Shen Qingqiu shakes his head. "It turns out knowing the tropes and events of a place doesn't really help you, like, navigate that place," he says, "even though it definitely should. I even feel like it should, here, even though this place barely even has a uniform reality, forget a uniform genre." He says this mournfully, and a little disgruntled, as if the Mansion's lack of narrative coherence is a personal slight.