Snow Empress in the Stigmata Space

The silent village remained just as Ling Mo remembered it. Yet beneath the Cherry Blossom Tree, where no one should have been, stood a woman.

She stood tall at nearly six feet, her snow-white hair falling from the back of her head all the way to her calves. Her clear sky-blue eyes seemed to see through everything in the world, while her plain pale-blue dress lent her an even more pure and peerless air.

Watching the woman reach out to catch the falling cherry blossom petals, Ling Mo spoke. "If I'm not mistaken, you should be the Snow Empress."

Hearing Ling Mo's words, the Snow Empress's lips curved slightly upward. It had to be said that with her breathtaking beauty, even that faint smile made Ling Mo stare blankly for a moment.

"You guessed correctly, strongest human of the Honkai World."

"Wha..." The Snow Empress's voice was soft and elegant, but to Ling Mo, it was no less than a bolt from the blue.

Countless guesses and thoughts flashed through Ling Mo's mind. Before he had time to consider them carefully, he anxiously questioned the Snow Empress, "How do you know the term Honkai World?"

The Snow Empress seemed to have expected him to ask that. She gave him a mysterious smile and, as though deliberately teasing him, said, "You guess?"

Ling Mo was left speechless. He had never expected the aloof Snow Empress from his memories to speak like this. Crossing his arms, he rested one hand beneath his chin and pondered in silence. The two simply stood facing each other without a word, and the Stigmata Space fell quiet once more.

After a long while, Ling Mo said, "I really can't think of why you would know the term Honkai World."

The Snow Empress had not expected that her casual remark, made in anger over him ruining her attempt to rebuild her body, would make Ling Mo seriously dwell on it. She raised one hand and continued catching the falling blossoms. Perhaps because of the peculiar nature of the Stigmata Space, cherry blossoms kept drifting down, yet the tree's crown showed no sign of thinning.

"Actually, I don't understand what is going on either." After a while, the Snow Empress finally spoke.

Ling Mo thought, You don't even understand your own situation? He immediately asked, "What do you mean by that?"

The Snow Empress glanced at Ling Mo. "You should understand what a stigmata is. At its core, it is a database containing a vast amount of genetic information. The energy wrapped around my soul ring connected my soul to the stigmata. There was originally nothing wrong with that, and I could have continued existing here in this unconventional way. But the problem is that the stigmata you awakened belongs to you. A Stigmata Space naturally retains the memories of its original owner, but when I entered this Stigmata Space, you—the original owner—lost consciousness. That caused the Stigmata Space to fall into chaos, with an immense amount of information flooding toward the only consciousness within it—me. So now, I have obtained almost all of your memories. You should know that fifty thousand years is an extremely long time for humans, but to me, it is not much at all."

Ling Mo had initially been astonished by the Snow Empress's explanation that she had connected with the stigmata. But her final statement—that she had obtained almost all of his memories—sent a cold sweat down his back. After all, he was not simply someone from the Honkai World. He immediately decided to test her. "You said you have all my memories. Then do you know which game I spent the most time playing?"

The Snow Empress did not know why Ling Mo was asking this, but after thinking for a moment, she answered, "Hoaxer Adventure?"

Hearing that, Ling Mo could not help but breathe a sigh of relief. Human civilization in the Honkai World was good in every regard except entertainment, which was truly difficult for him to put into words. It seemed that the Snow Empress had only obtained his memories from the Honkai World. The stigmata apparently had not recorded his memories from his original world; otherwise, things would have become much more complicated.

Ling Mo let out a long breath and said to the Snow Empress, "Then aren't you very clear about it? You even lied to me earlier, saying you didn't know what was going on."

"No, you misunderstood what I meant." The Snow Empress lowered her hand, turned to face Ling Mo directly, and spoke with a solemn expression. "Why am I connected to the stigmata? Where did the energy around that ring come from? Although your talent is the greatest among all Soul Masters I have seen, with your strength at the time, you absolutely could not have absorbed my soul ring. And at only Rank 34, you should never have been able to survive in my hands. Yet not only did you survive, I eventually became your soul ring. I have no idea what happened after you collapsed that day. I was about to kill you while you were badly injured and unconscious, but for some reason, you emerged unharmed from my final blow. Afterward, I also lost consciousness. When I regained it, I found that I had already become connected to this space. Then came what I told you before."

The Snow Empress paused for breath before continuing, "Ling Mo, there are secrets within you that even you do not know. Perhaps your arrival in this world was not an accident."

The Snow Empress's words gave Ling Mo much to think about, but whatever the reason, it was not something he could change now. Even if the Snow Empress had not been at full strength at the time, the fact that something had so easily reduced her to her current state already said enough.

Forget it. There was no point in thinking about it. All he could do now was become stronger as quickly as possible. "Seriously, Honkai is already gone, yet I still have to hurry up and get stronger in the end?" Ling Mo muttered in complaint.

Having sorted through his thoughts, Ling Mo said to the Snow Empress, "Sigh, I don't understand any of this either, and I can't figure it out. For now, we can only take things one step at a time."

Hearing Ling Mo's answer, the Snow Empress also let out a long sigh. "That does not sound like something the former strongest human would say. But for now, we can only do as you say." Indeed, even the Snow Empress herself felt powerless in the face of this matter. How could she ask more of Ling Mo, who only possessed three soul rings now?

As the saying went, if you could not change something, you could only accept it. Now that she was effectively bound to Ling Mo, the Snow Empress could not help considering what she should do in the future. Suddenly, as if she had thought of something, she asked Ling Mo, "By the way, what is your martial soul? Why do I sense that my soul ring only gave you one soul skill? Logically, a hundred-thousand-year soul ring should grant you two soul skills. Although I could not control which soul skills you received under those circumstances, there should still have been two."

"You mean my martial souls? You know about Divine Keys and the Herrscher of the End, right?" Ling Mo had now figured out that the Snow Empress's situation was similar to Kallen's in his previous life, except that she also possessed the memories of the stigmata's original owner—his memories. Thus, he lowered his guard around her. Ling Mo was confident that even the Snow Empress could not pose any threat to him within the Stigmata Space, so he answered her question directly.

Naturally, the Snow Empress replied, "Of course I do. Didn't I say earlier that I possess the memories of your previous life?"

"My martial souls are the Divine Keys and the core of the Herrscher of the End. Because of the special nature of these two martial souls, soul rings cannot grant me soul skills. Every time I absorb a soul ring, the corresponding martial soul unlocks a matching form. For example, my Divine Key Martial Soul currently has three forms: Void Archive, Yu Du Chen, and Black Abyss White Flower. After I absorb my fourth soul ring, it will not grant me a skill. Instead, the Divine Key Martial Soul will gain another form, though I do not know exactly which one. The Herrscher Martial Soul works the same way. Every additional soul ring unlocks two Herrscher Modes."

After hearing Ling Mo's explanation, the Snow Empress could not help sighing. "I never expected that the weapons from your previous life and your ultimate mortal enemy would both become your martial souls. It truly is hard to imagine."

It really was quite legendary. Ling Mo thought it was about time, so he said to the Snow Empress, "I've been in here long enough. I still need to visit the old man at my house, so I'll be leaving first." With that, he left the Stigmata Space under the Snow Empress's watchful gaze.

Watching Ling Mo disappear from the Stigmata Space, the Snow Empress turned to look at the enormous Cherry Blossom Tree before her. In Ling Mo's memories, this had originally been the place where the fox-eared girl named Yae Sakura often stayed.

As she watched the petals drift down, the Snow Empress seemed to think of something. She suddenly laughed and softly said, "What a fickle human."