Lan Wangji likes conversations that happen in English. No one could possibly expect him to contribute.

"Um, do you - know much about maleficing, and when it's bad for someone? People seem to think it's very worrying but not all of their arguments make any sense and I don't know how actually bad it is." 

"If you pull from inanimate objects or insects it's less powerful but it basically won't fuck you up, everyone does that but they like to pretend it isn't malia. Sacrificing animals is bad for you, it's addictive and it makes it harder to use mana and it cuts years off your lifespan. Sacrificing humans is worse on all those axes, especially the shortened life expectancy, because in addition to the malia itself you're going to have everyone ganging up and trying to kill you."

"....Why is it addictive? Climbing stairs to get mana or something isn't." 

"I don't know. It's easier? My teachers just said that it's always addictive to do things the easy way."

"I don't really think it's easier? It's just faster and so if you don't have a way to store mana and you need a lot of it at once to fight off a big mal or else you'll die, then it's the only option? I had to use rats sometimes to survive when I was traveling by myself, but - it's not like I'm tempted to for no reason? And there's not really any reason to here, there are a tenth as many mals and there are other wizards to help." And other wizard kids who make much more tempting targets, but Masozi doesn't say that out loud. 

"I think it's like cigarettes." He looks at Masozi. "--Do you have cigarettes wherever you're from?"

"Some people do but they seem stupid, I dunno why you'd want to breathe smoke on purpose–"

He dives to block Wei Wuxian from stepping forward and ending up underneath the ceiling grate, which is currently home to some sort of mal that looks as though it's made entirely out of ribbons. "Careful! Look." He points. 

Lan Zhan understands this part of the interaction!

He unsheathes Bichen and stabs the mal. 

Wei Wuxian is undisturbed. "So cigarettes make you want more cigarettes even though they don't get you high or anything. I thought that it must be a really good high given how much people smoke it but I tried and it's not fun at all and then Yanli caught me and frowned so I stopped. I think malia probably works like that?"

Lan-something is pretty good in combat! Masozi notes this with satisfaction. He checks another door. Nope, still no cockroaches. 

"But doing it with bugs isn't addictive?" he asks. "....Just, a different person I talked to before said that normally bugs is okay and people call it cheating not maleficing, but - that if I'd ever done it with animals then it might've hurt me already and I would have to stop using bugs too in order to get better from it? Only, it doesn't feel like it did anything bad. I don't think I have a harder time with normal mana and I definitely don't want to go find more rats so I don't think I'm addicted either." 

"Well," he says judiciously, "if you smoke a cigarette once a week it probably won't give you lung cancer or make you addicted either. I pull from bugs all the time, that's one of the things my cockroaches are for, and I don't think I'm addicted to it."

Masozi nods. Frowns. "Do you know about it doing - worse damage to you than just being addictive? If all it does is make you want to do it more, I mean, that's fine, it's just like being hungry and you can ignore that. But someone thought it might turn you into someone else, and change - what you care about - make you think hurting people is fine and not bad..." 

"Well, I mean, if you're craving something you can only get by killing people, you're going to rationalize killing people."

"Mn," Lan Wangji contributes.

"But you could just not do that because you don't want anyone to be dead!" Masozi's face and voice are very earnest. 

"I think most people just do whatever they feel like and come up with some explanation about how it makes them a good person afterward."

"But if you just do whatever you feel like then you can't make plans that work," Masozi says, as though this is incredibly obvious and he's very confused it hasn't been brought up. 

"I mostly do whatever I feel like and it's worked out okay for me so far!"

"Well," Masozi points out, "you did lose your room. That feels like things not working out very okay." 

"But then I met an interesting person finding it again!"

"You're not worried I'll murder you because I did maleficing?" Masozi is kind of joking but only kind of. "The New York people wouldn't even talk to me." 

"Do you want to see what would happen if you tried to murder me?"

"Not especially. I don't actually want to murder anyone, but apparently I look scary." 

"Aw, it's fun to have Lan Zhan show off."