So I'm finally getting this one up. Next upload will be the ending.
This one was also interesting looking back. It didn't hit me at all back then but like I said last time the "Sigils of Permission" are just ofuda like in Onmyoudou which makes sense because they all come from Taoism. But what's interesting is what that implies here. See we learn later in this part of the quest that Osial wasn't fully released anyway because the sigils only release it for a while. That didn't make sense because you had to drop the Jade Chamber on it as a new seal right?
Wrong. If this whole sigil thing is an ofuda then it would work like ofuda do in Onmyoudou which is a seal placed on a demon. Then you can release those seals - using another ofuda - which summons the demon. So what we are actually seeing here is Childe using a bunch of forged sigils to release the seal on Osial and summon it. These summonings aren't the original creature but a spiritual representation of it. Ofuda summoned demons are called Shikigami so that's actually the Osial we fight and not the real thing and that's why the sigils only free it for a certain amount of time. The Jade Chamber was just used to keep it trapped until the sigils wore off and it was unsummoned. This also might explain why it looks more like a creature of living water than the actual hydra looking thing that Beisht is. If you look at the two side by side Beisht has definition in her heads but Osial looks just like a bunch of pillars of water with a low poly head.
Also funny enough that could even be the reason why we can fight Beisht directly but had to rely on the adepti to shoot Osial. If he was a Shikigami then you can't really fight it since it's a spirit.
What all that shows is that Zhongli was really on top of things. He knew none of the old gods could be freed from his seals but he still needed to test the people so he set it up that the Fatui could summon one of them instead. Even if Liyue failed and they couldn't beat it Osial would have been returned to the seal sooner or later. And if Liyue failed really badly then Zhongli could still easily beat a summoned version of Osial. That way Liyue stood no chance of actually getting wiped out and Zhongli would have an answer for whether or not he should retire. No wonder he was so smug about giving up his Gnosis.
Another thing that didn't hit me until now was that Childe turns into water when he leaves. Back in Unreconciled Stars Mona was able to teleport the group away from Scara. We know that only the Traveler can use the waypoints but they are physically there and it's just that nobody knows what they do. But if the allogenes have teleportation abilities outside of gameplay then it doesn't really limit them either. And because of that it actually adds to the benefits of having a Vision. Personally I've always thought of Visions as a good thing. I know many theories suggest it comes from the gods who get their power from Celestia and Celestia is bad so the Visions must be bad. I feel like everything the game has shown us so far though points in the opposite direction and this being able to fast travel through your Vision's element only helps.
And a funny thing I thought about when you get the 3 options for mentioning Childe. So the Fatui are based in Snezhnaya. Of course that doesn't mean they are all Snezhnayans so none of them have to be Russian. But Childe is a local. And he has a sister and brother named Tonia and Anton so totally Russian. (except for the fact that Tonia and Anton are both the same name. It's just Anthony in Russian) But Childe's name is Ajax and his other brother is Teucer. These are Greek names and there's even a story behind it I think everybody already knows about. And then Childe is an Old English word meaning prince. And then finally we have Tartaglia being Italian because it's based on the commedia dell'arte. So for this 1 Russian dude we've got a Greek name, an English title and an Italian code name. What the hell happened to you Childe? One day we're going to find out he's half Khaenrian and that he and his brother were adopted by his Snezhnayan family of all Anthonys. And maybe that's why he's really violent because those guys call missile firing golem robots "field tillers." [emoji]
One last thing but I don't even know if I'm just reading too much into it. So Chinese people use a rule of thumb for their history saying it goes back 5000 years. Liyue is 3700 years old and we see that most of the architecture is ancient Chinese. If we take 5000 - 3700 we get 1300. 1300 years ago would be 720AD right smack dab in the middle of Tang Dynasty China known as one of the greatest dynasties. A reason it was considered great was because of how rich it was which fits with the whole "City of Commerce" thing. Also the Silk Road was very big during this time and some say it was its Golden Age. So finally because of the Silk Road this period of Chinese history saw tons of travel between countries mostly by Middle Easterners and Turks. You could maybe relate that to why we had Sumeru NPCs and Fatui diplomats. Anyway that's not to say Liyue is based on Tang China because tons of stuff doesn't fit into the time period which I talked about before.
Tips and Tricks from a Super Casual Genshin f2p
