I finished the underground part, it was quite nice!
I can’t believe Paimon actually fetched the key that was on the ground below. I was both super grateful she did it, because I really didn’t want to go down again to fetch it, and at the same time, I was thinking… why don’t you help more often??
Back at the surface again, but I’ll continue later.
Wow this chapter was so great. Things that I thought were details ended up being relevant in this chapter.
| Word | Reading | Definition |
|---|---|---|
| 一时之瑜亮 | yī shí zhī yú liàng | two peers of equal brilliance; two outstanding talents of the same generation (An allusion to Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang of the Three Kingdoms) |
This book is really fantastic, characters are all so interesting and realistic, and we have a new point of view in chapter 2 as well, which makes things even more compelling. Their inner conflicts and worries are very relatable, and I really like how anchored in reality the story is while also hinting at supernatural elements.
The plot unfolds slowly but the tension is here, steadily growing.
I love every aspect of the book so far and I find it really well written.
I continued the WQ a bit, I found the part where we need to chase after 娜斯佳 much more difficult than it should have been… I kept getting lost lol, I’m very bad at this kind of puzzle.
Now I reach the point when we’re in shooter mode, I’ll continue another day!
Also about her riddle. It’s… 3, right?
一群小鸟天上飞，一只在最前，两只在最后，一只在最后，两只在最前，还有一只在中间…
I started the other big world quest, In the Dwelling of Life. The area is beautiful! It’s a welcomed change of scenery (as much as I love Snezhnaya and the snowy landscape, it also feels good to see warm colours all of a sudden).
Quest sounds interesting so far, but I’m still at the first chapter.
Oh and Paimon does call the region 叽里咕噜… I don’t know I find it weird. It’s true that she has trouble remembering long or difficult names and often gives nicknames to persons, but this region does not seem particularly hard to remember or pronounce?
Developments in this chapter were unexpected, I thought we would have an opened confrontation right away!
I liked this chapter, you can feel untold underlying tensions and awkwardness.
Now that I’m reading four books at the same time, it could be a good idea to have at least one collection of short stories in the lot. Something I can put aside for several days without problem. And it would encourage me to read more short stories too, as I tend to gravitate around novels most of the time.
I said I would try to always have a collection of short story in my rotation to make reading several books at the same time easier, but my three current books are all novels. However, 同名偵探事務所’s chapters are each devoted to a different case (at least, it was the case for the first two ones), so that kind of functions like a collection, meaning it doesn’t hurt to take small breaks between two chapters.
| Word | Reading | Definition |
|---|---|---|
| 另辟蹊径 | lìng pì xī jìng | to take an alternate route (idiom); to find an alternative; to take a different approach |
Now we know what happened in the past, and it’s really not what I expected… So Li Xunhuan gave Lin Shiyin to his friend as a gift to repay a debt… like a piece of furniture? Without asking her opinion and worse, emotionally torturing her for 2 years and leaving her heartbroken. 
I’m glad I followed my plan and finish chapter 1 today.
The plot is good, but I don’t really care for the characters. I feel like we hardly know them, so why should I care about their story and what happens to them? The novel jumps right into the crisis, each of the two threads we’re following start with a mystery, but the main characters involved lack dimension and personality, they feel quite empty to me. The part with Chiharu especially, this character is a bit too passive and emotionless to trigger my interest even though this is the thread where the most things happen. It’s also strange, but I have to remind myself that this part is a first-person narration, because it doesn’t feel like it at all, and I’m always surprised whenever the first-person pronoun appears.
There’s so many things to do in Genshin this patch: Liyue event (Xiao was not in the trailer, but surely he’s going to appear, right??), two acts of AQ and two SQ!! And of course, I still have a ton of exploration to do and most WQ still untouched.
I’m keeping the event for next week because I’ll have a lot of time for myself, and I’ll probably wait for until I finished the event to do the AQ.
清明上河图 (Along the River During the Qingming Festival) is a real handscroll painting by 張擇端 (Zhāng Zéduān) from the Song Dynasty, It has been copied and forged many times, the original being kept in imperial collections, though now we know that the one kept in the imperial palace was a forgery and the original was in Li Xunhuan’s family estate hahaha.
