A wending way through the forest...
Sep. 17th, 2020 12:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thesecondjadeThe problem with sending Lan Zhan on a very easy night hunt is that takes nothing to complete. By the time he reached the village to engage and discover more information, he had realized this had been nothing more than a ploy to get him out of Cloud Recesses in an attempt to curb his desperate study.
There was no anger in him over the realization. His blood did not pound, his vision did not narrow; he remained calm, and accepted the intent over the action. His brother wanted him to be well, and it did not do to dwell in darkness and obsess. Sending Bichen through a misty wood to take head after head after head of the nine-headed jiufeng wasn't thrilling, per se, and nor was it a challenge -- but it vented something in his heart that had been festering there.
Resentful energy took many forms, and the feelings he penned up inside him could sour his spirit, too. Returning to the easy and rhythm of combat, wielding Bichen to end a threat, to see something constructive done with his time... it eased his heart to give action to his limbs and let that anger that seethed inside him take form and rush out of him with each stab and slash of his dust-avoiding blade.
Bichen was silver-blue and clean once the thing was dead; blood did not cling to the blade, it's enchantment and power so fierce it refused to be sullied so. As the jiufeng melted into bitter blood, a cleansing talisman made sure no evil would take root, and seared the last of it's remains away.
It was halfway back to the village when things began to change. He'd taken the long way - walking instead of flying on his sword, because he wanted to feel his feet on the ground, take in sensation beyond the cut of cold air at his cheeks. But it was starting to twist around him, turning strange, and colder still.
When he saw the rabbit, he knew something was wrong. It looked at him like a predator did, opening it's mouth to show teeth that were all wrong. Had this place had more corruption than he recognized? Had something slipped by him? Too many long days and nights in the library, and his senses had dulled. Maybe Lan Xichen had been right to send him out for more than just his helpful hint that Lan Zhan needed to let some pressure off.
The rabbits -- there were more than one now, watching him from beneath shrubs he did not recognize and in the shadow of treelimbs that were all wrong for the forest he had been in. But he saw that the forest was thinning as he walked, and wondered if he needed to ask more of the village about what evils might still yet lurk near them.
There was no village on the other side of the wood. There was a lake he did not recognize, and a temple glittering in the distance of it. It was certainly all wrong, and none of this was supposed to be near that little village he had first come to. They were landlocked, no major bodies of water near by. Not like this.
Bichen trembled in its sheath, and Lan Zhan stepped warily out into the environs beyond a tavern. But it was all wrong; the noise and laughter of it marked it as a wine house, but there were stables and a forge near by, and a building he could not recognize.
Either this was the most complex illusion he had ever been tricked into, or he had crossed a barrier between realms. Either was possible, but the latter was the far more unlikely occurrence. Creatures that could make pocket realms were both exceedingly rare and terribly powerful, even for a Cultivator of his caliber. He would need elder disciples at his back to take on anything of that power. There we no Wei Wuxian with him to be clever and daring and still manage to defeat the Tortoise of Slaughter despite injury and weariness.
There was no presence of resentful energy, but any being that could make this level of illusion could certainly hide it's true nature. So Lan Zhan walked, on guard, toward the tavern. He had to find out more, and it was the obvious bit of bait in the whole thing. Might as well engage it, to see what comes of it.
[ Wei Wuxian gets to calm Lan Zhan down; assume he's less likely to stab out for being a monster and is definitely less jumpy as he wanders by that point. ]
