Returning to Teyvat

After Sun Wukong left, Wang Lei waited in the shop for several days. Yet neither the Super God Academy nor the government came looking for him. There were not even any surveillance personnel near his little shop.

It was as if Sun Wukong had truly kept his secret for him. But in reality, Sun Wukong had reported everything about Wang Lei to his superiors as soon as he left the shop. The Monkey King had never been someone who kept secrets. Besides, he was not particularly familiar with Wang Lei.

The reason for this situation was that neither the Super God Academy nor the government had figured out how to approach Wang Lei.

Du Kao had a terrible headache over it now. The person Wang Lei had summoned had actually driven Morgana away. That was simply not someone the current De Nuo Remnants could afford to provoke.

Moreover, Wang Lei had made his disgust toward the De Nuo Remnants abundantly clear. Du Kao truly could not send anyone to make contact with him. He feared they would start fighting after one wrong word. Earth now needed to gather every force it could gather; clashing with Wang Lei at this point would be an utterly unwise move. And what if Wang Lei decided to drive them all off Earth? Therefore, before they figured out what Wang Lei actually wanted, not contacting him was the best choice.

At the very least, Wang Lei had not openly attacked them yet, which meant he probably still tacitly accepted their presence. Perhaps he was merely observing them.

As for the Hua Xia government, they had refrained from approaching Wang Lei purely out of consideration for Du Kao. After all, the government and Du Kao had been cooperating for a long time. Offending Du Kao outright over an unknown force was foolish.

But the government was still the government. Although they did not disturb Wang Lei openly, they had long since formed a task force in secret. It was filled with psychologists and behavioral experts, who investigated every detail of Wang Lei's more than twenty years in Hua Xia.

From his birth, to every illness, every trip abroad, and every transfer record.

They then decisively arrested the former head of the lottery center. At the same time, they discovered that Wang Lei had not gone to the hospital for any personal reason since he was sixteen. He had not even bought medicine, not even something as simple as a bandage.

The government had therefore already concluded that Wang Lei might have gained superpowers at the age of sixteen. Furthermore, he was mature beyond his years and skilled at enduring in silence. Otherwise, no sixteen-year-old who gained superpowers could possibly resist showing off a little.

Yet in reality, it was as though both sides had forgotten Wang Lei. Even Qi Lin and Rui Mengmeng knew nothing about him, and whenever they occasionally called, their attitudes remained exactly the same as before.

Seeing how everyone seemed to have forgotten him, Wang Lei was happy to enjoy the peace and quiet. Every day, he simulated Morgana's slap within Quantum Space. After reaching the outcome of death countless times, Wang Lei accepted reality. He could not calculate the Demon Claw. Unless he prevented the thing from appearing in the first place, the moment it was transported out, it meant he had failed.

So Wang Lei turned his attention to the system. Of the hundred thousand Energy Points from the Mikage Furnace, only a few thousand remained. He needed to return to Teyvat and fleece it for more.

Moreover, he needed to try contacting the Gnoses of other nations. His Stellaron would most likely have to be activated by the power of faith within the Gnoses.

Therefore, Wang Lei had to visit Mondstadt. Based on his experience from his previous trip to Teyvat, all of his old game records had been reset. It was equivalent to starting a brand-new account.

He had stayed in Inazuma for nearly nine days before. If the protagonist's timeline was synchronized with his own, then Aether or Ying should be about to enter Stormterror's Lair by now.

If he waited any longer, Mondstadt's Gnosis would be taken by La Signora to Snezhnaya. He had not unlocked the map there. By then, he could only give up on Mondstadt's Gnosis.

So Wang Lei decided to wait no longer and directly activated the system's world-travel function. This time, he selected a waypoint outside Mondstadt City.

That weightless sensation came again. In an instant, Wang Lei appeared on a slightly elevated grassy slope.

Mondstadt's entrance lay before him. In the game, it was merely a small bridge, but in reality, the bridge was as wide as a sixteen-lane highway, startling Wang Lei for a moment. Carriages and vehicles flowed endlessly across it, while pedestrians streamed back and forth along its sides. He also spotted a little boy feeding pigeons by the bridge. It was most likely Timmie.

Wang Lei thus pretended to be an ordinary tourist and followed the pedestrians along the roadside toward Mondstadt City.

As he passed Timmie, Wang Lei nearly failed to stop himself from casually shooting down a couple of pigeons. After all, that had become habitual gameplay for him.

But he forcefully suppressed the urge to shoot pigeons. He did not want to be questioned by the Knights of Favonius for making a child cry before he even entered Mondstadt.

Entering the city went smoothly afterward. Wang Lei exchanged a Liyue merchant's certificate and successfully entered Mondstadt City.

After entering Mondstadt, the first thing Wang Lei did was not wander around. Instead, he immediately found an unoccupied corner. There was an important piece of information he needed to confirm: exactly how much time had passed between this world travel and his last one.

After repeatedly making sure no one was nearby, Wang Lei opened a rift and returned to the Grand Narukami Shrine in Inazuma. There, he saw A Xing helping tidy up his room. When she saw Wang Lei appear, she asked in surprise, "Eh? Wang Lei, didn't you say you were returning to Liyue today? Did you forget something?"

Upon hearing that, Wang Lei calmly said that he had not left yet. He had come specifically to say goodbye to A Xing.

A Xing's face immediately turned red. She had a secret crush on Wang Lei. If Wang Lei flirted with her a little more, he could finally lose his virginity.

However, Wang Lei had already confirmed what he wanted to know. Regardless of how he traveled, only about ten minutes passed in the world he traveled to. That was good news. He no longer had to worry about staying too long in the real world and missing the plot.

So Wang Lei found another corner and opened another rift back to Mondstadt. The Stellaron's rifts were truly convenient—so long as he had coordinates, anywhere could serve as a teleport waypoint.

Since not much time had passed, Wang Lei was in no hurry. Mondstadt City was the starter city for every Genshin Impact player. It looked tiny in the game, but it was not small at all in reality. He needed to take a proper look around.

He headed straight onto Mondstadt City's central main street.

This straight avenue was paved with white stone slabs and connected by five flights of stairs. Looking upward, he could see the upper half of the enormous Anemo Archon statue. Unlike in the game, shops lined both sides of the road. He also saw the familiar Adventurers' Guild reception desk and the With Wind Comes Glory shop. In real Teyvat, however, they were both three-story buildings. Katheryne and Marjorie finally no longer had to stand outside on the street all day.

As he climbed the stairs, he passed Mondstadt's great fountain again. This time, Wang Lei examined it carefully like a tourist. The fountain's main structure alone was two stories tall, and he could clearly sense elemental fluctuations from it. This fountain that ran day and night without interruption appeared to be an alchemical product.

At the same time, Wang Lei saw two Fatui chatting on the raised platform behind the fountain. They should be Mikhail and Lyudmila. At that moment, they were discussing Stormterror's attack.

Wang Lei relaxed as soon as he heard their conversation. These two were said to possess the richest intelligence among the Fatui. Whenever anything major happened, they would stand here discussing it. Since they were still talking about Stormterror's attack, at least the plot had not advanced to Liyue yet.

Wang Lei also strongly suspected that the two were lovers, slacking off here every day while dating.

Unlike in the game, Wang Lei did not deliberately walk between them and trigger a chorus of startled cries. Doing that in reality would get him beaten up. He merely passed them like an ordinary tourist.

He then followed the various stairways until he arrived at the Knights of Favonius Headquarters, a place both incomparably familiar and strangely unfamiliar to him. It had five floors, plus a watchtower on the roof. It did not resemble the game's little three-story building at all. If not for the sign hanging outside, Wang Lei would not even have recognized it.

Wang Lei did not look at the Knights of Favonius Headquarters for long, because he had already noticed something wrong. Powerful Cryo and Anemo Element reactions had appeared near Favonius Cathedral.

Wang Lei inwardly cried out in alarm. Could he have arrived at the exact moment La Signora was stealing the Gnosis?

Without the slightest hesitation, Wang Lei used quantum teleportation and transported himself to the top of the Anemo Archon statue's head. From there, he should be able to clearly see everything at Favonius Cathedral's entrance.