[PALACE GAME - LAN WANGJI RUN]

[laughitoff]

Everything is red. You are dying, somewhere far beyond pain, the very essence of yourself going to pieces. You’re shattering so badly you don’t know if you’ll ever find all of yourself again, if you’ll ever put yourself back together. There are teeth on you, ripping, tearing, devouring. There are teeth inside you, carving their way out, and those are worse.

This is a memory, happening at a remove. It is not yours. This is not happening now.

Everything is grey. You wake up in a prison cell, eyes wide, the ceiling flat and blank and unfamiliar above you. For a moment you simply think, no. You think, Please, wasn’t it over? Wasn’t it enough? You consider closing your eyes again and refusing to get up, until oblivion reclaims you. Even if you’re no longer dying, everything hurts.

This is a memory, happening at a remove. It is not yours. This is not happening now.

What is happening, then?

You–

–sit up.

Comments

[strikingchords]

[oh cool, interesting insight into how this works. he's going to take out another piece of paper, write "Lan Zhan scorns Wei Ying's failures" on it, and use Heresy to fucking destroy it. smears his hand through whatever crumbled ash is left, nuking it from memory

then he'll writes on the bottom of the first paper:

"Wei Ying is only human. A fate earned is not a fate deserved.
If all his efforts were foolish, would be proud to be called fool.

I wish him here.
I will find him."

then he will draw an array on the paper and concentrate very hard on using both Orthodoxy and his cultivation to send that whole Q&A to Wei Wuxian's shadow, wherever it is behind its door; he is expecting this to work like a sending talisman, so the goal he's envisioning is the paper catching on fire and crumbling in his hand, hopefully for its words to appear elsewhere.

he won't know if it was successful, of course, but he can hope.]

[laughitoff]

[The use of Heresy works as intended, and the pain in his Orthodoxy-bearing hand lessens.

The paper catches on fire and crumbles in his hand.

The Orthodoxy-bearing hand hurts deeply, again.]

[strikingchords]

[ow! that's fine for the moment though. he'll stand, picking the Ideal Rock up to weigh in his hand as he does. hmm.

is the collective huli jing still hanging around?]

[laughitoff]

[They're watching him greedily.]

[strikingchords]

...

[attaches a small bit of his own spiritual energy to the rock and tosses it out of the entrance to the cave, to see if anything outside stirs that he can see from here]

[laughitoff]

[There's the faintest ripple in the outdoor scenery, but it's one of the ghosts that eats the rock. Just unhinges its patchwork jaw and swallows it straight down.]

[strikingchords]

...





[exhales pointedly and goes to look at the blood pool.





okay yeah I'll just ask. is it the same blood pool that he remembers. anything weird going on with this pool o'blood, narration?]

[laughitoff]

[This could almost be a natural cave pool, and maybe it was once. Now all the water has been saturated with blood, and glows a dull, sickly red. There’s a mad tangle of talismans and twine all around it and dangling partially into it, which look to have snapped and fallen from the cave ceiling. Some sort of broken barrier…?

tl;dr it is absolutely the canon blood pool

There are flickering, strange presences darting and congregating thickly under the liquid.

His instincts don’t scream danger just looking down into the pool, but they do twinge. It’s risky to deal with whatever’s in there.]

[strikingchords]

[shifts into a dragon and wings up to the cave ceiling to look at the remains of that barrier more closely...]

[laughitoff]

[THAT'S METAL

They look like protection and suppression warding, not unlike when Wen Ning was being kept in there.]

[strikingchords]

[hangs onto the ceiling and flicks a pebble down into the blood to see what happens...]

[laughitoff]

[The flickery things cluster excitedly around where it fell in, but nothing more notable happens for now.]

[strikingchords]

[hmmmmmm.

he wants to know more, but he doesn't want to burn more Orthodoxy to ask.

...

two more questions, actually.

- is there still a partial protective effect remaining from what wards are left holding these blood pool buddies inside?
- he does remember the arrays used on Wen Ning. though Wei Wuxian's protective circles use different sources of energy, Lan Wangji obviously understands the principles behind warding in general really well.

out of curiosity, could he replicate what had previously been done before, or something with a similar effect, with his own cultivation?]

[laughitoff]

[There is still some energy in the ward talismans themselves, but they're useless with the barrier partially torn down like it is. They're kind of protecting a random section of air and ceiling right now?

He can replicate the work with his own cultivation.]

[strikingchords]

[cool cool cool.

he's going to hang onto the ceiling upside down, bite one of his own feet or the tip of his tail for blood now and then, and start working, in that case. :B

he will:
- incorporate the remaining talismans into the pattern as much as possible
- leave the protection circle very clearly open to additions or refinements by Wei Wuxian
- use Heresy to destroy anything that's nonfunctional and unable to be restored
- also use Heresy and/or his claws to score the main circle deeply into the ceiling, hopefully creating a permanent effect. refinements can be added on top, because he doesn't want to go too crazy on overusing Heresy or adding stuff Wei Wuxian can't change by his own will, but the goal is to use rock carving to make the big basic marker of "THIS IS THE DEFINED AREA WHERE THESE OTHER THINGS CAN TAKE EFFECT" be just part of the ceiling now. (a note: he WILL probably use Heresy enough to get to the point of pain, if it works as intended in this context.)

the open-ended style of his work here is not wholly like his typical cultivation but is pretty similar to how he was trying to so-carefully leave space for Wei Wuxian when he was augmenting Wei Wuxian's wards on the gravestones in Reverie--trying to say "we can work together rather than at cross purposes" through design rather than words, however successfully or unsuccessfully that message came across.]

[laughitoff]

[He can use Heresy three times before it starts to hurt very badly. Each time he uses it the pain in his Orthodoxy-bearing claw lessens, until it's gone in that claw with the third use. So he's just switched the pain over, basically.

He's also able to successfully complete his setup, creating a barrier of extremely gay intent between the Blood Pool and the rest of the cave.]

[strikingchords]

[cool, this should do as a nice solid barrier array till Wei Wuxian gets more ideas and leisure for his own improvements. shakes his head hard (he's kind of dizzy doing this UPSIDE DOWN IN SEVERE PAIN after a while) and then opens his wings and drops to the ground at the edge of the magic circle again, meeting the huli jing's eyes (?) as he returns to human form.

he'll drop down to a kneel without breaking eye contact, presses his hand to the ground, and channels all his power of intent into using Orthodoxy to fix the cracks. he will once again push it till he's in pain in the other direction, trying to forestall further damage in the future as best as possible.

he wants more light in the cave, too, so insofar as he visualizes anything on purpose, he imagines the blue light of spiritual energy pouring into the empty spaces to solidify them, leaving behind soft illumination and a solid basis for the array.

he does not think of this with purpose, but the way the river of scales on his back runs between the banked ridges of his scars and fills them in until his skin is smooth and strange under his fingers is likely not far from his mind.]

[laughitoff]

[once again, with three uses of Orthodoxy on the cracks, the pain gradually decreases in his Heresy hand before returning all at once in the Orthodoxy hand.

The cracks fill in with blue light, like he's repairing pottery with gold. The change only runs up to the cave entrance itself, though, and the light in the cracks right up next to that is stuttering and weak.

He gets the sense he's bought more time, but this is only a temporary fix.]

[strikingchords]

[hums thoughtfully, adds a second circle with his own spiritual energy just inside the first for an extra layer of protection and bought time, and then heads to the desk. maybe Wei Wuxian left notes.

...

it's also worth asking.

what does his curse mark from the huli jing look like here?]

[laughitoff]

[The curse mark has not changed, for now.

[The desk is crowded.

Most of the room is taken up by notes and diagrams., illuminated by the lantern. At a quick glance, many of them are dense and esoteric but address theories and object applications of 'demonic cultivation' and 'resentful energy'; others are about Reverie and the Warden and dreams and monsters; and others seem to be notes about mundanities like electricity and indoor plumbing. He might find other things if he digs, but that's what's immediately obvious. Also, Wei Wuxian's handwriting is as bad as his housekeeping.

There is a teacup which appears to be filled with blood, set on top of a notebook bound uncomfortably in what looks like human skin.

There is a black metal cage which seems meant to hold some small animal. It smells foul and sour, and there’s corrosion on the bars. There is a worn leather bag inside.

There is also a bell on the table, lying near the edge.]

[strikingchords]

[...







touches the skin notebook

can he feel anything from it. is there any apparent reason why it's skin.]

[laughitoff]

[It feels like skin. He does not get a revelation about why it's skin.]

[strikingchords]

Ridiculous.

[he's going to push the notebook a little away and ignore it in disdain for now, then loop the bell around his wrist and turn his attention to the cage. is there a way to open it from the outside?]

[laughitoff]

[There's gratitude and wanting in the bell, but also heartache, fear, the sense of something important being lost forever.

The cage has a small door with a simple lock, and the lock is currently undone. It looks like it can be opened from the outside quite easily.]

[strikingchords]

[okay, so here's the situation as Lan Wangji sees it:

- there is a small bell that he knows, from Ritsuka in the conversation that made him conclude that he guesses he'll die for her now, is meant for calming animals.
- there's a cage that looks like it's meant for a small animal here. the cage is shitty.
- whatever is in the cage appears to be both badly taken care of and hiding from the world after being stuffed into a shitty leather bag. it is presumably not calm.
- the bell is not on the animal.
- Wei Wuxian is frankly bad at small animals and has probably been a dipshit about this one.

all of these facts together may explain why instead of doing anything else here, Lan Wangji frowns at the cage for sixty seconds

carefully draws an array immediately around the cage that will keep anything from fleeing into the rest of the cave or knocking the rest of the desk stuff over, temporarily, and

reaches for the cage with his right hand and uses Heresy to destroy first it, then the pouch, in quick succession.

his goal: to touch whatever small animal is inside with his right hand, use emotion share to go CALM DOWN YOU'RE SAFE at it, and hopefully grab it, all before it really has time to react to the fact that the cage and pouch have been vaporized from this earth.

LET'S FUCKING GOOOOO]