A collection of folk stories, myths, and legends from Liyue. It's quite a page-turner. This segment features the stories of Seelie living in the mountains.
—Mountain Spirits—
Many lone seelie are found floating in the mountain forests of Liyue. These glowing spirits are unfailingly found hovering in the mountain mist, in the ruins of ancient cities, or in crumbling, decrepit villages. Should a Vision-bearer draw near, the seelie will guide the way for them, leading them to long-hidden treasure or unfathomably ingenious mechanisms.
The people of Liyue believe these tiny, silent spirits to be auspicious sightings, the souls either of departed adepti or unnamed benevolent gods of old. Others believe they are the echoes of strangers without kin, lingering in the mountains to guide lonely, lost visitors onto the path back home.
Another old legend told in the mountain villages claims that there was once a time, before the adepti had come into being, when the seelie who meander in the mountains knew an altogether different existence, one in which they had beautiful physical forms and possessed great wisdom. That era, when the seelie roamed the mountains and strolled through the grand halls in the cities of old, is said to date back even further that the days when Rex Lapis fought bitterly against countless rival gods.
At a far-flung moment in the distant past, the ancestor of the seelie met a traveler from afar, with whom they swore an oath of union witnessed by the three sisters of the Lunar Palace. Just thirty days later, a sudden disaster struck. The seelie and their lover fled into exile as the world collapsed around them, fleeing until the terrible calamity caught up with and seized them. Their cruel punishment was to be separated from each other for eternity and to have their memories wiped without a trace.
The graceful but heartbroken seelie and the sisters grew more sullen and withdrawn with each passing day, to the point where their wondrous forms withered away, leaving fragments of their former selves scattered in the mountains and ruins, where they turned into tiny little life forms. They had forgotten so much, lost so much, and been stripped of their voices and wisdom, yet they continued to sing the same songs of grief. Because of this, still harboring a shred of the deep love they once had for their long-lost lover, they will act as guides to travelers who stop in the mountain mist, seeking to retrace their memories of an ancient story in long-abandoned ruins, disused makeup cabinets, and now-undecipherable poetry.
Of course, these are nothing but clumsy, incoherent folk tales, wild and fantastical conjecture about what Liyue may have been like in the distant past before the time of Rex Lapis. Needless to say, such tales have no credibility whatsoever. The true origin of these sorrowful spirits that meander in the mountains is, however, still widely debated, and no consensus has ever been reached on the topic.