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ArabicGenshin Impact: A Guide to the Unofficial History of Teyvat — Chapter 25
Chapter 25: Mr. Li Xin’s Pen Grows Ever More Dangerous
The sky stretching over Liyue Harbor was a brilliant, washed blue, signaling what should have been a perfectly ordinary afternoon. Yet, for the keen-nosed literary enthusiasts of the harbor, a faint, electric thread of anticipation hummed through the salty sea breeze.
Shortly after dawn, a freshly painted wooden placard was hoisted beside the entrance of Sanyu Bookstore, bearing elegant yet eye-catching calligraphy.
New Work by Mr. Li Xin
The Travels of Shi Po Chen, Part Two: Lord Shi Po and the Ten Boxes, Half Price
On sale precisely at the Si hour today!
The placard seemed to possess an adeptal magnetism of its own, instantly ensnaring the gaze of every passing merchant, sailor, and scholar.
“Look! It is Mr. Li Xin! He finally released a new volume!”
“A sequel to The Travels of Shi Po Chen? Move aside, I need a copy!”
“Ten Boxes, Half Price? That title alone is a riot. Is it another amusing anecdote about Lord Shi Po’s financial misadventures?”
“It is almost time! Shop assistant, reserve a copy for me! I will be right back with my coin pouch!”
The news sprouted wings, soaring across the bustling wharves and teahouses of Liyue faster than a falcon catching an updraft.
The very second the appointed hour struck, the assistant of Sanyu Bookstore hauled a massive stack of freshly bound booklets onto the front counter. The crisp scent of fresh ink and pressed bamboo paper had barely wafted into the street before the crowd surged forward like a breaking tide.
“One for me!”
“I will take two! One for my wife!”
“Hurry it up! Put it on my tab at the Northland Bank…”
“Stop shoving! There are plenty of copies to go around!”
For several breathless minutes, the storefront descended into absolute chaos. Shopkeeper Sun stood safely behind the heavy wooden counter, his face split into an ear-to-ear grin. He watched his assistant frantically collect handfuls of Mora, his ears filled with the delightful chorus of rustling pages and sudden, explosive laughter from customers who simply could not wait to read their purchases on the spot.
“Ten Boxes, Half Price? Unlimited Stacking? Lord Shi Po’s financial logic is flawless!” A young apprentice doubled over, clutching his stomach in a fit of breathless laughter after merely skimming the prologue.
“Charge it to the Qixing? Truly a classic maneuver.” A middle-aged merchant stroked his beard, exchanging a knowing, conspiratorial smile with his peers.
“Look at this part! He gave some of the discounted goods to Cloud Retainer! ‘Oh? When did you learn mortal promotional tactics?’ The author captured her tone perfectly! It sounds exactly like an illuminated beast!”
“The segment featuring the Conqueror of Demons… it makes my chest ache, but I still want to laugh. How does Mr. Li Xin balance this?”
“Streetward Rambler has the right idea! The Mora saved is enough to fund two entire opera tickets!”
“Wait, he saved money, but did he not spend significantly more by purchasing such a massive bulk in the first place?”
“With the ten boxes half price rule, naturally, the more you buy, the more you save. It is simple mathematics!”
Raucous noise and cheerful amusement flooded the street outside the bookstore. Every reader found themselves completely absorbed in the lighthearted, absurd humor of the tale.
However, as the readers turned the pages and read further into the narrative, the boisterous atmosphere began to shift. Upon reaching the final scene, the lively debates and chuckles gradually died down.
Smiles melted away from their faces, replaced by a deep, quiet focus.
Some readers stared blankly at the lines describing the wordless stele, their eyes tracing the ink over and over again. Others clicked their tongues softly, unconsciously rubbing the coarse paper between their thumbs, their gazes drifting toward the distant mountain peaks as if visualizing the lonely sunset painted by the author’s words.
A young woman dressed in elegant silk turned her back to the crowd, discreetly dabbing the corner of her eye with her long sleeve.
“This ending…” An elderly scholar gently closed the booklet and released a long, trembling sigh. His previous amusement had completely vanished, leaving behind a heavy melancholy. “The prose is so… it is difficult to articulate the feeling it leaves behind.”
“Indeed. The opening chapters made my sides ache from laughing, but reading this final passage… my heart suddenly felt incredibly soft,” a nearby sailor murmured in agreement.
“The Lord of Geo… he is a nostalgic god. Over the span of thousands of years, he must have witnessed far too many farewells.” Someone in the crowd speculated softly about the true inspiration behind the wordless stele. Their tone was thick with reverence, completely stripped of any lingering mockery.
A shared, poignant silence rippled through the gathered readers, binding them in a collective moment of quiet reflection.
Meanwhile, near the grand entrance of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, Keqing had just concluded a grueling administrative meeting. She was briskly making her way back to her private office when she paused. A cluster of young secretaries were huddled tightly together in the corridor, their heads bowed as they whispered excitedly over a rather familiar-looking booklet.
‘Why did it look so familiar? That was a secret she would take to her grave.’
“The Travels of Shi Po Chen, Part Two? When did a sequel release?” Keqing arched a delicate brow and approached the group with silent, measured steps.
The secretaries jumped out of their skin, scrambling to stand at attention. “L-Lady Keqing!”
Keqing simply extended an open palm. One of the terrified secretaries instinctively surrendered the booklet. Keqing flipped through the crisp pages with practiced efficiency. When her amethyst eyes caught the phrases ‘Ten Boxes, Half Price’and’charge it to the Qixing’, a dangerous tightness gripped the corner of her mouth.
Yet, as her fingers turned to the final page and absorbed the vivid description of the lonely figure standing before the wordless stele, her rigid posture softened. She fell into a prolonged silence, her eyes lingering on the text before she finally snapped the book shut and handed it back.
“…During work hours, mind your professional conduct,” she instructed, her voice uncharacteristically flat. She turned on her heel and walked away. However, her usually brisk, purposeful strides were noticeably slower, her mind clearly weighed down by the heavy imagery she had just consumed.
Deep within the quiet, shadowy halls of Wangsheng Funeral Parlor, Zhongli sat comfortably in his usual chair, a steaming cup of fragrant tea cradled in his gloved hands. He listened placidly to a junior undertaker’s daily report. As the report droned on, the same young female attendant from days prior slipped silently into the room, respectfully placing a freshly printed booklet onto the consultant’s favorite tea table.
Once the undertaker finished and bowed out of the room, Zhongli’s amber gaze naturally drifted toward the new arrival. He picked up the booklet, a faint shift in his brow the only sign of his reaction to the title.
He turned the pages at a leisurely, unhurried pace. His handsome features remained as calm and unreadable as still water. Only when he encountered the phrase ‘Unlimited Stacking’ did he raise his porcelain cup to take a slow, deliberate sip to mask his reaction.
Reading through the segments detailing the distribution of discounted goods to the adepti—and specifically noting the highly accurate reactions of his old friends—a faint, unmistakable glimmer of dry amusement flickered in his golden eyes.
But then his gaze swept over the final scene. The painted sunset. The lonely mountainside. The wordless stele. The small incense box, and the golden pine needles drifting down from the canopy, shimmering in the fading light like scattered Mora.
The hand holding his teacup froze in mid-air.
Those deep, ancient eyes, glowing faintly like polished Cor Lapis, anchored themselves to the words ‘wordless stele’and’golden pine needles like shimmering Mora’. He remained completely motionless for a long, heavy moment.
After what felt like an eternity, an incredibly soft, almost imperceptible sigh slipped past his lips.
There was no anger in that breath. It carried only a deep sense of absurdity, a helpless feeling of being caught between laughter and tears, woven together with a genuine sliver of admiration for Mr. Li Xin’s increasingly outrageous imagination.
‘A deceased wife? Mora?’
Zhongli shook his head in slow, measured increments.
This particular fabrication was truly beyond belief. Yet, astonishingly, it aligned perfectly with the shocking historical research presented in the author’s previous installments. It formed its own bizarre, self-contained system of absurdity that was, from a purely narrative standpoint, perfectly logical.
He almost had to applaud the author’s sheer, unbridled audacity.
And yet, beneath the ridiculous premise, the scene depicted on the page carried a quiet, deep poetry.
The bleeding sunset. The silent mountain peak. The nameless stone marker. The solitary deity whispering into the void, while pine needles danced on the wind like falling currency.
This fictional tribute, this deep longing directed at an empty phantom, did not offend him. Instead, it drew the ancient god into a deep, quiet well of contemplation.
The concept of a deceased wife was, naturally, pure fabrication.
But that wordless stele… that heavy, eternal remembrance anchored deep within the heart… that was very real.
The curling steam from his teacup blurred his vision. Within the rippling reflection of the amber liquid, a multitude of faces and silhouettes began to surface from the depths of his memory.
He saw the sweeping plains of the Guili Assembly. He saw the dear friend who had once shared his wine, challenged his ideals in fierce debate, and ultimately entrusted her boundless wisdom and fragile dreams to the soil of Liyue. He remembered her bright laughter, her complex mechanical arts, and her gentle, reluctant gaze as she looked upon their shared land one final time.
His thoughts drifted deeper, plunging into the suffocating darkness of The Chasm. He saw the Yakshas who had fought bloody, desperate battles by his side, shielding the fragile mortals behind them until their bodies finally succumbed to exhaustion and eternal slumber. He remembered the sharp glint of their spears, their silent, unyielding loyalty, and the agonizing determination etched into their faces as they burned away under the weight of their Karmic Debt.
And there were more. So many more.
The brutality of the Archon War had never been as simple as merely selecting seven victors to claim the divine seats.
It was a brutal, blood-soaked path paved with countless sacrifices. It was a tragic epic woven from the lives of dear friends, loyal comrades-in-arms, and even worthy, honorable adversaries, all of them eventually swallowed by the relentless, churning river of time.
He had, in truth, stood countless times atop various desolate mountain peaks. He had lingered amidst shattered ruins and quiet, forgotten glades, lost in silent contemplation.
Sometimes he visited once every few years. Sometimes, only once every few centuries.
The offerings he brought varied with the passing eras. A pot of newly brewed osmanthus wine. A rare, wondrous stone pulled from the earth. And sometimes, he brought nothing at all, offering only a whispered, ‘Have you been well lately?’ to the empty wind.
It had absolutely nothing to do with mortal romance. It was solely the crushing weight of millennia of sediment, a burden known simply as ‘memory’.
This Mr. Li Xin, operating under a completely mistaken premise, had somehow managed to pierce the veil and touch upon the genuine, bleeding emotional core of a certain ancient deity.
It was not mourning for a specific, fictional wife. It was a vast, quiet grief for all the important existences lost over an impossibly long life—a gentleness that was far grander, yet infinitely more lonely.
Zhongli lowered his eyes, watching the tea leaves slowly unfurl at the bottom of his cup. His gaze grew distant, as if piercing straight through the wooden roof of Wangsheng Funeral Parlor to behold Liyue’s vast, azure sky. And beneath that sky, the sprawling, vibrant land that had flourished to this very day, nourished by the blood of countless sacrifices.
He took another small, measured sip of his tea. The temperature was perfect. It was slightly bitter on the tongue, followed by a lingering, sweet aftertaste.
Much like the passing of these long years.
Finally, he gently closed the booklet and set it aside on the table, his movements as steady and composed as they had been for over six thousand years.
‘Let it be.’
If a purely fictional tribute could echo so deeply with genuine, quiet remembrance, perhaps it was not entirely a bad thing.
It was just that Mr. Li Xin’s pen had grown ever more cunning, and ever more… dangerous.
He shook his head, a slight, enigmatic curve forming at the corner of his lips—a complex mixture of resignation and, to some degree, quiet acknowledgment.
At the very least, this particular story was far more elegant, subtle, and moving than the absurd tales of a Synthesized God or the ridiculous rumors of a deity who brought death to his wives.
After a long, stretching silence, Zhongli murmured softly to himself, his rich voice so low it barely disturbed the air in the empty room.
“…Ten boxes, half price, using unlimited stacking until the goods are eventually acquired for free? That is, admittedly, a rather novel line of thought.”
[Elysian’s Note: The “Si hour” refers to the hour of the Snake in the traditional Chinese timekeeping system, which corresponds to the time between 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM.]