Qu Yuan's Having an Awesome Party Underwater!

"Ah, hello, my name's Wei Zhenzu. People call me Liangzi, and this is Paimon. You... wait, that's not right!"

Wei Zhenzu froze, his eyes widening into saucers.

He stared in disbelief at the young man before him, who radiated an air of nobility from head to toe.

"Wait, hold on a second." Wei Zhenzu held up a hand in a gesture to pause.

"Did you just say... Roland?"

"No, he definitely didn't mean that Old Roland who loves eating Jumpy Dumpties every day, whose date was a misunderstanding and ended with the girl confessing first," Wei Zhenzu muttered under his breath.

"Then it can only be the leader of Charlemagne the Great's Twelve Paladins?"

The moment Tuoerfu heard the words "Twelve Paladins," his eyes, once brimming with melancholy, lit up with a startling brilliance.

His dejected expression vanished, replaced by an indescribable ecstasy.

"You... you actually know about the Twelve Paladins?" Tuoerfu's voice trembled unmistakably.

"Of course I do!" Wei Zhenzu slapped his thigh.

"You mean that French god of war who wielded the holy sword Durandal? That absolute badass who fought to the death without retreating at Roncesvalles Pass? France's greatest knight, who blew that ivory horn so hard he burst a blood vessel in his brain!"

Tuoerfu's face flushed with excitement, and his eyes even grew moist.

He stepped forward and seized both of Wei Zhenzu's hands in a tight grip.

The noble young master's grip was surprisingly strong, squeezing Wei Zhenzu's bones until they ached.

"A kindred spirit! You must be the kindred spirit I was destined to meet!"

Tears welled in Tuoerfu's eyes, and his voice choked.

"The people of Mondstadt forgot this epic long ago, over the passage of years. They remember only the great deeds of the Anemo Archon and the Geo Archon. I never imagined that you alone would truly understand my family's hidden, tragic glory!"

Tuoerfu shook Wei Zhenzu until his head spun, leaving him only able to force out an awkward yet polite smile.

Paimon floated over curiously.

She flew a circle around the immensely excited Tuoerfu, then raised a soft little hand and timidly interrupted this historic meeting.

"Um... excuse me." Paimon blinked her big, round eyes.

"That ivory horn that made someone burst a blood vessel from blowing it... if you used it to hold apple cider, would it taste better?"

Tuoerfu had eyes only for Wei Zhenzu at this moment, completely ignoring Paimon's culinary inquiry.

Like a drowning man grasping at his last straw, he had finally found the perfect confidant in this world.

He pulled Wei Zhenzu down to sit beside him by the thick roots of the tree, then let out another of his signature long sighs.

"Since you understand my ancestor's greatness, you must understand the pain I feel now."

Tuoerfu lifted his head and gazed up at the sky at a forty-five-degree angle, his eyes growing distant again.

Wei Zhenzu was utterly bewildered.

He had just been worrying about his entire fortune of fifteen Mora, and he really couldn't imagine what pain this filthy rich man could have.

"What pain do you have?" Wei Zhenzu asked humbly, his probing question even carrying a trace of deference.

"What, are you unable to afford food too?"

Tuoerfu shook his head in pain and began recounting his "tragic" life with feeling and expression.

"Brother Wei, you don't understand. Every morning when I wake up, I feel utterly lost."

Tuoerfu spoke slowly, as though bearing a weight too great for life itself to bear.

"I live in a five-hundred-square-meter villa with a garden in Mondstadt's upper district. My bed is simply too big. When I wake up each morning, I often lose my bearings in the soft blankets and can't find the right way out of bed."

The corner of Wei Zhenzu's eye twitched violently.

"There are too many maids at home, and they're far too hardworking."

Tuoerfu continued pouring out his troubles, his brow tightly furrowed.

"They polish my knight's armor until it gleams every day. When the morning sunlight falls on it, the reflection is so dazzling that it hurts my eyes every day. It leaves me feeling deeply exhausted and uncomfortable."

Wei Zhenzu silently clenched his fists. His breathing grew heavy, and his chest heaved.

"Of course, what suffocates me most is my younger sister."

Tuoerfu clutched his chest, his face filled with pain and torment.

"My sixteen-year-old sister, Bei'erta. She's too thoughtful, too adorable! Every morning she personally prepares a full thirty different top-class dishes. Then she puts on a maid outfit and stands obediently by my bed, waiting for me to choose my breakfast for the day. Do you know how stressful it is to have to make that choice the moment you open your eyes every day? That kind of love simply leaves me unable to breathe!"

Paimon drooled as she listened from the side, frantically raising her little hand. "Thirty dishes! I'm willing to bear that kind of pressure! Let me choose! I'm not afraid of being spoiled for choice!"

Tuoerfu turned and looked Wei Zhenzu straight in the eye.

His handsome eyes were now filled with the tearful glimmer of confusion and helplessness.

"Brother Wei, tell me." Tuoerfu clasped Wei Zhenzu's hand earnestly.

"If I can't draw that broken sword passed down through my family, if I can't restore the glory of the Twelve Paladins... then what meaning does my dull, tedious, and perfect life have left?"

At that moment, the air stopped moving altogether.

The smile vanished completely from Wei Zhenzu's face.

His expression darkened at a visible rate, as black as the cast-iron wok in his rental apartment's kitchen that went unwashed year-round.

Fifteen Mora. His pockets were cleaner than his face, holding only that pitiful fifteen Mora.

Yesterday, to save money, he and Paimon had hidden in the Knights' single-occupancy dormitory and eaten boiled cabbage. Just now, Hilichurls had kicked him around like a ball. He even had to count every Mora before buying a single skewer of grilled meat.

And the man in front of him? He lived in a huge five-hundred-square-meter villa! Slept in a super-sized bed! Didn't have to work!

He had an adorable sixteen-year-old sister who made thirty different dishes for him every day!

And he actually dared to sit here with the most melancholy expression and complain that his life had no meaning?

[Warning! Warning! Host has suffered severe mental contamination!]

[Sanity reduced to zero! Current SP: -44!]

[High-risk emotional fluctuations detected! "Distortion" precursor activated!]

Wei Zhenzu completely broke down.

The corners of his mouth twitched twice beyond his control. Then he covered his face and let out an exceedingly low, raspy laugh, tinged with desolation.

"Heh heh... ha ha... hahahaha..."

"Brother Wei? You... what's wrong?" Tuoerfu finally noticed that something was amiss.

He looked at the mass of strange black fumes gradually emerging behind Wei Zhenzu and drew back a little in concern.

"Why is black smoke coming off you? And... why is there such a sour smell in the air?"

Wei Zhenzu slowly raised his head. Like a rag doll drained of its soul, he weakly laid his hands on Tuoerfu's expensive Silk Flower coat.

He was laughing so hard he was nearly in tears.

It was a deep sense of helplessness and absurdity, the kind a dirt-poor man at the bottom felt when faced with a top-tier tycoon.

"Meaning... you're actually discussing the meaning of life in front of someone who can't even afford food?"

Wei Zhenzu patted Tuoerfu's shoulder, laughing bitterly in helplessness and heartache.

"Yesterday, to save money, I ate boiled cabbage without any soy sauce. Just now, I turned my pockets inside out, and all I had left was fifteen Mora. I don't even have enough to buy one grilled mushroom at the Good Hunter."

Wei Zhenzu's eyes reddened, and his voice trembled.

"You're fucking complaining to me... that your bed is too big? Your maids are too hardworking? Your sister's cooking is too delicious?!"

Paimon hid behind the sturdy trunk of the great oak.

Smelling the strong scent of lemon in the air, she looked with immense sympathy at the Traveler, who seemed to have aged ten years in an instant.

"Hahahaha..." Wei Zhenzu tilted his head back and laughed, his voice full of the desolation of someone who had given up caring.

"Qu Yuan's having an awesome party underwater!"

"Alas! I suddenly recall that Qu Zi invited me to a banquet beneath the river. I'm off."

Tuoerfu's eyes widened.

He couldn't understand these strange dialects at all.

But he could clearly feel the despair pouring from Wei Zhenzu, a sorrow flowing backward into a river.

That aura even made him feel a trace of inexplicable guilt.

"The king does not cry. The king does not make a fuss. The king does not speak."

Wei Zhenzu's voice drifted away on the wind by the shore of Cider Lake.

He had completely given up, venting a working man's bitter tears with no regard for anything else.

"The king wants to buy cigarettes. The king does not take the stairs. The king descends from the heavens..."

"Heaven and earth are inverted! Heaven is narrow and earth is vast! Strange, most strange!"

"Traveler, that's jumping off a building!" Paimon stomped her feet anxiously at the side.

"Why didn't you say so earlier?"

The black lemon miasma behind him grew larger and larger, giving off a suffocatingly sour scent.

Wei Zhenzu's sanity was standing at the very edge of a cliff.

"You humblebragging bastard who doesn't know how good he has it..."

Wei Zhenzu sniffed, as though using the last of his strength.

"Apologize to all the poor people in Teyvat right now... and listen carefully. Send me 50 right now, this instant. Otherwise, I'll die of envy right here today and distort straight into a lemon spirit for you to see..."