#another is that NMJ just continues on being completely off his rocker

[robininthelabyrinth]

enderwiggin24 on ao3 asked for more NMJ decides to kill so here’s one version of how that could continue

“I have proof!” Xiao Xingchen exclaimed, bursting into the room.

Everyone turned to stare at the young man, even Nie Mingjue…though in his case, he just sighed, again, at how easily excitable Xiao Xingchen was. It didn’t seem to matter how many times he explained that his decision to kill Jin Guangyao and Jin Guangshan had been motivated by his own motives, not by Xue Yang’s latest atrocity – he hadn’t even heard about Xue Yang’s attack on Song Lan’s temple, slaughtering most of the inhabitants and blinding Song Lan himself, when he’d gone to Jinlin Tower with murder on his mind, and yet Xiao Xingchen seemed to view him as some sort of benefactor, seeking revenge for the injustice done to him.

Maybe that was why he, along with Nie Huaisang, was so insistent on finding a way to prevent Nie Mingjue from paying with his life for what he’d done.

Apparently Xiao Xingchen had been in the middle of a potentially friendship-ending fight with Song Lan when the news had come to them that Jin Guangshan, who’d protected Xue Yang from all consequence, was dead at Nie Mingjue’s hands, making them both rush over as soon as they could…Song Lan was now recuperating in the Nie sect, safe and sound, and the doctors were optimistic about restoring his vision eventually. The natural way, not by transplanting someone else’s eyes into him the way Xiao Xingchen had apparently intended, self-sacrificing overly loyal idiot that he was.

Nie Mingjue could relate – or at least, he’d thought once he could.

He wasn’t so sure anymore.

“Xingchen…” he started to say.

“No, I really do,” Xiao Xingchen insisted, earnest and wide-eyed as ever. “I really, truly do this time! You don’t need to commit suicide, and you don’t need to be put on trial – it wasn’t your fault.”

Nie Mingjue stared. “I knowingly left the Unclean Realm, flew to Jinlin Tower, paid off the door guards, and murdered my own sworn brother and his father by literally beating them to death with my fists, not even with a saber,” he said. “I would have done the same to Xue Yang, if he hadn’t escaped at the last moment. Even if I was having a qi deviation, I acted knowingly and with intent; there’s no excuse for unjustly killing people.”

He really should have just killed himself immediately when he realized what he’d done. That would have been the just thing, the right thing, the righteous path – but even as he’d lifted Baxia up he’d thought of Nie Huaisang, who just wasn’t ready to be sect leader, and he’d hesitated. Nie Huaisang had always been his weakness…he was the reason he was still alive now, for that matter. His stubborn little brother who’d never fought for anything was fighting now, for him.

“But you didn’t just have a qi deviation and decide to kill people,” Xiao Xingchen said. “Someone drove you into that qi deviation intentionally – you were being poisoned!”

“I knew it!” Nie Huaisang said triumphantly. “I knew da-ge’s condition was deteriorating too rapidly for it to be just our inheritance, that there was no other reason he was dying faster than our father did after he was murdered. I told you.”

Lan Xichen looked less convinced, as did Jiang Cheng, and in all honesty Nie Mingjue himself was with them.

“Right,” he said skeptically. “Poisoned. And how exactly was I being poisoned?”

“For that I’ll need to bring out my witnesses,” Xiao Xingchen said, having apparently taken Nie Mingjue’s long and earnestly meant lecture about the necessity of reliable evidence to heart. “Lan Wangji, if you could –”

Lan Xichen abruptly went pale, which Nie Mingjue didn’t understand…at least he didn’t understand until Lan Wangji came out of the side room, barely able to stand on his own two feet from the severity of his injuries. Nie Mingjue was instantly concerned, as he hadn’t even heard about Lan Wangji getting hurt, much less hurt to such a shocking degree – there was blood on his neckline, and probably underneath his pristine white robe as well – that it took a while before he even noticed the two people Lan Wangji was leading into the room.

“Wen Qionglin is alive?” he blurted out, even though that wasn’t quite right. Wen Ning had become a fierce corpse long ago, but the Jin had said he was destroyed...but what was even stranger was who was flanking Lan Wangji on his other side, holding his arm in support. “And…Xue Yang?”

Xue Yang made a strange expression, halfway between a smile and a grimace.

“Not…quite,” he said, sounding a little sheepish. “Long story. Let’s focus on explaining what happened first so that Lan Zhan can sit down, okay?”

“I am fine,” Lan Wangji, who was pretty obviously not fine, said. “But let us tell you about what we have discovered regarding the Song of Turmoil…”