"Yes, I'm not worried. And he's clearly an infinitely better sect leader than ours." 

They are getting ready for bed when a knock comes at the door. Wen Ying answers the door in a single layer of soft sleeping robe, her hair loose and spilling over her shoulders. 

Oh no oh fuck oh no that's very attractive

-- focus --

"Wen Ying," she starts, and then loses her train of thought because nightgown and hair and soft and oh no oh fuck

"Lan Zhan!" she says, BEAMING. 

OH NO OH GOD OH FUCK

"Wen Ying," she repeats, a little hoarsely. Wen Ying's smile is blinding, but she cannot look away because then she might look at Wen Ying's - chest - which would be catastrophic. "I...

I have to go."

"Oh. Tonight?"

"I am sorry. I...

You have been a useful travel companion."

Nod. "Jie and I are leaving in the morning...you really think it's urgent enough you can't stay the night?"

Headshake. "I want to be there by morning.

Where are you going to go?"

"Back to the village for A-Ning, first, then to Qishan to do damage control on this stupid indoctrination thing." She sighs. "I can see why you're in such a hurry." Her face gentles. "Thank you so much for coming to say goodbye, first." 

And then, impulsively, she hugs her. 

Lan Zhan does not say that she loves her, because that is an entirely foolish impulse.

But she does hug her back.

"I will see you again?"

"Yeah. In Qishan, probably, unless I get the perfect opportunity to assassinate Wen Ruohan before he makes everyone show up." Sigh. "--If the situation at Cloud Recesses is dire enough that you have to go back immediately...I hesitate to say this, but maybe it would be safer to leave the Yin Iron with Chifeng-zun? He seems righteous enough he'll be unlikely to be tempted to use it, and this place is much more of a fortress than Cloud Recesses." 

That is clever. Wen Ying is so clever.

She nods.

Forces herself to let go of the hug, and it hurts. "Farewell."

"Farewell." She does NOT append any endearments that would be STUPID. "Have a safe trip."

Lan Zhan walks away.

She drops the Yin Iron fragments off with Nie Mingjue, and departs promptly.

Wen Ying closes the door and flops on her bed and PINES. 

In the early morning, they are both awoken by shouting in the hallways. Wen Qing leaps out of bed and presses her ear to the door, a hand tightly gripping her sword.

A moment later she curses. "Fuck -- get up, A-Ying, it's Wen Chao -- get up --"

"Fuck!" 

She has an outer robe tied on and her hair up in a simple ponytail in seconds, and then she bursts out of the room. 

The fighting is for the most part restricted to the outermost layer of the Unclean Realm; it's too well-fortified for them to have penetrated deeper en masse. Wen Ying curses Wen Chao in her head and sticks to the shadows, lashing out and stabbing at her own sect members when she thinks she can get away with it. 

It's sheer luck that finds her alone with Wen Zhuliu. 

She isn't sure she needs to kill him. It could be that his loyalty to the sect outweighs his loyalty to Wen Ruohan, and he could be useful later once her uncle is dead. 

But he is loyal to Wen Ruohan at the moment, and she reeeeeeaally doesn't want to have to fight him to get to Wen Ruohan, or Wen Chao or Wen Xu. 

He has no idea that she is disloyal. It isn't hard at all to get close enough to stab him through the chest before he can react, then finish him off quickly once he's on the ground. 

She wipes her sword off and exits stage nobody finding out it was her that killed him. 

Inconveniently, someone else is in the wings of the nobody find out about this murder zone.

Meng Yao is facing away from her, bent over something.

--Oh cool. Nie Huaisang talked enough about Meng Yao at Cloud Recesses for her to suspect he'll cooperate with what she wants. 

She grabs him by the collar and drags him bodily into the room with Wen Zhuliu's corpse in it. 

shit - 

Okay, well, now he's going to have two murders he'll need to cover up -- but she's a Wen, grabbing him in the middle of a Wen attack on the fortress, really this is going to cover itself --

He swivels the bloody sword in his grip and jabs backward.

She evades it easily. 

"Relax," she hisses. "I'm still on you guys's side." 

She lets go of him in front of Wen Zhuliu's dead body. 

"If anyone asks, you did that, you work for the Nie sect so it's not like you'll be in more danger from Wen Ruohan being mad at you about it." 

"What?"

"Wen Zhuliu is loyal to Wen Ruohan, he was a threat to my impending coup, so when I got him alone I killed him, and I would really like to not take the flak from Wen Ruohan for it. Nie-gongxi says you're ambitious so I was hoping you would be interested in taking credit, I bet Chifeng-zun'll be real pleased about the Core-Melting Hand being dead." 

He stares at her. "-- yes. I will do so, Wen-guniang."

"Awesome! Thanks!" 

She flees on her original intended trajectory, not particularly noticing any particular dead body that Meng Yao may or may not have been bent over. 

Sadly, by the time she finds Wen Chao, he's well back out of the fortress surrounded by other Wens with no possible excuse for friendly fire. He orders her to leave with them, she retorts that she is definitely not leaving without her sister and ducks back inside to look for her.