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a city hidden high in the hills comes out to honor the dead
GHOST CITY
this was truly a swarm of evil, the chaos of hell
A mysterious and haunted world opens before you, red-hued and alive, for all that many of the residents are anything but.
A long street appears.
It's so long there's no end in sight. Along the street are all manner of bustling stores and stalls; colorful signs are flown high above and giant red lanterns are hung low. Pedestrians fill the street, many wearing masks of faces crying laughing, angry; some human, some not human. Those masks can only be described as bizarre. Some have large heads and small bodies, some skinny as a bamboo stick, some flat like a pancake; pressing on the ground, letting pedestrians walk all over them while complaining.
Passing by a food stall, one can see the stall owner use a giant bone to stir a giant pot of soup; while it stirs, spit spills from between its teeth, dripping into the soup, and in that soup filled with weird colors floats many an eyeball.
On the other side, there's strange buskers performing: a buff, burly man has a small ghost, weak as a chick, in his hold, and the man opens his mouth to blow massive flames to barbeque the ghost while it squeals like a dying pig, writhing. The crowd cheers and shrieks, shouting encore! There are even insane individuals randomly throwing money into the air. Grabbing one and flipping it over shows that it's indeed the money of the dead, if you're familiar with that custom.
Walking in further, there's a butcher stall with a row of crestfallen human heads, hung in order of age, as indicated on their price tags; a child's head is this much, a youth's meat is that much, a grown man's flesh costs this amount, a mature woman's sinews is charged that much, and so on. The one dressed in an apron with a butcher knife in hand is a boar with black, thick hair; and under its knife getting butchered is a muscular human leg, still twitching.
Various stalls have much the same feeling; a soup shop with a cock (the rooster kind, get your mind out of the gutter) as the head chef comes and goes, strangely damp. Someone running a stall wipes the tables and chairs with their overly long tongue, everything sparkling clean, so to speak. Many strange, gruesome wares are on sale in the market, and artifacts give off an ominous sensation as their hockers try to get you to purchase them.
It's best recommended that one checks the signage outside of the food stalls and shops that they desire to visit - a new addition seems to be whether the food and wares they serve are human-friendly and human-free, for the sake of visitors more inclined towards that realm than the ghost realm.
Gaggles of tittering female ghosts, scantily glad and drifting together looking for easy work and easier prey, come and go through the stalls along the street. Revealing dresses, heavy makeup, and hands hooked in claws ready to grasp at the nearest wandering gaze. Darker alleys are best avoided, for the trouble that may arise from them, shadows dancing with hidden threats.
THE GAMBLER'S DEN
money over life, gains over fame, HAHHAHAHA!
On the two pillars at the entrance, there's a set of verse, calligraphy wild, clumsy, and frenzied. The left says Money Over Life, the right says Gains Over Shame. On the top horizontal beam it sys HAHAHAHA! It's as if someone took a brush whilst drunk, and scribbled with malintent, and the words got blown by a blast of evil aura before they were formed thus.
In the main hall of the Gambler's Den, crowds are packed to the brim; innumerous heads moving, laughter and desperate cries cram the air. Masked bouncers can be seen in the sea of bodies, dragging out writhing and howling and bloodied patrons - missing legs, arms, eyes, anything and everything, trailing blood across the luscious carpet - or throwing out the over-enthusiastic. A terrifying sight, but no one in the Gambler's Den every spares it any looks, and continue to shout and cheer, rolling about. Though, of course, many who gamble here aren't people, and if they are, then they're no ordinary humans.
Lithe, feminine figures in softly smiling masks come and go, and might even come up to question whether you'd like to play a game.
PARADISE MANOR
the lord's sanctuary, it never sees guests!
Both the Heavens and the ghost realm have glamorous architecture. However, the distinguished buildings of the Heavens put emphasis on prominence and prestige, whereas the buildings in the Ghost City are glamorous in their bewitchment and frivolity. Even the large letters of this pavilion, Paradise Manor, emit an evil aura.
Strange music comes from the inside, light and soft, incredibly enchanting; as if there are many women giggling and teasing, playing as they sing and dance languidly.
Following the music, entering the pavilion and after raising a beaded curtain, warm perfumed air comes rushing to the face. A thick, snow-white rug made from the fur of some unknown beast covers the floors of the great hall of Paradise Manor, and, surprisingly, it's a full pelt. Depending on the time of your visit, many beautiful and captivating women, barefooted and clad in light silk, dance and play, sensual and beguiling. The music comes from them.
At the end of the hall there's a large divan made of black jade, expansive in size; upon it could lounge probably over a dozen people.
Beyond the great hall? Who knows. You'll have to have an invitation to go deeper in.
QIANDENG TEMPLE
the temple of a thousand lights
That a temple with brilliance and enlightenment as its core would sit within the rowdy, chaotic pandemonium the likes of Ghost City, it's opposingly conspicuous, yet awe-inspiring. The moment it's seen, it leaves an inerasable deep impression.
A path paved by jaded stones leads to the temple proper, delicately engraved with the words Qiandeng Temple. Above the entrance, no establishment plaque sits. Looking around, the interior of the temple is wide and open, walls decorated with beautiful murals (familiar to those that might recall the offerings to the inn's shrine), but nowhere is there a divine statue, nor cushions used for worshippers to kneel. Still, a jaded bureau, exceedingly long and wide, sits as an altar in the heart of the great hall. Orderly decorated upon it are various offerings and an incense burner, and there's even brushes, inkwells, and paper; a refreshing flavor of scholarship.
Whatever cacophony of noise that exists outside of this temple, in the alleys and market of Ghost City, cannot be heard from here. It's as if some silencing spell has brought calm to the great hall of worship.
a post-game catchall for hua cheng and redacted (presumably a year later since he's unavailable before then) or chasma (immediately afterwards) - leave a starter, or feel free to use this post to explore ghost city with other people in your own threads! but if you'd like to see xie lian or yin yu, just throw the starter at sisi's face and she'll come tag it.
BASE CODE
how about some cross-dimensional mail instead!
hateful
Captain Kaeya Alberich, of Mondstadt
and it truly is a parcel. this is no letter that has been written in return for kaeya's, but instead numerous scrolls marked in flowing brushwork, a practiced hand that has changed the pages into works of art.
the first, a red-washed city full of fantastical people and beings - giants that tower over buildings, and small spirits that scurry close to the ground, people and beasts and more - making it come alive. it bustles, almost to the point that it would spill off the paper itself. things are busy, it implies. if kaeya holds the scroll at a certain angle, he'll find that there's an illusion imbued in the paint: he, diluc, yuri, and even sheba with their daemons seem to materialize on the page, amidst the crowd, exploring another world with an invitation this time.
come if you like, the illusion offers, as they disappear and reappear with every shift of the scroll.
the second, a portrait of kaeya in just as brilliant color. it's more detail than the portraits on the traveler scrolls, more color, and it shows him with his khaenri'ah eye fully visible. a shift of this scroll, however, causes it to be hidden by an ornate eyepatch, a bright and sharp eye gazing back out of what had become an emptied socket on a journey to retrieve something for hua cheng himself.
wear it proudly, maybe, for the first, but all the same - i understand, for the second, and something can be done for that.
the third is one of xie lian, twice over. one that is dressed in his full taizi dianxia regalia, smiling the same smile kaeya had seen before when they bid their farewells in the land of prosperity. he faces the left of the page, ferret-formed ruoye perched on his shoulder. and, facing the left as well, obscured in the darkness of the background, so does a familiar, younger hua cheng without a daemon.
the xie lian on the right smiles warmly, welcome, and looks hardly different - save for his plain white robes, the hat he wears on his back as he faces the right. but there is no daemon, and something in his eyes looks older, wiser. much like the younger hua cheng, the elder one that became a watcher stands in the background, facing the right with xie lian - but tanhua stands at his hip, this time.
they're different, but still the same. you should meet this one - he'll like you. the welcoming smile on the white-clothed xie lian, daemonless, seems to say.
the last scroll is simple. it's baraqiel and tiger-formed tanhua, kaeya and wolf-formed polaris, sitting in the lobby of nerak with drinks. perhaps i miss the company.
a silver butterfly marks each page, and the parcel is accompanied with a bottle of their finest wine. ]
no subject
yeah, that's shi qingxuan right now. it takes her a moment to process that she's in ghost city, but when she does, her first thought is an is this some kind of a cosmic joke? followed by an unsettled which version of ghost city is this? ...but there's only one way to find out! whether this is he xuan's zhongguo or hers, she won't know just by standing here.
maybe this is her fault, anyway; she'd thought it might be nice to see xie lian once before dealing with that whole situation. and, well, she's of the opinion that xie lian is likely spending a lot of his time with hua cheng, so maybe she subconsciously caused herself to end up here.
...well! no time like the present.
hua cheng, whichever version of hua cheng happens to be here, will probably be made aware soon enough that the lady windmaster is wandering the streets of his city. man i really should have asked you if this was going to be chasma or redacted hua cheng but i didn't so now you get to decide. sorry!!]
gives you pandora's box
At some point, he's tired of the dazzling lights and bustling air. ]
Hua Cheng. Where is he?
cautiously opens
that is a very, very large wolf.
his question gets some wariness, but immediate gossip of anyone nearby. he's pointed towards the third largest building in the city: the gambler's den. ]
Eh... Chengzhu might be at the Gambler's Den, but he could be with the grand uncle daozhang, instead. Hard to say if that'd be Paradise Manor or anywhere else, though! Could see if any of his butterflies or that fox demon of his are around the city.
no subject
To the gambler’s den and I was told Joonghyuk is going to be met with Hua Cheng’s hideous handwriting. He squints and his nose scrunches—suddenly irritated. Through the den’s doors he goes and immediately he scans his surroundings. Whatever blood or gruesome sight to behold he doesn’t bat an eyelash. ]
I am looking for Hua Cheng.
[ Joonghyuk would definitely ring up the PA system to look for Hua Cheng like he’s a lost child in a grocery store. ]