It strikes him with feral certainty: another predator in the line of his horizon, chasing, lusting for, targeting his prey. Five's gaze locks on the tender shifts of motion, and it's Lan Wangji who lunges — a tired, easily unwound arc, unravelled. The creature that answers his assault defies classical biology and its expectations: a wolf by sheer insinuation, its joints and back straddled by a waxy carapace, while its muzzle contracts, deformed only to thickened, blunt, short bones.
They struggle like a sandstorm, destroying each other, hard ground beneath. The animal concedes only when the string-binding talisman of Wei Ying's creation crafts rings and fetters to round its limbs, its back. He does not slay it, but bites futilely in small retaliation, against the back of its nape, until it gives a seismic shudder and yields, resolutely. Good. Good, and so Wangji leaves him with life and the string yet bound for another shi longer, let the weaker opponent learn.
A fresh, animal pulse beats between his skin, the ebb and tide of the forest's wind rousing patience and need at once within him, starvation. When Five (briefly, it must be brief, on his tongue, between his teeth) eludes him, Lan Wangji surrenders him with the inevitability that the moon still screams round and long, her light blinds. He will make good pace.
And he pursues, after. Shrubs prickle him, branches whip his skin. In the absence of a core, his stamina lessens, but what he cannot compensate in speed against Five's natural advantage, he coaxes through (Wei Ying's) talismans, casting an array of wards to trap in prey between spiritual walls, should Five step into their radius. ]
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It strikes him with feral certainty: another predator in the line of his horizon, chasing, lusting for, targeting his prey. Five's gaze locks on the tender shifts of motion, and it's Lan Wangji who lunges — a tired, easily unwound arc, unravelled. The creature that answers his assault defies classical biology and its expectations: a wolf by sheer insinuation, its joints and back straddled by a waxy carapace, while its muzzle contracts, deformed only to thickened, blunt, short bones.
They struggle like a sandstorm, destroying each other, hard ground beneath. The animal concedes only when the string-binding talisman of Wei Ying's creation crafts rings and fetters to round its limbs, its back. He does not slay it, but bites futilely in small retaliation, against the back of its nape, until it gives a seismic shudder and yields, resolutely. Good. Good, and so Wangji leaves him with life and the string yet bound for another shi longer, let the weaker opponent learn.
A fresh, animal pulse beats between his skin, the ebb and tide of the forest's wind rousing patience and need at once within him, starvation. When Five (briefly, it must be brief, on his tongue, between his teeth) eludes him, Lan Wangji surrenders him with the inevitability that the moon still screams round and long, her light blinds. He will make good pace.
And he pursues, after. Shrubs prickle him, branches whip his skin. In the absence of a core, his stamina lessens, but what he cannot compensate in speed against Five's natural advantage, he coaxes through (Wei Ying's) talismans, casting an array of wards to trap in prey between spiritual walls, should Five step into their radius. ]
Come here.