"We'll grab an extra set from the laundry, Mistress Dath. It won't quite fit but it'll do until proper robes arrive. And once you're settled in I can warm zhuren's bed."

"- Sure. I don't need that much to get settled, I don't think? I could use...food. And I am also a normal person and not a cultivator, so I'll get sick if I drink contaminated water. And I need at least one blanket to sleep with. I don't mind sleeping here if that's where there's space -" probably even if the teenage boys are dating they are not going to have sex in front of her. Right? Wei Wuxian is kind of starving to death? Merrin is pretty sure that decreases sex drive and probably that's sufficient even with teenage boys? 

...If her patient and his maybe-boyfriend want to have sex in front of her, well, it's their tent, she will assume the local culture considers this fine and be a professional about it. 

"I take care of zhuren's water and his food, I can easily take care of yours too. I think we should get you a tent because you're an honored guest."

"Oh. That would be good, thank you. I, um, don't know how to put up a tent." 

"I will be your servant as well as zhuren's, Mistress Dath. The Sunshot Campaign needs doctors far more urgently than it needs people to put up tents."

“I guess you would, that’s fair. Although, um, I’m - worried my ability to usefully be a doctor is going to be affected pretty negatively by how different medicine is here. I’m used to having equipment. And prediction markets so I’m not just making everything up on the spot with just my own judgement - and even if I’m training for a case where those are offline I would have reference material!” Merrin lets out her breath in a gust. “It’s not - I mean, I’m not going to be totally useless or anything, but I’m…not really a doctor, either by dath ilan’s standards or by the ones you use here.”

This hurts a surprising amount to admit out loud, but it’s important, right, not to start out deceiving anyone about what she can or can’t do. Including - especially - herself. 

"...what's a prediction market?"

“Ummmm. Do you want the high level summary or the simplified version with some math or the more-true version with lots of math?”

"High level summary? I was never good at math."

"Right. Okay. Um, it's - a way of aggregating the knowledge and best information of a large number of people, by setting it up like an actual market, where people win money for being right so experts are incentivized to participate - there's a bunch of math involved for deciding who gains or loses how much money, and they update in real time as more information comes in, so you get real-time best guess answers to questions and recommendations for action. If he," she gestures at Wei Wuxian, "were a patient where I'm from, I would be feeding in real-time information on his condition as it changed - although if I were back home that'd be mostly automated via monitoring equipment, and also I'd have way better treatment options than making him drink low-quality hand-mixed oral rehydration solution." 

"...you get scholars to trade in a market like they're peasants?!"

What in the name of dirty wet wipes is a ""peasant"". Is the translation magic providing any informative connotations here. 

The cultivator who created the talisman is pretty sure EVEN barbarians have peasants. Probably they have more peasants.She is left without a helpful sense of connotations.

FINE then she will have to ASK using her actual mouth. 

"Um, what's a peasant? I...am not really getting anything helpful from your translation talisman thing and I'm confused." 

"The ones who farm and make clothes and raise animals?"

".....Right." To Merrin that sure sounds like THREE DIFFERENT categories, two of which are (she assumes) food-production-related and one of which is a low-tech-craftsperson role, which makes it kind of a baffling catch-all term. "I - guess peasants, as experts in those fields, would be pretty well-placed to trade in markets for - grain? fruit and vegetables? whatever you grow here - and clothing and animals? That must still be a really small percentage of total market share, though. And - prediction markets aren't the kind of market that buys and sells concrete physical goods, they trade in information, which sounds like the sort of thing where 'scholars' would have the most expertise and comparative advantage? Assuming I'm correctly understanding what scholars do, here." 

"Scholars run the government, mostly? And write poetry and paint and teach other people about philosophy. If you're a cultivator or a gentleman you don't do trade because trade is for peasants."

"What? I - but - that doesn't–" 

Merrin stops herself. Takes a deep breath. Getting into a stupid debate with her local guide on the specifics of their native culture, where he is the expert and she isn't, is unlikely to achieve any of what she wants.

"...I think maybe there's a weird translation thing going on here? Do you have an entirely separate system of expertise and training and expert-skill-evaluation for farming versus Governance decisions?" 

"I... don't know what peasants do? They're peasants. I don't think there's that much difference in how good you can be at farming? I know that gentlemen sit a competitive exam and the ones that score best get to be in the government and the others... do something else? Tutor children?" He sounds very uncertain.

"Huh. My impression is that there's a lot of difference in how good you can be at farming. I think agricultural productivity per unit land area and per capita is a pretty important factor for overall surplus? ....Um, sorry, I guess you just said that's not your area of expertise. The thing I was trying to say is - probably more like the competitive exam thing? I assume it's not the same exam every year and there's some sort of system to keep updating it and figure out the best questions to ask to actually measure expertise in Governance or teaching or whatnot." 

"I think they have lots of different... essay questions? About the Confucian classics?"

"....Right." He is probably also not an expert in Governance qualification exam design and it won't help to interrogate him about it, even though she's so curious. "But - once scholars have passed that exam and are making policy decisions, there's got to be some kind of process they use to resolve things when two different Governance experts disagree?" 

"I... know what we do?" Wen Ning offers.

"Oh? What do you do? - I guess it'd make sense for it to be different, here, actual full-on prediction markets take a lot of overhead - if I had to rebuild Civilization it'd take me ages to include that, and it'd be a worse version, I don't actually understand or remember all the math for it." 

"Well, all the sect leaders and clan leaders govern as seems right to them. If they do a good job their clan will be richer, more disciples will want to join, other sects and clans will want to ally with them, and outlying branches won't leave to become their own clans or sects. The clans negotiate with each other about subjects that matter to everyone, like whose territory is whose. And everyone talks to each other and picks out who they think ought to be the chief cultivator, who's in charge of all the cultivators. Currently, Wen Ruohan is the Chief Cultivator, but he started slaughtering other clans so there was a war to replace him with a different Chief Cultivator. --Also there are wars if one cultivator clan wants more territory or if there's a serious dispute about tribute or something."