Genshin Impact: A Guide to the Unofficial History of Teyvat — Chapter 93

Chapter 93: History of the Jar: The Mortal Jar and the Wrath of God

[Title]: History of the Jar: The Mortal Jar and the Wrath of God (Also known as: Did You Know? Liyue Harbor Was Built on Pickling Jars)

[Author]: Li Xin

[Main Text]:

[Chapter One: Vicissitudes of Time]

In a distant, forgotten era, long before the golden prosperity of modern commerce, Liyue Harbor was merely a tiny, insignificant fishing village. The earliest ancestors clung to the rugged coastline, eking out a fragile living from the restless waves.

The great ocean served as a generous granary, offering up endless bounties of the deep, but it was also a notoriously fickle deity. It bestowed the vital gifts of fish and sea salt, yet it frequently unleashed catastrophic, world-ending disasters upon the mortal realm.

According to fragmented ancient records, these apocalyptic storms were no natural phenomena. They were the deliberate workings of a terrifying entity known to later generations simply as the Sea God. Whenever this abyssal being stirred from its slumber, it would whip up towering waves of absolute destruction, threatening to drag the entire fishing village down into the dark, suffocating depths.

During those dark times, turbid and briny seawater would roar like a dying beast as it poured into the coastal settlement. The surging tides swallowed low-lying cottages whole, mercilessly crushing hard-earned belongings, fishing boats, and livelihoods into a pathetic slurry of splintered wood and choking silt.

This was no mere seasonal storm. It was divine punishment, a brutal, overwhelming encroachment upon the mortal land by the Sea God.

With every receding tide, the survivors were left with nothing but a tragic mess of waterlogged wreckage and heavy, exhausted sighs.

Yet, in that era of despair, there lived an extraordinary man in the village. The neighbors and fishermen simply called him Old Pickler.

Old Pickler was a man well over fifty years of age, his back slightly hunched from decades of labor. He was not skilled at casting heavy nets into the churning sea, nor was he adept at tilling the stubborn soil in the fields. He possessed only one unique, ancestral skill: a mastery of pickling vegetables that remained absolutely unsurpassed far and wide.

The thousands of heavy, dark clay jars crowding his courtyard were his entire world. Through Old Pickler’s calloused hands, even the most ordinary, bitter wild vegetables could be transformed into something miraculous. He produced mellow-flavored, perfectly crisp pickles that could be preserved for years in the damp coastal air without ever spoiling.

Those pickles, offering a fresh, salty bite with a lingering sweet aftertaste, became an essential, life-saving staple for the fishermen heading out into the unpredictable sea.

Old Pickler was a broad-minded elder. He never viewed this unique, life-sustaining skill as his own private property. He frequently gathered the villagers, personally teaching them the careful secrets of selecting the right ingredients, sun-drying the leaves, balancing the seasoning, and perfectly sealing the heavy clay jars.

Gradually, those dark brown pickling jars began to pile up under the dripping eaves and in the muddy courtyards of every single household.

Then came the day when everything changed. At the fragile transition between the end of summer and the beginning of autumn, the weather suddenly violently shifted.

At the far edge of the horizon, mountains of ink-black clouds piled up against the heavens, pressing down upon the ocean with the suffocating weight of a collapsing city. Even before the gale-force winds arrived, a terrifying sound echoed across the water. It was a low, rumbling moan, sounding exactly like the breathing of a colossal, primordial beast. The faces of the oldest, most experienced fishermen instantly turned an ashen gray. They all knew this calamity was completely unavoidable.

Wave after towering wave grew higher, crashing thunderously against the fragile coastal rocks and the pitiful earthen embankments. Briny seawater, thick with broken wood and the debris of shattered ships, had already flooded into the village cottages, quickly rising past knee-height.

“It is not a wave… It is Him! He has come again!”

Cries of sheer anguish, the deafening howl of the gale, and the sickening crunch of collapsing houses merged into one apocalyptic chorus. Despair, matching the freezing temperature of the encroaching tide, soaked through the ruined cottages and drowned the hope in everyone’s hearts.

People screamed as they scrambled toward the muddy higher ground, forced to watch helplessly as their home was about to be swallowed by the abyss.

At that critical, life-or-death moment, Old Pickler turned his gaze toward the massive mountain of pickling jars in his courtyard. A sudden, brilliant light burst from his weathered eyes.

He lunged toward the highest point of the village square, letting the violent gale tear at his graying hair and unkempt beard. Drawing upon all the remaining strength in his aging body, he raised his arms to the black sky and shouted over the storm.

“Folks! Quickly! Bring out every single jar! Fill them with heavy sand and pile them up! The higher the better!”

The despairing, panic-stricken villagers were momentarily stunned into silence.

Use these fragile, everyday pickling jars to fight against a colossal, heaven-swallowing wave? To fight a God? The idea was completely absurd! Was it not exactly like throwing fragile eggs against a solid stone mountain?

But as the first massive wave, heavily imbued with the crushing power of a God, violently struck the shore and tore away three houses like wet, shredded paper, the people realized they had absolutely no other choice.

The raw, primal instinct for survival drove the terrified populace into a frenzy of action. Men threw off their soaked shirts and went into battle bare-chested. Women, crying children, and the elderly all rushed forward to help. Basket after heavy basket of wet coastal sand was frantically poured into the empty clay jars. They were quickly sealed with thick oilpaper cloth and tied down with heavy hemp ropes. Even the heavy clay jars still containing Old Pickler’s famous vegetables were carried over and used directly in the desperate effort.

Thousands upon thousands of heavy clay jars were rapidly passed down a human chain and stacked by the bleeding hands of the mortals. With their heavy, sand-filled bodies and their unique, curved structural design, the jars were cleverly interlocked. Along the rising waterline, the villagers miraculously built a massive Jar Dike that looked remarkably, impossibly solid.

The exhausted crowd had barely finished stacking the final row of the Jar Dike when the God’s ultimate tide arrived.

The water crashed down with the force of a falling mountain. But when the divine waves struck those makeshift ramparts built entirely of pickling jars, a true miracle occurred.

The curved, interlocking structure of the clay jars actually dispersed the immense impact force layer by layer. The heavy pots only settled slightly deeper into the mud during the violent impact, leaning closer and tighter against one another. The small, curved gaps between the thousands of jars acted like countless miniature whirlpools, actively disrupting and shedding the God’s kinetic power. The devastating impact of the violent waves was forced to flow away, completely dissipating into the surrounding sand.

The long, terrifying night eventually passed, and the dark tide receded.

The Sea God had failed to level this insignificant fishing village.

A heavy, dead silence hung between heaven and earth, with only the gentle morning sea breeze bringing the briny, bitter scent of ruin.

Although the outer edges of the village still suffered heavy damage, the core living area was miraculously preserved, entirely thanks to this bizarre rampart built from items familiar to every single household.

What was even more miraculous was the state of the wall itself. After the seawater fully receded, the stunned people found that these ordinary clay jars, which had directly endured the crushing impact of divine power and prolonged soaking in the corrosive seawater, were actually completely intact. The small gaps between them had been firmly filled and solidified by the wet sand and crushed marine organisms, forming a single, unified entity that became even more indestructible than solid rock.

The exhausted survivors stood before that curved, towering rampart made of countless clay jars, utterly silent in their awe.

[Chapter Two: The Legacy of Jar and Tile]

The surviving villagers quickly realized that the Jar Dike, born out of absolute, frantic despair, might look completely ridiculous to an outsider, but the architectural wisdom it contained far exceeded their wildest imaginations.

The curved structure could perfectly divide immense, crushing force. The jars, packed tightly with wet sand, were as steady and immovable as mountain boulders. The gaps between them could be naturally solidified by the elements over time.

Using nothing but their hands and their pantries, they had defeated a God.

Thus, under Old Pickler’s wise leadership and the villagers’ spontaneous, unified organization, a massive, long-term engineering project began. People no longer discarded their broken or empty jars at will. Instead, they organized dedicated teams to collect them, fill them to the brim with heavy sand, and began to construct a true, permanent Jar Dike along the vulnerable coastline, treating the pottery exactly like building a massive stone wall.

As the years passed and maritime trade began to flourish, this once small, vulnerable fishing village gradually developed into a highly prosperous market town where wealthy merchants gathered. New, superior building materials were introduced. Solid, heavy stone transported all the way from The Chasm and high-quality, fragrant timber purchased from the Guili Assembly were widely used in the expanding construction.

However, the older generation of Liyue craftsmen stubbornly adhered to a strict, unwritten tradition. Whenever they were tasked with constructing the most important pier foundations, the thick walls of an ancestral hall, or the heavy stone piers of bridges built over the water, they would solemnly bury several completely intact clay pickling jars, heavily filled with sand, directly at the core of the structure.

This practice was not mere superstition. It was a deep, spiritual inheritance. The master builders called it Setting the Foundation.

The jars filled with heavy sand symbolized great, enduring virtue carrying the weight of all living things. Their perfectly circular shape signified family reunion and ultimate perfection. The tightly sealed mouths further implied long-lasting stability and thoroughness in all endeavors.

More, those humble jars contained the heavy memory of a forgotten time when frail mortals once stood their ground against a raging deity.

This small, quiet ritual prayed for eternal safety and commemorated those harsh, early years of fighting the violent sea for a chance at life, turning the utterly mundane into the miraculous.

Much later, the great Rex Lapis personally defeated the Sea God, sealing the abyssal beast away beneath the waves for good. He led the people forward, and Liyue Harbor was officially established, with grand construction flourishing across the region.

The arrival of absolute peace meant the Jar Dike no longer needed to be expanded. The people would only maintain the existing structure every so often. As the decades turned into centuries, the original Jar Dike gradually fell into neglect, eventually vanishing entirely into the long, sweeping river of history.

Yet, many years later, a genius Liyue architect, deeply inspired by the ancient bedtime story of the Jar Dike, captured a sudden flash of inspiration from the curved, interlocking structure of those old pickling jars.

He directed his craftsmen to fire clay into uniform, hollow tiles in massive batches. After several rounds of structural improvements, these crude shapes evolved into the highly efficient Tubular Tiles, complete with concave-convex interlocking tongues, and the flat Plate Tiles, which were soon widely used on roofs across the entire harbor.

These new tiles not only fit tightly together, providing extremely smooth and rapid water drainage during heavy storms, but their light, hollow structure could also easily withstand strong, howling winds while remaining incredibly durable.

Looking out over the city, the neat, rows upon rows of tiles on the roofs of early Liyue Harbor bore a faint, unmistakable resemblance to the Jar Dike stacked by those desperate villagers so long ago.

As for the legendary Glazed Tiles that would later become radiantly famous and serve as the ultimate symbol of high-class Liyue architecture? Their birth was even more wondrous and entirely accidental.

According to dusty ancient records, the massive breakthrough in firing technology originally stemmed from the sheer absent-mindedness of a young, overworked kiln worker.

While hurriedly transporting a massive batch of clay tiles specially commissioned for the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the exhausted boy accidentally tripped over his own feet. He violently knocked over the precious color jars he was carrying to paint the decorative patterns. The shattered jars contained rare sea minerals and finely crushed seashell dust, which were all completely spilled onto the raw, unfired clay tile bodies.

The clumsy kiln worker was absolutely terrified of the punishment he would receive, but he could not undo the massive mess. Left with no other options, he had to steel his nerves and push this entire batch of ruined waste directly into the roaring kiln.

To his absolute, wide-eyed surprise, after undergoing the fiery nirvana of the fierce kiln fire, what came out was not the expected blackened waste. Instead, the heat produced breathtakingly beautiful Glazed Tiles! The finished pieces presented a jade-like, glowing warmth and a deep, captivating luster that perfectly mimicked the surface of the seawater.

From that fateful day onward, those brilliant Glazed Tiles guarded the myriad lights of Liyue’s bustling homes.

[Chapter Three: The “Jar” of Hidden Merit]

Centuries passed in the mere blink of an eye, and Liyue Harbor had fully transformed into the most prosperous, wealthy commercial port on the entire Teyvat continent.

A thousand merchant sails gathered in the bay, and the daily traffic flowed endlessly like water. The famous Glazed Tiles shimmered brilliantly under the golden sunlight, and the towering, tiered buildings displayed the grand, unmatched scenery of the mortal world.

That ancient story about the wrathful God, the mortal ingenuity, and the humble pickling jars had long since become like the distant, fading silhouettes of departing sails. The tale was completely buried in the vast, obscuring mists of history, almost never to be mentioned again by the modern citizens.

Today, only a few highly damaged, rotting bamboo slips locked deep within the archives of the Ministry of Civil Affairs still bear a faint, barely legible record: “…requisitioned folk clayware and pottery to resist the sea breeze and strengthen city defenses…”

What that vague sea breeze actually referred to, and the epic, desperate story behind it, were known to almost no one alive.

Occasionally, modern construction workers would dig up massive, ancient pickling jars from the deep soil by the sea. The heavy jar bodies remained perfectly intact, though they had completely merged with the surrounding earth and rock over the centuries. They would be briefly, dismissively scrutinized by academic archaeologists and then lazily categorized as ancient domestic waste. No one knew the heavy, life-saving mission they had once carried, nor did anyone know the forgotten story of Old Pickler and the brave villagers.

The jars remained buried and silent, as if desperately wanting to speak but stopping themselves at the last moment.

Only those few old-fashioned, traditional shops or ancient families who deeply valued the past would still follow the ancient tradition. When renovating their ancestral property, they would quietly bury a single clay jar, heavily filled with sand, deep under the new foundation.

The hired craftsmen would casually mutter about protecting the house or gathering good energy, but no one could clearly explain the original, historical source of this ritual anymore. They treated it merely as a lucky, superstitious rule passed down from their ancestors.

Today’s Liyue people walk on smooth, perfectly paved, and solid streets. They live in magnificent, towering houses, and they enjoy the sturdy, impenetrable city defenses left behind by Rex Lapis and generations of skilled craftsmen.

They do not know that the original, unyielding solidity of this land did not stem solely from the divine protection of Rex Lapis. It also came from those simple, heavy pickling jars that once carried the mundane flavor of every household’s daily life, and bravely resisted the apocalyptic wrath of a God.

Those jars condensed the brilliant ingenuity and the unbreakable unity that mortals burst forth with when pushed into desperate, impossible straits.

Liyue Harbor remains endlessly prosperous.

And its true foundation remains deeply hidden in the dark earth of history. Silent, forgotten, yet never having disappeared.

[The place where we stand originates from this land; our solid immortality belongs to this land.]