It was nine in the morning.
After brushing her teeth, taking a shower, and tidying up the room, Furina was ready to crawl back into bed. She wasn't fragile by any means, but as a defeated warrior, she needed rest to recover her strength.
Lu Heng, on the other hand, had it easy. With a flick of two simple spells, he felt refreshed and ready to head out. By the time he stepped outside, it was already nine o'clock. But he wasn't fazed in the slightest.
No matter where the Core of Civilization was, it would automatically open or close the shop doors right on schedule. With technology this advanced, a smart door was only natural.
Inside the shop, a line of Fontaine residents had already formed outside, eager to draw cards. Aside from them, it was just Lu Heng and the empty space around him. He plopped down on the sofa, unbothered by whether he'd eaten breakfast or not at this hour. Pulling out his phone, he scrolled through images sent by the Core of Civilization—stunning landscape designs, architectural blueprints, and even interior decor plans. The Core was reliable as ever, and its work was impressive.
Lu Heng often found traveling between Fontaine and Liyue Harbor a bit of a hassle. Sure, he could whip up a teleportation portal and be on his way, but for others, it wasn't so simple. That's when a new idea sparked in his mind.
"What if I hung a pocket dimension in the void as a transit hub? Wouldn't that make things so much easier?" The more he thought about it, the more it made sense.
Picture this: no matter where Lu Heng set up shop, heading home would mean stepping into the pocket dimension. Others, who didn't have his knack for portal-hopping, would either have to wait for him to show up or stick close to his side. But with a pocket dimension as a middle ground, Furina could travel from the Fontaine shop to the dimension, then from there to the Liyue branch in a snap.
It sounded complicated at first, but flip the perspective: a wife in Fontaine could step through a door and be home in an instant. A wife in Liyue could do the same. It was perfect—absolutely perfect.
He hadn't considered this before, but now that he did, it seemed like he might not even need a pocket dimension to pull it off. A glowing teleportation array materialized in his hand. The principle behind it was intricate, but in simple terms, it compressed space. Say Lu Heng needed to travel ten kilometers— the array would shrink that distance to a single step, letting him cross it in an instant.
Could he etch this array onto a door? If he ignored the issue of powering it, the only real challenge was setting the destination. A point-to-point teleportation system wasn't hard to achieve.
"It wasn't useful before, but it might be now," Lu Heng mused. In fact, plenty of people could probably benefit from it right away. Take Mondstadt, for example. He could set up a shop there without needing a shop-specific card. Just install a point-to-point teleportation array, and he'd be raking in Mora from Mondstadt's residents in no time.
Traveling from Mondstadt to Liyue for card draws was no small journey. There were costs—food, lodging, maybe even bandits along the way. Sure, getting robbed might lead to some extra spending at the card shop in the end, but why deal with the hassle? A teleportation array could save days of travel, not to mention the expenses of meals and supplies. One person might save a few hundred or thousand Mora. Multiply that by ten thousand people, and you're talking millions, maybe tens of millions, in savings.
"And I could charge a teleportation fee on top of it!" Lu Heng's grin widened. The idea was brilliant—convenient for everyone, profitable for him, and best of all, he'd out-earn everyone else. It solved so many problems in one go.
He mentally cataloged what he'd need to create the pocket dimension and point-to-point teleportation arrays: the cards [Money is Power], [Directional Teleportation Array], [Future Computer (Cyber Divination)], and [Art of Creation]. [Art of Creation] was pure knowledge, a theoretical framework without inherent power, requiring the raw energy of [Money is Power] to fuel it. [Directional Teleportation Array] was straightforward, its principles ready to be applied. As for [Future Computer], Lu Heng planned to use it to rapidly evolve a world. Why bother with trial and error when he could aim for perfection from the start? He'd follow his vision and let the computer calculate the optimal outcome.
"Let's do this!"
Lu Heng stepped into the void.
The void was a desolate expanse, utterly empty. It wasn't the same as the cosmos or the false heavens—it was another layer entirely. If he tore through space here, he'd step right back into the shop's main hall. The void and the real world were like two overlapping sheets, separated unless the barrier broke. At most, faint disturbances might ripple between them, but no physical impact would cross over.
Standing in the endless void, a single speck of light appeared in Lu Heng's palm. It was tiny, like a grain of rice or a seed, yet it pulsed with immense power. He poured boundless energy into it, and the void trembled in response.
The tremors didn't reach the physical world, but their intensity was enough to catch the attention of the powerful. Thanks to [Future Computer], Furina, fast asleep in the shop's master bedroom, remained undisturbed. But the sheer force of this world-creating energy drew countless eyes.
Cracks split the void. Zhongli and Venti arrived, one after the other.
"What's happening?!" Venti's face was a mask of shock. He'd had a few drinks the night before and was still groggy, but the terrifying energy snapped him awake. His gaze locked onto the glowing speck in Lu Heng's hand, radiant enough to illuminate a vast swath of the void. The sheer magnitude of its power was overwhelming.
Venti swallowed hard, his eyes wide with awe. That tiny speck in Lu Heng's palm held the essence of an entire world.
How could something so small be so staggering?
Zhongli and Venti were among Teyvat's strongest, and Zhongli, with over six thousand years of experience, had seen it all. Yet Lu Heng kept shattering his understanding of the world. The card shop had already opened his eyes, but this—holding a world in his hand—filled Zhongli with boundless astonishment.
Lu Heng wasn't surprised by their arrival. He raised the glowing speck and said with a smile, "I'm creating a pocket dimension."
Venti's expression twisted. "You call this a pocket dimension?"
"Hold it steady, don't let it slip!" he added, half-joking, half-serious. Few beings could breach the void, but that speck was a world in itself, no matter its size. If it broke through to Teyvat, it'd be like two massive planets colliding.
"It's not fully formed yet," Lu Heng said, glancing at the speck. Power still flowed into it, the grain-sized light resembling a continent shrunk countless times over. It wasn't a planet but a vast island floating in the void, surrounded by nothingness. A sun and moon orbited it, casting light across its surface.
People living on a planet could walk in one direction and eventually circle back. But on this continent, walking too far would lead to the edge, where a single step could plunge you into the void—or, if placed in the real world, into the cosmos itself.
"How did you do this?" Zhongli asked, his voice brimming with curiosity.
"Which part?"
"Its creation," Zhongli clarified.
Lu Heng grinned. "From nothing, I made something."
Once you understood the fundamental principles of a world, you could channel immense power to shape it. First, transform your energy into the source of all things, then let that source give rise to everything else.
And so, in this moment, the world in Lu Heng's palm was growing.
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T/N:
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