Chapter 163 - 161: Sumeru

Words : 1153 Updated : Sep 29th, 2025

"Kiana, to be honest, you're actually Chinese, right?" After finishing the production of Liyue's second Lantern Rite version, Fu Xuan looked at the final product and said this to Kiana. Kiana tilted her head in confusion: "Of course not." "If not, then why are you so good at exporting Chinese culture? Do you know that many players around the world are discussing how China is about to celebrate the Spring Festival, so the Lantern Rite should be starting soon?" Fu Xuan said this in an admiring tone. "And you actually made the Lantern Rite. After this year's Lantern Rite, players will be absolutely certain of one thing—when Genshin Impact celebrates the Lantern Rite, it's the Chinese Spring Festival." In Fu Xuan's opinion, Kiana had handled the Lantern Rite event very cleverly. She didn't directly tie it to a real-world holiday but instead created a fictional in-game festival and turned it into a version event. The clever part was that the Lantern Rite in Liyue only happened during the real-world Chinese Spring Festival. This way, foreign players, driven by curiosity, would naturally learn about the significance of the Lantern Rite and, by extension, the Chinese Spring Festival. This wasn't a forceful cultural export that would provoke widespread resentment among players from other countries. Instead, it was a subtle, gradual influence. If you didn't want to learn about it, that was fine—you could just treat it as a regular version event. But if you did want to learn... then the cultural export was successful. As Genshin Impact continued to operate, every year during the Chinese Spring Festival, the game would celebrate the Lantern Rite. Over time, more and more foreign players would come to understand that the Lantern Rite was actually the Chinese Spring Festival. When China celebrated the Spring Festival, it was time for the Lantern Rite in Liyue—even now, many foreign players were already speculating that the Lantern Rite was about to start because the Chinese Spring Festival was approaching, and they were looking forward to it. Seeing this, how could Fu Xuan not marvel... Kiana, you're actually Chinese, aren't you? No wonder some players online were saying that Kiana was a "spiritual Chinese." She was just too friendly toward China, and her cultural exports were top-notch. Now Fu Xuan was starting to suspect the same thing. Just look at the Lantern Rite, the Liyue characters, and the "Divine Damsel of Devastation," which had been ready since version 1.0 and was just waiting to be released. It was all absolutely brilliant. Fu Xuan even suspected that if this continued for a few more years, Kiana wouldn't just be exporting Chinese culture—she'd be gradually gaining cultural definition power and starting to export Chinese values. If this combo were fully unleashed, who would believe you weren't Chinese? "Hmph, isn't it because you said Genshin Impact's main audience is Chinese players? So, isn't it only natural to cater to them?" In response to Kiana's words, Fu Xuan just blinked: "That's not really relevant anymore. We're not in the early days of the game's launch." "Huh?" "With Genshin Impact's current global scale, as long as the story doesn't collapse, there's no need to deliberately cater to any specific region's player base. Maintaining a neutral stance is enough to keep the game running smoothly." As she said this, Fu Xuan patted Kiana on the shoulder. "That's right, as long as the story doesn't collapse. Keep it up. My trust in you has increased. Sumeru is being developed very well. I didn't expect the story to hold up until Sumeru without collapsing—it's actually tying everything together. Kiana, I underestimated you." Kiana couldn't help but twitch her mouth, then turned her head away, ignoring Fu Xuan: "Forget it. Since it's already like this, let's keep the tradition of celebrating the Lantern Rite every year. After all, I quite like the atmosphere of the Chinese Spring Festival." Yes, the Sumeru version was now officially in production. This was only natural. In fact, it was already a bit late. Generally speaking, for a live-service game like Genshin Impact that constantly updates with new versions, each major version is handled by a different team. For example, Team A would be responsible for developing and operating version 1.0, while Team B would handle version 2.0. When version 1.0 ended, Team A's work would seamlessly transition to Team B, which would then take full responsibility for version 2.0. If you only started developing the next major version when the current one was about to end, it would be too late. The workload is enormous, and production capacity simply can't keep up. Even... well, even the miHoYo from another world, despite its seemingly superhuman production capacity, often struggled to keep up with demand. Take Port Bada, for example. This port, located at the intersection of Sumeru, Fontaine, and Liyue, should theoretically be even more bustling than Port Ormos. In fact, based on the actual Teyvat continent, it is more prosperous. But the port was made so crudely because... the development team focused all their efforts on Petrichor and the Sea of Bygone Eras. —But this wasn't a problem for the Genshin Impact development team under Kiana's leadership. Even without dividing into multiple teams, they could still operate perfectly. One team handling multiple tasks, multitasking effortlessly—Genshin Impact, Genshin Impact Battle Royale, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Honkai Impact 3rd... all flourishing without any chaos. That's true skill! The only problem with the Genshin Impact development team was Kiana herself. As long as she didn't mess up, the game's production would run smoothly. And now, it seemed that even by the Sumeru version, Kiana wouldn't mess up. At least, Fu Xuan took a look at the design of the Sumeru main storyline and thought it was quite good. She even did a divination, and it came out as a great omen. This... although she had doubted the accuracy of her divinations countless times when dealing with Kiana—otherwise, how could Kiana always get such great omens?—the facts proved that she was still the infallible Fu Xuan. It was Kiana who was truly miraculous. She was a woman who defied common sense. Even when retconning, she did it with such finesse that it was almost an art form. "But speaking of which, isn't it a bit too early for the Hydro Archon to make an appearance? Shouldn't she wait until the Fontaine version?" "It's fine. The players are already familiar with the Hydro Archon. The only one who isn't familiar is the Traveler." Kiana said confidently: "So, as long as the Traveler doesn't know it's the Hydro Archon, it's fine."

Chapter 163 - 161: Sumeru

Comments (0)