When I was a child, there was a woman in the village named Da Yanlian. She never blushed or smiled once in her life. When other people’s children had a fever, she delivered medicine; when a man beat his wife, she dragged the man to the river to soak his feet; when an old man was about to die, she was the first to carry him to the town clinic. But no one could tell what she relied on to survive. She had no land, and no one married her. She just appeared suddenly and disappeared suddenly.
Later she died. I heard that she walked into the mass grave, chose a grave that no one claimed, lay down, and never got up again. The villagers said she was crazy. I was young at that time, and I thought she was not crazy, but God took her away, because she lived too unlike a “living person”.
Many years later, when I was playing games and saw Xiadie, my first reaction was: she was the same type of person as Da Yanlian. She was not a hero living in the sun, she was the woman who cleaned up the mess, the kind of person whose face was blackened by artillery fire but no one remembered her name.
She has always stood behind others, waiting to be needed like a nameless dog
You can control her in the game, but she never takes the initiative to fight for anything. She is like an invisible dog, ready to pounce and take bullets for others at any time. If you are injured, she will restore you; if you are dying, she will turn her anger into a knife to help you fight back; if you die, she will use your last bit of life to send the enemy to his death.
You can say that she is a support, but I don’t think so. I think she is like the old lady who picks up rubbish at the door of my father’s unit. She picks up cardboard boxes and rotten bottles all day long. Sometimes when she sees someone can’t carry a gas tank, she will help, and she doesn’t charge any money. She is not for kindness, but to prove that she has not been abandoned by the world.
Xiadie is the same. She is not great, but she has found a little sense of existence in despair. She regards the life and death of her teammates as her own breathing rhythm: if you are still alive, she is still useful; if you fall, she will burst into a short-term anger; if you are resurrected, she will stand back in the corner silently.
The whole meaning of her life is that others can still use her.
She grew up on the wounds of others. She is not a flower, but a parasitic root.
Her skill design is ironic: the more miserable you are, the stronger she is. When you are dying, she is violent; when you are running out of blood, she increases her damage. This is not a healthy logic, but a tragic reincarnation – in order for her to be strong, others must hurt her first.
She is not a blooming flower, but a bunch of parasitic vines. She does not need sunlight, but only blood and bones.
When I was a child, I watched a movie in which there was an old lady who had to absorb her grandson’s breath every night to survive. The grandson was afraid to sleep after knowing it. In the end, the old lady died and the grandson went crazy.
Xiadie is that old lady. It’s not because she is bad, but because she has no other way to live. She has been a person who lives on the suffering of others from the beginning. Whether she wants it or not, she can only do this.
Among a group of people who want to win, she is the only one who wants others not to die.
Many people in the game get anxious when they fight. They want to output, kill enemies, and get heads. Who can care about you as an auxiliary? Many people scolded her, saying that she couldn’t heal, that she had no output, and that she was useless in team fights. But she never said a word. She was like my second uncle’s old yellow dog, standing in front of my second uncle during a fight, lying on the ground panting when she lost, and just wagging her tail when she won.
Xiadie was not on the battlefield for victory, she just wanted to let someone live a few more seconds. She knew that these few seconds might not bring victory, but they could bring a little warmth to that person’s heart.
She was like the last nanny in the old world. When everyone left, she still kept her handkerchief and medicine bag to wrap people’s wounds. It’s not that she didn’t want to win, she was just more afraid of losing one person after another, not the game.
She was afraid that no one would remember that someone tried to stand in front of you.
She had no past, no future, she was just a sad existence now
I tried to find her background story in the game settings, but found only a bunch of vague words: Hades, Xinrui, Dead Dragon. She didn’t have a clear past and clear motivation like other characters. She is like a person who was temporarily pulled into the team. She does not belong to any place. She only appears when you need her most and leaves silently after the battle.
She is like an old lady I saw when I was walking at night when I was a child. It was getting dark at that time. I fell down and she helped me up. Later, I asked the villagers and no one had seen her. My father said that you might have hallucinated because of fear. But I know that she is real. She lived in that moment and never appeared again.
Xiadie is such a character. You use her to play a game. If you win, you are happy; if you lose, you will not blame her. Because she has never done anything wrong, but no one remembers what she did.
She is a forgotten person.
Epilogue
Yu Hua wrote: “In this world, who is not living and being forgotten at the same time?”
Xiadie may be the kind of character forgotten by all battles. She has no highlights, no eye-catching injuries, and no passionate lines. She just quietly bends down when everyone is unwilling to bow their heads and supports the bodies that are about to fall.
She is like the neighbor lady who always helps you carry bricks, like the nurse who delivers hot water in the hospital corridor every day, like the person who turns away before you can say thank you.
She is not a symbol of victory, but the last evidence that people can still take care of each other.