Fool's gambit: what Wei Ying has weaponised for decades, he can deflect. It strikes him, with forlorn inevitability, that this is why a master's tricks should not be turned against him, until they have been altered by innovation. Recognisable, they can only serve him. Lan Wangji rolls more than retreats, half worm and half man, and wholly, torturously clear-eyed that the next strike might well taste skin.

Wei Ying's sword cleaves beside him, too close to neck and shoulder and deep in the stab wound it deals waiting ground, thudded and slow, too weighted. This is not Qinghe, but Wei Ying has turned butcher, and he will pay for it — the weight he can never recover a disservice, when he must collect his sword again. It bides Lan Wangji breath, time.

Smear of flush on his cheeks, he comes to stand, dust swirled and heated at his feet, and he heaves, animalistic and vain, and next Wei Ying passes by him — close, too close — he does not parry, or seize, but simply catches Wei Ying, arms rounded and strapped over his chest and back.

He does not intend to slam them both against the nearest wall — barely remembers, at the last moment, to rotate them, so Wangji's core-defended body can absorb the better part of the offensive momentum. Hissing, he relinquishes Wei Ying to slam into the marble for the last of the impact.

...when he laughs, it's a strange, acrid thing, lung-splitting. He coughs too knife-like around it to curb the sound.

"Like... that."

Claim the kill. Slipping down the wall, mouth infected with mute laughter, he's too amused with his own wit to fight it.