Everyone said they wanted to hold a test of courage event, so if everyone works together, can they scare him to tears?
Lucian didn't know that Yae Miko was plotting against him. He spoke up to remind everyone not to just focus on being sad; there's another book.
Yes, this time Lucian also released two books together. Besides this one published in Teyvat's Strange Tales titled 'Suspicious Traces on a Perilous Path', there's another one called Love and Teyvat.
Teyvat's Strange Tales is the main storyline, while Love and Teyvat is the legend quest.
This time's protagonist is—Hu Tao. The book's title is Papilio Charontis Chapter: Yet the Butterfly Flies Away.
Putting these two stories together serves two purposes. On one hand, it's to alleviate everyone's emotion about life and death after reading the Layered Rock story.
On the other hand, it's because of Hu Tao. He guessed that Hu Tao might still be able to hold up, so he left this backup plan. This time, he's determined to make all the bosses cry.
By the way, Hu Tao previously thought that the story Lucian mentioned writing about her was the one from the Lantern Rite festival. She didn't expect there to be an even better one.
Picking up this book and looking at the cover featuring herself, Hu Tao smiled in satisfaction. As expected of the hall master; even the cover photo is this good-looking.
She hopes that this story can bring some customers to the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor. Hehe.
Most people in Liyue know Hu Tao and thought: Isn't this the young lady hall master of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor? What's her story? Promoting Wangsheng Funeral Parlor services?
After reading the story, they would discover that it's exactly that.
This isn't their 'prophecy'; it's simply because Hu Tao likes to promote Wangsheng Funeral Parlor services whenever she has nothing to do.
Although she's been rejected many times, she's extremely persistent about it. So everyone guesses that in the future, she'll probably still be persistently promoting.
With this kind of drive, if she put it into something else, she might actually succeed.
But this matter won't do! We can't just die once because you're persistent, right?
You reimburse the Geo Archon every day; can you reimburse us too? Pull us back after we die? Then we'd dare to support your business! Do whatever you want with the performance metrics.
Speaking of performance metrics, besides the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor's hall master Hu Tao who checks every day if they're dead or not, there's actually also the Bubu Pharmacy's owner Baizhu.
The difference is that Baizhu doesn't go door-to-door promoting every day. Otherwise, a doctor promoting medicine every day would be pretty ridiculous too. Who's idle enough to take some medicine for fun?
In the story, it starts with Lumine and Paimon arriving at Wuwang Hill for an adventure.
This place isn't as good as Tsurumi Island, but it's still a pretty decent haunted spot.
By the way, Paimon's courage is very small; she's afraid of ghosts, but her reactions are slow.
In a real haunted place like Tsurumi Island, she even went there several times without noticing anything wrong and wasn't really scared at the time.
But now that they've come to Wuwang Hill, she immediately feels like there's something wrong here, that a ghost might jump out, and she starts getting scared.
Incidentally, as a real ghost, Arataki Itto also shuddered in panic.
He fears this kind of thing the most. If it weren't for there being too many friends around making him care about face, he really wanted to say, 'My cabinet moved; I'm not reading anymore!'
["Paimon: 'Look, horror stories often have this kind of scene: in the wilderness, dim lighting, and in the darkness, suddenly a human figure pops out—'"]
Arataki Itto: Don't! Absolutely don't!
Itto is also panicking because the content on the first page is just these two sentences, followed by a large blank space. This unusual appearance makes people uneasy.
The adjacent page is an illustration depicting the scenery of Wuwang Hill: pitch black and eerie, seemingly flickering with 'green ghostfire.'
This image creates a very effective atmosphere, at least it's super effective on Itto.
∵ Ghosts are also called spirits.
∵ Ghost-type beats Ghost-type for a super effective restraint.
∴ It's normal for Itto to be afraid of ghosts.
Flipping the page again, a 'massive' face is pressed close to the 'camera,' with the entire image filled by his big face.
There seem to be 'ghostfires' around him too, making his face look wretched and miserable, emitting a ghostly green glow.
Lucian deliberately made this illustration look just like a 'ghost image,' only missing some blood dripping. It's creepy to look at.
["Old Meng: 'Ah…?'"]
["Paimon: 'Waaahhh—! Traveler, quickly think of something!'"]
Arataki Itto: "Waaahhh—! Shinobu, quickly think of something!"
Everyone held back their laughter. What's going on? Does this book come with voice acting?
But this voice isn't right. Did Paimon hit puberty? And the name she's shouting isn't right either. This voice acting isn't professional!
Kuki Shinobu sighed helplessly. Her boss really is too afraid of ghosts—or rather, he's afraid of things that suddenly appear and suddenly disappear.
More importantly, when Arataki Itto is scared, he observes even more seriously to prevent himself from being startled.
Concentrating his attention so seriously and then seeing a 'ghost image'—it's no wonder he gets scared.
"Ahem, this lord isn't scared," Itto coughed lightly.
Because it's just an illustration, although it startled him at first, he recovered quickly.
"I just saw that everyone's mood was a bit low, so I livened up the atmosphere. Right, that's it." As he said it, Itto almost believed it himself.
But no matter what, he at least achieved the goal he mentioned.
Xiao nodded: "You've put in the effort."
No one believed Itto's words, but for Xiao's statement, everyone really couldn't tell if he truly believed it or was just giving Itto a way out.
Xiao doesn't really understand human relations and worldly affairs; maybe he really did believe it?
Itto scratched his head. Xiao's sincere attitude instead made him feel a bit embarrassed. Luckily, the red markings on his face could hide the blushing.
Everyone was indeed cheered up a bit by Itto's antics, and their mood for continuing to read wasn't as heavy anymore.
["Old Meng asks: 'W-Who are you?'"]
["Traveler: 'I'm the Traveler.'"]
["Old Meng: 'T-Traveler? Could it be… y-you're a traveler from 'that world'?!'"]
["'I just came here to perform a funeral rite and have no intention of offending anyone. No matter who you are, we should have no grudge against each other!'"]
Who would've thought that this scary guy is actually even more afraid than they are.
However, from Old Meng's words, everyone also learned some information: he's here to perform a funeral rite, and his attire seems to be the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor employee uniform.
He doesn't look very professional, so as the hall master, shouldn't Hu Tao come along to supervise?
In the story, Old Meng gets scared off by the Traveler.
But Lumine is so cute-looking; who knows what he's afraid of.
On the contrary, once Paimon realizes Old Meng is human, she stops being afraid and even worries if Old Meng might encounter something bad in this place.
They care about Old Meng, so they chase after him. As a result, this chase makes Old Meng even more scared.
His running speed is even faster than a nimble dog in the mountains; he vanishes in a puff of smoke right up to someone.
["Old Meng: 'Hall Master, Hall Master, there's a ghost chasing us!'"]
Here, there's a full-body illustration of Hu Tao. Although she had already appeared earlier, this is the first time there's a solo full-body illustration.
Quite a few people saw the illustration and straight-up called her wife.
But Hu Tao is still underage, so those calling her wife should all be arrested.
===✧✦✧===
Character Voice Line · Hu Tao: About Lucian
"My good guest consultant does everything except work; he's even more worrisome than Zhongli. But luckily, he doesn't need me to reimburse him."