Keqing’s Hometown Heartbreak
Keqing's panicked cry tore through the cafe as she swung the mouse wildly, desperate to snag anything with the hammer and halt her bald character's plummeting descent.
The bald man, still ludicrously wedged in his jar, had slipped off the left platform, and the hammer flailed uselessly against the slick stone, finding no grip to save him.
He crashed onto the Wangxiang Stone below, and in her frantic scramble, Keqing misjudged a swing, shoving him further left with a hammer's errant push, sealing his fate.
With a resounding crack, the jar hit the ground, the screen flashing back to the "happy hometown," a reset that yanked her progress out from under her like a rug.
The game's narrator chimed in with smug glee, "There's no feeling quite like starting over," its taunting lilt twisting the knife in her already fraying nerves.
That smug voice hit like a slap—back to square one after clawing so far, the sting sharper with every step she'd gained, a brutal blow to her Yuheng pride.
She froze for a heartbeat, stunned, then gritted her teeth, her resolve flaring as she muttered, "Happy hometown? Fine, I'll climb again—Keqing doesn't break that easily."
From the starting tree, her practiced hands flew, scaling past stones and gaps with a speed born of yesterday's grind, landing her beneath the building ruins once more.
She steadied her breathing, coaching herself silently, "Caution now, no rushing—this is where it counts," her focus narrowing to a razor's edge.
The hammer hooked the distribution box, launching her up, and she aimed for the triangular steel frame, grazing it faintly before it slipped, dropping her back a notch.
Undeterred, she swung again, this time latching the frame solidly, using it as a fulcrum to hoist the bald man higher toward a tiny protrusion above.
Her aim faltered, the minuscule target rejecting her hammer's grip, but her cautious force kept the fall short, sparing her another trip to the dreaded hometown.
After twenty-plus painstaking tries, she nailed the small fulcrum, soaring to hook the iron guardrail of the house above, a small victory that eased her pounding chest.
"Whew, that's brutal," she murmured, wiping sweat from her brow, her heart racing from the relentless tension of each precarious swing.
Pressing on, she guided the bald figure left, flicking the mouse to snag a horizontal ladder mid-jump, a tricky stretch she breezed through with surprising finesse.
She traversed the ladder step by step, emerging from the hut at its end, then leapt onto the roof, hammer poised to scout the next daunting climb ahead.
Peering up, her face darkened as a chaotic jumble of upside-down stairs loomed, defying physics with a complexity that sent a shiver of dread down her spine.
The difficulty spiked visibly, a gauntlet of precision and patience, yet Keqing steeled herself—worthy challenges demanded her grit, and she'd rise to meet it.
The hammer's vertical reach fell short, so she dropped back to the hut, using its eaves as a launchpad, only to miss the first swing and land on a mercifully wide platform to the left.
She attacked again, hooking the stairs, but the clutter of desks, chairs, and debris above offered only pinprick fulcrums, each swing a maddening test of her dwindling patience.
Half an hour of grueling trial and error finally saw her through, her relief short-lived as she faced a new nightmare: a barbecue grill perched on a cliff's edge.
Above it jutted a large rock, the path upward, demanding a flawless leap from the grill—one slip here meant a straight plunge back to the start.
Keqing swallowed hard, her hands trembling slightly as she edged the bald man onto the grill, aligning the hammer with meticulous care to hook the stone.
The hammer caught, and with a steady click of the mouse, he soared toward the mountain's upper right, her breath held as he arced through the air.
A smooth stone awaited as the next fulcrum, but luck abandoned her—the hammer skidded off its glassy surface, sending the bald man tumbling downward.
She scrambled to recover, her swings growing frantic, but each desperate push veered him further left, her control slipping as the drop loomed inevitable.
With a gut-wrenching thud, the screen reset to the happy hometown, the narrator crooning, "It's like deleting your homework the night before it's due—oops, my bad!"
Keqing's expression froze, her catlike ears flattening as the mocking words sank in, an hour-plus of toil erased in a single, humiliating crash.
The game's taunt fueled a fire in her gut—mocking her, the Yuheng star, after all that effort? This was beyond infuriating, it was personal.
Liam watched from the counter, his system humming as it drank in her spiraling dismay, a rich brew of frustration and defiance swelling his emotional reserves.
The crowd murmured, some wincing in sympathy, others stifling grins, all hooked on the drama of Keqing's relentless war with this digital beast.
She sat rigid, her hands clenched, the sting of defeat warring with her unyielding will—happy hometown or not, she'd claw her way back, no matter the cost.
This wasn't just a game anymore; it was a battlefield, and Keqing vowed silently to conquer it, even if it took every shred of her famed perseverance to do so.
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