Chapter 161: Senior Varesa Confessed to Me (Patreon)

Piers just sat down, right next to Hu Tao. Ganyu had actually wanted to stay and share breakfast with him too, but she still had work to finish, so no matter how much she wanted to, she had to head back to it first.

"Well... Junior Brother, I'll head back to Yuehai Pavilion for now. If you ever feel like visiting, you're always welcome."

Ganyu gave Piers one last smile, then turned and hurried off in a rush.

"Director Hu, what are you thinking of having for breakfast? How about treating me to a meal?"

Piers looked over at Hu Tao.

Hu Tao had been resting her chin on one hand. At his words, her eyes lit up, and she immediately sat up straight.

"Sure, sure. But if I'm treating you, you'd better tell yours truly all about last night, in detail."

There was a distinct whiff of gossip in her tone. Honestly, even without a word, her eyes would have given her away — the gossip was practically overflowing.

"Last night? Nothing happened last night."

Piers answered with a straight face, his expression unchanged.

"Oh, come on. You ran off last night, and then this morning you show up bright and early for breakfast with Miss Ganyu. What, you think I'm not good enough for you? Or is there something going on between you and Miss Ganyu—"

Hu Tao had put on a look of feigned disappointment, but by the end her gossiping tone crept right back in. She leaned forward, her head drifting closer without her noticing, her plum-blossom eyes glinting.

The next instant, Piers gave her head — which had crept toward him without her realizing — a light chop with the edge of his hand.

The effect was immediate. Hu Tao snapped back at once, now cradling her head and giving Piers a somewhat wounded look.

"You two..."

Xiangling appeared suddenly behind them, leaning down to poke her head in between the two of them. She'd shown up without a sound — if it had been someone who'd pulled an all-nighter and wasn't quite all there, this might've given them a real scare.

"You've been sitting here forever. If you're going to order something, just say so. Are you just going to sit there?"

Xiangling tilted her head, her gaze sweeping back and forth between the two of them.

"?! Did I forget to order food?!"

Hu Tao looked startled — she was pretty sure she'd already ordered.

"You stayed up too late again last night, didn't you? Don't tell me you still haven't slept — planning to finish breakfast and go straight to bed?"

Xiangling leaned in closer, her eyes sharp as she studied Hu Tao.

"No way. Yours truly went to bed nice and early last night. Piers can vouch for it."

Hu Tao suddenly raised a hand and pointed at Piers. Xiangling glanced at him but didn't bother asking.

"So what do you want to eat? It's not often you make it out for breakfast."

Xiangling slid the menu toward Hu Tao.

"I'll have this, this, and this... that should do it. Give Piers the same, and put it all on my tab."

Hu Tao picked up the menu from the table and pointed out a few dishes for Xiangling. Xiangling committed them to memory, then nodded and headed into the kitchen.

Once Xiangling had disappeared inside, Hu Tao finally let out a breath, like someone who'd just survived a close call.

"Phew~ Finally gone. Oh right, Piers, you said the consultant's been staying at a friend's place, but usually around this time he'd already be at Chihu Rock, sitting down ready to listen to Iron Tongue Tian's storytelling. He hasn't shown up today."

Hu Tao glanced around. Never mind Zhongli — the whole street was eerily quiet, without a single soul in sight.

"Maybe... he overslept?"

Piers said, his tone flat.

"Really? That's rare."

Hu Tao muttered, and didn't press further.

A while later, the food arrived, and the two of them stopped talking to focus on their meal.

After eating, Hu Tao didn't care whether Piers had other business — she just dragged him straight off toward Wangsheng Funeral Parlor.

Piers didn't resist, didn't say anything, and simply let Hu Tao drag him along. By the time they'd finished eating, it wasn't especially early anymore, but the streets were still empty — all of Liyue Harbor lay as vacant as a dead city.

"Weird, weird. Why is there nobody on the streets of Liyue Harbor today? Did I just get up too early?"

Hu Tao walked beside Piers, one hand shading her eyes from the sun as she looked around, curious. Sunlight fell across the empty street; the shop shutters were all closed tight, and there wasn't even the sound of a peddler's cry.

"True enough. Director Hu's famous for being a night owl — this is probably the first time you've seen Liyue Harbor this early."

Piers went along with what she'd said.

"Hmph, hmph. Why not marry into Wangsheng Funeral Parlor and be a night owl right alongside yours truly?"

She clasped her hands behind her back, her twin-tailed head leaning toward Piers, the corner of her mouth curling into a smile as her eyes gleamed, fixed brightly on him.

"Sure."

This time Piers agreed outright, a rare thing — and he answered so decisively that even Hu Tao froze for a moment.

"What did you... say..."

Hu Tao's steps faltered, the smile on her face freezing in place, as if she suspected she'd misheard.

"I said... I like you. I said yes."

Piers turned, gripped Hu Tao's shoulder, and pressed her back against the wall of a nearby shop. There was no one inside, and no one on the street around them either.

With Hu Tao pinned against the wall, Piers began closing in slowly. It all happened so fast that Hu Tao still hadn't caught up, her gaze hazy, at a loss for what to do.

So as Piers drew steadily nearer, she showed no reaction at all — no refusal, no response — standing there like a puppet.

As the distance between them shrank, Hu Tao closed her eyes on reflex, and Piers's other hand came up to cup her cheek.

But just as their noses were about to touch, Piers stopped. One more inch and their lips would have met.

When she felt nothing more from him, Hu Tao opened her eyes in confusion. At such close range, the moment she opened them she found herself staring straight into Piers's eyes.

"You..."

Hu Tao, usually lively and talkative, found herself at a loss for words. After that single syllable she fell silent, simply staring at Piers, a flush of red rising on her smooth cheeks.

"What's wrong with me? Do you need me to introduce myself... Ruler of Death?"

The moment Piers finished speaking, ash-gray adept power flooded his pupils, while the Hu Tao before him began giving off black-red divine power, her lovely plum-blossom eyes slowly shifting into hexagram-shaped pupils.

In the next instant, a stream of black-red death energy shot toward Piers. At such close range, practically pressed together, he had almost no way to dodge it — and he had no intention of dodging anyway, since he'd already prepared himself for this.

The strike landed, but it didn't do much. It had only been a casual blow — even one of the Four Great Rulers wasn't necessarily unable to withstand something like that.

After taking the hit, Piers used the recoil to leap back several meters.

"You figured it out that fast?"

Ronova's voice came from within Hu Tao's body, its tone as calm as ever.

"It would've been strange if I hadn't. You didn't want to waste power trapping me, so instead of building a little cage, you turned the whole of Liyue Harbor into one. But you couldn't drag every single person in Liyue Harbor into the world of the dead at once — you could only pull in the handful who happen to leave a somewhat deep impression in my memory."

Piers steadied his footing, ash-gray adept power swirling around him.

"Oh? Then how did you know this little girl was me?"

Ronova tilted her head slightly, Piers's reflection caught in her hexagram pupils.

Piers gave no answer, playing at being deep and mysterious — though in truth, he was just holding back a laugh.

Given what Hu Tao meant to Zhongli, if she'd really been the one dragged in, Zhongli would surely have reacted somehow. Piers didn't know exactly how powerful Zhongli truly was, but he did know Zhongli was working together with the Tsaritsa against the Heavenly Principles.

Working backward from that, even if Zhongli couldn't win outright, he wouldn't be utterly helpless against one of the Four Great Rulers either. If he were, the Ice Tsaritsa would have had no reason to ally with him at all.

So rather than clash with Zhongli and stir up a commotion, it was better to disguise himself as Hu Tao.

"It's fine if you won't answer. I'm here to tell you... don't push your luck. The resurrection of the God of Dust, Haagentus, already counts as a violation of the rules. Stripping her power and minimizing her influence on the world — that's the greatest concession I'm willing to make."

Ronova slowly raised a hand, black-red divine power coiling around her fingertips.

"I'm Fatui. I stand with Her Majesty. And you, Ronova — we're utterly opposed enemies. What makes you think I'd listen to you?"

Piers's voice dropped low, his gaze locked on the figure before him.

In the next instant, ash-gray adept power surged out from Piers's body. Liyue Harbor filled with countless ash-gray points of light like drifting insects, each trailing a tail of the same pale color.

Piers raised a hand, and the ash-gray points of light instantly obeyed the command, streaking toward Ronova. But Ronova simply stood where she was, showing no intention of dodging at all.

As a result, every single attack struck home. And yet, as it turned out, she truly didn't need to dodge — the attacks left not a mark on her.

"The Cryo Archon? Nothing more than a negligible little thing. A slightly bigger ant, presuming to try killing a god."

Ronova glanced at her own fingers with mild boredom, admired them for a moment, then raised her index finger and flicked it casually toward Piers.

With that offhand gesture, a black-red cone shot toward Piers. But at such a distance, with such an obvious windup, he only had to tilt his head slightly to dodge it.

But the next instant, the cone — which had already flown past — suddenly reversed course and flew back at him. Its speed was far too slow, though; another tilt of the head and Piers dodged it again, only for it to loop back once more.

"Are you done yet?"

Tired of dodging, Piers simply reached out and grabbed the black-red cone. A slight squeeze of his hand crushed it — and the instant it shattered, Dust Cutter appeared in his grip.

He abandoned any flashy moves and charged straight in. The Ruler of Death unleashed several beams of black-red light, but Piers cut through every one of them with Dust Cutter.

He finally closed the distance to the Ruler of Death, Dust Cutter following through with a slash — but just a foot from her body, the blade was stopped by a layer of black-red shielding.

"A meaningless gesture. You should know whose domain the world of the dead is. Why not simply accept your death quietly?"

Ronova's tone was utterly flat, not a flicker of emotion in her eyes.

The next moment, the black-red barrier sprouted several beams of light that struck at Piers. But he simply drew out one palm and slapped the attacks to pieces with a single blow.

"Accept my death? Seems like you can't do a thing to me either — even here, in what you call your own domain."

Piers poured more adept power into Dust Cutter, the blade pressing slowly downward. The paving stones and walls around him were ground to dust by the overflowing adept power, but Ronova before him remained utterly unmoved, watching him without reaction.

Just as Piers had nearly committed the whole of his adept power, the blade's slow descent stopped — and instead it tore straight through the black-red barrier, cleaving Ronova within it in the same stroke.

The aftershock of the blade's force kept spreading even after it broke through the black-red barrier, splitting the shop behind her clean in two, and continuing on until it struck Mt. Tianheng, the force of the strike carrying the adept power along and cleaving the mountain apart as easily as it had the shop.

Ronova looked almost shocked, as if she hadn't expected Piers to actually break through.

She stared at her own hand, still confused, and in the next instant her body began slowly fading away, finally dissolving into black-red points of light.

Piers put away Dust Cutter, but just as he thought it was all over and he could leave, the whole of Liyue Harbor was suddenly swallowed by an eerie red filter.

He felt this power descending from somewhere far above, and when he looked up into the sky, what he saw made him take an involuntary step back in shock.

Above Liyue Harbor, a massive blood-red eye had opened in the sky, surrounded by countless smaller eyes — an utterly unsettling sight.

Piers had seen a scene like this before, in Natlan's main quest line, but even in the game it had carried an overwhelming sense of pressure. Now, experiencing it firsthand — even having already witnessed it once in the game's story — fear still rose within him, impossible to shake off.

The eye's pupil swept slowly across Liyue Harbor before settling on Piers. The crushing weight of that gaze left him struggling to breathe.

But before long, he forced down that suffocating pressure and the fear welling up from deep inside.

Back when he'd first joined the Fatui, he'd thought he was going to die too. The threats back then were nothing compared to this, but to Piers they amounted to the same thing — both were threats capable of killing him.

It was a feeling he hadn't experienced in a long time, one he'd almost forgotten. Feeling it again now only made him bolder, bringing back the exact sensation of standing on the arena floor in life-or-death duels, back when he'd just joined the Fatui.

He gripped Dust Cutter and rose slowly into the air, a great surge of ash-gray adept power pouring from his body. The black-red sky above Liyue Harbor was steadily overtaken by the drifting adeptal mist, half the sky turning ash-gray, and Piers rose to the same height as the massive black-red eye.

"Even if I have to die here, I'll cut you down one more time."

Almost the instant the words left his mouth, countless black-red beams of light rained down on Piers, but the ash-gray adept power around him canceled every one, and he shot forward straight at the black-red eye.

The closer he got, the more he felt death closing in on him, as if this single strike would surely cost him his life. Yet he didn't hesitate for even a moment, swinging his long blade straight at the massive black-red eye.

But in the next instant, the blood-red eye vanished. The world around him began to shatter, and everything went pitch black.