Shenhe was originally from a branch family of exorcists, but due to a series of coincidences, she became the disciple of an adeptus.
She is a student solely of Cloud Retainer in name, but her impressive constitution and intelligence quickly won several other adepti over.
She would go on to learn from them all, eventually becoming a master of adeptal arts in her own right as a mortal.
She very much looks the part as well in her unique temperament and manner of carrying herself — indeed, it would be no understatement to name her a true adeptus upon meeting her for the first time.
However, it is precisely due to the long years of tutelage that she has lacked company save for the adepti and odd passing illuminated beast.
This isolation has caused her to grow distant and indifferent.

Sometimes, a few rumors will escape from Liyue's small community of pilgrims to make the rounds in the city's back streets.
These tales often depict someone being in a hopeless situation in some desperate place, when suddenly—
A wandering white-haired adeptus comes to their rescue in the nick of time...
Most such stories are a collection of lovely, intoxicating clichés, little different from the oft-told street-tales of fated marriages and the like.
But if one were to ask that white-haired adeptus to tell the story, it would take a vastly different shape:
"Some annoying creatures worm their way into the mountains from time to time. I simply get rid of them to prevent them from disturbing my master's meditations."
"If some people did wind up getting caught in the crossfire and injured... Well, it was their decision to come here. There isn't much I can do about that."

Shenhe is in all likelihood the least accustomed to mortal life amongst those who take on an adeptal appearance.
Having been sequestered in the mountains since a young age, she lacks experience and common sense, which makes it difficult for her to relate to people normally.
To ordinary people, there are many solutions to any given problem. But to Shenhe, any solution that is not the simplest and most direct one may as well not exist.
For example, she almost never considers "negotiation" as a solution to being at cross-purposes with others, mostly resorting to "threats" instead. After all, it is simple and efficacious. A good solution, no?
She has also spent much time ruminating on problems that are truly esoteric.
For example: Why do we need to pay for food?
Is there any difference between intimidating civilians and intimidating bandits?
She even truly believes that her master, Cloud Retainer, is a most brilliant and eloquent conversationalist.
In a certain sense, she can be considered very pure.
Much like a child, she relies on her chaotic yet straightforward intuition and logic to get her through life.
Mountain Shaper once had this to say about her:
"Little Shenhe is not only stronger than most — she also possesses a unique character."
"She knows not the world, understands not common sense, distinguishes few cuisines, and acknowledges no hierarchies."
"It may not be such an easy thing for Cloud Retainer to tutor her."

Liyue has no lack of folktales about meetings with the adepti, and many of these concern relative nobodies whom an adeptus took under their wing, thus elevating them greatly.
However, the circumstances under which Shenhe's fate became tied to the adeptal abodes was no such glorious thing. If anything, it was an experience characterized by anguish.
When she was five, her mother passed away, and her father, having loved his wife dearly, found that agony hard to bear.
Over time, this agony turned into resentment, and this resentment birthed obsession, by which he was driven wandering throughout the land like a man gone mad.
He left for close to a year, never stopping, never able to sleep soundly, ever searching for some technique that might bring his wife back.
At last, when the year was almost out, he returned in joyous frenzy.
Her father had brought with him a secret art known as "Fate Transference"—
By making a ritual sacrifice to the seelie summoned by this art, a living person's body could be exchanged for a dead one's life.
At that time, Shenhe was yet utterly unaware of the disaster that would befall. She was only an ordinary child, overjoyed at her long-absent father's return.
He claimed that he had a surprise awaiting her in a cave in the mountains behind and that he would take her there immediately. She was ecstatic...
But the scene that followed would be burned into her mind forever.
Her father summoned that hideous, horrifying black "seelie" into that cave, its blood-red eyes craving her delectable life-force.
Stupefied, Shenhe knew not from whence it had come, nor what it wanted from this place.
Crises often paralyze people. One thought only, however, crept into the young Shenhe's mind.
This creature wanted to eat her, but she did not want to die. She wanted to live!
Gripping her mother's keepsake, an exorcism dagger, she faced that dark "seelie," trembling yet resolute...
Several days later, an adeptus following the trail of great evil would investigate the cave, only to find the little girl collapsed inside — spent, famished, parched, her life hanging by a thread.
Taking pity on the lass' ruinous fate, and seeing that she possessed great talent, having repelled some terrifying force on her own, the adeptus would bring her back, heal her, and instruct her in the adeptal path.
If not for that, Shenhe would not be as she is today.

Even the most diffident heart, cooled from living and training in the mountains for over a decade, might sometimes experience strange surges.
So it was with Shenhe. On impulse, she came down from the mountains one night to return to what was once her home.
She did not know how she felt about her home or her family. She was merely driven by some nebulous desire:
To live in the house that was once hers, and to see what became of her father, lost in his obsession.
She learned from neighbors that he had passed away several years prior only when she got there.
Her childhood home had also been demolished by pawnbrokers — and thus had all the traces of her memory dissipated.
She did not care about the attention she was attracting, and did not answer a single one of the questions asked by those in the vicinity.
She simply stood there, listening to the howls that swept through the depths of her heart.
Was it hatred? Mania? Relief?
They were all there, and yet none tarried for even an instant. It was as if her heart were an old well without ripples.
No, like a barren well with no water upon which there might be ripples.
She stood there for a long time, before departing again before the astonished eyes of all.
Each step was slow indeed, but she never once turned back.

Liyue has its own fortune-telling, destiny-reading methods, similar to astrology.
Of these, there are two fates that people seek to avoid at all costs.
One is that of the "solitary star," which dictates that one will be separated from friends and family, living alone all one's days.
The other is "disastrous evil," which means that one will face many hardships and perils.
When the adepti rescued Shenhe, Moon Carver did once read her fortune.
The signs showed that she was marked by both the "solitary star" and "disastrous evil," and that she was also plagued by intense homicidal urges — she was thus a person of supremely ominous destiny, doomed to harm both herself and others.
To ensure that she could grow up safely and not harm any innocents, the adepti bound her soul using red ropes.
This binding had the effect of restraining both her evil fate and her violent tendencies, but also shackled many emotions that should have originally belonged to a human.
From then on, she became more and more disaffected by trivial matters, and even things most might consider important were but dust to her.
She became ever less human, and ever more like a lovely yet cold statue.
But surprisingly, she felt something stir within her when she encountered that Traveler from a distant land:
Long-dormant emotions, now strangers to her, came loose all at once from the depths of fate's tableau.
Perhaps it really was as Moon Carver once said: that heaven might dictate fates, but destiny's tale is written by mortals. The tale of Shenhe and the mortal world had not yet ended...

Once upon a time, Shenhe had a full head of black hair.
When she was first brought to Mt. Hulao, she would not say a word. The only thing she proved willing to do was to climb the mountain and watch the sea of clouds.
It was well, however, that she would sleep when tired, drink the dew of the mountains when thirsty, and would chew on a few stalks of Qingxin when hungry.
Cloud Retainer took this all in, but did not disturb the girl, instead making this comb of white jade from a sacred stone and giving it to her.
The adeptus said that if she ever wished to sever her ties with the mortal world and enter adeptal tutelage, she should brush her hair thrice with this comb, and it would be counted as a rite of apprenticeship.
Shenhe did exactly as the adeptus said without any hesitation. And something strange happened then — for as the jade comb brushed through Shenhe's hair once, a layer of her black locks turned a frosty silver from root to tip.
On the second brush, but half her hair remained dark.
When the process was complete, only a flowing curtain of snow remained.
...
Today, Shenhe still keeps this comb on her person as a symbol of her connection to the adepti.
Through her years of training, she has long since come to understand the meaning behind those three brush strokes:
The first to uproot useless anxiety, the second to forsake joy and sorrow, and the third to walk this path into old age without regret.

Few people know how the young girl in the cave, intended as a sacrifice by her own father, had been able to stand against the monster for days and nights on end by herself.
Though Shenhe was born into an exorcist family, her maddened father had not taught her a single thing about exorcism.
And like many at that innocent age, she was also wholly unused to facing life's perils alone.
But in that aphotic cave, bereft of parental protection — indeed, betrayed by kin — Shenhe underwent a metamorphosis.
Just as Moon Carver's readings had shown, the sleeping calamitous fates, violent urges, and unyielding spirit within her burst their bonds all at once.
Those things served as an unseen shield and invisible blade, arming the girl's frail form.
They gave her strength, gave her claws and fangs, allowing her to attack that wretched creature before her, to swear to tear it to shreds — to prove that she, and not it, was the cruelest evil that stalked the darkness.
Their life-and-death battle across the next few days was one without end. Hunter and hunted switched places many times, the conflict locked in stalemate...
As the shadow of death loomed large, the gods looked upon the extraordinary girl with favor.
With the bright, crystalline object falling into Shenhe's hands, the balance tipped irrevocably in her favor and the victor was decided.
The vivid icy light pierced through the dark like skyglow, showing the path to the future.
In the past, it had guided Shenhe from her miserable fate. In the future, it would also lead her back to the mortal realm.