If he cleans the room as punishment won’t that make it more obvious he’d been there? Unless other Jiang Cheng’s been sending in someone to do it regularly (does he remember how clean the room looked when he came in? no he doesn’t). Disguising that he’s been here for the safety of this Jiang sect: also not punishment!)

“If you did everything like we do, you’d have whipped me about five times already, Sandu Shengshou.” - Yep, figuratively as well as literally, he is hitting that one out of the park.

"You haven't hit me since you arrived here either!" Jiang Cheng accuses him before he has the chance to think it through. 

He is certain that he is missing something.

"You asked for a punishment and I suggested one.  Now you're complaining that it isn't good enough.  What do you want from me?  Why do you want to get whipped?"

Wei Wuxian flinches at the first sentence.

Alright, he has gotten other Jiang Cheng phenomenally mad at him. What did he do. It was questioning his ~mastery about punishment wasn’t it. 

(He wasn’t complaining! -He is totally complaining ideally to Lan Zhan about alternate universe punishment rules which are very unreasonable and doms which are also unreasonable. But he didn’t say anything complaining. Now Lan Zhan is who would complain about a punishment not being good enough.)

“Sorry Sect Leader Jiang, sorry Sect Leader Jiang. This one is grateful for Sect Leader Jiang’s authority and” nope he is not betting on other Jiang Cheng wanting to hear ‘merciful correction’ at the moment “deserved correction. This one apologizes for his presumption and disrespect and insolence. This one accepts the punishment Sect Leader Jiang sees fit to give him.” He got the message, discipline happens on the doms’ schedule over here. He’ll - just find out when it happens, if that’s in the next few days. Or he’ll ask other him. Won’t kill him. 

Jiang Cheng scoots away from the table to sit in front of Wei Wuxian, since apparently they are not going to be getting to lunch yet.  "What are you talking about.  Hey, look at me.  Stop looking at the floor."  Wei Wuxian (the local one, anyway) was so good at reading expressions and picking up on body language that Jiang Cheng often didn't need to say anything.  Wei Wuxian could even get information off of Lan Wangji somehow.  Taking away that advantage doesn't sound like it's helping with whatever is confusing them. 

His tone is harsh - as always - but his expression is worried. 

"You've been unusually well behaved.  For a Wei Wuxian, and for someone who hasn't learned our rules and etiquette.  Delaying telling me that you were from another world for less than an hour isn't the sort of thing we whip someone over.  Not when no one got hurt."

(Unfortunately, reading expressions and body language turns out to be way harder when you’ve been transported to another universe!) Even with another universe he can read body language well enough that he doesn’t really brace when other Jiang Cheng starts coming closer. He stops looking at the floor and looks at other Jiang Cheng.

Other Jiang Cheng is being nice to him again. “Thank you, Sect Leader Jiang,” he says, quiet again. (It’s the same kind of quiet way he’d thanked him for the food; Jiang Cheng can probably notice, not very much like the ‘yes thank you sir’ sort.)

He has the urge to pitch into other Jiang Cheng and hug him like he was Lan Zhan or Shijie (or Jiang Cheng who did just beat him). …Oh, he’s dipped into subspace.

His eyes flick down for a moment at ‘for a Wei Wuxian’ but he puts them back. 

He is not buying at all that either this world or other Jiang Cheng actually tolerate submissives deceiving dominants in authority over them as long as it’s for less than an hour. He can see the argument for why a dom wouldn't punish someone who confesses and admits everything, but he didn’t even do that. If he lied to his Jiang Cheng for five minutes and then his Jiang Cheng figured it out his Jiang Cheng would not take that as much mitigating circumstances; why should he get credit for that. Also it wasn’t less than an hour (…when does other Jiang Cheng think he figured it out?), also he did like three other things. But he’s not in a state right now for really figuring out why other Jiang Cheng might be saying that. Maybe it’s like a movie and other Jiang Cheng thinks he was too hard on other him and that’s why other him did a prison break, and now he thinks he should be nicer to Wei Wuxians.

“Figured it out when you jumped on the roof,” he says (admits). “-Sandu Shengshou.” (Other Jiang Cheng can count out how much time that means it was; there are lots of math questions where he is definitely the person to ask but keeping track of time is not one of them at all.)

"I figured it would be either that or one of the times I used talismans." 

He is only counting time when Wei Wuxian could have told him, meaning the metaphorical timer had stopped when Jiang Cheng was out of the room.  Not that he is bothering about accuracy the way he would if judging wrongdoing in his official duties as Sect Leader - Jiang Cheng is still thinking of this as them working together as accomplices.  He isn't going to explain this; the idle comment has already left his mind.

"Why do you want to be hit so much, anyway?  Don't think I haven't noticed how you didn't give any real answers.  Apologies and thanks are a nice change of pace from my Wei Wuxian's constant excuses, but you've gone too far in the other direction.  You don't have to treat me exactly like you treated your own Jiang Cheng; you also don't have to do the complete opposite and not give me any reason at all."  Even if it is helping Jiang Cheng keep them separate.  Had he conflated the two of them too far and wound up insulting other Wei Wuxian?

This is not Wei Wuxian's expectation of the metaphorical timer. If he could argue super convincingly that he'd absolutely been going to tell Jiang Cheng everything as soon as Jiang Cheng showed up in the morning, he might be able to get the time overnight to count against him less. (Which he can't, because that's false.) But the time where Jiang Cheng left and then came back again would definitely count against him. It's not going to occur to him to say this outloud either though.

Since Wei Wuxian is continuing to mostly follow instructions on looking at Jiang Cheng and not looking at the floor, Jiang Cheng can probably notice Wei Wuxian draw in on himself a little at ‘you’ve gone too far in the other direction’ and then just look confused at the last sentence. 

Yeah he is not understanding what other Jiang Cheng is trying to say in that last part at all. He does tuck away the new bit of 'other Jiang Cheng and other him' information. And - his Jiang Cheng would not like it either if he tried to use being etiquette-y to avoid actually answering questions. In his defense, he had not realized there was a real question! It's kind of a weird question. And does not sound at all like other Jiang Cheng is just going for the version of 'tell me why you're about to get it' where it's supposed to go 'I want it' and not just 'I deserve it' and 'this one accepts his punishment'. Well, not answering questions is what he was doing yesterday and is not what he's doing today, and this is not the kind of question that will get him to change his mind about that.

"I'm not looking forward to it, Sect Leader Jiang!"

His eyes flick down for a second again, not far enough to be either not on Jiang Cheng or on the floor. "Ah, you know waiting's hard on a submissive.

And not knowing. Meaning no disrespect to your decisions, Sandu Shengshou! 'm just not used to it yet. And it'll be my first time here! You're not exactly like my brother, Sandu Shengshou. But it's only the first time once.

Aiy, and this room is very boring, Sect Leader Jiang. If I cry in the bed for a few hours, it'll give me something to do."

It takes a little while for him to put together first time for what to mean 'first time being disciplined in a new place.'  What kind of a thought is that?

Not that his Wei Wuxian didn't get hit in every place he's ever gone.  Jiang Cheng remembers getting beaten when he went along with Wei Wuxian's plans at Cloud Recesses and knows that Wei Wuxian was punished on his own at least twice as often.  And during the Wen Indoctrination when Wei Wuxian had come back covered in blood and shaking, not to mention the various other beatings for slouching or not paying attention when they were supposed to be reading the Wen's drivel.  Even in Lotus Pier it had not taken long for Jiang Cheng's mother to find reasons to punish him.  Because Wei Wuxian immediately breaks every rule he sees.

From the look on Jiang Cheng's face, the idea of Wei Wuxian crying makes him very sad. 

One of the terms Wei Wuxian used was strange.  Jiang Cheng focuses on it.  "Submissive?"  Someone who conforms to the authority or will of others?  Jiang Cheng's initial thought is - no, that's not Wei Wuxian.  On the other hand, other Wei Wuxian has been acting unusually meek and obedient.  "Is that what you're going for?"

A statement which he regrets as soon as he's said it.  From context it is likely just the polite euphemism the other world has for its lower classes, relating to Wei Wuxian being the son of a servant.  Which is probably still the same?  Jiang Cheng makes a mental note to start comparing who else is copied between universes.  It can't just be him, A-jie, and Wei Wuxian. 

Wei Wuxian is used to figuring out his Jiang Cheng's moods while he's not supposed to be looking up at him, and right now he is looking directly at other Jiang Cheng. He's not going to guess the reason at all, but being in another universe is not going to keep him from noticing that look on other Jiang Cheng's face. It feels like a rug being pulled out from under his solar plexus, again. What does he do, what does he - . Maybe other Jiang Cheng can just hit him already. It'll be the first time but he has all this experience, at least he can get that one part right.

(What did he do?! It has to have been something he said, literally nothing else has happened!) 

"Submissive? Is that what you're going for?" He cringes. Shrinks in on himself, drops his eyes again. Puts them back. He can obey a simple order (-ok demonstrably he can't. But he can at least try.)

And Jiang Cheng's preference that Wei Wuxian doesn't know about is about to be kind of inconvenient, because at this point he is apparently going to start crying. What the fuck, self. He tries to wipe his eyes with his sleeve.

(He wants Lan Zhan. He wants other Jiang Cheng to beat him already so he can have a hug.)

He still doesn't know why other Jiang Cheng looks sad, but his brain helpfully informs him that it is obviously because he is a terrible submissive.

Other Jiang Cheng is busy, being Sect Leader after a war, and then having to deal with execution level politics because other him did a prison break. And then he shows up, disobeying direct orders and refusing to answer questions and unable to behave himself for the length of one interrogation and hiding under beds so other Jiang Cheng must have thought he also ran off or something. And then - after other Jiang Cheng was nice enough to bring him food and everything - he has to go asking him for more things because he can't stay quietly in a room for less than 24 hours. And now here he is crying on other Jiang Cheng's floor when other Jiang Cheng hasn't even hit him or anything yet.

(He hasn't changed his mind about anything. He's still pretty totally sure that other him had very good reason for doing a prison break and was completely right about it, and other Jiang Cheng having to deal with it is the fault of whoever was the reason other him had to do that and whatever doms here are in charge of execution-level politics. And if doms want submissives to obey emergency orders, they should be more careful about when they give other kinds of orders. If he suddenly appeared in yet another world right now he would go right back to the same plan and wouldn't tell the more new Jiang Cheng everything either until he knew more. And he should definitely have asked other Jiang Cheng ahead of time how to know if it was him at the door and what to do if it wasn't, but given that he didn't do that, hiding under the bed was very reasonable! And everyone knows that waiting for punishment is worse.

At the moment this is helping about as much as, when he is actually being punished, telling himself that the dom is obviously not going to seriously injure him or anything, so really there's no reason for him to need to be in pain about it; which is to say not very much.)

He tries his best at a smile (he is very good at smiling while crying!) Wipes at his eyes again. "Sorry Sandu Shengshou. I don't usually start till he's at least partway through." Right no they had this problem already. "-My brother, I mean." His eyes flick down again - not not on other Jiang Cheng's face, not on the floor. "I'm sorry, Sect Leader Jiang. I'll" be good, behave, comes to his mind like it does at times like this - but he can't do it, so he's not going to say it. "I'll talk to other me. I'll ask him how to be better for you."

Which sounds like it could be kind of awkward, given, but he'd totally give another universe him tips on his Jiang Cheng even if he'd actually run off or something. ...Not that he doesn't get his Jiang Cheng fed up with him all the time even having known him most of his life.

He tries for another smile. "Ah, at least I'll stop making stupid mistakes?"

Oh no.  Wei Wuxian crying is the worst thing.  "Wei Wuxian!  Why are you crying?  Stop that."  Which obviously isn't going to help - even Jiang Cheng can figure that out - but he blurted it out in panic.  His Wei Wuxian hadn't done this in years, and never at him. 

This Wei Wuxian doesn't know how useless Jiang Cheng is for this.  The other one must know what to do.  How is he supposed to guess?

And Jiang Cheng's own eyes are trying to tear up in sympathy, which is one of many reasons that this is the worst thing. 

If Wei Wuxian is going to be crying, Jiang Cheng doesn't want to look at his face any more.  Slowly, to avoid startling him, he shifts position so they're next to each other.  He hesitates, then pulls Wei Wuxian into the same sort of side-hug that his Wei Wuxian always pulled him into.  This is probably fine; other Wei Wuxian hugged him yesterday.  It also is maybe the sort of thing that will help?

"What am I supposed to do about you?  I'm not A-jie.  Do you make your own Jiang Cheng deal with this?  Tch.  Make sure you hug him too once you figure out your way back.  I don't want to start things off poorly with him because he's jealous about missing out on hugs."

It can't be that other Jiang Cheng is normally soft with him.  Not when Wei Wuxian just said that other Jiang Cheng is always hitting him.  Jiang Cheng is confused.

"I don't think my Wei Wuxian cares how either of you can be better for me."

(It doesn't help, no.) He winces. "Sorry, Sect Leader Jiang." If he had control over whether or not he was crying right now, he wouldn't have been doing it! But that was also a direct order, and he's Wei Wuxian and the fact that it doesn't look like he can do something is not a good reason to not do it anyway, so he's just going to remember all the stopping-crying strategies he can think of and try harder. That does produce some results, but slowly enough that he's still crying some when other Jiang Cheng moves towards him more.

Oh. He's getting a hug. Other Jiang Cheng is so nice to him even though he's terrible. He goes kind of limp into the hug. ...He should maybe have asked first. (Should he have?) Part of him behind his thoughts is very aware that if other Jiang Cheng slaps or ever reprimands him for it right now it's going to hit him hard. But he already did it, so.

He's already told other Jiang Cheng what he thinks other Jiang Cheng is supposed to do about him! And already told him what he does at home. But other Jiang Cheng has strong opinions about question answering. Eyes-not-to-the-floor. (He's not really looking at other Jiang Cheng anymore, but he's not worried about it. Jiang Cheng has always been good about not punishing him for disobedience when Jiang Cheng is the one who changed conditions.) "I make him deal with a lot, Sect Leader Jiang." ...Is that something his Jiang Cheng would get jealous about? Of course it is. That's funny. He wonders if his Jiang Cheng would also ever mention his feelings more if he got to say them about a different Jiang Cheng. (Part of him registers the implicit compliment(!) that other Jiang Cheng thinks he can figure out his way back.) "Yes Sandu Shengshou."

"I don't think my Wei Wuxian cares how either of you can be better for me."

His brain does a 180 like he's been shown an interesting math problem.

Oh. A bunch of things slot together in his head.

What makes doms insecure. Other him isn't here, other him is staying away, other him is holding borders. Other Jiang Cheng doesn't like what other him did or is doing but he's going with it and coming up with more plans. Other Jiang Cheng was upset about him calling him the wrong thing when he thought he was other him, and not just in a lashing him for disrespect way.

"Of course he cares, Sect Leader Jiang!" He maybe usually wouldn't say exactly that or exactly like that. But, subspace. ...Oh, is that why other Jiang Cheng hasn't been punishing him. That is exactly the kind of thing Jiang Cheng would not notice he was thinking, if he thought Wei Wuxian might get disobedient about punishment and didn't know what he would do. (Of course other Jiang Cheng can jump twelve feet and could overpower him easily even if he didn't have Zidian. But come to think did other Jiang Cheng ever get to asking him what power use he has? Maybe other Jiang Cheng thinks he can do all sorts of things.)

"I'm not going to make things difficult for you just because you can't call someone to come hold me down, Sandu Shengshou. - Other me won't either." (He doesn't especially have doubts about that as he says it. There's definitely all sorts of things he would do if he could and doms couldn't stop him, but 'trying to not let Jiang Cheng hit him when it would obviously make Jiang Cheng feel better' isn't one of them, why would he do that.) "He's not trying to just not be yours just because he has to hold borders against Jin Guangshan." And probably other people but that's the one he knows and one he and at least his Jiang Cheng can agree on some negative opinions of. 

Unfortunately belatedly it occurs to him there's a caveat to that. Which he doesn't want to say, he doesn't think that'll help at all. But it would definitely be worse if it comes up when other Jiang Cheng is actually around other him. Eyes-not-to-the-floor. "Ah, if you want him not able to get up for a few days, he might give you trouble. It's not you, Sandu Shengshou! It's the holding borders."

If he were home, he would get such a lecture now, and lines he would not have a great time sitting at his desk for. At the moment he feels like he has absolutely no idea how to tell if other Jiang Cheng is going to throw him across the room, or completely ignore what he's doing until Cleansing Day or whatever, or come up with another new way of telling him off. He hopes it's not that one. Or maybe really bury him in mud. But since he can't tell there's no point in worrying about it! At some point other Jiang Cheng will do something, or it'll become Cleansing Day, or other Jiang Cheng will want to deal with him before he takes him to see other him. Or he can ask other him when he gets there.

Anyway obviously the solution to the real problem here is to use combining two worlds' power systems to solve whatever is causing other him to have to hold borders, and then other Jiang Cheng can do as much as he wants to. And knock other him into subspace and crying on his floor until he feels reassured enough and - well, as secure as Jiang Cheng can get. (...He can predict that other him's Lan Zhan is not going to like this plan (his Lan Zhan is also not going to like this plan). But they have brothers and places they belong to too, they'll get it.)

No one could claim that he was inadequate compared to Wei Wuxian if they could see this.  Jiang Cheng would have expected to feel better about that, given the insinuations that have somehow only managed to increase after Wei Wuxian's departure, but it turns out there is a difference between wanting to be stronger and wanting others to be weaker.  When Wei Wuxian goes limp, he keeps hugging;  Whenever his Wei Wuxian tried to hug him and he didn't react Jiang Cheng did want to keep being hugged and was just too proud to admit it.  Presumably the same is true the opposite way around.


He listens to Wei Wuxian.  At first it's normal enough.  Jiang Cheng doesn't really believe that his Wei Wuxian cares.  Certainly not enough to not abandon and replace him, because that's what his Wei Wuxian did do and actions speak louder than words.  (He wonders if this Wei Wuxian will change his mind after they meet.  His Wei Wuxian will say something proving how bad Jiang Cheng is.  Then two worlds' Jiang Chengs will be abandoned.)

Then it gets into baffling.  Why would he want to hold other Wei Wuxian down?  That makes no sense if taken literally.  Hold him to his duties, like hitching an oxen to the plow, then? 

-No.  This is more of that bizarre insistence about punishment.

"Look.  Just.  Shut the fuck up, Wei Wuxian.  I have no idea what you're talking about.  You have no idea what you're talking about.  There is some kind of difference between our cultures or families that is making you think-"

Jiang Cheng tries to figure out why other him would bother whipping Wei Wuxian the way that Mother did. 

Though he didn't pull away, his body tensed up and his free arm gestured in sharp agitated motion.  "Do people where you're from enjoy hurting their close friends and family?  It's not like I've never laughed when Wei Wuxian fell on his face when trying to show off, and it's fun to wrestle and hit each other and spar.  And I liked watching Wen Chao die, when Wei Wuxian decided to draw it out, but allies are different from enemies!  It would be one thing if it was serving a purpose, but if Wei Wuxian were going to change his behavior over being whipped it would have happened when Mother tried."

He can see a possibility clearly.  A version of Father who had asserted just a bit more authority, or perhaps a Mother who was allowed to be even more absent.  A Jiang Cheng who, therefore, had never seen how utterly useless trying to punish Wei Wuxian with physical beatings could be.  If so, he feels a little sick.  He always wanted Mother to stop.  Apparently that wouldn't have done any good, if that meant that Jiang Cheng had never learned how it didn't help and just did it himself.  It would be a logical experiment to try.  Jiang Cheng still kind of wants to punch that hypothetical other him about it. 

(Of course, back when he was being whipped regularly Wei Wuxian had never left the Jiang Sect to live in the Burial Mounds with a bunch of Wen-dogs.  He used to carry his sword and not do demonic cultivation.  Was this all Jiang Cheng's fault for not reining him in in the way everyone else considered best?)

He notices the food, which is starting to get cold again.  "Can we just eat now, Wei Wuxian?  I'm hungry, and I'm not going to go find you anything else to eat if our food isn't good enough for you."