Where Was the Third Honkai We Were Promised?!!

"You think she's cute too, right? She charms both men and women as always, completely unlike a gloomy shut-in otaku like me."

Fu Li put away his phone. While continuing to text Little Great-Aunt, he teased Prometheus, who was clearly staring in a daze. "Doesn't she look nothing like one of my relatives?"

Little AI silently nodded.

"I used to be curious about her background too, so I even secretly peeked at her screen once."

He thoughtfully paused, giving the girl who had suffered a beauty attack(?) some time to recover.

Only after she waved her hand to indicate that she was fine did he slowly continue. "According to what Grandpa's generation said, my Little Great-Aunt was an infant Great-Grandpa picked up during one of his expeditions to Antarctica's Vostok-51 Zone. Back then, the research team unexpectedly encountered some bizarre prehistoric lifeform and was on the brink of death. Little Great-Aunt, who was still a baby at the time, was unsealed from a glacier. A strange radiance bloomed from her body and helped everyone escape danger... So, doesn't that sound fake?"

"Mm."

"I think it sounds fake too—no, not just me. Everyone else in the family group thinks it sounds fake too."

If you said she had been picked up somewhere else, we might have accepted it. The world was huge; the odds of finding an abandoned baby were low, but not impossibly low.

But Antarctica?

Sorry, in that environment, what you picked up was probably a pink elf.

"So compared to the Antarctic baby-picking theory, the family group prefers the more popular theory that the old man was still vigorous in his old age."

The old man could still do several sets of Tai Chi and Bagua Palm in his eighties. With physical fitness comparable to Joseph Joestar's, wasn't it perfectly normal for him to do something similar to Joseph Joestar—meaning secretly having an affair and a child behind his wife's back?

If old men in North America could do it, why couldn't old men in Shenzhou?

All they could say was that it was fortunate Fu Li's great-grandfather had passed away early. Otherwise, he might have burst out of his coffin, grabbed an ice pick, and beaten this bunch of unfilial descendants senseless.

Prometheus's eyes flickered. "Then, is the host going to pick up this Little Great-Aunt?"

"Pick her up? No way." Fu Li kept typing without even looking up. "Not only am I not picking her up, I need to figure out a way to make her stay obediently in Shenzhou during this period."

"Why?"

"Because something huge will happen in Changkong City three days from now. The consequences of that huge event will erase Changkong City, this international metropolis, completely and utterly from the map of the Far East."

"Great Honkai and Sequence Herrschers"

The huge event Fu Li spoke of was the Great Honkai, an utterly despairing disaster universally recognized throughout history as the greatest catastrophe ever.

As an energy that coexisted with civilization, Honkai Energy normally either blended into the atmosphere above a planet's surface as a special fundamental parameter, or wandered through Imaginary Space, isolated from the real world, as the excess entropy produced when imaginary numbers anchored themselves to real numbers.

But once Honkai Energy gathered on a massive scale through natural or unnatural causes, it would erupt with immense energy in an extremely short period of time, like colliding matter and antimatter!

That unrestrained energy would rapidly spread through the surrounding area like thunder, corroding or destroying every living thing it came into contact with according to each individual's resistance to Honkai Energy!

Honkai Beasts dozens or even hundreds of meters tall would also be born in batches of tens of thousands, only stopping after that Great Honkai finally subsided!

Historical records stated that, apart from extremely rare cases like the Wanggongchang Explosion, where elite experts poured out in force and fought desperately to stop it, a Great Honkai's expansion would have to engulf at least one modern city before it naturally stopped!

Unfortunately, on March 28th, three days from now, this rapidly developing international metropolis would welcome such an apocalypse.

No one understood the terror of this disaster better than Fu Li, who had personally lived through it. Therefore, he absolutely could not allow his kind-hearted but scatterbrained Little Great-Aunt to board that plane to Changkong City again!

Fu Li, who had been typing with his head lowered, suddenly said, "Come to think of it, she did save my life in my previous life."

Prometheus, seated beside him, did not say anything. However, those large blinking eyes were already enough to satisfy what little vanity Fu Li had left after everything he had experienced.

"After the Great Honkai happened, the more densely populated an area was, the more dangerous it became," he explained. "Especially downtown areas, commercial districts, schools, slave markets... places like job markets where people were packed shoulder to shoulder. You could toss a brick down there and hit three to five Dead Walkers."

"However, I was on my way to the airport to pick someone up at the time, so I happened to avoid that first peak while sitting in a taxi. The driver carrying me was also an unlucky guy with low resistance. The moment he touched the spreading Honkai Energy, he vanished into thin air."

"Thanks to him, I only suffered some inertial injuries from the sudden brake because I had my seatbelt on. I managed to hold out relatively easily by the sparsely populated highway until rescue arrived."

Incidentally, Little Great-Aunt had paid his taxi fare in his previous life too. Given Fu Li's state of starving for three days and eating nine meals, he simply had no money to take the famously expensive Far East taxis.

It sounded pretty easy...

Prometheus's eyes flickered, but she did not say those brainless words aloud.

She changed the subject. "Then, host, do you need me to help you come up with a plan?"

"I did just now, but not anymore. I've already thought of a brilliant excuse to brush her off."

Fu Li sent the excuse he had drafted, picked up his backpack and baseball bat, and headed out of the store.

March evenings came unexpectedly early. The setting sun spilled its lingering glow, dyeing the sky like flushed red wine. Crows wheeled and sped through the hazy dusk, their rapidly beating tail feathers gleaming beneath the sun.

Little AI stretched out her hand. Her illusory fingers passed through a falling black crow feather.

In an ethereal tone, she said disdainfully, "...Using 'locals have it easier' as an excuse to say you could help her buy plane tickets and tickets to Eden's concert, then taking her money without intending to do anything for her at all... A host like that is the worst."

"Getting scammed out of some money is better than plunging headfirst into the apocalypse."

With his little treasury considerably fuller, Fu Li spoke righteously. "The Great Honkai in Changkong City this time is the Third Honkai, the one that gave birth to a Sequence Herrscher. If ordinary people charge in without knowing anything, not only will they have no chance of survival, they'll basically be completely done for."

Not only did he feel no guilt whatsoever, he was even a little happy about it.

Prometheus narrowed eyes as vivid as the sunset. "Sequence... Herrscher?"

"Yes, Sequence Herrschers. They're humanoid monsters that can be born when a Great Honkai reaches an intensity of over 1000HW."

The afterglow fell across Fu Li's shoulders as he passed an intersection. He took out his phone and brought up a map leading to the suburbs for navigation.

"As for the specifics, I only know what happens, not why it happens. The higher-ups have always kept information on that tightly sealed."

As he walked, he said, "For example, my three... friends who were also Changkong City survivors but luckily joined St. Freya Academy. Whenever I asked them about this stuff, they would start rambling about unrelated things and looking everywhere but at me. They refused to reveal even the slightest bit."

At that point, Fu Li carefully looked Little AI floating beside him up and down. "I suddenly realized, Prometheus, your build looks a bit like one of them. Did you use her as a reference when making your model?"

The girl fell into a subtle silence.

Yet Fu Li seemed to see through the truth. "I had a feeling that before I was reborn, I vaguely saw her figure in the Dominion Theater. Unfortunately, those bastard dogs had blindfolded me with black cloth at the time, and I'm not good at sensory abilities. In the end, I could only make a rough guess."

"Host, telling a girl that she looks like someone else is an extremely off-putting thing to do."

"Fine."

Sensing that Little AI was a little angry, the off-putting man spread his hands and returned the conversation to Sequence Herrschers.

"Anyway, to lone freelancers like us, Sequence Herrschers are more like an elusive urban legend. Everyone knows a little about them, but if you ask for specifics, it's always, 'I dunno, I heard it from so-and-so. Go ask him.'"

"There is one exception, though: Anti-Entropy's leader, the First Herrscher, Welt Joyce."

Fu Li raised a slender, well-defined index finger. "The Herrscher of Reason is the only Herrscher who has publicly revealed his identity and is willing to fight for humanity. His information has always been posted on Anti-Entropy's official website for anyone to browse, though there's a ton of artistic embellishment."

"Unfortunately, I can't afford a darknet account right now. Otherwise, I could let you have a look. He seems like a pretty harmless guy."

"But it's fine. Once I finish this job, whether it's the US Dollars Anti-Entropy uses to establish monetary hegemony in the ordinary world, or the Crystal Currency Schicksal uses to harvest Honkai-world resources, I'll basically have as much as I want."

He waved and boarded a bus headed for the outskirts of Changkong City.

PS: Just in case, I should mention that after Joyce died protecting Manhattan in 1955, Old Yang used his authority to mimic him and served as Anti-Entropy's leader for over sixty years. That was why, in the Moonshadow Arc manga, Joyce's clone could become the Anti-Entropy leader controlled by Cocolia.

"Divine Keys"

The lingering sunset glow quietly slipped away amid the bus's jolts.

When night fell, the neon-lit city reflected in the water outside the windows like countless stars. Everything seemed dreamlike and unreal.

"Host."

The cybernetic baby voice by his ear made Fu Li, who had been dozing at the back of the bus, open his eyes.

"What is it, Curious Baby? Do you want to ask where I'm going again, like before?"

"No."

Little AI shook her head. Her light-gray braids, tied into Twin Turbos, bobbed adorably.

"I was thinking, since you know the Third Honkai will happen in Changkong City, why are you still staying here?"

Question: You had just transmigrated, asked around, and discovered you were in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

What would a normal person do in that situation?

Run! If you didn't run, were you staying to become an acquaintance?

"I saw you wrestling with that question all the way here. I thought you might manage to hold it in and not ask." After teasing Prometheus, Fu Li quickly answered before the little girl could grind her teeth. "You remember, right? Before I left, I said there was one more thing I needed to do. Only after completing that would I leave this city that was about to perish."

The girl who had just been teased said nothing, merely staring at the suspense-loving big bad guy before her with those beautiful eyes.

The big bad guy smiled. "Do you know about Divine Keys?"

"Divine Keys are Herrscher Core-driven anti-Honkai God-Slaying Weapons created by the greatest scientists of the Previous Civilization. They used the Herrscher Cores of Sequence Herrschers as their central components, along with Soul Steel and many other top-grade materials."

After saying it all in one breath, Prometheus proudly puffed out her chest. "I understand my own kind quite well."

"That's right." Fu Li said, "Every one of these super divine weapons created in the Previous Era possessed devastating power. And because they were made using the cores from inside Sequence Herrschers, they also contained ultimate authorities that only Herrschers had originally been able to wield."

He glanced at Little AI. "Oh, except you."

Prometheus was so angry she wanted to bite him.

Including the Herrscher of the End, who had supposedly completely destroyed the Previous Civilization, the Previous Civilization had faced a total of fourteen Sequence Herrschers.

They were born during one Great Honkai after another. To make written records easier, people used the combination of "order of birth + authority name" as their codename.

Among them, the Tenth Herrscher, the Herrscher of Domination, was a special case.

Unlike the other thirteen, whose great power resided within themselves, the Herrscher of Domination in the Previous Era was an enormous group numbering one thousand.

Although this greatly reduced their individual combat strength, one thousand pseudo-Herrschers with different abilities working together still caused considerable turmoil for civilization at the time.

More importantly, after all the pseudo-Herrschers had been eliminated, the scientists of the Previous Era discovered in astonishment that every one of those Dominator individuals possessed one-thousandth of a Herrscher Core.

So they extracted the miniature Herrscher Cores from the remains and used the materials from those thousand individuals to forge one thousand Keys of Domination.

The 0017 in the End-of-World Assistance System 0017 that Prometheus had initially called herself was her serial number among those thousand Keys of Domination.

However, everything had its pros and cons. Since the Herrscher of Domination's core had been split among a thousand individuals, the Keys of Domination's power naturally dropped dramatically compared to other Divine Keys with intact authorities.

Unfortunately, Fu Li knew none of this before he was reborn.

He had merely heard from an intelligence broker he knew that an ownerless Divine Key had appeared. After confirming the authenticity of the news, he had rushed in howling to join the scramble.

Only after realizing that its power was wrong did he buy the follow-up information on the Key of Domination from that person. Then he finally understood why, despite it being a battle over a Divine Key, the strongest participant had only been Critical.

Just like Future Fund's lending business, the truly powerful experts simply couldn't be bothered with it.

"But the Divine Key still sleeping in Changkong City is different."

At this point, Fu Li straightened his back, and a trace of gravity rarely entered his usually relaxed tone.

"Although it has not yet been completely forged for certain reasons, it is indeed a Divine Key made using a complete Herrscher Core."

"And that is why I insist on staying in Changkong City right now."

Thump!

The bus jolted as it rolled over a speed bump and entered a tunnel. For a moment, only the phosphorescent safety signs and Fu Li's eyes glowed inside the carriage.

The former glimmered faintly, while the latter shone like stars.

Faced with her host's rare seriousness, Prometheus thought for a moment before speaking. "I have no intention of questioning the reasonableness of this trip. I simply want to know where you learned such important information. Is it really reliable enough for you to gamble your life on this?"

The two "blades," Crescent Moon and Shiranui, were fine. Though rare, they were only C-rank, so obtaining information related to them was not difficult.

Divine Keys were different. They were ultimate existences on another level, abnormal God-Slaying Weapons of which a civilization had exhausted everything to forge only a dozen or so.

Noticing the concern in the girl's voice, Fu Li imperceptibly raised the corners of his brows. "The information about the Divine Key was told to me by Kiana in my previous life. As for its reliability, I can say with absolute certainty that it's one hundred percent reliable."

When Kiana had told Fu Li about it in a slightly boastful tone, the Divine Key codenamed Kikyo had already been contained by the Far East branch of Schicksal, which she belonged to at the time. She herself had been one of the personnel involved in its containment.

The exact containment date was a few days after the Third Honkai. Otherwise, Fu Li would not have been rushing to seize every possible moment.

He would only have this one chance to take Kikyo in advance.

"Kiana Kaslana?" Little AI froze. "Isn't she your..."

For some reason, Prometheus regretted bringing that up in front of Fu Li.

It was not because she harbored some bizarre romantic feelings toward him. She just felt that discussing someone's painful past right in front of them was like rubbing chili powder, dipping sauce, and a little cumin into an open wound.

"Yes, that prematurely gray-haired girl who lived next door in Room 201."

Fu Li remained calm about it. "I mentioned it before too. After the Great Honkai happened in Changkong City, I got lucky and held out on a sparsely populated highway until the rescue forces arrived. Not just me—Changkong City's very few survivors basically lived through similar methods."

"Kiana was the only exception." He sighed as someone born ordinary. "She relied on her own strength, along with two other girls, to fight their way out of the most densely populated city center!"