The matter of fiction, of whether Lan Wangji himself comes from some fantastical story, is not one he likes to entertain, even after his unsettling conversation with Shang Qinghua, but for this, he will attend to the conceit. If Luo Binghe is, indeed, a character plucked from the mind of a storyteller who gave no consideration to his possible impact on others, that explains a great deal. Claudius once promised to come to Lan Wangji before embroiling himself in political squabbles or doing something dreadfully self-obliterating. He is relieved, almost unaccountably so, to hear that Claudius did not set anything unstoppable in motion without asking his opinion, and unfazed at the word villain. He has seen too many unflattering portraits of the evil, child-devouring Yiling Patriarch to care about that.

He is quiet, taking a fresh sprig of watercress from his still-open qiankun pouch and feeding it to Xiaoxue to fill the silence with the small sounds of that. "I have met Aornis," he says, then. He hesitates again. "There is no love in my heart for Luo Binghe, and I believe he has influenced my own dreams, too. But before Wei Ying's death, he was accused of something, because he was the Yiling Patriarch. A curse. That accusation led to his death, but the curse was not his doing."