Genshin Impact: Watch me turn the tables and kill my servants at the start!

Fanes: So what do you plan to do!

-

Two days later, at dusk, Fanes was squatting on the edge of the dock, poking at a piece of driftwood floating on the river with a branch, when he caught a glimpse of something moving in the bushes upstream. The movement was faint, and the swaying of the branches and leaves was not quite in sync with the direction of the wind.

Setting down the branch and standing up, Fanes gestured to the foreman behind him who was adjusting the crane. The foreman understood, lowered his head, pressed the communicator on his chest, and his voice came through in a very low voice: "Someone's coming."

The bushes parted to reveal an opening. Tinari emerged at a leisurely pace, his large green ears standing upright from his hair, turning slightly towards the dock in the breeze.

Behind him followed several people dressed in light-colored forest ranger uniforms, holding standard hunting bows with a small section of the fletching stick sticking out of the quiver, gleaming with a matte brass color in the evening light.

Tina stopped about twenty paces from the edge of the dock, glanced up at the row of piles that had already been erected and the barges that were being loaded with cargo, and then turned her gaze to Fanes.

"Who built this dock? You didn't go through any procedures."

After finishing speaking, Tina added, "This is an illegal building. According to the river management law within the Sumeru territory, it must be demolished and restored to its original state within ten days."

Fanes threw the branch into the water, patted the mud and debris off his hands, took a few steps forward and stopped in front of Tina: "Go away, go away, go somewhere cool and stay there. If you say another word, I'll show you what a steel behemoth is."

As he spoke, Fanes glanced meaningfully at the cleared area behind the riverbank.

Tina followed his gaze and saw that the side panels of several crates that had not yet been completely dismantled were half open, and the tubular metal sections exposed through the gaps were clearly not the same type of thing as his hunting bow in terms of shape.

When Tinari withdrew her gaze, her voice remained steady, but with a hint of anger: "Fools, you've gone too far. Don't think you're so great just because you're strong now. This is Mount Sumeru, not a place you can just claim as your own territory."

Fanes crossed his arms and tilted his head to look at him: "If you can generate this kind of firepower and directly attack Winter's homeland, I'll accept it. Everyone starts with two hands, so why is there such a huge difference? Don't you have any idea?"

Fanes paused for a moment, then said, "If we can't develop ourselves, are we supposed to blame others for being too strong?"

Tina's ears flattened slightly for a moment, and his gaze shifted back and forth between Fanes and the row of crates.

Tinari opened his mouth, but then stopped himself from speaking. He glanced at the rangers behind him, each holding a hunting bow, and then at the Fools soldiers opposite him, who were loading cargo boxes onto the barge. Each of them carried a metal tube on their shoulder; although covered with canvas, the lower part clearly had a sight mount and carrying mechanism similar to those of a standard mortar. The spacing and shape of each connector were exactly the same as those drawn in the Siege Weapons Manual. Tinari's Adam's apple bobbed at his neck.

Yakoda emerged from the dock shack, holding a freshly brewed cup of tea. She walked over to Fanes, stopped beside him, glanced at Tinari following his gaze, and whispered something in Fanes' ear.

"Boss, aren't we going a bit too far? We feel sorry for Sumeru."

Fanes turned his head and replied in a low voice, "Let them mock me before for being an uncultured bumpkin. I'm already being lenient by not dropping the airdrop directly into the Sumeru Church."

Yakoda blinked, her hand holding the teacup pausing slightly. She recalled a few months ago when she went to the Order of the Church to exchange materials. The great sage sitting in the main seat looked her up and down with a "from which country did you run away from?" gaze, then pushed an old, translated, illegible, and outdated text onto the table, never giving her a second glance.

Yakoda lowered her head and took a sip of tea without speaking, but the fingers holding the teacup tightened noticeably, as if responding to that unspoken memory with silence.

After seeing the interaction between Fanes and Akoda, Tinali spoke again, this time at a slower pace.

"This is an illegal building. You have violated the Sumeru Building Law by constructing permanent facilities along the riverbank without approval. According to regulations, not only must they be demolished, but you will also have to bear the costs of restoration."

Fanes turned to look at him, his tone still calm but with a slight rise at the end: "Looks like you're not convinced. If you're not convinced, come and fight me. If you can beat me, I'll leave right now. The dock will be demolished, and everyone will be removed, leaving no one behind."

Tinari's ears perked up for a moment in the air. The rangers behind him exchanged glances; some had already placed their hands on the quiver's buckles but hadn't unfastened them, as if waiting for an unissued command.

Tinali stood at the front of the line, looking at the makeshift roadbed beneath Fanes and Jakoda's feet, then at the row of barge locks on the distant shallows, where work was about to end as night fell and the workers were gathering their ropes. After a few seconds of silence, he finally spoke.

"Aren't you afraid the grass god will come and punish you?"

After listening, Fanes chuckled: "Come on, let her come. In my eyes, the Grass Goddess is at most a little girl. A goddess who's been trapped for five hundred years, unable to even manage her own people, do you expect her to dismantle my docks?"

Fanes stood on the gentle slope between the shallows and the dense forest, and stopped after saying his last sentence. He didn't go any further, but just stood there looking at Tinari, bringing the conversation to a close in a straightforward tone.

"You should take care of your own affairs first. The people in the Order of the Teachings have almost exhausted the resources of Sumeru. Instead of arguing with me here, you should go back and check how much is left in your own warehouse."

Tina stood still, her ears still erect, but the curve of her ears had sagged slightly more than before.

The gaze shifted from Fanes to the section of riverbank that had been cleared, then slowly returned to Fanes' face.

"The dock can be kept in place for the time being. But I will send people to check it regularly. If it is used for purposes other than ore transshipment, I will report it directly to the Religious Council."

After saying this, Tinari didn't linger. He turned around and walked back along the path he had come from toward the bushes. After a few steps, he turned back and made a gesture to the rangers behind him.

The rangers fastened their quiver buckles and followed him back into the bushes. The shrubs closed behind them, their branches swaying slightly before settling back into stillness, quickly fading into the twilight.

Fañez stood on the edge of the dock, looking at the closing thicket of bushes. He bent down, picked up the branch he had just used to move the driftwood, and threw it back into the river.

Yakoda finished her tea standing next to him and placed the empty cup on the lid of the wooden crate beside her. "Boss, what you said just now really left him speechless."

Fanes dusted off his hands and turned to walk towards the shed: "It's not that I left him speechless, it's that he knew arguing any further was pointless. Now that he's backed down, he won't only have this one set of arguments to use next time he comes. Notify the docks that the next shipping schedule be moved forward by an hour, and that all ships must be evacuated from the river section by evening and not dock again before dawn. Also, notify Zhidong that the delivery date for the next batch of steel will be postponed by a week; I have several tons of emergency stock that need priority in securing a berth."