It's pretty! There are no bunnies but Wen Ying manages to point out several adorable small animals anyway. 

Cute!!!

They are, indeed, pretty cute. Lan Zhan does not acknowledge this.

Soon they reach a lively town! Tanzhou's marketplace is bustling and colorful. A massive tree in the center of the city is visible over rooftops from blocks away.

Oh, lovely. 

"Oh - oh, heyheyhey! Wen-er guniang!"

"Eh? Nie-gongxi? What are you doing here?"

"Ahh, yknow! Just hanging around. I wanted a rest after surviving those terrible lectures before going home, don't you? Is that why you're here - oh, oh, with your siblings! Hi Wen-gongzi, Wen-guniang." Hasty little bows in their direction.

"Your brother came to pick you up, we saw him, he glowered in our vague general direction. Did you just vanish on him?"

"Ahhhh, aha, well, Da-ge doesn't really need me in the Unclean Realm really, I promise I'm not very useful to him at all! Besides, a- aren't you the same, Wen-er guniang, aren't you supposed to be back in Qishan now?"

"Sect Leader Wen doesn't really care about us or anything, he won't worry." 

"So then we're all good! Tanzhou is a really beautiful town, don't you think, Wen-guniang? I only just got here but everyone seems really nice." 

He smiles around at the shuffling marketpeople, and then does a large doubletake. "Oh, is, uh -- is Lan-guniang here with you?"

"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?"