—Mondstadt Border, Spring—
The scent of the wind had changed.
Anastasia put down the Northern Geography gazetteer she had been reading for days.
Looking through the carriage window, she gazed toward the horizon, which was gradually opening up in the distance.
Mondstadt’s sky was different from Snezhnaya’s.
It lacked the bitter leaden gray, possessing instead a flowing, vivid blue.
The women and children of the convoy had been arranged elsewhere; currently, only the Tsar of White Sands and the Grand Duchess enjoyed this space.
Just then, a gust of fresh breeze drifted into the carriage.
The wind bore the delicate fragrance of Cecilia flowers, the moisture of grass and dew, and the faint strumming of a lyre.
“My, my, I’ve been waiting for you for so long—”
A crisp, clear voice arrived with the wind, as though whispering right beside their ears.
“—Let me speed you along!”
The moment the words fell, the music of the lyre brightened dramatically.
Anastasia felt the entire carriage—no, the entire convoy—pushed forward and accelerated by a surge of gentle power.
The bumping of the wheels over the gravel road smoothed out, the beasts of burden pulling the carriages stepped with light grace, and even the scenery outside flowed past far more rapidly.
This was the power of the Anemo Archon.
She turned her head toward the opposite side of the carriage.
Moh was leaning lazily against a soft cushion, one hand supporting his head while the other held a book.
His ice-blue eyes were focused intently on the printed page, his long fingers occasionally flipping a sheet.
His posture was relaxed, his movements nonchalant.
It was as if the divine transmission that had just crossed the nation’s border was nothing more than a passing sparrow chirping outside.
“Pay it no mind,” Moh said without lifting his head.
“Barbatos is simply impatient.”
Anastasia withdrew her gaze.
She looked down—what could possibly be so fascinating about that book?
She had noticed recently that His Majesty’s taste in literature had become remarkably unpredictable.
The fairies knew of his reputation in literature and art, so they spent their days inventing new ways to perform music, singing, and dancing for him at banquets.
His room was filled with stacks of portrait paintings, and Kitezh City was the crowning masterpiece of fairy aesthetics.
In the past, the praise-poems presented by the fairies extolled his illustrious military achievements and his sun-like benevolence.
Those poems used ornate rhetoric and neat rhymes, comparing Monomakh to the unsetting sun of the Northern Realm, the eternal blue flame upon the frozen soil.
At first, Moh thought they were decent enough.
But as the fairies blew his praises out of proportion while remaining entirely focused on praising him personally, it gradually grew tedious.
He had no choice but to tell the others to write about different subjects, noting that there were already more than enough texts extolling Monomakh’s deeds.
Only then did the fairies ease off.
If noblemen presented works in person, Moh would review them out of courtesy, occasionally nodding and saying, “Your thoughtfulness is appreciated.”
Nowadays, he didn’t even bother to unseal those piled-up eulogies.
When guards brought them up, he merely cast a glance at the cover and said, “File it away.”
Some poems never saw the light of day again, while those with worse luck gathered dust on bookshelves.
Anastasia herself had read the books from the sea of stars brought aboard the train.
Compared to those otherworldly writings, the ornate rhetoric the fairies took pride in was indeed…
rather bland in entertainment value.
In those interstellar tales, there were stubborn travelers who spent centuries chasing a single comet.
There were retired captains who opened bars at the edge of black holes, looking back on their legendary lives in reverse chronology.
There were people who returned from the dead solely to hunt down enemies and uphold justice.
Absurd, fantastical—yet leaving one stunned for a long while after reading.
She couldn’t help asking again, “What are you reading?”
Moh looked up.
A flash of sly humor sparkled in his ice-blue eyes as he held up the cover of the book.
*The Domineering Female Tsar Falls in Love with the Handsome Duke, Part II*.
Anastasia: “…”
Moh passed the preceding volume over to Anastasia.
She took the book and flipped through a few pages rapidly.
” Her Majesty, the beautiful Monomakh, was once again distracted during the imperial court session today.
Resting her cheek on her hand, her ice-blue eyes passed over the endlessly babbling Finance Minister and fell upon that handsome Duke.
Grand Duke Anastasia was speaking softly with a colleague, his profile as cold and sharp as a glacier in the Northern Realm.
‘Why does he not look at me?’ Her Majesty Monomakh thought to herself.
‘Are the lands I have conquered not vast enough?’ ”
Anastasia remained expressionless.
She flipped a few more pages.
” ‘Your Grace,’ the female Tsar blocked the end of the corridor, looking up straight into those cold eyes.
‘I know you have someone else in your heart.
But I possess the wealth of the entire Northern Realm and thousands of years of invincible martial might—are you truly unwilling to consider me?’ Grand Duke Anastasia lowered his eyes, his tone as calm as a frozen lake: ‘Your Majesty, you possess everything in this world, yet you alone cannot command the human heart.’ ”
Anastasia snapped the book shut.
She took a deep breath and placed it back by Moh’s hand.
So it was just a mindless web novel.
She knew that some uninformed fairies liked to make up rumors about her and His Majesty’s romantic life, but why did this book have to gender-swap both of them and throw them into a melodramatic love triangle?
“…So this is what you’ve been reading these past few days?”
“It’s quite interesting, isn’t it?” Moh turned to the next page, his tone sincere and matter-of-fact.
He tapped his finger on the page.
“Compared to those praise-poems singing of my sagacity, divine power, and freezing of the eight directions, works that deconstruct imperial and divine authority like this are quite rare.”
“Even extraordinary beings can be confused by love and rejected by others.
To the author,” he paused, his voice softening, “it means ‘Her Majesty might be no different from anyone else.'”
He raised his eyes.
“This proves that, in the eyes of at least one fairy, I am not an absolute, untouchable authority. I am very glad someone can think this way.”
Anastasia remained silent for a moment.
“…But it gender-swapped you.”
“Artistic processing.”
“And it gender-swapped me too, making me the object of your affection.”
“Oh, that,” Moh waved his hand lightly.
“An audacious exercise of artistic imagination.”
Anastasia looked at him blankly.
Moh coughed softly and placed the book back on his knees.
The movement was casual, yet carried that familiar posture of preparation she recognized before every deep conversation.
“Anna.”
His voice relaxed, yet became noticeably more serious than before.
“The dukes who follow me hope that I will lead Snezhnaya forever. They bind the destiny of the nation to my person, entrusting the future to my every decision.” He paused.
Anastasia looked at him, waiting for his next words.
Moh’s gaze fell on the spine of the book, yet seemed to reach much further.
“Even gods suffer erosion one day. There will always come a time when I must leave. When that time comes, those who view me as their sole path forward will be like headless flies, unable to find their direction.”
“I hope the fairies can grow. I hope they can become masters of their own destiny, rather than a flock of sheep led by another shepherd.”
He raised his eyes, his ice-blue irises reflecting the daylight outside the window.
“Otherwise, how would I differ from those Hyperboreans? I would merely be another master of slaves wearing a different title, continuing to rule over the fairies.”
Anastasia did not answer right away.
She lowered her eyes to look at the intricate silver thread embroidery on her cuffs—craftsmanship that only members of the Pale Star Court could enjoy.
The intertwined ice crystals and stars were embroidered with secret silver thread, every single stitch representing dozens of days of painstaking labor by fairy artisans.
She had once thought this was a mark of honor.
At this moment, however, she suddenly felt that it was merely another thread binding her.
Was she truly His Majesty’s successor, or simply His Majesty’s most exquisite “artwork”?
Moh’s voice continued.
“In the second part of *The Domineering Female Tsar*, the Duke rejects the Tsaritsa’s love to pursue his true feelings. A subordinate rejecting a ruler—this is a rare ending in fairy literature. What’s more, the one rejected is the Emperor who commands all fairies, the master in their hearts.”
The corners of his lips curved slightly, his smile carrying a touch of obscure self-deprecation.
“You know, among the court eulogies presented to me, there are quite a few fairies who wish I would wield a whip and harshly… well, ‘whip them into shape.'”
Anastasia’s brow twitched.
“Not all fairies were persecuted by the Golden Realm,” Moh said calmly.
“Some, due to their outstanding beauty, actually received preferential treatment. To them, going from the Golden Realm to Snezhnaya was merely changing the master who decided their fate. That kind of ‘servile nature’ has yet to be liberated even today.”
Silence filled the carriage for a brief moment, broken only by the heavy rumbling of the wheels rolling over the frozen earth.
Anastasia asked softly, “You wish to…?”
Moh did not answer; he simply reopened the book.
When he had transmigrated, the game had only progressed to Natlan.
The original developers had been extremely stingy with details about Snezhnaya, revealing almost nothing about its native lore beyond the Fatui.
After arriving in Teyvat, he had carved out a path step by step.
He didn’t even know whether he had altered the game’s predetermined fate or if he had been running in circles under the destiny set by the Heavenly Principles all along.
Transmigrating so early—more than a thousand years before the main story’s timeline—meant he was essentially groping in the dark.
What should he do?
Moh had followed the spirit of the Nameless, practicing the belief of the Trailblaze.
In the end, as he walked his path, he discovered that the fairies had unknowingly draped the royal robe over his shoulders, drawing him into Teyvat’s destiny.
Only when an Archangel and a Human Emperor sought him out for methods of “Tuning” did he realize he had transmigrated into Genshin Impact and become the founder of Snezhnaya.
Destiny worked in ironic ways.
Given Snezhnaya’s current demographics and scarcity of resources, a feudal monarchy was the most suitable system.
But Moh hoped Snezhnaya could carve out a different path.
After all, he came from a three-dimensional world and had studied abroad in the real-world country that served as Snezhnaya’s prototype.
During that nation’s most glorious period—when it was at the forefront of progressive thought and inspired awe across the globe—he genuinely hoped he could pioneer such an era.
However, under the framework of the Heavenly Principles, and with super-dimensional entities like Archons and Dragons, such a vision was difficult to realize right now.
Yet that was his path, and Anastasia had her own journey to walk.
Anastasia looked at his lowered eyes.
He was never just thinking about the book itself.
Those texts she read for entertainment were, in his eyes, slices of the social trends within fairy society.
Anastasia hadn’t thought as deeply as Moh; she had truly believed His Majesty had simply taken a sudden liking to popular pulp novels.
It was like a reading comprehension exercise in school: the veteran master, Moh, could already feel the values and thoughts conveyed by the author from the text, whereas Anastasia was still just a student solving problems, seeing only the superficial, frivolous story without the textbook or teacher’s guidance.
No wonder His Majesty always said she still needed more experience.