"I managed to convince her of my good intentions enough to make friends by the end of classes!" 

"Wow! Where are you guys going?"

Lan Zhan is already walking ahead of them towards the town square.

Wen Ying starts walking to follow her, not so suddenly that Nie-gongxi will have to exert himself to catch up. "Lan Zhan has sect stuff. I'm tagging along, and then Qing-jie didn't super want me unsupervised and of course we couldn't send A-Ning back to Qishan alone." 

Lan Zhan draws up short once she reaches the square. A large crowd of people has assembled, clustering excitedly around a man beneath the big tree.

"Is this where you're being drawn?" she whispers. 

She hesitates, assessing, and shakes her head. “Close.”

She doesn’t believe the Yin Iron fragment is close enough to be in this square, but possibly whatever phenomenon the crowd has gathered around could be related. Brother said that the fragments would be stored in places of great positive spiritual power to keep them contained.

“Is there a reason we shouldn’t go closer and see what this gathering is about?”

“Crowded.”

"Crowded like that would confuse the signal somehow or crowded like something bad would happen or crowded like crowds are unpleasant?"

“Unpleasant.”

"Well, let's just go up to the very edge and ask, then. C'mon!" she says, taking her by the wrist and tugging her toward the crowd. 

Eek

He jogs along beside them, making an earnest effort to peer over the crowd's heads. 

"Sir, sir," he says, tapping the nearest person with his fan. "What are you all looking at? What has happened?"

"You don't know? The seclusive Lady Florist has put up an invitation, welcoming all cultivators to her mansion up in the hills for a poetry competition. Any cultivator who is worthy -- who is especially elegant and versed in poetry, has the opportunity to be greeted by the Lady Florist in person!"

"Lady Florist..." she muses, trying to remember anything about such a person. 

"Hmm, I remember that I read about her in 'Lady Florist and the Flower Phantom'," he muses, fanning himself. "In a beautiful garden in Tanzhou lives a lady florist, who often recites poems by moonlight. Anyone whose poems move her will be granted a magical flower. The flower lasts three years, and its aroma lasts forever..."

That sounds vaguely familiar. A cultivator, then, and a powerful one. Surely her magical gardens will be a place of great spiritual power? And long seclusion could even be explained by the task of guarding the Yin Iron shard. It's an encouraging lead, at least.

"Ah, Nie-gongxi, it's true that how well you remember something is directly proportional to how aesthetic it is," she teases. 

“Ah, Wen-guniang, things are worth remembering in direct proportion to how aesthetic they are!”

Suddenly, gasps and awed murmurs rise from the crowd. Flower petals of all colors drift down overhead, blown down from the direction of the treetops.

Ooh! 

The flower petals against the blue sky are gorgeous. 

And Lan Zhan amidst a flurry of petals is even more gorgeous than regular Lan Zhan, which Wen Ying had not previously been confident was possible. 

Lan Zhan, gazing up in peaceful awe at the beautiful petal shower, does not notice Wei Ying staring. 

But Wen Qing does. “Nice flowers, hm?”

"Yep. Gorgeous flowers."