Lan Wangji hears his name again. "Mn."

"If I find more mals he can show off then." 

"He has a magic sword named Bichen-- which means, uh, 'don't do fun shit'-- and-- you know that magic objects have to be taken care of or they'll wander off or stop behaving?"

"Yeah, I heard that." He's never actually owned a magic object. "Does that mean he has to fight and kill things with it to keep it behaving?" 

"Oh, no, it's a very priggish magic object. It wants him to defend the weak and helpless and defeat evil and not get drunk and go to bed on time and meditate a lot and never ever ever have sex."

"That seems oddly specific! Does he...mind?" Masozi opens another door to check. 

"Oh, no, they gave it to him because he's a prig, he's fine with it. --It's Taoist or whatever, getting drunk and not meditating and having sex is bad for you because it drains your qi."

"Your...tchee? Is that like mana?" 

"Oh, qi's not real, the Taoists made it up, but magic items get their opinions all sorts of places."

"....Right." Masozi is not entirely sure that he follows. 

Also they've now opened a LOT of doors and he's starting to run out of conversation to make. Although probably Wei Wuxian will just start chattering as soon as Masozi leaves him an opening. 

"It's not so bad when you're here because you shouldn't get drunk or have sex anyway. I mean, I'm going to get drunk a lot regardless. And you can build a ton of mana meditating because it's the most boring goddamn thing in the world. Oh! You might like meditating."

"What is meditating and why do you think I'd like it?" 

"You sit in one place and think about your breath or the sounds you're hearing or, like, the boundless compassion you feel for everyone in the world. You can build a ton of mana with it and it doesn't cost resources the way that knitting does and you don't get tired like with exercise. Probably don't do it more than a few hours a day, you get spacey." 

"That's interesting. Yeah, I'll try it - thanks." 

"I think it's supposed to make you be able to do cool things with your brain like focus really hard on something and stop being able to feel pain and stuff." He switches to Mandarin. "Lan Zhan, has meditating stopped you from feeling pain?"

Literally what happened to cause this topic to come up. "No."

"Lan Wangji doesn't know how but you can ask the void and maybe it'll send you a book."

That sounds very implausible. "Sure, I can try asking the void for a book. Does it have books that aren't about magic?" 

"This white girl said you could probably get it to give you novels?"

"I see. Does the library have novels?" 

"I don't know. Want to go check?"

"I think we should finish finding your room next! We could check after, if you wanted." Masozi is, in fact, SO EXCITED to see the library. 

"Let's go check out the library, I'm bored of room searching." Switches to Mandarin: "Lan Zhan, I want to go look at the library."

"Mn."

"See! He says yes."