Honkai: Star Rail confirms Jingliu in animated short

A character from early leaks seems to make it into the game

HoYoverse debuted a Honkai: Star Rail animated short named “A Flash” on May 10, 2023, which dives into the story of Jing Yuan, the game’s next 5-Star character. Mixing scenes of the present with those of the past, “A Flash” shows the relativity of time for someone long-lived like Jing Yuan – the Arbiter-General is around 800 years old during the game’s events.

While the scenes in the present focus on Jing Yuan and his pupil, Yanqing, the scenes playing in the past show Jing Yuan’s own mentor, a sword master called Jingliu. She’s been mara-stricken and attacked her own troops, Jing Yuan among them.

It’s not just an interesting look at the backstory of the upcoming character, but may well be the confirmation that Jingliu could become playable herself down the line. She’s actually been leaked last year by several insiders, who determined that she’d be a Destruction character dealing Ice Damage – and going by the animated short this still seems to be the case.

While it’s generally good to take such leaks with a huge grain of salt, as lots of things can and will change so far away from release, it seems like the ones regarding Jingliu have pretty much hit the nail on the head.

According to the latest kit leaks for Jingliu, she can sacrifice the HP of herself and her party members to increase her Attack and even gain an alternate Skill.

HoYoverse has not officially introduced Jingliu as a playable character, however, so it’s likely that her release is still far off. After Jing Yuan’s turn in the second half of version 1.0, the trio of Silver Wolf, Luocha, and Yukong is set to appear in update 1.1.