Compared to getting close with female characters, he now preferred lying here alone, basking in the sun, feeling the sea breeze, and anticipating who the next character to enter the dream would be.
This sense of anticipation was a feeling Ren had lost for a long time, so long that it even felt quite novel to him now.
He didn’t know how long he had been lying in the inexplicably lazy People of the Springs; he only remembered that the sun had passed overhead at least four or five times, and he had almost turned into a salted fish.
Then, Ren heard a ‘ding’ notification sound.
This newly set friend-online notification component made Ren perk up, and he quickly looked at his friends list.
He saw that in the friends list, which had been a uniform gray offline state, the avatar of a certain lively Pyro girl had become colorful.
“Pyro, girl, lively and cute—” But it wasn’t Amber.
True, Amber, who had been given cheats by Ren—max constellations, max skills, and health lock—was currently full of energy.
How could someone her age sleep…
*cough*, I mean, she was racing against time to save the Great Dragon Dvalin, so Amber naturally wouldn’t sleep on schedule.
At this moment, the one entering this dream-like world was another Pyro girl.
Nationality: Liyue.
Owns a family business in Liyue Harbor.
Apprenticed to the Liyue Adeptus, Streetward Rambler.
Her companion is the Liyue Stove God, Marchosius.
A girl whose affinity with the Adepti is so profound that even the old Lord Rex Lapis frequently expresses his admiration.
A miraculous girl given for free at the start of the game who, even in the 5.0 era, still has a very high appearance rate in the Abyss.
—Xiangling.
“Is the second one to enter the dream Xiangling?
What exactly is the order for entering the dream based on?” It certainly wasn’t based on the order the Traveler meets playable characters in the game’s story.
After all, if it were according to that order, the second one to enter the dream would be either Jean or Lisa.
—Kaeya?
Kaeya was banned.
If Jean hadn’t slept because she was too busy, then Lisa, the Miss Witch who would never mistreat herself, certainly wouldn’t stay up all night.
Besides, even if Lisa hadn’t gone to sleep, there were still Barbara, Fischl, Noelle, and other Mondstadt characters.
No matter how you looked at it, it shouldn’t have been Xiangling’s turn yet.
Oh, wait, Xiangling seemed to appear quite early as well; she could actually be considered a character who debuted in Mondstadt.
“Then it’s the order I obtained the playable characters in the game—no, that’s not right either.
My first one in the game was Amber, followed by Lisa and the others.
I even obtained Hu Tao earlier than Xiangling.” For now, he could only barely guess that since the first was Amber, a Mondstadt character, and the second was Xiangling, a Liyue character, the characters might be appearing according to the order of their nations.
And even this guess, with only two isolated cases so far, wasn’t solid.
He could only wait until more people entered the dream to draw a conclusion.
If the third person to enter the dream was a pretty girl from Inazuma living a good life, then this pattern could pretty much be confirmed.
In any case, Ren was now very interested in a living Xiangling.
Although Xiangling dressed the most provocatively, she was the least provocative person herself.
In this game world, she was among the characters Ren had lost interest in long ago.
But Ren was very interested in Xiangling now because she was alive!
Alive!
Without even taking off his sunglasses, he teleported straight to the Chihu Rock alley where Wanmin Restaurant was located, wearing his beach shorts.
Just as he teleported over, Ren heard the voice of a very energetic girl, currently calling for help in a panicked and helpless manner.
“Dad, you…
don’t scare me!
Why have you become like this?
I admit I shouldn’t have used Slime Condensate as seasoning yesterday, but…
don’t be like this, I’m scared!” Blinking, Ren trotted a few steps and saw from a distance a lively Xiangling, eyes filled with tears, shaking the arm of Chef Mao, who always stood by the Wanmin Restaurant window.
As everyone knows, in the original game, whether it was NPC characters or playable characters, the actual modeling was based on a few fixed sets of models.
It’s just that the playable characters had finer modeling and more details, while the NPC characters were more perfunctory and slapdash.
Some were even exactly the same, with at most some differences like beards or scars.
It even reached the level of perfunctoriness where hostile NPCs were completely identical.
In the game, Xiangling’s father, the head chef of Wanmin Restaurant, Chef Mao—the character who always guarded the entrance—was an NPC primarily responsible for selling dishes and ingredients.
He had no special features and used a common adult male NPC model, dressed so simply it made one wonder if he doted on his daughter so much that he spent all his pocket money on her clothes.
Logically, Xiangling shouldn’t have been able to recognize her own father.
But for some unknown reason, when Ren transmigrated into this world of Genshin Impact, the entire world had taken a giant leap toward realism.
To be honest, Ren was happy to see this realism; at the very least, it made his life more convenient.
The NPC characters in the game world naturally became a bit more realistic as well.
Although they still shared some similarities, every NPC—even the background NPCs who had no lines or interaction in the game—now had their own unique characteristics.
In short, they could be distinguished from one another.
However, Ren could guarantee that these NPCs without human rights were definitely still very different from real people, and as for Xiangling’s current appearance— “I see.
Amber was like this before too.
Although they don’t know Chinese characters, as a system benefit, they can naturally recognize the text after entering.” Ren looked at the text above Chef Mao’s head; it was the text identifying NPCs that could be interacted with in the game.
Some NPCs only had a name or a code name, while more important NPCs had both a name and a title.
For example, Chef Mao, being an NPC from whom one could buy dishes and ingredients, was naturally more important, and his text description was more detailed.
[Chef Mao] [Owner of Wanmin Restaurant] There was even a crossed knife and fork symbol representing food and drink.
Add to that the familiar short-sleeved shirt, the familiar arms-crossed pose, and most importantly, the occasional familiar shouts of greeting.
Although it wasn’t obvious from his appearance, his voice was still very recognizable.
Xiangling naturally recognized that the somewhat familiar middle-aged man in front of her might, probably, perhaps be her own doting father.
Xiangling was still frantically trying to get her father back to normal when she heard a greeting by her ear.
“Boss, I’ll have an order of Black-Back Perch Stew.
Hmm?
Is Chef Xiangling in today?
Then I’ll change it to Wanmin Restaurant’s Boiled Fish instead.
Oh, and an order of Golden Shrimp Balls!” “Coming right up— Wait, I’m sorry, customer, our Wanmin Restaurant has run into some trouble today and is temporarily clos—ing—???” Hearing the familiar greeting, Xiangling subconsciously responded as she usually would when attending to business.
But she froze for a moment, immediately remembering that after she woke up, not only had Wanmin Restaurant shrunk to the size of a tiny room, but even her father had become this inhuman, ghostly, and terrifying form.
Under such circumstances, no matter how you looked at it, it was really not the time to continue doing business.