Shen Luolun walked out of Wanmin Restaurant with a big bump on his head, still grumbling indignantly:
"All I did was make a few suggestions. Did you have to hit me?"
Nothing could be accomplished without rules. That was a rule handed down by the ancestors~
Only with rules could one avoid heartburn and go far.
Would he have spoken so earnestly to anyone else?
But since you're my bestie, I won't hold it against you this time.
The thick-skinned Shen Luolun immediately put the matter out of his mind.
Next, he was going to the pleasure house to listen to some music.
Following the ripples of his memories, Shen Luolun arrived at the Yun-Han Opera Troupe.
The Yun-Han Opera Troupe.
The place was ablaze with light and packed with people.
As the foremost opera performer in Liyue today, Yun Jin was immensely renowned. Whenever she performed, the Yun-Han Opera Troupe was packed, sometimes to overflowing.
"Ah, I'm late."
Seeing the house full of guests, Shen Luolun beat his chest and stamped his feet in frustration.
There were no seats left.
Damn it!
It had always been crowded before, but he had always managed to arrive just in time to snag a seat. Tonight, though, a lot had come up and delayed him.
And in that short delay, every seat had been taken.
Even so, Shen Luolun refused to give up on listening to the music.
In his view, listening to music was a wonderful thing, even better than drinking chicken soup.
Worst comes to worst, I'll find an empty spot and stand.
As Shen Luolun looked around for a suitable spot, a calm, unhurried voice sounded by his ear.
"Young friend Shen, there's still a seat here."
"Hm?"
Shen Luolun turned to look.
A handsome young man with a composed air sat at a table outside Heyu Teahouse, holding a cup of hot tea and looking at him calmly.
"Consultant Zhongli?"
Shen Luolun broke into a delighted smile.
"Well, what a coincidence."
He jogged over and sat down opposite Zhongli.
"The guests at this table left not long ago. I only just arrived myself," Zhongli said mildly, taking a sip of tea.
"I happened to see you, young friend Shen. It must be fate."
It wasn't fate.
Everyone who knew Zhongli knew.
Just put the bill on Wangsheng Funeral Parlor's account~
He was the sort you couldn't pluck a single feather from, even as he flew past like a goose.
How could he possibly treat another person to tea?
His intention was already obvious.
Unfortunately, the innocent Shen Luolun knew little of the world and had never seen the darkness of the adult world. Thinking his older friend was simply being hospitable, he happily asked the waiter to bring out Chenyu Vale's finest new tea of the year.
Steam rose as the fragrance of tea wafted through the air.
Shen Luolun took a small sip and clicked his tongue in admiration.
"Ah~ Good tea, good tea~"
"Tea from Chenyu Vale really is different. It has a touch of adeptal aura all its own."
"Indeed. Tea from Chenyu Vale is rich but not harsh, clear but not thin, with a deep, lingering fragrance. It is a first-rate tea."
Zhongli nodded slightly.
He had lived a long life and drunk who knew how much fine tea, yet every time he sampled tea from Chenyu Vale, it drew his approval.
"Are you here to listen to the opera too, Mr. Zhongli?"
"Yes. I heard the Yun-Han Opera Troupe had a new piece, so I came to see it on a whim."
In a sense, Zhongli and Shen Luolun were the same sort of people:
The sort who liked listening to music at pleasure houses and taking caged birds for walks in the street.
With a new piece at the Yun-Han Opera Troupe, Zhongli, a man who spent his days wandering the streets, naturally wouldn't miss it.
And Heyu Teahouse was close to the Yun-Han Opera Troupe. Yun Jin occasionally came to the teahouse to sing a few pieces, so it was indeed a good place to listen to opera.
Shen Luolun smiled.
"Same here."
He suddenly remembered something and asked:
"By the way, Mr. Zhongli, may I ask you something?"
"Go ahead."
"I just heard someone say that strange phenomena have appeared in The Chasm, and in other nations too. What exactly is going on?"
He was curious about the strange phenomena those customers had mentioned, and what had happened to Lumine and Paimon in Snezhnaya.
As an aside, Shen Luolun hadn't joined the protagonist's party and traveled the Seven Nations with them, keeping up with every new development on their journey, as he might have in other fanfiction.
He could only learn what great things they had done and which nations they had affected through newspapers or rumors.
Didn't that sound useless? A Genshin Impact fanfic where he didn't even follow the protagonist? Had all those years of practice been for nothing?
It wasn't that Shen Luolun didn't want to. In fact, Lumine had once invited him to join her travels, but he had politely declined.
He didn't have the strength, folks.
He had been reincarnated in Teyvat for eighteen years, and never mind a cheat, he hadn't even awakened a Vision.
He also didn't want to endure the hardships of martial training, so his combat power was approximately five.
A combat-power-five weakling accompanying the protagonist to fight the Heavenly Principles? Don't make your Brother Shen laugh.
The two randomly spawning Hydro Slimes under that big tree in Windrise were enough to give your Brother Shen a hard time.
Maybe the protagonist had an aura of immortality, and even with a combat power of five, he might still survive just fine, lying low until the final battle with the Heavenly Principles. But there was no telling how much hardship he would have to endure along the way.
As the saying went, if you can endure hardship, endure a little less of it.
Working 996 before transmigrating and still working 996 afterward-wouldn't that make transmigrating pointless?
In any case, Brother Shen, who earned hundreds of millions of Mora a year, had already resolved to live a life of financial freedom and extravagant luxury.
The protagonist could save the world. I'll just be responsible for shouting 666.
Ahem, enough digression.
Although Shen Luolun didn't know what had happened to Lumine and Paimon recently, he could ask!
He felt he could find the answers to all of it from the mysterious and seemingly omniscient Consultant Zhongli.
Come to think of it, even after knowing Zhongli for so long, he still hadn't figured out his identity.
He was clearly a shield-support character abandoned by the times, yet he always managed to show off inadvertently in every version.
The developers had really hidden things well. The more he dug, the more he found.
Zhongli paused briefly and glanced at him, the meaning in his eyes unclear.
"Have you not been out these past few days?"
Shen Luolun scratched his head.
"Yeah, I've been rushing to finish a manuscript at home, so I haven't gone out much these past few days."
Zhongli knew Shen Luolun was a bestselling novelist and understood. He then said slowly:
"It is... the Skyfrost Nail!"
"The Skyfrost Nail?"
Shen Luolun froze, then his expression changed.
Wasn't that the fucking same thing as the ones in Dragonspine and The Chasm?
Heavenly Principles: Children, do you like the gifts your boss prepared for you? (gleeful)
Σ(ŎдŎ|||)ﾉﾉ
Could it be that, now that they had reached Snezhnaya's final version, the Heavenly Principles could finally hold back no longer and was going to settle every old grudge?
Fuck!
Shen Luolun clutched his head and wailed.
"OMG~ I don't want this~"
"I've only just started living a corrupt life, preying on the locals and terrorizing the region. How can it be about to end already?"
His life had only reached chapter four, yet it had already fast-forwarded to the grand finale.
Could he surrender now and only lose half?
(A certain Valorant junior who had lost so much she was completely tilted: What do you think~)
Zhongli assumed Shen Luolun was worried about the threat posed by the Skyfrost Nail and had lost control of his emotions, so he comforted him:
"There is no need to worry."
"The world is ever-changing and difficult to predict."
"Perhaps the child of man will work a miracle in the future. Ultimately, the world is moving in a positive direction."
"Everything can continue as before."
The senior Geo Archon passed on his experience in lying flat to a great landlord and remnant of feudalism.
"The child of man?"
Shen Luolun's eyes lit up, hope rekindled in his heart.
"That's right, there's still the child of man!"
He had been so scared out of his wits that he had forgotten about Lumine.
Lumine was the protagonist. How could the protagonist possibly stand by and watch the world be destroyed?
"Consultant Zhongli, do you know something we don't? Could you give me a hint?"
An archon who could still leisurely drink tea and listen to music before a great battle was the most devious kind.
If he could get some inside information from Zhongli, he could find somewhere to hide in advance.
Zhongli, however, acted as though he were an old man too aged to hear, simply sipping his tea with an air that said the secrets of heaven could not be revealed.
Shen Luolun pursed his lips.
It was always like this.
Just when things reached the crucial point, they fizzled out.
Just like a certain webnovel author.