Genshin Impact: A Mortal's Ascension to Godhood

It was already halfway through summer, and soon it would be the hottest time in Liyue.

In the past few weeks, Li Tao, with the introduction of Xingqiu, bought a house in full at a relatively low price near a community near Tianheng Mountain. Since then, Li Tao has become a genuine old Liyue citizen with a Liyue household registration.

The house that Li Tao bought was quite grand, with two floors and a loft. It was said that it was a wine shop before, but it had not been open for a while. When Li Tao and the owner were looking at the house, he smelled a lingering smell of wine in the cellar.

Because the landlord wanted to return to Chenyu Valley to do business and his family lived in Qingce Village, he didn't want to live in Liyue Port for the time being, so he sold the house, which had been vacant for some time since the tavern closed down, to Li Tao.

After the two signed the contract and submitted it to the relevant departments for inspection, Li Tao took the property certificate and moved into the place that could be called "home" with peace of mind. However, after the wine shop moved out, the house looked shabby and there were few furnitures. Li Tao had to spend several million Mora to hire decoration workers and buy furniture from Feiyunpo to redecorate the house. After these works were completed, almost a month had passed.

Li Tao is not short of money at the moment, but it is always a bit scary to have only expenses and no income. Li Tao does not want to rely on the one-time high adventure bonus for the rest of his life, thus neglecting the practice of martial arts and elemental power, so he continues to train himself by completing the Adventurer Association's tasks. If divided by level, Li Tao's adventurer level is estimated to be around level 40.

(Although the Adventurer level has almost no effect.)

However, one day when Li Tao came back from the Layered Abyss after completing his mission, he received a letter from Catherine while chatting with her at the counter of the Adventurer's Association.

"A client claiming to be a guest of the Wangsheng Hall has issued a mission to the association, and has designated you, the adventurer, to accept it. Would you like to take a look at the specific instructions in the letter?"

Li Tao was a little absent-minded at first. After hearing the words "Guest of the Rebirth Hall", his heart skipped a beat and he almost fell to the ground: "Wait, Miss Catherine, who is the guest of the Rebirth Hall you are talking about?"

The Chamber of Commerce in Liyue has an ancient tradition of recruiting guests and patrons. To put it nicely, these people are guests, but to put it bluntly, they are the black and white gloves of the Chamber of Commerce. After all, you can't keep these people for nothing. Of course, they will be needed if the benefactor has any needs. It is normal for some wealthy Chambers of Commerce to keep hundreds of patrons.

However, as a time traveler, how could Li Tao not understand that when the two words "Wangsheng Hall" and "Guest Official" are combined together, what kind of existence the object might be referring to... Anyone who has played Genshin Impact knows that Zhongli, the guest official of Wangsheng Hall, is the Geo King!

Catherine was slightly stunned, then looked at Li Tao and asked, "Do you know Mr. Zhongli, Li Tao? He is very famous in the treasure appraisal industry in Liyue. Everyone says that he has a pair of eyes that can see through everything. No matter whether it is jade or antiques, as long as he takes a look at them, he can tell the secrets of them."

"Mr. Zhongli is not only knowledgeable, well-versed in ancient and modern times, and has great artistic vision, but he also has a deep understanding of Liyue's traditional etiquette. Even the most conservative Liyue old scholar could not find any fault with the [Sending Immortals Ceremony] organized by the Wangsheng Hall in the past. He came to entrust you to do a task, probably to obtain some materials in the wild. Just like before, Shopkeeper Wang entrusted you to get some topaz from the ruins..."

How can it be the same? Emperor Renyan, do you still need to entrust a little Kalemi like me to mine in the Layered Rock Abyss? A person can split the Lonely Cloud Pavilion with one shot, okay? !

Li Tao was a little numb. He stretched out his hand stiffly to take the letter from Catherine. He tore open the seal with trepidation and took out a letter that was full of antique style and charm in both the letter paper and the wording.

The general meaning of the letter is that the client Zhongli, as a guest of Wangsheng Hall, wants to entrust an adventurer from the Adventurer's Association to fetch some things from the wild secret realm. He happened to find that there is a rising star Li Tao in the Adventurer's Association, so he wants to entrust this task to him. If Li Tao has any questions, please feel free to come to Wangsheng Hall to find him (although there is a chance that he is not there).

After reading the letter, Li Tao had only one thought: No, Emperor, are you free? Why not ask Xiao to do this kind of thing, and add more work to the Adventurer's Association? And of course the Emperor will not pay, he will pay in kind, that is, some antiques, which is of course possible, but doesn't this confirm the rumor that "Morax can't use Mora"?

"Adventurer, adventurer? Do you want to accept this mission?"

Catherine looked at Li Tao's dazed expression after reading the letter, and waved her hand in front of him in confusion.

Li Tao came back to his senses and nodded with difficulty: "I accept. Also, Catherine, please give me a piece of letter paper from the Adventurer's Association. I want to write a letter back to Emperor...ah, Mr. Zhongli."

Since I have received the letter, it would be impolite not to reply. Li Tao of course also knew this tradition of Liyue, so he carefully considered the words and wrote back to Zhongli, telling him that he thanked him for his commission. The next day, adventurer Li Tao came to visit.

......

the next day.

When Li Tao arrived at the Hall of Rebirth trembling with fear as agreed, the first person he saw was not the guest official Zhongli, but the head of the Hall of Rebirth, Hu Tao, who was so bored that he used his personal ghost to scare Li Tao.

"A cloud appeared in the northwest sky, and the fool stepped into the forest of graves... Sir, are you here to reserve a grave, or to carve a tombstone? Or do you want a beautiful golden nanmu coffin?"

Li Tao looked at Hu Tao who was hiding in the shadows of the Wangsheng Hall and talking in a pinched voice, and said helplessly: "Stop it, Hu Tao. You should know that adventurers usually die without a complete body. What's the use of a coffin for me?"

Hu Tao walked out of the door slowly in her leather shoes. "Tsk, you are a few years older than me, don't be so boring. Since you don't have anything serious to talk to me about, what's wrong with me making a joke? Can't I just say it? I say, don't always be boring like an old man. Even Zhongli can tell a few jokes occasionally."

At this point, Hu Tao suddenly thought of something, and looked at Li Tao with her plum blossom eyes suspiciously: "Wait, you are not here to look for Zhongli, are you? I remember that he went to the Adventurer's Association before, saying that he wanted to entrust something... Did you accept his commission?"

Li Tao nodded, indicating that it was indeed the case.

Speaking of why Li Tao and Hu Tao know each other, it is also thanks to Xingqiu. Xingqiu likes to recite poems and paint, and has a deep attainment in Liyue classical poetry. Li Tao is very aware of this - when he and Xingqiu Chongyun go out to travel, once they talk about literary topics, Xingqiu is always the one with the most knowledge. And Hu Tao, the head of the Wangsheng Hall, is Xingqiu's "poet friend" in a sense. This girl calls herself the "alley school dark poet". The poems she writes are as shocking as a mixture of Mondstadt coffee and fruit wine, pointing directly to the darkness and chaos in people's hearts. One time when Xingqiu was walking on the road, he heard Hu Tao reciting her masterpiece "Qiuqiu Ballad" on the side of the road. For a moment, he was shocked and went up to talk to her... This is how Xingqiu and Hu Tao met.

Li Tao, by chance, had seen some amazing doggerel on the Internet when he was in college, so one day when Hu Tao and Xing Qiu were both there, he also went up to recite a poem from "Tian Heng Mountain":

"From a distance, the sky is dark.

Thin at the bottom and thick at the top

If we turn the balance upside down

Thin at the bottom and thick at the top"

Xingqiu burst into laughter, but Hu Tao regarded Li Tao as a close friend, believing that he was a poet whose level was "not inferior to mine". But after that, Li Tao refused to be clever and write poetry.

The memories ended here. After Li Tao fooled Hu Tao with a few words, he successfully met the old man Zhongli who was sitting in the guest room of the Wangsheng Hall, playing with beads in one hand and holding a teacup in the other. Seeing Li Tao push the door open, Zhongli put down the teacup and beads in his hand, opened his beautiful phoenix eyes, and said to him slowly: "Mr. Li Tao is here? Please sit down, please sit down."

Oh my god, the pressure was instantly maxed out.

Although he knew that the retired old man Zhong Li would not do anything to him, Li Tao, who knew Zhong Li's identity in advance, still tried his best to appear polite and sat upright at the table in the guest room, like a primary school student who was about to be criticized by his parents.

Seeing Li Tao like this, Zhongli was also a little confused - why was he so nervous? But Zhongli chose to ignore these details and got straight to the point about the topic of the commission: "Hello, Mr. Li Tao. I heard that you are an outstanding adventurer of the Adventurer's Association. I have a commission for you to complete. Since you have already replied to me, it means that you have accepted the commission, right?"

"Uh, yes. Any questions, Mr. Zhongli?"

No problem - but your hands are shaking. Am I usually that scary?

Zhong Li's heart was filled with a trace of amusement, and his expression became softer: "Haha, don't worry. The difficulty of the task may be a little high, but I don't have any time limit for the task. In other words, you can try to complete this task in your lifetime, and you can choose to give up if you really can't."

After talking about serious work, Li Tao finally felt less nervous: "A long-term mission with no time limit? Mr. Zhongli, this... you have to know that this kind of mission needs to be renewed with money, otherwise it will easily become a [Zombie Mission] and no one will accept it."

"Yes, but didn't I appoint you to do it? Does this also require renewal?"

"I think it is necessary..." Li Tao wiped the sweat from his temples and answered in a low voice, "About every five years, you have to pay a fee to the association, otherwise the association will cancel the mission. The association will not allow an adventurer to carry out a mission all the time unless it is an extremely special case."

Zhongli frowned slightly and changed his mind: "Then let's temporarily set it to five years. Just complete the task within five years. It doesn't matter if you exceed the time limit, it will be considered as you giving up. During this period, you can also use your time freely, whether it is to do other tasks or travel around. I will not interfere with your actions and force you to complete this task."

Li Tao nodded in confusion, then asked indirectly: "But you haven't told me the specific content of the mission. Even in the letter and the association's records, you only wrote some very obscure information..."

Yes, in the tasks issued by the Adventurer's Association, there are always some clients who act as riddlers, writing ancient Chinese or poetry in the task entrustment, and let the adventurers rack their brains to guess their meaning. Zhongli did this. His task requirements were written as nonsense such as "floating in the thousands of rocks, solid and distant". If the client was not Nima Rock King Emperor, Li Tao would have found the client and complained to him harshly - he can't speak human language, right?

"Ah, that, I forgot." The instigator had no self-awareness. Fortunately, he finally explained to the agitated Li Tao, "The goal of the mission is to find some [holy relics] that were left in the human world since the Demon God War."

"Holy relic?"

Li Tao is very familiar with this name. When he first played Genshin Impact, he was looking for treasure chests all over the world and accidentally found a holy relic, but he didn't know what it was for. Later, as the game progressed and the game time gradually increased, Li Tao also learned to play various holy relic dungeons and fight various world bosses to brush holy relics suitable for different characters to enhance the combat effectiveness of the characters.

To put it simply, relics are like accessories in other games, which are used to add some extra bonuses to characters. There are many ways to enhance combat power in the game Genshin Impact, and equipping suitable relics is a quick way to become stronger.

Li Tao couldn't help but ask, "Mr. Zhongli, why are you looking for the holy relic?"

Zhongli looked at him with some surprise. "It seems that you know what a holy relic is, so I don't need to explain it. In fact, I don't need the holy relic itself. I need you to collect as many different holy relics as possible and make a [Holy Relic Atlas] for Liyue to use. Now many people who have awakened the Eye of God don't know the existence of [Holy Relics], nor do they know the functions of [Holy Relics]. Therefore, I need someone to spread this information. After thinking about it, the Adventurer's Guild is a suitable medium for spreading this kind of news."

"So, can I trust you, Mr. Adventurer Li Tao?"

Li Tao's face was a little stiff. He forgot that in this world, [Holy Relics] were not well-known - because they were usually hidden in ruins and secret places, and few people knew their functions. But at this time, he could no longer modify his words, and could only continue to follow the emperor's meaning and say: "I will pay attention, Mr. Zhongli. In short, as long as you make a relatively complete [Holy Relics Atlas] within five years, it will be fine?"

Zhongli looked at Li Tao with encouraging eyes: "Yes, that's what I mean. You just need to do your best, and I will pay you... Well, using physical collateral also counts as payment, right?"

"The Association... Of course the Association recognizes those antiques..."

Li Tao felt that he was sweating profusely. He had to stand up quickly and say goodbye to Zhongli: "Then, even if I officially accept the commission from you... I'll take my leave now, Mr. Zhongli."

After saying that, Li Tao turned around and moved out of the guest room of the Wangsheng Hall step by step.

Zhongli looked at his receding back, touched his chin and thought: Am I behaving terribly?

Then, he couldn't help but curl up the corners of his mouth, and whispered to himself: "Souls from another world...it seems that you know a lot about me and this world."