ARCANE LORE: WHY SHE CAN'T TAKE A BREAK

Arcane, real name Li Zhiyan, cannot take a break. Endfield’s medics found several dozen internal injuries after the North Wuling operation, and the Yinglung Special Task Force sent her on her first long leave in years. She treats the leave like a mission she is failing.

When you send her to rest aboard Dijiang, her answer is “Roger. R&R is part of the command.” Her operator files, text messages and trust lines are the record of how that goes: a captain who trained with every weapon she could find, asked her own promotion ceremony for more missions, and gave a borrowed pet military training.

How we checked this. Everything below comes from Arcane’s profile records, voice lines, text messages and story quest text in the official English localization, checked against the current game data on 10 October 2026. Where the files only hint at something, or where we read between the lines, we say so. The Wuling story section near the end has spoilers and is marked.

Endfield Hub is a fan-made resource and is not affiliated with Hypergryph or Yostar.

Short version first: Arcane’s story in under three minutes, told through her phone, from our YouTube channel. The full story with every source follows below. More backstories are on the Endfield lore hub.

TL;DR - Key Points

• She is on mandatory rest. Several dozen internal injuries, her first long R&R, “to make up for all the breaks she missed for several years running.”
• Rest makes her anxious. “Actually, nothing. But that ‘nothing’ is what’s bothering me.” She asks to resume training drills; medical has not signed off.
• She tried every weapon first. Blades, spears, swords, halberds, axes, broadaxes, hooks and tridents, then doubled her training, then took up her father’s cannon.
• Chen wants a rematch. “I’ll give her three free attacks on me! Wait … maybe two.”
• Si’s verdict: a “silly dolt” with “the most boring life ever”, who kept calling her “Lady Proxy”.
• Her one purchase for herself is a critter playground. She once watched it for three hours.
• She trained a borrowed fowlbeast until it broke out of its cage and set off an HR complaint.
• The aunties back home panicked and mailed rice cakes and hand-sewn clothes, “because space is cold.” She asked them to stop, then sent back more than she got.

Who Is Arcane?

Arcane is a Liberi born on July 7, authenticated by the Yinglung Special Task Force (YSTF) of the Hongshan Academy of Sciences (HAS). Her given name is Li Zhiyan. She is a YSTF captain, which the game also calls Task Leader, and she reached the post fast: one line of dialogue says it took her “only 3 years to get promoted from a reservist to a Task Leader.” In battle she is a 6-star Nature Caster who switches between two skill types, Array Arcana: INT and Array Arcana: WILL. Her kit, builds and stats are on her operator page and in our Arcane build guide. Julia Gu voices her in English.

The Yinglungs are Hongshan’s special forces for Blight zones. Their work, in her own words, is to cross “the Boundary” into the North Wuling Exclusion Zone, “survey the routes, record any anomalies, and plant Yinglung Pillars,” so that one day there is a “road” back in. Her second profile file sums up what that job asks of people: “If ‘safe exit’ is not listed as part of the mission objective, every Yinglung knew what it meant.”

Her own summary of the job is one standing-by line: “Consider me a blade at your command. Point me at where you need me, and I’ll strike.”

Ordered to Rest

Her HR summary, signed by HR assistant Martin Marvin Malen, is the reason she is aboard Dijiang at all. Arcane was injured in an operation in the North Wuling Exclusion Zone, “our medical operators identified several dozen sites of internal injuries,” and the YSTF granted her “an extended R&R.” According to Arcane herself, it is her first long one. The HAS told Endfield what it hopes she gets out of it: “It should be a break to make up for all the breaks she missed for several years running.”

She does not take it well. In her first text thread with the Endmin she writes:

“Actually, nothing. But that ‘nothing’ is what’s bothering me. I’ve never had this much free time. My life has only ever been training and duty.”

She asks to at least resume her training drills, then admits the real problem: “I’ve never been off the front line this long. It’s putting me on edge. Normally I’d train to clear my head, but medical hasn’t signed off.” Under the Yinglung and Endfield agreement she even needs the Endmin’s permission to use Dijiang’s training rooms. When the Endmin suggests joining other operators’ activities, she says “I don’t think I’d fit in. I’d probably just spoil their fun.” When the Endmin offers to spend the time with her, she objects that “You shouldn’t waste your time on me,” and only gives in once she hears it is the break Perlica scheduled for the Endmin anyway.

Her promotion lines read the same way. At one, she thanks the Endmin and then: “Commendations are appreciated, but I’d rather keep busy with more missions. Any missions will do. Idleness doesn’t suit me… I want to be of more help to you.” Her line for being assigned to a facility: “Yinglungs are never choosy about their missions. My duty is to see them through.”

Every Weapon, Then Her Father’s Cannon

A trooper called Phrase tells the story of her weapon in her first profile file. The YSTF did not teach her the heavy arts unit cannon she fights with. There was a period when “the Captain couldn’t get any better no matter how hard she trained, so she kept swapping her weapons. Blades, spears, swords, halberds, axes, broadaxes, hooks, and tridents… She tried them all, got decent with everything, mastered all sorts of fighting styles, but she wasn’t satisfied.”

So she doubled her training regimen, and people worried she would collapse from exhaustion. Then she found her father’s arts unit cannon, stored away. “She never applied for leave until then. No one knew where she went for a couple of days. But when she came back, she had made up her mind to use her father’s weapon.” Phrase’s conclusion: “No Yinglung garrisoned at Wuling is a match for her.”

Her third profile file, in her own voice, explains the style she built around it. Her father taught her arrays as games: riding logs down rivers, climbing tall trees, lying in the grass learning the constellations. “I later learned that none of this was just a ‘game’.” His principle was change, and “an array is only complete when the wielder becomes part of it.” The Yinglungs taught her the opposite, “permanence,” and “how to remain unmoving in the midst of a storm.” She could not reconcile the two until she went back to where they used to play and understood: “I am the key. I must be part of the formation, the fourth piece of the array.” She now positions her triplex cannon with a jade slip, and she is writing her lessons into a book for other Yinglungs.

She has taken notes from Endfield’s operators too. Gilberta shared casting tips. She asked Arclight for advice on electrical currents and got a two-word answer: “Feel it.”

Chen Wants a Rematch

Arcane and Chen Qianyu came up together. Trooper Summit’s account in her first file: they “were pretty good friends and even partnered up during the selection trials,” and were the two most outstanding reservists. “But after that … they wouldn’t stop arguing with each other. And if they weren’t, they were preparing for the next shouting match.” Arcane became a Yinglung; Chen did not. Summit’s view is that keeping them in separate groups was “the best for both of them.”

Chen’s own entry in the same file is the funniest paragraph in Arcane’s records:

“STOP LISTENING TO THE RUMORS! Ugh. During the selection trials, she … welp, she was like … yeah … got that slight edge over me. But I’m a far better fighter than I used to! If we fight again, I’ll give her three free attacks on me! Wait … maybe two.”

Arcane’s side, in a chat line: “I used to win most of the fights, but she improved quickly, so quickly that it once frustrated the other Yinglungs. Unfortunately, I was even quicker.” Since becoming Task Leader she has trained less, “so now I’m not really sure anymore. Maybe we’ll need a real fight to see who’s stronger… Heh. I’m actually looking forward to it.” Under the rivalry is respect: Chen is “not Yinglung material but … people will trust her more. While some must survive the darkness, others must stand in the light.” Chen’s own story is in our Chen Qianyu lore post.

Si’s Review: “Silly Dolt”

Si, the Feranmut Proxy, is not a stranger to the Yinglungs. Arcane explains: “Long ago, she shared her strength with Hongshan and helped with the founding of Yinglung Special Task Force. Yet she holds no formal commanding position with the Yinglungs … nor any title at HAS.” She guides them as a “partner,” and “many of us never saw her in person even after being discharged.”

Si’s entry in Arcane’s first profile file does not hold back:

“Li Zhiyan? That little Yinglung girl? Nope. Nothing special comes to mind. Every time I see her, she’s always stern-faced, stiff-necked, and making people feel bad about themselves. And she wouldn’t stop yapping ‘Lady Proxy! Lady Proxy!’ and I had to correct her umpteen times before I could force her to change.”

“Mortal life is short, yet she’s blessed with powerful abilities. But look at what she’s doing with them: Living the most boring life ever and shackling herself with a load of self-made rules.” Then, grudgingly: “Things have gotten a bit better recently. Her face softened up a little, so that’s quite interesting, at least. Maybe the silly dolt did something.”

Arcane noticed the change from the other side. “I once thought the Proxy didn’t like me much. But after our return from the North Wuling Exclusion Zone, she started treating me warmly… She probably treated the old me as a stiff bore. If I get the chance to meet Lady Si aboard Dijiang … I’d like to thank her in person.” She still calls her Lady Si. When the Endmin suggests picturing other operators as sparring partners, she adds: “As for Lady Si … I can’t even imagine fighting her. I’d have no chance.” For who Si is, see our Si lore post.

Looking for a Hobby

Tianshi Zhuang told her to find a hobby. Her chat line on it: “So about hobbies … training certainly doesn’t count. Maybe I could ask Uncle Pan to teach me a skill. But I can’t be like Chen and be positive all day. She’s a rare one. Developing a hobby seems like a new challenge.”

The closest thing she has is in a furniture description for her dorm: “Arcane likes small critters and easily zones out when she spots them. This critter playground is one of the very few things she has purchased for herself. She once spent three hours watching them play.”

Animals are also where her training habit goes furthest. In a trust line she misses Blitzcrash, a howlerbeast she raised “from a tiny howlerbeast into a reliable comrade,” and asks: “Are pets allowed on Dijiang? I’d train them to military standards.”

She meant it. In another text thread, HR sends her a warning notice about “a small animal attack.” She was looking after a small fowlbeast for an operator on a long mission. It flew out, scared an operator who did not know it was there, and someone called HR and medical thinking it was an emergency. Arcane offers to accept any punishment. The Endmin asks why such a well-behaved pet turned aggressive:

“I’ve been giving it some military training.”

“YOU WHAT?!”

“Just basic drills. It’s sharp and quick, could be useful in the field. It picks things up fast. I just didn’t expect it to be able to break out of its cage…” She was teaching it “how to use its strengths for basic attacks. That’s how I trained Blitzcrash too.” Told to stop, her worry is professional: “Then what should I do? Just feed it water and food? That feels like I’m not doing my job.” The thread ends with her agreeing to learn pet care from the operator it scared, and to apologize to her in person.

The Aunties Back Home

Her fourth profile file is two delivery records between Dijiang and Wuling City. The first carries a voice message from Auntie Liu, who has heard about the R&R from someone other than Arcane: “You should have told me, Ah Girl. The entire neighborhood got super worried!”

The care package holds “a few boxes of osmanthus cakes and sweet kohl pudding,” plus clothes that Auntie Shen sewed, because “she heard you’re now staying on a spaceship and so she kept complaining how cold you are in space.”

Auntie Liu’s message is also the clearest picture of Arcane as a child. “You’ve always been stubborn. Always sitting at one spot and doing nothing. You hardly played with other girls your age. Instead, you kept trying to help the aunties in the neighborhood.” Her advice is to make friends at Endfield, and she has a plan: “just take the rice cakes and sweet kohl pudding to the Endfielders, and let them try out your Auntie’s cooking! Do this a few times and you’ll have new friends!” She adds that the neighborhood watched Arcane grow up, that Auntie Shen treated her “like her own,” and that “you are a child of Wuling.” The message ends with the battery dying mid-sentence: “Wait. Low battery? How …”

Arcane’s distance was deliberate. In a chat line she explains: “As a soldier who might die at any moment, I thought it was improper to form attachments or make people sad, so I kept my distance. But now I think about what I did and felt a little guilty… So, how does one make up for this?”

Her reply, the second record, is to the courier Ling Yue: “Please don’t let them deliver another package… There’s everything aboard Dijiang.” Then she ships five Simonch Shawls, five jars of Breeze of Kjersch, three Cosmic Gate Puzzle sets and ten bottles of Citromix to Wuling, “fruit-flavored mixes you can’t find in Wuling and toys for the children.” “Don’t worry about the cost. I hardly have any other expenses. And tell Auntie Shen that the things are free giveaways from Endfield. I don’t want her to worry too much.” Whether they were free, the file leaves to her; her own line about the cost suggests they were not.

The Wuling Story (Spoilers)

This section covers the North Wuling Exclusion Zone story in broad strokes.

Arcane’s profile says she had nothing to put in the YSTF’s memento box, the box every Yinglung fills with one item as “the only proof of your existence” if they fall. “Everything she once had was buried within the dark, cold, and toxic Miasma of the North Wuling Exclusion Zone.” She had a calligrapher write her name, and put that in.

The Wuling story takes her back in, as the vanguard with the Endfield Crisis Team, while still injured. Along the way she meets Blightshades, Æther echoes of the people the disaster took: her old howlerbeast Blitzcrash, her instructor Zhu, who founded Tanjian Hall where Yinglungs trained, and a pale Blightshade girl with a red ribbon who leads the team to a collapsed building. Arcane recognizes the ribbon, then the place: “This was … my home.” Zhu’s words make her and Chen question whether she has drifted from why she joined. Near the end she volunteers to be the trump card against Ardashir and is willing to die for it; the Endmin and Chen both refuse, and she seals Ardashir with her own plan anyway. She wakes later and, in the quest summary’s words, “admits her immaturity and decides to rely on you more.”

Her text thread about it, sent late at night, is about kites. She used to fly them in Wuling to see the zone from above, “so close. Yet so far away.” From Dijiang, looking toward Wuling, “I’m the kite. No matter where I fly, I’m still tied to my homeland.” It ends with a thank-you: “for bringing that little girl out of that cold, dark ruin and into the open sky.” For her link to Lifeng in that story, see Are Arcane and Lifeng related?.

The Little Things

• Her hair. “Mother used to braid my hair with all kinds of ribbons. I never liked it.” Later she asks the Endmin to tie it for her, then notices: “Have you been watching how I tie my hair?”
• Gifts. Giving: “Just some local stuff. I didn’t go out of my way to prepare them. I just … hmm, got too much of them.” Receiving: “I’m … not very good at picking gifts … so keep your expectations low.”
• Combat records. “I used to spend all night poring over after-action reviews.”
• Defeat. “A minor setback, that’s all. Victory and defeat are part of the mission.”
• Her memento box now. It has started to fill: a pen, a button, a dagger, small things that look like they came off a desk. “I looked back and realized that I have missed so many things that I should have treasured.”
• Nightmares. On her first night aboard Dijiang the “anguished cries and harsh instructions” were gone for the first time.

So Can She Learn to Rest?

She is trying, in the most Arcane way possible. She asked for advice on how to fill free time, agreed to learn pet care instead of pet drills, started filling a box she once left empty, and spent three hours on critters. Si, who called her the most boring person alive, admits her face has “softened up a little.” By her own standards, that is a mission in progress.

For more operator backstories, see Chen’s six-word job application, Avywenna’s real name and the Endfield lore hub.

Related Reading

• Arcane operator page: kit, stats and her full profile records
• Arcane build guide: weapons, gear and teams
• Are Arcane and Lifeng related?
• Si lore: the Hongshan guard and dream traveler
• Chen Qianyu lore: the six-word job application
• Endfield lore hub: every operator backstory and our story Shorts