How far was ninety-six thousand kilometers?
"Ninety-six… million meters…?"
Just the radius alone was a unit of distance none of them could truly grasp.
A space-time distortion with a radius of ninety-six million meters—
What kind of scene was that?
The girls' minds simply couldn't picture it.
"Is that really the kind of enemy we'll be facing in the end…?"
Keqing felt her heart trembling with fear.
"And he was talking about just one fragment of the Will Overmind," she said quietly.
"In its home universe, the entire cosmos is filled with those same energy beings."
"If the Abyss is really similar in nature…"
"Then the final end of our universe will be the same as that other one," she whispered.
"Everything replaced by Abyssal energy."
Ningguang, by contrast, seemed strangely calm. She took a slow drag from her cigarette, movements unhurried.
"This isn't something beings as small as us are qualified to worry about," she said.
Not just them—
Not even the rulers of nations, nor even the Heavenly Principles themselves, had the right to look directly at something like the Abyss or the Will Overmind.
No matter how strong, the Heavenly Principles still existed only to govern a single planetary world.
But the Abyss?
The Will Overmind?
Those two were beings that treated the entire universe as their playing field.
The Will Overmind had even become the structure of its entire cosmos.
And according to Su Xuan, the universe Teyvat belonged to was also suffocating under the pressure of the Abyss.
That meant the Abyss truly was expanding through the stars like the Will Overmind—
Destroying endless suns and worlds, until it became the universe's only energy, its only structure.
What Ningguang least wanted to imagine was that the Will Overmind had begun as a failed experiment.
And if the Abyss had been born the same way, then it wasn't hard to understand why the Heavenly Principles cherished mortal life—
Or why that distant "Observer" would place such emphasis on free, thinking beings.
The existence and future of intelligent life were things no one could fully predict.
But one wrong step—and the price was irreversible annihilation.
"So don't define the Abyss as our 'final enemy' at all," Ningguang said lightly.
"With our strength, we're in no position to 'fight' something like that."
"Unless we can create something that surpasses the Abyss itself."
She closed the folder in her hand.
"But even then, no one can guarantee the new thing we create wouldn't just become a second Abyss."
Thinking about impossible problems was pointless.
Better to think about how to link Mondstadt and Inazuma and set up a three-way trade route.
Ningguang decided to merge several star-skiffs into one large cargo vessel—
A ship that could carry far more goods between Liyue, Mondstadt, and Inazuma, entirely free of charge.
As for the other nations?
They could wait until their representatives established a proper relationship with Su Xuan.
"You're right," Keqing said, nodding. "In the end, only he can handle this."
"At the very least, he did say he has a way to let Teyvat dodge the Abyss."
Su Xuan's talk of "can't provoke, then avoid" came from the fact that the Abyss had already spread across the whole universe.
Unless you wiped out every single fragment of it in one go, it would just come back again, sooner or later.
Like a stubborn curse that stuck to you forever.
Fighting it head-on was nothing but asking for misery.
—
Tenshukaku.
Yae Miko's fox ears twitched. She looked like she was scheming something again.
She sneaked a look at Su Xuan, then smiled brightly.
"Anyway, since you can't leave Teyvat without some special trigger," she said, "why not have Ei give you a quiet little position?"
"You can live in Inazuma when you feel like it, travel whenever you want…"
"I think 'Raiden Shogun's personal bodyguard' has a nice ring to it."
Her proposal hit the room like thunder.
Everyone stared.
Kokomi recovered first—and refused on the spot.
"Guuji-sama, you—"
Have you lost your mind?!
Wanting to give Su Xuan a relaxed position was fine.
But "personal guard" was barely one step removed from "servant."
"Guuji-sama, I don't think that joke is funny at all," Kokomi said, face dark.
Words that disrespected Su Xuan weren't just reckless—they were inviting disaster for all of Inazuma, all of Teyvat.
Ei's brows knitted.
"Miko."
"Don't think that just because Su Xuan understands our personalities, you can say anything you like in front of him."
"If you keep this up, I'll have you confined."
Yae Miko, however, acted like she hadn't heard a thing.
She just kept smiling at Su Xuan.
"How about it? In the daytime, you follow behind Ei and show your face around Inazuma."
"And at night, you're still behind Ei."
"That way," she added sweetly, "we can make your little bargain literal—by day, Inazuma belongs to Ei. By night, Ei belongs to you."
Ei blinked, stunned.
But when she saw Su Xuan smiling, felt that he wasn't remotely angry, she finally let out a quiet breath of relief.
"Come on, Miko," Su Xuan laughed. "Your idea's fun, but if that's the case…"
"You might as well slap a crime on me, throw me into an Inazuman prison—"
"And then have Ei, you, Kokomi, Ayaka, or even Sara take turns interrogating me alone every day."
All of the girls tilted their heads.
What?
When did the conversation change genre?
"Pfft." Yae Miko covered her mouth, giggling. "You're worse than I am."
"The noble Raiden Shogun, descending to seduce a 'criminal' in order to extract information…"
"But in the end, instead of winning, she falls—corrupted and willingly enslaved."
Ei: "?"
Kokomi and Ayaka, now fully understanding the scenario Miko was painting, went bright red on the spot.
So that was it.
This scheming pink fox was trying to use a "power reversal" setup to give Su Xuan a different kind of emotional thrill.
Su Xuan could only shake his head, half exasperated, half amused.
"You're always bullying Ei," he said.
"How can you call it bullying?" Yae Miko protested sweetly. "I'm her closest friend."
"And I have other ideas."
"For example, we announce to the outside world that the Raiden Shogun has entered seclusion in some special space."
"Inazuma's authority is temporarily passed to me—I rule in her stead."
"In truth, Ei would still be inside Tenshukaku the whole time."
"Just… as your personal broodmare."
The girls: "…"
That abacus was practically rebounding off their foreheads.
Still, they had to admit—the fox's idea was sharp.
If Ei really bore Su Xuan's child, both Inazuma and Teyvat would never need to fear the future again.
Su Xuan: "…"
All of a sudden, he realized that compared to these women, he just wasn't nearly twisted enough.
When it came to this sort of thing, women really did have more… talent.
"Let's wait on that," he said dryly. "Before 'bullying' Ei, I'll try my hand at you first, little fox."
"But before that, I might as well satisfy your curiosity."
Her thoughts weren't hard to read.
Yae Miko desperately wanted to know how he planned to keep the Abyss outside from seeping into Teyvat.
Su Xuan didn't see any reason to hide it.
She didn't have to drum up games and stimulation to get him to talk.
He'd planned to make this public anyway.
So, he simply picked up where the previous diary entry left off.
[Since we're already talking about the Abyss—]
[I might as well lay out its future "plans" for Teyvat in one go.]
[And explain why I still say it's gentler than the things next door.]
[Putting aside the fact that it willingly shares its power with those whose will can withstand it—]
[It has another obvious trait.]
[It expands very slowly.]
[It drifts.]
[Nibelungen brought it into Teyvat thousands of years ago.]
[If Khaenri'ah hadn't tried to study it—hadn't caused the Black Beast Tide—]
[Its erosion of Teyvat would be even slower than it is now. Many times slower.]
[And the main Abyssal force Nibelungen brought in? It landed in Natlan.]
[Yet even after all those millennia, Natlan, as a nation, is still standing.]
Marvica: "Eh…"
Somehow, that sounded oddly insulting.
[Of course, when I say "Abyss," I mean the energy Nibelungen brought here.]
[Sky Island has also been helping from above, providing aid to the mortals below in their attempts to fight it.]
[But if you zoom back out and look at the cosmic scale—]
[Across thousands, even nearly ten thousand years—]
[The false sky that blocks the Abyss has only begun to weaken in the last few years.]
[Is the false sky really that powerful?]
[At the end of the day, it's just a planetary shield.]
[How is that supposed to stand up to a cosmic-level entity like the Abyss?]
[And yet even after the Heavenly Principles fell asleep, the Sustainer broke down, and another five hundred years passed, it's only now starting to thin.]
[So yes—the Abyss's erosion is far slower than people imagine.]
[If we put the Will Overmind in place of the Abyss under Teyvat's current conditions—]
[The Overmind would've sent everyone on Teyvat to the afterlife long ago.]
[Aside from Natlan, which has been at war with the Abyss from the start—]
[The other nations only see serious Abyssal activity about three years from now.]
[In Mondstadt, the Abyss acts through Durin's corrupted corpse.]
[Its main trick is to copy the citizens of Mondstadt and send those copies to wreak havoc.]
[Along with controlling a horde of hilichurls and monsters to attack.]
[In the end, Mondstadt deals with it rather easily.]
"Durin…?" Jean murmured. "The Durin on Dragonspine?"
Lisa chuckled. "Where else would there be another Durin?"
"But Durin…" Jean hesitated. "Hasn't he been…"
"Mm. Yes, Acting Grand Master," Lisa said gently. "Su Xuan cleaned him up quite some time ago."
[Liyue's "death-qi" outbreak might be somewhat related to the Abyss—]
[But it's still suppressed by Hu Tao staking her life on the line.]
[In fact, just when her life was about to be exchanged for the death-qi—]
[Our adorable Lumine jumped in and pulled her out.]
[If that outbreak was truly Abyssal, then honestly, the Abyss really lost face there.]
[Being held down by Hu Tao alone…]
Hu Tao puffed her chest out. "Hehehe… this Hall Master's got some skill, you know."
[As for Sumeru—once all traces of Greater Lord Rukkhadevata (Buer) are erased, the Withering Zones and Mawarin vanish as well.]
[That's what confuses me.]
[The Abyss clearly infected the Irminsul by infecting Buer.]
[Yet in five hundred years, it made no real progress.]
[And after the Withering and Mawarin are cleared, it stops moving entirely.]
[That just leaves Inazuma.]
Ei's expression tightened.
She waited for the next lines like a soldier awaiting a verdict.
[Inazuma's Abyss activity is still just an aftershock from the Black Beast Tide.]
[Back then, your friend Chiyo was tainted by the Abyss and went mad.]
[Her splintered mind turned everything she saw into an enemy.]
[She killed many around her—and eventually fought her way all the way to Tenshukaku.]
[In the end, Ei cut off one of her horns, and she fled into the mountains.]
[She later died, unable to endure the pain of Abyssal corrosion.]
Ei and Yae Miko both fell silent.
But in the next moment, Miko suddenly realized something.
Her eyes trembled slightly as she read on.
[Chiyo died, but the horn Ei cut off was buried in the mountains.]
[Starting from now, three years later, the residual Abyssal power in that horn will erupt, causing a small incident during the Three Rivers Flower Festival.]
[But even then, it never becomes more than a minor disturbance.]
[The Abyss really does creep forward slowly.]
[It reminds me of a certain laid-back "Black Overlord" from next door.]
[It is invading—but without any strong intention or clear target.]
[It just spreads naturally, and anything in its way happens to die.]
[Maybe that's why the false sky can hold it back.]
[The Abyss has no strong will to smash through the barrier.]
[So if we want to stop it from eroding the false sky completely—]
[If we want to prevent Teyvat from falling into eternal night—]
[All we have to do is lay a Flying Thunder Guiding Thunder barrier over the outside of the eggshell.]
[Once the Abyss touches that barrier, it gets pulled into a space-time rift and spit back out somewhere else.]
"Flying Thunder… Guiding Thunder barrier?" Ei repeated under her breath.
Su Xuan nodded. "A network of space-time rifts, essentially. With teleportation effects."
"A transmit barrier big enough to cover the world…" Yae Miko whispered, eyes wide.
But then she thought about it.
If the Heavenly Principles could create a planetary shield in the first place—
Then a future Su Xuan modifying that shield with a space-time barrier wasn't so hard to imagine.
[About the Flying Thunder Guiding Thunder barrier—]
[Conceptually, it's similar to the teleportation gates used by the Abyss Order.]
[But their gates are only simple spatial portals. They're not proper barriers.]
[The main function of the Guiding Thunder barrier is to set up space-time rifts in the false sky.]
[Once the outer Abyss touches the sky, it's automatically diverted into another layer of space.]
[Then we let it exit somewhere else.]
[In that scenario, the Abyss outside will never truly touch the false sky.]
[If it can't even touch the sky, it can't erode the shell.]
[And if it can't erode the shell, it can't enter Teyvat.]
[As long as the Abyss outside can't pour continuously into Teyvat, all we have to do is clean up what's already inside.]
[In the end, all the Abyssal energy covering Teyvat will simply pass through via the Guiding Thunder barrier.]
[Even if the Abyss devours this entire universe—]
[Teyvat itself will drift like a lone boat on a black sea.]
[No matter how wild the waves outside, the people in the little boat can still sing and dance.]
[And if, one day, the Abyss suddenly "wakes up," gets angry, and decides to bypass the false sky with some higher spatial authority to enter Teyvat directly—]
[It will still have to deal with the distortions caused by the Guiding Thunder barrier's space-time rifts.]
[When will that day come?]
[A few hundred years? A thousand? Ten thousand?]
[If the Abyss is kind enough to give Teyvat that much time—]
[And it gives me that much time as well…]
[Then by that point, I'll really be able to blow this entire universe to pieces.]
The girls stared for a moment—
Then suddenly:
"…Right," someone whispered.
"Su Xuan does have Boundary-Breaking authority," another added. "And the power to kill gods."
"A little Abyss… could really be shattered with a flick of his fingers."
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