Wait? What? She hadn't expected to be basically kicked out and honestly, this only confirms that this Nie retainer must be the height of incompetence. That's what happens if you give inferior people any kind of power.
Before she knows it, she finds herself standing outside the walls of the Uncleam Realm, with the gates slamming shut behind her. She is still wearing the Nie servant robes but they are all she has to her name, she doesn't even have so much as any robes to change, never mind money.
Pretending to be a Nie servant on her way to run errands, she does manage to sweet-talk a merchant into taking her to the closest town on his cart but then she is on her own again, unable to pay for lodgings or even so much as a meal.
In the days and weeks to follow, this new life is proving a very unpleasant affair for Wang Lingjiao. She had worked as a servant before but being the servant to Wen Chao's wife was quite different from being penniless and alone deep in Qinghe Nie territory, without the money to travel anywhere else - not that there is anyplace safer or more welcoming for a former Wen minion. People aren't kind to the destitute and she has grown used to being waited on, to having soft hands and a back which doesn't ache from hard physical labor. Life may be easier in a brothel but also more dangerous than on the farms she only ever works on for a short time until they realize she knows nothing about farm work. Working in a brothel so close to Qinghe Nie headquarters, she would sooner or later be serving cultivators who recognize her from her old life.
It takes about three weeks for her to be back at the gates to the Unclean Realm, demanding an audience with the incompetent retainer who had released her.
"Very well," is the first thing she says as she walks into the room, wearing robes much drabber and worn than the ones she had left in, "you had your fun. Now tell me what you want from me."
Huaisang is a little bit surprised when she goes, and when she doesn't return again for days, but then he forgets about her. Not as clever as he'd hoped. He wonders for the first week what she's doing and what opportunities she'd chosen. Then he accepts that she must have found something that met her standards, and he forgets her.
By the time she returns, the whole escapade has been mostly forgotten. The guards at the gate are perplexed by her demands. Who is she? What retainer? Her own name gets her nowhere, but a description of the bureaucrat who released her is recognized quickly enough, and she's taken to a room to wait.
Hours pass before she's finally fetched again and led to a room in the upper palace, luxurious spaces reserved for the Nie Clan family members, two levels above the bureaucratic halls where she'd been received before.
This time, Huaisang is looking far more casually luxurious, settled on a porch that looks out across the mountaintops of Qinghe. A couple of pretty birds hop in cages in the room just inside the porch, and there's a sense of peaceful luxury in the space. Kneeling at a table on the porch laid with tea and pastries, Huaisang is dressed today in expensive but comfortable silk robes, a mere three layers of silk instead of his usual five. He doesn't look up from the view as Wang Lingjiao enters, but there is a second cushion set on the far side of the table.
As she was taken higher and higher, she had believed for a while that this time she would actually be getting the audience with someone important she had been wanting all along. This, she realizes soon, are the quarters of the sect and clan's leadership, nobody else would be living in such lavish surroundings.
And right here, in the middle of all that luxury and looking like someone who fits right in, is the incompetent servant she had spoken to last time.
She comes to a sudden full stop and gapes at him, mouth opening and closing several time before she remembers her voice at all and blurts out an indignant, "You!!" Well. That isn't very impressive, right. She straightens her shoulders and lifts her chin and stalks towards him. "How dare you deceive me! Who do you think you are?!"
Huaisang looks up with wide-eyed concern the moment she stalks over to him, and his fan whirls open so that he can flutter it defensively. "Wang Lingjiao," he says, brow furrowed in a sympathetic pout. "I am Nie Huaisang. What have I done to deceive you?"
Confused and worried, he gazes up at her with the same helpless bewilderment he used before. He's done everything he can to accommodate her requests. It's not his fault that she makes stupid requests, and he's not about to tell her what's what. He'll just do his best to enable her to figure it out on her own, and hope she doesn't cause too much trouble along the way.
"Nie Huai... Nie..." Her mouth opens and closes several times, with nothing but strangled noises coming out as she realizes how very much she has been played. Everyone must have known and eagerly played along and... Humiliation burns through her, yet she bites down her tongue, seething quietly. Wen-gongzi would play games with people, too. You could be pushy, but not too annoying to be more trouble than you'd be worth.
And she doesn't want to be too much trouble to someone like Nie Huaisang. He is her chance to get back her life.
"Nie-gongzi!" she simpers, bowing low with great flourish and ultimately, little actual grace. A lot of fake enthusiasm, though. "It is too much honor of you to receive me! Too much honor!"
He's perfectly capable of using graceful formality, and he could use it now to rein her in and slap her into shape, if he wanted. Formality is one of his best tools. Instead, he discards it entirely. The levels of formality between the heir of a clan and a clanless prisoner are far too many, and Huaisang doesn't want to relegate her to being a lump in the dungeons or a resentful lower maidservant. In those cases, she's just a drain on the clan, an uncooperative maidservant likely to be more of a burden than anything. Better if he can get her to cooperate and to choose her own fate so that then she'll be willing to expend energy in pursuing that fate.
"Would you like some tea?" he gestures clumsily at the table in front of him, pleasantly laid with pastries and tea. The tea is cooling, but he's not going to have it refreshed just for her. If she wants it still hot, she'd better hurry up with cooperating.
She has to actively keep herself from sniffing a little, haughtiness is what you default to when you are out of your depth. But not so much anymore in this new life. In this life, more caution than she showed before has served her reasonably well. Well enough, at least, that she is getting invited to have tea with Nie Huaisang. Once, she would have scoffed at that, too.
"Nie-gongzi is far too generous!" Now she bows again, empty words of flattery and gratitude falling from her lips still as she situates herself and pours herself some lukewarm tea, then, on second thought, remembering to pour tea for him as well.
The pastries are calling to her empty stomach but she still has some pride left so she sticks to her tea for now, not wanting to be seen eating like a starving beggar. No, she is no beggar. Just... unfortunately out of funds. And options. And friends. And a whole lot of other things.
"You are such a kind young man, I never realized!"
"That's very nice of you to say." Huaisang blushes and flutters his fan, acting very shy and uncertain. At least she's sitting and cooperating now, with a slightly better sense of her position in this situation. Huaisang just still isn't sure what he's going to do with her. "I didn't want you stuck down there in the dungeons. It seems very unpleasant."
Giving her a hopeful little smile, he taps his fan lightly against his lips. "I didn't think I'd see you again so soon! What brings you back to Qinghe?"
"Oh, I..." It takes all she has to keep the scowl from her face, or keep from snatching his fan and slapping him with it. What impertinence to play her so, to make her dance for him... But she is in no position to refuse, right? Right.
So she keeps smiling her best simpering smile and coos, "Oh, I couldn't stand not seeing Nie-gongzi again, and thanking him for his generosity and his trust in releasing me! The villagers have been very welcoming." Disgusting peasants who make you work your hands to the bone for some watery soup and a bed in the stables. What a vile people, just as vile as their leaders. She widens the smile, turning it a notch more subservient. "I was hoping I could pay my debt to Nie-gongzi, if I'm permitted."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ahahahaha I love him
Before she knows it, she finds herself standing outside the walls of the Uncleam Realm, with the gates slamming shut behind her. She is still wearing the Nie servant robes but they are all she has to her name, she doesn't even have so much as any robes to change, never mind money.
Pretending to be a Nie servant on her way to run errands, she does manage to sweet-talk a merchant into taking her to the closest town on his cart but then she is on her own again, unable to pay for lodgings or even so much as a meal.
In the days and weeks to follow, this new life is proving a very unpleasant affair for Wang Lingjiao. She had worked as a servant before but being the servant to Wen Chao's wife was quite different from being penniless and alone deep in Qinghe Nie territory, without the money to travel anywhere else - not that there is anyplace safer or more welcoming for a former Wen minion. People aren't kind to the destitute and she has grown used to being waited on, to having soft hands and a back which doesn't ache from hard physical labor. Life may be easier in a brothel but also more dangerous than on the farms she only ever works on for a short time until they realize she knows nothing about farm work. Working in a brothel so close to Qinghe Nie headquarters, she would sooner or later be serving cultivators who recognize her from her old life.
It takes about three weeks for her to be back at the gates to the Unclean Realm, demanding an audience with the incompetent retainer who had released her.
"Very well," is the first thing she says as she walks into the room, wearing robes much drabber and worn than the ones she had left in, "you had your fun. Now tell me what you want from me."
no subject
By the time she returns, the whole escapade has been mostly forgotten. The guards at the gate are perplexed by her demands. Who is she? What retainer? Her own name gets her nowhere, but a description of the bureaucrat who released her is recognized quickly enough, and she's taken to a room to wait.
Hours pass before she's finally fetched again and led to a room in the upper palace, luxurious spaces reserved for the Nie Clan family members, two levels above the bureaucratic halls where she'd been received before.
This time, Huaisang is looking far more casually luxurious, settled on a porch that looks out across the mountaintops of Qinghe. A couple of pretty birds hop in cages in the room just inside the porch, and there's a sense of peaceful luxury in the space. Kneeling at a table on the porch laid with tea and pastries, Huaisang is dressed today in expensive but comfortable silk robes, a mere three layers of silk instead of his usual five. He doesn't look up from the view as Wang Lingjiao enters, but there is a second cushion set on the far side of the table.
no subject
And right here, in the middle of all that luxury and looking like someone who fits right in, is the incompetent servant she had spoken to last time.
She comes to a sudden full stop and gapes at him, mouth opening and closing several time before she remembers her voice at all and blurts out an indignant, "You!!" Well. That isn't very impressive, right. She straightens her shoulders and lifts her chin and stalks towards him. "How dare you deceive me! Who do you think you are?!"
no subject
Confused and worried, he gazes up at her with the same helpless bewilderment he used before. He's done everything he can to accommodate her requests. It's not his fault that she makes stupid requests, and he's not about to tell her what's what. He'll just do his best to enable her to figure it out on her own, and hope she doesn't cause too much trouble along the way.
no subject
And she doesn't want to be too much trouble to someone like Nie Huaisang. He is her chance to get back her life.
"Nie-gongzi!" she simpers, bowing low with great flourish and ultimately, little actual grace. A lot of fake enthusiasm, though. "It is too much honor of you to receive me! Too much honor!"
no subject
He's perfectly capable of using graceful formality, and he could use it now to rein her in and slap her into shape, if he wanted. Formality is one of his best tools. Instead, he discards it entirely. The levels of formality between the heir of a clan and a clanless prisoner are far too many, and Huaisang doesn't want to relegate her to being a lump in the dungeons or a resentful lower maidservant. In those cases, she's just a drain on the clan, an uncooperative maidservant likely to be more of a burden than anything. Better if he can get her to cooperate and to choose her own fate so that then she'll be willing to expend energy in pursuing that fate.
"Would you like some tea?" he gestures clumsily at the table in front of him, pleasantly laid with pastries and tea. The tea is cooling, but he's not going to have it refreshed just for her. If she wants it still hot, she'd better hurry up with cooperating.
no subject
"Nie-gongzi is far too generous!" Now she bows again, empty words of flattery and gratitude falling from her lips still as she situates herself and pours herself some lukewarm tea, then, on second thought, remembering to pour tea for him as well.
The pastries are calling to her empty stomach but she still has some pride left so she sticks to her tea for now, not wanting to be seen eating like a starving beggar. No, she is no beggar. Just... unfortunately out of funds. And options. And friends. And a whole lot of other things.
"You are such a kind young man, I never realized!"
no subject
Giving her a hopeful little smile, he taps his fan lightly against his lips. "I didn't think I'd see you again so soon! What brings you back to Qinghe?"
no subject
So she keeps smiling her best simpering smile and coos, "Oh, I couldn't stand not seeing Nie-gongzi again, and thanking him for his generosity and his trust in releasing me! The villagers have been very welcoming." Disgusting peasants who make you work your hands to the bone for some watery soup and a bed in the stables. What a vile people, just as vile as their leaders. She widens the smile, turning it a notch more subservient. "I was hoping I could pay my debt to Nie-gongzi, if I'm permitted."