It's been thirteen years since Lan Zhan was last in a room with Wei Wuxian, but its been five minutes since he saw Wei Ying teaching art online. Devising a complex plan to save Wei Ying from being framed from murder, Lan Zhan throws his life and he...
He suspects strongly that his didi is doing the same thing, standing as close as he can to Wei Wuxian, whose eyes are fixed on the tablet, fingers moving deftly over the screen.
Again his mind reminds him of why his didi needs comfort. There are Wen in Cloud Recesses. There are the disciples of the Sect possibly intent on destroying Cloud Recesses. The Sect that also nearly burned their ancestral home to the ground. The Sect who murdered his father, nearly murdered his mother and created this creeping uncertainty that lingers in what should be a peaceful, safe space.
Lan Sect disciples died that night and not easily or kindly.
Some where shot. Some were burned alive trapped in buildings. Some were beheaded or had their throats slit.
A attention-detracting talisman and the flames mixed with smoke, allowed the masked men to storm into homes and burn others. They entered not from the gate, but from the east side of the mountain and used a high caliber ward-breaker to slide inside.
It was months before the blood was finally removed from the stones.
It was years before some of the Lan disciples and their families could even bring themselves to return. Others refused to leave. They scrubbed and purified. They rebuilt homes and sifted through the ashes of personal belongings. They mourned and quietly seethed.
There was no justice and all of them realized that it could happen again.
Right now, the fear that it could happen again felt like a brutal reality.
Which was where this plan came into being. A-Zhan had sold the idea with Jiang Yanli to Lan Xichen, who in turn had bolstered their distraught, angry uncle. Lan Qiren had then stood before the Elders and convinced them of this plan so thoroughly that they in turn projected an inflated sense of confidence.
The vulnerable had been moved from the center of Gusu for three days, the margins of the Wen Sect visit. Cutting down the number of disciples present would have been sensible from a safety point of view, but this too was a doubled edged sword. Less people, meant more opportunities for disaster.
"System is up and running. Prepared for ignition." Wei Wuxian said quietly and firmly to Nie Huaisang, who nodded, fingers rapidly typing on a keyboard.
Wei Wuxian projected confidence and smooth efficiency as they ran the system through the last of the careful checks, turning this from a nightmarish situation into something they could deal with.
For two days they had been writing talismans, carving arrays and rigging a system that would allow them to track the Wen disciples, monitoring them discreetly in case this was nothing more than another prelude to an attack.
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"Talismans active." Nie Huaisang responded. "The Wen disciples are arriving now."
The talismans were carved into small wooden tokens that each student regardless of sect were handed at the gate. They were a back up in case the Wen disciples refused to wear the guest uniformbut Nie Huaisang had said that the system they had created could monitor them by spiritual energy signature after the first lecture. It had been quite something when Wei Wuxian had opened the unobtrusive briefcase and offered the carved tokens.
