Also still a fan of hanahaki where the final outcome is you turn into a tree. Maybe it's not hanahaki per se but a variation on that "Lans are cursed to only love once" trope

In Jin Guangyao's treasure room, they find a medical text, written by Wen Qing. That's the name on the cover of the book, anyway.

Sizhui is already there. They've found so many Wen artifacts, it was becoming troublesome to summon him every time. Sizhui has seen Wen medical texts before. There are several, he recalls, in Koi Tower's libraries--he saw them once, when he was twelve. Jin Guangyao had invited Zewu-jun to bring as many junior disciples as he wished, to make copies of Wen texts won in the Sunshot Campaign.

When Lan Wangji finds A-Yuan, the boy is covered in ashes. He doesn't think on it too much. All of the Burial Mounds burned, after all. But when they reach the Cloud Recesses, when they reach safety, the boy is clean. He remembers this a year later, when A-Yuan almost drowns in the cold spring, The water is clear but A-Yuan emerges covered in a gray sludge. There is a smell like a thunderstorm. The watery ash dries, then flakes away, then dissipates.

The ship's alarms had blared for two full days, ever since the broken nav computer whirred to impossible life and punched a hole in the fabric of time and space. They were going to die inside this wormhole, and the ship was going to die screaming. (Their pilot, who had died guiding them to safety, synced with the nav computer for far longer than any living human could bear, had met his end in silence. Now the rest of them would die knowing his sacrifice had been in vain.) If only they had surrendered--but no.

So @clockworkspider and I brainstormed this a while back.

After the siege, JGY comes across A-Yuan when he's searching for WWX's manuscripts and kind of just...automatically comforts this crying child. The fighting is over so no one wants to just. slaughter a toddler.

https://twitter.com/fallenwithstyle/status/1113086105568624641

But no one wants to take responsibility for him either so JGY, as the one who found him and as the one who's always given the cleanup jobs anyway, is stuck with him. He wasn't planning to use him or even keep him at first but then A-Yuan started asking for Uncle Ning.

On Xiao Xingchen's 17th birthday, Song Lan tells him the truth. He hadn't even meant to meet him until now, but Xiao Xingchen, just like in his past life, has a heroic streak and the accompanying lack of self-preservation. Song Lan first saved his life when he was only 12. An awkward introduction for a fierce corpse in a modern era that has relegated creatures like him to fiction, especially when he can't offer any words to explain himself. Eventually, though, Xiao Xingchen accepted him--not as protector, but as a teacher and friend.