"Wouldn't it be nice if everybody had a story like that," she sighed, "and this was the special class for people who don't suck."

"It would be nice. But a small cadre of people who don't suck who can watch each other's backs against everyone else is better than being the only non-terrible person."

"I admit, I'm feeling...more hopeful...than I was a few hours ago."

"Is there anything that you'd like to do to check people's bonafides besides listening to us have a conversation? I don't know what-all you can do."

Small smile. "I cast a few different spells to detect lies before coming to the cafeteria. My kind of magic isn't as powerful without using elementals as a non-consensual power source, but lie detection is cheap as long as you specify it well enough."

"Ooh, how'd you specify it." 

He becomes more animated as he explains the spell; the parts of it that have to do with syncing up concepts with the magic itself have little meaning to the rest of the group, but the concepts themselves are fairly elegant; the spell doesn't just differentiate between "true" and "false;" it covers a wide variety of concepts such as "completely and wholely sincere," "lying through one's teeth," "basically honest but exaggerating their confidence;" and "basically honest but conflicted about it," and then it expands on that latter one to detect, let's call it contradictory opinions within the same mind--intended to detect situations where someone has been mind-controlled to believe what they're saying but the underlying personality knows it's bullshit. 

"That's really cool! I wonder if you'll be able to figure out a non-elemental power source or if all the gains are going to be in efficiency..."

"I have hopes that once all the coercive power structures are dismantled it will be possible to draw power from elementals consensually. The process doesn't hurt them by itself, the problem is the fact that magicians keep them captive to do it. Elementals, some of them anyway, like human things like books and complex foods when they can get them without taking horrible risks; it should be possible to just pay them if they can be sure it isn't a trap."

"I don't know how helpful it's likely to be, since it involves a lot of dramatically yelling at people to cut things out while demonstrating vast cosmic power, but if you can find a use for my experience dismantling oppressive power structures it's available." 

"I don't think that's likely to be very helpful, but thank you for the offer."

There is a sign on the library indicating that you can't use mind control in there. Annika Akka is lurking just outside of it. And reading a book but mostly lurking.

Kanimir, having finished absent-mindedly putting food in the food orifice, has decided to head to the library for more information on his roommate's magic (chi, whatever) system. 

"Hi there," Annika says. "What's your name?"

"--Kanimir Żeleński," he says, bemused. (Why is she talking to him when she could, instead, be inside the library, reading books about magic?)

She does have a book which might conceivably be about magic! And in her other hand she has a fistful of powder, which she throws in his face. "Kanimir," she purrs, "is anyone expecting you?"

He inhales in surprise, then coughs on the powder. "No."

"Oh good. You're going to follow me at a discreet distance, all right? We're going to the Dean's office, no detours."

"Okay."

"Good boy. Tell me, do you have anything set up that would catch this?"

"No." 

"Silly boy... I thought this would be hard, but oh well, this is fun too..." She heads Deanward.

Wei Wuxian was going to meet Kanimir at the library, but he wanted to grab something from their room first. 

Kanimir is not at the library. 

Wei Wuxian throws together a quick tracking charm. 

"Kanimir!" he says when he catches sight of his roommate, jogging over and grabbing his arm. "What are you doing? We were supposed to meet at the library." 

"I'm going to the Dean's office." 

"Ah. I see. Hold on a moment." 

Kanimir isn't a cultivator; his meridians don't have the smoothness of someone who actively takes care of their own qi. But the effect on him isn't particularly subtle, and the patterns of it in the qi circulating through his head aren't hard to pick out. Wei Wuxian isn't a healing specialist, to have a lot of experience manipulating the qi in someone else's body yet, but it isn't hard to send a quick burst to the right place to disrupt the effect.