We were just lacking an excuse to strike you! Now that Destruction has fixed its gaze upon us, we'll just fight back.
--------------------------------
After realizing these meanings through Rion's words.
The audience deeply felt it.
The main thread of the Xianzhou could be one of the main story lines.
"But not only that."
Rion spoke again: "What I just said, all of it was from the perspective of mortals."
"And now, if we raise our gaze higher, looking from the perspective of paths, or even the Aeons, we will discover even more interesting things."
After Rion's words fell.
A constantly mentioned saying burrowed into the minds of the audience.
The relationship between Hunt and the Xianzhou is the most special faction relationship in the universe.
Are the actions of the Xianzhou Alliance because of some kind of suppression?
Back when the Xianzhou Alliance was on the Thousand Year Voyage, many people speculated that the Alliance wanted to walk the path of uniting the Xianzhou Alliance and the Galaxy Rangers.
Combing the two, broadening the principles of revenge. And in the end, perhaps even allowing Hunt to ascend and broaden its destiny.
Looking at it today, this statement is entirely possible.
But the last point, that Hunt might ascend and broaden its destiny, suddenly shone like a bright lamp.
And the best evidence to verify this statement, is the relationship between Lan and the Xianzhou.
They are too close.
"In the Thousand-Year Star Voyage Myriad Celestia Trailer concerning the Aeons, the words of Hunt were like this."
"The first ten thousand years, survival was the goal."
"The second ten thousand years, the hunter drew his bow in anger."
"The third ten thousand years, hunting itself had become the purpose."
"These words that once seemed cryptic and mysterious, are they not now instantly understandable?"
Rion threw out another clue.
...
: Damn, it's all making sense now.
: The first ten thousand years refers to this ten-thousand-year history of the Xianzhou, hunting to survive.
: The second ten thousand years, drawing the bow in anger? Anger, does it mean the anger of Destruction? Or their own anger?
: Incredible! So long ago, the groundwork for the current plot was already written!
: Foreshadowing recovered! So shocking!
: That's why, making a series must have an outline.
...
The three lines of Hunt are the best evidence to support this hidden thread!
And they align perfectly with Rion's analysis just now.
The Alliance walked to the end of the first ten thousand years, and the choice of the Xianzhou Alliance was, seizing the Luofu crisis, to divide a chapter.
"Why is the key to understanding the plot, understanding the intimate relationship between the Xianzhou and Lan?"
"The Xianzhou Alliance is vast, with countless people, and most of them walk the path of Hunt."
"And the power accumulated from these lives practicing Hunt is unimaginably immense."
"To use an unreasonable expression: the Xianzhou Alliance itself is the manifestation of Hunt's will in the universe."
"Their actions will all ultimately feed back to the Hunt's path."
"Just like the Interastral Peace Corporation, when they make money, unify currency, whether through wars or oppression, in the end it is all for Preservation."
"Does that make sense? It makes sense."
"Now let me ask you all, think: after the Xianzhou Alliance points its spear toward Destruction, what will happen?"
Rion gave many hints.
Waiting for the audience's answers.
Everyone knew the IPC very well.
But at this moment, applying the IPC's logic to the Xianzhou gave feelings of contradiction.
All of the IPC's actions are founded upon: they earn money to better support Amber King's work of Preservation, so earning money equals practicing Preservation.
Then what about the Xianzhou? Creating a new target, pointing toward Destruction, is that fulfilling the duty of revenge?
It's not that Phantylia's harm to the Luofu doesn't count, but looking higher, her actions can't compare to the feats of Swarm in the past.
To hunt Destruction for this, looking from the broader view, isn't the driving force somewhat insufficient?
After all, this is one path, The Hunt, hunting another path.
Seeing that the audience in the livestream couldn't answer.
Rion typed a line.
"The Galaxy Rangers are just a group of messy people gathered together, some don't even know each other, maybe never even met."
"What connects them is a shared bottom line, and anyone who touches that bottom line will be targeted by the Rangers' hunt."
This was what Boothill explained in Penacony about the Galaxy Rangers.
At this moment.
As soon as these words appeared, they immediately confirmed the logical framework from before.
"We may not know each other, but if you cross that bottom line, you are my enemy."
"This is the most terrifying aspect of Hunt."
"Why does the whole universe say, better not to provoke those lunatics, the Galaxy Rangers?"
"It's for this very reason."
"Even if you are eighty light years away, if you touch the Rangers' bottom line and one Ranger sees it, believe it or not, countless stars will come to hunt you, until death."
"But before the Xianzhou Alliance formally declared war on Destruction, this claim lacked authority."
"And now, by formally waging war on Destruction, the Alliance, the largest, official faction of The Hunt, has established this claim's authority."
"Is Destruction the destruction of the universe?"
"Doesn't matter."
"What you cannot manage, we the Xianzhou will manage."
"What you cannot defeat, we the Xianzhou will defeat."
"Because Destruction has already crossed that bottom line! The grudges between the Rangers and Zulo were only appetizers!"
"And as the Alliance and these people who practice Hunt formally take this step, Hunt's destiny is bound to expand."
"Perhaps by tearing off a piece from other paths, or perhaps by integrating paths not yet revealed."
"In any case, after today's episode, if anyone still treats Hunt as a narrow path, then they must not be thinking straight!"
After Rion finished the last sentence. The livestream was completely silent.
This passionate analysis completely unveiled the mystery of the script.
Just as Rion said. Only now did the audience realize, Hunt is not a narrow path.
Its potential is simply unfathomable.
As just explained, the reasons for the Alliance's war against Destruction are many.
They include the Xianzhou Alliance's own cultural heritage, and the irreplaceability of Hunt within the Alliance, concerns of mortals.
But there are also deeper, fundamental reasons in practicing the path itself.
When the Alliance began, just like dealing with Abundance, to deal with Destruction and help those worlds ravaged by it, could their actions be considered a form of justice?
Justice, revenge, hunting.
All of these can be encompassed by the Hunt.
And by this inference, all purposeful actions, even the terrifying philosophical concept of causality, can be included within it.
Revenge is essentially a manifestation of causality.
Once the bottom line of the Hunt is trampled, a cause is generated.
With cause comes effect, and the Hunt's pursuit and conclusion is the effect.
It formed a complete, self-consistent system.
When realizing this, the audience trembled in awe.
And at that moment, Rion's voice, like that of a devil, kept piercing into the minds of the audience.
Through the mouth of this scriptwriter deeply familiar with the story, an extreme dissection of the Hunt unfolded.
The Hunt and the law of causality are practically born for each other.
The cause is touching the bottom line, the effect is the Hunt's pursuit.
This is the basic logic.
And before today's story, the targets of the Xianzhou Alliance's revenge were specific, individuals or forces that had harmed them.
The Abundant, the Disciples of Sanctus Medicus, the Wing weavers, and later Phantylia and Destruction were all like this.
But after today, as the embodiment of the will of the Hunt, the actions of the Xianzhou have already defined the boundaries and essence of the Hunt Path.
They defined their war against Destruction as "practicing the Hunt."
In essence, it was a declaration: the actions of Nanook the Destruction and his followers, such as trampling life, creating disasters, breaking order, and driving the universe into entropy, had touched the bottom line of the Hunt, creating a new cause.
This is a web of causality on a cosmic scale: all the forces and civilizations affected by Destruction would become new "causes" for the Xianzhou and the Hunt, and these causes would automatically transform into "effects" directed against Destruction.
This is no longer retaliation against a specific enemy or a single action.
The narrow mindset of the Hunt had ended. What replaced it was the budding establishment of a "rule":
[Any existence, as long as its actions align with "causing irreversible disaster and wantonly trampling the bottom line," will automatically become a target of the Hunt's pursuit, starting a hunt to the death…]
This already possesses the embryonic form of karmic retribution.
...
: Damn, Brother Lan…
: This is way too ruthless.
: I suddenly have an absurdly abstract thought, if the universe is a computer, then the Hunt's bottom line is the "trigger" of the Honkai Star Rail universe. Once someone triggers it, the Hunt's algorithm automatically generates a crusade mission…
: I knew it, the Hunt could never be just simple revenge.
: Finally, with this episode, the fangs of the Xianzhou and the Hunt are completely revealed.
: I've got goosebumps all over! Too shocking!
: MiHoYo really hid this so deep!
...
The livestream audience was completely enthralled by this line of reasoning.
"But this is far from over."
Rion, too, was immersed in the dissection of the Hunt, showing the audience another layer of the picture.
At first, the Hunt's reason was revenge, that revenge was the cause.
And that cause was what the so-called line defined by the Galaxy Rangers was.
But what exactly is the bottom line?
At first it was "harming the Xianzhou civilization itself," later expanded to "harming the Xianzhou's allies." And now, yet another new DLC was added: acts of Destruction.
Following this logic, the Hunt's primal drive of revenge, the cause, holds infinite possibilities, endlessly expandable.
If the Memory's tampering and erasure of memory grows rampant.
If the Balance's control of equilibrium increasingly erases possibilities.
If the Nihility's influence grows ever heavier…
"If, I'm saying if-"
"One day, the Xianzhou and the Hunt universalize some behavior into a cause, one sufficient to trigger the logic of revenge."
"Once such behavior is widely recognized and pursued in the Hunt, the origin and scope of this logic will correspondingly expand."
"The Hunt will transform from merely avenging Abundance into a universal executor of causal law: 'hunting all evils that touch the bottom line.'"
"What… would that look like?" Rion finished slowly.
Her gaze turned to the three descriptions of the Hunt in the Chronicles of the Aeons.
And the final one read:
[In the third ten-thousand years, hunting had already become the goal itself.]
This short sentence, together with the recent analysis, left the audience unable to imagine what Brother Lan's wheelchair would become in the future.
"Revenge is the manifestation of the effect."
"The Hunt's pursuit is the effect inflicted upon evil causes. Lan's arrows are both arrows of revenge and instruments of karmic retribution."
"And each successful Hunt reinforces the weight and reality of 'those who cross the line will face retribution' in the universe's causal law."
"In turn, this consolidates and expands the Hunt Path."
"This forms a terrifying positive feedback loop: define evil causes → inflict evil effects → reinforce causality → broaden the Path → define more abstract evil causes… endlessly, until the very end of existence."
...
: This analysis of the Hunt is making my brain explode.
: So the Retribution is the true theme?
: As expected, the Xianzhou storyline never plays around with anything superficial.
: I can't imagine what terrifying existence the Alliance and Brother Lan will become if they truly implement such a plan.
: The ultimate executor of the universe?
: My head is filled with that phrase "hunting has become the goal itself." Ten thousand years later, won't Brother Lan be hunting the entire universe?
: This is the grandeur a great power should have, every action, every purpose, all ultimately pointing toward elevating Lan and the Hunt Path itself, revenge under the banner of causality.
...
Terrifying visions rose and fell in the minds of the audience.
According to this analysis, no one would ever again think of the Hunt as a narrow Path.
Its possibilities are endless, so much so that it made everyone shudder!
And the power of the Hunt Path will only grow stronger and stronger!
---------------------------------
[ T/ N: I felt my headache even more translating this chapter, trying to make sure everything made sense and not just random words like you bite me, I bite you.
But one more thing, can an Aeon or the followers just randomly add things to their paths just because they can?
Then if that is the case, the Aeons and their paths become even more terrifying,
An example, the Amber King: I'll preserve all life and matter as it is at this specific moment. That makes the Amber King able to tap into the powers of time and space and include them into the path of preservation.
What do you guys think?
Also a few more reviews will help me.]