I'm in the Teyvat running group

“If we use ‘unresurrection’ as the standard, then he is indeed not completely dead yet, and his concept still exists.” Zhongli glanced at it briefly, then placed the small cube on the table and continued, “However, absolute safety cannot be guaranteed here. Given the strength of this seal, his concept will overflow in three days at most, seeking another resurrection.”

"Then I'll trouble Your Majesty to seal it again for me."

"That's easy."

Zhongli gently tapped the small cube, and a peculiar stream of light enveloped it once more. He then examined it carefully before continuing, "I'll take it and study it for a few days."

"Um... it's fine if he doesn't return it. I'm not interested in old men like that." Yunxiu chuckled. There's no such thing as someone taking care of such a big problem for him. Keeping it with the Emperor is practically the safest place in the entire Teyvat. Yunxiu himself can't find a safer place. Keeping it in the Sky Keep's treasure vault might get stolen by Yueji or Anyue someday.

Zhongli nodded, put the small cube away, and then quietly began to drink his tea again.

After eating for a while, he paid the bill, and the group left separately. Xiaoyue had to go to the Imperial Academy for classes, Lao Ma usually went to Qianyan Army as an instructor at this time, and Huang Ming was a bit special, as he would go to the Hearth House to cook for the children.

Although theoretically, the number of children in Hearthglen should be decreasing as Teyvat develops, the actual situation is somewhat different from what was expected. However, Yunxiu is certainly not that stupid. If there is a slight discrepancy between the data and reality, it certainly cannot be that there is a problem with reality. Therefore, the funding for Hearthglen has remained unchanged for many years.

There are currently around 9 million Hearth House orphans across the seven kingdoms of Teyvat, with an annual funding of around 200 billion. They are distributed across more than 4,000 branches in the seven kingdoms and Nordkalley, with 245 Hearth House branches in Liyue Harbor.

This place houses about a third of Liyue's orphans. The current head of the organization is Rosaline and her husband Rustan. This former Mondstadt Knight of the North Wind was resurrected but did not return to the Knights of the North. Instead, he works under Yunxiu. Yunxiu himself doesn't need such a legendary high-ranking subordinate, but Rustan himself doesn't really want to return to the Knights of the North.

Most of the children here receive a normal education, and after they reach a certain age, they have several career paths to choose from. The simplest one is to work at the Hearth House and take care of their younger siblings.

Alternatively, they can go to other departments of the Chamber of Commerce. Generally, they need to be assessed. The Chamber of Commerce has 20,000 to 30,000 openings every year. On the one hand, these are naturally left behind by retired seniors, and on the other hand, they are for new projects. For example, for the space elevator project, the Chamber of Commerce will invest more than 200,000 employees to be responsible for various aspects. Even after the space elevator is completed, most of these people will work in the space station or supporting facilities.

Secondly, there are adventurers or other merchant guilds, which are the most common choices. Compared to schools outside, Hearth House has an advantage in that it pays more attention to the children's physical health. Most children learn some combat skills, which makes them quite adept at adventures. There are several large adventure groups centered around the children of Hearth House.

Of course, there are also a group of smarter students who will be admitted to the Imperial Academy or other higher education institutions, and some will even become legendary figures, such as Linnie, Linette, and Fimini, who are role models for many children in the Hearth House.

Of course, there aren't many people with this level of talent.

In the past decade, even though Yunxiu has almost perfected the elemental barrier and spell system, legendary figures are still extremely rare. The same is true for Genshin Impact. The number of Genshin Impact-level players in Teyvat has just exceeded 20 million so far, which is less than one percent, about two per thousand.

The surge in numbers is because the spell system is something almost everyone can learn, but that doesn't mean the proportion of geniuses will increase... in fact, it's even less than before.

The reason is very simple: in the past, most of the players were truly elites, but now many people who are not so talented have learned the spell system, and most of them will remain at the fourth or fifth ring level for their entire lives.

With a scale of 20 million Genshin Impacts, only about 800 legendary powerhouses appeared, or more precisely, 860. Most of them were at the early stage of legendary, about 300 were at the high stage of legendary or above, about 60 were at the peak of legendary, and about 20 were demigods from all Teyvat.

From Genshin Impact to Legendary titles, the ratio is less than one in ten thousand; it's probably around four in one hundred thousand...

Yunxiu appears to be surrounded by a large number of legendary peak-level and demigods, but that's only because he's at a higher level. It can be said that most of the legendary peak-level and demigods in Teyvat have some connection with him.

They're either friends, subordinates, or wives; at the very least, they're enemies.

Yunxiu has been promoting the spell system in Teyvat for over ten years and has concluded that the upper limit for most ordinary people is the level of a seventh-ring Genshin Impact—this is a truly ironclad limit, meaning that even if you are an ordinary person, you can reach that level through your own efforts, practice, and a little bit of luck.

Even so, the success rate is still less than two per thousand. After all, obtaining six Destiny Constellations is extremely difficult. Even six Silver Destiny Constellations are beyond the reach of ordinary people. Therefore, many wealthy individuals choose to use Primal Stones to solve the problem, but at this point, they have essentially cut off all other options.

The seventh to eighth ring roads represent the most dramatic drop in population numbers, with only slightly more than three million people born in the eighth ring road out of a total of twenty million in the seventh ring road.

On the one hand, many of the seventh rings were originally obtained by using Primal Stones and potions. On the other hand, the seventh ring begins to involve the fifth level of godhood. Most spells starting from the seventh ring involve laws and the understanding of the world itself. Therefore, there are even cases where seventh ring spellcasters do not master seventh ring spells. Some Primal God level powerhouses cannot even defeat some genius fifth or sixth ring mages.

This is why Yunxiu dared to fight against many seventh-ring demons when she was only at the fifth ring.

Those who can reach the fifth level of the Ascension God are extremely rare even among the Seven Rings. Then, with each level and each test, by the time the Nine Rings are reached, there are less than 10,000 people left. Of these 10,000 people, less than 1,000 legendary powerhouses are ultimately born, and most of them remain at the initial level of the legendary realm, not much stronger than some peak ninth-ring experts.

Moreover, even today, among legendary powerhouses, some key professions are still extremely rare. For example, there are only two legendary druids in ten years, and there are eight legendary priests, but most of them are original priest powerhouses who broke through to the next level.

Among these fewer than nine hundred legendary powerhouses, there are about thirty of these key professions, which is indeed much better than ten years ago. In particular, there are nearly ten legendary alchemists, who can be said to be key figures in the space elevator, the lunar base and a series of key large-scale facilities. After all, it is not so easy for this world to develop a complete magic industry system.

To this day, many key facilities still require legendary alchemists to "handcraft" them, such as the wooden chip in the core of the Spirit Realm.

Abedo has been pondering this for ten years, but he still hasn't figured out how to use magic arrays and mechanisms to inscribe the computational runes on the wooden chip. Therefore, the expansion of the Spirit Realm's computing power is also limited by the legendary alchemist's energy...

The only good news is that the wood chips themselves can now be manufactured; they just need to solve the rune problem.

Chapter 509 Surveying Miscellanea and Ship Delivery

Previously, Yunxiu, Abedo, and even Xianyun and Lishui had all been pondering this problem. They even considered whether the talisman itself could solve the problem of the runes, but all their efforts ultimately came to nothing.

Because the runes on the wooden chip are not actually runes in the true sense, but rather a combination of strange runes and magic arrays, and even require the injection of some spiritual power for guidance during the engraving process, it is impossible to directly print them like talismans. Direct printing would cause the computing power to drop by a level, which would be somewhat counterproductive.

It's fortunate that the legendary alchemists are indeed very capable, and creating tens of thousands of pieces at once is not a big problem, but if they want to truly de-industrialize, it's unlikely to happen in the short term.

Aberdo and Rene had considered that this might be because there was something like a "magical factor" in this world, but they had never found it. Even though shamanic magic could forcibly extract a product similar to a "memory factor" from the scroll, it was still difficult to figure out what it was.

Rene plans to use the Genesis Center to unravel the mystery and find the magical factor, but so far, the large scientific facilities are busy dealing with all sorts of current scientific problems and haven't had the time to verify this, so it's still in the theoretical stage.

As for what the magical factor is, Yunxiu has a guess. It might be the "string" that corresponds to Earth, which is the basic unit that makes up the world and is only the Planck scale in length.

Finding this thing is indeed very difficult. At least on Earth, there is absolutely no clue. Earth's most powerful particle accelerator, the LHC, is at least tens of thousands of times weaker than its own PRIME. They can't even reach the quantum scale, while its own accelerator can even obtain information at the creation level. But if it's about finding "strings," it might not be enough.

If nothing unexpected happens, we might have to upgrade PRIME to achieve this, but upgrading PRIME is incredibly difficult. When this thing was created, it incorporated all the world's theology, science, metaphysics, and various black and white technologies. In many places, it is even a product of the solidification of divine laws. For example, the six sealing rock plates that serve as both energy transmission and heat dissipation panels. If it weren't for Zhongli, this thing would have been impossible to create.

The current optimization algorithms and constraints for increasing energy levels have been pushed to their limits. After optimizing energy transmission last time, the efficiency increased by nearly 50%, but this is still at least two or three orders of magnitude lower than the core component.

However, for René, perhaps if he had enough information, he could start by solving the problem theoretically. After all, he developed the World Style with just a few books back then. If he had had his rich brother to fund the construction of large scientific facilities, he might have perfected the Transcendent Method long ago...

However, Yunxiu didn't dwell on this issue any longer.

Today is Saturday. After delivering the items, Ying went home to rest, while Yunxiu turned around and went to the Surveyors' Association in Liyue Harbor. He had promised a few days ago that he would come over after everything was finished, and also to wrap up the matter between Linaia and Kreno.

The Surveyors Association is still in the same small building that Yunxiu paid to renovate before. However, due to the expansion of its scale, a new building was added next to it, but it is still not big, only seven stories high. According to Zhiqiong, most surveyors are basically in the field all day long. Now that there is a demiplane, it is not very meaningful to build such a big building. It would be better to save the money and use it on welfare.

Yunxiu didn't say anything. Zhiqiong really knew more about managing the association than he did. Although he wasn't completely incapable of management, he was completely clueless about surveying.

Especially the surveying mages, who need to combine spells, enchantments, perception and other spells to develop new spells, from drawing maps to sensing ley lines, from designing various surveying and reconnaissance spells. Let alone managing this group of mages, Yunxiu has a headache just learning these spells.

It's not that he can't learn it, but that even if he learns it, he doesn't know how to use it. The path of the surveying mage was almost entirely pioneered by Zhiqiong on her own.

Of course it's useful; it really is. Now, the seven nations need to pay billions of Mora to the Surveyors' Association every year just to purchase updated map books for their own country's high-precision maps. Other companies also have to invest a lot of money in this area. The Surveyors' Association has an annual income of three to four hundred billion Mora, which is quite good among the associations in Liyue.

Archaeological associations are relatively poor; they rely almost entirely on donations from influential figures, such as Minghai Qixia, who occasionally provides financial assistance.

Yunxiu had considered launching satellites to compensate for the lack of surveying mages, but the final conclusion was that it wouldn't work. Teyvat's atmosphere would interfere with magic circles and spells. Even the space elevator needed to use phlogiston to penetrate the atmosphere to ensure the operation of the middle section. Most of the space elevator's energy was used to maintain the force field ropes.

Building a satellite capable of detecting the Earth from space is not impossible, but the final cost is terrifyingly high, almost comparable to the cost of an armed weapon, so the idea had to be abandoned.

After all, the cost of one piece of weaponry is enough to train at least ten Genshin Impact-level surveying mages, and then equip each of them with two artifacts...

Yunxiu pushed open the door and walked easily to the president's office on the top floor. The door was not closed, and Zhiqiong and Linaya were working there. The two seemed to be discussing the budget allocation for the new year. Yunxiu could vaguely hear the resource allocation of the mining department, the biological department, and a series of other departments.

“Master, you’re here! We were just discussing the budgets and revenues and expenditures of each department for next year.” Zhiqiong stood up, smiled and showed Yunxiu the documents in his hand before continuing, “Some departments are now considered cash cows in the Surveyors Association, but some departments have relatively little funding. How to balance this is still a big problem.”

“There are a lot of mining companies, right? They’re a cash cow no matter where you are…” Yunxiu glanced at the rather unbalanced report and sighed, “But we can’t stop producing plants and animals, so are you using the revenue from the mining sector to fill the gaps in these other sectors?”

“Yes! The Rare Animals Department, the Crops Department, and the Special Environment Department are all relatively poor.” Zhiqiong pointed to Linaia and said, “Linaia is the vice president in charge of the Crops Department, the Rare Animals Department, and the Plants Department. She is very skilled in these areas and is currently the most proficient mage in Teyvat.”

Yunxiu nodded. Although he hadn't thought of this, it wasn't surprising. Most mages were already great scholars, and surveying mages were just stronger in this particular area.

"I'm here to tell you that the matter of that sage is basically over... I'm here to fulfill my promise." Yunxiu smiled and looked at Linaia and Zhiqiong, saying, "Zhiqiong, there's no need to say more. After you reach the Familiar level, I will prepare some gifts for you according to the standards of other disciples. As for Linaia... do you have any dreams? You can tell me, and your grandmaster will try his best to help you realize them."

"Really?" Lina asked incredulously. "If it's really possible... I want a research vessel, not one of those from the current Surveyors' Association, of course. I want to build one myself."

The Surveyors Association has fourteen or fifteen research and exploration vessels, as well as hundreds of spirit scaffolds and some airships. These are essential for surveyors to travel, since surveying can't always be done on the ground; there are also special environments in the air and at sea that need to be tested.

"A research vessel... that's not a big deal." Yunxiu didn't seem too concerned, after all, a ship wouldn't cost much. He then took out two amulets from his storage bag and handed them to Linaia, smiling, "Two amulets of divine artifact level. Divine artifacts probably won't be of much use to you, since you're not the type to excel in combat. These amulets provide some attribute bonuses and also solidify advanced restoration techniques and emergency teleportation, making them very effective at saving your life. You and your sister each get one."

"As for the research vessel, I'll give Yanfei a heads-up. You can go directly to the shipyard to negotiate. The payment will be directly recorded in the Chamber of Commerce's account, and Yanfei will handle everything afterwards."

"Thank you, Grandmaster...!" Lina carefully took the amulets, solemnly hung one on her body, and then happily left, eager to contact the shipyard.

“She finally realized her dream. Although the income is good, research vessels are really too expensive.” Zhiqiong chuckled and stretched, signing several documents and placing them in the cabinet next to her. Then she continued, “Linaya has always longed to have her own research vessel. Although she has commanded several association ships for surveying, none of them are as comfortable as having her own. The association also doesn’t have enough extra funds to build her own private ship…”

“This amount of money is nothing to me.” Looking at Zhiqiong’s expression, Yunxiu’s gossipy nature resurfaced: “Speaking of which, I heard last time that the vice-minister of the Illusion School and you two are on good terms and have had dinner together before? I’ve also met that young man. Do you have feelings for him? Or is it that you’ve finally reached the point where you want to talk about marriage…?”

“Master… I went to reject his advances… I even treated him to that meal…”

"Don't worry, our sect is quite open-minded. If you really have something difficult to say, you can leave it to me to handle..."

"I'll tell Master when I find the right one..."

"Aren't you planning to find someone suitable? Or do you prefer girls? Like Lina? What about your parents..."

"Master! I'm going to get angry!"

Chapter 510 Tianxuan's Nighttime Talk on the History of Liyue

After approving and signing the last document in her hand, Tianxuan stretched and neatly stacked all the approved documents together.

Then she quietly took out a small Tianxuan Star Seal from her person and placed it on the documents. After thinking for a moment, she took out the talisman that allowed her to freely enter and exit Yuehai Pavilion and placed it next to the documents.

She then walked into the office and changed into the clothes she had prepared before coming today—a long dress that Yunxiu had given her seven years ago. It was made of Liyue Plain Brocade and was handmade by the proprietress of Qianzhi. The dress had a moon-white background and a few purple herbs. Yunxiu would give her one or two dresses every year, but she rarely had the chance to wear them, so most of them ended up in the bottom of the closet.

This is her favorite, not because it's the prettiest, but because that's its name.

Tianxuan's real name is Ji Heng. She was originally an orphan who was adopted by the previous Tianxuan. After the kind old lady passed away, she took over Tianxuan's responsibilities and has been working ever since.

After changing her clothes, she neatly folded her official robes and put them into a small box. The box contained many other odds and ends, some photos of her adoptive mother, some letters, a neatly folded tea set, and several books.

She picked up her suitcase, grabbed a potted plant from the windowsill, and gently stepped out of the office, only to see a familiar figure standing at the doorway—it was Ningguang.

"Are you really leaving? The ones who are going to take over don't seem to have any confidence either, and they want you to stay on for a while longer..." Ningguang said somewhat awkwardly, "Besides, you were the one who led the completion of the space elevator and Genesis Center projects..."

Tianxuan shook her head and said seriously, "When the Seven Kingdoms pushed me to the forefront to negotiate with Yunxiu, wasn't it just to use our personal relationship to reap the benefits? The Chamber of Commerce has the ability to build it independently, and at least it can get more control. If the space elevator can be legitimately said to be for the country, then didn't the Seven Kingdoms not invest in the Genesis Center in the first place?"

"Yunxiu herself shouldn't mind..."

"That's because he's a good person, but good people shouldn't be automatically entitled to suffer losses."

"The economy since the Seven Kingdoms War has only improved slightly, and there is simply not enough capacity to support such a large scientific facility..."

“I know, that’s why I still stood up for you, but I think this is enough.” Tianxuan picked up her suitcase again and looked at Ningguang, saying, “Politically, I know that all of this is fine, but I’ve already wronged Yunxiu in this matter, and I don’t want to be tied to you again.”

She pulled her small suitcase, hugged the flowers, and slowly walked away, leaving only a voice echoing in the air.

“If you think Yunxiu has done many things wrong, then of course you can deal with them through normal means. If you feel there are difficulties, you can also raise them directly with him. I think he is a person who considers the big picture, but I think it's better not to worry too much about the big picture.”

The sound lingered for a long time, leaving Ningguang standing quietly in place, watching Tianxuan leave without hesitation.

No, she should be called Ji Heng. From this moment on, she has relinquished this position.

Carrying her belongings, she quietly left the small building of Yuehai Pavilion through the back door, gently waving to Qianyan Jun at the entrance. Soon she arrived at the Lingmingjia parking lot behind Yuehai Pavilion, where an enormous six-tailed calico cat was already waiting in a corner.

The cat was sunbathing with its paws tucked in its sleeves, its six huge, furry tails swaying behind it.

Ji Heng walked up to the cat, stuffed the box and flowerpot into the cat paw pouch around Qi Liangliang's neck, and then poked the cat's nose: "Qi Liangliang, let's go home."

Qi Liangliang opened one of her huge eyes, which was at least fifty centimeters in diameter. She glanced at Tianxuan with her eyes half-closed and half-awake, stuck out her tongue and licked her, then stretched out her hind legs and yawned before speaking: "Have you stuffed everything in?"

"They're all packed in, that's all."

The cat nodded, used its paw to put Ji Heng on its back, then shook its fur and slowly started walking: "We have to pick up the child first... Yunxiu has been quite busy these past few days."

"I know, I know. Anyway, I'm retired, so I'm not in a hurry." Ji Heng smiled and lay down lazily, a rare occurrence for her. Qi Liangliang walked very steadily, and the afternoon sun in Liyue was quite warm. It was just that she rarely got to enjoy such a life before. Under such warm sunlight, she actually fell asleep, which was quite rare for her.