Where Was the Third Honkai We Were Promised?!

Where Was the Third Honkai We Were Promised?!

Author: Person in the Light and Shadow

Synopsis:

A 4-million-word premium Honkai fanfic has already landed smoothly.

My name was Fu Li, and I was a reincarnator.

Before reincarnating, I had survived the Third Honkai, only to die a year and a half later amid the unending Great Honkai incidents.

Then, I reincarnated—back to before the Third Honkai.

This time, I had to prepare myself so I would not end up getting a GG again.

After a series of developments, although I had yet to escape alive, I had still used my intelligence advantage to secure quite a decent return.

The price was that a pile of Anti-Entropy Titans, heavy drones, and armed soldiers swarmed after me one after another, chasing my companions and me until there was no way up to heaven or down into the earth.

But I was not worried in the slightest. The Third Honkai was about to arrive, and when it did, their offensive would crumble in an instant.

So I calmed down and waited in peace.

However...

Huh?

His gaze swept over the time on his watch. Fu Li looked at the perfectly ordinary blue sky, the perfectly ordinary Titan forces, and Kiana, Bronya, and Mei in the car, each wearing a different expression.

—No, bro?

Where was the Third Honkai we were promised?!

Volume One: Where Was the Third Honkai We Were Promised?!

"I'm Fu, Fu Li's Fu" (New Book—Please Bookmark, Recommend, and Support!)

The rain that had lasted all night quietly stopped as dawn arrived, leaving behind only the lingering chill and a few puddles.

Sunlight pierced the thin mist and fell upon the morning dew sliding from the leaf tips, shimmering with mottled rays of dawn.

If some ancient swordsman well versed in Tang poetry and Song lyrics had been here, he would surely have filled a cup with crystal-clear dew condensed from the morning mist, stood in a long robe with one hand behind his back and a sword at his waist, and written his own legend amid a life of passion and vengeance.

But in this hurried modern society, office workers and students could only rise early when the east was just beginning to brighten, get dressed, wash up, and begin their repetitive work and studies.

Muye was one such person.

The thirty-three-year-old single kneeling aristocrat got up early in the morning, washed up without folding his blanket, changed into the cheap suit that declared his status, and staggered out the door half-dead.

The moment he stepped outside, the world opened wide in an instant.

Quite a few cheap apartments in the Far East were like the one he rented: three or four stories high, with an exposed corridor linking rows of single rooms and staircases at either end connecting the upper and lower floors.

Calling such tenement buildings poorly soundproofed would be generous. They had no soundproofing at all. If someone raised their voice even a little on the second floor, Muye could hear it crystal clear from here.

He had just experienced that firsthand.

It was six thirty in the morning. No matter how diligent Muye was, after working overtime until midnight, there was no way he would have broken free from the great demon king known as his bed this early.

What had woken him was the shrewish cursing downstairs, along with the violent banging that went clang-clang against a door.

"Fu Li, open up! Open up, open up, open up! Don't hide inside without making a sound—I know you're home!"

The shouting was vicious enough to make one's heart jolt, instantly clearing away most of his early-morning grogginess.

Of course, Muye knew who was banging on the door. That sharp-tongued woman in her thirties was the landlady of the entire second floor.

Driven by Massive Electric Inc., or ME Inc. for short, a famous multinational electronics manufacturer that had emerged over a decade ago, Changkong City had quietly transformed from an unremarkable place into the international metropolis it was today.

As the city boomed, industrial parks, commercial facilities, medical resources, affiliated schools, and other related industries naturally sprang up one after another like mushrooms after rain.

For workers from poor backgrounds, such an emerging city filled with opportunities everywhere was no different from the New World during the Age of Exploration.

Everyone wanted to claw their way upward before the upper class became entrenched. Every year, countless strangers carrying dreams came here, setting themselves ablaze to become cheap fuel for Changkong City's vigorous growth.

And once there were too many people, housing resources began to grow scarce.

Once housing became scarce, renting naturally became widespread.

Among the locals were plenty with a head for business, such as the landlady currently going "Bang! Bang!" on the door.

After reaching an agreement with the owner of the tenement building, she had rented out the entire second floor, then sublet the rooms individually at higher prices to pocket the difference.

She was not the only one. The third floor where Muye lived was much the same.

Fortunately, the person renting the third floor was a pleasant middle-aged man. Having achieved financial freedom long ago, he would bring a few bottles of beer and some barbecue over to drink with his tenants whenever he was bored.

That little Shenzhou brother living in Room BK202 downstairs, though, was truly cursed with rotten luck. That younger-brother-obsessed landlady was not someone easy to deal with.

Look! In the time it took Muye to think all that, she had already verbally destroyed three or four tenants who had come over after being woken by her racket to reason with her!

Come to think of it, that little guy with the bright red eyes seemed to be called Fu Li?

As Muye passed the second floor, he gave the landlady glaring at him with tiger eyes an innocent smile, tucked his briefcase under his arm, and headed for the subway entrance over two hundred meters away.

He knew why the woman had come so early to bang on the door. It was not just him—many people living in the apartment building knew perfectly well.

The landlady had a younger brother. To put it bluntly, he was a dead fatso who only knew how to live off the family inheritance and never left the house.

That useless lump was already in his thirties and still unmarried. He spent all day immersed in the beauty of two-dimensional culture, unable to stop fantasizing about snuggling up with pretty girls. He was also a diehard fan of countless VTubers and idols, the most hopeless sort of Heisei-era shut-in.

The landlady spoiled her brother terribly. Anything good went to him first, and whatever he wanted, she would find a way to get it for him. After her husband died in an accident, she had even transferred the family's only detached house into his name.

Her late husband's family had always been deeply dissatisfied about that. Their disputes had gotten so severe on several occasions that reporters from civil affairs programs had come to mediate—while stirring up the flames.

And this time, the landlady's brother had set his sights on a female high school student studying abroad.

That stunning Nordic high school girl was now renting BK201 next to Fu Li.

Muye could figure it out with his toes. That nasty woman wanted to drive Fu Li away so her brother could move into his room.

As the saying went, the moon was easier to reach from a nearby terrace. In the older generation's eyes, only a thin veil separated men and women; if they spent day and night together, there would always be some chance. Not to mention she had an absurdly overpowered younger-brother filter.

Still, Muye felt this matter was—unlikely!

The lesser reason was that her anorexic brother was 1.62 meters tall, weighed 130 kilos, and had facial features squeezed together by fat. No one would find him attractive.

The main reason was that Fu Li was also pursuing that JK exchange student.

Muye understood Fu Li's thinking very, very well.

Silver hair, blue eyes, fair skin, a beautiful face, and long legs—she was a super beauty straight out of a painting. Rumor had it that she was even the young lady of some great Nordic family. Who would not lose their head after seeing her?

Muye had lost his head too!

But he knew his place.

He felt Fu Li should know his place too.

Yes, you, Fu Li, and that girl named Kiana Kaslana had taken the same ship from Shenzhou to Changkong City. You attended the same school, the same class, and even rented rooms next door to each other. But that was not a reason to keep pestering her after she had rejected your confession, was it?

Fine, Muye admitted it. He was jealous. He was afraid some melodramatic nonsense would actually happen, that true love would move the heavens and let that wet-behind-the-ears Shenzhou brat carry off the Nordic beauty.

If he could not have her, then no one else had better have her either.

Even if someone could have her, it absolutely could not be someone he knew.

Besides, that girl really had no feelings for you, Fu Li.

Forget your completely average looks, which were only barely a little better than his because you were young. Just hearing you go on every day about, "Kiana, do you really not remember me? When we were eight, in 2007, we met in Kolosten Town in Europe!"

Good grief! It was already 2014! How could anyone still use that move to pick up girls?

And you even claimed she had promised as a child that she would become your bride when she grew up? You clung to her all the way from Shenzhou to the Far East? Mother of God, it was so awkward that Muye got goosebumps!

And if you asked him, even if, even if you really had met in Europe as children, then she definitely did not want anything to do with you now. That was why she had deliberately pretended not to recognize you after your reunion.

It could not seriously be some melodramatic development where the girl had amnesia, right? What a joke. Reality was not some eight-o'clock soap opera!

Muye hugged his shoulders and shuddered. After flashing a mocking smile, he boarded the train that would take him near his company.

On the second floor of the apartment building, the landlady withdrew her sinister gaze from that ordinary office-worker man. At the young age of twenty-nine plus one hundred and twenty-eight months, she continued pounding on the door with a clatter:

"Open the door! Open the damn door already! Don't think I don't know! I checked the surveillance footage when I came over! After you went back inside last night, you never went anywhere and stayed home the whole time!"

Her persistence rivaled that of a Calabash Brother whose grandfather had been kidnapped by a snake demon.

The landlady had already decided that if she ended up breaking the door, she would deduct the cost from the security deposit Fu Li had paid when renting the room.

A stinking outsider had come to Changkong City to beg for food. So what if he was from Shenzhou? The Far East was the territory of us nuclear underworld folk. If it went to court, would he not still have to swallow the loss in silence?

Of course, even if Fu Li opened the door, she would only tell him with a dark face that his rent was going up. She would demand half a year's rent at once, and if he could not pay, he could pack his bedding and get the hell out!

Thinking of the way her brother's eyes had lit up when he came over for spending money a few days ago and saw that white-haired Nordic girl, the landlady found a few more ounces of motivation out of nowhere.

Even if East Asians and Europeans had different standards of beauty, she had to admit that Kiana's little face was truly gorgeous enough to strike straight into one's heart.

Her waist and butt were a little too thin, not the type built for easy childbirth. But people went to hospitals for C-sections these days anyway, so that would not affect having children.

Besides, after more than forty years of eating salt, the landlady could tell at a glance that the girl was not naturally skin and bones. She simply was not eating well.

If she could raise her from childhood herself, she would definitely make her as fair and plump as her own younger brother!

The landlady indulged in all sorts of random thoughts, but the pounding of her hand never stopped.

Time passed second by second amid the noise, while the fog filling heaven and earth only grew thicker instead of dispersing.

A blank white veil shrouded the houses and roads within several dozen meters, making the woman still stubbornly banging on the door feel as though the entire world had cast her aside.

The scene resembled something from the film The Mist, making her shiver abruptly. The force of her knocking weakened by a few degrees without her realizing it.

Then, with a click, the door to Room BK202 opened from the inside.

The sudden creak in that silent world gave the lone landlady a trace of reassurance, followed immediately by anger that was half real and half feigned.

She tightened her face and glared upward, launching smoothly into her practiced shrewish tirade. "Fu Li, did you sleep yourself to death in there, or are your ears blocked with earwax? Didn't you hear me working my ass off outside, knocking on your door for so long..."

Her shrill, caustic voice grew lower and lower before finally sinking into dead silence.

Until another voice spoke.

"My new ASMR headphones worked so well that I accidentally got absorbed in listening to Miyuki Nakajima's newly released album."

The black-haired boy's skin was pale, as though it had not seen sunlight for a long time. Yet beneath the radiant glow that stubbornly broke through the morning mist, he appeared dazzlingly brilliant.

A clean scarf suitable for March was wrapped around his neck. A pair of curved willow-leaf brows, like the first buds of early spring, gave him a slender and somewhat androgynous beauty. His eyes were calm and flawless like white paper reflecting a still lake. Altogether, he possessed a harmonious beauty, like one of the Six Immortal Poets of the Heian era.

"Something wrong?" Fu Li raised an eyebrow.

"..."

Examining this younger tenant, whose appearance was no different from what she remembered yet who seemed as if he had become an entirely different person, the landlady suddenly recalled something.

It was an interesting anecdote brought up during afternoon tea by one of her male best friends, a man who insisted that temperament mattered more than looks and makeup:

In the 1980s, two ancient human corpses from 3,800 years ago had been unearthed in the Loulan region of western Shenzhou.

The one with good temperament was later named Loulan Beauty by researchers, while the other was perfunctorily called Corpse No. 2.

And now, Loulan Beauty stood before her.

Transformed from the once entirely unremarkable Corpse No. 2.

—As though reborn.

"Prometheus"

"...The Belobog aerospace carrier battle group is holding a multinational joint military exercise in the Whale Sea..."

After sending away that irritating younger-brother-obsessed landlady on the excuse that he would be moving out in a few days, Fu Li closed the door and leaned against it.

He turned off the morning news playing on his phone and slowly slid to the floor with a complicated expression.

For humanity, the experience of death itself was a false proposition.

Those who had truly died had no chance to describe what death felt like to the people still living in this world. Even the greatest physicians, renowned through all ages and lands, could only fall silent like Confucius debating whether the sun was closer at dawn or noon when asked such questions.

Fu Li was different. He could beat his chest and tell anyone: Nobody knows death better than me. No one understood death better than he did.