"I mean, we're used to having merchants? I would suggest you pick ones that aren't very easily offended and can, like, do all that 'oh noble Daoist' shit I'm so bad at."

"Okay. Well, I'm not sure we have an adequate supply who are already up on local etiquette but if there's a quick summary we can brief them."

"I can handle it."

"I don't expect the merchants to be the problem here. --So we can get just the merchants by themselves, if Nie Huaisang decides that you are powerful and he would like to lick your boots."

"We can supply merchants to anywhere that wants them."

"So the basic question is what happens when the peasants inevitably vote to join Vanda Nosseo, and then a cultivator runs someone through with a sword for insulting them, and then you say 'we would like to arrest the perpetrator', and the perpetrator's clan says 'well, if she didn't want to be murdered she shouldn't have insulted a cultivator, we're not handing him over', and... I don't know what you would do after that."

"This isn't an area with a whole lot of precedent, since most separate political units don't have coextensive territory - usually border control will keep out anyone who might go around murdering people and consider themselves entitled not to be arrested for that. I wonder if the territory could be - less coextensive, particularly since cultivators can fly, and don't need to travel through civilian areas to get between parts of the jianghu?"

"Cultivators aren't financially independent of their associated peasants, the peasants pay us tribute in exchange for us handling monsters and maintaining a reasonable and manageable amount of murder. And, like, we don't super have skills? Other than killing things, I mean. I guess Zewu-jun can paint. Is there going to be a market for painting?"

"Well, if you join Vanda Nossëo in your own right you get basic income. And paintings can sell but my understanding is that it's not a steady market for most artists. If the peasants were able to control their borders on their own recognizance, would there be - competition for monster-hunting jobs, among the cultivators?"

"What would that look like practically? The peasants can limit which cultivators enter their borders? Presumably by clan, so a village could decide to allow in the Lan because we don't allow violence against peasants, but would ban the Chu who tend to be rather more murderous."

"Yes, exactly. And then the Chu would have to convince peasants that they won't be murderous, or allow that they're subject to the local laws while they're in a territory, or at least charge much less than anyone else."

"We don't charge, we're not peasants. We accept tribute."

"Would have to agree to handle monster-hunting for smaller amounts of tribute?" Nelen tries.

"Well, they're not... going to pay tribute if they're their own country and can not allow cultivators in? Why would they do that?"

"To get someone to handle the monsters, presumably, if it turns out we can't do that with offworld magic trivially."

"Cultivators don't take money to kill monsters! We're not peasants!"

"Rogue cultivators do."

"They accept gifts, it's not-- we're not going to not protect people if they don't pay!"

"The Chu would."

"The Lan wouldn't!"

"Well, since the Lan don't murder people presumably no one would have reason to forbid you to visit their areas and protect them, and you'd continue accepting gifts if anyone felt moved to give you gifts," says Nelen.

"I... feel like I'm failing to explain something."

"That's possible! My understanding is that you don't have a formal transaction about defending peasants from monsters; instead, you do that whenever there are monsters to be killed, and meanwhile, your economic means of support is receiving tribute from peasants - ones who you've been protecting, as opposed to ones on other continents, or who were not protected and instead died, or who founded their own cultivation sect and defended themselves. The peasants can't choose who protects them because cultivators are free to come and go as they please without being subject to peasant laws. I'm not sure what happens if peasants don't give any tribute to any cultivators and attempt to free-ride on their neighbors supporting the nearest cultivators instead. But if the peasants were able to close their borders to anyone who might not obey their laws, some cultivator sects would likely be cut out from monster-fighting opportunities, and would no longer have relationships with the peasants that involve, among other things, tribute-giving. Is that right?"

"...do you want the summary of how it ought to work or the way that it actually works?"

"Both. The second to know what to try to move toward instead and the first to know what we have to arrange to say about it."