At seventeen, you and Aili Xiya had been traveling for a long time. During these days, due to the girl's outlook on life, you also became less obsessed with famous historical sites and more focused on the roadside scenery.
However, the completely unregulated destinations, and the encounters with various outstanding and striking individuals due to different reasons upon arrival...
Even made you somewhat unclear about the true purpose of this trip.
If Aili Xiya's keen eye could accurately spot geniuses still undiscovered and buried in the crowd, and the lovely girl's luck could lead her to encounter one or two geniuses with astonishing wisdom...
But...
If this number expanded to dozens, or even at least one or two in every place visited, usually encountered within two hours of reaching a new destination...
That would be difficult to explain scientifically.
With the current pace of technological development, the possibility of truly talented individuals being overlooked is quite small. Even if it happens, it shouldn't be so widespread.
If it were truly just a coincidence, then besides incredibly good luck, it would only mean the world was in decline, society was chaotic, and the rot had spread to such an extent that even geniuses were being overlooked in droves.
Originally, you couldn't be bothered with these things, having already given up and treating everything encountered on the road as scenery.
But...
The prerequisite for you to ignore it was at least that it shouldn't affect your trip!
What was supposed to be a trip for two with Aili Xiya seemed to have turned into Aili Xiya's journey to interview and bring salvation to those geniuses.
Aili Xiya spent tens of thousands of times more time on them than on you. You felt like an accessory, utterly meaningless.
This even made your perception of Aili Xiya somewhat subtle.
She said she had no goals, everything was spontaneous.
But in reality, she had already outlined the directions she wanted to go. She said she wanted to focus more on scenery and culture, but she spent all her time communicating with those geniuses.
You felt as if you had returned to your time in the town, as if you had never left that small town.
The same neglect, the same lack of presence. Those brilliant and beautiful eyes, whose beauty even the most vibrant flowers could hardly express, seemed to linger on you for an exceptionally short time.
You didn't hate her for it.
Because as the journey progressed, you could also feel Aili Xiya's mood.
—She was very anxious, as if something urgent was at hand.
..."Did Aili Xiya realize the problem so early?"
Jiang Cheng felt everything he encountered during the trip, all the darkness hidden within those seemingly beautiful, dreamlike experiences.
Being overlooked or anything, the young man, who knew Aili Xiya's personality well, never took it seriously.
Not being overlooked might have been the strange thing.
The only unusual thing here was the girl's urgency regarding a certain matter, or rather, a certain crisis.
This feeling was undoubtedly due to sensing the disaster called Honkai, the threat of Honkai, and arose from not knowing how to deal with it.
Because there was simply nothing else in the world that could make the girl so worried.
Being unable to fight Honkai was not the key.
The question was... was it really at this point in time?
Did she really realize it when she was so young?
When she first left the town, she was a young girl. Her next appearance was during the second herrscher subjugation battle, where she appeared as a teenage girl.
The time span between these events was at least astonishing, and the world tour would certainly not have been less than five years.
Could it be that during this long period, Aili Xiya discovered the problem and consciously sought out geniuses who could change these things?
Or perhaps encountering geniuses was just an accident, and the essence was simply to investigate this matter.
I don't know.
The plot here is too fragmented, or rather, completely absent. The official sources never explicitly stated what happened during the journey.
All of this is just speculation.
Ultimately limited to the imagination of an individual with blinders on.
There is no definitive explanation.
If the original timeline had clear regulations, then one could search and correct it.
Unfortunately, the plot of Elysium is completely fragmented, just like the Flame-Chasers who would later shatter into pieces, making it almost impossible to piece together a complete timeline.
At eighteen, by worldly standards, you had reached adulthood.
Normally, there should be a so-called birthday party to celebrate the arrival of this day, but... now only you and Aili Xiya are together. She won't miss the party, but she probably won't put too much effort into it.
After all, you, as her travel companion, can feel her urgency without reservation.
You are willing to give more tolerance in this matter.
After all, weren't you the one who brought the girl out of the forest?
She has also been your only playmate for almost your entire childhood, still somewhat green, even going to the nearby pond to catch fish together.
Even though you don't care about it at all, when you return to the temporary tent under the cover of night after purchasing supplies from the nearby town to go to the next area, you can't help but feel a little lost that the girl has forgotten you.
Until suddenly a little colorful firelight lit up in the dim tent.
"Jiang Cheng, happy birthday ~?"
The girl's pink and blue eyes sparkled with moving colors, and the blessings from her slightly raised corners of the mouth corners of her mouth and lips were more brilliant than flowers.
The bright candlelight dispelled the dark night, and an exquisitely decorated pink cake entered the young man's vision.
At first, he couldn't even fully understand everything that was happening in front of him, even if the candlelight was right in front of his eyes, it couldn't illuminate the confusion in his pupils.
Unable to understand.
Hard to imagine.
— I never imagined this was possible.
After all... it hasn't been a day or two since the girl unconsciously ignored him.
He doesn't have no status in daily life, and he can't feel that she hates him, it's just that he simply has no presence.
He even thought about hiding his birthday and letting it pass by like this, or buying a small cake by himself as a memento.
The reason why birthdays are worth commemorating is essentially because others will buy cakes and sing birthday songs for the protagonist.
If there are no others, no relatives, and you can't even find someone who can take the time to celebrate, then there is no point in celebrating a birthday.
There are pictures here, which can be viewed after updating the version
There are pictures here, which can be viewed after updating the version