Those things are appreciated!

When they make camp again the next evening, they are extra careful about setting watch.

Wei Ying almost insists on being part of the watch the whole night but eventually decides that wrapping herself protectively around Lan Zhan is her particular comparative advantage. 

Lan Zhan also wanted to be on watch all night, but this is a compelling alternative. She pets Wei Ying's hair and cuddles against her chest and falls asleep there.

She startles awake from nightmares twice before morning.

Wei Ying is right here to soothe her with snuggles and kisses and pets when that happens. 

That's extremely lovely and helpful but is Wei Ying getting any sleep?

"I woke up when you started having the nightmare, I'll be fine." 

Pet pet. "Would you like to sleep elsewhere?"

"No!!! Absolutely not." She snuggles in closer. "My Lan Zhan." 

Kiss. "Yours," she murmurs. "My Wei Ying."

She sleeps better after that.

They make it back to Gusu without serious further incident. 

...

It makes Wei Ying half want to cry, seeing the Cloud Recesses half-burned and crawling with Wens; she can't really imagine how Lan Zhan must feel. She tries imagining that it's Lotus Pier instead, jerks away from the thought, and squeezes Lan Zhan's hand so tightly. 

Lan Zhan is not speaking or outwardly reacting in any way, but she squeezes Wei Ying's hand back hard enough to hurt.

She wonders where the bodies have gone. If they burned those too, or dumped them into the rivers - she certainly can't imagine anyone bothered to bury them. 

They are very careful creeping through the woods around the ruins unseen, until Lan Zhan leads them within sight of the rabbit burrow. How many Wens stand in their way?

Five. 

They have many skilled archers amongst them; how many of those five do they have good shots at from this distance?

Three of them. One of them is standing next to another at an angle that makes it awkward to shoot at them without the arrows being blocked by their somewhat larger compatriot; another is on the other side of a straggling tree. 

Okay. Those three should all be shot, then, and at the same time the non-archers will run for the other two. Lan Zhan is sure that she can take out at least one of them instantly with Chord Assassination. They all need to be ready to fall back quickly if an alarm is raised.

It goes off without a hitch, including Wei Ying managing to drop out of the straggler tree onto the relevant Wen and break his neck, but the Chord Assassination makes enough noise that distant querulous yelling can be faintly made out. 

Lan Zhan runs for the rabbit hole and drops fluidly to the ground beside it. She reaches inside gently, so that no bunnies inside will be alarmed.

A bunny noses at her hand. 

The Yin Iron is right where she left it. 

Relief. She pats the bunny and thanks it for watching the Yin Iron well. Then she grabs up the pouch and sprints back to Wei Ying and the others. "Have it."

"Great, let's get out of here," she says, darting a look over her shoulder at the direction from which the voices are getting steadily louder. 

They run. Lan Zhan clutches the Yin Iron tight at her side.

The voices fade out and don't come back. 

"If we run into a bigger group next time, my current draft of the binding-net talisman might be helpful. With only five I think it would have grabbed some of us." 

That will probably come in handy! They are going to be around lots of Wens for a while; the chances of running into larger groups of them are unpleasantly high.

Now that they've retrieved the Yin Iron, they move on to the most nebulous phase of their plan: finding as much information and as many Lans as possible in the surrounding towns.

When they arrive at the outskirts of Caiyi Town, Meng Yao suggests that he split off from the group to focus on finding Lan Xichen while everyone else assembles Lan resistance. They can check back in with each other at appointed times to exchange useful information?

Sounds good. 

The next time they meet up the main group has located several hiding Lan disciples and Wei Ying is very pleased with the initial test results of some of her draft talismans. There's still a few kinks to work out in the binding-net one but it's still pretty useful as-is! And a variant on the fire talisman that only burns human flesh. And this one that makes an incredibly loud shrill noise! It doesn't sound useful but if you set it off in the middle of a group of the enemy it completely incapacitates them for several seconds, she was TRYING to get it to do the resonant frequency of bone but that's still a pretty good outcome, right.