Somewhere in Liyue, far from Wangshu Inn.
Lightning flashed, thunder roared, and rain poured down.
A campfire burned inside a cave.
Ellin and Xiao were sheltering from the rain there.
Xiao sat at the cave entrance, listening to the rain. Its sound and coolness helped soothe his restless heart a little.
Beside the campfire, Ellin narrowed her eyes slightly as she looked at Xiao.
It was already the fifteenth day since they had met.
To be honest, Xiao's condition was far more complicated than she had imagined.
In Xiao's story quest in the game, he had said he was sorry for troubling the Traveler, because the karmic debt within him had reached the point of overflowing without his noticing.
The monsters near Wangshu Inn had been affected by the karmic debt he emitted, becoming more frenzied and aggressive.
Now, the karmic debt within Xiao had already reached that same point.
He might have looked perfectly at ease in the game, but bearing karmic debt that pushed him to his very limits was no small matter.
With his mind already unstable, Xiao was especially at risk of losing control and going berserk at any moment.
To keep anything from happening to him, Ellin had stayed by his side for the past two weeks or so.
During that time, to avoid letting his karmic debt affect the ordinary people at Wangshu Inn, and to eliminate the monsters affected by it,
Xiao had never returned to Wangshu Inn. Instead, he roamed the wilderness, constantly fighting and killing monsters.
Ellin had followed him throughout, joining him in clearing out many of them.
After witnessing the lingering hatred of the Archons, Ellin soon understood what the so-called karmic debt within Xiao really was.
To explain karmic debt, one thing had to be established first.
Liyue