A few days later.
Lu Chen was in the lab next door, watching a Gundam flight demonstration, when Miko called to tell him there was a guest at home.
Puzzled, he returned to his living room—only to see a young man standing behind Sha Lin, looking strangely familiar.
"Boss, you're finally back!" Sha Lin greeted him with a smile.
Lu Chen nodded, then looked more closely at the man.
Mid-twenties, average height, average build, glasses, plain features… and looking a little stiff under Lu Chen's gaze.
It was Cai Haoyu.
"This is…?" Lu Chen was a little confused. Sha Lin had said no offer could sway him, and he'd even been planning to pay Cai Haoyu a personal visit—yet here he was.
Sha Lin smiled and glanced at him. "Mr. Cai turned me down flat at first, but when I told him our project was to adapt Chen's Teyvat Universe, he changed his mind. Today he insisted on meeting you in person."
"Oh?" Lu Chen looked at him in surprise. "You're a fan of my books?"
"I'm really a fan!" Cai Haoyu suddenly shed his earlier reserve and stepped forward. "Your story of Liyue—I love it. The characters feel so alive, as if they really existed! The day I stumbled across your work, I thought to myself, 'It'd be a tragedy if this novel never became a game.' I never imagined I'd actually get the chance one day…"
He turned to Sha Lin gratefully. "It's thanks to Miss Sha for coming to find me again and again. I almost missed this chance—if I had, I'd regret it for life!"
"Then why refuse so many times before? I heard you've always wanted to make the game you really want," Lu Chen asked, curious.
Since they were still standing by the door, Lu Chen led them into the living room, where Old Master Zhongli happened to be brewing tea.
"Guests?" Zhongli looked up at Cai Haoyu, then returned to tending the leaves, calmly pouring fresh tea for the newcomers.
The fragrance filled the air, and Miko and Hu Tao, curious about the stranger, came over as well.
"Thanks…" Under everyone's gaze, Cai Haoyu reverted to his earlier stiffness and accepted the cup, looking embarrassed.
Lu Chen found the scene oddly surreal—the creator of the game meeting its own characters face to face, though Cai Haoyu had no idea who they really were.
"I was passionate about the game industry at first, but…" Cai Haoyu sighed, a trace of helplessness in his voice.
And then he told them his "miraculous" entrepreneurial story.
It began normally enough—a few freshly graduated students, full of enthusiasm, pooling their savings and untouched scholarships to start a game studio.
But with little experience, the funds ran out before they could even produce a finished build.
Still, their prototype had promise, and an investor saw potential, offering angel funding.
With money, progress sped up—until just before launch, when disaster struck. The investor's capital was tied up in cryptocurrency; the market crashed, his cash flow dried up, and he simply vanished, taking the funds with him.
"The market really was bad back then…" Lu Chen recalled hearing about something like this. Cai Haoyu had just had the misfortune to be caught in it.
"I'm not done…" Cai Haoyu sighed again.
He found another investor—only for that man to be hit by the worst stock market crash in a decade. Overleveraged, his assets frozen, he too fled with what he could.
"This…" Lu Chen was at a loss for words.
"It's still not over." Cai Haoyu took a sip of bitter tea, his expression sour.
"Still not over?" Lu Chen was starting to feel uneasy.
Cai Haoyu went on. Determined not to give up, he kept trying to make games—only for even stranger misfortunes to strike. His team's artist ended up hospitalized with food poisoning; the planner got hit by a car and was laid up in a cast; their computers caught a virus and every scrap of data was wiped. It was like Bennett himself had cursed him—disaster in every sip of water.
In the end, the company achieved nothing. Losses piled up, and apart from the two partners who started with him, everyone else left.
"What an extraordinary run of bad luck…" Miko frowned at Lu Chen. "It's like fate itself is working against him."
"That can't really happen, can it?" Hu Tao's eyes went wide. "Is this true? Maybe you're haunted by bad luck! Want me to perform a cleansing ritual for you?"
"I actually turned to mystics before…" Cai Haoyu gave a wry smile. "I went to a temple, and the master told me I wasn't suited to entrepreneurship in this life. Suggested I donate to the incense fund to change my luck."
"And?" Lu Chen asked.
"I donated. Nothing changed." Cai Haoyu shook his head. "A few days ago, I tried to join a big game studio to learn and gain experience—then that studio nearly went bankrupt."
Lu Chen and Miko traded looks, both seeing disbelief in the other's eyes.
Was fate itself preventing this world's Cai Haoyu from making Genshin Impact?
Or… was it something else?
If in this world Lu Chen needed to gather "faith power" to grow stronger, perhaps he was meant to be the one to create Genshin Impact. Maybe that was why it didn't exist here before—because the "system" had set it up for him.
"I guess I just have no fate with games…" Cai Haoyu smiled bitterly. "I'm telling you this not expecting you to take me in after hearing it. I just—"
"I want you to make this game," Lu Chen said firmly.
"What!?" Cai Haoyu nearly dropped his glasses. "Even knowing I'm this unlucky, you still want me to do it?"
"Who else but you?" Lu Chen stepped forward and patted his shoulder reassuringly. "I've got limited time and a world to save. The game is yours and Sha Lin's to handle. She's my editor—you can consult her on the story—but the game side is yours to captain. I believe in you."
Cai Haoyu adjusted his glasses, eyes alight with the resolve of a man ready to die for a kindred spirit.
"Alright! I'll make it happen!"
Then, remembering his string of disasters, he hesitated. "Still, I really advise you not to invest too much. You know my history…"
He didn't want a good investor to lose everything—and maybe get food poisoning—because of him.
Lu Chen thought for a moment, then casually held up three fingers. "Alright, not too much. Three hundred million."
Cai Haoyu promptly spat tea all over the sofa, making Zhongli frown.
"Th-three hundred million…" he stammered. "You're serious?"
"Don't get too excited," Miko laughed, covering her mouth. "For him, that's not a huge sum right now."
Lu Chen nodded. Between the system's rewards, the bar profits from Diluc's business—Mondstadt's fine wine now sold across the city—and his plans to expand to other regions, plus the star power of Venti and Barbara, his income streams were already strong. And the basement still held a trove of uncut jade from the old man's collection, worth a fortune.
"Three hundred million for now. If the project shows results, another three hundred million. Deal?"
Cai Haoyu was too stunned to reply.
In Lu Chen's mind, this was simply matching the scale of the investment from the other world. If reception was good, he'd keep funding it.
After all, this was tied to the Power of Faith—and he'd be adding himself into this Genshin Impact. He couldn't afford to treat the project lightly.
Cai Haoyu looked around the seaside villa like he was dreaming. "So this is the joy of the rich…"
"Money is but an external thing," Zhongli said. "If you complete this work, it will do the world great good."
Cai Haoyu took it as talk of the game's future success, but Lu Chen knew better. Zhongli had told him not long ago that the steady flow of faith power had restored him to his Archon War-era strength—like an old tree bursting into fresh bloom.
Making a game really could save the world.