"You're so good. And--you're hard to read to people who don't know you but the baby'll know you from the start, and you're so sweet and sincere and strong."

Kiss. Lan Zhan is very touched. Not convinced, but very touched. "Mmm. I do not know how to be sweet to a baby."

"That's not hard. You just have to hold them and kiss them and sing to them." 

"I will try to do it well."

Kiss. "How could you not?" 

They can spend their time snuggling and gently touching Lan Zhan's stomach until she falls asleep.

Wei Ying sends her message to Jiang Cheng at Lotus Pier the next day. 

Wei Ying continues to spend most of her time furiously working on talismans, punctuated by battles in which she does increasingly terrifying amounts of damage single-handedly and also frets about Lan Zhan, whose body count is less gratuitously high but who is not much less of a terror to whoever is unlucky enough to end up within reach of her blade. Sometimes the Sect Leaders plus Meng Yao in the command tent want to know what directions her research is taking or solicit an opinion from her or Lan Zhan. She spends her evenings and whenever she's going too out of her mind otherwise loving her wife-to-be. 

It is not much more than a week later when a contingent from Lotus Pier arrives, led by Jiang Cheng and containing 

Madam Yu, who is apparently alive after all, Zidian crackling on her finger

and someone who definitely isn't there for any martial purpose, but then, an army has to eat. 

"A-Cheng! Shijie!" Wei Ying calls out delightedly, racing over to her siblings to hug them tightly. 

"It's so good to see you well, A-Ying," Yanli says warmly. 

"I was so glad to hear you weren't at Lotus Pier when the Wens arrived," she breathes. 

Madam Yu clears her throat meaningfully. 

Wei Ying lets go of her sister and bows to her foster mother. "Madam Yu," she says respectfully. 

"Wei Ying. It is Jiang-zongzhu now," she says, nodding towards her son.

"So they did...I'm sad but not surprised." 

"You would have known, if you had come back to Lotus Pier after you left Nightless City instead of running around Gusu with someone else's sect." 

"Lotus Pier didn't need me the way they did." 

Madam Yu slaps her. "You think because it's my son instead of my husband who's Sect Leader now that you can talk back to me like that?" 

Lan Zhan had been hanging back a ways to give the family their space but all at once she is right here, her fingers steel around Madam Yu's wrist.

Madam Yu gives her a tight look. "Excuse me," she says through thin lips, "but if you could leave us alone to deal with our own sect business, that would be appreciated." 

No.

"Let go of me!" she snaps when it becomes clear that the younger woman is not about to do this unprompted.