Hi guys I am Inotia King a youtuber, redditor and gamer who likes theorizing about the story. I actually cobbled together a list of some of my more important theories with respect to the game Genshin Impact and Star Rail that I have been basing all of my newer theories on. I'll be putting more of those up on Hive along with new stuff but if you're impatient I also archived all my theories here. I hope some of you guys are game theorists too. Let's try to figure out these great games together!
Yeah what about the false sky? Are the theories now confirmed? A long time ago people had theorized that Teyvat was a Bubble Universe surrounded on all sides by the Abyss aka the Sea of Quanta. Yes that is the thing we're seeing. Anybody who played Honkai would likely remember this image:
That's the Sea of Quanta. Notice the similar broken "moon" floating around chaos? I do like Genshin's upgraded look for it.
However if that's where miHoYo's going with this I think that'll be a mistake. The thing is what would the implications be if Phane's Firmament, the false sky really is keeping the Sea of Quanta from Teyvat? Well first it would in fact confirm all the theories saying Teyvat was a Bubble Universe but have you guys seen what it's like to live in a Bubble Universe? Those things are unstable. They can collapse at any second. Sometimes they merge or intersect with other universes so there's craziness going on in them. Is that Teyvat at all? Super kid friendly "power of friendship" Teyvat? No. This game is sunshine and rainbows. Sure you get the odd Chasca every now and then but mostly it's a good time. You don't ever get the misery porn of Honkai Impact for example. So that alone would constitute a continuity error but it gets worse.
I think we're all agreed that the Genshin crew is set to face off against Phanes at the end of the game. That's according to the game's heavy basis on Gnosticism. In Gnosticism the story ends with Christ coming down and fixing the physical world created by the abomination Aeon called Demiurge. You guys know our Gnostic Chorus? Yeah it's that. Our Demiurge is Phanes who isn't really a bad guy just misguided. The Abyss is a real threat to Teyvat but it's also a threat to every other universe. And every universe has its own Phanes. In Honkai for example that would be the Cocoon of Finality which set in motion every cycle from development to destruction in that game. In this universe that's something Phanes wants to avoid but it's still a product of its creator and so it has chosen to preempt this outcome. Rather than wait for humanity to grow so decadent that it needs to reset the universe it is stopping humanity from ever getting that far and causing large scale resets within the same cycle aka dropping those nails and destroying certain civilizations. This is why we need to oppose it. It's hindering humanity's true development which we saw play out already at the end of Part 1 in Honkai Impact. As it works in Gnosticism that'd be gnosis which we'll get to with Aether.
So what about that right? What's the problem? Well if we're set to oppose Phanes what are we opposing exactly? What was Deshret and Nabu's goal? Breach the false sky. What are the Harbingers working on, at least Pierro and Dottore with Scara only learning about it later? Opposing the principles and the false sky. Basically to oppose the Heavenly Principles we need to get through that false sky and bring Teyvat back to the real world. But what if the "real world" is the Sea of Quanta? Not really the same inspiring tale is it? Breaching a Bubble Universe only leads to one thing and that's the destruction of said universe. So unless miHoYo goes for a literal plot hole and breaks with its own established Hoyoverse lore we necessarily need to abide by the principles in this case. It's actual suicide to oppose them because all that's out there in the supposed "real world" would be annihilation. It'd be like driving off a cliff to escape the cops pursuing you. Sure you get away from them and Thelma and Louise is a classic but wow was that a stupid solution lol
Side Note: That said if they are intending to go through with this then there is a cute little tie-in to the Honkai series. Bubble Universes are sustained sometimes by feeding Honkai Energy into an Ether Anchor. Another way to spell ether is aether as in Aether and Aether is being tapped by Zhongli, Yae, Neuvillette and probably Mavuika now to be a living record of Teyvat. In other words he may in fact be an Ether Anchor, the Aether Anchor. I had come up with this one theory where Aether may replace Phanes as a god whose dream sustains the universe. (of course there was still a better version of that too)
Anyway since that would suck, let me bring up the old theories I had (and that dream one) to show how the lore could be upheld and give us an even more interesting story. (and in spite of what miHoYo showed it could still work out) What did Mavuika punch? The sky? No. An Abyssal thing shot up from out of the Sacred Flame and created the weird black fractal. Mavuika punched that and then the excess energy flowed through it and created that distortion in the sky. What is the Abyss? It's part of the Void Realm. What's the Void Realm? That's right, the Sea of Quanta. So if you punch a manifestation of the Sea of Quanta hard enough what would you expect to see? The Sea of Quanta itself. There are two ways this can be explained in spite of what we were shown. First if Teyvat is a Bubble Universe and the sea is all around us why did the Abyss need to infect the Night Kingdom at all? Why wouldn't it just send all of its power at the sky? Breaching the Firmament would solve all of its problems so why would it jump through all the hoops of infecting Khaenri'ah or getting Nibelung to utilize its power? Why would it need to infect the Night Kingdom and then shoot that big fractal from it, through the Sacred Flame and into the sky? Isn't it just on the other side of said sky? And then Mavuika punching through the false sky. Wouldn't that be exactly what the sea wanted? We just helped it weaken the false sky it was trying to break through anyway. So all of those points make it seem unlikely that what we saw was the false sky. Now here's the other explanation. Mavuika punched the Abyss fractal thing. Her power then filtered through it to then open up that breach which gave us a peek at the Sea of Quanta. Since again the Abyss is a projection of the sea it makes perfect sense that what actually happened was that she punched through its layers and revealed its true form underneath. What can we do with a revelation like that?
Side Note: I didn't actually know this but apparently the big Abyss thing in the sky had a name: Gosoythoth. And of course the internet being the internet they quickly realized G-O-S-O-Y could be rearranged to Y-O-G S-O and make the name Yog Sothoth which then made them jump the gun and go "ERMAHGERD Lovecraft! It's all about Lovecraft!" Yeah so anybody who has played another Hoyoverse game besides Genshin will know this isn't anything new. In fact not only is it not that nuanced for miHoYo to use Lovecraft's works for subtle hints or to name something, [Yog Sothoth is a literal character of the Hoyoverse.](https://houkai2nd.miraheze.org/wiki/Yog-Sothoth_(Awaken%29) Sorry to burst anybody's theorist bubbles but all of these references are just the same old connection to the Sea of Quanta. It's Cosmic Horror which the Sea of Quanta is the definition of. It's not the whole story. Let's just move on. (O wait before that I should point out I've actually brought up another one of Lovecraft's horrors myself and "she" too is a Hoyoverse character, the Eldest God Azathoth whose dream is creation. It's actually linked in that previous Side Note above. The Hoyoverse isn't just Lovecraft. Lovecraft is just stuff miHoYo references to tell their story and represents the stuff beyond just any single universe.)
While people were thinking that Teyvat's a Bubble Universe I was theorizing that Teyvat's actually one of the healthiest universes on the tree. The "false sky" is also in Gnosticism, namely Earth. The physical world and our own physical bodies are separating us from divinity. We're all tiny specks of the true god because we were created by another splinter of it, the Aeon Demiurge. But because Demiurge was created the wrong way it thought it was the true god and feared humanity reaching its level. This lore is in the Old Testament, the Tower of Babel but we have this story in Genshin as well, the Prayers Artifact Series. Humanity tried building a tower to reach heaven. God got mad and not only destroyed it but also spread humanity far and wide to prevent us from ever doing that again. We lost the unified language. Unified. Like the unified human civilization period of Teyvat. We oppose the false sky because it is Genshin's version of the Demiurge separating us from the true god, true Ascension. But Deshret and Nabu failed right? Further attempts ended up corrupting Deshret with forbidden knowledge. That's proof that all that's waiting out there is the Abyss right? Therefore Phanes created the false sky not to keep us from the Imaginary Tree but as a countermeasure against the Sea of Quanta. This is true. Basically it's a half truth that the Firmament is keeping the Abyss out of Teyvat and protecting its people. In fact we already have a version of this story, I suppose a few versions. The one I think is easiest to see would be Liyue's Archon Quest. Zhongli had been shepherding Liyue's people for 3700 years. But one day he heard some people talking and wondered if his time had passed and if he was no longer needed. He willingly set up a test and stepped down from Archonhood once the people met his expectations and showed they were ready to lead their own lives. Phanes hasn't reached that epiphany yet.
And miHoYo wants that set up for the long game. That's why we're seeing the "false sky" as being the barrier between Teyvat and oblivion. It's another red herring and if you played Penacony in Star Rail you know how much miHoYo loves their red herrings. By the end of the game when we're ready to break through the false sky Phanes will tell us that all that's out there is the Abyss and to break through it would only lead to death. We supposedly have proof of that here in Natlan and previously with Deshret's downfall. So what will we do? Break it and kill ourselves? Or be good little boys and girls and play by the rules, the heavenly rules? It's the red pill/blue pill plot. Do we risk defiance because we know the Heavenly Principles are wrong? Or do we play it safe since Phanes doesn't actually mean us harm?
Of course the answer is plain from a Gnostic perspective. Yes you risk it. Staying put is allowing the Demiurge to greedily keep you humans from your true potential. We must return to the Ogdoad where we belong. We need to take control of our own fate and free ourselves from the clutches of the Heavenly Principles. Or as we saw in Natlan already, to live without regret is to take on risks. Kachina would still be dead if we didn't. Vichama didn't take on that risk and ended up with lifelong regrets. (he got better.... if you call that better lol) So we will be rewarded for our courage as we find out that the Firmament isn't actually keeping the Abyss out. Again, if it was out there why would it keep using so many other more convoluted means of breaching Teyvat instead of just focusing its immense power against the false sky?
In this version of mine instead of creating a crazy tonal shift late into the game (as we find out everything we'd been working towards was foolish and bringing us closer to destruction so we should just stop and follow the directions of our lords and masters in Celestia) we're going to honor the Gnostic ideal of gnosis and find a way to ascend. We'll carry out the story in Liyue on a Teyvat-wide scale, create not just a manmade facsimile of Celestia in the Jade Chamber but the real thing and succeed god. We'll achieve the goals of several that came before us and take humanity into a bright future.
Short version? Mihoyo is trying to prevent us from knowing how this story will end by throwing red herrings at us. That way they can pull off a Catch-22 fake out: We either break through the false sky and end up releasing the Abyss into Teyvat leading to death or we stay imprisoned within it. But the real story is to reframe the situation: That wasn't the false sky we saw.