In the wake of the Archon's fall, Liyue Harbor was a city draped in a somber, heavy veil of uncertainty. The Rite of Descension, usually the start of a joyous festival, had become the beginning of a long, anxious period of mourning and political turmoil. For Ganyu and Keqing, this meant their workloads exploded exponentially.
Their days were now almost entirely consumed by endless, high-stakes meetings in the Jade Chamber, the floating palace of the Tianquan. They were grappling with the immediate fallout: calming the panicked merchant guilds, reassuring foreign diplomats, and most importantly, trying to maintain a fragile, precarious stability in a nation that had just lost its divine anchor.
This new, frantic reality meant Ren could no longer be left at home. The city, with its grieving populace and its lurking Fatui, felt less safe than ever. And so, a new, strange routine was established. Ren became a permanent, silent fixture in the very heart of Liyue's power: Ningguang's office in the Jade Chamber.
Every morning, he would ascend to the floating palace with Ganyu and Keqing. A small, elegant desk and chair, identical to the one from the Yuehai Pavilion, had been brought in and placed in a quiet corner of Ningguang's opulent office.
The sight was, for anyone who witnessed it, utterly baffling. While the leaders of Liyue engaged in tense, hushed debates about the fate of their nation, a small, ten-year-old boy would be sitting quietly in the corner, sometimes sketching in a notebook, sometimes building small, intricate towers out of discarded drafting weights, and sometimes, even being allowed to play with the priceless, ancient artifacts that Ningguang usually kept under lock and key.
At first, Ren was just a quiet presence, a way for Ganyu and Keqing to keep an eye on him. But it was not long before Ningguang, the Tianquan herself, began to take a more direct interest in her tiny, silent office-mate.
She started to notice things. During a heated debate about stabilizing the value of mora in the absence of the Geo Archon's divine guidance, she saw Ren quietly sketch a complex flow-chart in his notebook that perfectly, simply, outlined the very supply-and-demand principles she had been trying to explain to a stubborn ministry head.
Ningguang began to actively seek his opinion. She would present him with simplified business problems, framing them as puzzles. "Ren, if a merchant has ten boats of silk flowers, but the demand is only for five, what is the fastest way for him to sell the rest without losing all his profit?"
And Ren would provide solutions that were a brilliant, almost frightening, fusion of cutthroat capitalist logic and a deep, empathetic understanding of human nature. "He should sell the first five boats at a high price to the wealthy buyers who want them now," Ren would explain. "Then, he should bundle the last five boats with a less popular but necessary good, like rice, and sell them at a small discount to the general public. They get a good deal, and he gets rid of his excess inventory."
Ren was ofcourse utilizing his own financial expertise from his past life, a subtle reminder to his own financial escapades to survive in his world.
The Tianquan was utterly, completely fascinated. She was looking at a mind that possessed an innate, intuitive grasp of commerce, finance, and strategy that rivaled her own. His innocence was not a lack of intelligence; it was a lens that allowed him to see the most direct, logical path to a solution without the clutter of ego or political maneuvering. He was becoming her secret, unofficial, and most brilliant consultant.
The sight of the Tianquan of the Liyue Qixing leaning over a small child's desk, listening with rapt attention as he explained a business strategy using a collection of shiny rocks, became a surprisingly common, if still deeply baffling, sight for the other Qixing members.
Several days into this new, strange routine, the adeptal sigil, which Ren now carried with him everywhere, glowed with a familiar light. He excused himself to a quiet, adjoining balcony to take the call.
"Ren," Xianyun's voice came, calm and steady. "The Traveler has been here."
"Is she alright?" Ren asked immediately.
"She is," Xianyun confirmed. "She is a formidable and resilient individual. She presented the Sigil of Permission and relayed the events of the Rite. This one… and the other adepti who answered her call… have now been formally appraised of the situation." There was a new, cold gravity in her voice. "We have our own questions. And we will be seeking our own answers."
She had told him what he needed to know. Lumine was safe, and the adepti were now officially involved. The next phase of the Liyue Archon Quest had begun. He thanked his Master, the connection faded, and he returned to the office, his mind a little more at ease.
He stepped back inside to see Ningguang looking at a large, complex map of Liyue's trade routes, a deep frown of concentration on her face. She looked up as he entered.
"Ren," she said, her tone all business. "Come here. I have a puzzle for you."
And just like that, he was back in his new role, the quiet little boy who played with artifacts on the desk of the most powerful woman in Liyue, and who, in between his drawings, was helping to quietly, secretly, run a nation.