Beyond the Chrysalis is the five-star sword built around Vesna, but its passive works for any sword user who cycles abilities quickly, and Keqing is a clean fit. Equipped on her in Genshin Impact‘s Stygian Onslaught: Luminous Battlefront – Dire, the sword pushes her CRIT DMG high enough to take down the Level 110 Guardian Blade of Drifting Snow in 112 seconds, inside the 120-second battle timer.
Quick answer: Beyond the Chrysalis grants stacking Winds of Plentiful on each Elemental Skill or Burst; every 3 stacks add 56% CRIT DMG for 10 seconds, raising Keqing from 235.1% to 291.1%.
What Beyond the Chrysalis does
Beyond the Chrysalis is a sword with a high CRIT DMG secondary stat and a passive, Dance of Wings Unbound, that rewards fast ability rotations. Each time the holder uses an Elemental Skill or Elemental Burst, they gain a Winds of Plentiful stack. Every 3 stacks convert into a 56% CRIT DMG buff for 10 seconds.
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| Type | Sword |
| Base ATK (Lv. 90) | 674 |
| Substat | CRIT DMG 44.1% |
| Passive | Dance of Wings Unbound |
| Refinement shown | R1 |
Keqing suits this because she weaves her Elemental Skill and Burst constantly during a rotation, so the stacks fill fast and the buff stays active through her damage windows. The sword also contributes its flat Base ATK and the 44.1% CRIT DMG substat on top of her artifact stats.
How Keqing’s stats change with the sword active
In the open world near Liyue, Keqing’s base CRIT DMG with the sword equipped reads 235.1%. Cycling her Elemental Skill and Burst to reach 3 Winds of Plentiful stacks raises that figure to 291.1%, a flat 56% gain that matches the passive. Her ATK also climbs from 2,053 to 2,303 across the rotation.
Her other numbers sit at 78.9% CRIT Rate, 126.6% Energy Recharge, 61.6% Electro DMG Bonus, and 240 Elemental Mastery, running a split 2-piece Gladiator’s Finale and 2-piece Thundering Fury artifact set at C6 with 9/12/12 talents.
The Overloaded team built around her
Keqing’s Electro pairs with three Pyro units to trigger Overloaded reactions throughout the fight. Durin and Nicole are custom concept characters rather than released roster units, while Keqing and Chevreuse are standard playable characters. The Pyro application from the trio also matters against the boss’s Cryo defenses.
| Character | Role | Element | Weapon |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keqing | Main DPS | Electro | Beyond the Chrysalis |
| Durin | Sub-DPS | Pyro | Athame Artis |
| Nicole | Buffer | Pyro | Angelos’ Heptades |
| Chevreuse | Support | Pyro | Symphonist of Scents |
The Guardian Blade fight and its Cryo Ward
Guardian Blade of Drifting Snow: Endless Reverberation enters the arena at Level 110. Its defining mechanic is a Cryo Ward, an icy crystalline barrier it raises when its HP drops past set thresholds. While the ward holds, the boss can restore health, so the team has to break it quickly with Pyro and Electro pressure.
After the first ward breaks, Keqing, Durin, and Nicole run their burst rotations and keep Overloaded firing. Large damage numbers stack up as the ice-armored boss takes sustained hits between shield phases.
The boss raises a second Cryo Ward later in the fight. Heavy Pyro application from Nicole and Durin cracks it open, with Melt reactions landing against the ice.
Keqing closes the fight with her Elemental Burst and a normal-attack combo, clearing the last of the boss’s health under full Electro pressure.
The clear result
The 112 seconds recorded on the Battle Complete screen for Guardian Blade of Drifting Snow: Endless Reverberation beats the 120-second battle objective by eight seconds. For this one battlefield, the result is also comfortably faster than the 60-second stage average required across the full Dire run.
Where this fits in Stygian Onslaught Dire
Stygian Onslaught is the boss-rush endgame mode, and Dire is its hardest difficulty. On Dire you clear three separate battlefields with no repeated characters across them, and co-op is off, so every stage runs solo. The enemies carry far more health and hit harder than their Fearless versions, and the Exalted Ones boon does not apply.
Dire also adds a Perilous Objective: finish the entire three-battle challenge within 180 seconds to earn the Sublimation weapon skins, which averages out to 60 seconds per battlefield. A 112-second single-stage clear here leaves comfortable room against that whole-run target.
Vesna is the sword’s signature holder, and clears of the same Dire bosses with her on Beyond the Chrysalis show the weapon working on its intended owner.
The current Version 7.1 Stygian Onslaught cycle runs through November 3, 2026, with the following cycle scheduled from November 11 to December 15, 2026. Each reset brings a fresh Disturbance Outbreak state, after which artifact rewards stop but the rest of the mode stays playable until the cycle ends.
