Most of Alice's inventions had a cute aesthetic—often featuring Dodoco and four-leaf clover elements.
"This red wind glider… compared to normal ones, what's special about it?" Koji picked up a glider and asked with curiosity.
"Oh, that one? I added a jet-assisted takeoff device. It can launch you for a short-distance lift-off," Alice said.
"But the distance is a bit short. Once the fuel runs out, the main body is fairly heavy, so you'll drop faster than a normal wind glider."
Whether you could land safely… depended entirely on whether your luck was tough enough, and whether fate felt like sparing you.
"Bennett can't use that," Koji said with a helpless laugh.
With Bennett's luck, the moment he used it, he'd probably end up performing a vertical drop.
"That kid, yeah, he really can't use it. But if he goes back to Natlan, he should be able to," Alice nodded.
Alice knew Bennett's situation well. When he wasn't adapted to the local environment, his luck got worse. Humans living on Teyvat were connected to the ley lines—if the place didn't suit you, fortune itself could take a nosedive.
"Then what about this one?"
Koji picked up a rusty one-handed sword. Was it a kind of disguise, hiding its edge?
"This is just an ordinary rusty one-handed sword," Alice said with a perfectly serious face. "You can also call it the Tetanus Blade."
Koji: "…"
What a "Tetanus Blade." It smoothed out all 520 of his brain wrinkles in one go.
But jokes aside… Teyvat probably didn't have a tetanus vaccine. If you got cut, unless you had a dedicated healer-type or some special medicinal herbs, you might not be coming back.
Alice was pretty ruthless, huh—actually pulling out a weapon that should've been destroyed.
"Alice-san, I'll take these. Next time you have something good, don't forget me."
A qualified merchant had to have exceptional marketing skills. Even trash like the Tetanus Blade—Dori could dress it up with packaging and still sell it.
"Hah, no need to be so polite. We've been working together for years," Alice said.
Alice wasn't short on money. This was purely about friendship—whenever she had extra things, she'd pass them to Dori.
"Alice, you came to Sumeru—did Rukkhadevata react at all?" Koji asked with interest.
In Mondstadt, Liyue, and Inazuma, the moment Alice showed up, the corresponding gods would tense up to the max. Alice's troublemaking potential was simply too strong.
"I haven't done anything big in Sumeru, so there's no need to guard against me."
She was a maintainer of boundaries, while Rukkhadevata could be called the maintainer of Irminsul. There was no reason to stir up trouble in Sumeru and give her a headache.
"I told her I wasn't here to cause trouble," Alice said.
If it were Nahida, she'd tease her and play around a bit. But Rukkhadevata? No thanks. Her wisdom was too high—she'd see through everything instantly. That took all the fun out of it.
"I'm going back to Mondstadt for a bit—to see my precious daughter."
With that, Alice flew off on a magic broom—truly the classic witch-style method of flight.
"So the ones in stories weren't fake after all," Eula said with feeling. "To think I'd actually see a magic broom that can fly."
"It's probably not the same as the fairy-tale kind," Koji said. "It's Alice's custom build. I just don't know the principle behind it."
Compared to wind gliders, a magic broom that could lift off from a standstill was obviously more flexible.
"It's not my first time seeing one," Dori said. "It's just that I can't get my hands on something like that."
Dori envied that kind of tool. If she had it, she could definitely sell it for a spectacular price.
But Alice said it wasn't easy to make. The materials were rare, and mass production wasn't realistically possible.
A flying magic broom… Teyvat's tech was genuinely strange.
Forget airplanes—there weren't even cars. Even without a steam revolution, other energy sources could replace internal combustion engines, yet nobody here seemed to think in that direction.
Out in the wilderness, roads were still primitive dirt paths. After rain, they turned into thick mud. Land transport relied on carts, balloon transport existed, and most trade moved by sea.
There was basically no development in transportation infrastructure.
The roads were like this now, and they were probably like this during the Archon War too—no real progress at all.
Maybe it could only be chalked up to the world's peculiar development path. But since Koji had thought of it, he had to do something about it.
Another opportunity to earn Mora had arrived.
Koji brought Eula and Shenhe to Liyue, while he went to find Ningguang.
In all of Teyvat, he was most familiar with Ningguang, the super-rich—after all, they'd cooperated many times.
"No business at the Three Treasures Hall, hm? What wind blew you here?" Ningguang lifted her head, her vermilion eyes smiling as she looked Koji over.
"So I can't come see you unless I've got business?" Koji sat down right beside her.
A faint, lingering fragrance drifted over—soft, with the delicate scent of Glaze Lilies mixed in. It was refreshing, soothing. If he leaned just a little closer, he could practically feel the warmth and softness of her body.
Ningguang let out a light laugh. "Of course you can. Treat this place like your own home. After working with you, I've made quite a lot."
The opening of Liyue's second city, and useful building materials like cement, had caused her assets to skyrocket.
At this point, she didn't care much about the number attached to her Mora. Still—more income meant more joy. Why not?
"Ningguang, have you ever thought about using cement to pave roads?" Koji asked.
Asphalt roads were possible too, but that would require alchemy.
Cement roads had more than enough load-bearing capacity, and they were suitable for regions with big temperature differences or high heat.
Ningguang understood immediately. She looked surprised. "You mean building roads in the wilderness that connect the nations?"
"Exactly. Don't you think the roads out there are a bit too primitive?"
Hearing that, Ningguang nodded. That was true. Compared to land transport, trade between nations mostly traveled by sea.
Once it rained, muddy roads could trap carts. Liyue Harbor, known as the place where a thousand ships and ten thousand merchants gathered, had vessels constantly converging on its thriving docks.
And once Liyue's second city was officially completed, the two places would certainly need frequent exchanges. At that point, relying on sea routes between them wouldn't be ideal—while a land route would be far more direct.
If cement roads could open pathways to other nations… it really would be an opportunity.
"It sounds simple, but it's not so easy in practice," Ningguang said helplessly. "It requires negotiations between nations."
They couldn't just pave cement roads right up to another country's doorstep—that would be seen as a provocation.
It would have to be planned long-term. It couldn't be implemented right now.
"You're something else. You show up and immediately assign me work like this," Ningguang said, giving Koji a look. "You knew I'd be tempted, didn't you?"
She was already busy enough, and now he was adding more to her plate.
(End of Chapter)
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