i was staggering my way through trying to translate thousand autumns earlier today and the descriptions of martial arts & cultivation in that novel are really beautiful, but it also has me thinking about the lan clan --- their founder was buddhist and it’s obviously influencing some of their conduct ( not eating meat, and there’s at least one reference to the buddha amitabha ) and the sect’s rules are very confucian in modeling a particular kind of behavior. so along with the daoist cultivation, they’re quite ... well-versed? but thousand autumns has this kind of integration of different philosophies as an innovative thing to do and i can see that being an attitude from the different sects towards the lan clan, too, and something that sets them apart from the others besides just “oh they’re strict on their disciples.”