Lan Zhan has good reaction times and a good tactical head on her shoulders, but both are still largely untrained. She does well, for someone as new as her; but that caveat is a sharp limiter. 

"Hey San Niang, come here!"

San Niang has been sitting with her legs dangling out the back of the open van, watching, and hops down and lopes over as soon as she is called. "Jiejie wants me?"

"Let's spar - not too fast, we want her to see it all - and then we can teach her whatever looks cool, okay?"

"As Jiejie says," says San Niang, and she bows, very deep, and produces her own sword.

Xie Lian starts to bow back but doesn't get very far before San Niang springs at her.

They're both very very good.

Lan Zhan is impressed. She watches carefully. 

They will pause whenever she is particularly intrigued by something or has a question, and then show her even slower!

Lan Zhan tries very hard to use her still fairly limited judgment to pick out which things will be most practical for her in particular and inquire about those. 

They have suggestions, too - mostly Xie Lian has suggestions, though San Niang is a very supportive teaching assistant in the sense that she supports Xie Lian and does not really care that Lan Zhan is there.

This is extremely valid of San Niang. Lan Zhan can relate to that kind of single-target focus. Lan Zhan is probably going to have to report this to Wei Ying when she gets back; Wei Ying has started to get invested in the Xie Lian and San Niang situation. If Lan Zhan recalls correctly, the term is "shipper on deck." 

Lan Zhan is an extremely diligent student, drilling everything Xie Lian shows her and asking questions whenever she has them. 

Then when it's getting on about dinnertime and San Niang reveals that she found a gift card for Burmese food on the ground somewhere she will have plenty of custom-tailored homework assigned her.

She writes down all the homework, just to be safe, and is already working on one of the hand-based exercise sets when Rhonda whisks her off home. 

Xie Lian and San Niang go to the Burmese place and discover the card has almost a hundred dollars on it, amazing, they can stuff themselves.

Meanwhile, factory farms aren't biting. They are:

- concerned the scheme violates OSHA
- concerned the scheme will violate the terms of their insurance
- concerned that Wei Ying's family will sue them if she dies trying this
- concerned it will mess up the meat

Would she like to buy a lot of male chicks to run experiments on herself? She can have them for the price of shipping. Or she can take the hints this one guy is dropping that he doesn't want to commit to a digital trail of conspiracy to commit insurance fraud but he wouldn't exactly mourn a specific pig farm.

Wei Ying blinks at this last one. 

"Hey, Lan Zhan, aiding and abetting insurance fraud is bad, right?"

"Yes." She peers over Wei Ying's shoulder to see what prompted this. 

Wei Ying leans out of the way. "I'm kinda leaning towards the male chicks option...if the witches I test can feed on animals, they can make them attack each other or something...I'm a little concerned about what to do with them if it doesn't work, though."

Lan Zhan nods. 

"We will think of something." 

She's not thrilled about the potential cruelty to animals, but she knows Wei Ying isn't either, and they really do need a solution to the monster problem. 

"We should test it outside the city." 

"Mhm. You think Rhonda will want to help?"

"Probably." 

Wei Ying orders the male chicks and texts Rhonda about the project. 

Her order of 5,000 live male chicks will be there in two days!

She really hopes this isn't a terrible idea.

At least whatever she does will almost certainly be better than what would happen to them otherwise...

has anyone told you this is slightly fucked up