milliways_bar | (no subject)

Bucky stares at him. "Uh." He takes a second to absorb that, then frowns at him. "Wait. I thought - you mean qi? I thought that had to be used by a person, not stored in metal."

Is there an opposite to qi? he wonders. Death-qi?

"Energy is energy." He repeats, with a shrug that is calculated in it's carelessness. "There was enough energy in the Yin Tiger Tablet I had, once, to level Koi Tower. And good riddance to it." He huffs. Would have been worth it, if he could have somehow managed it before his shijie had the poor sense to go and live there.

"I had to destroy the damn thing before the Cultivation world tore itself apart over it."

Not that it'd helped. Not that he'd stuck around to see if it changed anything substantial.

He thinks about the weapons trafficking that they've been working to stop, the things he's seen people do with vibranium, and the softly glowing heart of Mount Bashenga, and nods, very slowly.

"I think I see the problem."

"So, uh... don't go to any disrupted graveyards, yeah?" Wei Wuxian grins, crooked. "Might pick up more than you bargained for."

"I'll try to avoid them," he promises. "I appreciate the tip." Bucky looks at his arm, then at Wei Wuxian.

"Don't suppose there's a way to shield against that kind of thing?"

"... I don't see why not." Wei Wuxian decides after a bit of consideration. "I mean, it doesn't exist right now, but it'd just be a selective ward, I've made lots of those. You probably want something etched, rather than something like a paper talisman, don't want it getting wet and falling off at the wrong moment."

Does everyone see how Very Good Wei Wuxian is being, not making grabby hands at Bucky's arm and starting experimenting right here? He's being so good. Someone should give him soup.

"Assuming there's something that could etch vibranium." Besides more vibranium, of course. He has no idea how he's even going to explain this to Shuri, but that's a problem for the future.

"I carved Yin Iron with not much more than spite and a firm foundation in talisman work." Wei Wuxian assures him with breezy confidence. He dashes back to his little research camp, returning with a stack of bright yellow talisman paper and a small bowl of rich red ink, his brush balanced haphazardly atop it all. "I'll figure it out."

Did Bucky think Wei Wuxian was excited about the goats?

Well, he was.

He's just more excited about this. New heights of excitement, as it were.

The other man's enthusiasm is almost infectious. Bucky leans over to look at what he's setting up.

"So how does this kind of thing work? I remember you showing me the binding one before."

"What we want is to have the correct combination of characters to keep you from soaking up every wisp of resentment under heaven, but not keep your arm from being effective. "So I'll keep it to paper until I figure out how it works. Might have to go outside to test it, don't want to give the little ones nightmares."

"How would you even test something like that? I don't think there's a graveyard around here."

He frowns, and adds, "At least not that I know about."

"Mmm... no, no graveyard." Wei Wuxian agrees, absently as he sketches the character for warding contemplatively. "But here was a battle here, at least once. Something big."

Bucky frowns at him. "Do you mean that thing with the Slenderman? Or was there something else?"

"The slender man?" Wei Wuxian echoes, puzzled. "Was he a bandit or something?" But he shrugs, wry. "But I don't know, I haven't really asked. I didn't want to cause problems."

"I can't see how that'd cause any trouble," Bucky tells him. "Not like it's a secret." He shakes his head. "Not a bandit. Some sort of weird mutant tree god who fed on -- on fear, and stuff like that."

He frowns. "But come to think of it, that confrontation happened out in the forest. Not in here."

"People tend to get... anxious, when I mess around with that stuff too much." Wei Wuxian hedges. To be honest, the reaction is usually too extreme to be called 'anxious'.

Violent is more usual.

Murder-y.

Mob-esque.

That sort of shit.

"Someone being greedy about the forests?" He asks as he writes out a few options, his calligraphy notably neater here than it is in his notes. "That's being a bit ridiculous, there's even a person here who could probably have done the rites to quiet forest gods if that much wood was needed."

"No, this guy had a thing for causing fear and I guess pain, nightmares, that kind of thing. He had his lair out in the woods. It's a cave with weird stuff carved into the walls." Bucky sounds especially dour about this for some reason.

He peers more closely at what Wei Wuxian's writing, then glances up at him. "How'd you know about the battle? Your abilities, I'm guessing?"

"Sometimes they can be so loud." Wei Wuxian notes, off-handed. "Now, I don't want you in the line of fire if these don't work, so... we'll just have some indicator talismans, to see if they're failing." Those he sketches faster, a long-practiced pattern.

"Should we go see if we can find some angry forest spirits?" He asks, grinning, setting his ink aside.

"Sure, why not?" Bucky starts to get to his feet. "Any tips on how to fight them if something goes wrong? Or should I just plan on punching and knives?"

".... Hmm." Wei Wuxian sees a problem with his (sort-of) plan. "Here." He backtracks to write out one more talisman. "Tear this, if we get into trouble, and shout for Lan Zhan or Wen Ning really loudly, okay?" His grin is bright and reassuring.

"Uh-huh." Bucky takes the talisman in his right hand, giving Wei Wuxian a very dubious look as he does. "Scream for help, got it."

If it comes down to it, the other man looks pretty light. He bets he can pick him up and retreat from the forest at top speed if need be.

"Mm!" Wei Wuxian beams, encouraging. "Both of them seem to have an interest in keeping me in one piece, and have definitely seen me do worse. Let's go!"

For his weapon, he appears to have... a bamboo flute. Like, seriously, a hunk of bamboo with holes in. It's gonna be great.

He eyes the flute and does a quick mental count of how many throwing knives he's got hidden about him, then shrugs and falls in beside Wei Wuxian.

"Okay. Angry forest spirits, here we come."

It could be worse.

It really, really could. At least Wei Wuxian is at least 90% sane at this point. Like, at minimum. It's probably higher than that!

"So we don't want to go far down in that direction," Wei Wuxian decides, as they near the forest, waving in one direction in particular, "The Cloud Recesses are that way, and I have no idea how I'd explain you being there. It's not something they'd miss." Though most of them seem to have missed a whole-ass reincarnated necromancer, so... that's a thing, that's happening, currently. "Besides, won't be any resentful energy in Cloud Recesses. Maybe where there's more bunnies, something has to be encouraging them."

He makes particular note of the direction indicated, even though it's not likely he'd stumble into it on his own, and walks easily at Wei Wuxian's side.

"The fire-breathing rabbits, right. There's a couple of spots on the other side of the lake that are odd, too," he notes, unaware of the demons that were called and destroyed there years ago... most of them, anyway.

"And if we get desperate, I can probably find that creepy cave again. I remember it too damn well, given how long I spent trapped in it."