[4.6] How Celestia Stole Teyvat - A Genshin Impact Theory

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Learning that Zhongli has basically be handing out Celestia's authority out in the back alley to as many as he can is amazing.

Primordial One: “Would you lose?” Nibelung & Dragon Sovereigns: “Nah, we’d win.”

Celestia: looking at adeptal powers What you got there Zhongli? Zhongli: A smoothie.

The current Honkai 3rd arc is set in a Chinese mythology based bubble universe of Mars where 7 godlike beings used 7 nails to pin down the bubble universe to prevent it from collapsing. And instead of being powered by Dreams and Wishes, the fundamental energy they use is Fear. 7 characters who harnessed Fear in the most extreme ways to save their world, such as creating a lie so great that it replaced the perception of reality, turning Fear into the last hope of a dying world. Honkai 3rd and Genshin has been running story arcs that directly parallel and reflect each other in order to explore the exact same themes from different perspectives ever since Genshin first started. This arc actually parallels the latest Petrichor, Remurian world quest. Phobos, Fear is the main theme of this world quest. Fear is the equal and opposite of Dreams, both sides of the aspect of Hope, the main theme in all Hoyoverse games. To Dream is to Hope for something in the future. To Fear is to Hope that something doesn't happen in the future. Remus's Golden Dream was to create the greatest country in the world based on Justice, however the Dream became his greatest Fear as his people began to invade and attack other countries, becoming a great injustice. The Golden Song became Phobos, from a Golden Dream to Fear. But Dream and Fear is not about Good or Evil, they are just opposing forces. An evil tyrant can have Dreams of domination, and their greatest Fear would be to fail their quest at the hands of Justice. Remus's final song Phobos became the Hope for other civilisations as he himself destroyed Remuria with it, saving the rest of Fontaine from further destruction, the only way he could uphold his own Justice. If dreams are the source of power for Visions, then it very likely means that Fear is the source for Delusions. From the manga, Delusions are stated to be made from the remains of Demon God residue, concentrated final regrets and Fears of those Gods who had their Dreams broken and ended. Fears and regrets vs Dreams and wishes. Nails, needles, pins in both Genshin and Honkai represents the attempts of gods and humans at trying to control nature, the elements. Beings with sentience have to overcome nature in order to survive, and to survive you will need a strong will or Hope, either powered by Dreams or Fear. The human spirit allows us to fight against nature, humans and gods against dragons, but perhaps the best outcome is not for one side to triumph over the other, but to come to an agreement or balance; Like how Neuvillette has came to realise and understand.

I'm surprised your husband King Dreshet didn't show up this time.

The fact that Ei learned her way of sealing her mind in a puppet came basically from Zhongli is wild

Everything we learn about the Adepti just make Zhongli seem even cooler in retrospect.

As a Layla stan, she is unironically so oddly important to the story. She's brought up so many ideas in the lore it's actually so odd, not to mention the possession thing she has going that just isn't explained. Also visions = ambition and Layla herself is not a very ambitious person most of the time so why'd she get one? Also diamond shaped pupils and not round pupils are very important as all characters with non round pupils are linked to something important, Baizhu adeptal energy, Neuvillette dragons, Kaeya ye old underground i don't wanna spell, Chongyun Yang energy. She has pointy ears which are also shared by important characters such as Nahida, Klee and thus Alice, and THE ROOSTER whom she also share the very pale skin, gold eyes, and maybe the same pupils it's hard to see in winter night's lazzo. Not to mention gold is similar to amber in color which Candace says in her demo that her amber eye can see people's future but not the traveler's which is consistent with Mona's lore. She's also connected to astrology and fate, one of the most important things in the story. She made the theory in this video. She all around has oddly so much in this story despite being entirely in the background.

It’s interesting to me that Ei inadvertently learned how to put herself into her sword through Zhongli, considering that they’re both archons wary of “erosion”, it’s also interesting to me that Zhongli in his voice line about Ei says he too would like to learn about eternity, and that he himself didn’t try this technique or suggest it to any of his friends who have now passed which makes me think he already knew it wasn’t a viable solution, before Ei tried it, which to me means Zhongli has a lot more divine knowledge than our average archon. Basically I’m even more sus about Zhongli’s origins now that you’ve laid all this out. 🤯

Consider me Ashikai-pilled and lore-maxxing, I'm so all in on this theory now I'm willing to bet money most of it is true, putting it out here so I can come back to this in the next few years

Zhongli will introduce the imaginary element to Genshin let’s goooo

The dragons couldn’t defend Teyvat. Skill issue

Thinking of the ley lines like veins and the celestial nails as acupuncture needles is so simple but so damn brilliant. Oh my god

... Well this theory about the Loom of Fate is basically 100% correct

Watching this video reminded me of something I started looking at ages ago but never got around to finishing regarding the idea of Teyvat being "alive" with veins etc. - Ganyu has a voiceline that talks about how she can hear the heartbeat of the world when she lies on the grass, and her whole trailer is about how she seemingly has a prophetic dream after falling asleep on the grass. It's been a while since I've dug into it and I'm now kicking myself for not writing any of it down because I've forgotten most of the idea, but I remember having some thoughts about potential connections between the pulse of the world, hearts, ley lines/irminsul, fate, the adepti, azhdaha/memories, and Teyvat as some sort of living organism (I think mostly in regards to organs and an immune system?). I probably won't have time to go back through things for a while, but thought I'd just leave my incoherent ramblings here for now in case it sets something off for anybody else.

Not me casually side eyeing cyno’s new story quest and the hermanubis fragments after this video…. Because they might be sort of like the sigils of permission in the sense that they allow people to access this adeptal energy and are more powerful the more you have….no idea if it’s at all relevant but it is neat

Celestial loom that controls Teyvat makes a lot of sense now. During the war with the third descender the primordial one or the celestial loom has its functions ruined, hence they created the 7 gnoses and thus establishing the system of visions, whereby visions are granted to people in return for their wills/ strong yearning. Same with gnosis that collects and stores people's believe/ devotion towards their Archons, all to power that loom that controls the fate of the people.

Think of it now, if traveler manages to get the pearl which powers the heavenly principals, what they are gonna do with it? They could return it to the original ruler, whos Nibelung, but then he'd modify the rules as per the orginal order, which in turn would make teyvat inhospitable. Or, they could let it run just like the PO wanted, which wouldn't affect the civilization, then again whats the point of taking the authority, celestia is currently running it fine to sustain humanity. Reminds me of the statement from K.K. "The world shall burn no more for you shall ascend", what's the point of getting the pearl, unless traveler wants to destroy the humanity itself, which is weird to think about.

I've been believing ever since 3.6 released and Apep told us her story that none of the "Celestia punished a civilization by dropping a Celestial Nail because the humans questioned the heavens, sought to rebel, found out a secret, etc" are all correct and the Celestial Nails are dropped in response to an influx of Forbidden Knowledge ONLY. Those destroyed civilizations didn't know the full reason why they got a Nail hurled at them. I also theorized that the launching of the Celestial Nails was an automated defense system that Celestia no longer has control over. After watching this video, I'm wondering if the launching of Celestial Nails aren't even some sort of a mechanism built by someone but a 100% natural cause and effect to the Ley Lines getting disrupted specifically by Forbidden Knowledge. I know the whole video was about how the Heavenly Laws move the world and not the other way round, but Forbidden Knowledge is weird and maybe it has the power to defy common sense logic and shake the reflection to cause the real thing to shake. Or if we use the roots and branches of Irminsul analogy, corrupting the roots can cause the corresponding branches to go weird and cause things to fall apart and drop. The more Celestia is made out to be this ultimate evil mastermind, the more I wonder if there's nobody up there and never has been. Well yeah we literally meet the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles at the very beginning of the game so I don't mean that nobody literally, but I do wonder how powerful and controlling she and Celestia in general really are. I do enjoy the trope that what seemed magical or even divine turn out to be 100% mundane and explanable with existing laws of the world.