Lu Chen gazed at the cup of warm yellow wine Venti had poured, his thoughts drifting with the rising steam.
This "story" touched on concepts far beyond what ordinary people could grasp. He wasn't even sure where to begin.
Hu Tao rested her chin on her hand, fully in story-listening mode. When Lu Chen remained silent, she blinked at him, confused.
Venti, on the other hand, began cheerfully promoting the wine. He pushed a full cup in front of each person, smiling brightly.
"This is the local specialty—yellow wine! Come on, drink up before it gets cold!"
But the enthusiasm wasn't contagious. No one seemed particularly interested.
Only Ei, eyes curious, picked up a cup. Her violet gaze studied the golden, translucent wine inside.
"It only tastes good after being heated? Isn't there some way to make it stay flavorful forever?"
"There's no such wine!" Venti, seeing her clueless expression, launched into an explanation. "Even the finest aged brew loses its quality after a certain point."
"That's true," Zhongli added from nearby, absently toying with a stone lock.
"No wine keeps its taste forever. So-called vintage liquor, after enough time, loses its richness and fragrance. It evaporates... and becomes ordinary."
"Ei always talks about 'eternity'..." Lu Chen smiled as he gently took the wine from her hand.
She shot him a look of displeasure, but he returned it with a silent, "You probably shouldn't drink."
Then he downed the warm wine in one go.
Venti, pleased with the support, immediately poured him another.
"How many things in this world really last forever?" Venti mused aloud as he refilled the cup.
"Maybe there's only one kind of 'forever'—and that is that nothing is forever…"
"That's not true."
Everyone turned to Ei, seated in the center of the couch, her back straight, her gaze resolute.
"If we haven't found eternity, then it means we've taken a wrong step somewhere, strayed from the right path."
"How do we know?" Zhongli sat down and picked up a cup.
Seeing that his wine pitch was finally working, Venti beamed.
"Go on, then. How would you keep this wine from losing its flavor?"
Ei snatched Lu Chen's cup again. Ignoring his glare, she took a small sip and set it down.
"Time."
"Time?" Venti blinked.
Ei nodded, her eyes on the wine in her hand. "All efforts to preserve fine liquor—sealing, storing, guarding—fade under the passage of time."
She placed the cup down. "But if we master the power of time, we can stop everything. That's how we achieve 'eternity.'"
It was an unexpected answer, but it fit her perfectly. Lu Chen smiled silently.
Her thinking was direct and uncompromising—if time caused spoilage, then just eliminate time from the equation.
Zhongli shook his head. "To control time... Even among the Seven Rulers of the mortal realm, none of us possess such power."
Lu Chen looked into her shining violet eyes. After the fall of Khaenri'ah, she had watched everything she cherished fade away. Her joy became fleeting, her sorrow eternal. That's why she began to pursue the stillness of time.
Time—a relentless law governing the world.
Her answer was: Eternity.
She had promised Inazuma an unchanging future across millennia, because only "eternity" could halt the passage of time—only eternity could make Inazuma eternal.
"Maybe Celestia has that kind of authority," Venti said as he refilled Ei's cup.
"They don't," Lu Chen said, spreading his hands. "Or rather, their authority is false. After all—our sky is fake."
"But until that day comes, we remain powerless," Zhongli added calmly. "Isn't that so?"
"So the problem remains unsolved, and the wine still spoils." Lu Chen leaned over and snatched Ei's cup again.
"Go easy…" he said, meeting her dissatisfied glare with a helpless smile. Don't you know your own limits by now?
Ei smacked her lips. She looked a little reluctant to let it go.
Was she getting hooked?
Beside him, Hu Tao stood frozen, completely baffled.
She looked around, then finally turned to Qiqi across the table, who was quietly sipping coconut milk.
"What are they even talking about?"
Qiqi's expression didn't change.
"Coconut milk... delicious…"
"Wine... not delicious…"
"Boring…"
Lu Chen chuckled.
What started as talk of wine had unknowingly veered into something far more obscure—the true face of Teyvat, shrouded in shadow.
Wasn't this the story he had meant to share with Hu Tao?
To his left sat Zhongli, and across from him, Ei and Venti. A pot of wine had stirred a debate among three gods.
Zhongli emptied the cup Venti had just filled and smiled faintly.
"They're not wrong. Among the seven ideals pursued by the Seven, only the Raiden Shogun's 'eternity' comes closest to the Heavenly Principles."
"But..."
He trailed off.
Ei looked at him.
Zhongli continued slowly, "It's only close."
Now it was Venti's turn to jab. He elaborated on Zhongli's point, "It looks like it, but it isn't really the same~"
Seeing Ei's brows slowly knit together and her smile fade, Lu Chen thought to himself—Yeah, I'd never dare say that to her face.
Bold. Seriously bold.
"And your paths... Are they really the right ones?" Ei countered.
Venti, who had been leading the flow of this impromptu banquet, put down the wine jug and looked out the window, expression drifting.
He murmured,
"A nation that runs at full speed draws the attention of the gods... and just like weeds, they're ripped from the divine garden."
Outside, modern highways flashed by, traffic a ceaseless river of light.
"Humanity has its own foundation," Zhongli said softly.
"Humans are too fragile," Ei said, shaking her head with a bitter smile.
Her gaze fell on the championship medal Lu Chen had been fiddling with earlier. It now sat at the edge of the table. She reached out and picked it up.
"So fleeting, so frail… Maybe the moment they shine on the battlefield is the brightest of their lives…"
"But that's all." She set the medal back down.
Lu Chen thought back to his time on the school team with Ei. She had shown no interest in victory, no emotion at all. Maybe she never believed in the worth of mortal effort.
Ei was proud.
Not truly understood, and unwilling to be.
When faced with a challenge, she never blamed others—only herself. If something went wrong, it was because she wasn't strong enough. So she honed her skills even further.
Her strength proved her convictions. She could strike down heaven itself with her "Musou no Hitotachi."
Lu Chen had no doubt—every challenger in Inazuma would fall to that blade if she went all out.
And if one strike didn't do it—she'd strike again.
"Maybe the answer lies among the ordinary and the mundane," Zhongli said, then pulled out a phone from seemingly nowhere.
Lu Chen blinked in surprise. The old man hadn't touched a phone in centuries—what was he trying to show now?
Zhongli tapped around the screen. Lu Chen leaned over to peek and laughed.
It was Liyue's Floating World Amid a Thousand Rocks.