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

Fanes opened one internet cafe after another.

On its opening day, the branch of Angel's Gift in Mondstadt had a line of twenty people. The shop next to the Grand Bazaar in Sumeru was used as a lunch break spot by scholars from the Faith Academy. The corner shop in Fontaine near the port even attracted several young clerks from the Court of Justice to sneak over and watch videos during their lunch break.

Fanes sat behind the counter at the Liyue flagship store, flipping through the accounts of the three locations. His fingers traced the lines of numbers, and the corners of his mouth unconsciously turned up, but he stopped halfway through.

not enough.

Although he earned more than most people imagine, this amount was still a drop in the ocean compared to the big plans he wanted to push forward.

Fañes leaned over the counter and drew several circles in the blank spaces of the ledger with the tip of his pen, his mind racing with various ways to make money.

Selling terminal equipment is a one-off deal, while internet cafe revenue is a steady stream. Together, they can make him live comfortably, but they leave him short of funds to launch any new projects. He frowned and thought for a long time, then suddenly felt a thin layer of sweat on the back of his neck.

Summer has arrived in Liyue Harbor. Heat waves rise from the harbor's waters, engulfing the entire street. The air is humid and stuffy. The ventilation in Fanes' shop is not very good. The heat emitted by the terminal equipment that has been running for most of the day is trapped inside. Sitting behind the counter, he feels like a steamed cake placed in a steamer.

As he wiped the sweat from his forehead, Fanes suddenly thought of something—it seemed like nobody on the continent of Teyvat used air conditioning.

Let alone air conditioning, even decent electrical infrastructure is not widespread. His internet cafe can only operate by spending his own money to buy several bulky generators and pile them up in the backyard. Those things are noisy, inefficient, and need to be refueled regularly, and they break down every few days.

In his previous world, air conditioning and the power grid were basic infrastructure. Fanes put his pen on the table, stood up, paced back and forth in the room a couple of times, and then stopped.

It's time for an industrial revolution.

That afternoon, he rode Little Black back to Winter. Sandoni's workshop was still piled high with blueprints and parts. A year had passed, and the equipment and materials here were much richer than before. The ancient dragon equipment that had been disassembled in the corner had been put back in its original state and placed on the shelf like an exhibit.

Shinonin was hunched over another table soldering a circuit board. When he saw Fanes push the door open and enter, he merely raised his eyelids briefly before lowering his head to continue soldering.

Fanes walked to Sandone's workbench and stood there, placing his hands on the edge of the counter. He got straight to the point: "Sister Sandone, I want to get a high-powered generator. It needs to be stable, quiet, and cost-effective, ideally capable of meeting the electricity needs of a medium-sized town."

Sandoni sat in his chair, looking up at him with a gleam in his blue eyes that seemed to say, "You've finally figured it out."

Setting down the tweezers, Sandonne turned her chair around to face Fanes, her tone carrying a hint of smugness—"Have you forgotten my achievements?"—"Have you forgotten that I can directly use elemental force?"

Fanes was taken aback: "You can do it like that?"

Sandone took a palm-sized metal box from the drawer and placed it on the table. Inside, neatly arranged, were rows of button-sized circular chips, each gleaming with a soft, pale blue sheen, with a ring of extremely fine runes running along its edge. She picked one up and handed it to Fanes: "Take a look at this."

Fanes took it and examined it between his fingertips—the thing was almost weightless, with a warm, smooth texture. Runes shimmered on the surface of the chip, their patterns identical to those on the components he had previously salvaged from the ancient dragon equipment. "What is this? Could it be a button battery?"

"Energy storage block".

Sandonne took another piece from the box and placed it on his fingertip, his tone as calm as if he were introducing an ordinary button. "This was derived from reverse engineering the structure of the energy storage units in the batch of dragon equipment you dug up. Each piece stores enough energy to power a medium-sized industrial facility at full capacity for a whole year. It requires no fuel, no external energy input, and a single charge can provide stable output for over a year."

Fanes stared at the button-sized energy storage block on his fingertip for a long time, feeling as if his worldview was being reassembled: "...How did you make this?"

Sandonne put the piece back in the box, his tone carrying a nonchalant air of "What do you think I've been doing all year?"

"I referenced the energy storage structure and element conversion principle of those dragon-themed devices, and then optimized them using my own element conduction technology. The arrangement of the rune circuits was directly copied from the disassembled parts; I simply scaled it down."

Fanes gently placed the energy storage block back into the box, feeling his breathing quicken slightly. He asked again, "Anything else?"

Sandogne pulled over a larger drawer from the side, inside which were neatly stacked rows of metal components—some looked like the core parts of some kind of high-efficiency pump, some looked like components of a fuelless heating system, and there were a few oddly shaped parts that Fanes couldn't immediately tell what they were for.

Sandoni pointed to the row of parts: "These are supporting industrial products derived from energy storage blocks. In other words—they can boost productivity. Increased production capacity, zero energy costs, and significantly reduced equipment maintenance frequency."

"If the factory replaces its old power source with this energy storage block and corresponding energy conversion device to drive the production line, output will at least double."

Fanes squatted in front of the row of parts for a while, then looked up and asked her, "So when do we start?"

Sandonne leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped in front of his stomach, his tone still unhurried.

"The icy and snowy environment during the winter is not suitable for large-scale industrial development. Low temperatures cause materials to become brittle, transportation costs are high, and outdoor construction is almost impossible for more than half the year. Moreover, the labor force structure during the winter does not support large-scale factory construction."

Fanes frowned slightly: "So what's your plan?"

Sandone pulled a roll of map from the bottom of the drawer and unfolded it on the table. The map covered a larger area than any map Fanes had ever seen before, including not only the existing seven kingdoms of Teyvat, but also large dotted areas on the east and south sides of the continent, marked with various measurement data and ley line records.

Sandonne's finger landed on the edge of the dotted-line area to the east: "I've analyzed the existing leyline flow and elemental distribution records in Teyvat. The energy field in this eastern region is much more stable than in Winter, the climate is suitable, and the land area is sufficient. If we can establish a new industrial base there, free from the policy restrictions and resource constraints of the existing seven nations, your 'Industrial Revolution' can truly take root."

Fanes squatted beside the table, staring at the dotted area for a long time, then looked up at Sandone's face, which had an expression that said, "Are you already out of my mind?"

"The Age of Exploration, right?"

Sandonne took a sip of his tea: "That's roughly the idea. You have dragons, capital, technology, and people providing logistical support with shops all over the world. Go overseas, find a new piece of land to build a factory, expand production capacity, and then bring it back to cover the industrial needs of the entire Teyvat. At that point, your 'air conditioning' problem will naturally be solved."

Fanes stood up, brushed the dust off his knees, and stared at the dotted line on the map for a while before gently tapping the outermost outline of that area: "It's settled then. Let's go to sea and find a new continent."