Prologue

"Ha... ha... This should be the end, right?" A man lay on the ground, gasping for breath. The hollow cavity in his left chest foretold his fate. After quite a while, he gradually recovered. "Whew, I can finally go back. By now, they should..."

As he spoke, the man rolled over and tried to get up, but the moment his left hand touched the ground and exerted force, it turned to dust. Looking at the hand that no longer existed, he sighed softly.

He rolled over again onto his back and looked at the blue planet before him—Earth. "No matter how many times I see it, it's always so beautiful."

Turning his head, he looked around. The already pitted, barren land was now covered in enormous craters and ravines. "Come to think of it, Finality and I fought so fiercely on the moon... Will people not be able to see a full moon during Mid-Autumn Festival anymore? Well, it has nothing to do with me now..."

The man looked at Earth again, his gaze utterly intent, as though he were examining his most treasured possession over and over, wanting to imprint every detail of it into his mind. "In this world that no longer has Honkai, they should be able to live happily, right? Then my goal has been achieved..."

He raised his right hand. The palm that had already vanished by half told him that he did not have much time left. Gradually, he could no longer feel his legs either. "Heh... I still wanted to go back and see them... Looks like I won't get the chance. But maybe this is for the best... I wonder if everyone on the Hyperion will still remember me decades from now. Probably not, haha..."

As his body dissipated bit by bit, the man's voice grew softer and softer, until... it vanished.

"Elder Xuan! Come quick, there's a baby here!" In the boundless forest, an old man gnawing nonstop on a chicken leg was resting with several men and women when a young girl suddenly came running over at top speed, carrying a baby boy.

"A baby? In the Star Dou Great Forest?! Could it be..." The old man called Elder Xuan grew grave at the girl's words, his brows knitting tightly together.

The baby boy's eyes were shut tight, and his brow was slightly furrowed, as though the girl's shout had nearly woken him. Elder Xuan vigorously wiped his hands on his clothes, then reached out and took the baby, carefully examining every part of his body. He discovered faint, unknown dark-red markings on the baby's back. Their color was so light that they looked like nothing more than shallow marks left from being pressed against something for too long. A baby shouldn't be able to appear in the Star Dou Great Forest unless it was a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast that had taken human form and begun cultivating anew. But if he were a Soul Beast, there's no way I wouldn't be able to sense his Soul Beast aura. Was this revenge from his parents' enemies, or had his parents simply heartlessly abandoned him? Forget it. I'll bring him back first and figure it out later. Sigh, little fellow, you're lucky to have run into us. Your life wasn't meant to end here.