Liyue had truly been swept by one upheaval after another lately, with major events happening every day. The biggest news of all was that Liyue's Ministry of Civil Affairs had openly arrested Snezhnaya's diplomatic ambassador to Liyue-Yusupov.
The reason was simple: Yusupov had actually bribed a candidate to succeed one of the Liyue Qixing and supplied him with an extremely rare slow-acting poison. That candidate had then poisoned the current Tianshu.
Plotting against a member of the Liyue Qixing and bribing a candidate for the Liyue Qixing were both intolerable to Liyue. Most importantly, the Ministry of Civil Affairs had caught the two of them red-handed. The evidence was irrefutable, and even Snezhnaya, domineering as it was, could find no grounds to argue its case under these circumstances.
To deal with the matter, Snezhnaya appointed the Fatui Harbinger Childe, Tartaglia, who was still on leave, as its new diplomatic ambassador to Liyue and dispatched him overnight to handle the affair.
When Tartaglia landed at Liyue Harbor again, his reception was worlds apart from before. On his first visit to Liyue, Ningguang of the Liyue Qixing had at least welcomed him in person.
When the Inazuma delegation had arrived in Liyue, Liyue had sent three of its senior officials-Ningguang, Keqing, and Ganyu-to welcome them together.
But now, Childe's reputation had been utterly ruined when Osial first broke free of his seal. With Yusupov's affair on top of that, Childe was like a rat crossing the street in Liyue, with everyone calling for him to be beaten.
Not only had no one come to welcome him, but the officials at the docks repeatedly obstructed Snezhnaya's official ships as they entered Liyue Harbor, letting other vessels cut ahead of them into port time and again. They made no attempt to hide it, either.