The proclamation had barely settled into the stone of Liyue Harbor before the city buzzed in a dozen different directions: merchants calculating delivery savings, cooks imagining electric stoves, masons grumbling and then cheering at the prospect of work hauling heavier loads. The word "car" slipped from mouth to mouth like a new delicacy. For a people who traded in contracts and certainty, the idea of regularized roads and lawful driving felt oddly comforting.
Inside the General Affairs Department, the meeting room still smelled faintly of tea and melted wax. Yanfei sat hunched over papers, quill scratching with efficient impatience. Keqing stood by the window, arms folded, watching the harbor bustle. Takumi leaned back in his chair with a thin stack of documents—his amendments.
"Medical checks at Bubu Pharmacy," he said, tapping a clause. "No minors. No driving while intoxicated or severely fatigued. People with severe illnesses—unfit to drive. Add that the license exam requires both written and practical sections."
Yanfei's eyes lit up the way they did when a clause was particularly well-turned. "Good. I'll draft the penal code for violations and set fines that are actually prohibitive. No sense in having a law that means nothing."
Keqing snorted. "You're making fines a thing of principle now?"
"Public safety is worth principle," Yanfei replied. "Also: Bubu Pharmacy will supply the medical form—Baizhu will love being useful beyond herbs."
At the mention, Keqing gave a small smile. "We'll arrange a formal cooperation agreement. Bubu gets official sanction and probably a good amount of foot traffic."
Takumi took the paper back and scribbled a few additions. His handwriting made the clauses look clinical and decisive. He passed it to Yanfei with only a single sentence of private instruction. "Make sure the law requires re-examination for those who pass but later fail to renew medical approval. Old eyes and slow reflexes are not theoretical problems."
Yanfei read it and grinned. "You're ruthless."
"Efficient," Takumi corrected. "There's a difference."
The Driving School — A Field of Cones, Flags, and Qianyan Soldiers
Within a week the testing ground at Guili Plains—near the Wangshu Inn—was under construction. It was a tidy rectangle of packed earth, flanked by temporary stands, practice lanes, and a low wall of bargain stalls already selling tea and snack skewers for waiting families. Takumi had insisted on thoroughness: the exam venue contained a written pavilion, a practical course, and an obstacle area with a reverse-to-parking bay that could make even steady hands sweat.
Keqing took command of the driving syllabus. She had an obsession with details that rivaled any bureaucrat's. She wrote the driving checklists personally: clutch use (if the car ever required it), hand positioning for steering, speed rules for corners, and the etiquette of honking in narrow alleys. Takumi chuckled inwardly—Keqing's version of "parking" included a five-point checklist and a poem about patience.
The first class? The Qianyan Army. A row of soldiers in neat armor lined up, helmets glinting, faces serious. They had been given the easier, schematic vehicles to learn in; Takumi's team let them practice safe starts and braking first, while Keqing emphasized observation.
"Remember," Keqing said, voice strict in a command way that had menacing efficiency, "your job is to protect people, not scare them. If you lose a wheel, you lose a citizen's trust."
A corporal raised his hand. "Ma'am, what if a rogue hilichurl gets in the way of the road?"
Keqing blinked, almost amused. "Then you defend the road and call the Adventurers' Guild, not run over the hilichurl like a bandit."
A soldier muttered something about "lessons learned." The rest of the class pretended not to notice when Klee clambered up on a crate and shouted, "Practice makes kaboom!"
Takumi intercepted Klee and gave her a small, wry smile. "Klee, no explosives on the test track."
Klee pouted. "But practice!"
"Practice with the jump rope, not with the fireworks."
Klee relented, but only to swap a pocketful of gummy sweets instead of bombs.
Yanfei's Draft — Legal Poetry in a Chaotic World
Yanfei worked like a lawyer possessed. Paragraphs marched in her neat hand, definitions sat like tiny footsoldiers, and the penalties were both precise and enforceable. The Traffic Safety Law wasn't just a list of do's and don'ts; it read like a city's first attempt to codify the future.
"Article 1," Yanfei announced to the small group, "defines what a vehicle is and assigns categories: passenger, light goods, heavy goods. Article 2 establishes the licensing types. Article 3 defines road priority and pedestrian right-of-way."
Ganyu blinked in her gentle, bookish way. "You even typed out a clause about proper lighting and reflectors?"
Yanfei beamed. "Street safety isn't fashion; it's necessity."
They worked through corner cases—the noble's exemption (none), the adeptus exemption (for the sake of safety, no flying during traffic hours), the curious case of animals—especially hilichurls and small detestable bird-like creatures that liked roads.
When Takumi suggested the medical check at Bubu Pharmacy, Yanfei added it as a paragraph with a ribbon: "Drivers must present a current medical certificate issued by Bubu Pharmacy or an equivalent licensed institution. Failure to produce valid certification makes the license null."
"There," Yanfei said, tap-tap-tapping the pen. "Subpoena-proof and politely terrifying."
"I want an appeals process," Keqing said. "No one should lose freedom on a clerical error."
Yanfei accommodated, crafting a short, fair appeals mechanism with time limits and review boards. Keqing nodded approvingly.
Takumi, watching them work, felt the comfortable hum of a machine being built from human parts—law, enforcement, and civic will.
Takumi's Hidden Engine — The Blueprint System Explains Itself
That night, long after the others left, Takumi sat alone by the faint glow of a single lamp. His system—his secret—softly replied in his mind, a barely audible interface only he could perceive.
[BLUEPRINT CORE — STATUS]
Function: Convert real-world urban needs into parametric designs.
Outputs: Scalable road designs, traffic flow simulations, resource logistics, structural load calculators.
Privilege: Owner-only visibility.
He whispered to no one, more as a note to himself than confession: "This is the city's skeleton. Not magic, but math. Not divine, just efficient."
The blueprint system was not a divine artifact in the usual sense; it was a structured intelligence that accepted constraints and returned optimized designs. Takumi could input variables—estimated population distribution, average transport speed, material supply rates—and the system would spit out layouts: where to put drains, where a transformer should sit, what thickness a roadbed needed at certain load intervals. It even recommended phased construction timelines to minimize supply bottlenecks.
[MODULE: SLIME INTEGRATION]
Recommendation: Hydro and rock slimes for day-to-day rural work; controlled enclosures with buffer slime-pools.
Note: Bioethical concerns flagged. Human oversight required.
Takumi flicked the interface closed. Nobody else would know. The blueprints remained his secret advantage—he could show the final drafts and the finished city, but the invisible engine behind them would always be a private edge.
To him it felt right. Liyue would own its future by human hands, aided by his silent machine—but always with the people deciding. If the city prospered, Takumi would be content to be the unseen gear turning in the background. If it failed, his system would be a small consolation and a heavy burden.
Practicalities and the First License Exams
The first written exams were quiet affairs. The pavilion smelled of ink and sea salt as villagers answered questions about road signs, right-of-way, and pedestrian courtesy. Yanfei sat at the head, a tiny judge in a sea of earnest faces, watching blind to the distraction of Klee offering sweets in exchange for correct answers.
The practical exams were staged in the afternoon sun. Keqing supervised parallel parking with an almost surgical detachment. Candidates sweated, palms white on wooden steering wheels, while Keqing called out corrections in clipped, efficient syllables.
"Throttle control! Keep the eye-line at the bumper. No, further. You are doing three-point parking like a drunken banquet host."
At one point, a nervous fisherman tried to reverse into a space and accidentally performed an elegant little drift. Keqing froze, then burst into a rare, open laugh. "Well," she admitted, "that was technically correct."
When the militia's corporal took his turn, his display of precise braking and quick but safe maneuvers earned a disciplined nod from Keqing herself. She made him promise to teach his squad not to run over vendor stalls.
A hush fell when a dignified carriage—one of the official Ningguang models—pulled to the test's edge. The carriage contained Ningguang herself, who had insisted on being examined to set an example. Her hair was immaculate. She listened to Keqing's instructions with measured patience and then—calmly—performed a flawless reverse park that brought a small cheer from the onlookers.
Ningguang allowed herself a faint smile. "Civic duty, indeed."
Klee's Version of Driving School
Klee's "lessons" mostly involved her running about the test track, attaching harmless wind flags and cheering each driver on as if each successful reverse park were a victory over a dragon. She solemnly presented stuffed frogs to the top three students and sold "Kaboom!" stickers at a stall run by an overenthusiastic vendor who had somehow purchased the last of her gummy sweets.
When one young lad misjudged a corner, Klee rattled off the safety rhyme Keqing had written (Keqing insisted on a mnemonic) and then offered him a sticky lollipop. The boy grinned, his nerves undone, and passed.
Takumi watched the chaos with an affectionate exhale. This was how a city was born: laws and doctrines, yes—but also small human moments, candy bribery, imperfect practice, a stern woman teaching soldiers not to treat wheels like weapons, and a child who believed every success should be rewarded with a frog.
Evening — A Harbor That Dreams in Copper and Light
By sundown, the test track simmered down. Yanfei had a neat stack of proposed changes, Keqing was scheduling class rosters, and Takumi drafted the final blueprint for the driving school to hand to Ningguang.
Outside, as the harbor's lamps—some lanterns, some prototype electric posts—flickered to life, Takumi allowed himself one indulgence. He walked Klee to the pier where the water reflected a dozen soft points of light. For a moment the city looked like a living diagram—roads, people, light, ships, a network coming alive.
Klee leaned on his arm, cheeks still sticky from lollipop sugar. "Brother Takumi," she said, simple and hopeful, "will I be able to come to Liyue whenever the roads are done?"
Takumi looked at the little girl who had already altered more of his days than any plan had suspected.
"Yes," he said, quiet but firm. "You'll always be welcome. But promise me—no unlicensed kabooms on public property."
Klee saluted with sticky fingers. "Promise!"
Takumi smiled and, for the first time in a long while, felt like the weight of the coming changes sat on broad, capable shoulders. There would be problems—laws to enforce, money to account for, bridges to reinforce—but tonight the city had taken a step forward, and that step had laughter under it.
A town could be rewritten by blueprints, yes—but it was the people who made the lines mean anything.
And Liyue, stubborn and proud and careful, had just learned to drive.