[ Lan Zhan allows the swing of their arms, the long sleeve of his robe flapping in the air between them like a young bird struggling for flight. He fights the repetitive arc just long enough to slot their fingers together more comfortably, securely, so that such childish play may not wrench their hands loose from one another.

As Wei Ying trails off, Lan Zhan picks up the pieces of his sentence and thought to continue them to completion. ] Is a long-term solution. A river that overflows one season is likely to in the next.

[ He doesn't acknowledge the veiled request for talisman paper. Wei Ying knows, or should by now, that Lan Zhan is an upstanding cultivator who never leaves without the proper supplies. Even when traveling a friendly road towards his lover, he would not be so hasty and naive as to forget such important materials.

Wei Ying loses his footing, and Lan Zhan grips his hand more firmly to catch him. He says nothing of it, but there is a ghost of a smile on his lips—whether it's born of amusement for the misstep and Wei Ying's undignified noise as a result, or the fact that Wei Ying's focus had been on Lan Zhan when it should have been on the road, is a secret he will guard.

Then Wei Ying begins to laud Lan Zhan's loyalty, and he hangs his head slightly, his eyes on the road rather than the horizon as it usually is thanks to his rigid posture. A better half, born true and with eyes that do not stray, and yet he hasn't always listened to the heart which had belonged to Wei Ying for so long. That is his biggest regret, but one that motivates him to be Wei Ying's humble servant for eternity, in this life and all others after. ]

Members of the Lan Sect do not stray once they have found their fated person. Even in death, we do not wander.