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~ Beidou: Blackcliff Slasher ~

The Captain of the Crux was a charismatic leader who commanded the respect of each and every single member of her crew, having earned their absolute loyalty after getting them through countless encounters at sea that would have definitely overwhelmed a lesser crew. The Crux certainly earned their reputation, being the only naval crew outside of the Shogun's Army capable of passing to and from the borders of Inazuma, which itself is notorious for its perpetual thunderstorms that have kept all but the most courageous people away from the Land of Electro.

With majority of its crew hailing from Liyue, The Crux always returns to the harbor after every long voyage, anchoring their ship just off the shores of the Guyun Stone Forest. Beidou then gives her entire crew a few weeks off to see their families before they set off towards their next voyage, with only a handful of people electing to stay behind to man the ship. As a person of the seas, Beidou preferred to keep her time on land short as much as she could, but whenever she had to set her feet down, she would always make sure that not a moment of it went to waste.

While Beidou had made good company with most of the people of Chihu Rock and the South Wharf, one person she always goes to see whenever she's around the harbor is the Tianquan of the Liyue Qixing, Ningguang. As the people who govern Liyue, the Qixing stand well above the people, and for majority of Liyue's citizens, seeking an audience with the Tianquan is something considered next to impossible. And then there's Beidou who simply marches up to Yujing Terrace, getting Bu'yun to take her to the Jade Chamber. The guide of course, having been instructed by Ningguang to take Beidou up to the chamber whenever the latter asked, much to the envy of most people, particularly the merchants who seek to be on the good graces of the Qixing.

Throughout the years, Beidou and Ningguang have grown to become close friends, despite the latter's annoyance at the former's lack of care towards established decorum. The two first met when the former had only begun forming The Crux with a handful of her most trusted associates, and the latter still a fledgling member of the Qixing. Their relationship initially began as business associates, with Ningguang often commissioning Beidou and by extension, The Crux, to hunt for rare minerals that exist outside of those in Liyue. Trading these rare minerals helped the city's economy while The Crux uses the generous rewards they receive for their services to support themselves, mainly in keeping the Alicorn well-maintained and highly able to sail the waters of Teyvat. Over time, this business partnership grew into a close friendship as the two discovered that they were actually alike in more ways than they thought.

On one of her visits to the Jade Chamber, Ningguang presents Beidou with a rather sizeable amount of rare Blackcliff ores as well as an unusual crimson ore as a gift, in addition to The Crux's remuneration for their most recent commission. Ningguang then tells her of the legend of the Blackcliff weapons of ancient Liyue, a collection of powerful weapons that were forged from the same ores presented to her. Initially, Ningguang considered having a sword forged ahead of time, but decided to just have Beidou herself take the ores to have it forged, allowing her to tailor the weapon to her preferences. Knowing that she could always use a powerful weapon while sailing the open seas, the captain very much welcomed the opportunity.

Despite its promising potential however, the techniques of Blackcliff forging had become a highly rare art in modern day Liyue, known only to those who have worked at the Blackcliff Forge when the Millelith still had their weapons made there several decades ago. Nowadays, the Millelith has smiths within their ranks who have discovered ways to craft highly reliable weapons from much more common iron ores, making the process of arming their soldiers much easier, and thus making the use of Blackcliff ores and its forging techniques obsolete.

Among the blacksmiths of Liyue Harbor, only Master Zhang of Hanfeng's Ironworks knows the techniques of Blackcliff forging, having learned them from his father Hanfeng, who once worked at the Blackcliff forge prior to establishing the business. Master Zhang and Beidou knew each other through Suling, Zhang's cousin and the resident weaponsmith of The Crux. Zhang was the blacksmith responsible for making the sword that Beidou used to defeat Haishan, so the captain highly trusted his abilities when it comes to making weapons. With the ores in tow, Beidou headed for Chihu Rock and commissioned Hanfeng's Ironworks for a weapon made from the rare mineral.

Knowing that this weapon was very much likely to see actual use just like her previous sword, Zhang went as far as to close Hanfeng's Ironworks for the rest of the week to allow himself to focus solely on the captain's commission, even referring to the notes his father had compiled over the years of blacksmithing at the Blackcliff forge. Within these notes, Zhang found a design blueprint specifically for a broadsword made from Blackcliff ore. Zhang then went to work on forging the rare mineral, using the blueprint as a base to build upon Beidou's new weapon.

A week later, Beidou returned to Hanfeng's Ironworks to see the finished product, and what Zhang presented to her far exceeded her expectations. The sword was made as a single piece with a narrow blade and no handguard. The fuller was made from the crimson ore and bore the same color, while the rest of the blade was made from the Blackcliff crystals, with the tip noticeably protruding much further from where the back of the blade ends. Zhang also carved out an orb from the crimson ore and placed it where the grip meets the blade and tied a black tassel at the other end.

When she held the claymore in her hands, Beidou noticed that most of the weight was towards the middle of the blade. Unconventional in terms of smithing where the weight being closer to the guard was more common, but it was something that was well-suited to her highly unorthodox bladework that relied more on the sword's momentum to power her swings as opposed to a more conventional style that relied a bit more on the wielder's strength. This particular detail wouldn't have been possible if it weren't for Zhang forging the blade, who was well aware of Beidou's preference for that particular characteristic.

Upon closer inspection, Beidou noticed some small, golden text engraved along the edge of the blade. Zhang then recalled that when he was finishing up the blade, Ningguang and Uncle Tian, the Tianshu of the Qixing, personally came by to see him. It turned out that when the first Blackcliff sword was made, the Tianshu of that time made the same inscription on that blade, the engraving eventually becoming tradition for the Tianshu to do for Blackcliff forged weapons, and after hearing from Ningguang about his newest Blackcliff sword, Uncle Tian came along to do the engraving himself.

Already highly satisfied with how the sword looks and feels in her hand, Beidou then took the blacksmith along with her to the Guyun Stone Forest to test her new sword's power, wanting to give the smith the chance to watch his newest creation in action. When training her bladework, Beidou often settled with using boulders as a dummy until she crushed them completely. She settled for a spot close to where the Alicorn was anchored, which also had a rather large boulder nearby, the size of which was to her liking. With one strong heave, Beidou swung her Blackcliff-forged sword down on the boulder, expecting to crush it in one hit. Much to her surprise, the sword instead ended up cutting the boulder clean in two.

The captain quickly recalled Ningguang telling her of how the Blackcliff forged weapon were known to be more powerful than ordinary iron forged weapons. Beidou knew that that the legends about a Blackcliff weapon's power true, the sight of the cleanly cut boulder in front of her a clear demonstration. It was then that Zhang came up with the name of the new sword, calling it the Blackcliff Slasher, a sword powerful enough to cleave a giant boulder clean in half, one where lesser swords would either break or simply fail to do anything at all.

Beidou then decided to head back to Liyue Harbor and head up the Jade Chamber to show Ningguang the weapon crafted from the ores she had gifted. On their way back to the harbor, however, a group of four inactive Ruin Guards that had been sitting still along the shores of Guyun Stone Forest suddenly came to life, their cores glowing bright as they all got up to their feet. Thinking that the Ruin Guards would eventually move to attack them, Beidou quickly told Zhang to make a run for it, leaving herself to deal with the giant machines.

However, one of the Ruin Guards spotted Zhang as he made a beeline for the ruins and fired its missiles at him. Beidou then quickly ran towards where Zhang was and quickly jumped in the line of fire, channeling her Electro vision's energy to summon a barrier around herself to help absorb the impact of the missiles. Having made it just in time to block every single missile, Zhang was able to escape and hide himself behind the ruins, peeking out from the behind the walls to observe the battle.

Beidou then charged towards the nearest Ruin Guard with her sword at the ready, delivering two well-placed slashes at each of the war machine's legs when she got close enough. The attacks cleanly cut through the metallic limbs and caused its heavy upper body to fall on its back, damaging the socket behind its core and rendering it immobile. The captain then finished it off with a decisive stab to the core of the immobilized war machine, disabling it for good.

After making short work of the first Ruin Guard, she looked around for her next target only to find just two standing. Suddenly, a large shadow started to form around her and she quickly realized that one other Ruin Guard had leapt towards her. She was then barely able to dodge the attack by jumping out of the way. This Ruin Guard then quickly followed up with two consecutive attacks by swinging its arms, both of which Beidou was able to block with yet another Electro shield. With enough energy absorbed from the two hits to deliver a counterattack, the captain swung her sword in a wide arc, releasing the accumulated elemental energy only to hit nothing but air. To her annoyance, her target managed to narrowly dodge the attack by leaping into the air once more.

Knowing the war machine would be landing where she was, Beidou simply jumped away to safety. However, what she didn't expect was that one of the other two Ruin Guards had also decided to close the distance by leaping towards her, and she was caught off-guard as the giant machine landed directly at her blind spot: her immediate left side. The shockwave from the machine's hard landing sent her flying a few feet away, and as she got back to her feet, she heard the whistling sounds of missiles launching as the remaining Ruin Guard sent a full volley towards her from a distance.

Left with no choice but to stand her ground and somehow defend herself from the incoming barrage, Beidou held her sword up in front of her as she conjured her Electro shield. Thinking that she could at least use the smoke from the missiles' explosions as cover to move about, Beidou patiently waited until the last missile exploded before she made her move. Once the explosions stopped, she quickly cast the shield away and used the Electro energy her shield accumulated from the attacks to propel herself through the smoke in an instant.

What awaited her at the other end of the smoke however, was a Ruin Guard in the middle of its spin attack, her Electro-powered dash landing her right in front of the spinning war machine. She tried to erect a shield in a hurry to try and nullify the spin attack to give her a chance to hit back with her own counterattack, but all she managed to do was hold her sword up in front of her before the machine's arms hit it square on, the force of the impact hard enough to throw the captain off her feet and into the nearby water.

After the barrage of attacks she endured, Beidou was dazed and struggled to get back to her feet, needing to prop her sword up and lean on it to help her get up. Luckily, the water nearby was quite shallow, letting her keep her feet on the sand to give her some sort of footing. However, the situation looked grim as the remaining three Ruin Guards all closed in on her, looking to deal the finishing blow while she was still trying to catch her breath. Suddenly, the sounds of the machines' feet hitting water gave Beidou an idea, and she quickly channeled her Electro energy through her sword as she strongly planted it on the ground in one quick motion.

Once the sword hit the sand, it released streams of Electro energy, which was then spread across the surface of the water and onto the unsuspecting Ruin Guards, whose circuit were intermittently overloaded by the sudden surge of lightning along their metallic bodies. Beidou herself slightly winced in pain as she too, felt the electric shock as she stood on the water's surface, but her vision gave her some resistance at the very least. The stunned war machines left a huge window for a counterattack, which she capitalized on as she started picking off the Ruin Guards one by one. She sliced the legs of the nearest machine similar to how she dealt with the first one, only this time cutting through its entire upper body as it fell down with a single strong slash that pierced through the core, destroying it.

Her next target began moving its limbs freely, but was still sluggish from the Electro attack, and was thus too slow to react to Beidou jumping up and dealing a single thrust attack to its core. Beidou then stayed on the war machine, using its body as a springboard as it fell back to the ground to jump towards the sole remaining Ruin Guard. By the time she had moved towards her last target, however, it had fully recovered from the electrical surge, and was thus able to intercept Beidou's attack by catching her in mid-air as it clapped its hands together at her.

The captain, however, saw this attack coming and was able to generate a shield before the attack hit, and while the attack did leave her stuck in the middle of its arms, she was still able to move freely inside of her shield. This gave her the opening she needed to land a full Electro-powered counterattack at the Ruin Guard, hitting it with a wide arcing Electro-powered slash. Taking the full force of the captain's counterattack, the war machine's arms fell to the ground as its upper body exploded into pieces.

Once she was sure that she had dealt with all the threats around her, Beidou sighed in relief and let herself sit on the ground, her legs seemingly robbed of strength in an instant once the adrenaline died down. Zhang then came out from where he was hiding behind the ruins to check on the captain, who he saw take some very hard hits from the giant machines. What surprised him was that apart from a few scratches on her arms and legs and her hair being all over the place after being taken for a quick dip in the water, Beidou herself was very much fine, and was already laughing at how she had a tough time dealing with the machines.

Zhang then noticed that the Blackcliff Slasher was strangely glowing, with the red hue of the crimson ores spreading across the entire blade and onto the edge. Another thing he noted was that the sword itself looked very pristine, despite the battle it had just gone through. He quickly assumed that the sword must have reacted to the elemental energy from Beidou's vision, as well as the cores of the Ruin Guards it cut through, given the strange properties of Blackcliff crystal. Regardless, Beidou thought the sword didn't feel any different, but admitted that the sword's glow made it look just a tad bit cooler than it already was.

Ruin Guards were known to be highly dangerous enemies by themselves, with a full squad of Millelith needed to reliably take care of a single one, so witnessing Beidou take down a group of four by herself is a feat worthy of legend by itself. Zhang knows the woman in question was the same one that had taken down the leviathan Haishan without a vision, so the result shouldn't come as a surprise, and it only validated Beidou's reputation as a highly formidable warrior worthy of leading a crew as tough as The Crux.

After taking some time to let Beidou rest up, the two continued on back to Liyue Harbor with Beidou heading up to the Jade Chamber to see Ningguang, who quickly recognized from the captain's disheveled appearance that she had been through some sort of a fight. As the captain recalled the events that transpired at the Guyun Stone Forest, the Tianquan simply smiled, glad that her gift ended up being worth more than either of them ever imagined it to be.

Ningguang then remembered the words engraved by Uncle Tian on the blade's edge, and thought that contrary to what the legends said, perhaps the words might have been referring to the soul of the wielder as opposed of the sword's physical power. Coincidentally, the words themselves were quite appropriate to describe The Crux's captain.

"Carves open the mountains and tears through the seas, shreds apart clouds and splits the moon. Quite honestly, the words engraved by the Tianshu were very apt words for one such as yourself."