#but since rex lapis literally getting evicted from life is such a wild and massive variable

[trashcanwithsprinkles]

I just realized…

if Zhongli is dead then who will rescue Xiao from the Chasm😱??!???

… and reseal Azhdaha and whatever else he does in his story quests bUT MORE IMPORTANTLY WHAT ABOUT XIAO?!?!!

good question! if i had to try and think of how the game's plot would play out if zhongli gets functionally offscreen'd at the start of the liyue arc, then i think having rex lapis actually die for real and be gone for good (like not even his spirit is left) would significantly alter the way the adepti behave

this could of course mean xiao just dies in the chasm, but we can also try to think of it as like- xiao knows that with rex lapis gone, he's truly the last one fighting the abyssal miasma. there's nobody to save his ass if anything happens, he quite literally cannot afford to take risks. i'm not saying he was banking on zhongli saving him in-game (i think we can all agree he wasn't); but i still think he like- on a subconscious level, knew that rex lapis was out there somewhere. and that with rex lapis out there somewhere, somehow, he would be fine, even if 'fine' meant passing away peacefully instead of like. idk. lingering as a resentful spirit or smth. especially since he did give zhongli a heads up that he was going to the chasm. like xiao knew zhongli knew. but if rex lapis is dead? i feel like that would change things. since we don't know how the gang would've ever actually managed to get out of the chasm if it hadn't been for xiao's (near) sacrifice, we don't know that it would've been possible otherwise. but since i do like my happy endings, we could have the traveler actually contribute in that scene and like. funnel energy into xiao. like you cannot tell me the traveler doesn't have a decent amount of energy that they could give xiao. or yanfei for that matter. or itto but like- he's out cold so idk. they were so close to getting out, too. a little extra energy kick from the traveler should've done the trick.

basically what i'm saying is that, on the xiao front at least, i could see how we could spin it so that xiao doesn't fucking die as soon as he's left without parental supervision for like five minutes.

azhdaha i'm not as sure. if the adepti's dynamics are all changed after rex lapis' death, i think we could make a possible argument for the hermits to like. notice something is up. if the traveler never meets zhongli, then maybe they wouldn't bring anyone to the expedition, or maybe they bring someone else? maybe one of the adepti? not saying a single one of the adepti should be able to reseal azhdaha, but again, since rex lapis is gone, i think they would step up and band together to deal with stuff as it comes up. i think all the adepti together + the traveler should be able to reseal azhdaha. i think. he coulnd't have regained all that much strenght if gnosis-less zhongli was able to (seemingly) easily seal him again