She rolls her eyes. "I'm not going to take off my clothes, Lan Zhan. But I do want to stop in town before we leave Gusu entirely, I have heard amazing things about the local Emperor's Smile liquor and it's not like I could try it before now." 

Lan Zhan is too busy not reacting to the notion of Wen Ying taking of her clothes to object to this plan.

"Which town are we passing through? Where are we going?"

Focus. "Pass through Caiyi Town. Acquire a boat. The Yin Iron wants to travel Southwest."

"--Wants to? Wants like how. Should we be giving that thing things that it wants." 

"Wanting to reconnect with its other parts. Our shard responded to movement in that direction."

"Oh. Okay, that makes sense. Just--wanting to be careful." She shivers. 

Nod. It's good to be careful, although Lan Zhan is indignant that Wen Ying thinks she would just allow the Yin Iron to compel her towards its bidding.

It not a very long walk downhill from Cloud Recesses to Caiyi Town. As they move through the cheery town streets towards Biling Lake, they will pass many vendors selling food, trinkets, and alcohol.

Wen Ying finds a shop selling Emperor's Smile and disappears inside, coming back out a few minutes later with whatever she purchased stowed discreetly in her sleeves. 

Lan Zhan is occupied with purchasing a boat. They can all file onto it, no questions asked about the contents of anyone's sleeves.

Wen Ying immediately occupies herself trailing her fingertips in the water and admiring the fish and water plants. 

"Gusu is truly beautiful," she sighs. 

"I think that the fish are cute! Do you like the fish, Ying-jie?"

"They're so cute!!! The bunnies inside the cave were even cuter, though." 

"Am I ever going to get to see the bunnies too?"

"Hey Lan Zhan when this is all over can we show A-Ning the bunnies???"

"Yes."

"Oh, th- thank you, Lan-guniang! Qishan doesn't have any bunnies."

Nod.

"Next time I won't promise to follow all the rules and then I won't have to worry about the bunnies counting as pets. Jiang Cheng couldn't bring his dogs, he was sad about it." 

It is pretty sad that the bunnies aren't supposed to be kept as pets.

Although. Lan Zhan doesn't thing there was anything wrong with moving the bunnies to a nice warm forrest. That isn't keeping them as pets, necessarily, when there are no rules against animals living in Cloud Recesses by themselves. 

And maybe she feeds them sometimes but they aren't dependent on her for food, which a real pet might be.

And they are really really cute and good.

"Please don't go causing trouble even when you haven't expressly promised not too, A-Ying."

"I won't! But I can follow the important rules like not lying without worrying about whether or not I'm technically breaking the rules by doing something innocuous like playing with bunnies or working off energy by running around in the forest or something." 

"Can you not concentrate energy into meditation?"

"Meditation reliably increases the amount of energy I need to work off, not lowers it." 

"Hm."

An hour into their boat ride a dark bird swoops overhead, trailing wisps of black smoke.