With the core mechanics of stable, controlled flight now perfected, the hovercar was no longer a wobbly prototype; it was a true, functioning vehicle. But before they could even think about a manually piloted test flight, Ren knew they had to move on to the next, and in many ways, the most important, phase of the design: safety and comfort.
"Flying is one thing, Master," he said, presenting Xianyun with a new, meticulously detailed set of smaller blueprints. "But feeling safe and comfortable while you're doing it… that's what will make people truly love it."
Xianyun looked at the new schematics, her golden eyes widening with a fresh wave of delight and admiration. These were not grand, world-altering concepts of propulsion and balance. These were small, thoughtful, and deeply, wonderfully, human, details.
Their first task was the seats. The simple, hard benches of their initial design were scrapped. Following Ren's new blueprint, Xianyun crafted two, beautifully contoured, and incredibly comfortable, seats, using a flexible, lightweight wood for the frame and padding them with a thick, soft, and surprisingly resilient, material made from treated and fluffed-up silk flowers.
"And this," Ren said, pointing to a diagram of a strap that went across the lap of the seat's occupant, "is a seatbelt. If the car were to ever stop suddenly, this will hold the person in their seat and keep them from flying forward. It's a simple, but very important, safety feature."
Next came a truly ingenious idea: the accident cushions. Ren designed a system of small, hidden compartments in the dashboard and the sides of the car's interior. "Inside each of these," he explained, "we will place a small, specially-made, and very tightly packed, Anemo-infused slime condensate. And we'll connect it to a sensor that detects a sudden, violent impact."
Xianyun's eyes lit up with a look of pure, inventive glee. "An emergency, instantaneous, inflation system!" she finished for him, her mind already leaping ahead. "In the event of a crash, the sensor would trigger the condensate, which would instantly expand, creating a soft, protective cushion of air to protect the occupants! Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!"
They then moved on to the more practical, but no less important, features. They installed a lighting system, using the same, familiar technology of electrically charged crystal lamps that were already common throughout Liyue, giving the hovercar bright, clear headlights for night travel.
Ren also redesigned the braking system. Instead of simply reversing the thrust, he created a dedicated braking feature. A pedal on the floor, just like in the cars of his memory, would, when pressed, send a command to all the propellers to angle themselves in a way that would create a powerful, immediate, and very stable, counter-thrust, bringing the car to a smooth, safe, and rapid, stop.
Finally, he changed the very way the car was started. The simple, remote-controlled switch was replaced by a single, elegant, glowing button on the central dashboard.
"One press to start," he explained. "The car will automatically power on and rise to a default, safe, hovering height of a few feet. Another press, and it will begin a slow, gentle, and completely automatic, landing and power-down sequence."
He even added a small, intuitive slider on the dashboard, right next to the start button. "This," he said, "will be the height adjuster. The default is low, for safety. But if the driver wants to go higher, to fly over a forest or a river, they just slide this up. The car will then smoothly, and safely, ascend to a new, higher, but still pre-defined and safe, maximum altitude."
Xianyun looked at the collection of new, small blueprints, at the dozens of thoughtful, practical, and deeply, wonderfully, human-centric, details, and she was, once again, over the moon. Ren was not just an engineer of grand, impossible machines. He was a designer of experiences. He was thinking not just about how to make the car fly, but about how to make the people inside it feel safe, feel comfortable, feel… at home, even when they were soaring hundreds of feet in the air.
The hovercar was no longer just a vehicle. It was becoming a sanctuary, a comfortable, safe, and beautiful, little piece of the future, ready to finally, truly, take flight.