"I am attending," he corrects, in the way of disciples and chamber servants, of handmaids learning the trickery of the mistress' hair, dark silk in filigree. Water drop-drips-drowns Wei Ying's cheeks, film and sheen of sweat and rising warmth diffusing the horizon. Easy prey for a matchmaker, this Yiling Patriarch, when he does not hiss and claw.

A palm's width between them, but Wei Ying looks viscera of oil and ink stains, a sketched confusion of timid lines. Tired, where flesh absent the reining of a golden core stays lax and thinned — worn. Human, for the weedy tumble of his hair, rounding, sinking the red of his ribbon.

Owlishly, Lan Wangji watches, considers — remembers enough of war strategy to collect the bowl of barely thickened plant ash beside him, thick clump between his fingertips — then, politely sits the bridge of his palm on Wei Ying's nape, dunking him head-first in the barrel's pool.

At the last moment, his grip eases, dragging Wei Ying up by the neck as if he were a feline and a miscreant, barely his hair dunked, skin spared the pink chips of scalding — while slush of soot spans and stretches in viscous webs between Lan Wangji's fingertips. He spreads it at the sight-glanced halfway of Wei Ying's tresses, catching the hair curtain between his palms, and scrubbing vigorously in lines horizontal, in what some might be tempted to liken to —

"Tell me of the spirits."

— laundering Wei Ying's hair, as he has seen the women of the convoy perform with gusto each morning, by the well and pond-side.