In a small backpack, on the floor of an inn:
Earpiece
Fits snugly in one’s ear. Unless you stood very close to its user, it would be difficult to make out the audio transmitted through this earpiece. Most of the time, you would simply hear messages from family and dear friends.
Phone
In perfect working condition despite the multiple cracks that run across its screen. Despite its newer model, its perseverance in the face of its owner’s hectic life is commendable.
Wallet
Does anyone still use these things in the digital age? Although, there are benefits to physical cash when your travelling companion has a habit of forgetting to bring any form of money. How is this man still alive?
Pistol
A standard-issue Fatui revolver, typically used as a backup for more powerful firearms. To use this as a primary firearm is considered suicide due to its limited ammunition, especially when the most common opponents of this organisation require complete destruction of their physical form to die.
Shashkas
A pair of single-edged swords, each about 1-metre in length. The lack of a hilt means that these swords have no access to more defensive moves. Needless to say, these swords are not meant to be dual-wielded.
Moving ‘like flowing water’ in the hands of their wielder, it is more an extension of his body than a weapon. Or perhaps it is his very body that is the weapon, ever in motion like the water it emulates. Disease only catches up to the stagnant, he scoffs.
A small bottle
Tucked into an unassuming corner within the suitcase. Judging by the condition of the seal, it is a relatively new addition, yet untouched. A label on the side warns of possible addiction, a worthy price many pay for the relief from pain its contents bring.
Its owner is a businessman, but this trade is too big a risk even for him. Until the aching threatens to consume him, he promises. Until then.
A gold-bordered ticket
Very well-hidden in a secret compartment. One of the many reasons its owner forewent a trip home to go on a wild goose chase through a land that distrusts him and his rank.
A lighter
Always useful to have a fire source on you!
Ginger bastard
Help
How do you explain that you don’t think ghosts are real
What do you mean
Ghosts are real
I saw one yesterday
You can’t see but ok
Can’t believe a funeral director of all people believes in them
Tldr I’m chaperoning her and her friends in this hospital basement
Pretty sure we’re breaking some trespassing law
Sucks to be you
How’s Paimon
Arguing economics with Xingqiu, poor soul
That ghost detector device is going crazy
Send pictures
Will do
Air smells funny here
Like sulphur
Maybe it’s the hospital
Do they use sulphur in hospitals?
Don’t know
Why are you even with those kids in the first place
Ah the things I do for intel
Paimon
Huh?
Gone
Have to go, is urgent
???
And you complain about me leaving you on read
Hellooo
…
Hope you’re okay
From a new notebook. The label marks it as an overpriced souvenir (admittedly, a very ornate one). A smaller, dog-eared notebook is slotted in between its pages. Both notebooks share the same spidery handwriting, proudly displaying the writer’s skill with a calligraphy brush.
Note: I am mostly transcribing these memoirs for the benefit of a friend. I have noticed that he seems to have trouble sleeping most nights, and tires himself out by pacing endlessly around our room. Reading from these faded memories seems to calm him down. Moreover, this benefits my rusty calligraphy skills as much as his sleep quality.
Transcribed on 21/11, in Qingce Village
Bound Chi
The peaceful village of Qingce is cradled within the mountain of the same name. It has more than earned its reputation as a retirement spot for the elderly, and the bamboo forests only know sounds other than the slow shuffling of gatherers during the summer holidays, when parents drop their children off to accompany their grandparents.
It is during those months that the village’s storytellers light a campfire in the middle of the ring of tents, set up by the older children near the waterfall, and tell the children about the forgotten legends that won this village its peace.
I have had the pleasure of hearing these legends first-hand when I stayed in Qingce to recover from an illness. These children’s parents do not know of the embellishments that their grandparents present as fact, and I can only guess that this is due to the comradery between these two groups. A hidden fragment of history that forces you to cradle it to your chest as you look towards the mountains, wondering about the beings whose bones you stand on. Wondering if they will ever tire of the casual disregard of the insignificant pests that are humans, and rise again to claim their throne.
Sealed beneath these mountains is a serpent. Now, storytellers call it the Chi.
Rex Lapis, god-king of Liyue, left no stone unturned when he tamed this land. The specifics of the conflict between him and the Chi are lost to time, but every retelling keeps the fate of the Chi constant. To prevent its lingering regrets from poisoning the land, it was sealed in the very mountains whose name it shared, and subdued with the might of another god.
It was taken apart, piece by piece, its spirit in the north, its bones in the southeast, its flesh in the northwest, its soul in the northeast, and its form in the southwest. Rex Lapis taught his people to make statues to crush its remaining power, and sculpted pieces of amber to make its suppression absolute. And therein ends its form, its rage, now merely a part of the scenery, the instruments of its imprisonment the only sign that it ever existed.
This is the closest we will come to killing a god.
Despite the fact that the mountains of Qingce have existed long before the Chi’s rampage, people like to say that the scattered pieces of its body and spirit eventually found peace in the land itself. The village’s iconic terraced fields are its scales, you see, and the reason the trees in this area grow so well is because they feed off the remains of an immortal’s shell. These legends have their roots in the truth, and their flowers are so much more beautiful than that which they sprouted from.
I do not believe a god can ever find peace in this state. They are less gilded statues and more the wind and the sea, ever-changing just like the world they shape and inhabit. They are not meant to remember or to stay, only wander, die, and be reborn endlessly until this world gives in and collapses on itself. As for the Chi… I can understand some people’s more hopeful interpretations of its fate. To stagnate and watch the world leave you behind strips you of the freedom that is inherent to human nature.
What remains of it is but a handful of memories, passed down from generation to generation, spoken in terror and in reverence. For such a formidable foe, I think this is a fitting legacy.
so... writer's block hit and updates might be slow but rest assured i will get this out of my head. the whole thing. no cost too great