"Not- exactly?  Like, I guess it's the closest equivalent but like I said the word it was translating to sounds more like 'farmer', I think we don't quite have your thing and you don't quite have mine- or, sorry, did that just translate back into 'cultivator' again?"

"No, it's translating as our word for people who do agriculture."

"Okay, good, that's what I meant.  I'd offer to demonstrate but I think the good doctor would be annoyed with me, most of the flashy stuff involves moving."

"But if you concentrate on your third dantian about two inches below your navel do you get a sense of the spiritual energy collected there?"

"Nooo...?  Also 'dan tian' isn't translating."

"A dantian is one of the three energy centers where spiritual energy collects. --Huh. I guess you guys have really different techniques, in America?"

"Yeah, sounds like it.  We have a thing I'd call spiritual energy but I mean that like, the energy that comes from spirits, not spirits like ghosts of dead people but like- this is weird to explain, uh, the bit of a tree that you would talk to, if you could talk to a tree?"

Wen Ning nods enthusiastically. 

"Okay, good, you know about those- is the spiritual energy you mean the same sort of thing that they, uh, 'eat'?"

"Well, we don't know how to talk to them," Wen Ning says, "but it seems like the sort of thing that could exist. And plants have spiritual energy, yes."

"Okay, cool.  So it might be the same thing I mean, then, but I don't feel where it collects, I just have kind of a sense of how full or empty I'm running, like you know how tired or hungry you are... I guess hunger's not a great metaphor actually, since it's pretty much located in the stomach."

"Wei-gongzi is going to be so excited."

"He likes doing... magic science?  Or meeting new weird strangers?"

"Wei-gongzi developed an entire new form of cultivation called demonic cultivation!"

Chris has the sudden mental image of little horned demon heads popping up out of the ground like cabbages and has to bite back a laugh.  "That's how he brought you back and how he's dealing with the ghosts?  ...it's translating kinda ominous sounding, dunno if it's meant to."

"Demonic cultivation involves manipulating resentful energy instead of laying ghosts and fierce corpses to rest."

"So there's not really literal demons involved?  That's- or, I guess that's a place the translation got confused- what, uh, sorts of things does it do, aside from putting you back together?  I'm guessing that's the, like, peak ability?"  

They try to scratch the back of their head on the mat again.

"Mostly controlling corpses but Wei-gongzi also made it safe for us to live here in the Burial Mounds."

"Safe like- oh.  I was going to ask why not just lay them to rest, but if he can protect you from the ghosts, and no one else can come here because of the ghosts..."

"Yeah. If we laid the ghosts to rest the Jin would all come kill us."

"Damn.  That's- that's really rough.  I'm sorry."

Chris can see the shape of the other side well enough- necromancer holed up in a spooky ghost fortress doing who knows what- and they have to remember not to believe everything straight off, kicked puppy or no... but this is starting to look like a Strider problem in more ways than one.

"Do you have a way to talk to them?  Or, I guess, anything you'd want to say if you did have a way?"

"Jiang-zongzhu, Wei-gongzi's martial brother, came to visit once but then he and Wei-gongzi fought and Jiang-zongzhu expelled him from the sect. He or Jiang-guniang could maybe visit again? Or Hanguang-jun, he was nighthunting in the area and had dinner with Wei-gongzi once."

That's as many as several names.

"So people come visit you sometimes?  But- reason I ask is my, uh, clan I guess it translates to?  We're messengers.  Wouldn't be as effective here, nobody's gonna recognize the name and know I'm supposed to remain neutral, but if you need to get a letter or whatever to somebody instead of waiting for them to come by, I could maybe help with that.  Once I'm, y'know, discharged or whatever."  They glance in a general Wen Guniang-ward direction.

"Well, not me, I'm an abomination."

"You could still want to write somebody, I wasn't gonna judge!  Although if you or anybody wants to write somebody inclined to take their feelings out on the messenger, 'd appreciate a warning so I can be elsewhere fast."  Chris gives him a small sideways smile.