Inside the council chamber, the air was so heavy it felt as though it could be wrung out like a wet cloth. This was no elegant pavilion, but merely a massive cavern sustained entirely by Adeptal Energy. The jagged rock walls flickered in the dim, yellow glow of a few elemental ore lamps, casting distorted, shifting shadows of the figures gathered around the stone table. Every face was taut, exhaustion etched deep into the corners of every eye. This was the beating heart of the Qixing Emergency State Committee, and with every pulse, the lives of hundreds of thousands of souls inside the Serenitea Pot hung in the balance.
Limeng sat in a visitor's seat, the rough stone biting into his lower back and reminding him all too clearly of the temporary and desperate nature of this place. Jingyi sat quietly a short distance behind him in the shadows, a half-restored ancient text spread open across her knees.
Keqing’s voice was the first to cut through the silence, carrying a faint, unaccustomed hoarseness—the toll of maintaining order day after day. "The conflicts in the temporary housing zones have escalated again. Early this morning, the newly arrived cold-wave survivors from Mondstadt nearly came to blows with the early Liyue residents who occupied the more stable central areas over a few tents near the water source. The Millelith had to intervene just to keep a lid on it, but people on both sides were injured." Her slender fingers pressed against the stone table, her knuckles whi…
Chapter 23