The ritual within the transmutation circle is progressing, and an orb of energy is seen in its middle, forming into the head of a dragon. The lunatic cultist is trying to summon a Phantasm Dragon: an ancient art that would allow the cultists to call forth a powerful mystical beast to aid in their combat. 

 

The Phantasm Dragon was the primary way the lunatic cult could have combated the Could City, which was at one point guarded by numerous sky dragons called Wyverns. 

 

This is a powerful trick up the cultist’s robe sleeves; the dragon is ferocious, and the clones, once they take form at the end of the ritual, can also add to his firepower. The only downside to this move is that any interruption from an attack to the main body of the cultist will cancel the ritual. 

 

However, with two clones on the side as disguises, there’s absolutely no way that his opponent could possibly see throu-

 

Feng sneaks behind the cultist and shoots an arrow at his back. 

 

That ritual used to be one with the potential to succeed, until the cultist took that arrow in the knee. 

 

The cultist loses support on his leg momentarily, but that was enough to end the ritual prematurely. His clones vaporize into nothing, and the transmutation circle shatters. 

 

The cultist looks back with disbelief and hurls several fireballs at Feng. Feng quickly puts down several stone blocks before running away, blocking the fireballs that blow up upon hitting the walls. He makes a run for it. 

 

The arrow that Feng shot was only enough to interrupt the ritual and could not deal any significant damage to the cultist. 

 

The cultist chases after, but even with the speed boost from his wind, the cultist still arrives at an empty corner after a turn in the tunnels. His breathing is now dysrhythmic; he can’t fathom how that guy could have broken the ritual. 

 

“Tch! Dumb luck of a dead rat!” The cultist scuffs. “Oh the great Lord of the Moon, grant me ice beyond cryo!”

 

He shoots out a flower of ice mist that spins at great velocity, so great that its dagger-like icicle petals are launched from the flower, piercing through the stone walls of the tunnels. The cultist isn’t sure where Feng is, he’s merely throwing attacks in the general direction where he last saw him. 

 

That probably would have worked, but Feng went through the portal. 

 

“Hey ugly, wanna play a game?” Feng loudly announces after turning up his volume again. 

 

The cultist turns around toward the direction of the sound. No way, it’s from the opposite side of where he ran to, and the sound came from quite far away. The cultist isn’t sure what is going on. That guy is either insanely fast, or can teleport. 

 

“It’s called Marco Polo!” Feng is slightly excited about the new idea he just had. Even though he has no idea how that game is played.

 

So instead:

 

“Marco!” Feng announces from one side of the cave. 

 

The cultist gathers his strength, charges up his attacks, and launches in the direction of the sound. 

 

But just as the cultist is about to reach Feng's location, Feng suddenly goes through the portal and again loudly announces from the other side of the cave: “Polo!”

 

The cultist is now certain that the rat he's chasing after can switch between places in an instance. Instead of chasing after each sound, he leaves an ancient doom behind. 

 

The ancient doom is a purple skull that levitates in the air and damages any nearby target. Think of a landmine, except floating, and not disguised at all, but will still hit you because it is conveniently placed at the most inconvenient spot where you will dash right into trying to dodge other stuff. 

 

Well, at least that's sometimes the case in games. Feng, his potion highlights the skull. 

 

He teleports to the new location and shoots his Portal Gun in yet another direction. 

 

“Marco!”

 

A drop of sweat slowly rolls down the cultist's cheek. The sound is from yet another direction, also quite far away. 

 

The cultist shoots several fireballs in that new location. 

 

“Polo!”

 

Ice mist launching icicles. 

 

“Marco!”

 

More ancient dooms left behind. 

 

“Polo!”

 

The cultist feels his brain quaking as blood pulses through the earthworm-like veins popping on his temples. His teeth are clenched hard, crackling periodically and sending shivers throughout his entire body. There's red in his eyes; there's steam coming out of his robe. 

 

“Marco Polo Marco Polo Marco Polo Marco Polo Marco Polo Marco Polo Marco Polo Marco Polo…”

 

The cultist turns and twists looking at each direction of where Feng is heard. His eyes spin furiously in their sockets as if they're trying to escape from all directions simultaneously. 

 

He once again tries to summon the phantasm dragon, but just as he has deployed the clones and the ritual circle, another arrow once again interrupts the summoning process. 

 

It ain't a coincidence now, this guy knows how the ritual works and knows how to crack it down. Not even the clones can fool him. 

 

He is a half Adeptus, capable of tunneling through the base of an entire mountain, can teleport and sneak around seamlessly making literally no sound. Despite all that, despite the vast information network of the Lunatic Cult, an advanced cultist like him has never heard of someone like that. Just who is Feng!?

 

“You! You, you, you you! You dare to poke fun at me like I'm some dumb animal!” the cultist roars with the might of his boiling blood of anger.

 

The cultist interlocks all ten of his fingers, and when he separates his palms, an orb of light is seen appearing in between. He pushes his hands forward, and the light breaks into a shotgun-spray of stars flying towards Feng. 

 

Feng recognizes that; it's the cultist's Ancient Light attack. In the game, it's a move that the cultist uses when he's below half-health. It'd appear that in this case, the cultist has merely lost his temper. 

 

The starlights melt right through the stone walls of the tunnel, leaving behind a series of holes burned through the tunnels, leaking lava to the floor. 

 

“Um, Marco? Ooooohhhhh~Holy Shit!”

 

Even if Feng can see the attack coming, they still nearly struck him if he hadn't gone through the portal at the last moment. 

 

Feng has a strong instinctive feeling that even being scraped by that light would mean the end of him. 

 

During the past few minutes, Feng has been slowly luring the cultist towards the Cloud Archon. Every Marco and Polo had been made more and more towards where he had hid the Archon.

 

Now that the cultist has brought up the Ancient Light attack, hiding behind walls is no longer viable, as those lights melt the stone walls like butter. 

 

At this point, Feng can only pray to the literal goddess that she has done charging her freaking attack. 

 

“Hey lady! Now or never! Right up his ass!” Feng shouts at the top of his lungs. 

 

The cultist has two orbs of lights ready, one in each of his hands. Hearing Feng, the cultist immediately turns around and throws out a light orb. 

 

Though he still sees no one, the cultist now has learned Feng's trick. The ancient light stars melt right into the floor of the cave, turning the ground there into a pool of molten magma that spreads across and collapses several tunnel walls. He knows that Feng likes to hide underground, and so he aimed right at it. 

 

A smirk flashes on the cultist's face. He had nearly let his anger get the best of him and wasted his attack. However that smirk is short-lived when he sees that Corcell falls right before him from the roof of the cave instead. 

 

The cultist's pupils constrict as he realizes that all those times that Feng had dug underground were to distract him from ever suspecting that he could also do the same thing above on the roof. His previous attack had entirely missed. 

 

Corcell is holding a pink broadsword with a golden star on its guard. Her eyes gleam with a snow-white aura. She's standing on a piece of cloud that's levitating above the floor of lava, shielding her from the scorching heat. 

 

The cloud spreads, damping the cave with so much humidity that Feng finds it hard to breathe. He looks at his inventory and sees a Hydro icon. 

 

With a move that looks like an elegant dance in the eyes of Feng, Corcell slashes her sword, launching a gust of ice-cold wind carrying razor-sharp snowflakes at the cultist. 

 

“Prideful snow! Cease the passage of time! Freeze!” Corcell chants. She unleashes one of her several elemental bursts right at the cultist. 

 

The cultist still has one last orb of Ancient Light in his other hand. He readies his stance and begins to combat the Archon's attack. 

 

Meanwhile, Feng is scrambling for any way to distract the cultist. The Ancient Light can't be stopped by merely an arrow like the ritual. In his panic, Feng accidentally spotted that besides his celebration mk2 in his inventory is the number 9.

 

Feng is shocked, that means that his rocket launcher has 9 units of ammunition. Feng can not remember for the life of his where, when, and how he had gotten any rockets, but he ain't complaining. 

 

He points the bazooka at the cultist's back and squeezes the trigger as hard as he can. Indeed a barrage of rainbow-colored rockets are fired at his target, exploding upon impact into Teyvat's most contained firework show. 

 

The celebration mk2 blews the cultist right off his feet, completely altering the Ancient Lights launch trajectory, causing them to perfectly miss Corcell's attack. 

 

“What!?” The cultist is now on the brink of madness. He never had anticipated that Feng could dish out such a powerful attack. He figures that if Feng could see through his clones then he would have struck his hardest hit during the ritual. Yet for twice he only shot annoying arrows. 

 

But now, his final ancient light has missed, the cultist receives Corcell's Cryo elemental burst in its entirety to the face. Being infused with Hydro himself, the Cryo attack reacts and freezes him entirely. 

 

He hasn't even the chance to close his mouth before his tongue is frozen into a solid chunk of ice that he can no longer feel.

 

The snowy wind seems to puncture right through his body, locking every single cell in an icy prison. The snowy wind travels with great force, yet it soon is transformed into a gentle breeze with only some slight humidity when they reach Feng. He is left unaffected by the cold. 

 

Despite that, seeing a person in front of him becoming a literal ice sculpture still sends a chill down his spine. 

 

The cultist is that ice statue, and Corcell retrieves her sword. With a swipe of her finger, she melts the ice on the cultist's head and gestures for Feng to be by her side. 

 

Feng complies, and Corcell gives a delicate smile to him. 

 

She turns towards her captive, and her expression instantly drops to ice cold. 

 

“How…how…!? What…are…you!?” the cultist speaks in dying breaths; his eyes locked onto Feng. 

 

“I'm the one asking questions!” Corcell declares. “What does the Lunatic Cult want to do with the Shimmer!?”

 

“How…could you know…the ritual…” the cultist's unfazed by Corcell's question. He is so infested with disbelief that the desire to know is keeping him alive under this freezing temperature. 

 

Feng raises an eyebrow; he now finally has the time to carefully inspect this cultist. Unlike in the game, the cultist isn't wearing a bird mask with a beak. Instead, what's on his face is a pale meaty mask with green crystals as eyes and a bunch of tentacles on the lower half of the mask. 

 

To Feng, this mask resembles the Moon Lord more than a crow. 

 

“Dude, I'm literally just here to mine, what have I ever done to you ?” Feng asks back. There's no room to be friendly with the person who nearly murdered him with light. 

 

The cultist is honestly thinking the same thing right now. Had he known that Feng was this much trouble to handle he would have never chosen to fight him. But he still insists on finding out. 

 

“Eyes. On. Me!” Corcell declares, losing her patience as her question is left unanswered. Her voice went from a helpless little girl from before to a cruel mistress. She isn't going to show mercy to the member of the cult that has destroyed her home. With a single stare, Corcell forms a crack on the ice encasing the cultist. Soon a large chunk breaks off, taking with it the cultist's arm. Yet the cultist is still not bothered by the damage. 

 

He is too madly concerned with Feng right now. 

 

Feng gives the cultist an annoyed and disturbed look and answers: “To be honest, you are the weakest cultist I have ever fought. You can't pass through walls. You can't find where I am. You are dumb enough to stay in this cave so that you can't even fly. Your pride made you consistently underestimate me, allowing me to stab you in the back. And your attacks can be thrown off by angering you.” 

 

Feng finds it interesting. In the game, enemies are preprogrammed based on the game's codes. But here in Teyvat, it'd appear that his foes are indeed intelligent creatures with complex behaviors and potential flaws to exploit. 

 

The cultist still stares unmoving. He isn't concerned with any of those weaknesses that Feng listed out. Instead, he is more surprised by the fact that he wasn't the only cultist who has faced this man.

 

“You… have fought… other cultists before!?”

 

“Huh? Yeah I have, probably more than a hundred by now.” Feng estimates from the times he fought the boss before in games. 

 

“THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE!” The cultist suddenly loses control. Corcell is shocked as well. “There are…less than… 70 like me!” 

 

“There are HOW MANY of you!?” now Feng is shocked. 

 

Isn't the Lunatic Cult only consisted of 5 people? 2 pray, 2 shoot, 1 drops the ancient manipulator. 

 

Corcell snaps both the cultist's legs, causing him to go from erect to face planting into the ground. This time it gets a reaction out of him alright. 

 

The fall shattered multiple of the cultist's organs. His coughs would have been bloody if the blood hasn't all been frozen. 

 

Knowing that the cultist isn't gonna live for too long, Corcell decides to end him. However, Feng still has one more thing left to ask. 

 

“Whatever man, you're gonna die soon, where's the Ancient Manipulator? Hand it over.”

 

The cultist isn't capable of being surprised anymore. Feng even knows about the core artifact of the Lunatic Cult. 

 

“It's…been…stolen.”

 

“Say what?”

 

“The traitor of…the cult.”

 

The cultist speaks weakly. He huffs out a puff of mist with every word said. Feng then realizes that the cave has become very cold. He takes out his torch and is surprised to see that the walls of the tunnels are covered in a solid layer of white frost. Even the lava floor has crystallized into obsidian. 

 

“It's…quite a shame.” The cultist exhales.

 

“Yeah.” Feng sighs. The cultist probably won't even drop a treasure bag. 

 

“To be frank, I'd really rather you meet that traitor and take care of him for us.” The cultist speaks. 

 

“Wait, weren't you having trouble talking just then? You know, with all the pauses?”

 

“But unfortunately, you are too big of a threat to remain!!!”

 

Corcell instantly drags Feng to her side, hugging him with one arm while extending out the other. 

 

Feng is baffled by the sudden movement, and the pressure from the cushions shuts down his brain.

 

Corcell realizes that the cultist's somehow still able to chant, and tries to crack his skull beforehand, but she's too late. 

 

A string of incoherent gibberish later, the cultist shouts: “For the Moon Lord!” 

 

An orb of light the same shape as the cultist's body ascends into the air. Corcell has shattered the cultist into pieces, but it's too late. That orb of light scatters into countless stars that fly in every direction. 

 

Corcell hugs Feng tighter. She channels the rest of her elemental power and says: “Condense!” 

 

A clear shield formed of mist, water, and ice appears, surrounding Corcell and the man in her arm. The ancient light blasts out, melting through the stone walls all around everywhere but Corcell's shield. 

 

The attack wasn't too strong since it was very spread out, but Corcell still has a bad feeling about it. 

 

Just as she has been worried, the lights breach throughout the entire base of the mountain, melting its foundation from all around with ease thanks to it being mostly hollowed out by the tunnels. The entire mountain begins to tremble, and bits of stone fall from the roof as the tunnels shake. 

 

Corcell and Feng now know that the cultist had planned to collapse the mountain and bury them all. 

 

The Archon tries to draw out more elemental power, but she's drained. She lowers her head and closes her eyes, as if she has accepted her fate. They are near the dead center of the mountain base, there's no time to run out of here. 

 

Feng, on the other hand, is having none of that. He leaves a blue portal beside him and then takes out his shellphone. 

 

A magical sound effect later, Feng vanishes from the spot. He teleports right back to his spawn point: the room flooded by wooden bows. 

 

He flips away handful after handful of bows to exit his house, getting another splinter in the process. 

 

He blames the cultist for that splinter. 

 

Feng shoots an orange portal right on the wall of his house. Back in the cave, Corcell sees the outside from that circle of blue light. It's as if that circle has turned into a door, and on the other side stands the man who had just vanished. He reaches for her and brings her out of the collapsing tomb just in time. 

 

Feng shuts down the portal, and the two watch as Mt. Tianheng sinks downward. An enormous cloud of dust explodes from the base of the sky-piercing mountain. It didn't crumble entirely, just slightly lowered. However, due to the size of the mountain, such a fall still quakened the land and shattered the rocks on top, shaking the earth and sending several boulders rolling down. 

 

Feng is preparing his portal gun again when Corcell suddenly carries him into the air. A pair of angel wings sprout out of her back. She flies, and is carrying Feng like he was a princess. 

 

Down on the ground, the quaking from the mountain travels to Liyue Harbor and even the ocean. 

 

Countless people are frightened by this sudden occurrence, until Morax raises several Geo pillars around the harbor, stabilizing the ground beneath. 

 

He looks toward Mt. Tianheng, and wonders what had happened. 

 

On the other side, Corcell lowers to the ground after the dust settles. Feng's face is pale. He is beyond shocked that the mountain could just collapse like that. 

 

Could that mountain always have collapsed? Could he have been buried alive had he just mined out too much of its base? Shouldn't the blocks above his head stay above unless it's sand, silt, or slush?

 

The mountain doesn't float!? 

 

Wait, what do you mean mountains don't float!?

 

“It's over.” Corcell calmly tells as she lets Feng down. 

 

Feng looks at his house, surprisingly still standing, only with several holes smashed into the walls by boulders. 

 

It'd appear that blocks aren't as indestructible by the environment as they are in games. But they are more resilient. 

 

He then looks back to the mountain; if the cultist did drop something, it's locked deep inside. Probably would require a whopping 2 minutes of digging straight to get to its location. 

 

But all of that aside, Feng needs a break. 

 

“Huh…so what now?” Feng asks Corcell while sitting on the ground. He has faced quite an adrenaline rush just then. 

 

Corcell only scans her surroundings momentarily before staring intensely at the sky. “I must return to my city!”

 

Feng is reminded, oh yeah, wasn't this girl a god of clouds or something? 

 

“You fell from the clouds?” Feng asks. 

 

She nods. 

 

Feng’s eyes are on Corcell; he wishes to follow this girl. As for why, obviously it’s because she looks f-ing gorgeous it’s because Feng recognized her sword from earlier. 

 

A pink broadsword with a golden star on its guard, it is a starfury. The starfury is one of the best melee weapons in Terraria in the early stage. 

 

If that sword exists, perhaps he can find more items. Sky island items are comparatively the more useful ones. If he manages to find a pair of fledgling wings, it’d be the best. After all, immunity to fall damage can raise his survival rate. 

 

F*%k you, gravity!

 

“Is that star fury from your city?” Feng asks. 

 

“You know this sword?”

 

“Used it before.” 

 

Corcell narrows her eyes a bit. She is certain that no items from her city's treasury have ever been stolen before, yet Feng somehow has used the sword that she has kept by her side for as long as she could remember. 

 

“There are other swords of this kind?” Corcell asks. 

 

“It's… hard to explain.” Feng says. 

 

Corcell doesn't dwell on the topic. She gently shakes her head and proceeds to leave, saying as she walks: “Feng, I'm very sorry that I have involved you in such a dangerous fight, and I am very thankful that you have saved my life. This is why I must not trouble you further. But I'll remember this kindness and heroism. Should we ever meet again, I promise to repay them in full.”

 

Feng watches as Corcell distances. A bit later she comes to a stop. Then, she just stands there.  

 

He shifts his focus to his inventory. It's pretty apparent that Corcell doesn't really want him to tag along. Fine, whatever. 

 

After the mining session, Feng now has over 2200 meteorite ore and over 900 silt blocks. There are also bits of iron, but not enough to do anything useful for the moment. He needs an anvil, but instead of crafting one, Feng wants to try and find civilization first and borrow theirs instead. 

 

That's for later though, right now Feng is curious about what his Celebration Mk2 shot as ammunition back there.

 

He looks carefully. Not a single rocket is to be seen. Still the same equipment as before. Still the same wooden bow, the same portal gun, the same pickaxe and hamaxe, the same shellphone and celebration, 7 cabbages, 6 carrots. 

 

Besides the icon of the celebration mk2 in his inventory, is the number 6. 

 

Hmm.

 

A daring thought flashes into his mind. 

 

Feng aims his celebration at his already demolished house and squeezes the trigger. Once again the missiles fly towards their target and explode upon impact into various colors of the fireworks. 

 

Afterwards, only a single item in his inventory has decreased in number. 

 

His bazooka shoots carrots as rockets. 

 

Now that's clarified, Feng goes on to test another thing. How in the world did that mountain not float? Was it made entirely out of silt or is Teyvat not Terraria enough?

 

Feng builds a simple stone block tower, then mines the blocks underneath. Like in the game, his pickaxe doesn't need to physically contact the block to mine. Within a certain range, just swinging is enough to break them. 

 

Even with the blocks underneath gone, the one beneath Feng's feet is still levitating in the air, unmoving. 

 

Corcell tried and tried, but she currently doesn't have enough strength to reach her city. She can fly with her wings, ride on a piece of cloud, walk on the wind, climb the rain. But none of those methods will work, for she has not the stamina left to reach the height of her city. 

 

She sighs and turns back to look at Feng. She sees the man standing on a floating block of stone, periodically jumping on it like a monkey. He has a confused expression, as if wondering: weird, this stone doesn't fall, then why did that mountain fall back there? 

 

Feng has no idea. Maybe only blocks placed down by him can work with Terraria physics. 

 

Corcell, on the other hand, looks at the scene and concludes: there's no way that Feng is just an ordinary human. No human can currently make floating structures. Even she, the goddess of clouds, took a few tries before she could ascend her city. 

 

Feng notices that the girl has yet to leave and asks what's going on. 

 

After her explanation, Feng offers: “If you know where your city is, I can maybe build a staircase up there.” 

 

Feng figures that he'd help, considering that she did save his life. Plus, if he can't find any people on his own by random chance, then going with Corcell to her city would for sure lead him to civilization. 

 

It'd be even better if he can open a few chests. 

 

Corcell is a little hesitant, but soon nods slightly. Building a staircase into the sky sounds ridiculous, but seeing Feng's power just then and remembering his feat back in the mountain, maybe this man really can help her return to her city. 

 

It's just, after this, she will owe him yet another favor. 

 

She points towards the proximal direction of the cloud city, and the two start their journey. 

 

-------

 

Not too far from the bow-infested hut, a group of people in rags and scraps led by a lowly Archon is slowly approaching the Liyue Harbor. Their travel has been treacherous, yet unbeknownst to them, their slowness was a blessing. 

 

Had they been just a day faster, they'd all have been devoured by the cosmic horror that was the now-sealed Moon Lord. 

 

The group is tired, yet someone has to go forage for food. Some of the people venture down a few natural caverns and discover something rather pleasant. 

 

If they were modern humans, they would recognize the shape of the red crystal as a heart. When a man holds the crystals up, he sees his hands, full of cuts and wounds healing before his eyes. 

 

The people rejoiced. Even ignoring the creepy feeling, that an evil presence is watching over them.