Consciousness gradually faded, and the roar of Osial seemed to echo in her ears. Lights of Liyue Harbor flashed before her eyes...
The last thing she saw was the eerie smile on the face of the figure shrouded in black mist.
-
Meanwhile, deep beneath the sea:
The colossal Vortex continued to churn wildly, its raging currents carving deep ravines into the seabed's rocky strata.
Osial's tentacles pounded against the Geo seal imprisoning him, the unique pressure of a god driving the surrounding sea creatures to flee in terror.
"My child... is finally returning," his voice reverberated through the depths, each word making the seawater tremble slightly.
Beisht's massive form swam beside him, a hint of worry in her tone. "But the Conqueror of Demons is watching over her, and the Traveler and Morax are secretly protecting her. What if she awakens and resists...?"
"Morax? Just an old fool who abandoned his divine seat and hides in a shell," Osial scoffed, his tentacles slamming against the Geo seal. A crack instantly spiderwebbed across the seal, the runes on the seal dimming. "Our purest blood flows through that child's veins. Her bloodline's instinct will guide her to us."
-
In a parallel world, countless players were still watching the unfinished PV.
When the scene cut to Yunqin on the ocean near Liyue Harbor, listening to Uncle Tian say, "What's fake may be real, and what's real may be fake," they instinctively held their breath.
The next moment, the scene shifted to the top floor of Wangshu Inn.
Yunqin looked earnestly at Xiao, her lips moving slightly. "If... if in the future I start destroying everything in Liyue, if I do things that harm Liyue, please...Strike Me Down"
"Holy shit! Is Yunqin asking Xiao to kill her?!"
The players stared at the screen, a sense of foreboding rising in their hearts.
Immediately afterward, the players controlling the Traveler to search for Yunqin in Liyue were stunned. The "Find Yunqin" quest had vanished!
"What the hell? The quest gets canceled right when we're getting a lead? Mihoyo, are you screwing with us?"
"It's probably related to the new PV. Could Yunqin really be facing the Vortex head-on?"
"The main story isn't even finished yet! Don't jump to conclusions!"
As they reluctantly continued the main story and arrived at Liyue Harbor, a bizarre incident occurred.
A player controlling the Traveler passed Wanmin Restaurant when they caught a glimpse of a figure standing by the entrance—a figure identical to Yunqin.
But when viewed from the Traveler's perspective, the figure vanished into thin air, as if nothing had happened at all.
"Holy crap! Did I just hallucinate that?"
"I saw it too! At the docks! I was about to chase after her when she just vanished!"
"Pulling this supernatural crap in the middle of the night, Mihoyo? Are you trying to scare me to death?"
"Yunqin was standing right behind my Traveler just now! I almost threw my mouse! Now I'm hiding under the covers, afraid to move!"
Players everywhere declared they'd "encountered a ghost," with some streamers even shutting down the game, too frightened to continue playing.
Suddenly, the chat exploded with messages: "Quick, everyone look! There are NPCs at the spots where Yunqin disappeared! Try talking to them!"
Skeptical but intrigued, players directed their Travelers toward the NPCs at Yunqin's vanishing points, starting with Chef Mao at Wanmin Restaurant.
"Traveler, you've come at just the right time," Chef Mao said with a smile, apron tied around his waist as he handed over a cloth-wrapped package. "Yunqin helped me out immensely earlier and told me to give this to you if she saw you."
Players trembled as they opened the package. Inside were exactly one hundred Primogems!
"That girl is truly strange. She insisted on exchanging these stones for the payment I offered and made me promise to save the reward for you." With that, Chef Mao returned to his work.
Soon, more and more players discovered that whenever Yunqin's figure appeared in Liyue Harbor, they could find an NPC at her last seen location, speak to them, and receive one hundred Primogems!
"These Primogems... they're just like Lydia's back then!" A player suddenly recalled a previous plotline, their voice trembling slightly. "Back then, Lydia's quest also gave us one hundred Primogems for each favor we did, and then... she died."
The words struck like lightning, instantly throwing the players into a panic.
The forums were instantly flooded with posts: "Mihoyo, don't kill Yunqin!" "I'd rather not have the Primogems than see Yunqin hurt!"
Furious and worried players swarmed Mihoyo's official website, leaving comments, filing complaints, and spamming hashtags.
Before long, the website crashed due to the massive traffic, the page stuck on the "Loading..." screen, impossible to access.
Lu Nanqing, sitting before her screen, stared at the one hundred Primogems in her inventory, then at Yunqin's earnest gaze in the trailer, her eyes suddenly rimming with red.
"Mihoyo, if you dare kill Yunqin, I swear I'll never spend another dime on your games for the rest of my life... I mean it! Please, don't make us cry again."
At Mihoyo headquarters, the clatter of keyboards was as dense as a downpour, phones rang incessantly, and the anxious chatter of employees filled the air like a churning fog.
The operations department stared at the backend data screen, their fingers unconsciously picking at the edge of the table, their faces pale to the point of transparency.
Negative reviews on the game forums were surging at a rate of hundreds per minute, and the official Weibo comment section had already been flooded with messages demanding "Give us back Yunqin!" and "Stop hurting the characters!" Even the hashtag #BoycottGenshinImpactUpdate# had climbed to the tail end of the trending topics, its momentum still rapidly rising.
"What do we do, boss?! The players are about to explode!" an employee wailed, clutching at their hair, their voice trembling with tears. "Just now, a player sent me a private message cursing me, saying Yunqin's storyline was a carbon copy of Lydia's, and that we're deliberately using Primogems to bait whales while treating the characters like disposable tools!"
The department head rubbed his throbbing temples and let out a bitter laugh, his voice filled with helplessness. "We're just as bewildered as you are... You think we wanted things to turn out like this?"
He tapped open the backend interface. The red "Insufficient Permissions" error message flashed on the screen like a dagger, stabbing his eyes. "From the moment the game launched, we've had no control over it whatsoever."
This was no mere excuse.
Early in Genshin Impact's launch, the technical team had already noticed something was amiss.
Mountains of discarded code were automatically repaired and deleted overnight, while the game's graphics and performance far exceeded expectations.
The "Lydia" who suddenly appeared in the Mondstadt storyline, from the intricate details of her character model's hair to her lines in the plot, was never part of the official development plan.
At the time, Brother Da Wei held meetings for an entire month straight. The technical team tried forcing code overrides and resetting the game's underlying systems, but every modification would automatically revert within seconds.
In the end, everyone could only throw their hands up in resignation and attribute it all to "some powerful hacker's prank."
The most absurd part was that this hacker wasn't even after money.
Brother Zhang sighed, his gaze complex as he watched a scene of Yunqin's storyline play out on the screen. "The game's revenue hasn't been affected; in fact, these 'supernatural' plot developments have attracted even more players."
"Brother Da Wei even said, 'Let's just see how it unfolds. Since we can't control it anyway, we might as well be spectators.'"