"Farming?"

"I don't know what that is."

Du Ye looks genuinely disturbed. "Farming is the most essential and holy act! It's the cornerstone of all human civilization, the way all food and goods are produced, the essence of the human relationship with the heavens and the earth, even the root of cultivation itself. There is no activity more essential or sacred than farming."

"You put plants in the ground and let them grow. And then you eat them. Or feed them to a pig and then eat the pig." supplies Guo Rong.

"I don't know what a pig is and I don't eat plants."

"Well, yes. You're not human. If you become a cultivator, it shouldn't be hard to afford a steady supply of meat. If you don't..." He shrugs as though it's not worth thinking about. 

"Afford?"

Du Ye puts his face in his hands. 

"So, there's this concept called money where - some peasants farm potatoes all year and some farm corn all year and some farm divine wisdom lotuses all year, and then nobles own the land and manage the peasants and then cultivators protect everyone from monsters. So some portion of the corn and the potatoes and the divine wisdom lotuses needs to be distributed from the peasants to the nobles and the cultivators to see that they're properly rewarded. The portion given to the nobility is called 'rent' and the portion given to the cultivators is called 'taxes'. But because the world is very complex and it would be impossible to organise the distribution of all this everywhere it needs to go. So we have money. The peasants exchange everything they make that they don't need themselves for money - coins made of bronze, silver, and jade - and then they pay their rent and taxes with the money and keep whatever money they have left for themselves. Then everyone, the peasants with what they saved, and the nobles with their rent, and the cultivators with their taxes, can go exchange the money back for everything they need when they need it, and you have to decide on if you want to spend the money you have on say, opium or wound healing tincture. With the amount of money that even low level cultivators tend to have, it's not hard to exchange for enough meat to eat. That's what I mean when I say you can afford it. This is a greatly simplified model, you understand." 

"Why would I not just find fish and catch them?"

"If you take fish from a safe river, you need to pay rent and taxes to whoever is protecting it and making sure nobody eats all the fish. Out here in the jungle, it's too dangerous for anyone to live long term. A powerful cultivator could live like that, but it'd be more comfortable and easier for them to live in civilization as a harmonious part of the whole ecosystem." 

"I have to... pay someone... for the service... of making sure that people... like me... do not eat the fish?"

"If people eat all the fish, or demons eat all the fish, then there won't be any fish next year."

"...You need to leave a certain number in the river each year or they won't be able to spawn and produce new fish. So we assign ownership of the fish to one person, who is responsible for understanding all this and portioning out the rights to use the quantity of new fish which are born and making sure that the people who protect the river directly and indirectly are properly paid for their work as well." 

"...we don't have this problem at home but maybe this is something that happens if you don't have a whole ocean," she allows.

"It's rare for the empire to have enough water for all its needs, let alone a reasonable quantity of fish. Stewarding the wells and aqueducts that move water where it is needed is one of the responsibilities of the Du clan, and one we take very seriously." 

"So I can probably make lots of money making it rain?"

"It depends - do you have the ability to make it rain even if the air is completely dry? If you can do that, that would indeed be very profitable and I'm sure the Du clan would be delighted to work with you. But if you need the wind to be full of water, then you'd have the same problems as the cultivators we sometimes hire from the Feng clan, who can bring rain in the eastern jungle where we are now, but can't at higher altitudes where the air is dryer." 

"If the air is already wet it's easier but I can do without."

"I can think of several profitable career paths for you then, depending on the quantity you can produce on a daily basis. I would need to confirm details with my uncle before I can make any firm offers, but..."

"Already trying to poach her out from under the Feng?" comments Jing Yi. Du Ye glares at him. 

Wingshrug. "Could you teach me some of the language so I can translate less?"

"I will hire a proper tutor in the matter when we get back to civilization. For now, I will do my best." 

Cool, they can start naming things in the environment. She takes notes as they go.

He tutors languages like an extremely monolingual person who has never considered the problem at all, but will answer whatever questions she has. 

She's never learned another language either, though she did recently invent writing! A list of nouns to start out is plenty and will be very burnable if she has an emergency.

This language has many nouns. The others are going to get bored and go play a card game rather than watch them talk about nouns. 

That's fine.

They can pass some time this way, then. The sun will go down and the group will want to sleep. If Tireh really wants to stay up learning, Ye can take the first watch and short cut the argument about who should do it given that Jian Bojing is wounded.