Yes it's been a while no I'm not sorry I'm honestly used to never writing at this point.

The sun was high in the sky of Liyue as the Crux arrived at the port. Most of the people were a little confused as to why it was back so soon, but it quickly quieted down. Beidou made sure to put clothes over her bandaged wounds. The last thing she wanted to do was make everyone panic. There were still some rumors and gossip and such, but they weren't anything that made people worry, just curious. The captain made sure to tell her crew that they should avoid causing mass panic, so they shouldn't tell the truth, that Beidou got gravely injured by some strange entity and that being on the sea was anything but safe, at least for now.

"Are you here to see Lady Ninguang, Lady Beidou?"

"Yes. There is something really important going on."

Zenhai frowned. "I can plainly see that. Only when 'something really important is going on' do you have a face like this. I won't hold you back any longer."

Beidou nodded and walked past him and into the small room that the still under construction New Jade Chamber is. Only two of the three women inside looked at her, but the only one who didn't look at her spoke.

"It has been a bit, Beidou."

"Yes, well, I've been busy. So have you, you wouldn't have agreed to see me for just a cup of tea, that much I can guess."

Ninguang simply nodded while still looking at the smaller Jade Wall. "So, what is going on that is so important that you chose to stop me in the middle of my work?"

Beidou sighed softly. "Have you stayed up past midnight recently?"

Ninguang raised an eyebrow and turned her head slightly towards Beidou. "It's odd for you to worry about my sleep schedule."

Beidou rolled her eyes. "Well then, let me rephrase. Have you seen what happens when midnight hits?"

Ninguang took a long and deep breath from her lit pipe. "... Yes."

Beidou sighed in relief. "Then, you must know about the dangerous things that have been popping up at least in the sea, right?"

Ninguang fully turned towards Beidou, a frown on her face. "What dangerous things? All I know of what's been going on that is dangerous is the strange 'disease' that has been popping up here and there."

"Eh? What are you talking about? None of my men have been sick during this trip."

"This is barely a sickness. We call it that because we have no clue what it is, all we know is it is spreading. It seems to… Make people… No longer want to live."

Beidou's eyes opened wide. "Wait… How… How?"

"They simply end up sitting somewhere and stop doing anything. You can't even get them to eat or drink anymore, so we had to force them to do so."

Her shocked expression then turned into a deep frown. "That's very concerning. But how can you not know about the monsters popping up? Is it because they only appear in the middle of the sea? I find it unlikely."

"It is most likely because I have been distracted each time the world changes. You see, whenever the moon grows and the water turns red… A tower of sorts appears."

"A tower? Where?"

"You won't see it outside of that time period. It grows up and reaches for the sky when it starts and it disappears completely once it ends."

"Where does it go?"

"Nowhere. It just stops existing without a trace."

Beidou hummed in thought. "Well, this is certainly quite interesting. Why do you think it exists?"

"Maybe for no reason. I have been observing it for a bit and it seems to just… Exist. Though sometimes it creaks and groans ominously, accompanied by an earthquake."

"There's no way that this exists just to exist. We need to go see why it's there."

"I would rather not go into it at the very least. It might be dangerous, and I would like to observe it before attacking it."

Beidou crossed her arms. "And how do we observe it without getting closer?"

Ninguang paused for a second. "... Do you really want to throw yourself in the middle of something we don't know about just like that?"

"I never said just like that. Of course I'd prepare. Rations, sharpened claymore and, if possible, a few other adventurers, vision-holders or not makes no difference during that time."

Ninguang paused again and started walking towards the door. "... Then come back tonight, so we can work on finding people to join you."

Beidou leaned towards Ninguang. "You aren't coming?"

"..." Ninguang took a deep breath. "I am sorry, but… I cannot risk my life as much as you can. Liyue relies on me."

Beidou clicked her tongue. "Didn't know you were a coward."

Ninguang turned around and faced Beidou, discontentment clear on her face. "Do you truly believe that I don't want to go out there and help people? Do you truly believe that I haven't felt frustrated more than once because I can't go out there and defeat whatever monster is terrorizing people? I need to stay, at the very least to be able to tell the world that you died."

Beidou frowned. "I won't."

"I may be wishing for the best, but I still prepare for the worst."

"Well, haven't you been able to go out with the Traveler a few times?"

"I barely join those adventures. The Traveler is nice about it, but it is clear that I barely join them on the action. I have a much more passive role that is borderline inactivity. So, I asked if I could be left to my own occupations, and I was politely dismissed from the team."

"So you're too weak to fight." Beidou sighed. "You're a catalyst user too, and because visions don't work during that time…"

"I would be worse than inactive, I would be an actual hindrance, yes."

Beidou walked past Ninguang and outside. "So… See you at midnight then."

"I shall be waiting."

Beidou heard a single bell ring before, in the literal blink of an eye, everything changed, and not for the better. Once again, the moon turned green and gigantic, the water turned red and the air became filled with the scent of copper, the suddenness of it making her cough. As she looked around, she saw all of the nighttime merchants and passersby having been trapped in their coffins. She looked at the horizons, searching for the tower Ninguang mentioned, but not seeing it anywhere. With a sigh, she started walking towards the platform that would take her to the New Jade Chamber.

But, on her way, she heard a voice, one that sounded… A little too happy and chipper to be in such a situation.

Still worrying for whoever that is, she ran towards the voice. A minute or two later, she finally came face to face with the owner of the voice. The current director of Wangsheng funeral parlor, Hu Tao.

"Hey, you shouldn't be outside."

Hu Tao turned around to look at the voice she did not expect. "Oh, hello miss Beidou! It is nice to meet you here!"

"Yes, yes, but please, go somewhere safe."

Hu Tao shrugged. "Why would I need to? Besides, the beautiful coffins around here are just too good to resist! They are so well made and beautiful, I just need to take a few sketches of them to be able to reproduce them! I would actually take one, but I can't move them. I've seen a broken one once though, and if I meet the little joker who likes to desecrate the place of the dead…" She suddenly gained a menacing aura, but it was gone just as quickly as it arrived. "Well, I don't know. I most likely won't, as I'm not a detective or a hunter in any way shape or form, and I can't find those I would usually go to. Oh, and have you seen those special coffins that seem to be tailor made to represent certain elements? They are even better looking than those plain ones! I just need to get one of each ele-"

That is when they both heard a strange roar coming from near them, and beidou recognized it. "There's a monster nearby, go hide!"

Hu Tao looked at Beidou, somewhat offended. "Hey, I know we haven't seen each other while adventuring yet, but I'll let you know that I can hold my own in a fight."

The captain of the Crux took out her claymore as Hu Tao retrieved her lance.

"Maybe, but visions don't work during the time the word is like this, so stay careful."

"Well I say 'stay playful'! I don't really use my vision much anyway."

And then a monster that looked different arrived in front of them. It looked like a black puddle with two arms and a mask on a stump coming out of it.

"Here it is."

"That's got to be one of the least threatening things I've ever seen."

"It's stronger than it looks, trust me."

Hu Tao shrugged. "If you say so." And she then jumped into battle, slashing at the strange creature with her lance. While it did do damage, it didn't do much. During a moment when she backed up to avoid an attack, Beidou came in and smashed her claymore straight through it's mask. While it didn't cut it clean in half, it did leave a huge dent in it, and it was now quite fragile.

"Aim for the mask, I think it's a weak spot!"

"Got it captain!" Hu Tao did a mock salute, clearly not taking this very seriously, which only led to Beidou getting a little irritated, but when she saw her do her best to deepen the gash, she remembered that yeah, she was a capable fighter, just one that has trouble taking things seriously.

The fight ended with Beidou grabbing the creature's attention and Hu Tao jumping on and off a wall in order to plant her spear through it's mask, breaking through it. Both women were panting as they watched it's body dissipate into liquid then black gas that simply disappeared.

"Well, I see what you were talking about now. Mind if I follow you so I can safely look at other coffins and see if I can't find other elemental ones?"

Beidou let out a sigh. "If you don't mind coming to the New Jade Chamber and see me and Ninguang have a discussion about this whole phenomenon, sure."

Hu Tao simply shrugged and nodded. Beidou nodded back and started going towards the platform that would take her to Ninguang once more, but this time staying alert, making sure they don't get attacked by more of these dark creatures.

"Hello Beidou. And hello to you too Hu Tao. I suspect you didn't bring her along for no reason."

"I'd rather avoid having her be vulnerable out there. I can confirm that those odd monsters are out in the city, she and I fought one."

"It looked odd, it was like a person half melted and was struggling to cling onto life. It also had a mask that was like a depressed face stuck in rigo mortis!"

The other two women chose to ignore Hu Tao's terrifying comments.

"So you weren't lying."

"I'm sad you thought I lied even for just a while."

"I didn't, but I thought you might've seen things thanks to being disoriented from all of that."

Beidou hummed. "A good point if. But that sadly wasn't the case. Also, something's happening with your tower. It still hasn't showed up."

"It takes a moment. Any second now and it should-"

On cue, the ground shook. All three women rushed outside to look at what was going on. Ninguang looked towards where the Northland Bank was, prompting them to look over there too. And what they saw was breathtaking and terrifying.

A single stone pillar grew out of where the hidden building was, quickly reaching higher than the tallest mountain of Liyue, before promptly breaking from it's middle up. But the great chunks of stone never hit the ground, as they stopped in mid-air and began to float around the pillar. Then, the stone deformed and the pillar creaked and groaned loudly as it contorted, as if in pain, and several other stone pillars shot out of the main structure in every which way, sometimes reaching out to the sky, sometimes shooting into the floor. Some were thinner, while others were thicker, and some even had holes in them, from which great waterfalls of mora came out, but not a single noise indicating a coin hitting the floor was heard, as if they all disappeared into nothing.

Every woman had their breath taken away, even the one who already saw it happen. While Hu Tao squealed in excitement, Beidou let out a soft chuckle of disbelief. "That's…"

"Yes, it is quite a sight, isn't it? Something so… Unnatural, so unreal, sprouting from the ground and reaching to the heavens."

"This looks so cool! Oh, I couldn't mind dying in there!"

Beidou looked uncomfortably at Hu Tao. "... Anyway, I guess that's where I'll be going, huh?"

"If you don't mind exercising caution, I would rather have you only explore the outside for tonight."

Beidou nodded. "That sounds like a good idea. If there's no real threat, I'll try to take a peek inside, but no more."

Ninguang let out a soft chuckle. "So you can act without being reckless."

Beidou grinned at Ninguang. "Yeah, what of it?"

"Hey, uh… Has anyone looked at the Jade Wall?"

Beidou and Ninguang turned toward Hu Tao, who was in front of the Jade Wall. Ninguang raised an eyebrow. "Not really, I was quite distracted by the tower, why?"

Hu Tao took off a piece of paper, her gaze surprisingly intense. "I doubt you're the one who wrote all this Lady Ninguang." She then put it in the noble woman's hands, prompting her to read what was written on it. What she read surprised her.

'The Dark Hour is a supernatural phenomenon that manifests as an extra hour in the day, and happens when midnight hits. The Dark Hour houses monsters, called Shadows, and their source, a tower that grows from the €*°$÷* High School, called Tartarus.'

"I… Never wrote this. What is it doing on the Jade Wall?" Ninguang found herself so tense, the paper was scrunched up a bit under her tight grip.

Beidou walked up to the Wall and gave it a look, until something caught her eye. "There's no trace of anything business related, aside from something called the 'Kirijo group', which is apparently a highly influencial group in the country of 'Japan'. But I saw many, many maps of Teyvat, even of countries with no sea border… And there is no Japan."

"Yeah… And it says that 'no electronics work during the Dark Hour', but shouldn't it be 'no Vision work during the Dark Hour'?"

"This whole thing makes no sense… There's even some drawing right here. I think it looks like one of the guns the Fatui use, but it looks so different… Seems to be calling it an 'Evoker'. But what is it for?"

All three women took a long moment to think, but none of them could come up with any answer to any of the questions.

And then Ninguang noticed something under the papers. She carefully took off the pieces of information, but noticed that whatever was there disappeared. The other two looked at her curiously. She shook her head. "I'm sorry, I thought I saw something under the paper."

Beidou frowned. "Well, it would be best to take off every piece of info we have, it'll be a long night of reading and I don't know about you two, but I'd rather sit down for it." They all nodded at each other and began taking off the paper.

And then, once there were only a few papers left on the Jade Wall, they saw it. What Ninguang saw.

Words faded in on the Wall.

'I wonder who those voices belong to. It's been so long since I heard a voice… I can't even remember what faces look like, so I guess it's no use making guesses.'

If I've made any mistakes, send me a review.

Farewell, my subjects

Your Saltyness