The forest is dark, and calm, and quiet. Birds chirp in the trees, and herbivores snuffle around in the underbrush or bolt at the scent of a predator, but nothing more aggressive than nature itself can dwell long here without being discovered and dealt with, one way or another.
In a clearing, a brook winds its way through shallow curves in the hillside. Anything remotely supernatural that happened here would definitely be noticed within less than an hour.
They reach Cloud Recesses. Lan Wangji (openly) assigns "Mo Xuanyu" and Wen Ning a guest room, and (covertly) arranges it to contain plenty of candles and some books so that Wen Ning, who doesn't sleep, won't be bored to tears at night.
There is really no graceful reply to that. She gets herself ready for bed at the locally ordained bedtime.
Wei Wuxian is bored.
Wen Ning is alright with his books and candles, but Wei Wuxian doesn't feel like reading any of the things Lan Zhan provided for Wen Ning, and he's not going to fall asleep at nine o'clock, that's objectively ridiculous even if they don't have tame lightning to see by at night.
He could put up with it, in theory, try to go to sleep or read one of the books or something.
However, due to who he is as a person, he instead decides to sneak out and bother Lan Zhan.
Hmm. This isn't entirely unexpected, and he was planning to wake him up, but now for some reason he seems inexplicably reluctant to do that. But he doesn't want to just leave, either.
He decides to poke around a little.
The jingshi smells like sandalwood incense. Wei Wuxian has been in close enough contact with Lan Zhan over the past few days to have noticed the way the scent permeates his clothes; he remembers that it was the same in their school days.
It's...hm. He's definitely feeling something about it.
Not sure what.
Anyway, he steps closer to the shrine in the corner where the incense smell is coming from, and steps on something that feels odd to his foot. Frowning, he bends down and runs his fingers across the floor.
One of the boards is definitely different from the others. A little further investigation reveals it can be pried up. Logical concerns about Lan Zhan's privacy evaporate from his mind in the face of overwhelming curiosity, and he does so pry it.
Well, well.
"Once," ha. But if he knows that that's how he reacts to alcohol it's a little surprising that he still keeps eight jars of Emperor's Smile, Gusu's specialty, hidden under his floor.
He considers drinking one of them--doesn't Lan Zhan still owe him, really, for the jar he broke the first time they met?--but Lan Zhan shifts in his sleep and suddenly Wei Wuxian doesn't really want to explain this if he's caught.
He slides the floorboard back into place and sneaks back to the guest room.
Isabella is up at five and inspects the next six hours in the unlikely event that she decides to have breakfast and meditate and have lunch without making any laborious decisions.
Lan Wangji, Lan Qiren, and a handful of others attempt to exorcise the undead arm. It goes badly, although Wei Wuxian finds out and breaks in and prevents it from becoming a complete disaster; nobody dies or anything. They originally tried to draw out the arm's owner's spirit with "Evocation," but this fails completely; only by way of Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji duetting "Rest" is it wrestled under control, but not before multiple people end up bleeding from the face from the resentful energy.
Oh dear. She summarizes this for Lan Wangji so they can just leave it in the bag till they have another idea. [Though the duet was cute.]
If they just leave it in the bag it starts acting up anyway although a little later and not as violently as if they try Evocation.
Well that's annoying. Maybe she will get to witness the cute duet firsthand.
"The way the arm was pointing northwest? Yeah. You think it was trying to direct us to the rest of itself?"
"Mn. We cannot assume that Rest will work indefinitely. Or that the other pieces of the corpse will not also begin to cause trouble."
"Does that imply that all of the rest is in one piece, if it's in one direction from here and the arm wasn't indecisive about where to aim?"
"It could easily be that it was just pointing to the closest other piece. Or that some of the pieces are north of here and some are west of here, which would be harder to handle."
"Do you suppose its head is thinking enough that I could try talking to it? That doesn't have a range limit but the lucidity does so it'd have to already be pretty conversational to respond."
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