Alternate Universe
"Wah!!! How could you do this to us, Mihoyo?!! Who the fuck approved this shit!?!" Xiao Mei curses as she wipes the tears off her eyes after finishing watching the new trailer for the unknown character.
Randomuser97: Damn, she cursed!
Himeko's Dog: We were promised a space comedy, and they pull this shit!? I thought this wasn't an 18+ game!
TheOnlySaneMan: Honestly, I didn't expect Mihoyo to be this ballsy.
TheOnlySaneMan: I mean, their old games have some insane dark moments, but so far this takes the cake.
BestestFashionista: I was expecting such dark scenes for the old characters, but they give it to a newly introduced character.
Randomuser97: Everyone in Weibo has gone completely 180 after watching the trailer.
HSRD-1Fan: To everyone who was mad about Zhi Jiang and accused him of being an employee's self-insert, what do you say now, huh!?!
D-1MarchFan: I wish he had stayed dead!
Xiao Mei can't help but be baffled at how cold-hearted this so-called March's fan is, and decides to block him from her stream. With how this guy acts, she would rather not have him in her stream chat, arguing with other watchers about Zhi Jiang.
Like, for real, she had never seen someone obsessed so badly with a fictional character!
(She had no right to complain, especially with how much she loves Welt Yang ever since Honkai Impact 3rd released, and before she started her career as a streamer, but no one needs to know about that)
"Still, I wasn't expecting such a backstory..." Xiao Mei muses as she scrolls through Weibo and sweatdrops at how accurate HSRD-1Fan's words were. Her current timeline is filled with nothing but 'apologies' to Zhi Jiang.
As she scrolls through Weibo, she receives another notification from Bilibili. Upon opening it, she was surprised that the HSR official account had released another trailer, specifically a Myriad Celestial Trailer.
Myriad Celestial Trailer - A Gaze Upon A Branch
"A Gaze Upon A Branch? That's a weird name..." Xiao Wei mutters before clicking into the notification. As the video plays, a familiar Mihoyo logo appears on a black screen before she hears a jester-like laughter from the background, sending shivers down her spine.
"Oh, hello, watchers." An unfamiliar voice can be heard in the video before darkness dissipates and reveals multiple dark branches rising from the ground and reaching into the bright light in the cosmos. Xiao Mei, who once played Honkai Impact 3rd, knows that this is Imaginary Tree, the physical manifestation of the Multiverse, or in her terms, the Honkai-Verse.
"You all must have seen what Aha has done to that poor little soul from the previous trailer. Aha swears, Aha has never seen anyone with little to no joy in their life, so Aha, being a kind-hearted Aeon Aha is, brought him to the world filled withjoy!" Xiao Mei widened her eyes as she heard Aha casually breaking the 4th wall and even admitting how THEY brought Zhi Jiang into another universe. "You must be wondering 'how?' Oh, no, no, no, no! Aha will not spill any more secrets here! Aha is here to show you a completely different world through this Imaginary Tree. So many different worlds held together in this tree. Hah!"
"..." Xiao Mei silently watches as the video zooms into the bright light at the top of Imaginary Tree before showing an image of Earth. Xiao Mei had to groan as Aha continuously mocked about Earth, starting from the naming sense, the history of conflicts, and the way humanity gain their knowledge, mocking some famous figures by saying how they waste so much time talking with a bunch of idiots.
It was so bad that she had to ensure the stream was muted and the subtitles were turned off to avoid any trouble. Thankfully, many of her viewers are very understanding.
"Ah, Aha can see that some of you are bored. Hah, Aha get it. Who learns history nowadays!?" Aha cackles. "Well, let Aha speed things up. All of you might love this, Aha find this very amusing!"
"...why do I have a feeling we won't find this amusing?" Xiao Wei mutters as she unmutes her stream before the video shows storms at the center of the oceans. Xiao Wei's jaw drops as she sees multiple waterspouts and thunderstorms that the poor streamers would ever see in an anime.
"Haha! Aha has never seen so much chaos in an entire planet! A world where neither of Aha's 'friends' has ever set their gazes on, and yet, the chaos rivals Aha's much tamer pranks!" Aha cackles as Xiao Wei stares at the video in disbelief, as multiple scenes show people from all around the world trying to shield themselves from the disasters.
Xiao Wei watches in horror as a scene of an underground shelter, as everyone inside is buried alive, before it switches to multiple people being sucked into a tornado, and the video zooms out as the people start falling from several thousand feet like rain. Then, it switches to a scene where every skyscraper is falling into a group of people desperately trying to escape. To make things worse, Aha had once again made insensitive comments that were so bad that Xiao Wei had to mute her stream again.
Xiao Wei pauses her video before taking a deep breath. Xiao Mei is familiar with disaster movies, and some of them have become Xiao Mei's favorite, but this trailer is much more than she could handle. To make things worse, it was only a short video!
Xiao Wei wonders how this Aha treats all of this as nothing but a big fat joke. She had played the game for a while, and she had learned how Aha, an Aeon, treats everything as a joke and loves their chaos, but she was expecting THEM to have some sort of limit or sort.
Alas, being a god means they don't have to worry about crossing any lines.
Taking a few deep breaths, Xiao Wei continues to play the video, and to her surprise, Aha had toned down THEIR comments as the video shows the disaster ends and humanity tries to pick up all the pieces from all the destruction. Of course, it wasn't as easy as it seems, as the disasters had managed to wipe out the majority of the Earth's population and forced humanity to build everything from scratch.
Of course, Aha had to make jokes about how everything is 'hilarious' to him.
The video speeds up, showing time-lapses as humanity tries to rebuild their civilizations, and nature has covered all the ruins in every city. She watches as humanity grows before the video focuses on a man staring at a torn picture, his face mostly hidden from the video except for his mouth. Then, the man was called by other civilians, causing him to put down his picture and walk towards the group. The video zooms into the picture, but much to Xiao Mei's annoyance, the image is blurred.
The second half of the video heavily focused on the man as he helped the civilians with everything, while Aha made several lazy comments as THEY sound so bored. Xiao Wei may have gotten annoyed with Aha's words for the first half of the trailer, but she can't help but also gets bored by the video.
Then, the scene shows a group of civilians building a ship, hoping they could find more people from across the ocean. Xiao Mei didn't seem interested until Aha decided to open THEIR big mouth.
"Oh, Aha wouldn't recommend these humans to travel across the oceans. Aha had a feeling they wouldn't like what they would find." Xiao Mei was confused by Aha's comments. For the entire trailer, Aha continued to make terrible and insensitive jokes about the disaster and human suffering, so hearing Aeon make this kind of comment made the young woman curious.
The video speeds up the ship-building process as the man, whom Xiao Mei believed to be the main character of this trailer, along with a group of people, sails across the sea in hoping to find others. Xiao Mei watches as the people find an island and land at the island's shore. She watches as the people look around the beach before noticing an abandoned camp nearby.
They all approach the camp as the main man walks towards the camp and takes a look at a wooden plank, which is covered in dried blood stains, with something carved into it. The man's eyes widen before he shouts to everyone to search around the island.
Then, the video skips to a scene where everyone returns to the camp with the man holding the wooden plank in concern. The man looks at everyone with a hopeful expression before they all shake their heads. Xiao Mei could see something inside the man broke before he started collapsing to the ground, and he wept while everyone comforted him.
Xiao Mei looks utterly confused at his reaction before the video zooms into the wooden plank. She reads what was carved into the wood before she widens her eyes in shock.
'Lin Zhi Jiang was here.'
It was a single sentence carved on a wood and yet, it answered everything she had. She was so confused about why Aha shows a random world ruined by the apocalypse, why half of the video focuses on a random man, and the reason why said man reacts to the carving.
Aha shows Lin Zhi Jiang's home world. Aha shows how the world's civilization was destroyed by a global disaster. Aha shows Zhi Jiang's father dealing with everything after the disaster and finding out his son's 'death'.
Xiao Mei stares at the screen as it turns black and the Honkai: Star Rail logo appears, followed by Aha's laughter. Xiao Mei places her elbows on the table before covering her face, taking a deep breath as she tries to process what she had just watched.
She was too busy watching the video that she didn't even notice that the chat had been silent for almost half of the video.
To be Continued