LIFENG LORE: HIS LOST ARM, WHY HE LEFT WULING

Lifeng lost his arm as a little boy, entering hospital one spring and leaving the next, and both his parents are gone. He left Wuling for Endfield after the Blight Tide showed him his spear was “as fragile as a rolled paper”.

He is the cheerful Wuling spearman who calls the Endministrator an Originium Slug and takes out his whole neighborhood’s trash. His profile records, voice lines and text threads explain where the arm went, who raised him after his parents died, and why a boy who never wanted to leave home walked onto a ship.

How we checked this. Everything below comes from Lifeng’s profile records, voice lines and text message threads in the official English localization, checked against the current game data on 13 October 2026. Where the files only hint at something, or where we read between the lines, we say so. The cause of his injury is not in these files; for that we point to our earlier Version 1.4 story analysis.

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Short version first: Lifeng’s story in under three minutes, cut like an old kung-fu film, from our YouTube channel. The full story with every source follows below. More backstories are on the Endfield lore hub.

TL;DR - Key Points

• He lost his arm as a little boy. “It was spring when I entered the hospital, and spring again when I left… some things, once lost, never return.”
• His prosthetic is as old as modern Wuling. Tianshi Zhuang tuned it in her lab, and fell asleep mid-fix.
• His parents are dead. He keeps one flower back from every bouquet so their tombs always have fresh flowers.
• Da Pan taught him with 600 video tapes. The boy picked up a cloth-drying pole and the old Ursus saw a fighter.
• Mi Fu bought him sweets and ate the stick. Every skewer of Tangyoubaba went to Lifeng; she nibbled the bamboo.
• The Blight Tide sent him away. His spear felt like rolled paper, and he had never seen the ocean.
• On Dijiang he is a lot. A glowing meditation session that ended in smoke, a toothbrush for the plants, and a 1st Runner-Up award out of 2 contenders.

Who Is Lifeng?

Lifeng is an Anasa operator of Endfield Industries, born July 16, Oripathy positive, and authenticated by the Hongshan Academy of Sciences. He “is a native of Wuling City” who “voluntarily chose to work at Endfield Industries and is currently interning at the Specialist Tech Division.” In battle he is the 6-star spear Guard covered in our Lifeng complete guide. He introduces himself as “Lifeng of Wuling, ready to fight!”

His HR summary is short and fond. He “exhibited an innocent naivety and sincerity that far exceeded our expectations.” The assistant who processed him adds: “I rarely received an employment form with such details about the applicant’s personal life. In fact, in compliance to the articles of our Privacy Policy, I requested the youth to redact parts that may be considered too private for disclosure.”

The Arm He Lost as a Little Boy

Lifeng talks about his arm once, quietly:

“I was just a little boy when I lost this arm, and at the time, the pain didn’t quite register with me… It was spring when I entered the hospital, and spring again when I left. Sigh And I realized … that some things, once lost, never return.”

Spring to spring means a full turn of the seasons in hospital. The rest of his files treat the prosthetic as a fact of life. “The Wuling you see today hasn’t been around for long. It’s about the same age as my prosthetic arm!” In a private notebook he wonders whether he can “cool my arm in the fridge (gets a little hot when I use it too much).” And he is quick to tell the Endministrator that the Medical Division “says my toothpick arms aren’t an issue, and my punches hit just as hard as anyone’s.”

One of his profile files is a set of anonymous intranet forum posts, and the files imply the poster is Lifeng (the same user asks for a toothbrush for the Growth Chamber plants and claims “personal experience” with the spear). When someone asks how to comfort a friend who lost a body part, user 981902#8090 answers “speaking from experience”:

“If people around me act as though everything is fine, I would know they’re trying to keep their views to themselves. And that would make me sad. But if people really focused on it and do what they can to help me, I would also feel sad since I’d keep focusing on my missing part… Just be honest with your feelings.”

What these files do not say is how it happened. Lifeng never names the accident. Our Arcane and Lifeng story analysis, built from the Version 1.4 story, reports that his birth name is Bai Yong and that the Great Wall incident killed his parents and took his arm when he was six. Read that post for the investigation; this one stays with what his own records say.

One Flower From Every Bouquet

Lifeng’s parents are dead, and the way he mentions it is the saddest line in his kit, delivered as a tip:

“Endmin, I know a little trick for sending flowers. When you send a bouquet, keep one flower. When it wilts, you know it’s time to send a new bunch. Giggle I actually thought of it myself. It’s how I make sure my parents’ tombs always have fresh flowers.”

His explanation for why he is not sad about it comes from them. “Mom and Dad used to say our ancestors weren’t city folks. Before they crossed the Cosmic Gate to Talos-II, they roamed the dry plains outside the Nomadic City of Yan.” He did not understand the stories as a child. “Mom and Dad weren’t just telling me a story. They were preparing me. Even when their Astitva left this world, they’d return in another form. That’s why… I stopped missing them a long time ago.”

They worked at the Hongshan Academy of Sciences, alongside the two adults who would raise him: “That’s where Mom, Dad, Tianshi Zhuang, and Uncle Pan all worked.” He has never been to HAS headquarters himself. “I don’t know anyone there, and from what I’ve heard, it’s full of sharp minds and short tempers. I guess I’ve always worried they wouldn’t take me seriously…”

The Three Adults Who Raised Him

His files never use the word “orphan”. They describe three people instead.

Tianshi Zhuang. “When I was a kid, I used to do my homework in Tianshi Zhuang’s lab. She’d fine-tune my prosthetic when she had a moment, then quickly fall asleep mid-fix. Most of the time, I was the one tidying her place.” He does not hold it against her: “the future of all Wuling’s riding on her shoulders.” Her own story is in our Zhuang Fangyi lore post.

Captain Mi. “Captain Mi doesn’t like us saying it, but she’s actually a really nice person. Every time she saw me, she’d slip me a few coins and ask me to grab a skewer of Tangyoubaba from Auntie Tian’s stall.” The sweets were never for her. “When I brought it back, she’d slide them off the skewer and let me enjoy all the sticky goodness for myself. She’d just nibble on the bamboo stick with a contented smile.” More of her is in Mi Fu: A Fistful of Reflections.

Uncle Pan. Da Pan, the Ursus who runs a Wuling hot pot shop, got the job of training him from Zhuang Fangyi. He “confessed he was not good with children.” Stuck with “an energetic and inquisitive kid who followed him everywhere,” he “purchased over 600 video tapes of folk festivals and plays from a Hongshan antique store and allowed Lifeng to watch TV all day.” The kid took it all in. “One day, Lifeng grabbed a cloth drying pole to fool around with. It was at that moment when Da Pan realized the boy’s potential.”

Da Pan is not impressed by the flourishes. “True combat is about defeating the opponent, not the spear. A spear wielder studies the spear manuals. A true fighter studies the foe.” What he values in the boy is “the patience for it. And he’s a meticulous one, too.” A line from the old panda himself shows the worry under that: “Lifeng is too tense. I get tired just by looking at him, so I do my best to help him relax… He’s got a keen mind and sorts things out on his own, but I don’t know if that’s a good thing…”

Uncle Pan also fixes the arm “when Tianshi Zhuang’s too swamped,” and brought home presents from every trip: a snow globe from Kjersch that “makes this crisp, ice-crystal sound when you shake it,” and a wood carving from a Hannabit Circuit Songseeker. Lifeng has seen photos of him “back in the day,” with “a five-wheeler, leather jacket, shades, and a wild afro!”

The Neighborhood Chieftain

Lifeng grew up as the boy Wuling called first. “When Granny Bai forgets about her meds, Lifeng is the first person she calls.” Another neighbor: “The boy trains in the wee hours of the morning. He’ll also carry all the trashbags from the entire neighborhood to the dump.” The other kids “treated him as the chieftain of the group.”

He means it when he lists them from the ship: “Granny Bai heading out for her back massage, Captain Liu changing his leg dressing when it rained, Auntie Li buying soy sauce for her braised pork on Wednesdays, Xiao Ran always forgetting her gloves during sampling, and Ah Zai borrowing money from me at the start of every month for his little business…”

He has one rescue story, and he tells it like a training anecdote. “Once, when our family compound caught fire, I threw two kids over my right shoulder, one more over my left, and rushed them to safety!” Three children, one prosthetic, no fuss. Wuling childhood was dangerous in quieter ways too: “We Wuling kids grew up fighting these buggerloids just to survive. Back when the Tianshi Pillars were still going up, even getting near unknown water was a risk.”

Why Lifeng Left Wuling

He never planned to go. His friends thought “he always wanted to join the Watchguards.” Then something changed his mind, and his fourth file tells it plainly:

“When the Blight Tide surged forth, Lifeng realized his proud spear was as fragile as a rolled paper. He witnessed the massive Protocol Automation-Core breaking through the clouds and landing right in front of him. And in an instant, it deployed all sorts of machines before him. Lifeng realized how small he was, and smallness meant that he could not protect everything.”

He had always believed “he could protect everyone by simply staying put.” Now “it felt as though someone scooped him out from a pond and cast him into the sea. Then he remembered that he had never seen the oceans before. There are no beaches at Wuling.” So he decided to see “the oceans, the empyrean, and the world itself,” which “would transform him into a person with true strength. When that day comes, he shall return to his beloved Wuling.”

The adults did not want him to go. “I begged Captain Mi, Tianshi Zhuang, and Uncle Pan so much. They preferred I stay closer to home.” They wrote his recommendation letters anyway.

On the day he left, the neighborhood kids were upset, and Mi Fu, there for a safety drill, answered them. “He’ll be back. Won’t be going nowhere ‘cause this is where his heart is.” She took the baba breadstick out of her mouth, which the file says is “her cue for dropping some serious truthballs,” and explained with shoes:

“Old shoes are cushy and fitting. New shoes are another thing. Tight and loose at all the wrong places. Might even leave you bleeding… You get new shoes to travel to other places! …Just remember. People leave to better themselves before coming back. You should feel happy for him.”

The Boy on the Ship

Dijiang noticed him on day three. Operators heard about “a lad doing morning exercises in the Growth Chamber” and found “an Anasa meditating cross-legged in the chamber, eyes shut, breath steady,” with “a soft, gentle glow emanating from his body.” Theories ran from his “Spirit” to “some secret Yanese technique,” until he heard them, spun round, and his lance “made a few random slashes on the lighting module.” Three fluid inlets and outlets split open. Through the smoke: “I’m so sorry! I thought nobody was using this place!”

Asked how he looks “so young and old at the same time,” he offered: “Because … the Anasas are an old and wise race, but I’m still a little young…?” The file calls it “meaningful in some way, but also wholly incapable of answering the question!” The strict combat instructor Lil’ Dodge wrote “A warrior of rare quality” and “I really wanna know where he learned how to fight!” Lifeng insisted he was “but a little boy playing with sticks” next to Da Pan.

The rest of his ship life, in his own words and the forum posts implied to be his:

• The plants. The anonymous poster needs a spare toothbrush “to brush the fuzzball plants at the Growth Chamber. I think they like how it feels.”
• Sleep. “I just can’t fall asleep on pillows that smell too fresh.” A neighbor replies that someone keeps “mumbling behind my back all morning”: move names, “Great Chain O’er the River… Embrace the Moon.”
• Motion. “I get carsick pretty easily. Even riding a five-wheeler at Wuling would make me queasy. But for some reason, I don’t feel any motion at all on Dijiang.”
• Perspective. “I can actually see the Xiranite Dam through Dijiang’s telescope! It looks so tiny from here, like I could pinch it between two fingers… Mmm, I need to ponder on this.”
• The morning squad. He invites the Endministrator to his training group, “just me and Qianyu.” It starts with a 10-kilometer run. “That’s just the warm-up.” Chen Qianyu is “the same” as him: “I always run around and never feel tired.”
• The Originium Slug. He confesses he imagines everyone as animals. Perlica is “a little shellbeast”, Qianyu “a little pantailbeast”, and the Endministrator an Originium Slug, because “seeing them alone in such a huge world makes me want to protect them.” Himself? “That grass that rolls around in the wind,” because “some bugs love to ride in that grass, traveling with it to faraway places.”
• The Hero Cards. For a gift from home he offers “Tianshi Zhuang’s Hero Card set”, based on a 10-million-character novel in which Zhuang has not appeared yet, so the kids made their own Zhuang card. “Shh… Please don’t tell Tianshi Zhuang!”
• The Martial Codex. The forum poster writes a long essay on why the bookstore editions are fake, then backs off: “I’m just a small-time fan and got a bit carried away… Really sorry about that!”

The Notebook and the Awards Wall

His oldest notebook is a child copying out Uncle Pan’s rules. “One month to master the staff, one year to master the blade, and one lifetime to master the spear.” “Never direct the point to yourself, but only at the enemy.” “Skip 3 days of training and your body will notice. Skip 7 days and your foe will exploit it. MUST REMEMBER THIS!”

His newer notebook covers the Endfield interview. “PLS PLS PLS LEMME PASS! I really wanna work at Endfield!” Then: “AWESOME! I PASSED!!! AAAAAA!! Okay. Gotta keep my composure for my formal employee photo. No stupid grins… Anyway, Lifeng, you’re an actual operator now! DON’T BE A DEADWEIGHT!”

His dorm wall carries four certificates:

What His Story Adds Up To

The files give two halves. The first is loss: an arm gone before the pain registered, a year of hospital springs, two tombs he keeps in flowers. The second is a boy who answered all of it by becoming useful to everyone around him, from Granny Bai’s meds to three children out of a fire.

The Blight Tide broke that arrangement. Staying home and helping was no longer enough to protect anyone, so he left to get stronger and, by his own file, to come back. His knockout line, “If only I were stronger…”, reads differently once you know that. That connection is our reading, not a line from the files, and Mi Fu said the rest on the day he left: he is not the idle type, and he will be back.

Related Reading

• Lifeng operator page: kit, stats and his full profile records
• Lifeng complete guide: skills, builds and teams
• Are Arcane and Lifeng related?: the Great Wall incident and his Version 1.4 story
• Da Pan lore: his sad backstory
• Zhuang Fangyi lore: her sad backstory
• Mi Fu: A Fistful of Reflections
• Endfield lore hub: every operator backstory and our story Shorts