“Are you a cultivator?” “No,” she says, steadily. “This one doesn’t possess the core for it.” She pauses and raises her eyes to his, so boldly he finds it a little startling. “I believe that I can be of use to the Jiang sect in spite of that, and I have brought a gift to prove it. May I show you?” Fully intrigued now, Jiang Cheng nods. The girl unslings the bundle from her back, unties a couple of straps, and unrolls it on the floor in a smooth motion. Jiang Cheng is on his feet before he even consciously realizes it’s happened, and the reaction murmurs out through the hall. There, on a blanket that belongs on the back of a horse, are five Wen cultivator swords, offered to him by a girl who looks like the word “bumpkin” was invented specifically for her. What the fuck. “Where did you get those?” he asks, instead of asking “What the fuck?” out loud, because that would be unbecoming of his status as sect leader. The girl meets his eyes again, lifts her chin, and says simply, “I killed the men who carried them.” Or: Fan Dingxiang cultivates the swole path. Jiang Cheng doesn't know how to handle that.

“I haven’t…” she starts, watches his blue eyes narrowed in concern and it’s distracting, everything’s distracting. “I haven’t had a body in a hundred years,” Zelda manages, and shrugs one shoulder, as if to say what can you do? “I was Hylia, mostly, and a little bit me, but I wasn’t a person. I was the sun and the wind and the water and the dirt and I was in a prison and I was the prison. I feel like I’m blindfolded, now, without that sense of the world, but also everything is so bright and loud and close and I hardly know how I’m managing to speak to you when my skin is feeling wind for the first time in a century. It’s…” she trails off, her words failing her, which is infuriating because she’s a scholar, she’s good at words. “It’s a lot,” she finishes awkwardly, for lack of anything better to say. Or: Learning to be a person again, after the end.

HOLY FUCK IS THAT A BABY?! The howling anguish of the Burial Mounds goes silent. Wei Wuxian has returned, and he has brought other people with him, and one of those people is, indeed, a baby. The little caravan of weary living people (who have a fucking baby with them) works its way up what might generously be called a path, deeper into the cursed hills, and they have the full attention of many, many ghosts. Resentful energy burns away, boiling into nothing under the utter shock of the situation. Who the fuck brings a baby to the Burial Mounds? Or: People think Wei Wuxian somehow cleansed the resentment of the Burial Mounds for the Wen survivors, but actually, the ghosts did it as babyproofing.

The picture is of Wei Ying, that much is clear. It’s of a lot more of Wei Ying than Lan Zhan is used to seeing. He supposes that, technically, Wei Ying is dressed. It’s a bare technicality, since one of Wei Ying’s hands has rucked up his black tank top practically to his collarbone, showing a long expanse of abdomen and one nipple. Sweat beads on his sternum, catching the light like jewels. His other hand is--Lan Zhan feels his eyes widen, as though unable to look away from a train wreck--on his hip, one thumb tugging down the waistband of a pair of red briefs. Wei Ying is biting his lower lip and looking directly into the camera, sultry, his eyes dark and inviting. His erection is obvious, outlined against the red of the briefs and framed carefully with the hand on his hip. Lan Zhan’s brain goes wildly, screamingly blank. Or: Lan Zhan accidentally finds his best friend's OnlyFans account and has an ongoing emotional crisis.

Wei Wuxian is ready, waiting. The front and back doors of the Jingshi wait open, allowing the early summer breeze to pass through the house, bringing with it the scent of the flowers from the back garden. He has rope, crimson and smooth and well-worn, coiled in a neat pile. He has tea, perfectly brewed, the lightly flavored (nearly tasteless) kind that Lan Zhan likes, waiting in a pot with a warming talisman. There’s a comb, fine-toothed of carved white jade. There’s fruit, for later, perfectly ripe. There’s a small knife with a curved blade, still sharp as anything but stained with years of sap. There’s the garden, lovingly tended and fully in bloom in waves of pinks and purples and whites. There’s him, lounging against the frame of the back door, limbs sprawled about in the languid way that looks careless to an outsider but is actually carefully choreographed to put as much of himself on display as possible. He’s technically fully dressed, red inner robe and black outer, but the black outer robe is unbelted, half-hanging off one shoulder, and he’s decidedly not wearing trousers. His bare feet poke out the red folds, pale against the wood of the Jingshi deck. Or: Rope bondage as the deepest expression of affection.