The surface of the Tai Xu Illusory Realm settled back into the silence of still, dead water.
The heat that had risen from their desperate abandon was slowly being devoured by the boundless, faintly cool mist all around them.
Sirin lay limp against Su Yu's sweat-soaked chest, her breathing gradually evening out.
But just as she was about to shift into a more comfortable position, the purple fabric draped over her—materialized from her own consciousness—began to shimmer with a fine scattering of golden specks.
And then came her hair.
The long purple locks that had refracted a hypnotic halo across the surface of Tai Xu faded back to white.
Her delicate, slender bones let out faint stretching sounds as her frame was slowly drawn out and lengthened.
It happened in the space of a single blink.
The pitiful, tender purple-haired girl in his arms was gone.
In her place was that white-haired figure whose facial contours were identical to the Kiana of the outside world—only with a colder, sharper aura. The form of the "Herrscher of the Void."
Sirin lifted an arm that had grown longer, staring at the silver-white tips of her hair, her golden eyes filled with bewilderment.
She couldn't understand at all why she had suddenly reverted to this shell of the "Paramecium" she so despised.
"The illusory realm Yu Ducheng crafted will cause any consciousness within it to unconsciously drift toward the truest origin of your soul."
A steady voice drifted over from the thick mist not far away.
The white fog was parted by a pair of unseen hands.
Fenghuang finally ended her hours-long "disappearance," stepping across the calm water's surface as she slowly emerged.
"No matter what form you present on the surface, the root of your soul and the Kiana outside are one and the same to begin with."
Fenghuang came to a stop beside the bluestone table, her gaze not lingering too long on the still-somewhat-disheveled clothing of the two of them.
Su Yu reached out and naturally wrapped an arm around Sirin's shoulders, now returned to the form of the Herrscher of the Void.
He looked into her eyes, which still held a trace of resistance toward her current appearance, and did not flinch in the slightest.
"Actually... you and Kiana." Su Yu spoke slowly, his voice deep and steady. "Neither of you is the real Sirin."
Sirin's head snapped around, her golden pupils contracting to pinpricks.
Su Yu's fingers gently combed through her long silver-white hair.
"You and Kiana are extensions of Sirin in different directions. In that sense, you are both Sirin, and yet neither of you is Sirin."
The air in the illusory realm stagnated for a moment.
Sirin did not fly into a hysterical rebuttal.
She simply stared into Su Yu's eyes.
After a long while, she lowered her lashes, many complex shades of light flickering through her golden eyes.
"So? Why are you telling me this right now?"
She looked toward Fenghuang, uncomprehending.
"Su Yu told me something."
Fenghuang stood off to the side, hands clasped behind her back.
"He'll walk alongside you, to atone in this world for the sins you once committed."
This old squad monitor, who had lived fifty thousand years, looked at Sirin upon the stone table, her gaze clear and lucid.
"And if you're going to atone, the first step is to understand, thoroughly and completely, exactly where you came from, and why you exist."
Sirin raised her head, gazing at Fenghuang with a complicated expression.
Just a few hours ago, the two of them had been mortal enemies, each wishing to grind the other's bones to dust and scatter the ashes across this space of consciousness.
Yet at this moment, this old relic they called Fenghuang, the Immortal, was actually using a tone resembling that of instructing a disciple to help point out the faint, intangible road to salvation.
But before that complex emotion could ferment for too long—
Fenghuang's gaze swept past Sirin and landed squarely on Su Yu's face.
Those eyes, always as still as an ancient well, rarely welled up with such deep, aggrieved resentment.
"So..."
Fenghuang sighed and rubbed the space between her brows.
"Do you have any idea, for the sake of avoiding suspicion, being forced to seal all five of my senses, hiding at the very edge of the illusory realm, not daring to come near...
"just how great a torment on the spirit that was?"
Faced with this sudden bout of grumbling.
Su Yu's originally somewhat heavy expression instantly cracked.
He coughed awkwardly a couple of times and unnaturally shifted his gaze toward the distant lone mountain.
"Ding."
Right in the middle of this strange, awkward atmosphere.
Sirin suddenly felt her eyelids grow as heavy as if they'd been filled with lead.
An irresistible drowsiness surged over her nervous system like a tsunami, and that red, bold-lettered light-screen popped up right before she closed her eyes:
[Warning: High-intensity spiritual fusion has caused energy overflow!]
[This faint remnant soul requires an extremely deep sleep to digest the immense spiritual power brought on by that just-now... "shameless" intimacy.]
[Ten seconds until forced disconnection and hibernation.]
Sirin's body began to go soft. Clinging to her last shred of clarity, she stubbornly rested her chin on Su Yu's shoulder.
"Human..."
Her eyes closed, her two slender arms still coiled tightly around Su Yu's neck, her voice carrying the sticky, tsundere clinginess of one who has thoroughly gotten a taste for it.
"Don't forget—you're my servant. There is absolutely no way I'll hand you over to that idiot Paramecium."
The words had barely left her lips.
That tall figure belonging to the Herrscher of the Void scattered like fireflies dispersed by a blow, dissolving into countless points of dazzling golden light that faded away in Su Yu's arms, returning to the deepest depths of Kiana's consciousness.
Within the Tai Xu Illusory Realm, only Su Yu and Fenghuang remained.
The atmosphere shifted with Sirin's departure.
The lightness brought on by the teasing and tenderness instantly receded.
The aggrieved look on Fenghuang's face vanished without a trace.
She stepped forward a couple of paces across the water, closing in on Su Yu.
Those eyes locked tightly onto Su Yu's face, her expression turning grave.
"Since it's just the two of us now, there are some things I'll say to you plainly."
"I never expected you'd actually complete that absurd task. My original prediction was that you'd align Sirin's interests with ours, and thereby tie her to our chariot."
"But I never imagined you'd end up in this kind of relationship with her."
"Though I understand the elation in your heart, I still have to remind you of one thing."
Fenghuang's voice echoed across the empty water's surface.
"Su Yu, the revival of the Herrscher of the Void directly caused the death of Colonel Murata Himeko."
"For Kiana...
"Sirin is the one who jolts her awake from nightmares on countless nights—the enemy who killed her teacher."
"This scar, even if a hundred years, a thousand years pass, can never heal in Kiana's heart."
"Sooner or later they will have a battle, and it will only end in a fight to the death."
"Caught between the two of them, how do you intend to untie this deadlock?"
The Tai Xu Illusory Realm sank into utter deathly stillness.
Su Yu sat beside the bluestone table, saying nothing for a long time.
Fenghuang was not wrong.
In that original Honkai-ravaged world, Kiana learned, right to the very end, to embrace many things, to overcome many shadows.
But she never once "forgave" the Herrscher of the Void.
Letting go is not the same as forgiving.
This was, from the start, an equation with no solution.
What was more, now they even had to live under the same roof in this peaceful, everyday world—and were forced, for the time being, to share a single body.
"Ding——!!!"
But right at this moment, a ball of dazzling golden light suddenly burst open in the void before Su Yu.
[Detected: the Host faces an ultimate deadlock. Special authorization unlocked.]
[Top-Secret Operation, holding the bridge at the space base—sorry, wrong channel.]
[Long-Term Top-Secret Mission generated: The Unextinguished Flame.]
Beneath this enormous title, the System descriptions that pulsed into view made Su Yu's eyes light up, bit by bit.
[Description: Murata Himeko's soul did not completely dissipate within the void rift. Instead, it fell into a deeper crevice, wedged between the Imaginary Tree and the Sea of Quanta at their very foundations.]
[To forcibly drag her back into reality from that cage of absolute law, two demanding preconditions must be satisfied simultaneously.]
Su Yu held his breath, his gaze fixed intently on the text that followed.
[First: A physical medium. It requires the "Complete Herrscher of the Void" who has fully mastered spatial law (that is, the powers of Sirin and Kiana merged into one) to forcibly tear open that gate to the Imaginary Space at the depths of the Abyss.]
[Second: A Spiritual Anchor. Within that pitch-black crevice where the soul is utterly lost, one requires a vast amount of "Cognition" and "emotional resonance"—so great it could be counted in the hundreds of millions.]
[Only by transforming these immense thoughts into a lighthouse strong enough to pierce through dimensions can one precisely anchor the soul coordinates of "Murata Himeko" amid the countless parallel worlds.]
After displaying these conditions, the golden panel slowly faded away.
But the posture in which Su Yu sat had undergone an earth-shattering change.
He raised his head, meeting Fenghuang's somewhat baffled and pitying gaze.
"Squad Monitor."
Su Yu rose to his feet.
"I admit—relying on the strength of one person, or even a few people, to fish someone out of those bottomless rifts in the Imaginary Space and the Sea of Quanta is more laughable than trying to pluck the stars from the sky with your bare hands."
"But what if..."
"What if it were the tears and longing of tens of millions—even hundreds of millions—of people in this world?"
Fenghuang seemed to grasp something. She knew Su Yu would not say such a thing without reason; since he had opened his mouth, it proved only one thing.
Murata Himeko had a chance of being saved.
"Just as I told you before—Kiana Kaslana, along this world line, was supposed to be a person who had already died."
"She died from the torment of the Herrscher of the Void, died by turning a gun on herself. You should still remember that, right?"
Fenghuang nodded. Rather, there was likely no second person in this world who remembered it more vividly than she did.
Back then, after Kiana repeatedly used the Herrscher's power to save citizens caught in an attack, she could not control the berserk power surging within her, and in the end, to keep the Herrscher of the Void from bringing ruin upon humanity, she chose to end her own life.
"And this so-called Cognition of the System, this power of bonds—simply put, it springs from human emotion."
"The memory of Kiana Kaslana, the feelings born from her story—these are the very source of the power by which Kiana exists in this world."
"Perhaps I now understand why I was the one chosen by this System. Because, aside from Old Yang, I should be the only person in this world who knows Kiana's love and hate, her blood and tears."
"And it is precisely because of this that I have become Kiana's Anchor in this world."
Fenghuang fell silent for a moment, and then her eyes lit up. She understood what Su Yu meant.
"You mean—letting Colonel Himeko's story become known to more people, remembered, and mourned, and the power born from that... can bring about a miracle?"
"A miracle? No, Squad Monitor." Su Yu shook his head, a confident smile curling at the corner of his mouth. "This is no miracle. It is the ending we absolutely must reach—one with no room whatsoever for negotiation."
"In the near future."
Su Yu did not pause for an instant.
Like a madman producer unveiling his ultimate blueprint to the entire world, he slashed his finger fiercely through the void.
"In the game Honkai Impact 3rd, I will release that story short titled 'Final Lesson.'"
"I will make every player in this world—in this most peaceful, most comfortable of eras—shed their first tear for the sacrifice of Murata Himeko."
"I will take the emotion and regret of these tens of millions of people and forge it into the Anchor that engraves 'Murata Himeko' into existence!"
This was only the first step. Su Yu looked at the utterly stunned Fenghuang, an almost terrifying light burning in the depths of his eyes.
"This still isn't enough."
"Next, I'll let them witness 'Meteoric Salvation.' Let them see how Kiana, bearing Himeko's will, completes her transformation amid despair."
"These endlessly gathering, immeasurably vast emotions will build the sturdiest bridge in the world between reality and the Imaginary Space."
"And in that Master Theater, the Ranger in the midst of despair."
"At the very instant she finally accepts the past, is reborn in the flames, and transforms herself into the Herrscher of Flame!"
"At the moment every player in the world reaches their emotional peak."
Su Yu's voice even trembled—it was the extreme exhilaration of one painting that mad final act.
"When Sirin and Kiana truly become one heart, one soul, merged into one, fully mastering the Authority of the Herrscher of the Void."
"That immense power of emotion, gathering the faith and tears of tens of millions, will burn away the night and lead Himeko home."
At his description, Fenghuang's breathing could not help but grow heavy.
She was a warrior.
A grave-keeper who had watched countless geniuses fall, who had witnessed countless warriors advance wave after wave only to be ground to dust by the Honkai.
She had long grown accustomed to those brutal sacrifices, accustomed to using cold reason to weigh "gains and losses" against "cost."
Sacrifice in the fight against the Honkai was unavoidable.
She had long since taken this for granted.
But in this moment, she recalled the words Himeko had once said to her at the Schicksal airport, back when Himeko was still among the living.
["Fu Hua, what is truly terrifying is not how many lives this world takes away, but how many people it makes take the loss of life for granted."]
True enough—novels, television dramas, all manner of storybooks, even the ballads of wandering minstrels—tragedy has always struck so deeply into people's hearts, impossible to forget.
And for Fenghuang, life and the world were likewise an unavoidable tragedy. Every footnote had already been written. Before that ruin destined to come, all beautiful things, when the tragedy arrived, would only bring deeper despair.
To turn this imperfect world into the shape you long for—these were the words Himeko had once said to Kiana. Yet for Fenghuang, who possessed such a long life and past—
she had, at one point, lost the ability to "believe."
To believe in herself, to believe in others, to believe fate could be changed, to believe that all she did was not for nothing.
She merely, in vain, repeated the execution of her own mission.
It was not that she was pessimistic—rather, she had endured too many, far too many partings, had seen too many, far too many joys and sorrows of union and separation, worn down endlessly through that long span of time until she went numb.
Faced with this impractical, even wildly fanciful vision of Su Yu's.
Her instinct was to feel it absurd.
But looking into Su Yu's black eyes, burning with absolute conviction.
Fenghuang's body slowly, bit by bit, relaxed.
She closed her eyes.
Long and slow.
She exhaled a breath of turbid air.
After all, had this man created so few miracles up to now?
When she opened her eyes again, the corner of her mouth curved up, and in her gaze was the unconditional trust of one entrusting her back to another.
"If anyone else had said such words, I would have broken his legs on the spot with Tai Xu Sword Qi, to knock some sense into him."
"But if it's you saying it."
"Perhaps..."
She raised her head and glanced up at the boundless Tai Xu firmament.
"We really can reach that future you've painted—the one where everyone gets to live happily."
The corner of Su Yu's mouth lifted into a confident arc.
"I rejoice at your trust, Squad Monitor."
He held out his fist toward Fenghuang.
Looking at this man before her, brimming with confidence, the corner of Fenghuang's mouth curved.
"Though I've no idea what strange turn of phrase this is again."
She likewise extended her fist and bumped it against Su Yu's.
"But—I rejoice at your joy, Su Yu."
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