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As god of contracts and of mora, the greatest facilitator of contracts, Rex Lapis was boundless in wealth and generosity. Business far and wide clamored for a glimpse of the fabled god, whose patronage would establish a business's standing for generations to come. In turn, Rex Lapis would graciously refuse the offers of free goods and services, for the god of contracts loved a good contract.
But now, Rex Lapis was no more, and only the mortal Zhongli remained.
To be fair, merely-human Zhongli was still a formidable force, with an encyclopedic memory, and a geo vision besides. But though mora could serve as a guarantor for honor, knowledge was no substitute for sense. And so, it was inevitable that Zhongli would find himself at an uneasy crossroads, caught between the traditional and the modern. Between the divine and the mundane.
Between a rock and a hard place.
His first realm into the foray of human troubles was among the first and oldest troubles a human could face. With not a single mora to his name, where would he live?
“What are you talking about?” Hu Tao asked, bewildered. “What’s wrong with where you live now?”
“I no longer have the mora for it,” he answered simply.
“You’re our highest-paid consultant!”
“Yes, I, that is, well,” Zhongli said. Hu Tao glared at him, her foot tapping, and Zhongli had his first taste of mortal embarrassment. “Our client loved the qingxin that grows on the tallest mountains,” he explained. “To find the sweetest among them, I hired a mountaineering team to collect qingxin from every mountain in Liyue.”
“That explains the 200,000 mora charge on the Parlor’s expenses,” Hu Tao said. “A steep price, but if you think it’s essential to our client’s request, it’s alright! I won’t take it out of your pay!”
“I also hired Yun Jin to sing to the glaze lilies, to enhance their fragrance to the utmost,” Zhongli continued. “And purchased samples of padisarahs from every florist in Sumeru. I am unfamiliar with that particular flower, you see. All told, it exceeded the allowance for our client by. . . 1.2 million mora.”
“Aiya!” Hu Tao exclaimed. “Why did you not think to clear it with me!”
“Well,” Zhongli said, floundering for words. “In the past I was simply able to. . . find . . . all the mora I needed.”
Hu Tao thought about the intricate, elaborate ceremonies her employee had produced. He always did find the purest ores and the most fragrant blooms in all the land. The cost must have been astronomical. More than once, she’d wondered if he was conjuring mora from thin air.
She’d assumed he had simply secured favorable contracts—through extensive family connections, perhaps—he was clearly in the marble tier of importance, but just how important was he. . . .
“Do not concern yourself over it!” Zhongli hurriedly protested, heading off that train of thought. “I shall simply find another means of shelter.”
Some five thousand years prior, he’d first built a house out of mora, a material readily-available to him at the time. Now, his most abundant resource was—
“Rise!” Zhongli commanded, and the Earth obeyed. Great sheets of rich brown rock rose smoothly from the Earth. “Stabilize!” he shouted, and the rock obligingly fused into a grand dwelling, towering loftily over the Guili plains. He surveyed his new home with satisfaction.
It was a nostalgic setting for his home, after all. Something old and something new.
What he hadn’t counted on was the sheer number of the damned Ruin Guards stomping around the place.
Somewhere between 3700 years ago and now, the plains had gotten infested with them. Each one was no challenge at all: the automatons were neither strong nor coordinated, at least not for Zhongli. But when one pounded through every hour of the day-and-night, even a former archon could be worn down.
"It was five hundred years ago, when Khaenri'ah went down," Hu Tao hissed at him, the third time Zhongli blearily bungled their client's deceased father's name. "For someone who knows so much, you can be pretty dense. You'll have to forgive my consultant today," she added apologetically to the client.
She got him set up in a modern apartment with state-of-the-art appliances, including a mechanical teapot from Fontaine. Zhongli accepted it with mixed regret and relief. "As the sands of time flow, so, too, shall my abode fall into ruin, yet one more in a sea of ruins," he lamented.
Nor was that the end of his troubles. It would not do for a top-tier consultant such as himself to be making cultural faux-pas, not at all. One mishap per hundred years was plenty.
Zhongli devoted himself to the study of modern Liyue, and all its cultural practices. He sampled contemporary cuisines with Xiangling, served as judicial assistant for Yanfei, and even made a guest appearance in Xinyan's band. "Those seeking a headstone need not be in doubt. Marble, slate, or jade, Wangsheng will rock out," he intoned solemnly.
Crickets chirped into the silence. "Umm. . . does Paimon have to clap?" Paimon said dubiously.
But the one practice that puzzled him the most, and always had, was human coupling.
Zhongli sat at a little table tucked into the corner of the dance club, subtly disguised and quietly observing. Truly, the human mating song-and-dance was as entangled as the caverns beneath the desert, as intricate as a funeral service. And like a service, where every flower and scent carried a symbolic meaning, Zhongli could sense the intent behind each word and gesture. He only wished he could decode what it all meant.
"Hey, stranger."
Zhongli startled. He'd been so lost in thought, he hadn't noticed the man sliding into the seat across from him.
"You here to meet someone?"
He observed the man: dark hair and a sleek, fitted vest. A faint spray of perfume bearing a hint of pine and smoke. Minty-fresh breath and a keen smile.
What better way to learn about Liyue's youth than to partake in their earthly delights?
"Yes," Zhongli said. "Would you be interested in visiting my abode?"
The man's smile widened.
"You're damn hot. Bet you have a rock-hard cock to go with those rock-solid abs."
In his defense, Zhongli had not once given the slightest thought to the. . . anatomy. . . of humans. It was simply not relevant to him, a little less interesting than the wings of a moth, and a little more so than seafood. But he could tell, from the way it was said, that it was a high compliment.
And wasn't that convenient, that the charming young man seemed so fond of his most abundant resource?
He focused on the area, and concentrated.
"Whoa!" his fling exclaimed, feeling the bulge expanding between their entwined legs. "You're feeling eager! Maybe I can help with that. . . ."
The words fizzled out in his throat as he caught sight of Zhongli's freshly-minted member.
A long, oblong pillar of dark brown stone sprang from Zhongli's trousers, laced through with golden veins of geo-sensitive ore.
"W-wh-what happened to your cock?" The hapless man sputtered.
Zhongli took in his panicked, beet-red face. "Is it not to your taste, then? What a shame," he said calmly, allowing the stone to crumble away.
"Eaaarghhhh!" For some reason, this seemed to frighten the man further. "This m-must be a bad dream!" Without another word, he snatched up his trousers and fled into the night, a trail of dust drifting in his wake.
Zhongli stared after him in utter confusion, then shook his head. "Truly, mortals are as capricious as the wind," he concluded. "How fortunate I am to deal in contracts, and in rites for the dead."