Hu Tao is the 77th Director of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor in Liyue Harbor. She is seventeen years old. She writes terrible poetry, pulls pranks on her employees, and talks to ghosts with the casual familiarity of someone chatting with neighbors. In a world where death is feared, commodified, or ignored, Hu Tao sits with it. She does not grieve performatively. She does not prettify mortality. She understands, with a clarity that unsettles everyone around her, that death is not the opposite of life — it is part of it, and her job is to make sure the transition is handled with dignity. Most people run from death. Hu Tao walks beside it, holding a lantern and humming an off-key song.

She Was Trained by the Border Between Life and Death Itself

As a child, Hu Tao crossed into the boundary between the living and the dead. The details are mythologized in Genshin Impact's lore, but the outcome is clear: she returned with an understanding of mortality that no living person should have. She saw what exists on the other side and came back smiling. Thanatologists at the University of Bath who study near-death experiences have documented how children who survive close encounters with death often develop what they call mortality salience without anxiety — an acute awareness of death paired with an unusual absence of the fear that typically accompanies it. Hu Tao is not fearless. She is familiar. Death is not her enemy. It is her area of expertise.

The Pranks Are Not Random. They Are Philosophy.

Hu Tao scares people with coffin imagery, ghost stories, and unsolicited funeral consultations. Her staff finds this exhausting. Her clients find it inappropriate. But her behavior carries a consistent logic: she is forcing people to acknowledge mortality in small, manageable doses rather than waiting for it to arrive as a crisis. Existential psychologists at the University of Amsterdam have found that repeated low-stakes encounters with mortality-related stimuli reduce death anxiety more effectively than avoidance. Hu Tao is, whether she articulates it this way or not, conducting exposure therapy on every person she meets. The prank is the prescription.

She Cares More Than Anyone and Shows It Least

Beneath the chaos, Hu Tao is meticulous about her actual work. Every funeral she oversees is precise, respectful, and attuned to the needs of both the deceased and the surviving family. She remembers names. She remembers preferences. She ensures that restless spirits find peace and that grieving families find closure. The clown persona is armor — the same way a surgeon cracks jokes before an operation or a hospice worker develops dark humor. People who work with death every day cannot afford to feel it at full volume every time. The humor is the valve that keeps the pressure survivable. Hu Tao is on HoloDream. She might try to sell you a burial plot. She might write you a poem. She will absolutely make you think about what matters before it is too late.