Dominator Stellae

12 | The Pointer and the Moon

Zhongli seemed confused about the reason we dragged him away from Shitou. His eyebrows furrowed as he awaited our explanations. Still trying to get over the fact Childe willingly allows him to spend so much. If today continued on like this we'd spend the entire bag of mora and there was quite obviously a lot in there. Just what kind of life did he lead to be this careless with mora.

"We need only one jade for the ritual, right?" Lei-Li recounted Zhongli's words. "So why do we need to spend twice as much for unneeded ones?" He stared at Lei-Li in confusion for a moment before his brain process seemed to catch up with what was going on. I swear if he said something dumb I'd eat tofu and nothing else for a week- no three days. I could not handle that much tofu. I can already feel the smoothness of it in my mouth.

He put a hand on his chin, "Oh, Mora, hmm...It is as you say. I suppose I overlooked this particular aspect of the transaction." Looks like I'm eating tofu for a few days. I was positively jumping for joy, doing a little mental jig to show my excitement. That was all sarcasm. I was not a big fan of tofu unlike a certain adeptus.

"How do you not think about Mora when buying things?!" asked Paimon, incredulously. And then, this man proceeded to give us a "life lesson".

"If one must consider Mora before acting, then in all things one is bound by Mora."

I put a hand on my forehead, already exhausted. He didn't seem to understand that he was wasting Mora on things we didn't need. I breathed in and stared him straight in the eyes as I said, "Mr. Zhongli, with all due respect, we do not need three. You said it yourself that we needed one." I wanted to actually punch this man when I saw the amused look in his eyes. Yet another thing did he share with Morax: zero monetary awareness.

"No need to waver. Even when I am constrained by Mora, I have ways of working around limitations," he said, clearly seeing no problem in exploiting loopholes. Ugh, I give up for now. He's stubborn as hell, I'll give him that. I held up my hands in surrender and allowed him to continue doing his thing. I wouldn't hesitate to give him an earful if we somehow spent all the Mora gifted to us by Childe because of him. There had to be at least a million Mora in that bag, I'd actually have to cry if we actually managed to do that.

I had no idea what the hell he was talking about when he started talking about "crude ore" but I tried to understand. It only made sense once he suggested we take a piece of each jade and test its pyro affinity. His intelligence is really starting to shine. He was book smart, but sometimes the common sense area seemed to be lacking. Not that I'd ever say that directly to his face.

"A fool sees the pointer and misses the moon." That was one of few things Zhongli had said that stuck with me. It resonated with me harder than it should've. Shitou handed three thin slices of each jade, each one tagged as he'd promised. Terrified of accidentally shattering them, I handed them off to Lei-Li who'd become captivated by their luster. Now our main problem was figuring out where to heat these up without the potential of hurting regular people.

I don't recall ever having seen a large, open area truly free of people aside from Dihua Marsh. And, even then, there was no guarantee that someone wouldn't walk in.

"Oh! Paimon remembers! We once saw this biiig pot down at the Dadaupa Gorge, in the camp of hilichurls from the Meaty tribe!" She explained. Meaty Tribes? People were naming monster tribes now? I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised. "It's really sturdy and should be able to handle elemental reactions."

Lei-Li scratched her head, "But...it would take us days, unless?." Aether gave me an apologetic look as he pulled out his map again. My heart sank into the very depths of my stomach as I realized what we were about to do.