"Lixue."
"Master... is here to see you."
Fu Hua knelt, her gaze gentle and low as she stared at the resolute face in the photograph on the tombstone. Her voice was terribly soft, as if she were afraid of disturbing the beloved disciple sleeping beneath the earth. It was saturated with a bottomless well of longing and guilt—emotions that not even the relentless passage of time could wash away.
And there, amid the swirling blizzard, she began to murmur to the cold stone, recounting everything she had experienced lately.
From hiding her identity to join St. Freya Academy, to the burial of the "Tengri" at Lake Kanas, and finally to the ongoing Wardance. She spared no detail, speaking as though she were desperately trying to piece together and make up for all the time they had lost.
Her words would occasionally falter, punctuated by barely perceptible choked sobs, yet she maintained a strained, disciplined calm throughout.
All the while, Fuli stood silently behind his older cousin. He reached out, catching the erratic, jade-like flakes of snow falling from the sky.
A blizzard like this shouldn't exist on Mount Taixu in late September.
But heaven and earth often mirrored the state of mind of the truly powerful. Forget an S-Rank Valkyrie—back in Nagazora City, when Theresa's powers were suppressed to their absolute limit, even a slight shift in her mood was enough to blanket the boundless sky in dark, oppressive clouds.
However, Fuli soon noticed something amiss.
He looked up. The blizzard seemed to be stirred by an invisible, colossal hand. The snow no longer fell in chaotic flurries; instead, it was quietly converging toward a single focal point. The chill in the air spiked drastically, and an indescribable, suffocating pressure washed over the area.
A moment later, a hand as pale and flawless as crystalline jade pierced through the dense curtain of snow, manifesting clearly before his eyes.
Long, deep blue hair fluttered in the freezing wind. A breathtaking woman stood quietly in the storm.
Her features were cold and ethereal, her emerald eyes sharp as ice. She wore a dark, impeccably tailored Valkyrie uniform accented with light patterns along the pauldrons and lapels, her posture as straight and unyielding as a pine tree.
Fuli's eyes were instantly drawn to the longsword in her grip. It featured a Taiji-shaped guard and a crystal-blue blade engraved with intricate runic patterns—the Divine Key, Water Edge.
He shifted his focus back to her valiant yet solitary face. He had done his homework before coming here. The woman standing before them was a spitting image of the person officially recorded in Schicksal's archives as the strongest A-Rank Valkyrie and Vice-Captain of the Snowwolf Squad: The "Frost Chevalier," Cheng Lixue!
"Cousin!" he called out softly.
Fu Hua was still immersed in her sorrowful confession. She wasn't oblivious to the anomaly in the environment; she had simply trusted her little cousin to handle whatever it was. But since Fuli had explicitly called out to her, she immediately swallowed her grief, ready to transform into his most impenetrable shield and sharpest blade.
But the moment Fu Hua clearly saw the figure standing in the snow, it was as if she had been struck by lightning. She froze solid.
"Lixue?" she whispered, her voice trembling in absolute disbelief.
No. It's not her. Fuli shook his head internally.
As a catastrophe born alongside civilization, the Honkai manifested in bizarre, infinitely varied ways. Wars, plagues, extreme weather, comet strikes, or even the descent of colossal mechas—all were within the realm of possibility.
While Honkai energy inherently possessed certain idealistic, reality-bending properties, humanity had categorized these disasters over years of brutal survival.
They had ranks for zombies, classifications for Honkai Beasts, and serial numbers for Herrschers.
And then, there were the "Calamities."
Unlike the physical, biological manifestations of Honkai Beasts and zombies, a Calamity was a collective phenomenon of altered physical laws triggered by the Honkai. Officially termed "Regional Extreme Disasters," they took on countless forms. The most devastating among them were natural hazards so lethal that even S-Rank Valkyries found them nightmarish to deal with.
Usually, the UN's "Calamity Containment Agency" was responsible for handling these anomalies.
Right now, the "Cheng Lixue" standing before Fuli and Fu Hua was a Calamity that had taken human form.
As for why it was born? Perhaps the Celestial's bone-deep yearning for her disciple had resonated with the millennia-old energy of Mount Taixu. Or perhaps Cheng Lixue's own lingering attachments, still fresh from her death, had materialized under the influence of the Honkai.
Regardless, she was ultimately just a natural phenomenon—a phantom lacking true self-awareness, operating on a specific set of rules.
"..."
Fu Hua took a deep, shuddering breath, letting the freezing air fill her lungs. When she opened her eyes again, her expression had returned to its usual placid calm.
"Leave it to me, cousin."
She stepped forward, walking toward the phantom in the snow. Her footsteps left uneven, jagged prints behind her.
For the grand Celestial of Mount Taixu—the very origin of modern martial arts—to be incapable of maintaining basic footwork control spoke volumes about the catastrophic emotional shock hiding beneath her stoic facade.
Throughout her approach, the silent "Cheng Lixue" showed absolutely zero hostile intent. Her hollow, lifeless eyes simply stared at the approaching Fu Hua. She watched as Fu Hua raised her hand—the hand wearing the Grips of Taixu, the hand that had guided her through countless days and nights.
It wasn't until the tremendous gale generated by Fu Hua's readied fist fluttered the hair on her forehead that the phantom finally parted her lips.
Two words drifted out, faint as a whisper.
"Master..."
Fu Hua's fist froze inches from "Cheng Lixue's" forehead, the resulting shockwave blasting the surrounding snow away.
Then, the phantom spoke again.
"Be happy..."
If the first word had caused Fu Hua to hesitate for a fraction of a second, the following words acted as the sharpest ice pick in the world, cleanly shattering the hardened shell she had forced around her heart.
"Ugh..."
Her world-shattering fist dropped limply to her side. Her elegantly aloof face could no longer maintain an ounce of sternness. A rare, heartbreaking whimper tore from her throat, sounding exactly like a wounded, helpless animal.
"You don't need to hold it in, cousin."
A pair of hands wrapped around Fu Hua's trembling shoulders from behind, firm yet incredibly gentle, pulling her back into a warm embrace.
Fuli stroked her silken hair over and over, his voice low and rich with soothing comfort. "We're not out in the world right now. There are no strangers here. If you want to cry, just cry."
Hearts were made of flesh and blood.
Faced with the disciple she felt she had failed to properly teach in life, the disciple who had died with regrets, and confronted by that pure, soul-piercing wish born from the deepest core of those lingering attachments... the taut string holding Fu Hua together finally snapped.
She buried her face in the boy's chest and began to wail aloud, crying with the total abandon of a lost child. Guilt, sorrow, and endless longing burst forth like a ruptured dam.
"Yeah, that's right. Just let it all out."
Fuli patted her back gently. As he did, he felt a gaze lock onto him.
He looked up. It was "Cheng Lixue."
Her inorganic eyes were staring unblinkingly at the embracing pair. After a long time, she whispered in that same ethereal voice. "Master... happy... prove it to me..."
Ah. So that's the sole dispersion mechanic for the 'Cheng Lixue' Calamity rule.
Fuli remained silent for a moment. Then, he suddenly lowered his head and, with infinite tenderness, pressed his lips against the thin, icy lips of the girl in his arms, warming the cold left by the snow and her tears.
"Mmph?"
Fu Hua stiffened slightly at first, but she quickly melted into the practiced, deeply comforting kiss.
Her rigid body gradually relaxed, and her slender arms involuntarily wrapped around the boy's neck. The suppressed, painful sobs subsided, replaced by the faint, quiet breathing of someone drowning in warmth and absolute security.
Watching the two of them hold each other tightly in the blizzard, sensing the genuine, heartfelt tenderness and love radiating from them, "Cheng Lixue" smiled softly. She gave a small nod. Her figure began to turn translucent, eventually melting away like thawing ice, scattering into the storm.
The mimetic blade, Water Edge, dropped onto the snow with a sharp clink. Moments later, it followed its master, breaking apart into motes of crystalline blue light that drifted away on the wind.
A soul wanders the immortal gardens without regret; a sky full of snow sends her off.
Even the stoic photograph on the tombstone seemed to curl its lips into a faint smile.
---||---
Perhaps because the snow was "falling too heavily" and the mountain paths were "too treacherous to navigate" (yeah, right), Fuli and Fu Hua decided to stay the night at Fuyun Shrine after seeing off Cheng Lixue's final lingering will.
The shrine had plenty of empty rooms, so accommodation wasn't an issue.
Yet, in the dead of night, Fuli shamelessly used the excuse of "the temple didn't chop enough firewood and it's freezing" to tip-toe into his cousin's room, clutching his pillow.
Fu Hua merely offered a pampering smile. She shifted inward on the bed, silently permitting him to slip under the covers and wrap his arms around her. Closing her eyes, her breathing soon grew slow and rhythmic as she fell back into a deep slumber.
["She really has her guard completely down around you."]
Deep within Fuli's consciousness, Dr. MEI's complicated sigh echoed out.
["Hua has truly suffered so much over the years..."]
Even the Previous Era's Chief Scientist—who normally spent her days urging Fuli to build a massive harem and plotting to turn the heirs of every anti-Honkai organization into incubators for his offspring—didn't have the heart to ruin the mood tonight.
They had been comrades-in-arms once, after all, even if this MEI was just an imprint and not the original Doctor herself.
'It just proves how much my cousin trusts me,' Fuli replied happily, burying his face into Hua's soft, warm chest and nuzzling affectionately. He stopped right there, without a single thought of crossing the line.
Even though he knew perfectly well that with how thoroughly Fu Hua spoiled and indulged him now, there was a ninety-percent chance she wouldn't refuse him if he pushed for something more intimate...
Prometheus nodded approvingly in the background. Her Host's bottom line was incredibly sturdy. If it wasn't, he wouldn't have made it all the way to his current rebirth with Jingliu being his only "accident."
Granted, the main reason was that his Master, Jingliu, possessed peerless combat prowess. Had their power dynamics been swapped—or even just equal—there was zero chance Fuli would have let her get her way.
["So, are you annoyed at all?"] MEI teased. ["To think that the precious V-card you guarded so fiercely was stolen by someone other than Kiana."]
["Don't make your Bro Fuli laugh, MEI,"] Prometheus cut in mercilessly. ["With the Host's walking-succubus passive traits, his V-card was probably snatched up by some random older sister long before this system ever awakened."]
["Maybe it was a younger sister? (hua)"]
["Impossible. The Host is the purest, most die-hard connoisseur of massive assets. There is zero chance a flat-chested washboard could ever satisfy his beastly desires."]
'Hey! That's enough out of both of you!' Fuli severely regretted letting these two AI phantoms browse the internet's garbage dumps. 'Furthermore, how many times do I have to say it? Kiana's position in my heart is completely different!'
["Right, right, right. A believer can marry and have kids, take four wives, and have them pop out eight kids a piece. But the second war breaks out, he'll pick up a spear and fight for his Goddess,"] the little AI deadpanned with her signature cyber-loli voice.
["If you're so pious, then on the night of your honeymoon with Miss Kiana, I dare you to just stare at her face all night and do absolutely nothing else."]
'T-That's completely different! You have to separate the two things!' Fuli began to stammer incoherently, throwing out desperate defenses like "A Goddess is still a God" and "Once you marry her, she's a wife."
For a while, the mental airwaves were filled with a very merry atmosphere.
Time slipped quietly by amidst their banter, and soon it was past midnight.
While Hua slept incredibly peacefully in Fuli's arms, the three voices in the consciousness space were only getting more energetic.
Noticing it was time for the Finality Assistance System's shop to refresh, Fuli casually opened his personal interface.
When he, the Host, reached the Critical Class in power, the growth-type system naturally underwent a synchronized upgrade. Its core function, the "Monthly 10-Pull," remained unchanged, still operating on its fixed cycle.
However, the "System Shop"—which randomly refreshed five items—had its cooldown slashed in half, dropping from 48 hours to 24 hours.
This was undeniably fantastic news. The shop mostly spawned low-to-mid-tier skills, which Fuli could directly synthesize into "Light Cones" and sell.
Ever since Asta held that press conference, Light Cones had become the absolute hottest, most sought-after super-commodity among the Honkai factions. Every batch was instantly cleared out upon hitting the shelves. The higher-tier, composite Light Cones weren't even sold directly; they were auctioned off as finale items by the IPC's auction houses.
As a result, whenever Asta looked at Fuli these days, her eyes burned with an intense, terrifyingly passionate fire. It looked like she was constantly one bad day away from shoving him into a burlap sack, locking him in a dark room, and milking him dry in a sustainable, industrial-scale farming operation.
'Sigh. Being an exceptionally outstanding man is such a heavy burden,' Fuli lamented this sweet, sweet torture as he hit the shop's refresh button.
A flash of light swept across the UI, and five new item icons materialized.
The first: 1000x Sensitivity Potion (100ml). Absolutely useless for Fuli, who had already unlocked the First Rated Power of the Key of Corruption.
The second: Gen-2 Tactical Doll. Totally mundane.
The third and fourth: Standard C-Rank skills. Dime-a-dozen trash.
Just as Fuli assumed this was going to be another daily welfare pull, Prometheus suddenly shouted, "Host! We hit the jackpot!"
There, in the fifth slot, a blinding, radiant golden light was flashing wildly!
'Holy shit! A Golden Legendary! It's been ages!'
Fuli squinted to read it, and his jaw practically hit the floor. He subconsciously glanced down at Fu Hua, whose breathing was soft and rhythmic against his chest.
Moonlight spilled over the sleeping girl's serene face. Her long eyelashes cast shadows like butterfly wings, and her lips were unconsciously pushed into a slight pout. Every now and then, she'd let out a muffled, kitten-like sleep-mumble.
It was a look of utter, defenseless reliance—one that tugged at his heartstrings harder than any deliberate seduction ever could.
But Fuli's mind was in absolute turmoil.
Hold the phone! Didn't we establish that my cousin is cursed with the ultimate Gacha-Chieftain terrible-luck physique?! Then how in the world did I just roll the "Damaged Second-Hand Heroic Spirit Summoning System"?!
---||---
Hyperion - Massive Electric (ME) Corp Laboratory
"Spit it out. What is it that's so urgent you came running all the way back here to find me?"
Wearing a pristine white researcher's lab coat, Raiden Mei leaned lazily back in her ergonomic office chair. The pale toes of her foot hooked a slipper, dangling it back and forth in a slow, rhythmic sway. She didn't seem to care in the slightest about the alluring slivers of skin occasionally exposed beneath her skirt.
Fortunately for her, she was about to be wide awake.
"What do you mean, 'As long as we repair it completely, it can summon Heroic Spirits willing to fight for the preservation of humanity'?" Mei instantly sat up straight, her foot stopping dead in its tracks. "I'll admit this thing looks unique, but Bronya and I have been dragged by you into watching the Fate anime series, you know."
"I know the Throne of Heroes and the Root don't actually exist in reality," Fuli sighed in distress. "But the item is sitting right here in front of us. I don't know what to do with it either!"
Seriously, System-Bro, which obscure dimensional dumpster did you fish this bizarre crap out of?!
"How about we try to figure out a way to fix it?" he asked tentatively. "We obviously can't summon actual Heroic Spirits from the Fate universe, but what if it can summon historical heroes from our own Honkai world?"
Recalling the scene of Fu Hua bidding farewell to "Cheng Lixue" not long ago, Fuli couldn't help but let out a soft sigh.
Immediately afterward, he noticed Mei staring at him with deeply resentful, "You are seriously asking too much of me" eyes.
"Yuan." Her voice was chillingly flat.
"Present!" Little Fuli instinctively snapped his heels together like a soldier bracing for inspection.
"Let me list out exactly how many concurrent projects I currently have on my plate." Mei raised her slender, articulate hand, counting them off finger by finger. "First, within the Thunder Stigmata's Archive of Erudition alone: the subsequent data analysis of Project MEI, the Acheron's Staff meant to sever Herrscher Imaginary links, mass-production optimization for the Soulium ELF, stability testing for the Honkai vacuum generators, and partial reverse-engineering of the Moonlight Throne (Selene). That's just a fraction of the massive technological inheritance left by the Previous Era."
"Eek!"
"Second, the raw data for the 'Life Equation' created by the virtual Otto Apocalypse, which we acquired from the nun, Kallen. I need to cross-reference and reverse-engineer that using our existing HTR modification serums, Youth-Retaining Pills, and Basic Evolution Serums. All of which falls under cutting-edge bio-genetic engineering."
"Gah!"
"Third, attempting to reverse-engineer the Seven Thrones of Alchemy system by analyzing the alchemical blades, the Seven Deadly Sins. This involves deciphering the foundational rules of energy-to-matter conversion and conceptual endowment."
"Pfft!"
"Fourth, the Equipment Enhancement Furnace prototype, which I barely managed to cobble together after pushing an ancient +18 tachi to its absolute analytical limits. Followed by the continuous performance upgrades for the Starforge Crucible—which, need I remind you, is currently busy synthesizing the Third Turn of your 'Peerless Nine-Turn Art'."
"And on top of all that: parsing the generation principles for Light Cones, iterating unmanned mecha technology, R&D for new equipment, optimizing and maintaining multiple automated production lines, monitoring and updating the Hyperion's overarching systems, and tracking the medical data and physicals for everyone on this ship, Anna included..."
Mei leaned forward slightly, her violet eyes locking onto Fuli. "Why do you think I didn't sign up for the Wardance? Do you think I stay cooped up in the ME Corp lab all day because I don't want to go out and earn those massive point rewards?"
Her tone carried a heart-wrenching, exhausted tranquility. "'Give up' has six letters. 'Persist' has seven. It's just a one-letter difference, a seemingly small hurdle to overcome. So why do so many people refuse to persist? Because you know what else has seven letters? 'Burnout.' And 'Autopsy'."
With every project Mei listed, and every word she spoke, Fuli felt his physical presence shrink by an inch.
By the end of her rant, he felt so infinitely minuscule that he probably wasn't even as tall as the slipper dangling from the girl's foot.
"Dorae-Mei" was so incredibly omnipotent that he had genuinely forgotten it had barely been half a year since the Third Eruption broke out.
What do you mean 'without me, this house falls apart'? If we lose MEI, this house is literally going to explode!
"I-I'm sorry..."
Just as Fuli was drowning in a tidal wave of guilt, ready to curl up into a fetal ball, he suddenly felt a warm, soft body gently embrace him from behind.
Mei wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her chin on his shoulder.
"I'll figure out a way to add the Heroic Spirit Summoning System to the research schedule," her melodious voice chimed softly in his ear, having suddenly turned incredibly tender. "But I didn't list out all those projects just to complain, you know."
"I just wanted to remind my Yuan." Her whisper was as light as a feather brushing against his heart. "To let him know that Mei has always been right behind him, silently working hard to support all of this. I'm not inferior to any of the other girls."
"And since I've sacrificed so much, it shouldn't be too much to ask my boyfriend for a tiny little reward, right?" The girl's tone shifted, laced with a clear, deliberate trace of coquettishness. "After all, even a donkey pulling a millstone needs a bite of a carrot to keep going."
"It's not too much! It's not too much at all!" Fuli was so incredibly moved at this moment that he was fully prepared to offer his body to her to help relieve her stress.
But Mei simply nuzzled her cheek against his affectionately and whispered, "Then... just say, 'My dearest wifey, you've worked so hard~'."
"My dearest wifey, you've worked so hard!"
The boy shouted it at the top of his lungs, using every ounce of strength he had. His voice echoed loudly through the empty laboratory.
After shouting, he felt the embrace around him gently loosen. Thinking there was a 'next step,' Fuli turned around in confusion, only to see that Mei had already sat back down in her chair. She was tilting her head slightly, gazing quietly at him with a look of absolute, profound satisfaction and ultimate tenderness.
"For me, having Yuan say something like that is more than enough~"
Fuli stared blankly back at her. The sunlight piercing through the blinds caught Mei's violet eyes perfectly, making them shimmer like radiant stars.
Her fair, breathtaking face seemed veiled in a layer of mist, giving her an ethereal, almost surreal beauty.
Her tranquil smile was like an orchid blooming in an empty valley, and the few stray strands of dark hair framing her face added a hazy, poetic elegance. It was a sight so staggeringly beautiful that it made him want to freeze time and trap this very moment forever.