The chains come at them again, and Wen Ying lashes out with her sword in a sort of twisting motion, and manages to get the entirety of one of the chains wrapped around her sword's sheath and under control. 

--Which means she's VERY DISTRACTED when the other one catches her around the neck and slams her into a tree. 

OH NO

Lan Zhan realizes too late, lunges after her and dives through the mist -- she needs to go faster -- "Wen Ying!"

"I'll be fine! I can handle this! Go after the owl!"

No.  She zooms onward - can see Wen Ying's shape, now, through the mist -- 

An arc of blue light slices out from Bichen and smashes into the chain, Lan Zhan reaching the tree a second later.

The chain drops to the ground, and the mist starts to clear, revealing Wen Ying smirking with a struggling, smoke-spewing owl in her hands. 

"Somebody's going to take us back to his master," she coos dangerously to it. She looks up at Lan Zhan. 

"I really was fine," she says apologetically. 

Relief.

"Your neck?"

She shifts her grip on the owl so she can hold it with only one hand, the other probing at her neck. 

"A little sore. I'll ask jiejie for a more detailed diagnosis when we get back." 

The imprint of the chain is outlined in red, but there isn't any bleeding or immediate bruising. 

"Nn." She will follow Wen Ying's lead to her cousin, then.

Wen Chao is, it transpires, hiding some distance from the village. When they reach him, Wen Ying wrings the bird's neck and then stalks up behind him. 

"Hello, Chao-er," she says dangerously. He turns, a look of panic on his face, and she punches him straight in the face. He goes down like a sack of potatoes. She loops the chain around his neck and hauls him to his feet by it. 

"If you ever. Ever. Touch my village again. I will lingchi you slowly and feed you each scrap of flesh as I remove it. Are we clear. Cousin?" she spits the last word out sarcastically. 

He nods frantically, his breath too constricted to speak. 

She drops him to his feet, the chain going slack. He's just started catching his breath when she punches him in the face again, and this time he goes out like a light. She stomps on him somewhere delicate enough that he'll definitely still be feeling it when he wakes up, drops the chains on him, and turns and stalks away. 

Well that was much hotter than it should have been. Time to IGNORE THAT and focus on matching Wen Ying's pace. "The effects will be gone, now?"

"Yep! In theory. If theory does not match reality we come back here and hurt him some more." 

"For beating him, will he retaliate against you?"

"He might try. But the people in the village are all named Wen too, or at least married to people who are; Sect Leader Wen won't be mad at me for defending them like he would be if I beat up Wen Chao over his being an asshole at the Salute Ceremony. And I'm smarter and more competent than he is."

Accurate.

Lan Zhan won't raise any further concerns as they make their way back to the mountainside cave.

Everyone is free of the Yin Iron's control! There is lots of confusion and crying and hugging. 

Wen Qing is earnestly trying to console their grandmother, embracing her. Wen Ning is helping their relatives fuss over baby A-Yuan several yards away.

"Wen-guniang! You're back! You, you both took so long I thought we were going to die for sure, it was terrible. Did something bad happen?" His eyes flick to the marks on Wen Ying's neck and then away.

He looks up when Nie Huaisang shouts, then exclaims and scrambles to his feet. "Er-jie!!"

She rushes towards A-Ning and clings to him tightly. 

"--Nothing worse than you'd expect from the words 'Wen Chao was involved,'" she says, "and not nearly as bad as it could've been. Everyone's okay? I mean--physically, like nobody fell and broke something while insensate, obviously everyone isn't okay okay."

"I don't think so," A-Yuan's mother says softly. She is cradling her son more tightly to herself now that A-Ning is focusing more on his sister than the baby. 

"--Ah, I was hoping at least little A-Yuan had been left out of it--Wen Chao is going to die as horribly as I can manage--is he okay?" 

She smiles wanly. "He seems to have managed to sleep through the whole thing. I don't know if Wen Chao targeted him, but I was holding him when I went under and I was holding him when I woke up." 

"I'm glad he's okay, at least." 

"Yes. Will you two watch him while I go stress-vomit," she says, looking more than a little queasy. 

"--Yeah, definitely." 

She accepts the baby while her cousin runs off to vomit somewhere the smell won't upset the sleeping infant. Her eyes soften as she gazes down at him, and she gently pokes a fingertip into his mouth for him to sleepily teethe on.