Faruzan decided to study Chinese—the equivalent of someone on Earth studying Teyvat language. No idea what use it would have, but curiosity drove her to learn.
Lucian stayed silent beside her, acting profound: I spent months learning your Teyvat language!
Now it's your turn to enjoy it—go ahead and learn! Later I'll sneak in some private goods like a tomato-scrambled-eggs recipe.
When a linguist like Faruzan works hard to study and decipher the new language only to discover it's a recipe, who knows what her reaction will be.
Lucian declared: You didn't think I could only fool genius astrologers, did you?
Sorry—any genius falls under my jurisdiction. Look, even genius Ei treasure got fooled by me.
The Traveler in the story was also very much a genius; upon receiving the "new toy" she immediately used it, wanting to ask the Akasha how to meet Lord Kusanali.
Yet she received no reply at all—as though search permissions were insufficient.
The Akasha truly lived up to being a creation of the God of Wisdom; it was indeed wise. Knowing that everyone who introduced the Traveler to a god met misfortune, it didn't dare.
Lumine felt it was because Paimon's questioning posture was wrong: "Paimon, your question isn't rigorous enough."
Paimon was puzzled: "Where is it not rigorous?"
In the story she had asked "method to seek audience with Lord Kusanali"—wasn't that question very rigorous? Clear objective.
Lumine said: "Nahida is a child, so how can she be called 'Lord'? We should ask 'method to seek audience with little Lord Kusanali'!"
Lucian and Cyno applauded: "Good!"
Nahida also nodded involuntarily: "It does seem to be the case—from the perspective of linguistic rigor."
Faruzan retorted: "This isn't rigor; it's completely just nitpicking."
"Enough already! Stop telling cold jokes, you guys!" Paimon stomped her foot.
Paimon helplessly said: "Seriously, why after coming to Sumeru has everyone become so fond of cold jokes!"
This is Sumeru, not Snezhnaya—why is it so cold!
Kaveh suddenly realized: "Oh, so it was about 'adult' in terms of age! Interesting!"
Dunyarzad pressed her forehead: "How even Lord Kusanali… but… yes, Lord Kusanali is just that approachable a god."
As expected of Lord Kusanali—truly too gentle!
Nilou, meanwhile, was pondering: following this logic, the Flower God Birthday Festival probably shouldn't be called the Flower God Birthday Festival either—what should it be called?
One could only say that the moment Nilou began thinking about this problem, she had already been "logically assaulted" by little Lumine.
What the Flower God Birthday Festival should be called was hard to say, but little Lumine in the story had a new idea.
Since direct inquiry yielded no answer, she would approach from the side—ask about things related to little Lord Kusanali and see if she could piece together clues.
So little Lumine chose to query the Akasha about "Greater Lord Rukkhadevata."
This time she obtained a lot of information, but before she could even interpret it, certain emotions were exceptionally intense.
Adoration, closeness, nostalgia, sorrow, unease—these were the emotions of the Sumeru people toward Greater Lord Rukkhadevata.
There was still no content related to Kusanali, but she did gain some new clues: silence and lack of response could sometimes be clues too.
When inquiring about Kusanali, the Akasha had no such intense emotions—from this it seemed that even in the hearts of the Sumeru people, they did not truly understand Kusanali.
The text did not state this explicitly, but readers with high emotional intelligence could still grasp it.
Connecting it to the earlier PV: when Kusanali had just been born, the Sumeru people felt only remembrance and sorrow for Greater Lord Rukkhadevata, ignoring her existence.
Later generations of Sumeru people no longer carried those negative-emotion-tinted glasses, but unfortunately Kusanali was imprisoned—they couldn't even meet her.
Later generations who had never seen Kusanali naturally found it hard to have deeper emotions.
Thus the difference in emotions obtained when searching for information on the two generations of gods was also a kind of hidden intelligence.
The Traveler in the book was naturally clever; she discovered that the Akasha monopolized knowledge. To obtain more information and knowledge, one needed higher status.
Unfortunately little Lumine wasn't surnamed Brahmin, so she couldn't query all information in the Akasha—she could only go ask the person Tighnari had mentioned.
Finding Ruhavi, little Lumine stated she had been recommended by Tighnari, and the other party immediately broke down.
[Ruhavi: "Ah, stop stop stop—you don't need to say anything, no need at all. I admit the paper I published last month was indeed quite watered-down, and the data wasn't very convincing either…"]
His reaction was so extreme because Tighnari was a renowned Amurta scholar with full authority to comment on Ruhavi's papers.
At the same time he lacked confidence in his own paper, knowing full well its "water" level—almost entirely water; even the Hydro Archon would call it professional upon seeing it.
So Tighnari reading it would definitely criticize him.
This sentence instantly resonated with Sumeru scholars, causing collective breakdown as they all involuntarily recalled their own papers.
Whose paper doesn't contain water? Woo woo woo, save us! The true nation of water has been found.
Not to mention they were crying now—even the Wanderer would cry over this later. Papers are such terrifying things—whoever writes one cries.
The tears shed while writing papers are the water that got into your brain when choosing your major.
Layla, by contrast, was fine—she was always rushing papers, but her papers always mysteriously finished themselves.
Cyno grew interested: everyone else had performed; this time it should be my turn, right?
Cyno: "The desert is very hot and makes one thirsty. What should a Sumeru scholar do if they get thirsty in the desert?"
The moment this question came out, Tighnari and Lucian already knew what Cyno was going to say.
As expected, Cyno declared: "Answer: write a paper."
Progress! Great progress! This cold joke actually wasn't a homophone pun!
Setting aside Cyno's cold joke, Ruhavi in the story revealed nothing useful beyond admitting his paper was all water.
The intelligence he knew was actually just Akademiya "gossip"—twisted interpersonal issues. Interesting, perhaps, but not what the Traveler wanted to know.
Now that Tighnari's connections were useless, the Traveler could only mobilize her own network.
In a completely unfamiliar place like this, which intelligence overlord was the Traveler most familiar with?
Naturally: "Ad astra abyssosque."
[Katheryne: "Ad astra abyssosque. Traveler, Paimon—welcome."]
Paimon asked Katheryne the same question again, but regrettably Katheryne's permissions were also insufficient; she too could not retrieve relevant intelligence from the Akasha.
Yet this action instead gave everyone a strange feeling.
Katheryne had appeared plenty before and provided no shortage of quests and intelligence.
What was odd was that the Sumeru Katheryne was actually using the Akasha to search rather than the Adventurers' Guild itself!
This was the Adventurers' Guild—the kind that would inspect even unusually colored poop! When it came to intelligence, did they really need to rely on other channels?