Come Back to Gusu

49. We should pay our respects.

The Wen clan left to bury their matriarch in their Dafan village. Wei WuXian and Lan WangJi returned to Cloud Recesses.

Immediately upon their return, they were invited to a trial for two senior disciples who had been caught breaking through the wards. Wei WuXian was one of a few who pleaded for leniency. While the others were focused on this being the first offense, he took a more pragmatic route. "It's your own fault they were able to breach the wards," he stated.

"What?" came from most of the elders' mouths.

"I showed you they were useless when I was fifteen. The only reason I got caught was because Lan WangJi happened to be right where I crossed over. If I had picked a better spot, you'd never have known. Then Wen Xu's cultivators showed you I was right. And yet in the years since, you have done nothing to update them. Is it any wonder that some of your disciples take advantage of your poor security?"

Lan XiChen immediately demanded a demonstration of how the young Wei WuXian had crossed the wards. Wei WuXian led the group to the nearest barrier and tossed a handful of dirt. "See how the particles pass through?" He next threw a minuscule pebble which bounced off. "That the dirt and dust goes through but the pebble doesn't shows there are holes in the wards and they are bigger than dust but smaller than the pebble, right? So... you just..." He reached out with a bit of energy and poked at the barrier. "You just find one of the holes and carefully make it bigger. The alarms are set to go off if the wards are torn. But just enlarging one of the spaces, like so," he made a series of complicated hand motions, and stepped through the ward, "you haven't actually broken anything." He let the hole shrink back down. "No alarms go off. And anyone walking the perimeter looking for evidence of a breach won't find anything."

Lan XiChen examined the ward. "You figured this out at fifteen?"

"Before then," Wei WuXian corrected. "It's not like Cloud Recesses' was the first ward I occasionally needed to get through. Although, I don't think that's how those seniors did it." He gave them a wink. "I suppose they did it the easy way?" He jumped up into a tree and rapidly climbed to the top of the study branches. He used qinggong to then jump lightly onto the higher branches and leaves and then leaped as high as he could over the barrier to land on his feet. "The barrier is tall, but a good cultivator can easily get over it."

"How do you know that's how they did it?"

"Well, they both have leaves from a similar tree in their hair. And that one's sleeve," he pointed at the taller of the two disciples on trial, "has burn marks similar to ones I expect to see when it touches the ward."

The natural result of having proven that the Cloud Recesses' wards were easy to breach was to be assigned to find a way to make them more secure. Later that afternoon, Wei WuXian and Lan WangJi searched the library for every book and scroll on wards. "I'm surprised you're not more of an expert," the older one mused.

"Why would I be?" Wei WuXian huffed his bangs away from his face and opened the book on the top of his pile. "The Jiangs wouldn't let me near the arrays that control their wards. What little I know came from the introduction class I took at... twelve, I think, and the half day lecture your uncle gave here."

"You had wards at the Burial Mounds." Lan WangJi had yet to open any of his books.

"I improvised," the younger muttered. "I took what little I knew and... played until something worked."

"You improvised," Lan WangJi lowered his head to focus on his own research. "You never cease to amaze me with what you can do when you want to do something."

Researching and putting theories into practice occupied most of their time to the point where the ache from missing their son was dulled. Every child walking really fast (also known as running) past the library had Wei WuXian looking up, hoping to see Wen Yuan. Every child speaking more loudly than what Lan rules dictated was appropriate (also known as yelling) had Lan WangJi searching for their son.