Following Li Mu's bombshell revelation, a bizarre silence descended upon the room.
After a long pause, Kevin pointed at her own face and said flatly, "Do you think I'm a total idiot?"
Li Mu carefully studied Kevin's current appearance. He didn't know if it was just his imagination, but after turning into a girl, there was definitely a subtle, lingering goofiness resting on her features.
Ah, Li Mu thought. That must be the foundational programming of the Kiana genome at work.
He nodded with absolute honesty. "Not gonna lie, you do look a little silly right now. But honestly, it perfectly fits your character design..."
Hearing this, Kevin snatched the silver-framed mirror off the floor and hurled it directly at his face. "I'd sooner believe I'm the savior of the world than believe you're a time traveler!"
Anticipating the violent reaction, Li Mu effortlessly caught the flying mirror. He couldn't blame her. If someone walked up to him and claimed to be a Regressor, he'd treat them like a lunatic too.
Fortunately, Li Mu had already prepared a foolproof method to convince her.
He dug into his pockets for a moment before pulling out a high-tech, mechanical VR helmet shaped vaguely like a cat's head. Before Kevin could even react, he jammed it down over her head.
"Wait... where did you even pull this from—Mmph?!"
The moment the helmet encased her head, Kevin thrashed wildly.
But a second later, she froze. Her vision had completely changed.
The suffocating darkness of the helmet vanished, replaced by a bleak, desolate landscape of ashen white. Before she could even process her surroundings, a soul-crushing terror rippled through the sky, reverberating straight to her core.
Kevin instinctively looked up, only to lock eyes with a colossal face that blotted out half the sky. Enormous fingers, each the size of a continental mountain range, were slowly closing in around her, threatening to snap the entire world in half.
The face belonged to a woman. And terrifyingly, she looked incredibly familiar, though Kevin couldn't quite place where she'd seen her before.
Floating in the endless void behind this monolithic entity was a solitary sphere, its surface scarred by glowing magma. Yet, Kevin could still recognize it. That sphere was Earth, the cradle of human civilization.
In a flash of horrifying realization, she understood where she was standing.
This ashen landscape was Earth's satellite. She was on the moon.
And this satellite, which had orbited Earth for billions of years, was currently being cradled in the palms of an unfathomably gigantic woman!
"What in the world is..."
Kevin was so utterly paralyzed by the sheer scale of the nightmare before her that she couldn't even form a coherent sentence.
Just then, the frantic crunch of boots on lunar soil echoed behind her.
Kevin turned, just in time to see a figure brush past her, sprinting madly toward the god-like entity at the edge of the horizon.
In that fleeting glimpse, Kevin caught sight of the warrior's face.
White hair. Piercing blue eyes. A body covered in grievous, bleeding wounds. The warrior's eyes held an infinite, bottomless sorrow—the kind of hollow despair that remained only after all rage had burned away into ash.
He wielded a greatsword wreathed in raging flames, burning like a solitary spark against the endless, encroaching night. It looked as though it could be snuffed out at any second.
Kevin felt a profound sense of tragic heroism radiating from him, but what truly anchored her attention was his face.
He looked exactly like her!
No, that wasn't right. He was her. A fully grown, older, battle-hardened male version of herself.
"Is that... me?" Kevin murmured.
A familiar voice answered right next to her.
"Correct. That is you. The future you, from the original timeline."
Kevin turned her head to see Li Mu standing beside her, calmly observing the apocalyptic spectacle. Or rather, he was observing the divine woman whose colossal fingers were slowly enclosing the entire moon.
Li Mu's voice was heavy with sorrow. He didn't sound like he was delivering exposition; he sounded like he was reciting a eulogy.
"The point in time we're watching takes place just a little over a decade from our present."
"Facing the relentless, crushing advance of the Honkai, humanity banded together under an organization known as the Fire-MOTH. They survived twelve apocalyptic Great Eruptions. Countless tragic and heroic tales were forged during that time, birthing legendary heroes who shone like stars in the annals of history."
"But in the end, they all died in the ensuing catastrophes."
"By the time this specific moment occurs, the global population of seven billion has been reduced to less than a hundred thousand. Human civilization, as we know it, is functionally extinct."
Li Mu looked up at the god holding the moon, his tone laced with indescribable regret.
"And the one responsible for all of this... is the ultimate tribulation born from the Honkai disaster. A foe as mighty as a god: a Herrscher."
"The entity before us is the most powerful of them all. Her title is the Herrscher of Finality."
The moment Li Mu spoke those words, a torrent of blinding, incandescent fire erupted at the edge of the horizon.
Like a divine sword piercing the heavens, the flames surged upward, striking out at the god in the sky.
BOOM!
A brilliant explosion, as radiant as a dying star, detonated in the freezing void, entirely wiping out everything in its path—including Li Mu and Kevin.
---||---
Back in Li Mu's living room, Kevin frantically ripped the helmet off her head.
Her chest heaved violently as she gasped for air, greedily sucking in oxygen as if trying to physically force down the lingering terror in her heart.
Li Mu casually pulled out two juice-box-sized cartons of milk, stabbed a straw into each, and slid one across the coffee table toward her.
"So, having seen that little preview, what are your thoughts?"
Kevin looked up. Li Mu's expression was infuriatingly calm. He was just quietly sipping his milk, watching her.
"That vision... is that really what's going to happen in the future?"
Though her tone carried a trace of skepticism, deep down, she already knew the truth. The moment she saw that older, scarred version of herself charging alone against the Herrscher of Finality on the desolate surface of the moon, she believed him.
"To be precise, it's what would have happened in the original history," Li Mu explained, taking another slurp of milk.
"This world is nowhere near as simple as it looks. Beneath the surface of our peaceful daily lives, a supernatural disaster known as the Honkai has always stalked us like a shadow."
"For thousands of years, it has walked alongside humanity. But because our civilization was small and our technology primitive, the Honkai remained relatively harmless. However, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the explosive advancement of human technology, It finally began to bare Its fangs."
"Starting now, over the next few years, the Honkai disasters will escalate exponentially. In less than twenty years, humanity will plummet from a population of seven billion down to a mere hundred thousand."
Hearing Li Mu detail the horrors of the Honkai made Kevin's scalp go numb.
But compared to the tragic end of the world, there was something else she cared about far more.
"You said earlier that everyone I love, and everyone who loves me, will die. Does that mean my parents, my relatives, my friends...?"
To this, Li Mu delivered a brutally cruel answer.
"Yes. Dead. Every single one of them."
All the color drained from Kevin's exquisitely pretty face. She looked as though every drop of blood had been siphoned from her body.
Instead of comforting her, Li Mu deliberately pushed her already sinking heart completely off the cliff.
"You will be one of the very few survivors of that final, apocalyptic battle. As one of the Pioneers, you will lead the remnants of humanity into cryo-sleep, acting as the dormant embers of civilization. You will sleep for tens of thousands of years until you reach the next era."
"Bound by a solemn promise to completely defeat the Honkai, you will be forced to become a messiah, shouldering the crushing weight of all humanity's future on your back alone."
"So, tell me, Kevin. Is that an ending you can accept?"
Kevin fell completely silent.
Li Mu didn't rush her. He just sat back and quietly drank his milk.
Finally, Kevin spoke, her voice hoarse and trembling. "If everything I care about is gone... then what's the point of even living?"
Hearing this, Li Mu set down his empty milk carton. His eyes locked onto hers, burning with an intense, piercing light.
"Exactly. If everything we know and love is wiped away, what the hell is the point of continuing the civilization?"
"In the established history, you, me, Su, and a handful of other Pioneers slept away the millennia to reach the next era, all to keep humanity's flame alive and help the next generation conquer the Honkai."
"And ultimately, that fifty-thousand-year plan succeeded. The future human civilization survived. They had a bright, shining future."
"But what does any of that have to do with us? Everything we actually care about is right here, in this era."
"That is why, in that distant future fifty thousand years from now, I paid an unimaginable price to claw my way back to this exact point in time. I came back to rewrite the script, to ensure that this era survives."
Li Mu clenched his fist, as if physically seizing the fabric of destiny itself.
"Unlike the weak, powerless me from the original timeline, the current me possesses the memories of the future. I possess the wisdom and the unbreakable will forged through hellish trials."
"The current me... can do absolutely anything!"
Kevin looked up. Li Mu's eyes were ablaze with a fanatic, almost overwhelming zeal.
She couldn't deny it—she completely agreed with him. Everything she held dear was in this era. If it was destroyed, surviving meant absolutely nothing.
Kevin let out a long breath. "Alright... I believe you. I believe you came back from the future. So... what exactly is your grand plan?"
Hearing her surrender, Li Mu smiled and pointed a finger toward the ceiling.
"Before we get into that, Kevin, you need to understand where the Honkai comes from, and why It wants to destroy humanity."
"There is a god—a literal, cosmic god. Let's call It the Cocoon."
"It lowers its threads to weave destiny, running a theatrical play called 'Civilization' over and over again on the stage of Earth. It does all of this for one single purpose: to find a civilization capable of enduring Its 'embrace'."
"The catch is, to a mortal civilization, Its embrace is synonymous with absolute annihilation. And the Honkai... is simply Its method of embracing us."
Processing this massive lore drop, Kevin couldn't help but deadpan, "So this 'Cocoon' destroys entire worlds just because It wants a hug? Talk about severe attachment issues."
Li Mu actually laughed at that.
"With our current level of power, destroying the Cocoon of Finality is mathematically impossible. If we want our civilization to survive, the only way is to accept Its embrace, and then seize control of It."
"And you, Kevin... in this grand cosmic play, you are the only one qualified to endure Its embrace."
"So, Mu... are you saying your grand method to save the world is...?"
"Exactly!" Li Mu sprang up from his chair, pointing dramatically at the dumbfounded girl before him. "Best buddy! For the sake of saving all of humanity, please become the Almighty Kiana—wait, no, please become the God of Earth!"
Li Mu's speech was incredibly impassioned. Honestly, Kevin was almost moved to tears.
But suddenly, the latent intelligence in her brain broke free from the Kiana-genome's suppression and violently retook the high ground.
Kevin instantly zeroed in on the massive, glaring plot hole.
"Hold on a damn minute! You almost distracted me!"
Kevin gestured furiously at her own newly-acquired female anatomy, glaring daggers at Li Mu.
"What does saving the world have to do with turning me into a girl?!"
"Don't tell me this supreme cosmic god is a sexist?!"
To Kevin's absolute horror, Li Mu didn't laugh. Instead, he nodded with deadly seriousness.
"Funny you should mention that. The Cocoon of Finality actually is sexist."
"And on top of that... It's a raging lesbian."
"...Huh?"