Ren
Of all the areas in Liyue, Nantianmen wasn't anything special. It had its own legends and stories, yet nothing as extraordinary as places like Guyun.
Liyue's signature rocky cliffs rising all around, sparse vegetation clinging to the stone, the sound of wind moving through the gorge without anything to interrupt it.
'If only I had a camera…'
Zhongli dropped from Nue's back without much ceremony. Even he took some time to appreciate the surrounding environment of Nantianmen.
Ren dropped down after him and recalled Nue into the shadow, rolling his shoulders.
"This way," Zhongli said, and started walking.
Ren quickly followed. Throughout their short journey, Zhongli had filled the silence with stories of Nantianmen. But what really caught his attention was Zhongli's long, very detailed explanations of the different kinds of ores they might come across.
The man knew his stuff.
They had just walked into a clearing that held one giant tree in the middle when Ren felt something off.
He almost dismissed the feeling as ambient elemental energy. Nantianmen, like all other places in Teyvat, was saturated in elemental energy, and the elemental density here was higher for some reason.
But this was different. It wasn't as clean as elemental energy was. It felt layered. Like someone was deliberately trying to conceal its presence.
He extended his senses carefully, trying to get a read on it. Only to find that he couldn't pinpoint it exactly.
'This smells like an Adeptus's doing.' Ren thought.
There were traces of Adeptal energy, yet even that was somewhat concealed. Whatever was being hidden must have been powerful enough to leak out even through all the layers of deception.
But while he wasn't able to locate the exact source. He was, however, able to sense its general location.
'So it's from that tree?'
Calling it massive would be an understatement, it was absolutely gigantic. What he also noticed was a blue scar that went up the tree's body, creating a haze that pressed outward in slow pulses, almost like breathing.
Ren spotted a stone tablet near the tree's base. The words on it were worn from time, but he was able to read it with some difficulty.
[Life endures in Heaven and Earth thanks to the merciful Adeptus. On this site lies an evil dragon, please do not disturb it.]
'Well, shit.' Ren immediately thought as he finished reading the tablet.
"Zhongli." He turned to the man, who was also looking at the tree. Though there was a glint in his eyes that Ren couldn't quite place.
For a moment, he looked sad.
"Do you know what's up with this tree?"
"The Dragon-Queller," Zhongli said. "There is an old legend associated with it. An evil dragon, one of considerable power, was sealed beneath this location by the adepti long ago. The tree was part of the sealing." He paused. "It is considered a sacred site. Most people who come to Nantianmen are aware enough of the story to give it a wide berth."
Ren looked at the tree for a moment longer. The haze pressed outward again, and his body registered it as something similar to a Cursed spirit.
That fact confused him.
If an evil dragon was truly sealed beneath his feet, why was the surrounding area so filled with life? People were able to walk past this place without a care in the world.
'How odd.'
He exhaled slowly and looked away.
"Good to know."
They spent a short while standing near the tree before walking again.
The sensation faded gradually as they put distance between themselves and the tree. It was like the way a sound faded. Not disappearing instantly, but diminishing until it was background noise.
They followed the cliff face east, Zhongli navigating with absolute certainty, until the terrain opened into the mouth of a cave.
"Whoa." Ren couldn't help but awe as his voice echoed through the cave.
It was really big. The kind of large where the ceiling was high enough that Ren's first impression was of the sky, before his eyes adjusted and he realized it was stone.
Zhongli stopped just inside the entrance and looked upward, and Ren followed his gaze.
The cave walls rose on all sides, and on them clusters of crystalline minerals were embedded at various heights, some close enough to reach with effort, most significantly higher.
'That's a lot of Cor Lapis!' Ren expected some mineral beds when Zhongli said he knew a place, but this was just absurd.
Why Zhongli hadn't hired a personal mining team to take the ores for himself was a question that popped into his mind.
He ran a quick mental calculation of the approximate volume, cross-referenced it with what he knew about Cor Lapis pricing, applied a conservative estimate of yield per unit of raw ore, and arrived at a number he had trouble even believing.
'Maybe I should consider branching into mining somehow.' Ren couldn't help but think.
"I owe you," he said instead, which was the most restrained thing he could manage.
Zhongli looked at him with amusement. "You owe me nothing. I said as much already."
"I know what you said. And I am choosing to ignore it."
Zhongli made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh and let the matter rest.
/ — /
"How exactly are you planning to get up there?" Zhongli asked.
Ren was looking at the cave walls, tracing the deposits. The lowest clusters were maybe fifteen feet up. Reachable with effort, but not efficiently.
The bulk of what he wanted was considerably higher, embedded in the upper portions of the cave where the stone compressed into the formations Zhongli had described as optimal. Getting up there manually would take hours and require equipment he hadn't brought.
"Don't worry. I have something for this."
He reached into his shadow and brought his arms together. Putting his knuckles against each other as the shadow beneath his feet rippled.
"Hunt. Hold. Crush—"
"—Come forth, Ganki."
The Stone Sentinel materialized right beside him, its seven-foot-tall frame completely dwarfing him.
Ren glanced at Zhongli and was surprised to see the man's wide eyes.
He went still, though not so much. If Ren wasn't already familiar with how he usually acted, he wouldn't have noticed.
Saying he was alarmed wasn't quite the right word. More like he was caught off guard. His eyes moved across Ganki methodically, almost like he was dissecting every small detail of the shikigami.
"Don't worry. All of my summons are under my control. They don't act independently against my intent."
Zhongli was quiet for another moment. "I understand," he said with his usual tone. But his eyes showed that he was still very interested in Ganki for some reason.
"I know you call your summons shikigami, but I am curious what else there is to your abilities." He hummed with his arms crossed. "If it's alright with you, of course."
Ren considered this for a moment. Zhongli was probably one of the most trustworthy people he had ever come across. And he was also helping him out, so telling him some stuff shouldn't be an issue.
"It's fine, you're already helping me, so this is nothing. Ganki is a fusion of three shikigami combined into a single form."
"I summoned it because it has adhesive legs that would help it with climbing. It can also manipulate Geo, which would also help with mining." He gestured toward the upper deposits. "It's built for exactly this kind of job."
Zhongli looked at Ganki, then at the cave walls. "What a fascinating creature…"
"How many shikigami do you have?" he asked.
"I have ten shikigami. Ganki is a result of a fusion between a few of them." Ren crossed his arms. "The combinations produce something new each time, depending on which shadows I use."
"Truly a powerful technique." Zhongli's attention had not left Ganki. "Do you have other combinations?"
Ren opened his mouth to answer, but closed it almost instantly.
"Yes."
"Might I see it?"
"No..."
Zhongli blinked.
"I can't show you due to… Very significant reasons. Personal and professional."
Zhongli studied him for a moment, an expression suggesting he was filing this information away. He didn't push further, which Ren appreciated more than he was going to say out loud.
He turned to Ganki and patted its back. "Alright, buddy, you know what to do."
It didn't need to be told twice.
It crossed the cave floor and hit the wall without slowing down, its toad legs gripping the stone immediately, and its four arms helping it find purchase on the cave walls.
It went up the wall quickly and efficiently, its four arms working in sequence. Two holding and two collecting, chipping the ore free in sections and transferring each piece down into Ren's shadow storage.
The sound of it filled the cave. Stone against stone, the occasional crack of a deposit coming free.
Ren and Zhongli watched. And Ren had to stop himself from tearing up at the sight.
'Oh, Ganki. My most versatile fusion. You are going to make me so much money.'
"Remarkable," Zhongli said.
"It is, isn't it? I made him specifically for efficiency." Ren said, unable to keep the satisfaction out of his voice. "While I did design it for combat first and foremost. I also added considerable tweaks to ensure it would help with courier related stuff."
"You designed it for your work?"
"That was the intent, yes." Ren watched Ganki shift to a new cluster, the toad legs releasing and reattaching without pause. "The shikigami I summon individually are powerful, but limited. The fusions are where I can get something versatile."
Then he added, "And Ganki is such a reasonably cost summon that I can rely on it without worry!"
Zhongli nodded slowly, clearly impressed. "It speaks to a certain kind of intelligence to take a technique designed for combat and find what else it can do."
"Is that a compliment?"
"It is an observation. Though I suppose it serves as both."
Ganki worked its way across the upper cave wall, and Ren's shadow storage filled steadily. He could feel the weight accumulating.
It wasn't anything unbearable, but it was quite heavy. He had gotten better at managing large amounts of weight over the past few months, thanks to several deliveries that forced him to shove everything into his shadow storage.
By the time Ganki finished the last cluster and descended the wall, approximately thirty minutes had passed. Ren recalled the shikigami and rolled his shoulders, feeling the full weight of the haul settle.
He grunted quietly.
"Are you alright?" Zhongli asked.
"I'm fine," Ren said as he straightened up. "The weight of anything stored transfers to me physically. Usually it's fine. But this is a significant amount of ore."
"We could have made multiple trips."
"That won't be necessary. I've carried heavier." He adjusted his footing and got his balance properly under the weight.
This was technically true. It was also not the most comfortable thing in the world.
Zhongli looked slightly worried for a moment, but saw that he was not lying and let it go.
"Ganki performed well," he said instead.
"Yeah." Ren looked at the now-bare upper walls of the cave, stripped cleanly of every deposit that had been there earlier. "It did."
He had designed Ganki with efficiency, versatility, and practical application in mind in a world where his other shikigami were either too powerful or too narrow for everyday problems.
Standing in a cleared cave with a shadow storage full of exactly the material he needed, he felt the particular pleasure of a plan that had actually come together.
"Alright, one more check around the cave—Huh?" He stopped the moment he felt his senses spike.
'Is something approaching us?' He brought his guard up, extending his senses outward.
It wasn't the tree. That had faded to background noise a while ago. This was something else, a concentrated burst of elemental energy moving toward them fast, and getting closer.
'It's coming from below—!'
He barely had time to process it before Zhongli spoke.
"Move back." He didn't raise his voice, yet his voice boomed through the air with authority.
Ren didn't need to be told twice.
Not a second later, the ground where they had been standing erupted as a Geovishap tore through it, sending chunks of stone scattering across the cave floor.
'So I finally get to see one face-to-face.' It was much bigger than the hatchlings Ren had encountered around Liyue. It shook the debris off and turned toward them with a snarl.
"We appear to have encroached on its territory," Zhongli said, perfectly calm.
"Yeah, I got that." Ren frowned, keeping his eyes on the creature. "Not a single trip outside the harbor ends normally. Not one."
He flared his Cursed Energy outward in an attempt to intimidate the Geovishap. But it seemed to only enrage it further.
The Geovishap roared and charged straight at him.
"Fine," he sighed.
Ren waited until the distance was right, then manifested Orochi's extension and slammed his front foot into the ground.
A Geo pillar erupted from the cave floor directly in the creature's path, catching it mid-charge and sending it flying upward.
"Nue."
He immediately reached into his shadow and summoned Nue, who lunged at the airborne Geovishap and threw it into the cave wall before discharging a burst of Electro directly into it.
It roared in pain, but Nue kept discharging Electro for the next ten seconds.
With a thought, Nue stopped its attack. The Geovishap was still alive, but the beast didn't move to attack, merely glaring at him fearfully.
After a moment, it slowly retreated back into the hole it had come from.
Ren recalled Nue and gumbled. "Honestly, can't a man just have one trip without being attacked by something?"
"You handle yourself well," Zhongli said, chuckling slightly at Ren's irritation.
"Well, these kinds of situations are pretty common—hold up." Ren stopped talking when he realized an odd detail.
Zhongli was standing in the exact same spot as before. The same spot Ren had moved away from when he told them both to get clear.
"You didn't move?"
"I assessed the trajectory and determined I was outside the impact radius," Zhongli said, like it was the most normal thing ever.
Ren narrowed his eyes. "In the exact second before it came through the floor."
"Yes."
"..."
"..."
"You're not an Adeptus in disguise, are you?" his mouth moved before he could think.
Zhongli's eyes widened at the question, before he let out an actual laugh. "You flatter me. But rest assured, I am as much a mortal as you are."
In response, Ren couldn't help but scratch the back of his head, embarrassed. "Haha, sorry. Yeah, it'd be pretty unlikely that you were, huh?"
"Precisely."
"..."
Ren tried to look anywhere besides Zhongli's eyes, cringing at himself for the weird question.
But it was exactly because of that that he did not see a bead of sweat fall from Zhongli's forehead.
"We should head back." Zhongli cut the silence, "Who knows if more monsters will arrive?"
"Yeah, let's go." Thankful at the change in subject, the two started walking toward the cave exit.
Zhongli fell into step beside him. "You seem to deflect praise easily. Someone with your capabilities should be more confident in themselves."
Ren was caught off guard by the question and rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "I'm just being realistic. There's a big difference between functional and impressive in Teyvat, and I know where I sit."
"Awareness of your limits is important," Zhongli agreed. "But so is acknowledging what you can actually do. You should have more pride in yourself."
Ren glanced at him. "Is that a compliment or advice?"
"Advice," Zhongli said. "The distinction matters."
Ren laughed quietly and kept walking.
/ — /
Zhongli
'Ren Roman. What an odd existence you are.' Zhongli thought as he walked next to the boy.
Ren was talking about something about the weight of the ore and something about Yanfei, but Zhongli was only half listening. His mind was currently occupied.
He still responded in the conversation, of course. One did not come to rule an entire nation and not learn how to multitask. One of the many skills he picked up in his long, long existence.
The boy immediately caught his attention the moment he set foot into Liyue. It was hard not to notice him. His mere presence exuded an aura so similar to the Abyss that it even got him worried.
A visitor from beyond the stars who possessed such malevolent energy was far too familiar for his liking.
Alas, his worry was for naught.
Zhongli did not observe the boy himself, merely a few interactions with him were enough to see that he meant no harm to Liyue. If he was able to befriend Ganyu of all people, then Zhongli knew for certain that Ren had no untoward intentions.
However, the moments when he did come across the boy were enlightening.
It had been a long time since he had seen a Descender. Yet Ren was a peculiar anomaly even amongst them.
The boy's body absorbed other kinds of malevolent energy as if it were nutrition, and Ren was growing stronger quickly because of it.
But what got his attention the most was Ren's soul.
Ren himself had no Karma to his name. Yet what surrounded his soul were thousands, if not millions, of restless spirits trying to claw their way into his being. Only to be stopped by some form of barrier that shielded his soul.
'Why would anyone do such a thing?' Zhongli couldn't help but question. 'To even go so far as to force one's existence into another. Imprinting two signatures upon another's soul…'
He couldn't decide if it was the purest form of love or the most vile of curses.
To have an innocent soul, but have so much hatred directed at him. Zhongli couldn't help but wonder how it came to be.
Just with a glance, even he knew he was powerless to do anything for Ren.
…
Not long after, they arrived back at the Dragon-Queller tree.
'I suppose this is goodbye once again, old friend.'
But his senses moved toward it the way they always did when he passed close enough, an action he did out of instinct rather than anything meaningful.
After many long years, he had grown used to the exact amount of malice, of corrosion that pressed against the seals. He had been monitoring it for so long that the knowledge sat below conscious thought, surfacing only when something changed.
Something had changed.
'What—?'
It was a small, nearly imperceptible change that any other Adeptus would have dismissed. But Zhongli did not dismiss things.
He checked the seals, then pushed his awareness into what lay inside.
'How could this be?!'
The malice leaking from the seal had decreased.
Not significantly. Not in any way that would register to anyone who had not spent centuries learning exactly what the seal felt like at rest.
But the weight was fractionally lighter than when they arrived. Something had drawn a piece, no larger than a speck of salt, of the corruption outward and seemed to erase it.
He used his power to trace the source of this anomaly and found his eyes moving towards Ren.
Ren had stood near this tree twice today. He had not known what was beneath it, Zhongli was certain of that.
He had sensed something, correctly identified it as another legend of Liyue, and moved on without understanding what it was.
He had not been trying to affect the seal. He had simply been present, and his energy had done what it apparently did everywhere it went. Drawn the darkness in and absorbed it.
The corruption that had consumed his friend had decreased by something so small it was almost nothing.
Yet even that insignificant change made the Lord of Geo tremble slightly for the first time in millennia.
Zhongli let himself ponder what months of this, or years, might mean for what lay beneath the tree.
Whether the corrosion that had made Azhdaha what he was at the end was as permanent as Zhongli had believed it to be for the last several thousand years.
He had believed it was permanent because there had been no evidence otherwise. There had never been anything that could touch the corruption without becoming part of it.
Until now, apparently, there was an outlander who absorbed filth passively as a side effect of existing and had no idea he was doing it.
The universe, Zhongli reflected, had a very particular sense of humor.
"Zhongli."
He heard his name from somewhere to the left.
"Zhongli."
He blinked multiple times as he snapped back into reality.
Ren stood beside Nue, looking at him with concern. "Are you alright? You just zoned out there for a bit."
"My apologies," Zhongli said, trying his best not to show any change in his expression. He began walking toward Nue. "I was thinking."
"About what?"
There were many accurate answers, none of which he was going to give.
"Liyue," he said simply, which was true enough.
Ren gave him an odd look, then shrugged and turned back to Nue.
He settled onto Nue and said nothing more.
Nue rose from the ground with steady ease. Liyue spread out beneath them as they climbed. The harbor, the docks, the layered stone of the city rising against the mountain.
The Dragon-Queller tree, growing smaller below as they climbed.
Zhongli watched it until the distance made it indistinguishable from the rest of the cliffs.
He did not allow himself to think too much about what he had noticed. He had spent a long time learning not to anchor himself to outcomes he could not control. That particular lesson had cost him more than most.
But there was a difference between not anchoring and not hoping, and he had not been given many reasons to hope about this specific thing in a very long time.
'Times have truly changed, haven't they, old friend?'