"I once thought you were an insurmountable mountain before me, but now I find that I have long since been able to cross it."
Xin Yu stood upon the moon, gazing at the Herrscher of the End of the previous civilization before him. He looked at this being whose level of existence was not even in the same dimension as his own.
"This is the end. The story of Honkai is over."
Xin Yu simply reached out a hand, and the enemy that had once been unbeatable for him was erased.
Then, using this moment as a time node, Xin Yu began to continuously erode the past.
At the same time, the time nodes of the entire solar system began to fall into chaos.
At St. Freya Academy, Himeko, who had been smiling at the youthful vigor of her students, suddenly felt memories surge forth in her mind. The smile on her face froze instantly. Then, she remembered everything from the previous storyline, including the future that originally had no Xin Yu.
Kiana, who had been sleeping in late, shot up in bed in an instant. Her voice was a complex mix of emotions, tinged with gritted teeth as she said, "Xin Yu! You're completely shutting me out!"
Raiden Mei was able to see a bit more than an ordinary person. She and Yae Sakura walked out of the flower shop, looking up at the streaks of cracks and auroral light that had appeared in the sky. Their expressions were somewhat bewildered, unsure of what Xin Yu was planning to do now.
"Ugh! This is! St. Freya Academy?"
A sudden cry of surprise rang out. Raiden Mei looked over and saw her past—or perhaps future—self. The self who, through her own efforts, had joined World Serpent and become the true Herrscher of Thunder.
"You are?" the original storyline's Raiden Mei asked, her expression baffled as she looked at this other person who was identical to her, yet radiated an intense sense of danger.
"I'm alive! I'm still alive!" A cat-eared girl excitedly ran back and forth on a rooftop, though her attire was a bit too revealing.
"The changes in the world are truly myriad and unpredictable," said a young man with a slight resemblance to Otto, though his hair was spikier. He held a glass of red wine, looking somewhat numb as he stood not far from the hand-in-hand couple of Otto and Kallen.
"Oh, my old friend. It seems that even in the original future where I chose to depart, you still mourned me in such a way. This is truly flattering," Otto said, looking at Void Archives not far away, a smile on his face that was all too familiar to the latter.
The chaos in the timeline had caused people from the past and future to meet in the present. Even people from the altered time nodes of the original storyline appeared. It was hard to say that this wasn't done deliberately by a certain someone.
The network he had woven into time meant that even if time completely collapsed, it would still maintain the normal existence of a single world. And because of this, many people were intercepted by this great net after the temporal collapse and appeared in this world.
At first, everyone was inevitably confused and disoriented. But after Raiden Mei displayed her Emissary-level power and created a space for everyone to communicate and discuss freely, everyone calmed down and sat down for a proper chat.
Raiden Mei looked at the people with identical faces, gathered in groups of twos and threes, discussing amongst themselves. For a moment, the scene felt both absurd and amusing. She turned to Yae Sakura, who was standing beside her, and said, "It seems the you from the original storyline hasn't appeared."
"That me has completely changed along with the timeline. She won't appear again. Besides, that me was truly, truly tired. There is no need for her to awaken again," Yae Sakura said, shaking her head.
"So, what on earth is Xin Yu trying to do by causing such a huge mess? Is there any way to contact him?" Future Kiana, the Herrscher of the End, walked over to Raiden Mei, her arms crossed as she spoke with frustration.
"With the histories of the 1st and 2nd Honkai Wars completely rewritten, I think Xin Yu has already prepared to rewrite the entire history of Honkai."
"Sigh! None of us know how many civilizations and cycles the Honkai has gone through since its birth. He wants to change all the tragedies born from the collapse—perhaps not even just the tragedies brought by the Honkai. How great a price and how much causality must he bear for all of this?"
The group from the original storyline's St. Freya Academy, including Siegfried and the members of Anti-Entropy, had all arrived.
The Kiana from the original storyline looked at her future self who had become the Herrscher of the End, and at Raiden Mei and Yae Sakura who were on a similar level to a Herrscher of the End. For a moment, the world felt truly magical.
"We've gotten a rough idea of the situation. So, that Xin Yu with the power to change time is now trying to rewrite the entire history of the Honkai?" Herrscher of the End Kiana said, then continued, "I suspect he's trying to show us, from the original storyline, this good ending to see if we'd be willing to accept it."
"That guy isn't trying to do something like making us all forget him, then becoming the great hero who saved the world all by himself, bearing all the pain and sorrow alone, is he?! After all, to perform such a massive time reversal operation, what huge price will he have to pay? So he's using this method to ensure we don't feel any pain or regret?" Welt, who had been pulled from the cosmos back to the Omphalos point in time, pushed up his glasses.
"...Hmm? The people from the past, future, and even the original timeline have all been intercepted by the network? Mm, it seems the net I wove is quite sturdy."
Xin Yu looked at the world within the network and nodded with great satisfaction. As for Kiana's accusation of unwarranted grievous harm, he declared it to be a vicious slander.
"Alright. I, as a bug, have crawled from inside the fruit onto a branch. If this Imaginary Tree doesn't react soon, I'm going to crawl down the trunk to the roots."
As Xin Yu spoke, he saw it. In the future, a network woven from the various causal laws and underlying logic of the universe was descending upon him.
"Hmph. Finally, a reaction. This is good. If you didn't react at all, it would actually be more difficult for me."
In an instant, Xin Yu released all the restraints on himself, extracting a portion of his higher-dimensional essence.
At the same time, the distortion points he had established in various timelines all activated.
A wave of chaotic time distorted and scattered in that moment.
The collapse of time, the disturbance of causality—a massive storm of bugs began to relentlessly assault the Imaginary Tree.
The attack that had originally been brewing was thrown into chaos and disorder by this massive storm of bugs.
The entire cosmos—no, the entire Imaginary Tree itself began to fall into a state of logical paradox.
And taking this opportunity, Xin Yu began to advance towards the deepest, most core part of this world.