While Eula struggled with her decision, our protagonist was-
"Aaah-I'm filled to bursting! Ronava, this is the powah of Wish Power!"
Ye Xuan threw his head back, his whole body looking as though it were being inflated from the inside.
What he had never expected was that what filled him wasn't the Fatui's delight at the success of their wicked scheme.
It was the secret, lingering pleasure the people of Mondstadt felt as they gathered outside the Lawrence Clan's gates and hurled abuse.
Those damned Mondstadt people were a real delight.
The moment his Wish Power gauge overflowed, the void began drawing abilities for him.
Light fell into his room.
A jumble of things clattered down, piling up into a small mountain on the floor in the blink of an eye.
"Holy shit, why is there so much random junk?"
Ye Xuan squatted down and rummaged through it. After a couple of handfuls, his sharp eyes spotted an intact box in the heap of rubbish.
He opened it to find twelve octagonal talisman stones lying neatly inside.
Ye Xuan couldn't have been more familiar with the designs on them.
Rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog, pig.
The twelve animals of the zodiac. They were his childhood.
He reached out, and the instant his fingertip touched the Dragon Talisman, all twelve stones burst into twelve beams of light. They circled him once, then merged into his body one after another.
Ye Xuan stood there and clenched his fists.
"I don't need anything else now!"
Before his excitement had faded, he plunged back into the rubbish heap and kept searching.
This time he was meticulous, picking up each object and giving it a couple of shakes to see if anything rattled.
Before long, he dug out something unusual.
It was a long pink wand, with a golden five-pointed star inside a ring at the top and a small white wing on either side. The shaft was smooth and warm, as though someone had held and rubbed it for years.
It looked familiar, but he couldn't remember it.
Ye Xuan snapped a photo and tossed it into the chat group.
[Ye Xuan: Otaku Eri, do you know what this is?]
[Blonde Loser: Who said you could give me that nickname?! Isn't that a magical girl wand? Ye Xuan, are you going to make your debut as a magical girl?!]
[Great Emperor Miwa: Cat peeking in.]
[Cat Burglar: Cat peeking in.]
Eriri really had forgotten who held the trump cards.
Teacher Kashiwagi Eri was so cute. If Ye Xuan gave her a blow to teach her who was boss, she'd probably cry for a long time.
Still, her reminder jogged Ye Xuan's memory-the Star Wand from Cardcaptor Sakura.
[Ye Xuan: Eriri, mine is the real thing.]
[Blonde Loser: What?! You jerk, you actually stole something from an underage girl!]
What kind of logic is that?
[Ye Xuan: Why couldn't Sakura have fallen for my good looks and given me the Star Wand as a token of her first love?]
[Blonde Loser: You damned lolicon, someone should electrocute you.]
[Ye Xuan: Eriri, as far as I'm concerned, you're just a loli too.]
[Blonde Loser: Who are you calling a loli? I'm an adult!]
[Ye Xuan: Height 158 cm, measurements: B79.9 / W56 / H86. Not much better than a loli.]
[Blonde Loser: Pervert! Where did you get my measurements?!]
[Ye Xuan: So you admit those are your measurements?]
[Cat Burglar: They are a little small.]
[Great Emperor Miwa: Don't say that. Maybe there's still room for improvement.]
[Blonde Loser: You're all bullying me! Ye, if I ever help you buy anything again, I'm a dog!]
After sending that, Eriri's avatar went dark, and she logged off.
Ye Xuan left the chat group too.
The Star Wand... he remembered it was linked to the Clow Cards.
He rummaged through the wreckage a little more and, sure enough, found one.
The Windy.
"Ronava, help me look for more like this."
The two of them spent a long time searching and counted fifty-three cards in total.
They also checked to make sure-there really was nothing else in there.
Ye Xuan stood up, dusted off his hands, and gazed at his haul spread across the floor, thoroughly satisfied.
All those days he'd spent working so hard to watch the show hadn't been for nothing.
He looked up and glanced out the window.
"This humble Daoist has counted on his fingers. The time is about right."
Ye Xuan smiled.
"Let me go play the savior for my little maid, just this once."
By the time Ye Xuan and Ronava arrived, Eula's entire reconnaissance company had been captured by the Lawrence Clan's private soldiers.
Torches stood in a ring around the square, lighting the red walls of the Lawrence Clan's old residence until they looked as though they were bleeding.
The members of the reconnaissance company had been forced to their knees in a row, their armor stripped off and their swords trampled underfoot.
Some had blood on their lips but still held their necks stiff, refusing to bow their heads.
The Mondstadt onlookers still weren't afraid of death and were standing there cursing Eula.
"Sure enough, there isn't a single decent person in the Lawrence Clan. Some Spindrift Knight she is."
"She must have stolen the Knights of Favonius' deployment plans."
"That's right. She's the only one from the Lawrence Clan in the Knights of Favonius."
"They should have driven her out of the city long ago. Keeping her around was asking for trouble."
How could this happen? Eula's once brilliant golden eyes had lost their usual sparkle.
Amber burst out of the crowd. "What nonsense are you talking about? Eula isn't that kind of person!"
"What do you know, little girl? You can know someone's face without knowing their heart."
"Exactly. A scout defending someone from the Lawrence Clan... Are the Knights of Favonius also...?"
Amber was left speechless.
Her face flushed, and her fists clenched tightly, but she found that every word she spoke was drowned out by the buzzing voices.
Then Eula spoke.
"They're right." Her voice was flat as a pool of stagnant water. "It's all my fault."
Amber whipped her head around. "Eula?!"
Eula didn't look at her.
She looked at the ground, at her own shadow cast across the flagstones.
The shadow was all alone, stretched long by the firelight. No one was willing to stand beside it.
Just then, another shadow suddenly appeared on the ground-
"What a sorry sight, my little maid."
Ye Xuan continued, "I agreed to let you tell the Knights of Favonius about the intelligence. What are you doing here?"
Ye Xuan's sudden appearance out of thin air startled the troublesome Mondstadt people and the Lawrence Clan alike.
But the giant babies were bold. After a brief, deathly silence, the crowd began talking about Ye Xuan.
"Who's he? Looks like he's from Liyue."
"I saw him on the road the day before yesterday, hanging around with that Eula. Neither of them is any good."
"What's someone from Liyue doing sticking his nose into Mondstadt's business-"
Hearing their remarks, Ye Xuan frowned.
"Since when did insects dare wag their tongues?"
The moment the last word left his mouth, he was no longer where he'd stood.
Ye Xuan teleported in front of the person who had said he was no good.
The man didn't even see how Ye Xuan got there. He only felt a gust of wind brush past his face.
Ye Xuan stood before him, barely taller than he was, but the oppressive pressure made his knees go weak.
"Wh-what do you want?"
Ye Xuan didn't look angry. He even smiled and thoughtfully asked a question.
"Have you decided where you want to travel?"
"...What? I'm not traveling," the man said, forcing himself to be brave.
"Then I'll decide for you. How about the Knights of Favonius?"
The next second, a hand clamped around the back of his neck.
The power of the ox!
The instant Ye Xuan's palm touched the man's skin, the muscles beneath it swelled, veins bulging one by one and knuckles thickening as though they might burst through the skin.
The man didn't even have time to struggle.
Ye Xuan gripped the back of his neck with one hand, as if lifting a piece of luggage, and swung his arm in a half circle-
He flung him away.
The man became a human missile, tracing a ridiculous yet terrifying arc as he flew clean across the square and down the street, before-boom-
The Knights of Favonius' gates shattered, wood splinters blasting outward in a fan along the shock wave.
The two knights outside the gates had no time to react before the blast knocked them to the ground.
"Looks like he might have a hard time surviving."
In the eyes of the remaining Mondstadt people, Ye Xuan's smile was like a devil's.