Qilin Bloodline, the Mystery of His Origins
[This Martial Soul Awakening revealed something else...
People on the Douluo Continent all say that Martial Souls are closely linked to one's bloodline. Whatever bloodline you have determines what Martial Soul you awaken. The more powerful the Martial Soul, the deeper its ties to the bloodline. They never appear out of thin air.
The Geo Archon's Vision is one thing; it became a Martial Soul because of the diary. But the Qilin Martial Soul... I've thought about it for a long time, and no matter how I look at it, something doesn't add up.
Back when I was in Liyue, I always thought I was a child Sister Ganyu had found. That year, she found me in my swaddling clothes in the woods at the foot of Jueyun Karst and took me back to Yuehai Pavilion to raise me. I followed her lead and called her Sister, and I kept calling her that for years. I never asked about my origins. Sister Ganyu didn't bring it up, and I didn't ask. With her and Rex Lapis there, Liyue was home. Who gave birth to me didn't seem all that important.
But now I've awakened a Qilin Martial Soul.
Surely that didn't come out of thin air too?
I remember how, when I was little, I always loved climbing onto Sister Ganyu's lap and reaching for the Qilin horns on her head. Every time, she would helplessly hold my hand down, but she never really pushed me away. Sometimes she would brush the top of my head with her fingertips.
And then there's Rex Lapis. I always felt the way he looked at me was different, not as though he were looking at an ordinary human child, but at the descendant of some old acquaintance. Sometimes, when I went with Sister Ganyu to see him, he would stop what he was doing and ask me how I'd been.
Could I really have Qilin blood? Maybe I was a child of the Qilin clan all along, and for some reason, I was entrusted to Sister Ganyu?
I've thought about it for ages, but I still can't be sure. What if I'm just overthinking it? What if the Martial Soul just happens to look like one? But both of my Twin Martial Souls are connected to Teyvat and to the people closest to me. How could that be such a coincidence?
Actually... even if I do have that bloodline, that would be pretty good.
That way, Sister Ganyu and I wouldn't just be family through adoption.
We could be real family!
If I can really go back someday, I'll have to ask her in person.
I'll ask about my origins, and whether I really do have blood like hers running through my veins.
...All right, and one more thing. If I really do have Qilin blood, does that mean I could grow horns like hers someday too?
Then I could bump my horns against Sister Ganyu's.
She probably... wouldn't scold me for it, would she?]
Having written that much, Gan Lin let out a long breath, stretched, and put the diary away.
Now the progress should be full...
Because the amount was so enormous, dusk had already fallen by the time Ganyu finished tipping all the Mora she had saved up. She had no heart to touch the stack of documents piled half as high as a person on her desk. She went straight to it and took out the diary, still warm as stone. Ever since her talk with Ningguang that morning, it had been as though she carried a knot of tender feelings in her heart that refused to dissolve. She kept wanting to read his words again, as if doing so could bring her a little closer to the boy in that distant world.
Her fingertips brushed the yellowing pages as she turned past the previous entry about his Martial Soul and circumstances. When the words on the next page came into view, Ganyu froze, then unconsciously began to breathe more softly.
Martial Souls are closely linked to bloodlines... The Qilin Martial Soul couldn't have come out of thin air...
"I always thought I was a child Sister Ganyu had found"... "Maybe I was a child of the Qilin clan all along"...
She read the tentative questions and guesses between the lines, watched him recall Rex Lapis and the fragments of his childhood, until at last he carefully wrote, "We could be real family." Ganyu's fingers suddenly tightened on the edge of the page, her knuckles turning slightly white.
She had never told him the full story of what happened that year. Following a faint sound of crying, she had found him in his swaddling clothes among a patch of Qingxin flowers in full bloom in a bamboo grove at the foot of Jueyun Karst. The baby was tiny, with a faint golden Qilin marking between his brows and a pair of bright black eyes that gazed quietly at her. At the time, she had assumed he was an ordinary orphan who had been entrusted there for some reason. Thinking that "if you're slow, you get nothing," she had taken him back to Yuehai Pavilion to raise him and said no more about it.
But now he had written that he had awakened a Qilin Martial Soul in another world.
He was wondering whether blood like hers ran through his veins.
Ganyu suddenly felt a sting in her nose, and her eyes grew hot in an instant.
All these years, she had stood in the gap between humans and illuminated beasts. One step forward, and she could not fit into the bustle of the mortal world; one step back, and she could not enter the cloud-wreathed abode of the adepti. She had grown used to solitude, used to holding herself back, used to treating herself as an "exception." But now, across a thousand mountains and ten thousand rivers, across the barrier between two worlds, the boy she had raised with her own hands was following the clues of his Martial Soul, drawing closer to her bit by bit.
So he had not appeared in her life out of thin air. So their flesh and blood bore the same warmth, the same markings. So she had never been the only one living with the mark of a Qilin.
Her heart pounded heavily in her chest with an excitement she had not felt in so long, one that was almost overflowing. Ganyu sprang to her feet so abruptly that the ink bottle at the corner of the desk wobbled. A little ink spilled onto the rice paper, spreading into a faint stain, but she could not spare a thought to wipe it up.
No, I can't rely on guesses alone. I need to know the truth.
She thought of Cloud Retainer almost immediately. Of the three adepti of Jueyun Karst, Cloud Retainer knew the most about Liyue's old stories and secrets. She might know exactly who Gan Lin was. Even the way Ganyu had happened to pass that bamboo grove and find Gan Lin seemed far too coincidental now that she thought about it. Unless someone had been guiding her in secret, how could she have found such a remote mountain hollow so easily?
Without a moment's hesitation, Ganyu carefully put the diary away in an inner pocket. She did not even have time to set the overturned items in order. She merely summoned a wisp of Cryo to support herself, pushed open the door of Yuehai Pavilion, and sped toward Jueyun Karst, knocking over several more stacks of files on her way out.
A secretary outside heard the commotion and knocked on the door. When she saw the scene inside, she clapped a hand over her mouth in shock, then hurried off toward the Jade Chamber.
"This is terrible-"
"Lady Ganyu's been driven mad by work!"
The evening breeze brushed the ends of Ganyu's hair, and the horns on her head seemed to glow. In the past, she had always deliberately concealed them with hair ornaments, but now she let the breeze sweep over their cool surfaces. For the first time, this proof that she was "different" filled her heart with burning anticipation.
The clouds and mist of Jueyun Karst churned beneath her feet, and the familiar cry of a crane gradually pierced through them. Ganyu landed before Cloud Retainer's abode, steadied her slightly hurried breathing, and raised a hand to knock on the stone door.
She had to know.
She had to know his origins and where his Qilin bloodline came from.
She had to know whether the two of them had been destined, from a very, very long time ago, to be each other's family.
If Cloud Retainer didn't know...
Then she would ask Rex Lapis!
Rex Lapis could do anything. She could surely find something out by asking him!