The sight of the stable, pure Electro energy crackling in Ren's palm had successfully defused Xianyun's immediate, apocalyptic rage, replacing it with a thousand, urgent, scientific questions.
"Explain," was all she said, her voice a low, intense, and utterly captivated, demand.
And so, sitting once more at the stone table on the now-calm mountaintop, Ren, with a few, helpful interjections from a still-slightly-panicked Ganyu, recounted the true, unedited, and utterly insane, finale of his Inazuman adventure.
He told them of the Balladeer, empowered by the Gnosis, a newborn, vengeful god. He described the terrifying battle in the sky, and his own desperate, death-defying gambit. He explained his theory, his mad idea to connect to the Gnosis, to pull on the echo of Makoto's will that he had felt within it.
As he spoke, Xianyun listened in a profound, almost reverent, silence. Her face was a mask of pure, scholarly concentration, her brilliant mind processing the sheer, breathtaking audacity of his plan.
When he got to the part about the Gnosis latching onto him, about the warm, gentle, and healing, flood of pure, divine energy that had poured into his body, he saw a look of dawning, horrified comprehension on his Master's face.
"You… absorbed it," she whispered, her voice a mixture of awe and terror. "You absorbed the raw, unfiltered, and catastrophically potent, energy of an Archon's Gnosis."
She stood up and began to pace, her movements sharp and agitated, her mind clearly struggling to grapple with the sheer, monumental scale of what had happened.
"The warning I gave you," she said, her voice a low, scolding murmur, "the absolute, non-negotiable rule about not touching any other god-forsaken element… and you go and absorb the very heart of the Electro Archon herself!" She stopped and looked at him, and her scolding was not of anger, but of a deep, profound, and retroactive, fear. "The potential for a complete, systemic, and fatal, elemental overload… the fact that you are standing here, alive and not a pile of glowing, purple dust, is a statistical and biological, miracle of the highest possible order!"
But the fear, the scolding, it was all secondary to the new, incredible, and utterly fascinating, data. "An Archon-level power," she mused, her golden eyes gleaming with a scientific fire, "a divine signature, now residing, stably, within the body of a mortal, an outlander, no less. The ramifications… the potential… this is no longer a simple anomaly, Ren. This is the subject of a new, grand, and potentially lifelong, thesis."
She stopped pacing, a new, firm, and unshakable, resolve in her eyes. "Tests are in order," she declared. "Comprehensive, thorough, and very, very, careful, tests. We must understand the nature of this new power within you. We must understand its limits, its potential, its effect on your own, original, Cryo abilities. The work begins now."
The scientist had officially taken over from the worried mother.
As the new, exciting, and slightly terrifying, research plan was being formulated, Ganyu, who had been listening with a quiet, loving, and slightly overwhelmed, awe, knew her own path was a different one.
"Master," she said, her voice full of a gentle, apologetic, but firm, resolve. "I… I must return to Liyue Harbor. I should check the work of the Qixing, since I have not been in Liyue for a while now. They need me."
She then looked at Ren, her amethyst eyes full of a deep, profound, and now much calmer, love. "But you can stay here, Ren," she said, a soft, gentle smile on her face. "If you want to. You are safe here. And you and Master have… important work to do."
She reached out and gently, lovingly, squeezed his hand, a silent, beautiful promise in her eyes. "I will keep our home in Liyue ready for you. For whenever you decide to return."