The last rays of dusk spilled gold across the mouth of the mountain cave.The boy in white silk still sat there, motionless.
"Do you know where your home is?"Gu Baizhou crouched beside him.
Zhang Richu tilted his head, eyes evasive. "I… don't want to go back."
Some family trouble? Gu's brow furrowed. "Why? Can you tell me?"
The boy pressed his lips together and stayed silent.
Gu tried a different tack."Are your parents away a lot?""Do they fight?""Bad tempers?"
Zhang shook his head at each guess, then muttered, "My father's too dull. And I hate a quiet, peaceful life."
A problem child, Gu thought wryly. He teased with a mock-threat:"Aren't you afraid someone might grab you, pump you full of drugs, and turn you into one of those lumbering brutes we just fought?"
The boy blanched. "I don't want to look like that."
Still just a kid—vanity wins over bravado every time.
Gu smiled. "Where's your home? I'll take you there. If I leave you here, those people might come back."
"Liyue Harbor," Zhang admitted, biting his lip. "My father runs a shop there."
"Good." Gu nodded. "Let me check a few things first, then we'll head out."
They crossed to the central stone dais of the abandoned villages.An ancient stele stood there, etched in archaic Liyue script:
"I am Fushe, one of the Yaksha who fought beside the Geo Archon…Though mighty, the Yaksha are bound by karmic debt…I place my wealth here, sealed by art.He who has the fate may unseal it and take what he will."
As Gu deciphered, knowledge of old Liyue characters seemed to pour into his mind.
Beneath the inscription, a mist-blue platform gleamed with three triangular recesses—obviously waiting for crystal wedges.
He searched the villages, finding two floating, luminous prisms.The last, he suspected, lay near the Stonehelm Hilichurl King.
Indeed, the final prism rested there.Soon all three clicked into place on the dais, spilling cold starlight skyward.With a resonant rumble, the gate of a ruined hall slid open.
"How did you convince both the Hilichurl King and those ruin guards to let you pass?" Zhang asked in awe.
"Courtesy and humility can move even steel," Gu said with a perfectly straight face.
Inside the hall, three treasure chests waited.The central silver chest held smooth, translucent crystals—Primogems.The others contained piles of Mora and a strange talisman.
"All mine," Gu murmured, pocketing the loot. He left the heavy coin chest in the Hilichurl King's care with a polite bow.
Back at the shore, the rescued boy's mother invited Gu in.
"No need," he said. "Just tell me the road to Liyue Harbor."
"Follow the packed earth south past Wangshu Inn," she replied.
Gu led Zhang across the stone bridge, only to be halted by a Millelith soldier in standard white-tasseled armor.
"Could you clear the monsters on that river island for me?" the guard asked sheepishly. "I'm stuck on duty here."
Before Gu could speak, Zhang cut in:
"Will those monsters come here to hurt anyone?""No," the soldier admitted."Then can you even see them from here?""…No."
"Then why can't you wait until night and do it yourself?"
The soldier blinked, chastened.
Gu ruffled the boy's hair and bent close. "Smart people don't phrase it like that."
Zhang looked puzzled. "Then how?"
Gu straightened, faced the soldier, and said simply:
"Is there a reward?"
The guard hesitated—an awkward, grown-up silence.
That, Gu thought, is the helpless practicality of adulthood.
Author's note: Some routes differ from the actual in-game geography; a few locations are fictionalized for the story.