The Most Recognisable Asses of the Sunshot Campaign

"Da-ge, hold still!" Nie Huaisang whined. "It's so cold my fingers will barely move. I want to get back into the warm as soon as possible, so let me finish sketching you!"

"You're cold?" Nie Mingjue's tone was impeccably dry. He raised one eyebrow, then cast a look down at his own naked torso and legs. Standing on one of the long ridges between the Hejian mountains, with one leg propped up on a large rock, Chifeng-zun somehow managed to retain his regal bearing, even though the only defence of his modesty was a piece of silk slung around his hips.

"Yes, da-ge, I'm freezing, so stop making faces and be serious." Nie Huaisang's complaints were punctuated with the chattering of his teeth. He had draped his brother's thick outer coat around his shoulders to 'keep it off the ground' while it was not in use, but he was still shivering.

Sighing stoically, Nie Mingjue turned his head back to look down across the valley, today fortuitously free of rampaging Wen-dogs trying to battle through the line so tenuously held by the Qinghe Nie.

After a few minutes, his attention was caught by a small figure in grey picking its way up the ridge towards them. He tracked it with his eyes, hailing it with a raised arm and a shout when it got close enough: "Meng Yao!"

"You are lucky I just got done with that drawing," Nie Huaisang said through gritted teeth.

"Chifeng-zun," said the new arrival, bowing to a depth that would have been impressive even had he not been carrying a large, insulated basket. He stayed in the pose for a beat longer than necessary, seemingly trying to find a safe direction to look in.

"Is there news from camp?" Nie Mingjue asked brusquely, stepping towards him while stretching out his arms. Despite his cultivation level, he was starting to feel cool. Small flakes of snow had begun to drift out of the steel-grey sky. "Have the Wen-dogs been sighted again? I knew it was too good to believe that they'd lie low till now."

"No, Sect Leader, nothing of the sort," Meng Yao reassured him. "Seeing that you and your brother were still out on your, ah, scouting mission, and that the weather was getting worse, this humble one decided to bring up some tea and hot food.”

His ears pricking up at the sound of the word hot, Nie Huaisang dropped his art supplies and joined the other two. He didn’t quite manage a sashay, what with the heavy coat and the way he unbalanced when his brother reclaimed it from his shoulders, but the thought was there.

“Hello, who’s this?” he all but purred.

“My vice-general, Meng Yao,” rumbled Nie Mingjue, “who is apparently so underworked that he has time to attempt to pamper me.”

Nie Huaisang’s eyes narrowed. He knew that tone of his brother’s voice.

“Please forgive this humble one,” Meng Yao replied, looking up (and up—he really wasn’t very tall) through his lashes at his sect leader. “The last few days have fortunately been peaceful enough to rebuild our defences, and keeping up Chifeng-zun’s strength is an important part of our military strategy.”

Nie Huaisang definitely knew that look, and that kind of flattery, too. He used them on his brother often.

“Enough, enough, I don’t want to hear about military details,” he said, flapping his hands at the basket to encourage Meng Yao to open it. “What sort of tea did you bring? Da-ge never brings decent tea on our night hunts. I hope he’s better at provisioning for war.”

“My younger brother, Nie Huaisang.” Nie Mingjue supplied the introduction in an amused tone, pulling his trousers back on.

“This vice-general is honoured."

Nie Huaisang rolled his eyes at that, but only a little, because Meng Yao was setting out cups for tea, soup bowls, and meat-filled bing that smelled amazing.

"Go on, Meng Yao, ask," Nie Mingjue said after they'd each got a comfortable amount of food in them. "You've been desperate to find out what we were doing up here. I can see right through you."

Meng Yao pinked in a very appealing way, but said obediently, "Might I know the purpose of Chifeng-zun and young master Nie's excursion today?"

"Tell him, Huaisang."

"It's my contribution to the Sunshot Campaign," Nie Huaisang said, with well-deserved pride. His cheeks warmed a bit, too. "I might not be adept at leading an army like da-ge, but I know that warriors need food, horses, tea… oh, thank you, Meng Yao. And probably lots of other things too. You'd know better than me."

"Mm," Meng Yao said, eyes modestly lowered but still, somehow, directed at Nie Huaisang's brother when he was the one speaking. Rude.

"Anyway. All of that costs money, and of course the major sects have money, but more certainly won't hurt, will it? So here I am, sketching da-ge."

Sheer bafflement washed across Meng Yao's beautiful face and was swept neatly aside. Nie Huaisang laughed lightly.

"I'm going to paint a calendar of all the most important figures in the Sunshot Campaign," he explained. "Did you know how much interest there is in the cultivation world from ordinary people? Quite a lot, I'm told. Not to mention the junior disciples of the minor sects, who are presumably all looking up to sect leaders like da-ge for their role models… and to their brave deputies and vice-generals, of course."

The expression on Meng Yao's face was complicated. Not knowing how to interpret it, Nie Huaisang pulled across the paper with the sketches he'd already made and spread them out to show them off. Nie Mingjue leaned over to see them, too. He'd spent half a shi posing without any chance to see the results of their joint labour.

"Look, this is the sort of thing I'm going for," Nie Huaisang said, fingernail tapping on a picture of Nie Mingjue with one arm out, leaning on Baxia, whose point bit into the ground. Although the huge sabre and the landscape behind Nie Mingjue were barely sketched out, Nie Huaisang had expended quite a lot of charcoal on capturing the heavy fall of his brother's partly-braided hair over his shoulders—and also on his behind.

"You see, it's very tasteful, but nonetheless arresting," he continued. "Wouldn't you agree, Meng Yao?"

Meng Yao's eyes were locked to the sheet of paper. They did not lift when Nie Huaisang spoke.

Nie Mingjue's face, when Nie Huaisang sneaked a glance at it, was soft and fond around the eyes, but there was a distinctly satisfied smirk on his mouth.

"Young master Nie, might I ask why it is necessary to do this work here?" the vice-general said at length.

"Well, there's a war on! I can't exactly summon the heads of the Sunshot Campaign back to my studio at Cloud Recesses, can I?"

"You have a 'studio' there, Huaisang?" asked his brother.

"Oh—da-ge—it's hardly a studio," he corrected himself. "Really, I'm just using the outer room of the ones Xichen-ge allotted me. I wouldn't dream of demanding more."

"Hmm."

"But must these drawings be made up on such a remote peak?" Meng Yao continued to ask questions, and Nie Huaisang was becoming a little miffed that he couldn't work out exactly where this was going. "And in the middle of the ice month…" He turned his face upwards to the clouds, which continued to scatter fine white flakes down on them.

"The beauties of the landscape are very important to my artistic gestalt," Nie Huaisang sniffed. "And yes, it must be done now. If anything, this is too late for calendars. The new year begins in just a few weeks."

Meng Yao continued to stare at him.

"Besides… it wouldn't really be seemly for da-ge to stand around naked in the middle of camp," Nie Huaisang admitted. "Yes, before you ask, Meng Yao, he has to be at least slightly disrobed. The theme of this calendar is the most important part of the whole idea!"

He stood up and held his sheets of paper in front of him, imitating a month-by-month calendar bound at the top. Damn it, Nie Huaisang wasn't going to let this gnomic little vice-general embarrass him, not when he was actually an artistic genius.

"Imagine the appeal, to both the cultivation world and mundane society," he said grandly, "of The Most Recognisable Asses of the Sunshot Campaign, in calendar format!"

Meng Yao's face held a studied blankness.

Nie Mingjue was flat-out laughing, even though he'd already agreed to be painted for the project. Huisang could feel a pout developing on his own face, without his even putting it on.

"Do you already have twelve models for the project, didi?" Nie Mingjue asked indulgently.

Nie Huaisang sat down, trying to keep his face under control. "Well… there's you, of course, da-ge. I have old paintings from the Cloud Recesses lecture days that will do for Lan Wangji, Jiang-xiong, and Wei-xiong… I heard he's changed somehow, these days, but I'm sure the relevant parts for my purposes aren't much different." With a sigh, he continued, "Jin Zixuan hasn't written back to me at all. His horrible cousin did, but nobody's interested in his ass, and I didn't even tell him about my idea! I don't even want to know how he found out!"

Nie Mingjue looked as though he wished he hadn't asked.

"Oh, there's always good old Zonghui," Nie Huaisang added, cheering himself up. "He'd pose for me whenever, I'm sure, and it would be ridiculous to leave him out of this kind of list. I'll have to ask Xichen-ge when I next see him, too. But no, I haven't got a full dozen, yet."

There was a windblown pause around their picnic spot. Meng Yao tried to pour out the final drops of tea, only to find that he'd already emptied the kettle. Nie Mingjue adjusted his coat and sat back, just a little too casual. Nibbling the final, now-cold bing, Nie Huaisang shuffled his papers into order.

"If it would benefit the Sunshot Campaign, as you say," began Meng Yao at last, "this vice-general would be happy to contribute his time to the calendar project." He took a breath. "Unless, that is, he would also not be of interest—"

Both Nie brothers interrupted him at once, reassuring Meng Yao that he was a key part of the Sunshot Campaign, that no one could possibly consider him uninteresting, that by posing for Huaisang he would be even more instrumental in defeating the Wens than he already had been… Once they had stopped talking, Nie Huaisang met his brother's eyes and realised that they were both hoping for the same thing: that by speaking over each other like that, they had rendered their most embarrassing statements unintelligible.

"I am glad to do whatever I can to aid Chifeng-zun and the Sunshot Campaign," Meng Yao said calmly. He stood up, hands at his sash. "Would right now be a suitable time?"

"Right now would be the perfect time," Nie Huaisang replied. As Nie Mingjue seemed to be temporarily dumbstruck, he added, "I'm sure da-ge wants to get me away from Hejian as soon as possible, right, da-ge?"

"Yes. As soon as possible." He met his younger brother's eyes with a glower; Nie Huaisang twinkled back at him.

Meng Yao stripped down to his undershirt and trousers with military efficiency, folding each removed layer and placing it on top of the basket to keep it as dry as possible. Once he was this undressed, Nie Huaisang began to move him around the rocky ground, testing out possible positions.

"Of course the light's got worse since I finished with da-ge," he muttered under his breath. "You don't mind this snow coming down, do you, Meng Yao? All right, I think just here ought to work out." He threw a glance back at his brother, making sure Nie Mingjue had a good view from where he sat on a boulder, arms firmly crossed.

"Now, if you don't mind taking off your last things, you can just hand them to me. I do need to see your, ah, behind, Meng Yao, but if you're shy you can just hike up your underpants a little—oh. Thank you. That does make things simpler, of course."

Dropping the rolled-up underthings on top of Meng Yao's other clothes, Nie Huaisang ran back and forth for a bit between the vice-general and the spot where he planned to sit and draw him. "Could you lift this elbow—maybe look just a bit more to the left—no, down—now, I'll just pull your hair across." As the finishing touch, he pushed a sheaf of paper into Meng Yao's hand, to represent orders or battle plans or… something else very serious and military.

Through sheer coincidence, his best sketch of Nie Mingjue from the day was at the top of the stack.

Though Nie Huaisang would not have denied that there were certain ulterior motives behind his choice of calendar theme, once he got started on drawing, his appreciation for the sight in front of him was never anything more than aesthetic. Meng Yao's lithe and compact form was merely a shape to be rendered in two dimensions. His narrow but firm shoulders and the slender arms, with their graceful suggestion of muscle, were simply a geometrical arrangement, one Nie Huaisang wished was picked out by stronger sunlight. The straight legs, dusted with fine, dark hairs, and the soft white flesh of the inner thighs were a device to draw the eye up to the focal point of his portrait—and that focal point, the high, round, twin buttocks, was only a problem of shading. You had to be delicate with asses, Nie Huaisang had learned. It was too easy to overwhelm the distinctive musculature of a man's ass with too heavy a hand. On the charcoal stick, that was to say. Certainly in no other way.

With, all right then, the occasional lapse, Nie Huaisang was focussed solely on his art. He hummed softly to himself as he swept the charcoal across the page, once more grateful to his past self for taking the time to paint a waterproofing talisman on each sheet of drawing paper.

Nie Mingjue, on the other hand, seemed to be having a more and more difficult time. He'd started out with a relatively relaxed posture, for him, and the ghost of a smile on his lips: the look he wore when, dropping in to watch Nie Huaisang at sabre drill, he had good reason to believe that his didi had actually been practising and would not disgrace his sect. This look never lasted long. Nie Huaisang recognised it nevertheless.

While Nie Huaisang had been working, though, he'd paid a measure of attention to his brother. A frown had snuck onto his face and stayed there. One could assume that, no lover of the arts, Nie Mingjue was losing patience for such an indulgence, but that would be to ignore the way his eyes had only grown more intent on the model over time. There was perhaps something to be drawn from his uncharacteristically hunched-over bearing. Nie Huaisang merely noted it and did not delve further. He did decide to take pity on his da-ge, though.

"You're very good at this, Meng Yao," he called, when he'd finished the sketch to his own satisfaction. "Have you posed before? You didn't move at all, unlike some people."

"This lowly one has had some practice, yes. May I move now, young master Nie?"

"Go ahead." Nie Huaisang brought over the basket with Meng Yao's clothing stacked atop it. "I'd love to get just one more sketch in… but I think we've really lost the light now, and my hands are getting cold again." He blew on his fingers and rubbed them together as an illustration.

"I hope this was satisfactory, young master Nie," the vice-general said, once again directing his lowered eyelids and solicitous tone not to him but to Nie Mingjue.

Nie Huaisang graciously pretended not to notice this. "Thank you, Meng Yao, you've been an enormous help. I'm very pleased with our work! Once the calendar is ready for production, I'll send you a copy as a token of my gratitude."

He held his drawing up for the other two to see. Meng Yao nodded thoughtfully; Nie Mingjue seemed to grit his teeth. Most likely that was just how da-ge expressed his approval. Nie Huaisang made a mental note to pass this sketch on to him, as soon as he no longer needed it to paint from.

"Well, I think it's time to head back to the camp, don't you?" he asked brightly. Nie Huaisang was prepared for an awkward hike back down into the valley, trailing some way behind the other two in deference to their need to discuss strategy and logistics, but a speck of blue in the dull green distance caught his eye and suggested another possibility.

"Da-ge, look! Is that Xichen-ge on his way up here, on Shuoyue?"

Nie Mingjue's face fell at the sight of his oldest friend's approach. "I wasn't informed that he planned to visit the front," he muttered. "Huaisang. He isn't here in search of you, is he?"

"What? No, certainly not, da-ge. Everyone at the Cloud Recesses was aware of my plans and they know when to expect me back." Nie Huaisang stretched out his arms and shoulders. "Da-ge, I'm very tired now after all this exercise and work. I don't know if it's a good idea for me to walk all the way back down the mountain. Do you think Xichen-ge would mind taking me down on his sword, if I wait for him up here? You and Meng Yao could go back together—I know you'll both want the walk."

Chagrin and gratitude warred on Nie Mingjue's face. "Huaisang, you presume too much on other people's good natures," he said stiffly, following it up in the same breath with, "Yes, I'm sure he would. Meng Yao, will you accompany me back to camp? I'm sure even this didi of mine won't perish in the time it will take Lan Xichen to get up here, and there are various… matters I'd like your opinion on."

"Naturally, Chifeng-zun," said Meng Yao, turning to follow him without even a glance at Nie Huaisang.

"You can both thank me later," Nie Huiasang grumbled under his breath as he watched their retreating backs. He wondered if they'd get halfway down the slope before jumping on one another.

He collected all his art materials and stamped his feet while he waited for the Lan sect leader to arrive. When he stepped down off the sword, Lan Xichen's beautiful face was stamped with confusion.

"Huaisang, I'm glad to see you well," he said. "I was told that your da-ge and Meng Yao would be up here also, though."

"Oh, they already left," Nie Huaisang said carelessly. "They had a lot of urgent business to discuss—it went completely over my head. I saw you flying up here and asked to stay behind to meet you."

"That was kind of you, Huaisang," Lan Xichen said, failing entirely to disguise his disappointment. His attention drifted around the flattish part of the ridge where the others had spent much of the afternoon.

"Not at all, not at all. Xichen-ge, I have a big favour to ask you, but it's not really for me: it's for the Sunshot Campaign. Well, and a small favour, too. Do you think you could give me a ride back down to the Nie camp? It would be so much faster than walking, and then I can tell you all about my fund-raising art project for the war effort…"