(I restarted the series as from various reason it was on pause, You will get 5 long chapters per week, Also for supporting me and other translations check our [email protected]/rosavyn. Our translations Have the highest quality.)
*Part One: Ink and Illusions*
Fingers clamped around his jaw.
Shen Xing's eyes snapped open, a sharp jolt of pain cutting through the haze.
He was too close. His pupils shrank to pinpricks.
Dottore let out a low chuckle.
Before Shen Xing could brace himself, the man peeled off his mask.
Two vastly different pairs of crimson eyes locked onto one another.
'Such beautiful eyes,' Dottore murmured, his tone unreadable. 'How about you give them to me?'
Shen Xing's brain short-circuited.
*'What the actual hell?'*
*'What is happening? Where am I? How did I get here?'*
*'Holy shit. Dottore.'*
*'What kind of sick joke is this? How did I end up on his operating table?'*
'You should have seen this coming the moment you penned that slanderous little novel,' Dottore whispered.
He leaned in, closing the distance until his breath ghosted over Shen Xing's skin. His gaze sank into those eyes, utterly captivated by the flame-like patterns swirling within.
A thumb dragged slowly across his jawline.
Just as panic threatened to choke him, Dottore spoke again.
'Actually, I've changed my mind. Why not let you experience exactly what you wrote?'
'I much prefer you over that foolish boy, anyway.'
Before Shen Xing could draw a breath, Dottore descended, pinning him flat.
'Ahhh…'
The terrified shriek tore through the lingering glow of the sunset, scattering the birds perched on the tiled roof.
The dark-haired boy jolted awake.
A stack of thick papers slipped from his face as he pushed himself up. His eyes blazed hotter in the warm sunlight, darting around in disarray.
The street below bustled with life.
Vendors hawked their wares in overlapping calls. Children chased each other, their laughter ringing through the air. Plumes of cooking smoke drifted lazily from the nearby tavern roofs.
The lively chatter and the rich, savory scents grounded him.
It felt like a lifetime away.
Just a dream.
His pulse slowly steadied.
Shen Xing drew in a long breath, let it out, and gathered the scattered manuscript pages sliding off his chest. He stacked them in order, running his fingers over the edges as he studied them.
His name was Shen Xing. A modern-day guy.
Yes, exactly what you were thinking. Transmigration.
He had dropped dead at his desk from overwork, a grand total of eighteen years old. The cause? Not drafting paintings, but churning out fanfiction.
He was a professional writer for the miHoYo game Genshin Impact, taking on any commission players threw at him, including the more, ahem, explicit pairings. He never said no.
A man of fierce execution, he could not sit on commissions. The moment he took one, he had to finish it. Pulling all-nighters was routine. Day and night blurred. He could not help it. Inspiration only struck in the dead of night.
Any writer knew you could not let a good idea slip. Miss it, and the feeling vanished along with any chance of writing something decent.
Eventually, even youth could not outrun a broken body.
The lights went out. His college career ended before it even began.
He had expected to meet the King of Hell. Instead, he woke up to the breathtakingly handsome face of Zhongli.
Like stepping into a dream, the game character stood right in front of him. Shen Xing had to accept it. He had crossed over.
Not some soul-transfer or corpse-hopping nonsense. His body was identical to his modern self. The only difference? His eye color.
Blazing. Like dancing flames.
According to Zhongli, he had been found in the mountains.
Shen Xing's interpretation was simple. He had transmigrated physically, dropped right into the wilderness, and stumbled into Zhongli by sheer luck. Otherwise, he would have been monster or wolf bait.
He had burned through a lifetime's worth of fortune on that single roll of the dice.
He brushed the dust from his sleeves and sat cross-legged on the roof tiles, reviewing his freshly minted manuscript.
The brushstrokes were elegant and fluid, a direct result of Zhongli's patient tutoring. Left to his own devices, his modern handwriting would have looked like chicken scratch.
Right in the center of the first page sat two clean lines.
The Yandere Experiment Maniac and His Runaway Harbinger
Author: A-Jiu
A wicked grin tugged at his lips as he remembered what he had actually written.
It was, of course, a gloriously twisted romance. The title alone gave away one of the leads. Who else could it be? The very Fatui Harbinger he had just dreamed about. The Second of the Fatui Harbingers, Dottore.
Shen Xing brushed off the lingering nightmare. It was nothing new. His best ideas always seeped out of his dreams.
As for the Runaway Harbinger, that was Childe.
He was aiming high. If this did not blow their minds into pieces, he would eat his own brush.
Shen Xing thrived on mischief. He had never held back in his past life, and transmigration certainly was not going to tame him. Logically, he should probably stop writing these things, especially with the chance of the actual people reading them.
But you would be wrong if you thought he cared. He was not just bold. He was recklessly audacious.
Writing right under their noses? Who was he afraid of? They had no idea he was the author. His pen name was buried so deep only heaven, earth, and he knew it.
If his cover ever blew, he would just cling to Zhongli's leg.
The Geo Archon's mysterious, overwhelming kindness to him was a bit strange, but it worked. Never too clingy, never too distant. Sometimes, Shen Xing caught him staring, as if weighing some silent calculation.
The best word for it? Friend. If his house came crashing down, Zhongli would definitely pull him out.
The two Harbingers despised each other in canon. Perfect. He was throwing them together anyway.
Once this hit the shelves, anyone who knew them would be screaming their lungs out. Readers would weep over late-blooming love and curse the inevitable chase-crematorium trope.
As for the ending, Shen Xing played dirty. He had written a bad ending. A double death. Though, looked at another way, it was a happy one. Together in the afterlife.
He would not spill the actual plot here.
Shen Xing thumbed through the thick stack of pages. To keep his little project hidden, he always wrote out in the open. Even Zhongli, the person closest to him, had no idea he was drafting novels. Zhongli just knew he spent every day roaming.
Thanks to his Anemo Vision and basic survival skills, Zhongli never fretted over his safety. He seemed utterly convinced nothing could go wrong.
Shen Xing shook his head, dipped his brush, and added a neat disclaimer beneath his pen name.
This work is purely fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons is entirely coincidental.
Perfect. No one could pin this on him now.
A reckless smile broke across his face. The flames in his crimson eyes danced brighter.
He slid the manuscript into the Storage Space Zhongli had given him. With one hand braced against the edge of the roof tiles, he dropped to the cobblestone street below, landing with feline grace.
The Vision at his waist pulsed with a brilliant cyan light, swinging gently with his movement.
── Page 2 ──
Slender fingers brushed over the wind motifs etched into the gemstone.
Shen Xing still had no idea how he had caught Venti's attention. He had never harbored any grand, desperate wish. But a Vision beat going without one. And Anemo elemental power was ridiculously practical.
Perfect for speed-based pursuits.
Like running for his life.
The Unspoken Divide
But running away was never his style. Shen Xing preferred to meet things head on. He strolled through the bustling streets of Liyue Harbor, letting the rich, savory scent of street food and woodsmoke wash over him as he made his way toward the New Moon Pavilion.
His last book had raked in a tidy sum, but the coffers were nearly empty. Why else would he already be drafting a new one? He had originally planned to pitch it to the Wanwen Bookhouse. Jifang had taken one look at the manuscript, her face draining of color before flushing crimson. She had called it absolute Filth, scolded him for his youth and poor judgment, and practically chased him away.
To be fair, she had likely never encountered anything so explosively unorthodox. A glance at her stall confirmed it. Her wares were strictly historical records and wholesome folk tales. Utterly proper.
So he had crossed the sea to Inazuma and walked straight into the Yae Publishing House. By sheer luck, he ran into Yae Miko herself. She had taken his debut novel, *How to Survive When a Modern Person Transmigrates into a Game?!*, right then and there.
The premise was simple enough. A completely straight man named Mu Bai got pulled into an otome game, found himself surrounded by male suitors, and gradually got bent to the will of fate.
Yae Miko had edited enough manuscripts to recognize a breath of fresh air. The prose was sharp. The scenes where the protagonist got relentlessly attacked by his admirers were downright hilarious. She had approved it on the spot, even praising his more explicit passages as wonderfully unrestrained. The book was mass printed, a staggering sum of mora was handed over, and she told him to bring his next manuscript soon.
The sunset bled into dusk. Dinner time. Shen Xing quickened his pace toward the New Moon Pavilion. He caught snippets of conversation along the way. Someone was using his pen name.
"Sister, look! My friend from Inazuma sent this to me. It is so good!"
"A novel?" An older woman sounded skeptical. Pages rustled. A pause. "This is rather... you know. Two men."
"Just tell me if you like it or not!"
"Ahem."
After a moment of internal struggle, she relented. "It is actually quite entertaining. A-Jiu? I have never seen this author before. It is so novel. What exactly is an otome game?"
"Check the very last page. The author left a glossary."
Shen Xing glanced toward the voices. Two young girls were huddled together over a single book. From his angle, he caught the unmistakable, knowing grins stretching across their faces as they whispered back and forth.
He smirked to himself. 'Good taste.'
It was already spreading through Liyue. Fast. By the time his next explosive release hit the shelves, he would guarantee they looked at Harbingers in a completely new light. He stifled a laugh and slipped past them, stepping up to the entrance of the New Moon Pavilion.
"Good evening, Yue Shu. One order of Moonlight Egg. The usual preparation."
Zhongli held rigid standards for the dish. The ratio of shrimp to fish had to match his exact specifications, or he would refuse to touch it. Shen Xing still felt a phantom headache remembering the first time he brought it home. Zhongli flat refusal had been a sight to behold.
Yue Shu recognized him immediately and nodded, calling out to the kitchen. The boy was a frequent sight lately, ever since his appearance in Liyue Harbor as the Consultant of WangSheng Funeral Parlor adopted ward. He rarely came here just for himself.
"Anything else?" she asked. "The Golden Shrimp Balls just came out of the fryer. They are excellent today."
He did love seafood, especially shrimp. But Zhongli despised it. He usually kept the shrimp and fish in the Moonlight Egg to a bare minimum. Bringing a plate of shrimp balls to the table felt like asking for trouble.
But his stomach betrayed him. Shen Xing rubbed his coin pouch, mentally weeping at the cost, and nodded. "Fine. One order."
He would just eat them fast. Out of sight, out of mind.
He packed the boxes, picked up a few other dishes from neighboring stalls, and checked the sky. Too late. He tapped the Anemo Vision at his waist, channeling its power to sprint through the winding streets. He detoured briefly to the Three-Round Knockout Tavern to grab a jar of wine, then kept running.
He pushed through the heavy doors of the WangSheng Funeral Parlor and practically threw the bags onto the table. The commotion drew Hu Tao out. She clutched her growling stomach, sighing. "Why are you back so late? I am starving."
Shen Xing leaned against the table, chest heaving. His crimson eyes curved into a bright, unapologetic smile. "I overslept."
Zhongli surveyed the spread. The boy remembered their preferences perfectly. His gaze drifted to the wine jar resting on the wood. A pause.
"Sleeping in the open is unwise," Zhongli said, voice even. "Should monsters roam, the danger is real."
Shen Xing waved a hand. "I know, Mr. Zhongli. I was not in the wilds today. Just caught a nap on a roof in Liyue Harbor. The sun was warm, I dozed off, and when I woke up, the sky had already darkened."
Zhongli nodded, letting the subject drop. He turned to Hu Tao and gestured politely toward the chairs. She was long accustomed to his refined manners, chalking it up to the typical courtesy of a Consultant. "We have known each other for three months, and you still stand on ceremony. Come on, Director Hu is about to perish from hunger."
Hu Tao, blissfully unaware of his divine identity, never thought twice of it. Shen Xing, however, knew exactly who sat across from him. The Geo Archon, treating him with such meticulous deference, still sent a shiver down his spine. It reminded him of that first dinner invitation, when Zhongli formal courtesy had nearly scared him out of his wits.
'You would think he was the Anemo Archon.'
He was just a human. Not even born in Teyvat. Why the endless courtesy?
Shen Xing took his seat opposite Zhongli, shifting subtly a few inches to the side. The man poise always fostered a dizzying illusion of equality. Perhaps Zhongli was simply hospitable. Perhaps he viewed him as a child.
It still made his nerves fray.
"Three months have already slipped by."
Time meant little to a deity of stone. It slipped through his fingers like water, abstract and fleeting.
Zhongli settled into his chair. He watched Shen Xing demolish the shrimp balls, his own chopsticks hovering mid air. After a moment of quiet resignation, he deliberately averted his eyes from the offending dish and met Shen Xing gaze instead. The boy eyes burned like embers. Zhongli studied them, then his face.
"You may call me Zhongli, Shen Xing. There is no need to address me as Mister."
"Cough! Cough!"
Trying to finish the shrimp before Zhongli could notice, Shen Xing nearly choked on his own words at the sudden request. He grabbed the wine jar and took a heavy swig. Liquor flowed down his throat like water.
Zhongli expression softened with genuine concern. To Shen Xing, it felt like a ghost staring back at him. Panic flared.
"Understood, Mr. Zhongli," he blurted out, wiping his mouth.
Zhongli said nothing.
The silence stretched.