Wen Ning is trying to plant turnips while thinking to himself optimistically that dead bodies contain lots of nutrients and are probably great fertilizer, when a person falls onto his turnip patch. 

It... doesn't seem like they're in good condition, even for a cultivator. The number of injuries looks very worrying. Wen Ning would feed them some spiritual energy but, well. 

Fortunately he's still very strong. Wen Ning picks them up and carries them to Wen Qing.

The person in his turnip patch sure is injured!  They seem to have gotten in a fight with something large and toothy and then fallen down a mountain, or possibly vice versa.  Aside from the blood they're pretty weird and foreign-looking, about his age, tall and lanky with short green hair, wearing a heavy pack in some odd scratchy fabric. 

They stir a little and mumble something incomprehensible when he lifts them, curling around their worse side.  Then their eyes close and they go quiet, still breathing hard and fast but otherwise lost to the world.

Wen Ning has not heard of any monsters or demons or gods that have green hair. On the other hand, he also hasn't heard of any humans that have green hair, and green hair is more likely to be a trait of monsters or demons or gods than of humans.

On the other hand, this person is definitely hurt, and Wei-gongzi can kill anything. 

Wen Ning carries her to Wen Qing. 

"...a-Ning, what do you have?"

"A... person? Demon? She fell from the sky. She's hurt."

"She's dangerous! Random people falling from the sky onto the Burial Mounds are dangerous! We'd be lucky if the Lanling Jin clan sent her instead of something worse."

"All right, a-Ning, I'll treat her, but when she kills us all you know who's going to take responsibility for this? Not me."

When she takes a look at her patient's chi, what does she see?

This is... probably not a human.

There's a lot of internal force there, more than anyone not a cultivator would have, but it hasn't formed into a proper golden core.  There's a nasty blockage around the heart, slowing the circulation- that combined with blood loss from half a dozen gashes and a couple of crush injuries should have killed a normal human once or twice over.  (Most of the injuries also seem to have only affected living flesh and not clothes- they're a little scuffed up, but blood is soaking through undamaged fabric.)  But despite that, and despite physical symptoms that would indicate a chi deficiency born of exhaustion, her patient is... stable?  Gasping for breath and semiconscious but not actively attempting to die on her, at least not yet.

Not human, but their systems look human enough that Wen Qing thinks she'll be able to help. Not a cultivator, but it seems like they're doing something similar. Wen Qing has heard that people outside China don't cultivate. Perhaps this is how the barbarians use their chi. 

Wen Qing feeds them some chi while she prioritizes the situation. Not dying on her is not that strange, if they're some kind of barbarian cultivator. Their injuries will need to be cleaned and dressed and have dit da jow applied, of course. They have a deficiency of blood because of their wounds, and a deficiency of yin in the heart organ, which in combination have left them unconscious; she should inspect the heart meridian more carefully to make sure it's in order. She'll need to set the bones, but with her patient so weak that's likely to do more harm than good. Ideally, she'd apply moxibustion to strengthen her patient's yang chi so it can heal the injuries, but that risks a critical imbalance with the patient's heart yin chi so low.   

How does her patient respond to the chi?

Her patient's eyes flicker open when she starts the chi flow, don't quite manage to focus, and slide closed again.  Gradually their breathing gets steadier and their color a little better; they stir a fraction and make a small pained noise.

"Get Uncle Four, I'll need him to feed her chi while I work."

Once Uncle Four is set up to feed them chi, Wen Qing cleans and dresses their wounds and applies the dit da jow. When a person is injured, chi is blocked in their meridians, which causes pain and swelling. The da dit jow allows the chi to flow freely, which speeds up healing. 

(They're wearing tight trousers in a sturdy workmanlike fabric and four layers of shirts- two open in front and one that pulls over the head in shades of blue and purple, and a very tight sparkly inner layer that would be a pain to get off without cutting.)

The peripheral meridians respond if anything faster than expected, but the blockage at the heart eases only a tiny bit, letting the barest trickle of chi through.  Looking closely, it's at exactly the spot where minimum effort produces maximum disruption of the healing process, and it's stubborn, rather as though it was set there deliberately. 

The donated chi is doing a quick job at clearing up the exhaustion side of the problem, at least- their limbs stop trembling, their breathing settles to the rhythm of a laborer at a steady pace rather than a man saved from drowning, their eyes open more often and focus better.  Inconveniently, they're also stirring and mumbling nonsense and trying to sit up and get off the table well before this is actually a good idea.

No, they aren't, because they have an acupuncture needle to several key meridians now.

That sure does stop them from getting off the table!  Also their breathing and heart are getting a bit faster.

"Uncle Four, please feed them only yin chi, thank you." Wen Qing keeps one eye on her patient and begins to prepare a herbal formulation. She's not sure precisely what's going on with this barbarian cultivator, so she'll start with a basic warm/bitter herbal formulation that gently strengthens the heart meridian.

They calm back down some after nothing more alarming happens for a bit, although they'd be pretty tense if they had voluntary muscle control.

The blockage is maybe loosening up a little?  Not enough to make an immediate difference, barely enough to detect, but it might clear out if that trend continued long enough.

"Hello," she says to the barbarian cultivator in her most soothing voice, "can you understand me? I'm a doctor and I'm trying to help. I need you to drink this." 

Her patient doesn't seem to recognize the words, but her tone comes across, and it's not hard to guess what a cup held up to one's face is for; they hesitate, then drink, watching her warily and grimacing at the taste. 

A somewhat stronger flow of chi seeps its way past the blockage as the drug takes effect, a substantial fraction of what a healthy adult should have instead of the bare minimum survivable.

"That's good," she says, "that's good, you're doing really well." More confident in her approach, she places some acupuncture needles where she suspects they'll loosen up the chi blockage.

It does loosen: slowly at first, then faster, then bursting like a broken dam at the last needle.  That is a lot of pent-up yang chi, going very fast- they gasp, head jerking back and stiffening as much as possible.  The visible scrapes and bruises start healing fast enough to see.

She's going to keep an eye on that for now. She prepares an herbal remedy that will lower the amount of yang chi if necessary. 

"A-Ning, please go get me Wei Wuxian and tell him I need a languages talisman."

Whatever kind of demon or cultivator this is, it's apparently a kind that heals fast.  The cracked bones and claw marks mend in less time than it takes to drink a cup of tea, all except the deepest and angriest of the gashes- running from the right side of the neck down the back to the left hip, torn and ragged rather than a clean slice.

They flop back to bonelessness, taking slow deliberate breaths, and say something that might from the tone be 'thank you'.

"Hello! I heard that someone fell out of the sky! Do I need to commit murder?"

"No, a languages talisman would be fine."

Once it's applied, she says: "Hello, I'm Wen Qing. I'm your doctor. Can you tell me your name?"

"Chris- uh, Wrong Mountain?  Where... am I?"

"You're on the Burial Mounds, in Yiling, in China. I think you're from very far away." She's trying to see how lucid her patient looks.  

"Oh.  Yeah, I'm from the United States.  Uh, I wasn't trying to get here, sorry."  They're glancing around at everyone (and occasionally at random points in the room), looking confused but alert, if still rather tired.  "Thank you for- whatever it was you did. And finding me."

They're from... a set of unified countries?

She can't, obviously, determine Chris's level of awareness by figuring out if Chris knows where and when they are; they obviously don't know where they are, and the barbarian cultivators likely have a different time system even if Chris wasn't thrown forward from the past. "Can you tell me where you are and why you're here right now?"

"Uh, a doctor's house in... did you say Yi Ling?"  They hesitate a while longer than is polite, glancing around the room again, then offer her a crooked smile.  "Why I'm here, like, philosophically, I could give you some wild guesses, but if you mean why am I here instead of where I was going, a storm blew me off course- I think I hit my head at some point, 's kinda blurry after that.  I remember that guy, though."  They angle their head slightly toward Wen Ning.

"I've put needles into your meridians to keep you still. If I remove them, will you promise to stay still so you don't make your injuries worse?"

"A storm? What kind of storm? Were you flying on your sword? There weren't any storms around here. Why are you from Unified Countries? Where are the Unified Countries? Should I get a map and have you point to them?"

"I can stay put- I'm fine though, mostly, can I sit up at least?"  They blink at Wei Wuxian for a moment.  "I don't... have a sword?  I would say I could show you on a world map but if you haven't heard of the United States I think I got thrown a lot farther than I thought I did... how does the translation thingy work, it told me 'China' but if it's picking the closest match for proper nouns why would it do that in one direction and not the other?  Unless it's just being too literal, if I said 'America' does that translate?"

She removes the acupuncture needles. "You can sit up but if I tell you to lie down you have to do what I say."

"'America' translates as, uh, that place we got potatoes and corn from originally, the one with all the forests. It picks the closest concept but it's pretty literal most of the time, I wouldn't recommend reading poetry with a languages talisman. --Okay, so, you're from America, I guess cultivators in America don't fly on swords? What do you fly on?"

"Following directions, yes ma'am."  They nod and sit up, grimacing and trying to find the way that uses their back the least.  "Personally I just run really fast but- 'cultivators' is translating as, like, 'people who farm', but farmers mostly ride around on tractors, and it doesn't sound like that's what you mean anyway..." 

Chris takes another look around the room from a less horizontal and more lucid vantage point.  "So uh.  Potatoes and corn checks out but 'forests' isn't the first thing I'd think of- I maybe am from the future.  Or I guess a different world?  I have no idea how to tell which."

"Cultivators meditate and train to build up a core of spiritual energy which they can use to be stronger and tougher and more agile, and fly on swords, and use talismans, and perform musical cultivation, and battle fierce corpses, and do cool jump things."

"Huh, okay.  I can do- some of those things.  Are fierce corpses what they sound like?  No idea about the spiritual energy part, though.  There are probably some people where I'm from who do all that as a batch but I don't know any to talk to."  They rub absently at an owl pendant on a bracelet and take a slow breath.  "Is the acupuncture a cultivation thing too?"

"No, that's just medicine. It's easier if you can sense spiritual energy but you can do it either way."

Chris nods.  "This is, uh, kind of a weird question but are there rules about who can go to China?"

"Uh. No? How would that even work? I guess we don't get many barbarians except near the border."

"There are where I'm from, I was worried I might've accidentally broken them... uh, there's a couple ways it works, I can ask Owl to help me pick the best route but most people can't, and it gets easier to keep an eye on the most likely places somebody might cross the border once travel gets faster.  And then also I think the foxes set a ward or something that tells them when people enter an area?  I dunno, I never tried myself yet, I just know people say don't try it unless you're- with... somebody.  Fuck."  They press a hand to their mouth and squeeze their eyes shut.

"Uh, we don't have any of that, and also we don't have owl demons or fox demons."

" 'S not a demon-"  Chris takes another couple of deep breaths and scrubs a hand across their eyes.  "Sorry.  I just- anyway.  Sorry.  Might be- translating weird?  Have you got foxes who turn into people and get- married or whatever and then leave on mysterious fox business, that's the kind I mean."

"Uh, I haven't heard of that happening but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen, there are kind of a lot of things in the world."

Chris laughs bitterly.  "A lot more than I thought this morning, which is so much more than I thought two years ago- or uh. However many years from now."  They scratch at the back of their neck.

"Are you keeping your whole thing secret from regular people, actually?  Should I be careful when I go outside?"

"No, the peasants know we're here, although I wouldn't step off the mountain if I were you unless you have me or Wen Ning as a guard."

Tiny wave!

Wave back!  Along with a sincere if slightly shaky smile.

"I can take care of myself in a fight- not great at scaring people off, I guess, and it wouldn't be fair of me to fight random people who're just scared for their sheep or whatever.  Decently sneaky, though, and like I said I'm fast, if someone was trying to hit me with a pitchfork I could just run away."

"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."

"--oh, wait, I just remembered that people in America probably don't know how etiquette works. I call them Wen Ning and Wen Qing. You call them Wen Qionglin and Wen-guniang. I'm just Wei Wuxian."

He would blush if he weren't dead and therefore incapable of blushing.

"Wen Qionglin, Wen Guniang, Wei Wuxian," Chris tries.  They've maybe heard of the concept of tones but can't reliably hear or reproduce them.  Or for that matter vowels. 

(If this is the first vampire- well, he can't be, if any of the stories are right, not when they've got steel and pottery and paper by now, and if none of the stories are right-  focus.  Whatever the weird ancient Chinese not-mages are up to has already happened and Chris can't do anything about it until they can move.)

"So then people were all like 'the dead should stay dead'-?  Or, we can talk about something less stressful..." They glance in the vague direction of the mixing sounds, although they can't quite get Wen Qing in their field of vision.  "Where'd you learn medicine?"

"I should do a talisman that teaches you how to talk right." He grabs a piece of paper and starts to sketch out notes. 

"Um, well, the Wen clan declared war on the other four major clans and lost. So they wanted to kill all of us and brought us to a forced-labor camp and-- I died-- and Wei-gongzi got angry and rescued all of us and took us to the Burial Mounds. Well, not me, because I was dead. Then he brought me back to life, which I'm very grateful for." 

"Oh.  Fuck.

I'm so sorry."

"Well, I'm alive now, sort of, so... I guess it worked out fine?"

"That's-"  Chris just barely bites their tongue on 'that's not fine actually'- you do not argue with somebody that they should be more upset, not when they're closer to the thing than you (and anything any of them say could be misleading or an outright lie)...

"Well.  I'm- very glad you're not there anymore."

"Me too. Uh. I guess by default I'm the person answering questions?"

"Drink this, please, it will be calming. --Can you explain to me how healing works for barbarian cultivators?"

what if they don't WANT to be calmer  "Is it going to make my head fuzzy?  And normally it just- happens without you directing it, I guess unless it's bad enough you die before you can start.  Anyway I've never had something heal this slow since- since I started, uh, cultivating, I don't know what's up with that."

(The last gash is in fact healing a bit faster than it would for a normal human, although slower than even a mediocre cultivator.)

"You have a blockage in your heart meridian. Do you know what could be causing that? --You presently have an excess of yang energy and it should reduce the amount of yang energy. It shouldn't make you sleepy, it's not a painkiller." 

That is probably an appropriate amount of objecting for a well-behaved patient; Chris will drink the potion.

"Oh- yeah, that sounds like- one of the guys who was chasing me.  I've, uh, seen it before."  Done it before, except it keeps not working, and it is seriously unfair of the universe for people who steal your powers to be better at them than you are.  "I think it usually wears off eventually?"

"All right, I'll keep an eye on things but not worry too much."

She does not remove the needles.

Reasonable of her.  Frustrating and frightening, but reasonable.

Chris does actually calm down a bit; not that the situation is any less concerning, but having the physical symptoms damped down almost makes it easier to think clearly, like the opposite of caffeine jitters.  (The yang excess subsides, although not by quite as much as it ought to.)  In theory it should be possible to work together- "Combat the Wyrm" is pretty clear as commandments go but if you can cooperate with vampires on a larger goal... well.  Except 'I, personally, don't die' is the exact opposite of a larger goal.  Whatever's going on with the not-a-siege might be, but they've only heard one side of the story so far and it's the necromancy side.  Which leads straight back to 'get out'.

If there aren't any shifters here, Chris has the advantage of surprise with any abilities they won't be expecting- any they can use while paralyzed, anyway.  If there are shifters and they're hiding- well, Chris will still have surprise on their side, and then they'll trade 'captured/rescued by inexplicably nice necromancers' for 'chased by angry kitsune.'  Or whatever kitsune are called when they're in China.  Is it racist to not know that if the two kitsune fox shifters you know best are Chinese but they go by 'kitsune' in America?

...what to call them is not the main problem here.  Focus.  If the not-mages know about shifters the fast healing would have been a dead giveaway, so either they don't know or they're very good at not reacting and doing some kind of long game, so either way the plan should probably be 'play nice and wait until nightfall'.  Which is definitely not just motivated by wanting a nap now the adrenaline has mostly worn off or had magic done to it.  (But it's probably a good idea anyway, except for the part about being asleep around strangers of unknown motives, whatever Wen-guniang did stopped Chris from passing out but they did still run... some number of marathons yesterday.  Or today.  Or a thousand years from now.)

"I can still answer questions if you have any, Chris-guniang."

"Um, sure- how do talismans work?  If it's not secret."

"I was never really good at cultivation theory, that's Wei-gongzi's field. You write certain runes and they are charged with spiritual energy? But you have to do them very precisely or it doesn't work, which is why the clans study calligraphy."

"Huh, okay."  That sounds... well, it sounds like fictional wizards, at least.  Chris is really starting to wish they'd learned all the old stories they could find as soon as they got over having fur.

"So- again, no pressure if it's, uh, the obvious reason, but.  Why are there so many ghosts here?"

"It was once a battlefield that was full of resentful energy-- I think people also threw their old corpses here instead of burying them properly-- and the resentful energy attracted ghosts and fierce corpses, which made there be more resentful energy, so it attracted more ghosts and fierce corpses, and now no one can live here without Wei-gongzi's help."

"So he's laying them to rest?  ...do you even help fierce corpses to rest, or do you just hit them in the head a lot, we don't have them where I'm from. Not real ones, anyway."

"You don't have fierce corpses? What happens to dead people with unfinished business?"

"Stick around as ghosts, mostly.  Or it just... doesn't get finished.  That's probably more of it, really, everybody's got something they're not done with."

"Well, yes, Chris-guniang, that's why cultivators have jobs."

"Oh, sure, but there's a lot more people dying than there are- of us, they can't all become ghosts or we'd be ten times as swamped as we already are."  They shift slightly, trying to scratch the back of their head against the mat.  "I think some people just... are ready to move on when the time comes, finished or no."

"I guess it depends on what you mean by unfinished business?" Wen Qionglin says hesitantly. 

"Yeah, maybe.  Or it could be something totally weird, like, more atheists means more people don't expect to be able to come back and haunt shit, which makes them less... sticky? I dunno exactly, I don't think anyone's, like, studied why some people come back and some don't."

"That word isn't translating." He makes a fair attempt to pronounce 'atheist.'

"Oh, people who don't believe in gods- or like, I was using it to mean that sort of thing generally, I think if somebody believes in ghosts and magic but no higher powers they wouldn't call themselves an atheist even if it technically fits."

"Does America have a lot of those?" Wen Ning asks politely and almost entirely concealing his deep skepticism about how one might as well refuse to believe in trees. 

"Oh yeah, not like a lot a lot but more than anytime previously- uh, so at some point in the past- or like various points probably, I can't imagine anyone was better at agreeing on things back then- anyway.  All the various sorts of supernatural creatures are hiding from normal people for their own various reasons, so uh.  Mostly people, or like... the sort of person who studies things a lot, anyway, usually either believes in a god or gods who set the universe going and then mostly has a personal relationship with you but doesn't do big flashy miracles, or that the universe just straight up runs on math."

He has so many questions and eventually decides on "how do you get all the fierce corpses to pay attention to that?"

"We don't really have them?  Not in the sense I think you mean, physical nonsentient ones?  Most people can't see ghosts at all... I mean, you do get people believing in all sorts of things where you couldn't get taken seriously if you tried to go study them at a university, and I think ghosts is the most common.  They don't really police their own the way people who have to live in the physical world do."

"America must have very good programs for burying its dead. Or do you do soul-calming ceremonies?"

"Uh, couldn't say but it's definitely not, like, standard- but it's like, unfinished business, right, I'm not gonna go around trying to guess who wished they could've reconciled with their estranged relatives and who's living their best life far far away, that's not my place to judge and it's not my business and even if it was I wouldn't have time.  But some stuff is obvious, like, you've gotta figure every murder victim at least wants to see their murderer get caught, and even then not every murder leaves a ghost behind."

"Maybe you have soul-calming ceremonies and you didn't know," he says dubiously.

"I mean, there's a lot of stuff I don't know, sure- I guess a lot of funeral ceremonies are pretty standard, someone could've snuck something functional in there?  And I haven't like, personally done statistics on it, but you'd think someone would've noticed and said something if one religion leaves way fewer ghosts than everyone else..."  They twist slightly, trying to scratch the back of their head again and foiled by their limited range of motion.

"What's a"-- he tries to move his lips around the unfamiliar phonemes-- "re-lee-jion?"

"It's what set of gods and stuff you believe in, and the, like, holidays and prayers and stuff that go along with that?"

"Oh, we try not to do that, it just encourages them."

"Heh, fair enough."  Squirm squirm.  "What sorts of gods and stuff do you get around here, then?  None worth encouraging?"

"Oh, well, noncultivators worship them, sometimes they're fine and we just let them hang around, sometimes they kill people and we have to kill them. The usual."

"Ah, gotcha.  Do they get to be a lot to handle?  Like, individually or there being too many of them, either one."

"Oh, don't worry!" he said earnestly. "If a god got too powerful one of the immortals would come down from a mountain and deal with it."

"Oh huh, okay.  ...are there a lot of them?  Why do they live on a mountain the rest of the time?"

"You have to withdraw from the world if you want your cultivation to be high enough to become immortal."

"Does that happen like all at once, or is there- like, how do you know when it took, unless someone tries to kill you and you don't die?"

"Do... Americans not know how to sense the strength of their golden cores?"

"I, uh, don't know what that is.  So if we do there's a different word for it.  Or somebody else does and their friends and my friends don't talk."

"But.. you're a cultivator...?"

"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.

"Oh, no, Chris-guniang, everyone I know is here! All the rest of my family is dead."

"Right.  Sorry."

"...what's, uh, gun yang?  It's not translating, I thought it was a name earlier."

"It's the polite thing to call a woman you don't know very well."

"Ah.  'Kay."  They almost succeed at covering up the slightest wince with another crooked smile.  "Is there a boy version- is that what Qyong Lin is?  Anything else I should be calling people?"

"Oh, no, Chris-guniang, that's my courtesy name. You call a man you don't know very well their family name and then 'gongzi.'"

Slight nod.  "Mmkay.  And- martial brother?  It's translating but I'm not sure it's a- thing we have so much."

"Oh hm, I've been letting- I said my first name first-"  They make a face.  "What I mean is, my last- my surname is Brooks actually, we do it in the other order.  Not that I mind or anything, I'm used to people our age using first- personal names with each other pretty much all the time."

"Didn't you say your name was Wrongmountain? Is that your courtesy name? --A martial brother is a member of the same sect."

"It's my deed name- for, like, formal stuff, or formalish at least, when we're not around humans.  And then my remembrance name is Amal, that's for Strider business, but if I'm the only one here it's probably not gonna come up."

"So if I want to be polite I should call you... Brooks-guniang? Wrongmountain-guniang?"

"Deed names you don't normally use with a title- or like, if you're old-fashioned or making a point of how somebody outranks you, you'd say their position first, but I don't have one, so."  Slight hesitation.  "Brooks Guniang I guess would be the equivalent, yeah.  Kinda prefer Wrong Mountain but it doesn't matter that much."

"Oh, Wrongmountain, we don't want to use a name that isn't the name foreigners use! That wouldn't be polite at all."

"Cool cool, okay, thanks.  I mean, it's translated anyway, or I would if I was doing it- my last name's technically a word too but that just came through as sounds, yeah?"

"All of your names are just sounds to me."

"Ah, okay.  The deed name means 'wrong mountain', did that work?  And Amal means 'hope' but it's from a language I don't speak, it's sounds to me too."

"Yes, it worked. How did you get it?"

Chris grins, a bit more openly than before.  "I was learning how to handle myself in the woods, and my teacher took me and my- martial sisters?  Fellow students?  Took us to this mountain near where they lived that had a kind of a split peak, dropped us off at different places and told us to meet up at the top.  They'd grown up there, I was basically a city kid- I misunderstood the directions, got turned around, and wound up on the lower peak hollering "I'm here, where are you?" for like an hour till I figured out what happened. 

So by itself that's a funny story but it's not something you'd make a name out of, right, student names don't have to be impressive but still.  The thing is that on my way back down, I found someplace where people had been secretly dumping their, uh, poisonous trash instead of dealing with it properly, and it was hurting the land.  So cleaning that up wound up being my coming-of-age, and she gave me the name as a reminder to leave room for happy coincidence in my life."

"Aww, that's really sweet. My courtesy name is 'Qionglin,' which means 'beautiful forest,' but there isn't really any reason for it. --Wei-gongzi's is 'Wuxian' which means 'having no envy,' because his clan leader was in love with his mother who ran off to marry his father instead."

"Aww, yours is pretty."  They crane their neck, trying to see if Wei Wuxian is still in the room and how he's reacting to the parental tea being spilled.  "I'm guessing- no, actually, I cannot guess who picked that."

"His clan leader, although his clan leader's wife was... not happy about it."

"Oof, I bet.  That must have been super awkward."  Chris grimaces sympathetically.  "How'd you two meet?"

"Wei-gongzi saw me practicing my archery and complimented me. He said I was one of the best at archery he'd ever seen. Then I got scared during the competition and couldn't hit the target, but he told me I just needed to keep practicing and I'd figure it out."

"Aww, that's sweet."  Oh no he's adorable. Why is the not-quite-zombie adorable.  "Sounds like he made quite the impression."

"Oh, yes, Wrongmountain. The next time I met him I committed treason to save his life."

Blink.  "Was that, uh, before the war, or during- I mean, not that I'm judging either way."  Well, they're a little bit judging, but mostly just confused, and trying to settle into the patient listening mindset they got taught for ghosts.  "I know war is rough on people no matter who's winning."

"They killed Wei-gongzi's entire clan and I helped him rescue his brother and escape."

Tiny nod.  "That must have taken a lot of courage."

"Oh no, Wrongmountain, I'm a coward."

"...going against your own clan and your orders doesn't sound like a cowardly thing to me."

"I didn't kill anyone in the whole war."

"My- I know a, kind of a lot of people actually, who would say that not killing people is the harder course sometimes, and no less worthy.  My first teacher was a healer."

"--I didn't not kill people because I was a priest, I didn't kill people because I was scared."

"Well, saving people takes guts too...  But it's over and done with and I should stop needling you, sorry."  They squirm again, managing to twist enough to get a good scratch in on one ear this time.

"Wen Qing will be annoyed at you if you aren't still."

"Right, sorry, I'm just-"  Metaphysically allergic to your house and also you, is there any polite way to say that.  "It's all the ghosts and stuff, I get- jumpy, not being able to move."

"Oh, yes. Resentful energy is tremendously bad for humans."

Slight nod.  "I can do a cleansing circle- one of the first things I learned once I was done tripping over my own feet- not sure if it would work here, though, maybe outside...?"

"Oh, I don't think that would be a good idea."

"Yeah, I don't know how you could convince the ghosts to not go in it- well, dunno, maybe Wei Wuxian could actually- but either way then you're stuck with a five-foot radius you're not using for anything else.  Well, anything ghost-related anyway, I guess you could like store stuff there or something."

"Oh, it just cleans out a five-foot circle from resentful energy? I thought you wanted to clean out the whole mountain."

"Oh!  No, that'd take forever.  And I know you said they're protecting you, anyway, I wasn't- I mean, like I said it might not work at all either."

"I think it's worth a try, if you think it would help you get better and not make you worse."

"Just hanging around here shouldn't- well, shouldn't make me too much worse, I don't think.  It does involve getting up and moving around, though- I can walk slowly, I guess?

And uh- you probably don't want to go in the circle after it's done, or Wei Wuxian either.  Regular people who've been hanging around here- it'll hurt but it's the good kind of hurt, like, I dunno, setting a bone, but if they're spending all their time here picking up resentful energy- ah, fuck.  It's not gonna do much good if I just have to sit in a circle outdoors instead of on a bed in here, is it."

"I think Wei Wuxian doesn't need resentful energy to survive. He just uses it for cultivation."

"That's- good, I guess.  Still, he probably doesn't wanna be, uh, on metaphorical fire if he doesn't have to and he's just gonna pick it right back up again." 

"Maybe you could go back in the cleansing circle to rest and then spend time with us the rest of the time?"

"Only lasts an hour- the space it's in should still be clear of resentful energy for a while afterwards, till the ghosts start hanging out in it again, but the cleansing force fades out." 

"Could you cast it again every time you want to move?"

Probably not, but explaining why means admitting exactly how they're vulnerable... on the other hand, it's not like they're not vulnerable now.

"Maybe?  Hm, and it would be nice to have somewhere clear to sleep either way, actually.  Are there any, like, woodsy areas where people don't walk through there much?"