Everyone stared, slack-jawed, at that blood-red wound opening in the sky on the light-curtain—at the countless "mountain-sized stones" hanging weightless.
Su Xuan had actually punched a hole through the heavens with a single shot. Just how terrifying was he?
And that abyssal black beyond the hole… was that the "universe" he kept talking about—the world outside?
"What are those broken rocks? Is the false firmament made of stone?"
Questions tumbled out—until something stranger happened:
The torn rim of the false sky flushed a deep, unknowable crimson… and began repairing itself. The wound knit closed, the red fading as it healed.
"Wh-what is going on…?"
In Fontaine, Furina lurched upright in bed, cold sweat beading. Then a mischievous light flared in her eyes.
"Why did Su Xuan suddenly shoot the false sky? Is he… declaring war on the Sustainer?"
If so… perfect! When Heaven wakes and sees this insult, She'll have to confront him. Heaven won't swallow the slight; Su Xuan won't accept being questioned. She storms in; he answers with a sword.
"Hee-hee… maybe we're saved after all," she giggled, clutching her head.
At Wangsheng Funeral Parlor, Hu Tao's twin tails practically stood on end.
"Su Xuan poked a hole straight through the sky! Oh no—first thing tomorrow I'm telling every restaurant to stop letting Zhongli put things on our tab. He'll definitely 'invite' Su Xuan out for another round to 'ask a few questions.' I haven't even met him yet and our guest consultant keeps wining and dining him with my money. No way—if anyone's treating him, it's gonna be me!"
Deep forest, northeast of Mt. Aocang.
Lumine and Ganyu gaped at the self-repairing heavens until the seam sealed shut.
"The false sky… fixed itself?" Ganyu murmured.
"No wonder Boss said 'breaking the sky' isn't easy," Lumine exhaled. "It patches itself. But those 'rock fragments'…"
Su Xuan only smiled. For him, punching a hole wasn't hard. Even Marvica, borrowing the authority of Death for a single charged strike, could do it.
What interested him was repair speed. The hole he'd made with a railgun closed visibly slower than Marvica's did. He doubted it was raw power—both attacks pierced the shell. He suspected it was magnetism from his railgun interfering with the repair process.
Teyvat barely had words for magnetism or magnetic fields, yet the ley lines' influence on life felt eerily like magnetic effects. Before, he could brute-force the leylines and wreck everything nearby. Now, with control over fields, he could tune them without breakage—stabilize or scramble, all by fine control.
When the sky finally knit shut, Lumine shook off her trance. "Boss, is Teyvat's sky… made of rock?"
Su Xuan: "?"
"Why that weird question?"
She hugged his arm. "I saw tons of rubble. Isn't that the broken sky?"
He chuckled and pushed a photo to the diary.
[Shattered False Sky.jpg]
[Shattered Three Moons Goddess.jpg]
"These 'stones'—you mean these?" he asked.
Lumine and Ganyu leaned over the diary images—and froze.
"'Three Moons Goddess'?"
"Those fragments are… goddesses? How?"
They looked from the image to Su Xuan. He tipped his chin at the sky, and his diary lines continued:
[Lumine and Ganyu asked if the false sky is made of stone, and I was honestly stunned.]
[With Celestia's tech, who'd build a planet-wide shell out of rocks?]
[At minimum, think energy shields.]
A dozen ladies blushed; they'd had the same first thought as Lumine and Ganyu and felt properly roasted.
[About those 'broken moons'—that tale is ancient.]
[The Three Moons—Constant, Iris, and Frost—]
[—weren't made by Celestia.]
[They were orbital planetary defense platforms from the Draconic Empire—and Heaven seized them for Her own.]
[Celestia set three goddesses over them—hence "Three Moon Goddesses."]
"Planetary… defense?" Marvica's eyes narrowed. Natlan still held ruins of a draconic tech-city; even in decay, you could taste how far beyond Teyvat that civilization had been.
"So the Old Moons were dragon-made weapons in space?"
[Their creation begins with a wanderer of the cosmos.]
[A woman whose body never rots—sleeping in a construct, her mind roaming the stars, tasked only to observe and record civilizations.]
[One day, a spark of will drew her eye—]
[—to insignificant, little Teyvat.]
[This was the age of the Primordial Dragon, Nibelung, who ruled our world.]
[Moved by its brilliant will, she broke her "observe-only" oath and revealed a prophecy:]
[This world will be destroyed.]
["Cold derides all songs; good and evil alike fall silent… Even so, my tender king, will you not abandon your children? Leave this doomed shell—wander the stars with me."]
Minds reeled. "Street-roaming" in Liyue was one thing; a cosmic drifter was another. People from beyond the world could foretell a world's fate?
[Nibelung refused.]
["Friend from faraway: thank you for heaven's truths. But what you call ignorant mortals are my everything. If the end-tide must come, let my bones be the seawall. Witness my chosen road; I will lead all toward the stars."]
[She left. He began.]
[Dragons pursued the stars. They built anti-gravity ships, a space elevator—and the Three Moons.]
[Then Heaven descended, drew down the false sky, warred with the dragons, and claimed Teyvat.]
[Naturally, the Moons fell into Heaven's hands.]
Ancient dragon tech had reached space elevators. And still—Heaven won.
[By then Nibelung had already torn the shell and fled.]
[But thinking of the world he loved, trapped under a dome awaiting doom, he turned back—with Abyss in tow—and challenged Heaven again.]
[He failed—and became the seed of destruction.]
[Yes—the Abyss was something he brought in from beyond.]
[Round Two—"the Year of Hidden Flame."]
[Heaven tilted; earth broke. The Three Moons fell.]
[Iris crashed underground and became an early object of Khaenri'ahn faith; the Crimson Dynasty rose around its ruins.]
[Arlecchino is their descendant.]
[Khaenri'ah's minds… have unique wiring.]
[The Crimson crowd spurned gods and worshiped a fallen Celestian asset. When they learned their "Crimson Moon" was once Heaven's dogma, their faith collapsed—and so did they.]
[Then came the Black Sun Dynasty—Ilmin's line.]
[I don't claim to grasp that logic.]
Arlecchino: "…"
Across Teyvat, minds painted an epic: a cosmic visitor, a dragon king, a climb toward the stars; Heaven's fall of the dome; Moons crashed into history. The beyond was alluring—and lethal. The Abyss itself was an import from outside.
In warm water, Ningguang breathed out. She had once dreamed of Qunyu Pavilion casting its shadow across seven nations; beside beings who dreamt of piercing Heaven and sailing space, her ambition felt small.
"Wait." Water splashed. Her eyes went wide.
"If Su Xuan walks into Natlan, he could reproduce the dragon empire's tech in days. With Reverse-Time to witness, and the Law of Understanding to reconstruct… he could uplift all seven nations instantly."
She rinsed her face, heart racing. "No. Don't be bewitched. The beyond isn't automatically 'good.' Better to finish the Qunyu Pavilion I promised him. Serve him well—when he tires of Teyvat and looks outward, he won't leave me behind."
The diary kept flowing:
[As for our cosmic drifter…]
[After the Year of Hidden Flame, she returned to check on Nibelung—only to find the world under new management.]
[Uncertain, she possessed a boy to investigate.]
[By chance she met the Chief of Angels come down to judge man—the Progenitor of the Seelie.]
[She told him the truth—and of the world beyond.]
[He heard that the egg-shell had an outside—that the great wide cosmos lay there—and it detonated his core logic of loving mankind.]
[He decided Heaven stunted humanity—and betrayed Her. He spilled secrets to the drifter.]
["Pitiful, pitiable—your master dares to profane lives so pure," she said. "Even a blood-wraith that delights in tortured souls would gasp at such cruelty."]
[Together, they rebelled.]
[The Seelie gave her Heaven's method of creation.]
[They founded the Golden City in today's Snezhnaya (Nordklaj) as a base against Heaven.]
[Heaven dropped a Nail. The Golden City froze to ruin.]
[The Seelie and their kin were cursed: meet a human's eyes, degenerate into the floaters you see today.]
[As for the drifter who broke her prime directive—]
[I won't claim to know. She'd only hijacked a boy's body. In the time they rebelled, did she use what she brought to modify him, build a vessel, anchor her power? Unknown.]
[If, after the Nail fell, she just… bailed, that's a bit low.]
The ladies winced. Plant a seed and flee? That was low.
Back in the forest, under a once-more pristine sky, Lumine and Ganyu looked to Su Xuan. The air still smelled faintly of ozone; iron sand slowly sank back into the soil.
Somewhere far above, the shattered relics of the Three Moons drifted—reminders that long before mortals, Teyvat had reached for the stars… and that Su Xuan now had a sky-killing railgun to match.
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