part two of this because i can’t shut the fuck up
lwj despite what he appears on the outside, genuinely loves & cares for his entire sect, the juniors, his family, etc. it’s something he’s learned more over the years & honestly i can definitely see in my mind, lwj taking lan sizhui in & wanting to provide him with a good life, with as much love as he could while still raising him with the morals of the gusu lan sect.
part of it is obviously the fact that lan sizhui was born wen yuan & his involvement with wwx & the yiling burial mounds in general i’m sure put him in danger. both actual physical & to an extent mental with how he would surely be treated. ( at least, with the reputation wwx currently has, not so much back before .. everything. ) so instinctively lwj was doing what was the most safe for him, looking after lan sizhui himself. not to mention lan sizhui’s condition when he found him !
the other part however, i definitely think that part of him saw this child that had already endured so much & genuinely didn’t want to see him grow up without a parental figure in his life. while lwj had qiren it definitely wasn’t the same, as i explained in the first part. along with the fact that lwj already cared about him from their past meetings when wwx was alive & everything, it just really made for a decision he never thought twice about.
as an adult though lwj just ? i think does understand love more now, but his thoughts have changed so much & while he still for the most part follows the rules. he is led more by his own moral compass in a sort of chaotic good standpoint as opposed to his previous unwavering lawful good.
so with that being said, he’s very slightly more casual about it, which even that is such a big change from how he once was. it isn’t quite as scary when you’ve already endured the worst of it. i,e. watching it rip apart your family, lan xichen being gone after the gusu lan sect burned, his father’s passing, so many of his fellow cultivators dying, waiting for thirteen years for someone that he thought frankly never would of returned. ( lwj never would’ve thought wwx to be one to possess someone else’s body maliciously, which is a Whole Other Meta to come honestly. )
basically now he’s just fiercely protecting what he has.