From a young age, Baishan was taught that a person’s trust is the biggest honor one can get and that the easiest way to lose said trust is by revealing their secrets. He grew up in a family with a single father who specialized in the mental wellbeing of others and to say that a lot of his father’s influence didn’t rub off on Baishan would be an understatement. Being the youngest and seemingly most reserved and quiet of three kids, Baishan spent most of his free time talking with his father about his work. By doing so, Baishan developed high morals for himself from a rather young age that he swore to uphold, especially when it came to keeping secrets. He did this thinking that it would win over his peers and that would get other kids to like him more. And whilst that was true to an extent, becoming rather popular and liked for how nice and genuinely caring he seemed to be, he also became a target of curious kids trying to test him. Progressively, others would come to Baishan to tell him worse and worse secrets, to see whether or not he would tell others about it. It started from other kids telling him how they were going to beat up other kids later that day, to confessions of crimes that their families were going to commit and every time that Baishan wouldn’t do anything about said confessions, he would get ganged up on by others for being messed up and horrible. This would happen so much to him that he ended up developing a rather good read of peoples lying body language, which ended up easing a lot of the anxiety these sorts of encounters left him in.
In his late teens, Baishan started to adventure outside of Mondstadts walls more and more. He found himself enjoying the sense of adventure a lot more than he did spending time writing up papers at a desk. Because of this, he started spending a lot more time alone than before. Not many of his friends liked exploring the greater lands of Teyvat due to the dangers they posed, learning to fight was not something that appealed to them and not that many people dared to approach Baishan, due to his constant cold seeming exterior and quiet nature. He didn’t mind this too much however, since it allowed him to go where he pleased and rest for as long as he wants. For a while, Baishan believed he’d become an adventurer, since that felt like the most suited job for him. The only thing from adventuring that he didn’t have a particular interest in was actually getting loot and treasures.
One day, after returning from a rather long adventure from Dragonspine, Baishan noticed a completely new face in town. He could tell that this person was not from Mondstadt, not only because he’s never seen them before, but also because of the way they were dressed. Usually he didn’t try to approach people first, but something about them intrigued Baishan and he struck up a conversation. He found out that they were visiting from Inazuma and that the two of them had a quite bit in common. Both of them loved adventuring, were passionate about the world they live in and the history behind the archon wars. Needless to say, they both became great friends instantly and when the other had to leave back to Inazuma, they still stayed in contact via letters. They grew even closer through said letters over the years and shared plenty of stories, dreams and secrets with each other. Though one of the biggest secrets that was shared with Baishan was that they and their family came from Khaenri'ah. Baishan trusted his friend and didn’t think too much of it, even if hearing about it was a bit of a shock. Years later, the two young adventurers met back up in Liyue, where they spent a good chunk of their time exploring and catching up with a lot of their life stories. However, their trip ended in tragedy, when one night the pair got ambushed by some group of people. Baishan was knocked out cold and when he finally woke, he couldn’t find a trace of his friend nor the attackers anywhere. After he reported his friend missing to both the Liyue and Inazuma officials, a slight investigation was conducted that revealed that their letters were tampered with for years. Whoever had been doing this either spread the information or was part of the group that attacked and kidnapped Baishans friend.
The loss of his dear friend struck Baishan a lot, especially since the reason of their disappearance was due to a breach of privacy in their communication. Because of this incident, Baishan ended up becoming a mailman to ensure that no more letters, especially the ones coming from higher officials, would ever be tampered with again. This allowed him to travel through Teyvat the way he wished to do so and ensure the safety and privacy of Mondstadts most important figures. And in the meantime, he would search for his friend and the group that started all of this.
A little less than half a year after Baishan lost his friend, he thought he had found a major lead in the investigation of the kidnappers. He had been traveling, researching and investigating for months and he was determined to find them this time. The lead was a dud and a rather dangerous one at that. The fake lead took Baishan to a rather dangerous area in Teyvat that had at the time been surrounded by abyss mages. The encounter had nearly killed Baishan and his father’s pleadings for him to drop the hunt rang in his head more than ever before. He collapsed almost instantly after returning home. Most sane people would’ve dropped this case by now, seeing as he hadn’t had any new development in this case for months and his life had been threatened multiple times. But even now, when he barely cheated death and was lying on the cold floor due to exhaustion, he wasn’t going to give up. He woke up in the middle of the night and the only thing that was clear in his eyes was the light of the vision that was lying besides him on the floor. All he did at the moment was close his eyes again and release a sigh of relief, as that was enough of a motivator for him that he wasn’t going into this alone.
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