Xin Yu, from an unknown place and at an unknown time, found himself standing in a university laboratory. He looked at the back of a woman with green hair, dressed in a white lab coat, busily working.
Mobius... The first person he had helped after crawling back from the brink of death following his desperate battle with the Herrscher of Thunder, a girl who also wanted to help save him.
To say he had no feelings for her would be absolute self-deception. But Xin Yu also knew she had far more important things to pursue than romantic entanglements.
Mobius was dedicated to the evolution of all humanity, to defeating the Honkai. She would likely strive for this her entire life. In that case, he just needed to provide assistance. Although he had previously promised her he would defeat that powerful enemy, the Herrscher of Finality was, after all, something he currently could not beat.
Or rather, even having reached the Golden Core realm, when Xin Yu recalled the power disparity Mobius had spoken of during their exchange, he still deeply felt his own powerlessness.
With his current strength, dealing with a Herrscher of Thunder would naturally be effortless. But to face the strongest among all Herrschers, to confront the very source of Honkai, he was still far too lacking.
He could, of course, choose to ignore the disaster Kiana in that world had suffered, and the hundreds of millions who had died in that world. He could say it was all for his promise, to become stronger in the future to change everything.
But regrettably, the time this would consume left even Xin Yu himself feeling lost. He could still see the path ahead, but it was far too long. The leap from Golden Core to Nascent Soul wasn't just a qualitative change achieved through a quantitative accumulation of energy; it also required certain conditions that Xin Yu himself didn't even know he lacked.
The time span was simply too vast, so vast that Xin Yu even worried his will might change because of it.
People are always fickle; one cannot guarantee they will always maintain their original intentions.
Xin Yu shook his head. He walked over to Mobius's side. She was still engrossed in her experiment, seemingly too focused to notice the sudden appearance of someone beside her.
Mobius's eyes moved away from the microscope. Suddenly, she noticed a small metal box placed on the documents beside her.
She frowned, then glanced around, finding no trace of anyone having been there. Moreover, the laboratory door had not been opened.
After checking the box with nearby equipment and confirming there were no dangerous substances inside, Mobius carefully opened it. She saw several glass test tubes and a stiff card inside.
"I am going to do something dangerous. It's very likely we will never meet again. As a parting gift, I've left you some of my blood."
After reading the words on the card, Mobius's expression instantly darkened. She gritted her teeth, staring at the glass test tubes filled with blood inside the box.
"Bastard! You haven't shown up for so long, and now you suddenly tell me this!"
"Xin Yu! You better come back alive!"
......
Tianqiong City. Xin Yu stood on a scenic lookout, leaning against the railing, gazing at the splendid night view below.
"The goods you wanted. Where's my money?"
A somewhat lazy female voice sounded. Then, a figure completely shrouded in a cloak appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, behind Xin Yu, carrying a briefcase.
Xin Yu didn't say much, merely took out a briefcase of the same size and placed it beside him.
The cloaked figure first opened the briefcase Xin Yu had provided. After checking the gold bars stacked inside, she nodded with satisfaction, then took the briefcase of gold and left without a backward glance, leaving the briefcase she had brought behind.
Xin Yu opened that briefcase, flipping through the various documents and files inside. He primarily focused on the specifics of that Great Honkai Eruption: the exact date and the extent of the damage caused.
Xin Yu read in silence. Through the numbers on the files, he could discern the immense trauma this disaster had inflicted upon human civilization.
Seeing some on-site photographs, looking at the once-prosperous city now reduced to ruins and scorched earth.
Xin Yu knew he had to do something.
......
"Why... why couldn't it have been me who died? Why am I the only one who survived..."
On a lonely night, a girl wandered the streets. Her eyes were filled with a dull darkness, and her entire body looked extremely thin, as if suffering from malnutrition.
In a small-scale Honkai disaster that had suddenly occurred earlier, the girl's parents had died. Just as the girl herself was about to die, an unknown woman had eliminated the Honkai Beasts spawned in the small disaster and saved her life.
But after being saved, the girl could find no place to go. Her relatives and friends shunned her, blaming her for jinxing her parents to death. The orphanages, due to the previous major disaster, had long since exceeded their capacity for orphans and couldn't possibly take in anyone else.
The governments were also powerless. To concentrate their efforts against the Honkai, each city housed an enormous population, and many matters could no longer be managed.
The girl was even thinking now, why hadn't she died with her parents back then? Why did that person have to save her? Dying with her parents would have been much better than this.
Just as the girl fell to the ground, thinking how wonderful it would be if she just didn't get up, if she just died like this and joined her parents, a warm hand grabbed hers.
The girl couldn't remember what happened next. She only remembered that on that pitch-black night where the path ahead seemed invisible, a pair of hands suddenly reached out from the darkness. A person, radiating light as if from within, dispelled the darkness before her eyes.
The girl woke up in a car, looking somewhat bewildered at her parents sitting in the driver's and passenger's seats.
She felt as if she had had a nightmare. But thankfully, the dream had finally ended.
And on a tall building behind the car, a youth watched in silence.
Merely the tip of the iceberg.
......
Schicksal Headquarters, Helheim Laboratory. Gazing at the white-haired young girl inside the glass container, the Overseer of Schicksal, Otto Apocalypse, still wore that smile on his face.
His plan was about to officially begin.
"Implant the Gem of Serenity into the target."
Following the command, a gem housed in another container was being transported via a tube towards the cultivation apparatus holding the young girl.
The fluctuations emitted by the gem caused the consciousness within the girl's body to slowly awaken. The surrounding Honkai energy also began to be absorbed into the girl's body in a manner that defied common sense.
Just as the gem was about to make contact with the girl's body, a hand suddenly reached out from nowhere, snatching the gem directly.
Everyone present was stunned. Even Otto, who had always appeared calm and collected as if everything was under his control, lost his smile.
A strange youth floated in mid-air. His hair was a stretch of gray-white, his eyes completely clouded, like an old man whose allotted lifespan was about to end.