"The problem here is less the peasants and more the tens of thousands of people who want to kill us."

"Don't upset my patient, their chi is still shaky."

Her patient seems remarkably unbothered by this fact!  Not pleased about it, but at worst bitterly resigned rather than shocked.  

"Ah.  Yup.  That is way too many people to fight."

"I guess they don't want to kill you, you could go to the Cloud Recesses or something. If you could get there. Maybe you could ask the owls."

"Maybe.  I flop when I get where I'm going if I run straight out, though, you must've seen how I was, so I try to only use it if I know someone at the other end or if I'm sure it'll be safe, which, uh."  They start to shrug, grimace, and think better of it.  "Are you, like, under siege?  How far away is Cloud Recesses, and what is it?

"We're not under siege exactly, it's just that every other cultivator thinks that everyone here should be dead or, in Wen Ning's case, more dead than he is right now. But they haven't really gotten it together to do much about it yet. The Cloud Recesses is where the Lan clan is, they're all into"-- he gestures-- "rules and laws and obedience and shit. But they'd take in a lost barbarian cultivator, hospitality is one of the rules."

"...more dead."  That gets a reaction- heart rate spiking, they shift their weight, ready to bolt, heedless of the tension on the remaining injury.  Energy surges up the Wood meridians as they do- something involving opening up perception, it looks like, holding very still and staring at Wen Ning like a hawk.

Now they have acupuncture needles in the relevant meridians. "Please stay still, you'll make your injuries worse."

Wen Ning is dead! He's some kind of undead Chris has never seen before. He's generally affiliated with preservation, although there's a lot of destruction being held back by the talisman around his neck. 

He's also not very happy with being stared at. 

Flop.

"Sorry.  I- sorry.  Long story."  Chris is putting out a good impression of 'see, I'm calm, look how calm I am' but their heart is still racing.

"You must... get that a lot, huh."

"It's fine. No one really does it because everyone here... knows... I'm dead?"

"Still.  Rude of me."  

It's very hard to be scared of someone with that face but maybe That Is How They Get You and Chris can't move- calm, calm, be a well-behaved patient, he wouldn't need to look like a kicked puppy if they were planning some immediate threat...

"How- uh, I get if it's something you wouldn't want to talk about, no pressure or anything."

"I made the world's first sapient fierce corpse!" He's very excited about this. "Or I guess the first one in China, I don't know what people in America have. I can get into the cultivation details if you want but I'm not sure if our systems even match up and how much theory I'd have to do before you could even understand what I'm doing-- do you know what resentful energy is--"

"No- not by that name anyway, mages might call it something but I don't know any of them to talk to...  we have ghosts and- stuff but nothing quite like him, and I think you get dibs on first regardless."

"What's a mage? We don't have mages. --Resentful energy is the energy given off by the spirits of the dead who stick around Earth, like fierce corpses and ghosts."

"Humans who can do stuff normal humans can't, is the short version, I forget most of the long one."  They tip their head a little, trying to get a better angle on Wei Wuxian.  "So then a fierce corpse is- a body that got back up, but there isn't a person in there?  Uh, normally I mean."

"Yeah, that's basically the situation. And a ghost is a spirit without a body attached, and demons are formed from living humans, and fae are formed from living nonhuman beings, and monsters are formed from dead nonhuman beings. And gods just sort of show up when you start worshiping things which is why you shouldn't venerate anything except your ancestors, it gives them ideas."

The perception surge happens again, although this time Chris is doing a better job of disguising the stare as polite listening attention.  "Huh, I  think either we have different things or we have different names for sorts of things and the translation is getting confused.  Ghosts sound the same but fae don't come from animals... I think, anyway, I guess for all I know they might- and 'monster' is just kinda a bucket for 'I don't know what that is but it's trying to eat me'."

"This is what happens when someone besides me invents talismans. If I invented a talisman it would be much better at translation."

Wei Wuxian is an ordinary human. He's positively glowing with destruction. It is honestly kind of impressive that someone can have that strong of an affinity for destruction and still be alive and a human being. 

Well.

Fuck.

"His thing there is your work, then?"  They glance back over at Wen Ning.  "Sorry, I keep talking about you in third person.  Didn't mean to leave you out."

(Their heart didn't settle down much from the last time but it is pounding right now.)

Her patient is having a spike in yang energy now! She prepares another drink. "Chris needs to rest," Wen Qing says. "If you disturb them, I will ban you from the sickroom."

"Sorry, Wen Qing. I'll be good."

"You'd better."

"But yeah! I woke up Wen Ning myself and attached his spirit back to his body."