Just thinking about it sent a surge of excitement through them.
“Jiang Xuan!”
Keqing grabbed Jiang Xuan’s hand, suppressing her excitement.
“Please let me participate! I won’t let you down! I’ll do everything in my power to help you build a civilization in that world!”
“Let’s start right now! We can do an on-site inspection first, and I’ll draft an outline for you as soon as possible tonight!”
Jiang Xuan blinked, caught off guard, and gave a helpless smile.
“There’s no need to rush like this. I feel like you’ve got the wrong idea… Ah, whatever. Let me show you what makes the resources in that world special first.”
With that, Jiang Xuan opened his inventory and pulled out two birch log blocks.
“Pay close attention. What you’re about to see might break your worldview.” Jiang Xuan’s tone turned serious.
This made Keqing and Ganyu tense up as well.
Ganyu even went so far as to cast an adeptal energy barrier for protection.
With solemn deliberation, Jiang Xuan stacked the two blocks on top of each other, then stepped aside to watch Keqing and Ganyu.
“???”
Completely bewildered, Ganyu stared blankly at Jiang Xuan.
After a long pause, she asked timidly, “Is… is that it? Just two… very neatly shaped wood blocks?”
Jiang Xuan smiled mysteriously.
“Watch closely.”
The moment the words left his mouth, Jiang Xuan rapidly punched the bottom block a few times.
With a crisp shattering sound, the lower wooden block turned into a tiny floating birch icon hovering near the ground.
But Keqing and Ganyu didn’t pay attention to that minor novelty.
Right now, they were staring blankly at the birch block floating in midair.
With zero support, it sat there calmly, suspended in midair.
After a quiet moment, Keqing suddenly stood up and pointed at the block in disbelief.
“H-How… How is it floating?!”
Ganyu rubbed her eyes again and again.
She felt as though the worldview she had built over thousands of years had shattered in a single moment today, all because of a floating piece of wood.
It wasn’t that Teyvat lacked floating materials.
The Jade Chamber floating high above Liyue Harbor was held up by plenty of Plaustrite.
But this wood…
This was far weirder than mere floating!
It didn’t look like floating at all.
It looked like it was rooted in thin air—just like tree roots anchoring into the dirt, it anchored itself into the air.
“What on earth is this?! Floating wood?!” Keqing stared numbly at the block.
Jiang Xuan gave a soft chuckle without answering her question right away.
Instead, he pulled out a stack of birch blocks.
Under Keqing and Ganyu’s watchful eyes, he jumped straight up and placed a birch block beneath his feet.
Right before their eyes, he stepped higher block by block until he reached the roof.
Then…
Jiang Xuan placed a block in front of himself, then turned back and broke all the pillar blocks he had used to climb up.
He stood effortlessly atop a single birch block rooted in midair at roof level.
Under the dumbfounded gazes of Keqing and Ganyu, he placed a block ahead, broke the one behind, placed another ahead, broke the one behind…
Using only two blocks alternated continuously, Jiang Xuan paved a floating path.
Down below, Keqing and Ganyu watched helplessly as Jiang Xuan performed this bizarre trick over and over.
Even though Ganyu had lived for thousands of years and survived the Archon War, facing a scene like this left her completely at a loss for words.
What kind of wood in the world roots itself in thin air?!
Looking at Jiang Xuan’s momentum, if conditions allowed, couldn’t he just alternate two blocks all the way to Inazuma City?!
Ganyu had a whole barrage of complaints trapped in her chest, but didn’t even know where to begin.
Seeing that his demonstration of “making Newton turn in his grave” was sufficiently effective, Jiang Xuan broke the remaining block and jumped down.
“Snap out of it! No need to be so surprised.”
*No need to be so surprised?!*
Keqing pursed her lips in stifled frustration.
In a situation like this, was she supposed to stay calm instead of being surprised?
“Jiang Xuan, you…”
Keqing opened her mouth, but before she could finish, Jiang Xuan tossed the block in his hand.
Instantly, the block that had been a cubic meter in size shrank to the size of a palm, floating gently near the ground in a thoroughly uncanny fashion.
“Ganyu, give it a try. Pick it up.” Jiang Xuan smiled warmly at Ganyu.
“Oh…” Ganyu gave a dazed nod and naturally reached out to pick it up.
But the moment her fingers made contact, her expression shifted dramatically.
It wasn’t overwhelmingly heavy for her, but picking it up clearly required a respectable amount of effort.
“How… How can this be?!” Ganyu turned to Jiang Xuan in shock.
“Such a tiny block, yet so heavy! Jiang Xuan, this is heavier than a chunk of Crystal Ore of the same volume!”
Jiang Xuan was used to this reaction and waved his hand with a smile.
“That’s completely normal. Small as it looks in your hand, it’s actually a solid cubic meter of birch.”
“Is it… a type of adeptal art similar to Sumeru mustard seeds? But… not even Streetward Rambler could perform such an intricate adeptal technique!”
Jiang Xuan shook his head.
“This is just the most ordinary timber from that world. I haven’t even refined it. You can call it a birch log. This is precisely the special nature of that world I wanted to show you.”
Turning around, Jiang Xuan pulled out another stack of birch logs.
Beckoning to them, he led Keqing and Ganyu out of the room.
He casually began placing log blocks on the ground.
“Wood like this—and in fact, the vast majority of materials in that world—basically takes the form of blocks. And these blocks can all be harvested: trees, ores, dirt, sand, and so on… A single type of material can stack up to sixty-four per group. What a stack means is that as long as you have enough strength to carry the weight, you can easily hold all sixty-four blocks stacked into a single slot. If you were familiar with quantum mechanics, it would be a bit easier to explain—it’s almost like a quantum superposition state. Though that’s not really important right now.”
Blocks kept dropping from Jiang Xuan’s hand onto the ground.
As he explained the unique properties of these blocks to Keqing and Ganyu, he quietly converted the birch logs into planks using the crafting grid in his inventory.