Madame Yu is glaring at Jiang Cheng like he's eating spoonfuls of red bean paste inadequately, which he probably is. 

"--and absolutely under no circumstances are you allowed to have sex."

"I won't."

"Check the food for mals before you grab it every single time, I don't care how distracted you are."

"I will."

"You have one chance to make something of yourself," Madame Yu says. "If you die out of carelessness you will bring shame to yourself, to me, to your father, and to your the entire Shanghai enclave."

"Yes, Mother."

"You didn't forget anything?"

"No, Mother."

Madame Yu double-checks, because Jiang Cheng can't be trusted to pack his own bags. Not for something important like this. (

Yanli is alive. (Jiang Cheng shoves another spoonful in his mouth.) She has to be alive. Wen Qing is a genius, everyone knew it, and she's been studying for two years, she found some kind of treatment for Yanli's fibromyalgia. Lan Xichen is responsible, of course he's going to take care of her; he knows how important she is. He's probably kept the whole generation of the Shanghai enclave alive. 

Yanli has to be alive, because the alternative is that Jiang Cheng would never get to eat her lotus root soup again, and that Jiang Cheng had seen her smile for the last time, and he'll never get to tell her about the movies he's seen that she'd liked or tell her about the latest time Wei Wuxian got him in trouble and then got him out of it, and that's unacceptable, so Yanli is alive. 

He's thinking Yanli is alive Yanli is alive Yanli is alive when the induction takes him.

(His father doesn't say goodbye to him. Wei Wuxian is, of course, the one he says goodbye to.)

Having a set of goals concentrates the mind wonderfully.

For this reason, Lan Wangji has four goals for his time at the Scholomance:

1. Wei Ying graduates from school alive.
2. Wei Ying doesn't become a maleficer.
3. Lan Wangji doesn't at any point break any of the three thousand precepts of the Lan family. 
4. (so far in the distance that it can barely be seen) Lan Wangji himself graduates from school alive.

Lan Wangji's affinity is killing things. He's grateful. If he can kill things, he can bring Wei Ying back alive. 

His most valuable possession is his sword, which has been enchanted in every way that you can imagine; it is strong enough to cut through iron and if he reaches out towards it it flies to his hand and when he unsheathes it it smells slightly of ice. The sword has a name, because while swords are not quite as temperamental as spellbooks Lan Zhan likes to be conservative with such things. The sword's name is Bichen, which means "to avoid worldly matters."

Lan Zhan is very good at avoiding worldly matters, except for one particular worldly matter, who is the most frustrating and wonderful worldly matter that Lan Zhan can imagine. 

His mother is dead and his father is in seclusion; Lan Zhan said his formal goodbyes to him three days ago. His uncle Lan Qiren is there as the representative of the family.

"Follow the precepts," Lan Qiren says.

"I will, shufu*."

"Good."

His stomach is too well-behaved to make him nauseous when the induction takes him.

*Translator's Note: "Uncle"

There is something wrong with how Nie Huaisang's body collects mana. He's magical-- the mals that have haunted him since he was a child are proof enough of that-- but he can do pushups for ten hours straight and get barely enough mana to light a bulb. He can draw on the other enclavers, sort of, but any spell he casts takes ten times as much mana if he's lucky.

Nie Huaisang doesn't want to die.

It has been the primary goal of Nie Huaisang's life ever since he understood what a mal was not to die. 

It would be one thing if he had the sort of personality that kept you alive in the Scholomance. But he's frustrated by tedious tasks, he breaks into tears when he's overwhelmed, and he gets overwhelmed easily and often; he can't handle stress or conflict or high-stakes decisions.

He leans into it a bit, once he figures out how hard it's going to be for him not to die. Safer to be underestimated. Safer for people to believe that not being the sort of person who will be able to survive is a choice.  

(He's good at art. He likes art. In another world, he was born without magic, and he paints. But that's not the world he's in.) 

When he was a child, he had his da-ge*, his brilliant badass da-ge, who spoke a dozen languages and fought like he was dancing and like he breathed, who loved him and was frustrated by him in equal measure, and da-ge killed the monsters under the bed that were a metaphor for every child other than him. And then when he was twelve, da-ge went off to school, and Nie Huaisang had to take care of himself. 

Da-ge was going to take care of him again, now. He had two years of da-ge keeping him safe before he had to find another protector. Simple enough.

Nie Huaisang ran sprints every single day; he had three very good pairs of running shoes in his pack. He trained himself, constantly, in situational awareness, so that it was second nature to check every room he entered for mals. (It made people think he was just paranoid. Safer, to be thought paranoid.) He had a first-aid kit; he wounded himself, carefully causing pain but not damage, so he could practice doing up his wounds while in too much pain to think. He needed tradable goods to keep himself safe, and he thought carefully about what would be valuable that the adults wouldn't have thought of. So he taught himself to brew prison moonshine and to write quite good pornography. He made Wei Wuxian carry most of his supplies so he could fill up his load with as many pounds as possible of visual pornography in as many different types as he could find, on paper as light as he could. 

(Wei Wuxian tossed out the mana crystals to make space. Nie Huaisang noticed, but he didn't ask. It's safer to be underestimated.) 

He got to take his art supplies with him. He could draw porn with that. Maybe presents for people's lovers. Another way to be valuable. 

The induction made him puke, of course. 

*Translator's Note: older brother

Wen Ning was honestly surprised he got a slot at the Scholomance. 

It would be embarrassing, he supposed, for the great Wen family to have a scion who didn't make it to the Scholomance at all. Much less embarrassing for him to die in the first two weeks. So some kid who could have survived the Scholomance lost the slot, to save the face of the Wen.

(But the number of people who die is more-or-less constant. So if he dies, he's going to save someone else? That's a nice way to think about it.) 

No one would miss him except his sister.

Even his pack makes it obvious how little anyone expects Wen Ning to survive. He carries a few things for himself, but most of the pack is things that the other enclavers couldn't fit into their allotment. 

(He can't speak any language but Mandarin. He freezes up in a fight. He is shy, and meek, and scared, and the world is not at all kind to wizards who are shy and meek and scared.)

(He never expected to live much past fourteen anyway.)

So Xue Yang heard that there was this wizard school that was, like, full of mals. The rich wizards send their kids to it to keep them from dying. One in four wizard kids survives at the Scholomance, one in twenty in the outside world. 

Xue Yang isn't especially fussed about staying alive. He dies, or he doesn't. What matters is how much fun he has along the way. And wizard school sounds fun. If there's one thing he likes, it's killing rich kids. Especially since he gets phenomenal magical power from it, which he can then use to have even more fun. 

Shanghai doesn't have enough slots for all the people who want to go, so you have to take tests to get in. Whatever. Tests are not fun. Languages? Fuck off. No matter what language you speak, screams sound the same.

But he figures that, well, if the magic can't find the person it's supposed to take maybe it'll find someone else. It's worth a shot, anyway. Worst case scenario he kills some rich enclaver kid who deserves it.

So he grabs all his worldly possessions and breaks into the enclave and waits until it looks like the spell is about to slorp everyone up, and then he explodes a guy. It looks pretty cool. All the adults are covered in guts. 

But he doesn't get any time to appreciate it before there's the weirdest goddamn sensation that Xue Yang has ever felt and then he's somewhere else.