Permanent defensive structures could not be built upon the sea. Faced with the joint invasion of the sea Gods, the only way to suppress and seal them was through absolute power. That battle was not a confrontation between a fishing village and the waves, but a world-shaking collision between Gods.
Under his command were the Adeptus and Yakshas, but the core of the battle was him alone facing the raging tides from the deep sea.
Ultimately, Jueyun Chili Spears fell from the sky like rain. Every spear thrown contained the Geo power to suppress all things; they not only crushed the allied forces of the Gods but also firmly pinned several powerful beings at their head—along with their ambitions and power—into the seabed, forming the Guyun Stone Forest that looks like a stone forest on the sea today.
Only then were the maritime disasters quelled and the surging "tides" completely suppressed, allowing Liyue Harbor the possibility of stable development and to begin taking shape.
Zhongli withdrew his gaze and let it fall once more upon the book in his hand.
This book interpreted the war of Gods and demons as a struggle between man and nature, and the great power of the Jueyun Chili Spears as the clever ingenuity of pickle jars.
Zhongli took a sip of tea; the fragrance was crisp and clear.
Those pickle jars buried deep beneath the foundations might not have truly resisted a God, but the will they symbolized was of the same origin as those ancestors who, under the protection of the Rex Lapis, carved out a home on this land.
After all, what has guarded this port has never been just Rex Lapis's Jueyun Chili Spears, nor just those "pickle jars," but also the mortals themselves who created and passed all of this down amidst the lights of ten thousand homes.
Lovia's pen combined reality with fiction, using the "jar" as a lead to outline a "scroll" that belonged to mortals and was full of warmth.
Outside the window, the setting sun plated the myriad roof tiles of Liyue Harbor in a layer of warm golden brilliance. That color flowed over the glazed tiles, and for a fleeting moment, they actually bore a slight resemblance to those pickle jars in the book that carried the weight of life.
The truth of history is buried deep beneath rock and time, while the vibrant stories of the people will continue to be written upon this land he has protected for a thousand years.
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Zhongli stayed in the tea room for a long time.
The tea fragrance curled up as Zhongli's fingertips brushed against the rough edges of the pages.
This was already his second careful reading. After the novelty of the first read, a second taste allowed him to better appreciate the profound meaning hidden between the lines. This person, Lovia, seemed to have a playful and absurd touch, but within it was woven rigorous logic and deep emotion.
"Old Pickler..." Zhongli murmured to himself.
The story of "Old Pickler" and the "Jar Embankment" did not stir even a ripple of reality in the long river of his several thousand years of memory.
Yet, the image of this fictional character in the book inexplicably overlapped with many blurred faces in his memory—those countless ancestors who, in the gaps of the Archon War, still survived tenaciously amidst hardships, using their hands to create a life and protect their homes. They might not have left behind names, but their wisdom, resilience, and unity were indeed the foundation upon which Liyue was built, a force more profound than the Jueyun Chili Spears.
He flipped the book back to the first chapter, his gaze lingering on the passage where Old Pickler called upon the villagers to pile up the Jar Embankment.
["Bring out all the jars, fill them with silt and sand, and pile them up! The higher the better!"]
That flash of Khvarena in a desperate situation was not a divine revelation, but originated from Old Pickler's lifelong experience dealing with ceramic jars. He knew these jars were heavy and sturdy, their curved structure not easily destroyed, and their center of gravity stable once filled with sand.
This was the burst of mortal wisdom at a moment of life and death.
The book described the principle of how the Jar Embankment neutralized the impact of the waves; although used to explain the resistance against "divine wrath," the principle actually coincided with the ideas of dispersing impact force and energy dissipation in later engineering. (I'm just making this up.)
This was no longer just legend and fantasy, but a simple engineering philosophy based on observation.
Zhongli's fingertips traced the description in the second chapter regarding "Setting the Foundation" and the birth of glazed tiles.
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