The road to Liyue is a well-travelled one, and he is not unfamiliar with the passage from overseeing some of the cargo transport from the Winery for some banquet or another hosted in Liyue Harbor. His next destination, however, would not be Liyue Harbor. While he briefly passed through the capital city while setting out on his sojourns a few years ago, his main impression of it was excessive noise, bright colorful lanterns, and crowded streets. The unrestrained sounds of an entirely mercantile society are rather overwhelming to the unprepared visitor.
In his mind's eye, he can conjure an entire panorama: street hawkers peddling their wares, food vendors shouting slogans and buy-two-get-one-half-off deals, children running amok down the street with kites trailing after them. If he looks away from the scene, seeing the children through the corner of his eye, the figures resolve into two young boys of around the same age, both chasing after an anemo crystalfly amongst the grapevines…
Diluc drains his cup of tea. No use in being overly sentimental anymore, not when there is no one from those memories worth knowing. His Vision glows faintly from his hip, but he brushes his coat over it as he gets up, leaving the empty tea cup behind on the table.
Mr. Zou, the tea vendor, cheerfully shouts something about living a life with no regrets after him. He nods, just once, in response. Trite aphorism or not, Diluc has no intention of being stuck in the past, making the same mistakes as his previous self.
In between unsolicited advice-giving and inane chatter, the man provides some useful information about the nearby locales. Diluc's next destination will be the nearby village of Qingce. Quiet, peaceful, but close enough to Liyue's borders that he would be able to establish an information network there. And, as it turns out, no one else his age has settled in the village, all having left to chase money in a more frenzied environment.
The situation would be conducive for his work: fewer people to bother him in an attempt to 'make friends.' He reflects on his future plans while examining the small house he rented from the de facto village chief—it is spare but clean and well-maintained, with spectacular views overlooking the fields of glaze lilies and flowing water. Which would be nice if that was the sort of thing he cared about. Overall quite serviceable.
He figures Qingce Village will make a suitable place to figure out his next steps and determine how exactly he would first tap into the current information networks in Liyue and nearby Sumeru and from there, to carry out justice. He has a house now, with clean linens and pure and clear water drawn from nearby springs. Tomorrow will bring a new day in which he can begin the rest of his life. With this cheering thought in mind, he falls asleep to the sound of cicadas and crickets.
He wakes up to knocking on his front door. The sun is barely up, casting a faint orange glow on the picturesque vista below. It is altogether too early for visitors, and thieves would not be so polite as to announce their arrival. He opens the door anyways.
"Welcome to Qingce Village!" says an older woman he does not recognize. She holds out a metal tin to him, which convention dictates that he take. "Freshly baked cookies, nothing like the smell of home cooking to liven up a new home."
Another older woman joins in. "We're happy to show you around the village if you'd like. She's Tian Yundan, and I'm Huang Yingtai."
He nods in acknowledgement of their greetings. The second woman points to a clearing somewhere beyond his front door. "Alright, so over there is the common area, where it's nice to sit back with some tea and watch the kids run around--"
"Don't mind this old fool on the welcoming committee, we're all just pleased as punch to have a young person settle in-- it's been ages since we've had someone your age last live here--"
"Now, now, Yundan, don't scare him off already!"
Faced with this veritable barrage of visitors, he falls back into old habits, the manners trained in him from birth as befitting his social station back in Mondstadt. The setting may be different, but he has found from his travels that common courtesy is the same in all lands. He accepts the cookie tin ("Walnut cookies! I bet you won't have had anything like them in Mondstadt. The trick is to use lard, not butter!"), finds some chairs to seat his guests, and offers them all glasses of water (not having had time to procure any juice).
He and the two elderly women have all just settled into their seats when the door knocks again.
The sight of an elderly couple, one male and one female, greets him when he answers the front door. This time he keeps the presence of mind to not automatically step aside and allow them access to the house.
"Good morning! Welcome to Qingce! We thought we'd drop by to see how you're settling in. Here, take these." The woman in the pair hands him a bamboo basket still warm to the touch. The smell of simmered seafood emanates gently from the basket. "Shu mai. No one likes to cook when you're all so busy moving in. You're not allergic to shrimp, are you?"
The man responds before Diluc can utter a single word. "Aiyah, Shufen, I told you a thousand times to make vegetable shu mai instead. All these foreign youth these days have allergies to nuts, to meat, to wheat."
"But not rice," the woman states.
"No, of course not. No one is allergic to rice! And that, dear, is why I brought this young man our finest rice wine." The old man holds up a bottle of what can safely be assumed to be an alcoholic beverage produced primarily from fermented rice. "It's no Maotai, but this is the good stuff. Use it for cooking something special, or better yet, savor it in the presence of friends."
This opening salvo of a conversation all takes place in the span of a few moments. Instinct helps him respond before the timing becomes too awkward. He accepts the gifts and is about to politely close the door on them when his guests in the living room call out.
"Old Kai! And Li Shufen! Come in, come in."
Oh no. They know each other.
The couple cheerfully side-step past him and join his two guests from before. Diluc, to say the least, is somewhat dumbfounded. When he entered into a short-term rental agreement with the village chief, he was under the impression that this domicile would be his house, yet here his guests invite others inside. Are these the local customs? Or did he just so happen to make the acquaintance of the only villagers who happily ignore social norms in all of Liyue?
He fails to close the front door in time before another older man, this time accompanied with a small adolescent, walks up the street. They make eye contact, and Diluc, with a premonition that can only be described as dread, knows this man's intended destination.
Soon, a veritable crowd of villagers gather in his too-small house, a mix of elderly men and women along with unfortunately more than one child. (He lost count of how many, exactly—at some point the front door was simply left open, and now children are running around too quickly for him to keep track). Before the sun has fully approached its zenith, food starts to be portioned out, drinks are poured, and all of these unexpected guests (and complete strangers) have made themselves quite at home. This realization only brings disquietude. Etiquette training, as well as sheer lack of available space, are the only things stopping Diluc from pacing to and fro in agitation.
"Aha, it's basically just dim sum. Look, we've got bao zi, we've got three types of dumplings, we've got shu mai-- Who brought the egg tarts? Miss Bai, was it you?"
"I say, the starlings only grow bolder each year! In the next five years, there shall be no glaze lillies that make it past their first full moon!"
"Granny, look, look! Xingxing's made a mess again…"
"Miss Ruoxin, wouldn't you agree that funding for the upkeep of common spaces is inadequate? Weeds like mint and sweet flower grow relentlessly. No matter how often I pick them, the next day they're back!"
The only solace Diluc can find in this morning's series of events is that the crowd seems to be largely self-sufficient and can find their own entertainment. His input is hardly required beyond introductions and simple questions about how he is finding life in Qingce Village. Finally, they all depart, though this is preceded by a mass group-cleaning that would have violated at least four different security protocols if this house had been the manor back in Mondstadt. Still, he cannot say he is too unhappy to see the last visitor make their egress. He closes the door, and while he does not quite slump in his chair in relief, he is also not precisely the model of proper posture. Diluc thinks that after such a raucous morning, he is allowed some dispensations.
The proceedings of the rest of the day are nothing near to what he had originally planned yesterday. Somehow, the cacophony carries over, lingering in his thoughts as he tries to salvage what he can of the remaining daylight hours. Which is what leads him to this:
He leaves.
This time with less fanfare than when he departed the winery. Only him and the full moon for company as he quietly closes the front door, with ample money covering the full month's rent and another month's worth for additional expenses on the kitchen table.
Coward, his mind helpfully supplies. He ignores this thought. It is only practical that he decamp under cover of night. No doubt these old men and women of Qingce Village would take his departure personally and would demand to know exactly in what ways they failed to make him feel at home, when his home is not here, will never be here (and is certainly not in the winery he left behind.)
True to its roots as a nation of commerce, the road system of Liyue is a modern marvel, reasonably smooth and free of potholes that would inconvenience a cargo-laden cart.
The rain, however, does not follow the same agenda.
He takes shelter at the hulking landmark that is the Wangshu Inn, a marvel in its own right as an improbably placed building atop an improbably large tree. After speaking with the proprietor of the inn, he procures a room in which to wait out the storm. Diluc kept a fairly expeditious pace after leaving Qingce Village and only made camp once, near a traveler rest station in Dihua Marsh. Then what would appear to be a localized monsoon woke him up, and he was forced to trudge his way to the inn lest he become wholly surrounded by fields of unending mud.
He had seen the Inn when he set out his tent last night but decided against the unnecessary expenditure that was a concession solely for the sake of his comfort. Which meant that by the time he steps into the inn's lobby, fully drenched and now fully willing to admit that comfort was sometimes a valuable thing to have, the day is still quite young. Once dry and dressed in clean clothing, Diluc sets out to gather some information.
The boss of the Wangshu Inn, the woman from Mondstadt at the front desk who provided him with a room number and key, proves to be stubbornly abstruse when he asks about interesting news and happenings. She insists that her inn was properly approved by Liyue's main governing body, the Liyue Qixing, and then redirects the conversation to some mischievous stray cat that she and her husband took in.
He cannot say he fathoms the reasoning behind her assertion. He had assumed as a matter of course that her inn was properly accredited and followed all the relevant regulations set by the Qixing. Mondstadt, as a nation, enforced much fewer rules upon its people and businesses, but such a statement was relative. During his short tenure as head of the Dawn Winery, he had been confronted with the sheer volume of paperwork that the legal operation of a business entailed in Mondstadt. To be fully transparent, a great degree of the complexity arose from the success of the Dawn Winery's products. Exports to other nations meant that the Dawn Winery was subject to following each nation's specific requirements. He counted himself lucky that a situation did not arise of one nation's rules conflicting with another's for the same product. Or at least, if it had, Adelinde had clearly handled it. Another reason to appreciate the hard work of the woman he had placed his trust in to manage the winery along with the entire estate.
Seeing that his line of inquiry with Verr Goldet is unlikely to bear fruit, he moves on. Her husband, at least, has a bit more to say about the local monster population as well as the Millelith's lack of ability to take care of these simple matters. Typical, really, that the government's military force is ineffectual and deaf to the plight of the common folk. He supposes he will see what he can do to help aid the Wangshu Inn staff tomorrow, once the storm has died down and the roads cleared again.
Diluc subtly pries about the current political situation in Liyue and Liyue Harbor. Apparently, there is to be a Fatui delegation arriving soon in Liyue Harbor, ostensibly to consult upon an expansion of the Northland Bank.
The lockdown of Inazuma, stemming from the Raiden Shogun's Sakoku Decree, has been posing problems to the continuation of trade between Liyue and Inazuma, though some pirate crews have been flouting the laws in order to export goods to Inazuma and to smuggle people in and out of the isolated country.
A few months ago, there had been a Rite of Descension, an annual ceremony for when Morax himself visits Liyue Harbor and shares his predictions and guidance. One of the statements made eventually led to a change in monetary policy regarding speculation and gambling, which is now provoking some merchants and citizens to begin hoarding mora.
"…And over here is the puppy that my beautiful wife and I adopted together. Come, hold out your hand. Look, he'll shake your hand. Good boy, Richie! He's a highly intelligent animal, our Richie."
Diluc will have to reserve his judgement on the true intelligence of the dog. The dog is simply performing an action that has earned it praise in the past and seemingly will continue to do so in the future. However, he sees no reason to deny the animal praise, and so he pets the dog while considering the information provided by the surprisingly knowledgeable innkeeper (who is not the boss, as Diluc has been reminded multiple times by Verr Goldet).
An increased Fatui presence in Liyue is a mid-level concern. He does not think they are at the level yet where they can openly meddle in another country's affairs, but it is only a matter of time, and besides, there are many ways to exert pressure without an outside indication.
The Sakoku Decree. A mid-level concern, but outside of his control to affect. He had heard rumors about it before but had not realized it was intended to last long enough to fully disrupt the flow of goods and services and people between Inazuma and other nations. It seems rather unwise to him, an island nation isolating itself to become fully self-sufficient on its own resources. He spares a thought for an acquaintance he once knew, back in Inazuma, who would doubtlessly be affected by the decree. A pity, for the man had always been a wanderer at heart and did not strike Diluc as the sort of man who would be fully satisfied by staying within the confines of one nation alone. As things stand, Diluc can do nothing from afar to support him, though, and will simply have to trust in his acquaintance's ability to handle his own affairs.
And finally, an increase in the prevalence of mora hoarding. Ostensibly a low-levelled concern, but with the potential to become larger. Such behavior was likely to encourage all manners of evil, whether it be more savings deposited at the Northland Bank, thus consolidating more power into the hands of the Fatui, or perhaps the mora would be cached on the saver's own person, thus posing a more lucrative target to thieves and pickpockets. Either way, the ramifications of this new monetary policy could only lead to more trouble in Liyue Harbor, trouble that no doubt the Millelith would be utterly incapable of either recognizing or handling appropriately.
…It would appear that Diluc has his work cut out for him for the foreseeable future. He takes his leave and goes to seek an answer for the problem of his grumbling stomach.
The chef downstairs provides him with an adequate plate of sustenance, though he has to extricate himself from what is shaping to be a lengthy conversation around the chef's frustrations with some ghost story or another. Somehow the chef views his confession about ghosts to lead to a genuine connection between them, as Diluc only narrowly escapes a hearty clap to the back while he leaves the kitchen to head towards the tables in the common area.
There is a someone in the room already sitting at one of the tables when he walks in. A plate of what looks to be slices of tofu covered in a sweet syrup glaze is on the table before the man, but that is not what draws Diluc's attention.
The man's stature is that of a teenage boy, but his eyes are more akin to those found on old war veterans. There are numerous signs that this figure is no mere human: the jade green arm tattoo, the strange uncoordinated clothing, the red eye makeup, and most tellingly, the ominous dark green mask set aside on the table. Barring a devoted acolyte of the theatre, as he knows some Fontaine plays utilize masks to better depict their intended storyline, this man may likely be some spiritual figure in Liyue.
Their eyes briefly meet before man breaks eye contact, looking down at his food instead. Diluc is grateful that, important spirit or not, at least this man has no interest in interacting with him beyond the necessity of sharing the same common space while eating their food. Finally, someone who is not overly gregarious, constantly trying to make grand overtures of friendship to him, a complete stranger from foreign lands. This realization pleases Diluc in an odd way that he does not care to examine now, and he quickly refocuses his attention on his own comestibles instead.
The sound of chopsticks being laid down on the table makes Diluc look up. The man freezes when their eyes meet once again. For a second, Diluc thinks the man looks as if he is about to say something. Entirely unbidden, the disturbing inclination to perhaps say hello back implants itself into his mind, when--
The man leaves.
Though the circumstances in which the strange man departs are noteworthy in how peculiar they are. A gust of wind blows through the room, though it is fully enclosed with windows and open doorways a full story up above. One moment, the man is there, and the next, he is nowhere to be seen. Only the empty plate and the chopsticks give signs of his prior presence.
After a moment's thought, he dismisses it. Whoever this man is and what mystery he brings is ultimately of no import to Diluc. He finishes his meal and goes up to the balcony to check on the weather before taking his rest in his assigned room. The tempest continues steadily apace outside.
He has the eerie feeling of being watched while on the balcony. The ghosts and specters that the chef was so frightened of? Or perhaps…?
More wind from the storm urges him to head back inside. (How can it be that the rain turns nearly horizontal, thus neatly bypassing any protection that the roof would normally provide?) Diluc retreats into his room to claim whatever sleep he can find for the night after pondering more upon what he has learned today. The strange sensation on the balcony of this incongruous inn? Irrelevant. He must focus on the journey he has ahead.
Notes: