Indeed, Lan Wangji nods again, with a slightly grimmer understanding this time. He sets his brush down so that it leans against his inkstone and flips through another few pages of the book Nina showed him, intrigued by the prospect of someone else here learning to speak his language. Perhaps it wouldn't matter, though. "Whatever it is that translates for us is a gift," he says, abruptly contemplative. "Without it, I could speak to very few others here." Two of those others would presumably be Luo Binghe and Shen Yuan, which is a dispiriting thought.