“I once heard a rumour that this is how Lan An and his cultivation partner did it,” Ma Qiao piped up. “Which, I mean, if anyone could…” “The Lans are far too boring and repressed for something like this,” Wei Wuxian said, with the authority of one who had been resoundingly ignored by a Lan for the past month. “Can you imagine Lan Wangji dual cultivating?” Everyone knows that dual cultivation is a myth that only works in porn. Wei Wuxian discovers differently.

The thing that most people who are not sect leaders fail to understand is that being a sect leader is hard. It’s not the countless duties and obligations, or the crushing weight of responsibility, or even the hours of meetings spent trying not to fall asleep as some stupid merchant who’s never experienced any hardship in his entire overly-fed life drones on and on about how Lanling Jin should compensate him because a stray fierce corpse scared him and made him spill his tea. Or something. It’s that sometimes, despite being a sect leader, there’s still nothing Jin Ling can do to help people. In which Jin Ling turns to masked vigilantism as a way to more effectively help people. Somehow it doesn't all end in disaster.

Wei Wuxian’s hand jolts, spilling a drop of wine onto the tabletop. “Love?” he croaks, then clears his throat and tries again. “Lan Zh— uh, Hanguang-jun, in love?” “Have you not heard the story?” the other young woman asks, looking pitying. “You must, it is a truly heartrending tale of star-crossed romance and mutual pining — go to any storyhouse in town, everyone has been requesting a reading of this book.” “There’s a book?” Wei Wuxian says blankly. In which the junior disciples (namely, Lan Jingyi, Ouyang Zizhen, and a reluctant Lan Sizhui) turn to RPF in an attempt to rehabilitate Wei Wuxian's reputation so that he and Hanguang-jun can get together and get married and live happily ever after. It's... surprisingly effective.