Afterward, just as Jun Bai had planned, Lumine and Paimon were in no hurry to head to Liyue.
"Jun Bai, Lumine and I discussed it." Paimon waved her hand, following behind Lumine.
Lumine spoke with a slight apologetic tone, "Paimon and I plan to continue traveling in Mondstadt, but we will definitely attend the Rite of Descension."
"Then I will prepare a proper reception for you in Liyue Harbor," Jun Bai smiled. "You two, may your martial fortunes be prosperous."
Jun Bai walked out from under the large tree. His flaming wings spread open. With his back to Lumine and Paimon, he waved. "Farewell."
A phoenix cry resounded across the grassland. The five-meter wingspan flaming wings appeared once again. Jun Bai flapped his wings and soared toward Liyue.
"Bye-bye!"
"Goodbye!"
Lumine and Paimon waved together in the direction Jun Bai had left.
This trip to Mondstadt had been thrilling enough. Without Jun Bai, who knew how much trouble there would have been along the way. In Lumine's heart, Jun Bai had already become an benefactor and a very important friend.
Venti stood under the large tree, watching his old friend depart with his eyes. He took out his lyre and plucked the strings with his fingertips.
The soothing music sent Jun Bai off and also announced to the players in front of the screen that the Mondstadt main storyline had been successfully completed.
Silver Wolf opened a can of Happy Water. "This plot feels much more exciting to me than the original."
She eagerly opened the tracking menu, planning to continue with the subsequent main storyline, completely unaware that the livestream duration had already approached four hours.
After all, Silver Wolf herself had never seen the new plot, so she hadn't fast-forwarded at all throughout.
However, when Silver Wolf opened the quest list, her expression instantly froze.
Because the next stage of the main storyline quest could only be accepted once the Adventure Rank reached 26.
[It fits the plot… "Paimon and I still plan to continue traveling in Mondstadt."]
[Adventure Rank 26. Even if you're fast and play five hours a day, you'd still have to wait three days, unless you don't eat or sleep and keep grinding.]
[During closed beta, someone calculated that fully exploring Mondstadt plus completing all quests would get you past AR26 without issue.]
[But even if you finish everything, it would still be a few days later.]
Unable to do the main storyline, Silver Wolf sighed helplessly and asked, "Since we can't do the main storyline, does anyone want to watch the Legend Quests for the Three Great Houses?"
After the main storyline ended, the Legend Quests for the Three Great Houses that had originally been interspersed in the main storyline were directly placed in the quest list.
Chapter of the Rabbit, Chapter of the Peacock, Chapter of the Hourglass, as well as Diluc's Chapter of the Night Owl and Razor's Chapter of the Young Wolf five Legend Quests in total.
There were also several World Quests that Silver Wolf had picked up along the way, but because World Quests had no voice acting, the livestream effect was poor, so Silver Wolf did not plan to do them during the stream.
Then, after receiving support from half of the water friends, Silver Wolf returned to Mondstadt City to take the flight license test.
Teyvat
"System, how much Popularity Value can I control right now?" Jun Bai communicated with the system while flying.
[100,000, plus some loose change, but less than 1,000 can be treated as none.]
"120,000 Popularity Value. Looks like the welfare distribution and that flashback perspective worked well," Jun Bai chuckled lightly.
Previously, Jun Bai had asked the system to reserve 20,000 Popularity Value for background completion. Those 20,000 were equivalent to fixed assets and could not be controlled by Jun Bai.
Total Popularity Value minus 20,000 was the Popularity Value Jun Bai could currently control.
It was obvious that the flashback animation of Jun Bai single-handedly fighting tens of thousands of monsters, along with Jun Bai keeping his promise and giving one million Mora, had caused Jun Bai's popularity in the real world to explode in a new wave.
[By the way, I don't understand.]
"You don't understand why I left Lumine?" Jun Bai guessed the question the system hadn't asked. "Do you think that if I continued following Lumine, the Popularity Value would keep rising?"
[Yes, isn't it…]
Jun Bai nodded. "It really is like that."
One sentence rendered the system completely silent. The system had thought the reality wasn't what it imagined, but Jun Bai directly told it that its thinking was correct.
This completely confused the system.
"Following the main storyline is indeed a good way to increase popularity, but that has nothing to do with me," Jun Bai said softly. "A character who has no strong connection to the main plot keeps following the protagonist. For a short time it's fine; players will feel it's fresh."
"But once it drags on, it becomes stealing the protagonist's spotlight."
After Version 4.0 of Genshin Impact, the main reason the protagonist's reputation kept declining was exactly this stealing of the spotlight.
4.0 was Clorinde's desperate rescue, 4.1 was Wriothesley freezing the Primordial Sea and Neuvillette suppressing the Primordial Sea water, 4.2 was Furina's grand deception and the return of the Sovereign Dragon's authority…
The plot was good, but it had no connection to the protagonist that is, the player.
Continuous stealing of the spotlight would only cause players' enthusiasm to fade. As a former player, Jun Bai knew this very well.
When players' enthusiasm fades, the game's daily active users will drop. When daily active users drop, it will indirectly affect character popularity.
The same example Scaramouche.
Quite a few players quit because of Scaramouche in Version 3.4 and 4.8. And the number of players who hated Scaramouche because of the plot was massive.
Even Jun Bai, who tried to maintain an objective view of Scaramouche, couldn't help but develop a dislike for him after the Version 4.8 event.
Therefore, following the main storyline, while it could bring a large amount of popularity gains in the short term, in Jun Bai's view, it was not conducive to long-term development.
Moreover, Jun Bai himself used to be a player. He did not want to become the type of character he hated most when he was still a player.
Jun Bai's positioning for himself was as a guide and a confidant on the protagonist's journey.
This was Lumine's or rather, the player's journey. Only by clearly understanding his own position could Jun Bai truly achieve long-lasting popularity that never declined.
"System, which version is my gacha banner in?"
[Version 1.1.]
"Are you planning to make the revenue explode?" Jun Bai teased.
The system had turned Jun Bai's modified plot into game plot in a reasonable way.
And that way was the system descending into a parallel world, becoming the behind-the-scenes boss of miHoYo, and taking full responsibility for all the plot and operations of Genshin Impact.
This was why Jun Bai was teasing the system.
His skill module was main DPS-oriented. It would eventually be power-crept, but in Version 1.1 it was undoubtedly an existence that crushed everything with overwhelming superiority.
The dimension-reducing skill design, the high-energy plot visuals, and the visual appeal of the character art and modeling Jun Bai was very confident in his banner's revenue.
[Your opponent is the fully optimized Zhongli after the Zhongli incident. The weapon has been corrected to have HP% as the secondary stat and a passive that increases Energy Recharge Vortex Vanquisher.]
"I think I don't need to face an enemy I cannot defeat…" Jun Bai retreated at the speed of light.
[I still prefer the unruly version of you from earlier.]
Jun Bai stopped speaking and began looking for a place where he could perform background completion.
Soon, Jun Bai arrived in the skies above Yaoguang Shoal. Finally, he landed near Wangshu Inn and retracted his flaming wings.