Keywords:

Moody. Grim. Suspicious. The Dark Sibling. The dusk warrior. Gloomy. The rider of the Longma. Martial artist. Meditator. Forest and green lover. Chivalrous.

Personality:

Xue is called "the grim" by many, but actually, he is not dreadful, or merciless. But yes, he is quite pessimistic and gloomy.

You can rarely see him smiling. Usually in quite a dark mood. If you ask why he is always so negative, de-motivated, and frowns, he replies "This is all futile. One day, he will return. There won't be anywhere to flee, any harbor to take shelter, any place to hide, and any sanctuary to seek. We will be all erased. This is all for nothing!" And if you ask who the hell is that guy, he just says "...the smoldering one, the king of the witches, " but he never gives out the name. You can see the terror in his eyes, though, even if he wears the mask.

Therefore, he acts like he is just waiting for his time to come and die by the Smouldering Khan's wrath. Interestingly, Chun, if she is nearby, always jumps into the discussion and excitedly says "You worry for nothing. We just need to give him the Crimson Angel. Also some presents! Yes? I'm sure he would love that! Some candies maybe?" And if Seliné is also close, she steps in to ease the tension, as she always does, and states with utmost confidence that "You worry in vain, brother Xue, the King of the Witches is nothing more than a fairy tale. Are you seriously believing in witches?"

Loves:

He spends his time mostly with the synth-longma "山王", which means the Mountain King (Shānwáng). He loves mountains and forests (you need to see how they lose themselves, Xue and Xander, when they talk about mountains) and probably that's why he named his synth like that. Longma (龙马) is actually a fabled creature, from Chinese myths, and it is a winged horse with dragon scales. Xue's "Shānwáng" is a synth, essentially. It is slightly bigger than a real horse, has some robust offensive abilities, and can even fly in short distances. However, Shānwáng cannot trigger its combat functions without Xue's piloting.

There is a special bond between them. Shānwáng is a self-aware and intelligent synth, yet unless Xue connects himself by going "inside" of it, Shānwáng cannot fight. Xue, on the other hand, respects his longma and always takes good care of it, or according to his own words, "him". He is the "mountain king" after all. It resembles the bond between horses and their riders in ancient times and at nomadic Turkic and Mongolian hordes.

Xue also loves his sibling, Chun, immensely. For him, Chun is like an innocent treasure that needs to be protected. He always manages to find some time to get some presents for her, even though Chun mostly asks for presents from the others (probably it is because, by default, Xue would always bring back something for her).

Probably one of the rarest moments when you can see Xue smiling (given he is not wearing his mask) is when he watches old martial art movies. Especially funny ones. Equally, he enjoys modern martial art movies and series, particularly the famous "Cyber-Monks" series and "The Drunkard Master" series. Daeva oftentimes makes him a nice favor by hacking human interplanetary broadcasting systems so he can download tons of these movies. As you can guess, not for free though (and yes, usually the price is helping Daeva to troll Aurora or somebody else. But mostly Aurora.)

Hates:

It is a challenging task to list what makes him angry. It is because the list keeps changing. His personality is quite unstable, so one day he can be okay if you make some jokes about him, and another day he can go berserk and try to attack you if you do the same thing again.

He is usually more stable when he is with Shānwáng, his "dragon-horse". If he is close to Chun, you can relax, because despite keeping his grim attitude mostly, he will be way more stable. Otherwise, always expect the unexpected. You never know how he would respond to even the most trivial actions or questions.

The most consistent negative attitude he has is towards strong people bullying the weak. Chun loves telling extremely exaggerated stories about her brother's chivalrous acts, like beating up fifty thousand men who were trying to gang-rape a woman, or defeating an entire Supreme Cartel battalion to protect a 2nd gen neo-human, and so on. Yes, the numbers are quite inflated but probably the events were real.

Xue, like his sibling Chun, was engineered by Iset the Mother. Xue never forgets the day when Iset ordered them to go their separate ways by saying: "You are meant to be together. First, you shall explore and assimilate the reachable universe. You will then return to each other, for this is what has been deemed fit for you. You will leave, now!"

Like his sister, Xue also obeyed the Goddess and wandered the space for centuries. He visited especially distant neo-human colonies, and rarely human settlements. He stayed away from the corporation influence area, however, because there was no feasible way for him to hide his neo-human looks. One day, he stumbled upon a desolated neo-human biodome. There was nobody left in the settlement. Just some ruins and annihilated 2nd gen neo-humans, and even destroyed customized and advanced transcendent ones. He found something else, he refused to mention what it was, but after that day he never fully recovered. The damage of this incident on his personality was immense, since, according to his own words, he saw the end of all neo-humans and humans.

Even worse, he experienced the root cause of the upcoming doom, and he sympathized with "his" cause. He was right to seek total obliteration and annihilation of all humans, old and new alike, but he failed to grasp the reason why he was holding still although he already has all the power he needs to proceed.

He dedicated himself to learning more, but after Iset's return, he received the Mother's invitation to return. He was good at tracking, so found Osiris himself and joined the crew.

He felt some kind of relief and joy when he reunited with his sister and the Mother. However, the positive feelings were quick to vanish, because he quickly remembered what was coming. So he asked himself, are we strong enough to stop what is coming?

Iset asked him what he found during his 2 centuries-long journeys. He paused for moments, and the Mother patiently waited for his response, which was an unusual thing. Finally, he replied: "You know I cannot tell what I found..." Iset, again unusually, just nods, and after quickly briefing him on what do to and whom to follow next, she was quick to dismiss him.

And so Xue joins the party, and even though he was quite sure all this was for nothing, due to his immense respect for the Mother, he accepted to follow Phoenix's lead and contribute as much as he can. How long he can keep going like this, however, is yet to be seen.