Hello readers, this is the first time I am trying to write a fanfiction. English isn't my native language, so sentences maybe a bit off here and there. Sorry for that. Also, I'd like to add that, even though I am a hardcore Genshin Impact fan, I am terrible with names and all of any game I play, especially if it isn't explicitly stated outside of the lore in various forms of text. I have tried to be as accurate with lore as possible, as precise with the dialogues of characters as possible and... In short I have tried my best to stay true to the lore but I am not so confident in my memorization skills, so maybe at certain points, the characters and all may appear a bit or a lot OOC. It may even happen that I get certain facts, skills, name etc. Wrong, so if you all will point it out in the reviews, that'd help me a lot. And with that adieu, I sincerely wish you do enjoy my work. Thanks for reading this.

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When the glistening yellow hues of the sun, shone upon the shadows of plants near Bubu Pharmacy, the big door was being opened slowly. Except the Milleliths patrolling the shopping district, there was no citizen in sight. So you may ask, who is this short-heighted, light purple haired girl with ghostly pale skin and magenta coloured eyes, leaving the pharmacy in such early hours of the morning?

She is Qiqi, a zombie herb-gatherer for the Bubu Pharmacy. Clad in mostly purple coloured clothes, she carries Talismans all over her, and the most prominent one is on her head. Now, this adorable little zombie, has a certain disorder of absolute amnesia, and has to follow strict commands, that she instructs to herself. But, if the Talisman on her head is endangered somehow, even minutely, she'll defend it with hook or crook.

Such a push hasn't come to shove, that she need to rely on aggressiveness to defend that Talisman, but don't take our Qiqi for a frail little girl. With every slash that she strikes, she is more than capable of wounding a person to death. It's different for monsters and special beings, who may face, her magic prowess, granted to her by her Cryo vision. She is a zombie and such, she's immortal but even zombies can be wounded and so she uses Herald of Frost. It's one of her adeptus arts, which forms a ghastly ball of ice around her, which not only heals her up but also does cryo damage to her enemies. Using preserver of fortune, she can gain healing based on the amount of attack she does. No wonder, she's so special.

She had crept out in the early morning to gather herbs for the pharmacy, which is a daily routine for her. She supposedly goes out when the sun rises and comes back when the sun sets… atleast on normal occasions. Due to one of her passive talent, Former life memories, she can easily gather resources unique to Liyue, majority of which are ingredients she needs for the herbs. Because of her protocol of following her commands sincerely, infact, too sincerely, she encounters situations where she gets stuck in an infinite loop because of an error in her judgement. Like, once she miscalculated height of a terrain on which she had to climb to get some Violet grass, and got stuck in a loop where she climbed a bit, fell down, then climbed again and repeat the process. So when, she doesn't return for a long time, or someone discovers her going berserk in circles, its upto Baizhu to rescue her. Whispering sweet words of love into her ears, does make her stop… or clears the memory that led to the error of her orders in the first place. But it doesn't always work with Baizhu, because of various reasons. It'd be wrong to say that, he doesn't care for Qiqi.

When Qiqi, inititally ran away from the amber she was sealed in for hundreds of years, and Baizhu stumbed upon her, she was like an enigma to him. And because of the nature of his work, and also a cunningly curious mind, he adopted her. It was initially for researching her, while never meaning an actual harm. But because, Baizhu had no one to call his family member, Qiqi quickly filled a void for his daughter. His conflicting emotions while still trying to analyse her from a researcher's perspective, and also trying to bring out her of the misery of her errors, his sweet talking of love actually feels insincere more often than not. And because, she goes to dangerous places to collect these herbs, he can't rely on normal people to keep an eye on her. In all these years, he came to know about her strength and her capabilities. She may seem like a child, but that child-like wonder only exists on a mere curiosity level. Otherwise, she's far more mature than Baizhu himself.

And so was the reason, because of which Baizhu was perplexed. In all these years, only on certain occasions, he had to go actually look for Qiqi otherwise, she came to home by dawn. He'd wait with a serious face, for his zombie daughter, and feel slightly relieved inside when he would see a shining object, under the crescendo of falling sun. That shining object would be the large Talisman on the head of Qiqi. She'd give the herbs and other ingredients to him, with same monotonous voice everytime "Qiqi brought some herbs. Didn't find Noctilius Jade. Didn't find Jungyeun Chilly. Didn't find…" and repeat every each thing she couldn't find. Baizhu would hear it without a dread for passing time, and give her headpats, which she'd take gladly although with stoic expression on her face. But the little jumps she'd take in her steps would convey that she felt a little happy. But nowadays, that happiness wouldn't come naturally, it has to be rescued more and more. The errors were increasing in frequency and Baizhu was worried, but he couldn't babysit her all day, and neither knew of someone who could diagnose a zombie. And even among Zombies, Qiqi was a very special case. Like a true father-figure, he was slowly becoming more and more anxious for her.

Again, when she didn't come back by dawn and the ground was slowly being enveloped by grey veils of early darkness, he told one of the staff to look over the pharmacy, and meanwhile went to fetch Qiqi. Along the way, raindrops began to fall with an increasing tempo in their speed.

"This is bad omen" he thought and increased his pace, to search for her near Jueyun Karst, one of her favourite place to pick up herbs.

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On the other side, Qiqi couldn't fathom the tsunami of danger that was about to struck her. The tempo of rain had increased tenfold near Jueyun Karst, and electro slimes were running hitherto, to find a cave or such. They were in group of 8, with 3 big ones and 2 small slimes. They were crossing a lake, until one of them saw a little girl (Qiqi) going in circles around a large tree. Electro slimes have a reflexive action to hurt any humans they can find. The reason why this happens is a mystery, but it's a long running theory that because humans formed civilizations, they pushed out the monsters like hulichurls and slimes away from the resourceful territories. These monsters had to survive with bare minimum while humans, were enjoying lavishly. As a large part of the fragments, that make slimes think, are very heavily influenced by their emotions; they began to inherit the hate for humans, with each evolving phase.

And such a hatred was evident in the movements of a small slime which was making it's way to Qiqi. The other slimes soon followed the suite. Qiqi's reflexes were telling her that she's in danger. But the failure to disobey her own orders were of much higher priority, than her intuitive reflexes. With one eye, she saw the group of electro slimes running towards her, but her feet kept on going in circles around the tree. Her pace did increase, because of an inherent reflex that seemed to send bursts of information via neurons in her feet muscles, in the eyes of dreading dangerous dilemma. After a long time, Qiqi has felt genuinely scared. The rain has also wet her clothes and Talisman. If electro slimes hit her now, it'd become a do or die situation for her.

But she still couldn't break out of the loop.

"Ahhh…" she said in pain but the voice was still meek due to her cold vocal cords. If one were to listen to it without feasting their eyes on the scenario, they'd think a sunsieta has fell on her head or something. But the rain along with the electro burst, hit Qiqi with such a vigorous force that she was thrown away. She stood up, as she still had to follow the orders, despite the pain she felt, despite some of her organs giving up on inside. The large slimes, took the opportunity to hit her again and again, thrice. She was thrown away much farther because of the declining steep cliff. But now she was hurt so badly, she could only be saved from the blessing of the statue of Archon. She'd still not die, but she'll slowly rot away. One by one, her muscles will tear until, her heart, liver and kidney would begin to rot and divide. And She'll exist as nothing but a mere part of soil. The soil, which made her remember… that event. The event, she can't remember except for some flashes and the memories of colossal pain. The pain, which make her wish that she gets an eternal life. She didn't knew why, she didn't know any reason, but she knew she has an insane fear of death. Most people who witness death, as close as how she has witnessed it, began to hate fearing it. They began to fear the act of fear itself. But Qiqi was still a child back then, and those memories, those emotions are still preserved inside her, even after all these years. She only knows Adepti as true god, as they took her life, but gave her new life as well, instead of just forgetting about her, like the Archons did with countless children and old people during their war with each other. So, she still stood up, and begin to walk towards the cliff, and towards the tree once again. Her purple dress was torn in several places, and because of that, her notebook fell from one of the pockets. She was limping towards the tree, where the Electro slimes awaited her.

They were enjoying this scenario. After a very long time, they have felt the adrenaline rush of slowly pushing a person with vision to death. They knew she'd come to them, so they just waited with electric blood lust in their mind.

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"Tell me again, who was that genius that forced me to travel from Mondstadt to Liyue?" Aether said.

"It was… Paimon"

"And despite the fact, that I came here to indulge that genius with her unending apetite, who was the one that told me to travel to Jueyun Karst, to get fresh Quingxin flower… so she can eat. A. New. Variety. Of. Jam."

"Geez… I get it. Paimon's bad. Paimon's greedy and selfish. But Paimon's also afraid of getting cold. Can we get somewhere safe sooner?"

"I am looking for a cave or something, but this rain is making hard for me to see. How good it'd be to get inside a cave, light some fire and eat some food."

"You have FOOD!"

"Yes… Emergency Food."

"Yayyy… yy.. Wai-"

But instead of listening to her, Aether just ran ahead, while Paimon followed screaming that, Aether promised that he won't joke about that again. Just a few steps ahead, Aether found something lying on the ground. He picked up the object, as he has formed a habbit of picking up every object he finds curious. It was a notebook torn in various places.

"What's this?" Paimon asked

"A notebook of some kind."

Aether turned it back and forth to get some info out of it. He, looked around thinking that maybe there's some liyue local around here, who has gotten stuck in rain and forgot/dropped his notebook. But except, a few purple and yellow flashing lights in distance, there was nothing special…

Hmm…? Aether thought Purple and yellow flashing lights

Shit!

He immediately tried to run away. It was foolish to fight in this weather with electro slimes alone, with no pyro friend by his side. But then, he saw something that crucified him to that spot.

That hat, That height, Those frilly clothes…

And that fluttering paper on the forehead…

Wait, that's…

"Hey, where are you running to?" Paimon screamed

"Just disappear for sometime… There's danger ahead."

Paimon was about to scream Geez once again, but saw the the electro slimes attacking the Weird-Zombie girl. She still thought it was pretty reckless and idiotic for Aether to just rush up ahead, but also felt a tinge of admiration for the kind of person she has chosen to partner for travel companionship.

Qiqi, was nearing the worst case scenario. Aether, with his vision scanned to see that her health was nearly 0, some more hits and she'd be gone. Luckily, he had his festering desire sword with him, which he has obtained in fully refined form, after helping Albedo in dragonspine. As he currently didn't had the blessing of Geo Archon over him, his anemo attacks would be useless. He'd have to rely on physical damage.

"Damn, I hope, I get out out of this fight unscathed…" he wished. And that wish didn't age well.

Initially, he ran upto the main 3 big electro slimes, giving them 5 slashes randomly, which diverted all other slime's attention to him. He did this with the idea of diverting them far away from Qiqi, as a result of which, she'll be able to run away, but all she did was go circling around the tree once again.

"Damn, what is that idiot doing?" Aether thought, but soon realized his mistake when he remembered the first encounter with her. He recalled herself giving orders to her, and thus made a simple 2+2=4 conclusion, on why she was behaving in this way. The top, was torn in such manner that, a few more wear and tear, would make him see something illegal. The pockets were badly scratched. And on top of that, she didn't even had health to walk normally. SHE WAS LIMPING!

Aether followed a simple process of attacking the closest one, thrice or 4 times if, opening allowed it and run away. They'd follow and he'd do the same trick again, but his stamina was failing him slowly. After the first two cycles, the gap between him and the slimes began to become smaller and smaller. The small slimes with some top-notch speed, hit him in the back and he fell hard on the ground. One of the big slime, the only yellow one among them, jumped in air to humph him. Aether rolled left, gained a distance, and used Palm Vortex to group them together. Due to the high physical damage of festering desire, he killed the five small slimes in one go, and the yellow one followed the same route. The last two big ones left, were a big challenge. As he slashed them heavily, they both got thrown away. Aether used the stamina momentum to rush to Qiqi. The other two had a good amount of strength left, but he didn't had enough to counter them, in worst case scenario. Adventuring with Bennet once, he had understood that he must always be ready for worst case scenario.

So he ran to Qiqi and grabbed her. But she wouldn't budge. He tried to pull her, but she'd still try to go back to the tree again. He took out her notebook, thinking if she had wrote something about it. He knows that she keeps all her notes here… aka a dummy guide to herself.

"When Qiqi get's stuck. Can't climb up. Can't come down. Can't change route, whisper sweet things of love in Qiqi's ear. Qiqi doesn't understand but words of love feels good. Qiqi feels great and blanks her mind."

Sweet words of love?

Aether, couldn't think of anything. But when he saw the two slimes rushing in, he quickly embraced her from behind.

"Qiqi. Stop this. I don't know what kind of love you need to be talked to you. But I will help you find it, if we get out of here."

And weird thing happened… Qiqi actually stopped.

"You promise" she said in the same stoic tone as ever "You promise to find Qiqi… Love. Baizhu promises. But never completes."

"Yes, I will. Now please come with me."

Qiqi, stopped in her track, but as the damages actually reach her brain cells and registers in her mind, she went numb and fell unconscious. Aether picked her up in bridal carry.

"She is as very light, just like a child"

These were his last words, before he read the room and fled the scene in the face of imminent danger.

Meanwhile all Qiqi could hear in the deepest part of her soul was "Traveller told Qiqi. He promised, he would find love for Qiqi. Then Qiqi won't feel lonely and sad."