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Honkai Star Rail short delves into lore of recently-leaked Jingliu

Upcoming Honkai Star Rail character Jingliu stars alongside Yanqing and Jing Yuan in a new animated short exploring into the lore surrounding these characters.

Honkai Star Rail Jingliu animated short a flash: an image of the character from the turn-based RPG

If you’re out there looking for more information on Honkai Star Rail’s Jingliu, you’re in luck: HoYoverse has just dropped a brand new animated short that delves into the lore of Honkai Star Rail characters Yanqing and Jing Yuan – while also featuring our first proper look at Jingliu. As a character that has recently leaked, it’s beyond useful to be able to put a Honkai Star Rail face to the name. Not only that, but it’s exciting to get a glimpse of her in action.

Through the animated short, titled “A Flash”, we learn that Luofu swordmaster Jingliu was something of a teacher for Jing Yuan – who we see both as a young apprentice and an Arbiter-General. However, we learn that since her time teaching Jing Yuan, she has been stricken with “mara”. From what we’ve seen already, mara is something of an inevitable disease for Xianzhou natives – a growth that drives them mad and continues to mutate until very little of their humanoid form is left.

At the 01:40 mark of the animated short, we see a Luofu swordmaster stricken with this sickness – twisted and evil – and not long after we then learn that Jingliu too has fallen to mara.

The culmination of their final battle is an emotional one – an event that undoubtedly informs Jing Yuan’s character moving forward (as we see in the final scene of the short, where he’s teaching Yanqing). However, it’s also a strange one given the fact that Jingliu has been leaked for Honkai Star Rail. You can see a full rundown of her abilities courtesy of ‘IkariOFFI‘ on Reddit here.

The video description of the animated short, which you can watch for yourself below, states that the video begins in “Year 7380 Star Calendar” and ends in “Year 8096 Star Calander”. So, it’s safe to say that Jing Yuan is a lot older than he looks.

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However, this does make us wonder how out of place Jingliu will be in Honkai Star Rail when they’re introduced – especially if there’s any lore to explain. We don’t know when-exactly Jingliu met her end, but the video description also mentions that it happened “centuries ago” – which lines up with the Star Calendar year dates above. So, there could certainly be some interesting conversations between characters when she makes her appearance.

But, ultimately, as exciting as it is to theorise, we’re going to have to wait and see what HoYoverse says. In the meantime, you can find out more about the best Yanqing Honkai Star Rail build here and the best Honkai Star Rail Jing Yuan build right here.

Looking at what Jingliu can do, though – which is hopefully dealing huge amounts of ice damage through area-of-effect attacks – we certainly think she could be a fantastic addition to HoYoverse’s tactical turn-based game – and, who knows, they might just find themselves fitting into the best Honkai Star Rail team comps when they’re eventually added to the game.

If you’re more interested in the immediate future – the here and now – you can find out more about the Honkai Star Rail 1.1 banners leak right here; Jingliu isn’t arriving just yet, but you can check out the best Honkai Star Rail Silver Wolf build and best Honkai Star Rail Luocha build ahead of time.