She smiles slightly. "I like to think that my instincts have improved, while I was here." 

"Can we reinforce the protections? What must be done?"

Her smile dims. 

"This was the best idea I had, and my time is coming to a close. I'm afraid that may be for your generation to determine."

She bows. "Lan Zhan will do her best. I promise to protect the Yin Iron and our sect."

"I'm glad that the next generation has one such as you in it." 

She turns her gaze to Wen Ying again. 

"Young one...come here." 

"If I try, I will definitely get blasted." 

She smiles, and places a stilling hand on the guqin. "You won't." 

She scrabbles to her feet and sloshes over to stand beside Lan Zhan. 

Lan Yi places a hand under her chin and gazes deeply into her eyes. 

After a long, intense moment, she blinks and the weight of her stare dissipates. 

"Swear," she says, "to me, and to your friend here, that you will never willingly allow the Yin Iron to come into the hands of those who would misuse it." 

She's not going to swear something the instant someone tells her to, she has to think about it for a moment first, she does not give her word lightly--

But, really, it doesn't sound like letting the Yin Iron fall into the hands of Wen Ruohan or anyone like him would be...at all okay. Ever. 

She bows to Lan Yi and then to Lan Zhan. 

"I swear," she says, "that--as long as I have not been lied to, about it, up until now--I won't allow Wen Ruohan or anyone else like that to get their hands on the Yin Iron if I can stop it. I take my word seriously, I won't pledge it only to find out that this is all some kind of deception and I've been cornered into something I didn't intend." 

"Do you know to whom you speak?" She hisses, cheeks warming. Such disrespect is... a welcome distraction from how frighteningly sincere Wen Ying is behaving. "Master Lan Yi would not lie."

"No, I don't know to whom I speak! Because almost everything I learned about the other sects before coming here, I learned through a lens of my tutors caring more about pleasing the megalomaniacal Wen Ruohan than giving me accurate information!"

"Master Lan Yi was the Lan sect's first and only female Sect Leader." A genius, by all accounts. More clever than even Wen Ying. Surely. "She invented our Chord Assassination Technique. Be respectful."

She bows to Lan Yi again. 

"I apologize for my disrespect. But I do not amend my oath." 

Lan Yi covers a laugh, eyes sparkling. 

"Since I'm not lying, I suppose it doesn't matter either way." 

Hhhh Wen Ying appearing to have Integrity is very stressful. (And not just integrity, is the thing, but this weight behind it, the passion around it, it's -- too much. She's too much.)

"Do you will us to carry the Yin Iron from this place?"

She nods and holds out a hand, and a chunk of curved and broken metal rises from it. 

And Wen Ying shrieks and staggers backwards, falling to her butt in the water before scrambling upright again. 

She whips around, alarmed. "Wen Ying!"

"Bad news: Wen Ruohan definitely already has one of those, also, it killed my parents." 

"Your parents?"

Nod nod. 

"Our branch of the clan lives somewhere called Dafan Mountain. I mean, me'n Qing-jie and A-Ning mostly don't, Wen Ruohan mostly keeps us at Nightless City, but before our parents died--anyway, there's this goddess statue thing and then one day it went berserk for some reason and a bunch of people including our parents died dealing with it and Wen Ruohan sent people to investigate and--there was a chunk of metal like that one."

"I see. I'm very sorry." 

"Thank you, Lady." 

"Qianbei, what does it mean that Wen Ruohan already has one? Are other sects endangered?"