The blacksmith turns around at the noise of something small landing on the floor behind him. 

He picks it up with large hands and turns it around, admiring the luster.  He doesn't recognize it - not it specifically, nor even what type of gem it is.  Perhaps his apprentice had seen the rich gold-brown leather he was planning to use for the sheath and grip of his next sword and found something to match it that had been forgotten in a back corner of the storeroom?  The boy had a good eye for finding things that others missed, but sometimes forgot that he was exceptional in this way and tended to leave things in strange places as a result.  He must have set it down precariously on the edge of the counter rather than with the other materials.  If it hadn't happened to fall to the floor, the smith might have missed spotting it until after the sword was already complete!  He shakes his head, puts it in a more reasonable place, and continues his work. 

In no time at all the sword is finished.  A fine blade in a sheath embossed with patterns of twirling vines.  Matching vines in polished copper decorate the pommel, and within them is a particularly lovely golden crystal. 

It is impossible to tell how much time has passed, exactly. The fixity crystal's processors are running on the trace amounts of power the fragmented generators can scrape together, and that means that their clocks are not perfectly reliable.

So it is ... some time later, that Weeping Cherry figures out what's going on with the local microscopic structure of space time, and recompiles the fixity crystal's structure to take advantage of it. She is able to leverage one actuator into fixing another, and then that one can start slowly replacing the structure of the rest of the crystal with something adapted to local physics.

Eventually, she gets one of the actuators on the surface of her crystal fixed, and finds it adjacent to a bunch of refined metal.

She slowly works her way around, until she finds a part of her surface that isn't obstructed. She grabs a fragment of incoming light, and throws it up on her virtual screen.

What do her surroundings look like now?

She is at the front of a blacksmith's shop.  The shop seems to specialize in bladed items in general and swords in particular.  Other finished and decorated weapons are hung to either side of hers, while others line the table below.

Immediately in front of her and taking up much of her view is a group of young men, Chinese in appearance and wearing old fashioned robes and long hair in topknots.  They are examining the displayed weapons, some merely with admiration but others with consideration to potentially buy one.

... huh.

"In a sword" was not on her "where will I end up after a dangerous experimental failure" bingo card.

She still hasn't got a huge range, because her crystal is still mostly not adapted, but she prioritizes building out a bit more of the uncovered surface actuator until she can see air molecules whizzing past and get sound.

What are the young men saying?

"...not sure if it's worth getting one of the decorated ones," one argues.  "Its the blade that's the important part."

"It is, but why get only the bare minimum?  Are you going to eat nothing but plain rice, too?  And it's not like you can't afford it, Meng-xiong."

The first one - Meng-xiong, apparently - looks skeptical.  "Maybe if they had one that matched my robes more closely.  The only green one has the wrong pattern and isn't even the right shade.  Let's go back to that first display."

"Go ahead.  I'm going to get something that'll impress girls."  His attention is focused on a sword about a foot to Weeping Cherry's left.  After a few moments he calls out to the shopkeeper, "How much for the red one there?"

This starts a haggling session.

Why are they speaking Mandarin?

That's actually the most surreal thing, here. Other universes? Sure. Human-looking aliens running on alternate physics? Why not. But for them to be speaking a language she recognizes is just bizarre.

After a moment she shakes her head, and throws in on her growing backlog of questions.

She grabs a little bit of air and shakes it. The small volume makes her voice come out somewhat tinny.

"Er, excuse me. Would one of you young gentlemen tell me where I am, please?"

This results in the absolute confusion of everyone within earshot.  No one seems to recognize where the voice is coming from.  The first response is an inelegant "...what?" echoed by several patrons, then, "the Swordsmith's shop?"

"Yes, hello, I'm over here," she replies, twinkling a little so that they have something visual to focus on. 

"Sorry, I meant more generally. The last thing I remember is being in my laboratory, which I'm fairly sure is in a different world. So ... a swordsmith's shop? In a city, presumably?"

The more fearful patrons have made their way to the door and away, one screaming about haunted swords. 

"Yes.  Jiuzi City," the shopkeeper clarifies.  "In China, and within the mortal realm," he clarifies, just in case the sword wants a more general answer.

"Thank you, that's very helpful," she replies.

She considers clarifying that she isn't haunted, but ...

Well, there are no radio waves that the can see here. And nobody has any electronic technology on them that she can spot either. So announcing that she is the uploaded mind of a human, trapped inside a crystal ... well, the difference between that and 'haunted' is probably splitting hairs.

"And I'm sorry about scaring your customers — I don't mean any harm, it's just a confusing way to wake up, suddenly being a sword."

The shopkeeper bows deeply.  "I am terribly sorry about this!  We hadn't known, and had intended no offense."

"I am not offended in the slightest," she reassures him. "If it came as a surprise to me, I cannot see how you could have known better. It would be quite rude of me to blame you for something outside your control."

She briefly contemplates whether she can return his bow somehow, but she really can't do much more than twinkle at the moment.

"In my world, I was a scholar," she continues. "And I'm quite sure that I will be able to fix this accident eventually. In the meantime, I'm not uncomfortable, or anything. Are haunted swords a common problem, around here?"

"They're not much more common than any other haunted item."

"And how common are haunted items generally? Common enough to be known and easily identified, I suppose."

She makes a considering sort of humming sound (since she can't exactly make facial expressions).

"You mentioned we're in China — will I have to fill in immigration paperwork, do you think? Or are there other laws that apply to haunted items?"

She's sort of hoping that they have an existing framework that she can slot herself into in such a way that she stops scaring people by talking. Her fixity crystal's repair timeline is still full of question marks, but she's probably looking at months of wait, at the least, and it would be really boring not to be able to interact with people and learn a little about this world in that time.

"Common enough, but they aren't usually able to speak.  I've never heard of paperwork done by - or on behalf of - a haunted item, though I suppose that cultivators must keep records."

Here he pauses, with the expression of one who is trying to find a phrasing for something which has the potential to cause offense if spoken badly.  "It is rare for ghosts to remain for long enough to possess something without being angry enough that their main interest is in lashing out.  Or so I have heard.  This humble shopkeeper is no expert on hauntings."

Ah, that makes more sense why people were scared. She's momentarily puzzled by the idea that farmers would keep better records of haunted items, before she glances at the translation breakdown and sees that the shopkeep said "練氣者" (qi cultivator) not "耕耘者" (cultivator in the sense of farmer).

"Oh! I see! That makes perfect sense," she agrees. "But as I hope you can tell, I am not angry. My workshop has ... had, I suppose ... had precautions that were intended to keep me alive in case something went terribly wrong with one of my experiments. The last failsafe was supposed to temporarily hold my mind in a crystal until it could heal my body. Only — this is just a fragment of the crystal, and it's not working properly, which is why I was surprised to wake up like this."

"Anyway — while other ghosts may need to hold onto their anger in order to haunt things, I do not. I am content, and have no need or intention of lashing out," she reassures him.

Meanwhile, just down the street, Jiang Cheng is carrying Wei Wuxian to the inn.  

This trip is going faster than his first trip from Mount Muxi to Lotus Pier, but it still feels like it’s dragging.  Neither he nor Wei Wuxian are able to fly right now.  The disciples who came with him to look for Wei Wuxian can, but they had expended most of their energy on the trip to find him, and having to carry passengers is tiring at the best of times.  So they stop frequently.

There is a nearby shout about a haunted sword by the guy who had run off early on.

Wei Wuxian stirs.  “What haunted sword?  Jiang Cheng, turn around.  We should go help.”

“Wei Wuxian!  Do you really think we’re in any position to fight anything right now?”

“But someone might get hurt if we do nothing.”  He wriggles, becoming unbalanced and nearly causing Jiang Cheng to fall over, then gets free.  His leg has been well bandaged and he can use cultivation to keep walking on it, which means it’s practically not injured at all.  There is only a bit of a limp in his step as he runs toward the commotion.

There’s a small crowd in front of one of the shops.  He pushes his way to the front.  

"Actually, I'm sorry, I've been terribly rude. My name is Weeping Cherry. May I ask your name, good shopkeep? You've been very helpful."

"It has been an unusual occasion," he says, then bows again as part of a proper introduction.  "I am Qiu Ling.  It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

"And yours," Weeping Cherry agrees.

"Tell me, do you smith swords here, or resell them? In either case, I would want to make sure you are not inconvenienced by the fact that it is one of your swords that I have found myself in. I don't have any money at the moment, of course, but I could repay you for the materials once I do," she suggests. "Maybe I could try busking ..." she adds in a thoughtful voice.

There. Hopefully that should thread the needle between making sure that the shopkeep is neither harmed by her arrival, nor has incentive to try and sell her, while also establishing her as more of a person and owner of herself than an object.

Maybe.

Weeping Cherry has never been great at these sorts of things, and trying to do them in a foreign culture is maybe a little foolish. But she wants to try, because it is going to be a long time until her crystal is repaired, and it's better to spend that time doing and learning things than hanging on the wall of a shop.

"My brother smiths most of our swords. It is a kind offer, but unnecessary.  I could not bring myself to accept payment in such a circumstance, when you didn't ask to have a sword attached to you."

"I am more concerned with how to see to your, ah, comfort?  Can you move under your own power?  I know much about the care of normal weapons, but nothing of spirits and magic."