i know it's talked about in beidou's stories but do you have anything to add about the encounter with haishan / expand upon ? what's your personal interpretation of the events beyond what's given in game ?
metas that i write about bc yes. // @hyvoc
content warning; alcohol, death.
The Haishan was often described and warned about in the form of nursery rhymes and bedtime stories to all the little children that grew up on the adjacent coastlines of Inazuma and Liyue. It was often said to be larger than a mountain, with monstrous fins that carved their mark into the ocean floor; a nightmare of a beast somewhere between a dragon and a serpent fish that had sailors on their knees praying to Morax for their protection and safety.
Contrary to the tall tales her men exaggerate about her slaying of the leviathan, Beidou tends to be discreet about the finer details -- and for good reason. The beast was said to be larger than a mountain, but Beidou remembers the Haishan blocking out her sight of the sun and the far away Celestia due to how unimaginably massive the creature was above water. Its blue-green skin was as slimy as can be, which only made more terrifying the reality of its more than lethal destructive force that it destroyed ships with. Some vessels were blessed to be done in by the Haishan swimming right into them, at least giving her crew at the bow or rear of the ship precious time to decide what to do before their respective halves of the ship capsized. Others were not so lucky, as Beidou recalls a stormy day wherein the beast had launched the entirety of its girth out of the water just to fall squarely on one of her more heavily armed galleons, obliterating the ship in a fiery explosion that had left even the Captain herself speechless.
At times, Beidou is thankful that the exaggerations about her final encounter with the Haishan remain only as exaggerations; to imagine the Haishan capable of breathing flames or of having three ugly heads, each upon its own elongated neck, would have surely tipped the scales in favor of a sea serpent that had already made believers out of atheists, one that caused catastrophes ever so casually as it made waves at night.
Archons aside, Beidou believes in her own ability first and foremost.
Then again, so did the dozens of men and women that sailed and fought with her for those four days and nights out in the ocean, only to have perished in the final fight against the nightmare beast. Maybe it would be appropriate to call Haishan a living nightmare more than anything else, given how infinitely rare it was for Beidou to broach the topic, let alone acknowledge the sea scourge’s mention with anything but a slight frown, and how the few of her crew that did survive had a tendency to reach for extra bottles when drinking and remembering the night as it were.
There is a reason the pirate captain drinks her alcohol so openly during the day. The veteran sailors on her ship only wish they had the same tolerance she’s built up over the years.
