"There's a guy up on the ship who can make about a million bolts of fabric in a second if he wants," she says, "it's really not generosity on our end. The fabric costs less than our time."

"The peasants will like that! --Well, the whole story began after the Sunshot Campaign, when Sect Leader Lan became sworn brothers with my brother Nie Mingjue and their friend Jin Guangyao." Which is to say that they were all dating but Nie Huaisang is saving his accusations of being a cutsleeve thank you. "Unfortunately, Jin Guangyao was a cruel and vicious man. He murdered my brother, his own sworn brother, and he had a child with his sister, and he arranged for his very own father to be raped to death!"

Nie Huaisang keeps the tone of his voice salacious. 

"What happened to the baby?" asks Tuturio.

"Jin Guangyao killed him to hide his incestuous lust!"

"Oh no the poor baby!" squeaks Tuturio.

"How do you even rape someone to death," muses Sai Ding, "unless they're an Elf - are cultivators like Elves -"

"Jin Guangyao gave him an aphrodisiac potion and then hired a hundred prostitutes to have sex with him until his heart gave out."

"Yikes!" says Sai Ding. "I wonder if we can resurrect cultivators - it seems like you might be like Hazel wizards in which case we can't yet -"

"...well, normally people's souls are reborn into new bodies, that seems like it would complicate things."

"Oh, yep, that'd do it - that's not what's up with Hazel wizards as far as I know but yep."

Nie Huaisang knows very little about this and is willing to admit to know even less. "Resurrecting Jin Guangyao's father will be very unpopular, he raped his own loyal subordinate's wife-- this is what, it is believed, drove Jin Guangyao to his atrocity."

"If he's reincarnated I can't imagine it coming up," Ligaya assures him.

"Now, Mo Xuanyu was a cutsleeve, one of Jin Guangyao's father's other bastards, and the Jin clan took him in-- and Mo Xuanyu repaid their generosity by trying to seduce Jin Guangyao! His own half-brother!"

"How awkward!"

"So of course Jin Guangyao expels him from the clan, and Mo Xuanyu decides to take his revenge"-- sorry sorry sorry sorry-- "by doing what I said earlier, permanently destroying his soul in order to allow the Yiling Patriarch, Wei Wuxian, to possess his body and take revenge. And so the Yiling Patriarch has to take revenge on Jin Guangyao, and one thing and another happens and we all wind up stuck in a temple together! Including me! Even though I was not involved at all!"

"You, and Jin Guangyao, and the Yiling Patriarch?"

"And Hanguang-jun, and Sect Leader Jiang, and the Ghost General, and Sect Leader Su, and Sect Leader Lan, and Lan Sizhui, and my brother's resentful ghost, and Sect Leader Jin, and Sect Leader Jin's pet dog Fairy."

"- I'll tell the coordinator to keep an eye on Allspeak mistranslating the dog's name," says Sai Ding.

"Resentful ghost?" says Ligaya.

"Oh, when people are full of resentful energy-- for example, because they were brutally murdered by their sworn brother-- they stick around as resentful ghosts bent on revenge."

"Instead of reincarnating?"

"One thing cultivators do is lay them to rest so they can reincarnate."

"...we should probably check at some point if we can resurrect someone who hasn't reincarnated due to being a ghost," says Ligaya.

"Oh, many people would be very happy about that!"

"Yeah! Is there anyone you'd recommend known to currently be a ghost? If not I can kick the question up and the coordinator can look out for mentions of ghosts elsewhere."

Nie Huaisang is putting his feelings in a box and he is putting a box very far away on the top shelf. Feelings are for Future Nie Huaisang. Present Nie Huaisang is enjoying his dinner.

(He is going to see his brother again. There are political complications but Nie Huaisang doesn't care, he would burn down the world to see his brother again. They can leave him mortal, they can deny him all the luxuries they have from their wealth, they can destroy the Nie, they can tell him to crawl on his stomach like a snake and lick their shoes and he'll say "thank you, O blessed immortals," if it means he can see his brother again.)

"Oh, I don't keep track of that kind of thing."