Lan Wangji takes the time to picture this with something like amusement. Claudius greeted him with such aplomb, and Lan Wangji became irrevocably fond of him so quickly thereafter, that it requires a little additional effort of imagination on his part. Wei Ying once very memorably tried the crying to get out of something trick on him. Lan Wangji paid it no mind. "New arrivals are often distraught," he says. "I was."