Lan Zhan slowly reaches out to accept them, eyes narrowed. "What did you design your presence at Cloud Recesses to accomplish?"

--Lying is against the rules and she promised to obey the rules--

"I didn't design that, Sect Leader Wen did."

She throws up her hands.

"I just wanted to get out of Qishan for a while and also maybe cement Sect Leader Wen's trust in me some more so when I overthrew him later he wouldn't see it coming. That's what I wanted to accomplish." 

"Overthrow him?"

"The man's an evil megalomaniac! Someone's going to take him down, and I'm a genius who he mostly trusts, I can do it sooner and cleaner than anyone else." 

(She knows she's a genius oh no that's hot.) 

"You are trying to win my trust," Lan Zhan accuses.

"No? Obviously you shouldn't trust me?"

"Why tell me that? Any of this?"

"Because I hate it when people I respect look at me like I'm lower than dirt for good reasons! It makes me feel like I--" 

She breaks off and looks away. 

"Also, you asked me a direct question and lying is against the rules and I promised to follow the rules." 

"I," she starts. She sounds unsteady; she doesn't like it. Doesn't like trying to speak when she's this - destabilized. Lan Zhan feels very destabilized. There are -- too many feelings, about everything Wen Ying just said (she promised to keep the rules, that mattered to her, she meant it) but one of the feelings is -- something like pain, that Wen Ying could think that Lan Zhan doesn't know that she is the most terrifyingly brilliant person in the world, that Lan Zhan could think of her like dirt. This must be fixed right away, even if words are difficult.

"I - do not think. That you are --"

-- and then without warning something yanks her beneath the water and she vanishes from sight, sword and ward-breaking notes and all.

Alarmed: "Lan Zhan!?"

Wen Ying has approximately twenty seconds to evaluate Lan Zhan's alarming disappearance before something sharply pulls her ankles and she finds herself underwater as well.

-- and then not. Wen Ying tumbles downward in a rush of splashing water that deposits her in what appears to be a large, frigid cave. Lan Zhan is already standing there, breathing heavily and blinking water out of her eyes.

She splutters and rights herself enough to at least be supine and stares around. 

"Lan Zha--Lan-guniang," she corrects herself, "do you have any idea what just happened?"

She shakes her head, distracted, gazing around in wonder at the cave before them.

Lan Zhan wades forward through waist-deep icewater, eyes wide. In the center of the domed cave rises a broad plinth of white rock, and upon it -- what looks like a guqin.

Wen Ying stands up and looks around and doesn't touch anything. 

This sure looks like a place where you'd hide some kind of weird magic treasure, but absolutely nothing about this place suggests "Yin" or "Iron." 

There's a lot to look at! Icicles glitter from the roof of the cave and the cold blue water glitters up beneath it. The pool appears to grow more shallow towards the guqin's platform, lowering to Lan Zhan's knees and then her ankles as she moves forward. Layers of pale, frosted rock build up like rough steps to the guqin and its pedestal - in fact, this shelf of rock reaches the back of the cave and wraps around its edges.

On the rock shelf against one side of the cave shuffle at least a dozen snow-white bunnies, each adorned in their own tiny silk Lan ribbons.

Something resembling snow begins to drift down in the center of the cave as Lan Zhan ascends the platform. It dusts over her hair and clings to her eyelashes.

"--Bunnies! In tiny Lan ribbons! That's so cute, oh my gosh--"

-- !!! Oh, that's very distracting, they ARE cute -- what on earth are they doing here --