Su Xuan moved fast.
After clearing out the Abyss in Enkanomiya, he quickly opened the deepest gate in those ruins.
The towering doors rumbled as they parted.
Far inside, a sudden flare of light pierced the underground gloom, standing out starkly against the darkness.
Among the shattered stone and collapsed buildings, a single tall tower rose.
At its peak, light blazed like a miniature sun.
In the current age of Teyvat, very few people knew of Enkanomiya's Dainichi Mikoshi.
But its sheer presence still stunned the watching girls.
The tower's tip was like a second sun, hanging over the forgotten city below.
Su Xuan stepped up beside the Dainichi Mikoshi and laid his hand on its wall.
With the Authority of Law and Principle in his grasp, it wasn't long before he'd unraveled every inch of the structure's design.
Once he'd finished, he lifted his gaze to the hundred-meter-tall tower. The blazing light above was almost painfully bright.
[Dainichi Mikoshi.jpg]
[After Sky Island refused the people of Byakuyakoku when they begged to return to the surface…]
[The Time Archon, Istaroth, secretly descended and granted them knowledge from Celestia.]
[This light-emitting device used to drive away the Vishaps was something she helped them build.]
[Because of the Dainichi Mikoshi, the people of Byakuyakoku escaped the dragon threat and were able to live underground for a long time.]
[It was only then that their nation truly shifted from "Tokoyo Ookami's realm" into "Byakuyakoku."]
[But once life stabilized, hearts began to waver.]
[Some people, greedy for power and control, decided to turn this luminous device into a "god."]
[Yeah… it's ridiculous. But the people of Byakuyakoku actually believed it.]
[To prove their devotion, they chose a number of children and called them the "Children of the Sun."]
[Then…]
[They offered them in sacrifice.]
The girls shuddered.
[As for the "reason" for the sacrifice—honestly, those people were disturbingly clever.]
[It was a fully formed theocratic system.]
[They used the people's awe of the Dainichi Mikoshi to elevate it into a god.]
[Then they chose a group of children, minds still unformed, to serve as its emissaries—the Children of the Sun.]
[These children would "convey" the god's will to the people.]
[Of course, every oracle they recited was written by the ones pulling the strings behind the scenes.]
[But children grow up.]
[They eventually mature, form their own thoughts.]
[And then what?]
[So when they reached a certain age, a special day was chosen.]
[The "Children of the Sun" were sent into the Dainichi Mikoshi.]
[The rulers claimed the god's emissaries were "returning to its embrace."]
[The Dainichi Mikoshi would cast their silhouettes onto its surface, arms flailing as if in joy.]
[The people believed this was the emissaries dancing in ecstasy as they rejoined their god.]
[The truth was, they were thrashing because they were being burned alive in the extreme heat inside the Dainichi Mikoshi.]
The watching girls felt their skin crawl.
These people had really thrown innocent children into a furnace, just to keep their grip on power?
No wonder Su Xuan had called Byakuyakoku even more cursed than Yashiori.
[And in this lovely little hellscape, you can even run into a few lingering souls of the dead.]
[Still, as bad as this dragon-infested Byakuyakoku is—]
[The place I'm heading next, Tsurumi Island, is cursed on an entirely different level.]
[Because of damaged ley lines, the entire island is shrouded in fog all year round.]
[Sometimes, when the sunlight hits it a certain way, the fog turns blood-red.]
[Add in Abyss creatures and Rifthounds roaming the island…]
[And you've got one of Teyvat's most top-tier haunted zones.]
Raiden Ei felt extremely wronged.
She genuinely had no way to fix Tsurumi—and the island's state really did come from broken ley lines.
[And of course, Tsurumi used to do sacrifices too.]
The girls all jolted.
Not again… right?
[By the time the twin gods, Ei and Makoto, came to Inazuma, Tsurumi wasn't yet part of Inazuma.]
[Honestly, even now it's only Inazuma's "territory" in name.]
[Back during the Archon War, the ley lines here were already faulty. Now and then the whole island would be eaten by fog.]
[To seek divine protection, the people of Tsurumi gave their faith to a passing Thunder Bird.]
[Every year, they'd offer it a living sacrifice.]
The girls fell silent.
Yashiori, Byakuyakoku, now Tsurumi—
Inazuma's obsession with sacrificial rituals clearly ran deep.
Inazuman thinking was… hard to compliment.
[Unfortunately, the Thunder Bird had no real interest in humans and almost never communicated with them.]
[Until one day, a boy's song moved it.]
[The Thunder Bird grew deeply fond of him. They agreed to be friends, and the boy even gave it a name.]
[When the villagers found out, they wanted to win the Thunder Bird's favor.]
[So at the next sacrifice, the boy's father personally…]
[…Well, that part's a bit too bloody.]
[Long story short: when the Thunder Bird came back and didn't see the boy, it went to the altar and drank from a golden cup.]
[While it drank, it asked where the boy had gone.]
[The villagers told it—what it was drinking was the boy.]
[Enraged by the truth, the Thunder Bird slaughtered every last villager on the island.]
[Then it took the golden cup containing the boy and left.]
[Later, the Narukami Ōgosho of Narukami Island heard tales of a Thunder Bird causing havoc in the south.]
[She sent her younger sister to subdue it.]
[That's how the Thunder Bird was shot down by Ei on Seirai Island.]
So in the end, the Raiden Shogun had slaughtered Tsurumi's people's murderer for them.
Su Xuan had only given a brief summary of Tsurumi's past—
But it was enough to make the girls' scalps prickle.
Blood-red fog, and a ritual like that…
It was obvious why he called Tsurumi one of the most terrifying places in Teyvat.
As the girls were still picturing the horrors of the island, the light curtain shifted again.
The scene of Su Xuan beside the Dainichi Mikoshi vanished—
And in the blink of an eye, he was already standing in a bank of thick fog.
A Rifthound at his side froze for a heartbeat at the sudden appearance of a human.
Then it lunged, claws flashing—
And in the very next instant, its body twisted violently out of shape, crushed to pieces.
Even the dissipating energy was torn apart by telekinesis before it could escape.
[Back in Enkanomiya, I'd been thinking of doing what I did with The Chasm—]
[Just moving the whole place up to the surface.]
[Unfortunately, Enkanomiya sits too close to Watatsumi.]
[And then there's the issue with the ley lines.]
[If I dragged Enkanomiya up from the seafloor, it'd damage Watatsumi's foundation.]
[The tangled ley lines in the area would be thrown completely out of balance.]
[Not worth the risk.]
[So Enkanomiya will just have to keep sleeping under the sea.]
[Tsurumi, though—that's much easier.]
[All I'd need to do is hit the exposed fracture in the ley lines with the Heaven and Earth Mirror to fix the entire break.]
[But…]
[For a place this cursed, the best solution is to destroy everything and rebuild from scratch.]
[And speaking of that—]
[I still haven't tried dropping a Skyfrost Nail on Teyvat.]
[Might as well use Tsurumi to have some fun.]
The girls: "???"
At that moment—
Once Su Xuan settled on the idea, his body lit up with a faint glow.
He shot straight up, punching through Tsurumi's fog and coming to a stop high in the sky.
A few seconds after he halted, a Skyfrost Nail quietly appeared beside him.
Crackling arcs of lightning slid over his skin like thunder-serpents.
No one knew what, exactly, he was doing. They could only watch the seconds tick by.
When the lightning finally faded, he lowered his gaze to the fog-choked island beneath him.
"Off you go."
With a soft chuckle, he let the Skyfrost Nail drop.
It fell like a weight cut loose, plunging straight down toward Tsurumi.
It vanished into the thick clouds.
The light curtain now carried sound, but aside from Su Xuan's casual "Off you go," the girls heard… nothing.
No deafening impact. No earth-shattering detonation.
The Nail seemed to fall silently.
Then, at some unseen instant, a deep blue radiance spread out—
In the blink of an eye, it swallowed the entire fog-shrouded island.
Like some terrifying energy field, it devoured Tsurumi and all its mist in one breath.
When the glow finally faded—
Su Xuan looked down again.
The choking fog was gone. The ground below was clear to see.
Only now, the island no longer resembled the other islands of Inazuma.
Where verdant stone and soil had once been, there was only white.
The entire island had become an ice field, like another Dragonspine rising from the sea.
From that moment on, Tsurumi Island vanished from Teyvat.
In its place was a brand-new glacial island, sculpted from ice and snow.
"Sss…"
Watching the frozen landscape on the light curtain, the girls almost felt the chill themselves, as if they were standing on that vast glacier.
The Skyfrost Nail's power sent a genuine shiver down their spines.
This thing was no joke.
It had transformed an entire island into a glacial wasteland in an instant.
Drop a few more of those, and from space you'd probably see nothing but a white ice-ball where Teyvat used to be.
In the process of reshaping Tsurumi into an ice island, the Skyfrost Nail had also repaired the island's damaged ley lines.
Su Xuan swept his telekinesis across the land.
Every Rifthound that had once prowled the island had been wiped out by the Nail's impact.
Returning to the ground, Su Xuan took in the nearby icy cliffs and distant peaks of frozen ridges.
An idea sparked.
He slowly raised his hand.
A huge ice mountain not far away lit up with a soft glow.
His hand closed—
The surface of the peak shattered into countless shards of ice.
And in the next moment, a massive human-shaped sculpture emerged from the mountain face.
"What's that…?"
The girls stared at the towering figure, eyes drawn to the familiar braided ponytail hanging over its chest.
In a daze, they realized who the statue was meant to be.
Add in the clothes and posture, and there was no doubt.
Su Xuan had carved a colossal image of the current Raiden Shogun, Raiden Ei.
[As for the Skyfrost Nail's effect—]
[Despite the name, it's not that the Nail itself is inherently "cold."]
[The changes it causes to local terrain mainly depend on the elemental composition of the ley lines.]
[Dragonspine's formation, for example, goes back to the age of Old Mondstadt and Sal Vindagnyr.]
[The region was already a snowfield.]
[That climate wasn't just wind direction and weather. The ley lines themselves were a major factor.]
[When the Skyfrost Nail hits, its energy resonates with the elemental power in the ley lines.]
[If Tsurumi's ley lines had been rich in Geo instead—]
[The Nail would have turned it into a realm of sheer rock cliffs.]
[Or perhaps a desert.]
[If Pyro had been the dominant element, we might've gotten an island full of active volcanoes and lava.]
[Just now, I used electromagnetism to tweak the elemental distribution in Tsurumi's ley lines—]
[And cranked Cryo's share up to the maximum.]
[That's why it turned into a brand-new ice island.]
[Honestly… Inazuma really is poor.]
[Maybe it's exactly because it has so many cursed zones and so much uninhabitable land that it ended up like this.]
That was hard to argue with.
Now that they thought about it, even without the decrees, Inazuma had never really had a chance to be wealthy.
Tsurumi's ley lines were wrecked and blanketed in fog.
Yashiori was plagued by the serpent god's resentment.
Seirai was soaked in the Thunder Bird's curse.
Watatsumi technically wasn't even under direct Inazuman rule—
And thanks to the Abyss in Enkanomiya, its soil had turned to holy ground where nothing could grow, forcing it to rely on external support.
A country made of islands, with barely a handful of habitable ones, and over half of those crippled—
How could it not be poor?
[Anyway, enough complaining.]
[I've been bullying Ei nonstop—so this time, I'll help her pad her achievements a little.]
[Turning an old useless Tsurumi into an Inazuman tourist paradise doesn't sound bad.]
[At least it'll draw some foreign travelers and bring in a bit of money.]
With that, Su Xuan's gaze swept the new glacial landscape again.
He focused on the giant ice statue of Ei he'd just carved.
His mind sharpened.
The surrounding mountains cracked and fell away in an instant—
And the colossal statue stood alone on the frozen plain, fully revealed.
He lifted his hand again.
The icefield shuddered as bulges of ice rose from the surface, forming clusters of low hills and outcroppings.
He nodded in satisfaction and wrote in the diary:
[I've laid the basic foundation for Tsurumi's redevelopment.]
[What kind of island they want it to become is up to them now.]
[They can send people over, carve the ice into whatever they like, or build on it.]
[I won't interfere too much with their plans.]
—
Tenshukaku.
Yae Miko had just finished "arresting" Yoimiya and bringing her up when a headache hit.
Kamisato Ayaka glanced at the clearly frightened Yoimiya in the room, then at the Guuji's pained expression.
"Guuji-sama, you look like… you're not very happy about this?" she asked cautiously.
Yae Miko let out a long sigh.
"A fully formed ice island like that is something you rarely see in Teyvat."
"It's perfect for tourism."
"But…"
"Ugh. You realize this massive project is going to end up in our laps, right? Yours and mine."
Ayaka nodded slightly.
Most of Inazuma's festivals and events were planned by the Yashiro Commission, with Miko providing support from the shrine.
But neither of them had ever handled something on this scale.
Transforming an entire ice island into a tourist destination—
That really wasn't the sort of job two shrine maidens and a noble lady could wrap up by themselves.
Su Xuan had handed them a perfect opportunity—
And Ayaka felt her cheeks heat up in shame at the thought they might not be able to make good use of it.
"Should we… ask the Shogun?" she ventured softly.
Miko's headache only got worse.
"Ei?" she said. "You're relying on her?"
"The moment she sees that ice statue, she'll probably be too excited to think straight."
"She likely hasn't even read the rest yet."
"Even if you ask her, you'll just confuse her."
"Forget it. I'll write to Ganyu. For a project like this, the best plan is to develop Tsurumi's ice island together with Liyue and Mondstadt."
"As for our dear Shogun…"
Her lips curled into a "dangerous" smile.
"All she needs to do is learn more poses and lines."
"She doesn't need to worry about anything else."
"All right, off you go. Go comfort Yoimiya. Don't let her think that stepping into Tenshukaku means something terrible is going to happen."
"I'll go find Ei some new books—for her to, ahem, study from."
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