"Okay, I can write the boss." She points vaguely upward.

"Jin Guangyao took Sect Leader Lan hostage so he could escape. Well, I will tell you, that was a very interesting hostage situation! And then the Yiling Patriarch confessed to Hanguang-jun that he loved him and incidentally that he wanted to have sex with him every day at least once and they spent the entire rest of the hostage situation snuggling and staring into each other's eyes and making happy noises. They even fought while cuddling. And there were maybe a dozen other personal revelations, which I will skip over because you don't know any of the people involved. And then my brother's resentful ghost got loose and tried to kill Jin Guangyao. And finally when we'd resolved the resentful-ghost situation and gotten Jin Guangyao tied up, he tried to stab Sect Leader Lan. And then Sect Leader Lan killed him instead, in self-defense. And having been so horribly betrayed, and murdering his own sworn brother-- it destroyed him. Sect Leader Lan was never the same again. I don't think he's ever going to leave his cabin."

At this very moment Sect Leader Lan is receiving a butterfly from Lan Sizhui explaining to him that he really does need to leave his cabin, this is important, Lan Sizhui can't handle all the diplomacy on his own. 

"He tried to stab him while he was tied up?" asks Escan.

"He snuck his hand out."

"Oh, I see. I hope Sect Leader Lan will be okay one day," Escan replies.

"Now, as it happens, I have another story about Sect Leader Jiang, who has been banned from all the matchmakers--"

Immortals, please observe all of the helpful information Nie Huaisang is giving you here about Sect Leader Jiang's personality!

They will keep handing him merchandise as long as he keeps talking!

Personally it is Nie Huaisang's position that Sect Leader Jiang is a cutsleeve and doesn't know it.

"That's not really scandalous in the wider multiverse," says Sai Ding.

"I mean, just because it's scandalous here doesn't mean it's impossible he is in fact gay and doesn't know it," says Tuturio.

"The wider multiverse seems to have very strange sexual norms!"

"It's a lot of different cultures encountering each other and working out how to live and let live," says Ligaya.

Well, then, Nie Huaisang is going to tell more stories, and incidentally give the Vanda Nosseans a complete sense of the current political landscape in the jianghu.

They appreciate this very much. He can have so much stuff. At some point in the middle of proceedings Sai Ding nips up to the ship to get a collection of art objects - prints and knick-knacks and music players loaded with nonmagical music instead of the healing songs and rugs and jewelry and, yes, a selection of painted fans.

Quietly: "...oh, they're beautiful."

"I'm glad you like them!" Ligaya says. "I'll tell the inventory curator you said so."

He is just going to stare at the fans and touch them very gently.

(The universe has such beautiful things--)

"- inventory curator says you're welcome to come up to the ship sometimes if you like!"

"...that would be wonderful."

"Do you want to go now?" Sai Ding asks.

"...yes."

There is a blink of discontinuity and then they are in the observation deck.

...He sits down on the carpet and touches it. It's so soft. It is the softest thing he's ever touched in his life. And he stares out at his world, higher up than any cultivator has ever been.

Completely sincerely, without any artifice or any planning, he says, "it's beautiful."

"I'm glad you like it," says Sai Ding softly.

"...I didn't know it would be so small."