“Well, yes,” she agreed. “At least someone understood the importance of making sure your actions fit the right aesthetic – and I think it’s clear that this, at least, is very aesthetic.”

“I’m not sure I agree,” Madame Lan put in with a slight frown. “Lots of corpses, yes, but what’s the aesthetic in that?”

“The ravens, obviously. Look at that, he’s more or less created a bird tornado.”

“Bird tornado,” the former Sect Leader Nie coughed into his hand, looking vastly amused. He always did have a good sense of humor, that little extra bit of ruthless edge that most Nie sect leaders lacked in their earnestness giving him the remove necessary to laugh at terrible things – his too-early death really had been a pity. “What aesthetic does that match, exactly? Is he going to be the bird patriarch?”

“Ravens are obviously aligned with demonic cultivation,” Yu Ziyuan argued, affronted on behalf of gaudy over-the-top taste everywhere. “Red eyes, ravens, corpses – it’s a death theme.”

“Then why isn’t he wearing white?”

“…a darkness theme, then. Not everyone can go with the funeral attire all the time - if you want that, why don’t you go look at what’s-his-name, the new star that fell down east? Xiao Xingchen or whatever he’s called himself?”

“Maybe he just doesn’t want to look like a Lan,” her husband suggested, getting back on track to stop the tide of rolling eyes.

“There’s nothing wrong with looking like a Lan,” Qingheng-jun murmured, his eyes drifting over to his wife. They were still working out their issues, which seemed to Yu Ziyuan to be in a bit of bad taste; they were all dead, after all.

Still, she wouldn’t comment. Maybe they were going for absurdist.

“Better look like a Lan than something like A-Han’s style,” Sect Leader Nie agreed cheerfully. “White and garish red – awful. Like blood on snow.”

“See, this is why everyone thought you were fucking before he killed you,” Yu Ziyuan told him, rolling her eyes. “Who the fuck calls Wen Ruohan by a diminutive?”

“Me,” Sect Leader Nie said. Still cheerful.

Sometimes she wanted to kill him, and he was already dead.

“I’m not sure why you think having killed him was an indication they weren’t fucking,” Madame Lan said, and nudged her husband pointedly with her elbow. She was a lot less subtle than he was, but then again, she wasn’t a Lan. Qingheng-jun had that vaguely constipated look that suggested he was both happy and regretful about her attention – Lans!

Yu Ziyuan really wondered about Wei Wuxian’s taste sometimes. All that wonderfully dark aesthetic he had going on, and he had to fall for a coffin-face?

Hmm. On second thought, maybe it did match. Now that was commitment to a theme…

“No comment on the fucking,” Sect Leader Nie said, the way he always did. “Anyway, looks like Wen Chao’s going to be joining us soon enough, once your Wei Wuxian is done playing with him.”

“Deserved, every inch of it.” Yu Ziyuan announced, and for once Jiang Fengmian held his tongue about her being unduly vicious. In fairness, the man had led the attack that killed them both; they were entitled to some bitterness. “I may hate his guts, but one really has to have some sympathy – I really have no idea how someone as fiendishly intelligent as Wen Ruohan turned out such an awful stupid child.”

“At least we finally got rid of Wen Xu,” Sect Leader Nie said, and showed his teeth – his son had been the one to execute that waste of space in the world of the living, and Sect Leader Nie had been the one to do something or other to get rid of him in the world of ghosts.

Yu Ziyuan half suspected that he’d eaten him.

Let it never be said that the Nie sect didn’t know how to bear a grudge.

“Well, aesthetic or no aesthetic, I’m concerned for the poor boy,” Madame Lan said. “People won’t respond well to demonic cultivation after the war is won, and it’s not as if he has other choices given – all that happened.”

Yu Ziyuan made a face, but nodded, agreeing – she’d always resented her husband’s obvious preference to Wei Wuxian, but she’d generally trusted the boy to take care of Jiang Cheng, and he’d lived up to that in full. In full and beyond, no less.

Poor child, she really had misjudged him. She’d have to tell him as much when he eventually died.

Sadly, Madame Lan was right that it probably wasn’t that far away now.