"Judging from the material of the pickaxe..." And so, Hu Tao brought Ronava along and began assessing their business.
It was bound to be a somewhat tedious and troublesome process. Yet Ronava could not read the slightest trace of displeasure on Hu Tao's face.
"Wait, this little girl..." As she studied Hu Tao's face, many of her own memories suddenly resurfaced.
She vaguely remembered that this was the child who had once crossed the boundary between life and death just to see her grandfather one more time, then returned laughing.
"Wait," one memory surfacing was like a radish being pulled from the ground. It was clearly unrealistic to expect it not to bring some dirt up with it. "What are all these?"
A vast series of images flashed uncontrollably before Ronava's eyes:
She saw the Abyss and Sacred Land Transformation ravage Teyvat. Countless lives perished, and no one was spared except the Fourth Descender.
She saw the god who ruled over ice gather the power of every Gnosis, only to change nothing in the end.
She also saw the figure she had taken for her new "master" raise an arm high in the heart of the Abyss...
Before she knew it, tears were streaming down her cheeks. Hu Tao, who had been pondering, tilted her head and was startled by her reaction.
"Consultant Ronava, are you all right?"
Her words brought Ronava back to her senses. Ronava touched her cheek with her free hand and was surprised to find her palm already wet.
"What's wrong with me?" She did not understand why she was crying for no apparent reason.
"Uh, I think you might have remembered something unpleasant." Faced with this situation, that was the only explanation Hu Tao could offer.
A similar strange phenomenon appeared on Tang Wang's end. By now, he had returned to his residence and was packing things he might need for his upcoming trip to Mondstadt.
"Mondstadt, the city-state of wind and pastoral songs. That's a nice place..." As he muttered to himself, his hands moved faster and faster.
"These things... I'd better bring them too. They don't take up much room anyway. Come to think of it, every time I think the space in this Shadow Domain has reached its limit, it still manages to hold more."
At the same time, Tang Wang once again questioned whether he needed to go to Mondstadt.
In his memory, the Traveler, the Fourth Descender, would soon awaken on a beach, fish Paimon out of the water, and begin their journey in Mondstadt.
Stormterror, the Rite of Descension, the closed borders... The Traveler would solve every problem. If he went over now and joined the Knights of Favonius in killing Stormterror, would that directly interfere with the original plot?
His hands continued to move, but time in the outside world seemed to have stopped. Tang Wang looked up in confusion. Before him, a great mass of Abyss condensed into a flat surface without warning.
"What is that?" Tang Wang immediately drew his weapon, and the golden light of condensed Human Realm Power once again appeared around him.
"..." Yet the Abyss merely stood there in silence, as though it really were just a mirror.
Soon, his own reflection appeared on its surface. Looking at the face identical to his own, Tang Wang felt a chill run down his spine.
Amid the suffocating standoff, the reflection in the mirror opened its mouth:
"As long as you do not lose your nobility..." The voice was weary and desperate. "The entire world will be open to you."
Tang Wang was completely stunned. He had never imagined that the Abyss, which had appeared so menacingly, was there only to tell him his favorite line from Genshin Impact.
"Wait, what exactly are you? And who's controlling you?" Seeing signs that the Abyss was about to dissipate, he immediately pressed on. "The Five Sinners? The Abyss Order? Or something else?"
Unfortunately, the Abyss would not answer it. The disaster that had afflicted countless planets vanished just as meekly as that.
"This is way too bizarre, isn't it?" Feeling the cold sweat on his body, he could not help complaining. "Ah... But now that I think about it, I've transmigrated into Genshin Impact, so maybe it really isn't a good idea to keep slacking off."
"Since I've already decided to shake up Heimarmene, doing a little more won't hurt, right?"
And so, Tang Wang finally made up his mind to change more things.
Only at this moment did the distorted timeline finally begin moving forward.
"Leaving everything else aside, there really do seem to be quite a few people in the Fatui I can win over... La Signora, Scaramouche, and Damselette. I can definitely win those three over."
"With their help, and the abilities old man Zhongli says I have, perhaps I can also..."
In fact, Tang Wang did have a bit of an idea-he intended to use every means at his disposal to fight the Abyss.
As someone who had played Genshin Impact, he knew all too well that the true disaster had never been the Heavenly Principles, but the Abyss. The Heavenly Principles' actions were tyrannical and even cruel, but their achievements in fighting the Abyss were also beyond question.
So even if Tang Wang had a favorable impression of everyone in Snezhnaya, there was no way he would help them rebel against the Heavenly Principles. Even if he were to oppose the Heavenly Principles, he would have to wait until he found a way to fight the Abyss.
An imperfect analogy came to mind: the Heavenly Principles as they were now were like a manhole cover over a sewer. Everyone knew how filthy and foul-smelling it was, but if you really wanted to lift the cover, you had to be ready to deal with the pollutants in the pipes.
If you lifted the cover without any precautions and got splashed all over with an unknown mixture of solids and liquids, you could hardly blame the cover for not being shut properly-after all, you were the one who lifted it.
"I really don't know what to do. There's nothing I can do..." Meanwhile, back in the house from earlier.
Hu Tao and Ronava sat properly on the family's sofa, one on the left and one on the right. Across from them, the middle-aged man was in floods of tears.
"The doctor said she only has three days left to live. I'm afraid she only has a dozen or so hours of consciousness left."
"So you chose to lock her and yourself inside the house?" Hu Tao said, using as solemn a voice as she could. "You still have a dozen or so hours together. Are you planning to spend all that time crying?"
The man was stunned by her words. He stared straight ahead, seemingly giving them serious thought.
"Since death is already unavoidable, why not try to give your loved one some more happy memories before it comes?" Hu Tao continued.
"I... I... I really am in no mood for that..."
"Then do you want her to meet her end in despair too?"
"..." After hearing her words, the man's expression changed at once. "All... all right. I think you're right..."
And so, Ronava witnessed a relatively gentle "farewell ceremony" for herself.
"Director Hu," Ronava naturally asked the girl about what puzzled her after they returned to the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor, "if you were about to die one day, would you be afraid?"
"Of course I would." Hu Tao nodded as though it were only natural. "But even if I were afraid, I'd still tell the person who harmed me before I died... I'll remember this grudge!"
Her attitude gave Ronava a sense of familiarity once again. Yes, she was still the same Hu Tao she had once met.
But now, Ronava was no longer the Ruler of Death in the eyes of the people of Teyvat... Still, once she had thought it through, she felt that was a good thing.