"Precisely," Shen Yuan says with an (increasingly admiring!) little nod. (He can't help it okay, Lan Xichen is so smart and, odd as it might be to think about another man over a decade his senior, adorable in how earnestly he approachs everything. He so clearly cares, so much, about so many things, that it makes Shen Yuan want...want...He isn't sure what. Definitely not things he should want with regards to his married best friend's husband, in any case.)

"Arranging society so the cars can be driven safely would be an even greater undertaking than making the cars themselves," he says, ticking off points on his fingers. "There's building safe and durable roads, building a consensus about traffic laws, enforcing those traffic laws...I'm not even sure how we'd do that, with out some sort of centralized constabulary." Shit, does Trench even really need cops??

Let's just indefinitely table that question for now. "Jin-ge really talks about his work in your world," he says instead, with a leading little inquisitive look. "I can understand why, but surely it wasn't all bad...?"

Surely Lan Xichen has some pleasant stories to share about his husband, the great administrator? :3c