"I'm not exactly the kind of spirit you have here," she reminds him. "I need to finish repairing my crystal, and then I'll just be able to restore my previous body and inhabit it. Repairing my crystal is going to take —"

She glances at the countdown clock in the corner of her HUD.

"— a long time, but almost certainly not centuries."

"I know you aren't the local kind of spirit," he says somewhat defensively.  "I just- that's the first impression people are going to have when they see you get a human-shaped form after being a crystal.  We were talking about people's first impressions."

"Oh, I see. I'm sorry — I thought you were expressing surprise that I intended to get a human form, not commenting about how it would appear," she apologizes. "My grasp on your language is good, but obviously still has some gaps."

Jiang Cheng nods to accept the apology.  He considers mentioning that he'd be doing far worse in her place, but can't bring himself to admit that out loud.  Instead, he remains quiet.  In the lull of conversation it's possible to hear the quiet sounds of other cultivators waking up and preparing for the day.

Well, she feels awkward. But a certain amount of that is inevitable.

She watches people get ready for the day, and tries to guess who she should aim to talk with while they travel.

It went about as well as any conversation that Jiang Cheng has when neither Wei Wuxian nor a rigid framework of formality are there to prop it up for him.  Once the other cultivators come in and relieve him of guard duty he politely excuses himself with a quick bow and vanishes into Wei Wuxian's room.

Local magical weapons tend to get attached to a single person.  Without thinking about it, the cultivators are all mentally filing Weeping Cherry in that category.  Thus, it's once again Tong-jie who comes by to sit with her and who offers to carry her once it's time to leave.

"Yes, please," she agrees. "Thank you for carrying me while I'm unable to move myself."

Once they're on the road, she decides to try and get to know Tong-jie better.

"So, I was distracted by Young Master Wei's condition last night, but would you be willing to tell me a bit about yourself, Tong-jie? It seems we should get to know each other if we're to travel together."

Tong-jie unsheathes her own sword and sets it out in front of her.  Rather than falling, it stops to hover just above the ground.  It's narrow and long compared to the others and glows a vivid purple.  She steps onto it and ascends.  As the strongest flier who isn't going to be carrying a human-shaped passenger today, she takes the lead.  Everyone falls into formation behind her like geese.

"Sure!" Tong-jie says, then pauses because she's not entirely sure what about her would be most interesting to Weeping Cherry.

"Well, I'm the third eldest sect sister of our batch of disciples.  My father is the Sect Leader's cousin, and I trained under the same teacher as his children and Wei Wuxian.  I'm planning to be a night hunting cultivator, mostly, and to teach history in between hunts.  I'm engaged to one of the cooks - we'll marry when I'm twenty, so in just over a year.  Uh, and I like plums more than any other fruit."

"What about you?"

Weeping Cherry smiles. It's not visible in any way, but it is audible in her voice.

"My family situation is a little complicated — I'm either the eldest of two siblings, or one of several thousand identical twins, depending how you look at things. In my normal life, I'm a researcher, focused on the study of the fabric of space. I was doing an experiment related to trying to make a box bigger on the inside before I ended up here. I was married, once, but no longer. I was ... let's call it 'courting' ... a few people before I ended up here, but our arrangements didn't include being separated for however long it will take to get back, so for now I'm on my own. My favorite fruit is probably blueberries, which I don't think you have here, but they're a bit like Bilberries. A little sweeter, I think."

"What do you like about history?" she asks. "Or why do you plan to teach it, at least?"

"I've always loved reading through the library's archives.  It seems natural to put all that time to use by teaching what I've learned.  My favorite part is the records of old night hunts, learning about the methods cultivators discovered to handle unusual monsters or curses.

"The several thousand twins would be the 'forks' you mentioned to Wei Wuxian last night?" she guesses.  Tong-jie had been among the ones close enough to hear the conversation.  Her eyebrows still rise at the number.  She'd been imagining perhaps a dozen or so. 

"Boxes - well, bags - that are larger on the inside are common cultivation tools, but I've never really thought about how they work.  I'm sure someone in Lotus Pier can find you a spare to look at and see if what you were doing has anything in common with our way of doing it."

"Ooh! It almost certainly doesn't, but that's actually even better, because having two techniques to compare is a great way to discover more about the underlying mechanics of each!" Weeping Cherry exclaims. "Yes, I would love a chance to get to examine a spare bag."

"And yes — I was referring to my forks. It's ... rather made family reunions and that sort of thing complicated, but I don't regret it. We work really well together, and it was necessary at the time that I forked the first time."

"It's not that I don't think I'd get along with more of myself, but I don't think I'd want to fork.  If it isn't too personal a question, what circumstance required you forking for the first time?"

Weeping Cherry grimaces as she considers how to answer the question, not that anyone can see her face.

"I told you I'm a researcher. Well ... I made a discovery," she settles on. "A way to use special crystals like the one I'm trapped in right now to heal grievous injuries. I used a weakened form of the technique to ease Young Master Wei's pain last night, because that's all I can manage until I finish repairing my crystal. Once I do have it repaired, it's the same technique I'll use to restore my body. But the discovery was also dangerous — any healing technique can also be used to kill, just by making things worse instead of better. So ... at that point, I could have released my discovery to the world and simultaneously released the most dangerous weapon that my world had yet seen. Or I could have sat on the discovery, and used it only to heal those few people I was close to."

She sighs.

"My conscience wouldn't let me take either path. Every person across the whole world who died from that point onward — I could have helped them, if I had been there. So I forked myself. A lot. Enough to handle making more crystals, negotiating with different governments for access, educating people about the discovery. I absolutely don't regret it. As I said, I get on well with myself, and I was able to help a lot more people than just one of me would have been able to. But I do sometimes regret the necessity of forking so much and how it screwed up my interpersonal relationships."

"Yeah, that does sound like a difficult situation to be in.  It was a good thing that you did, finding a way to help everyone."

"I certainly think so," she agrees. "I do intend to do something similar here, once I've managed to repair myself, although the details will probably have to be different since this world is different."

"It will be interesting to see what you decide to do here.  Our local doctors - well, I'm mostly only familiar with the healers that work within cultivation sects.  Outside of them I know that it's a job that both mundane people and rogue cultivators practice."

"Well, it won't be as far reaching, but there are, as you say, some things that mundane people can do without special equipment that I can teach about. For example: do you know about germ theory?"

"No, I only know basic first aid."

Weeping Cherry would nod, if she had a head.

"Alright; the basic idea is actually simple, even though the study of the details can get complex: many diseases are caused by very small monsters called 'germs'. Your body can naturally fight them off, but sometimes it will be overwhelmed or its defenses will be breached, and when that happens the germs get inside you and that's what makes you sick. When they get inside you, the germs feed on your body to multiply and grow new germs until your body manages to fight them off, or they kill you."

"In order to help your body fight against the germs, there are a few things you can do. Avoid going near sick people if you don't need to. If you do need to, wear a cloth on your face to screen out the airborne germs. If you have to touch a sick person, wash your hands with warm soap and water to wash away any germs that manage to get onto your skin. Do the same thing after using the bathroom, after handling dirty materials, and before handling food. If you need to touch someone who's particularly vulnerable, like a new mother and baby, wash your hands beforehand — a small number of germs that are no problem for your healthy body could still overwhelm them. If you get a cut, wash it out and bandage it. Your skin is a protective wall that contributes to keeping germs out; when there's a breach in it, your body has to work extra hard to hold back the germs, so it's better to protect the cut until your body can seal it."

"There are obviously more details that my people have learned over time, such as putting together a bestiary of the different types of germ, finding medicines that kill them, figuring out how to get your body's germ-fighting system training against weakened germs so that it can rebuff stronger ones, and so on. But that basic idea that I just told you? The idea that you should wash your hands before touching a new mother and baby? When we figured that out in my world, we cut early childhood deaths by 90%. Out of every 10 babies who would have died, 9 lived. I don't know if telling people the same thing will be quite as effective here — at that time, our cities were pretty dirty, which didn't help — but it will definitely help a lot."