The Mo Incense Burner (獏香炉, Mò Xiāng Lú) is a magical tool found in the Cloud Recesses. [1]
Description[]
The incense burner has the appearance of a magical creature: its face displays an elephant’s nose and a rhinoceros' eyes, while its body is that of a bear, its tail of an ox, its legs like a tiger. Its stomach contains the incense burner.[1]
People who use the incense burner are able to enter each other's dreams. There is no official recording of the effects of the incense burner in the Lan family's Library Pavilion. Wei Wuxian speculates it was made by a master for either cultivation or amusement purposes.[1] Although he has taken it apart and put it back together again, Wei Wuxian cannot discover how the incense burner worked.
As all the dreams depicted in the novel are past dreams, it is uncertain if lucid dreaming is possible, or if the incense burner merely carries its users into past dreams.
Use[]
Under the influence of the Mo Incense Burner, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji enter each other's dreams. Lan Wangji is able to determine that whatever is happening is not happening in the real world because Wei Wuxian appears the same as he did during his first lifetime.[1]
Lan Wangji enters Wei Wuxian's dream first, revealing that Wei Wuxian dreams of their life together after retiring from the cultivation world. In this dream, Wei Wuxian farms land, while Lan Wangji weaves cloth and takes care of their home. Wei Wuxian warns Lan Wangji that the dream always ends when they prepare to take their clothes off for a bath, and indeed the dream ended at that exact moment.[1]
Wei Wuxian then enters Lan Wangji's dream – a dream of a sexual encounter between the two of them at age fifteen, during the time Wei Wuxian was punished to copy the Lan Clan's rules in the Library Pavilion. Wei Wuxian notes that Lan Wangji has made some creative changes to the real events, including changing the pornography book to the male-on-male variety.[1]
The next evening, a third dream occurs. Wei Wuxian finds Lan Wangji dreaming of the time he begs Lan Xichen to allow him to keep the rabbits given to him by Wei Wuxian. When Wei Wuxian appears in the dream, the younger Lan Wangji does not remember that they have been cultivation partners. As Lan Wangji is confused by Wei Wuxian's older appearance, Wei Wuxian lies that he has time-traveled back to this period and proceeds to tease him further. In the end, Wei Wuxian is amused to the point that he wakes up from laughing so hard.[2]
During the fourth and final dream, Wei Wuxian meets Lan Wangji after the events of the Xuanwu of Slaughter cave. At this time, Lan Wangji is about seventeen or eighteens years old and teaching a classroom full of other students. He is disturbed by Wei Wuxian’s flute-playing, but no one else is able to hear it. Wei Wuxian lures him away from he students and seduces him before suggesting another, naughtier use for Bichen.[2]
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Novel, Chapter 117
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Novel, Chapter 119