"Well, we did have our own problems," Shen Yuan has to allow. "Overuse of meng huo you and coal did a great deal of damage to the environment; in the city where I was born, the air itself was so badly polluted that people often found it necessary to mask themselves before going outdoors. Our leaders were trying to fix the problem, but..." He shrugs, not wanting to get into the question of whether it would go anywhere or prove to be too little, too late.

"Is this young miss someone I'd know?" he asks curiously. There were several outspoken young ladies on the network, of varying levels of notoriety. Another reason to respect Lan Xichen: he never looked down on them for their gender or judged them for taking up space in the public sphere.