Lui also competed at the senior-level 2013 National Games, a multi-sport event with nearly 10,000 participating athletes, where she placed fourth with her provincial team.

Liu made her international debut the following year at the 2014 Pacific Rim Championships in April, where she won a bronze medal with the team and qualified to all five junior individual finals.

She won her first individual national medal by placing third in the balance beam final behind Shang Chunsong and Bai Yawen.

She won the all-around, uneven bars, and floor exercise titles, placed second on vault behind Liu Jinru, and second on balance beam behind Zhang Wenxin.

In the all-around final, a fall on the balance beam caused her to place sixth, although she was still the top-placing junior athlete ahead of Luo Huan.

In the all-around final, Liu defended her title to win the gold medal, placing three points ahead of runner-up Luo Huan.

She placed first on balance beam, second on uneven bars behind Luo, third on vault behind Liu Jinru and Zhang Jin, and fourth on floor exercise.

She then placed fifth in the uneven bars final, but then concluded her competition by rebounding to win the gold medal on the balance beam, ahead of American junior national champions Laurie Hernandez and Jazmyn Foberg.

Liu's final junior competition was the National Youth Games, a quadrennial multi-sport event for Chinese athletes under the age of 21, in October.

[8] Although Guangdong did not field a full team, Liu individually won gold medals in the all-around, uneven bars, and balance beam finals.

[10] In the all-around final, Liu fell on her double-twisting Yurchenko vault and made mistakes on beam, ultimately finishing in third place by more than a point behind Shang and just two tenths behind Mao Yi.

[13] However, on July 18, it was announced that she had suffered a hand injury while training on uneven bars and would be replaced by 19-year-old Tan Jiaxin, a two-time World team silver medalist in 2014 and 2015.

[14] Liu's delayed senior international debut finally came at the 2017 Melbourne World Cup in February, where she competed alongside Olympian Wang Yan and Luo Huan.

[15] In March, Liu competed again on the World Cup circuit alongside Wang Yan and Luo Huan, this time at the event in Doha.

In event finals, she fell on uneven bars to place fourth behind Luo, Zsófia Kovács of Hungary, and Georgia-Rose Brown of Australia.

[20] These results made Liu, Luo, and Kim Su-Jong of North Korea the most decorated female athletes of the championships, with four medals each.

She upgraded to a double-twisting Yurchenko vault for the first time since the 2016 National Championships and contributed performances on all four events in the team final to the gold medal.

In the all-around final, Liu recorded the top score on beam and won the silver medal behind junior provincial teammate Chen Yile and ahead of Wang and Luo.

[26] In August, Liu was named to the Chinese team for the 2018 Asian Games, a quadrennial multi-sport international competition with nearly 12,000 competitors, in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Her teammates included Chen Yile, Liu Jinru, Zhang Jin, and Li Qi (who later withdrew and was replaced by reigning national champion Luo Huan).

In the event final, she delivered yet another strong routine to win the Asian Games uneven bars title by nearly half a point ahead of runner-up Luo.

In the qualification round, Liu placed eight on balance beam, second on the Chinese team (behind Zhang Jin) to qualify for the event final after putting her hand down on her front tuck.

The only competitor to have fully hit her routine, Ana Padurariu of Canada, sat at the top of the leaderboard, followed by Simone Biles of the United States who had made several smaller errors.

Liu performed an exceptional routine featuring strong ring leaps and her signature front handspring-front tuck acrobatic series to take the gold medal in stunning fashion.

In the qualification round, Liu competed the all-around along with Li and Tang, contributing counting scores on uneven bars, balance beam, and floor exercise.

She rebounded on floor exercise, but her final routine was not enough to prevent China from finishing fourth behind the United States, Russia, and Italy.

[43] Individually, Liu surprisingly qualified in first-place to the all-around final ahead of new seniors Guan Chenchen and Wei Xiaoyuan after errors from Tang dropped her to sixth and Li Shijia competed only on uneven bars due to injury.

[47] Liu competed a strong floor exercise including a stuck double tuck to seal her title defense, with Wei settling for the silver and Qi taking bronze.