"Fu Li and Kiana (Part 1)"
"It was only after that happened that I realized Kiana was anything but ordinary. Of course, the other two around her weren't ordinary either. They could probably wipe out a hundred and one Fu Lis with a wave of their hands."
Using his past self as a unit of combat power, the grown-up boy shook his head with a laugh. "After that, we went our separate ways. The three of them were invited to join St. Freya, the Valkyrie training academy Schicksal had established in the Far East. As for me, I got some compensation and hush money, then was extradited back home alone."
"But think about it. Back then, I was still a hot-blooded, edgy teenager. After witnessing the 'magnificence' of the Honkai world firsthand, then being told that surviving the Great Honkai meant I had the potential to become strong... how could I not try every possible way to find a path into that world?"
"So, that's what I did." Fu Li spoke calmly. "I spent more than half a year looking for a way to become stronger. Then, after another two months, I climbed from a rookie who couldn't even defend himself to B-rank, becoming a moderately well-known freelance mercenary."
"It was then that I met Kiana again."
Prometheus quietly listened to Fu Li's story. Though he had glossed over the process, considering his earlier talk about self-destructive "competition," anyone who shot up to B-rank in just two months either had exceptional talent or something wrong with their head.
However, his attitude toward Kiana surprised her. Anyone with even a little understanding of romance knew that truly moving on was never about deliberately acting bitter or treating someone like a stranger. It was being able to smile and say hello when you happened to meet them on the road.
His breezy attitude truly showed that Fu Li was not merely talking big. He had completely said goodbye to that pathetic lovesick mindset.
For Prometheus, that was undoubtedly wonderful.
After all, he was her host.
Fu Li had no idea that his Little AI was secretly calling him mentally ill. He adjusted his backpack and continued.
"It was an urgent mission in Xingzhou. I won't get into what it was about, but at the final celebration banquet, I ran into that white-haired furball I'd been apart from for over a year."
"She seemed to have just completed some important mission too. She was at the banquet, holding a plate and stuffing her face. Her face was so greasy that I didn't recognize her at first, and we nearly got into a fight."
Because she actually dared to snatch my Thermidor Lobster...
Fu Li scratched his cheek. That bizarre cause of conflict was too embarrassing to tell anyone.
"We could more or less be considered old friends, right? We both came out of Changkong City. After experiencing that disaster together, meeting again naturally gave us a feeling of shared hardship. Besides, after struggling out in the world for so long, some things gradually stopped mattering so much."
"Like how Miss Kiana promised to become your bride when you were children?"
"It was just a joke from when we were kids. We were only eight then. After so much time had passed, it was perfectly normal to forget." Steadying himself after the bus's jolt slid him forward, Fu Li said, "So after the celebration banquet ended, she and I snuck out for a drink behind our teammates' backs."
They drank milk tea, since they were both underage.
"She secretly told me the information about Kikyo that time. Her tone was so smug, and I was insanely jealous."
Little AI blinked. "Jealous?"
"Yes, jealous." Fu Li sighed. "I don't know how St. Freya trained its fighters, but when we met again after more than a year, not only had Kiana not improved at all, she had actually regressed quite a bit. By then, even I could beat her by a narrow margin."
Even now, he still tended to believe that St. Freya's training policy was one of delayed growth, trading early weakness for explosive advancement later on.
Otherwise, Fu Li could not understand why Kiana had weakened until she was inferior even to him. It couldn't have been that her living conditions were too good and spoiled her, right? No way, right?
"If Kiana could get her hands on Kikyo, why couldn't I, Fu Li, do it too?! ...That wasn't just what I thought back then. Even now, I still think the same way."
Prometheus understood. "So that's why the host plans to get there first this time."
"Anyway, Kikyo was kept in storage after it fell into Schicksal's hands. Rather than let them waste it, I might as well make use of it."
Fu Li spoke with righteous conviction, then became helpless again.
"Unfortunately, Schicksal really does have the right to waste things. Putting aside the Key of Domination, that defective—slightly flawed future-wife-type growth weapon, at least half of the remaining Divine Keys are in their hands. They're ridiculously rich."
Little AI withdrew her glare and asked in surprise, "Half of all Divine Keys are in Schicksal's hands?"
"That's right. There are currently ten complete Divine Keys that have been excavated. The first, second, fourth, fifth, sixth, and eleventh are all with Schicksal."
Fu Li listed them with a confidence level of ninety-nine percent.
"Besides those six, the Third Divine Key will appear in the future Coral Island naval battle and be held by Raven, one of the legends of the mercenary world. The Seventh is in the hands of Mr. Sigfried Kaslana, an S-rank fugitive who defected from Schicksal. The Eighth is said to be Immortal Crimson Vulture's protective treasure in Shenzhou and cannot be shown lightly. The Ninth is the symbol and inheritance of Anti-Entropy's leader."
Prometheus looked strange. "Despite holding more than half the Divine Keys, Schicksal still hasn't unified the world and established a unified civilization?"
"How could that be?" Fu Li waved his hand. "I admit Schicksal is among the strongest major powers, but don't underestimate everyone else."
"To say nothing else, Gaul in the nineteenth century and Germania in the twentieth century nearly overturned Schicksal's rule over Europe twice in succession. The latter even indirectly led to Anti-Entropy, its North American branch, becoming independent."
"Besides, it isn't as though there are no divine weapons capable of rivaling Divine Keys. The many products of Shenzhou's Project Nantianmen, Anti-Entropy's god-machines, and the God of War built on the equator—which of those doesn't surpass an individual Divine Key? At the end of the day, Divine Keys are rated 'EX,' not placed in a separate 'Divine Key rank.' That already proves they are merely the strongest, not invincible."
Compared to the unlucky Previous Civilization, which only truly encountered the Honkai after entering the modern era and saw the Herrscher of the End descend before even a generation had grown up, the current civilization had a full five thousand years to study the Honkai thanks to Project Ember.
Though constrained by the form of civilization, this sort of private, chaotic, greenskin-style research was far less efficient than modern society's collaborative efforts.
Yet under the bold exploration of countless geniuses over five thousand years, saying they had surpassed the Previous Civilization as a whole might be a stretch, but absurd developments like "a villager who popped out of some backwater shared Honkai fusion technology with you" were by no means impossible.
After all, we all knew that the Honkai could do anything.
"Of course, none of that makes much difference to a rookie like me." Fu Li teased, "Prometheus, you'd better work harder. If the End-of-World Assistance System ever evolves to the level of a God of War or god-machine, your host here can cling to your thigh and charge in and out of a million gods seven times!"
"..."
"..."
"..."
His words seemed to have dealt a considerable blow to Prometheus's worldview as a remnant of the old era. She still had not recovered even after a long while.
That instead made Fu Li feel a tiny bit guilty. Looking at the silent Little AI, he tentatively asked, "Babe, is there anything else you want to ask?"
"Yes." The little girl answered dazedly, "The host said earlier that Kiana was B-rank like you. Then why did she leave you behind afterward?"
"I told you to ask questions, not stab me in the wound!"
Fu Li rolled his eyes at her irritably, but he still opened his mouth to satisfy her curiosity.
"Actually, I'm not entirely sure why Kiana became so much stronger than me either. After we parted ways during the Third Honkai in Changkong City, I only met her three times in total."
"Tell me more about those meetings."
Having recovered, Little AI seized the opportunity.
"The first was what I just mentioned, the chance encounter at that Xingzhou celebration banquet. Let me think... that was probably in the summer of 2015."
Fu Li glanced up at the bus stop sign and found that they still had some time before arriving.
So he continued, "The second was in 2016, when the Herrscher of the Void was resurrected."
"Resurrected?!!"
Prometheus was shocked for a hundred years. Did people in the current civilization all love courting death this much?
"Don't ask me. I don't know why the Herrscher of the Void, who should have been defeated at the turn of the millennium, awakened at Schicksal headquarters. Who knew what nonsense those big shots were up to!"
The lone wolf mercenary finished complaining. "The chain reaction caused by the Herrscher of the Void's resurrection made Honkai phenomena across the globe abnormally active, and the number of missions skyrocketed. That was when I received the mission to 'assist the Immortal Blades in clearing rampaging Honkai Beasts within Schicksal headquarters.'"
"Those large organizations were truly generous. One of my B-rank skills was a reward I claimed after completing that mission... Sorry, I got off topic."
He cleared his throat. "Since we were clearing the area, we naturally had to search everywhere. I had already advanced to A-rank by then, so the Immortal Blades' commander—Durandal, Schicksal's strongest Valkyrie—allowed me to patrol alone."
"And then I picked Kiana up off the beach."
"Huh?"
Prometheus felt that her host's transition was a little too abrupt.
"Can't be helped. I really did pick her up off the beach while wandering around." Fu Li said that blaming him would not change anything. "While patrolling near the shore, I saw a white mass being battered onto the beach by the waves from afar. I thought it was a Dead Walker, so I ran over to finish it off. Who would've thought I would find an unconscious Kiana instead?"
"She seemed to have just gone through a battle. She was covered in bruises, and there wasn't even the slightest trace of Honkai Energy fluctuation anywhere on her body."
Fu Li recalled the scene. "I guessed it had something to do with the Godslayer Spear stuck in her neck—don't ask what the Godslayer Spear is. That's what was written on the casing of that empty injection. The name did sound pretty imposing."
"She was covered in bruises? How did the host know that?"
Little AI's eyes sparkled as though she had discovered a new continent.
"I bandaged her wounds. How could I not know?"
Fu Li resisted the urge to complain that this brat's thoughts were unhealthy. "She was in such bad shape that she was one foot in the grave. We were friends, too. Was I supposed to let seabirds eat her for dinner?"
Seabirds did not understand tenderness toward women. If you dared lie there helplessly, they would send you straight to the grave.
"So the host took the defenseless Miss Kiana, parenthetical unconscious, back home."
"More precisely, I took her back to a hotel." Fu Li corrected her. "Mercenaries make their homes everywhere. Even if I bought a house, I wouldn't have time to live in it."
"Then why didn't the host return Miss Kiana to Schicksal? Wasn't she affiliated with Schicksal's Far East branch?"
It would have been better if the little girl had not mentioned it. The instant she did, Fu Li clutched his chest in extreme anguish.
"What a coincidence. The Schicksal Far East branch she belonged to had rebelled as a whole by then. Everyone, including branch director Theresa Apocalypse, was on the bounty list!"
Of course Fu Li would not hand Kiana over to Schicksal. But whenever he recalled all those zeros after the bounty amount, it felt as if his heart were being torn apart.
At that moment, the bus speakers began playing the theme song of Ming Dynasty 1566. Though he had no idea why the driver's playlist was so trendy, it helped Fu Li resonate with an old Daoist from over five hundred years ago.
My money!!!
After waiting for a while and finding that he was still trapped in his agonizing memories, Prometheus, whose curiosity for gossip had been piqued, began urging him onward.
"And then? And then? And then?"
"Then? Every day, I went out to do missions, and when I came back, I changed that girl's bandages and fed her."
Fu Li rested his chin on his hand. "Kiana actually opened her eyes on the third day, but I don't know what kind of blow she had suffered before that. All day long, she curled up on the bed, kicked out her little legs, wrapped herself in her little blanket, and stared straight at the ceiling with those big, lifeless eyes of hers, as if some alien president claiming to have ridden in a UFO was down there on the seabed playing with a shell over ten meters long."
"I told her to eat properly, but she wouldn't listen. I had to mash the food up and force it into her mouth."
"I taught her to change her own bandages, but she wouldn't do it. One time, I came back late and her wound nearly became infected."
"I told her to bathe herself, but she ignored me. I even had to wipe down her body with a warm towel."
Even babies were easier to care for, because babies were tiny and would actually cry and fuss when hungry or thirsty.
"The host got to experience the hardships of being an old father several years early."
That was certainly a tactful way to put it.
"Give me a break! At least fathers get to enjoy the fun of raising someone. I didn't even get that small sense of satisfaction."
"How so?"
"Kiana recovered very slowly, even slower than a normal person. It was as if something inside her was suppressing her recovery... but no matter how much it suppressed her, after she swallowed the more than twenty pills I brought back, her body had mostly recovered."
Produced by Shenzhou Ding Si. Everyone who used them said they were good.
Fu Li, who had been joking around moments ago, suddenly calmed down. Looking at the buildings flashing past outside the window, he spoke in an ethereal tone.
"So when I returned to the hotel one day after work, I found that she had left without saying goodbye."
"Fu Li and Kiana (Part 2)"
"..."
Prometheus frowned slightly, and her mood soured.
Just from listening to Fu Li ramble like an old father, she knew her host had definitely put effort into caring for Kiana.
Yet after being rescued and nursed back to health, Kiana had actually run off without saying a word?
"Oh, I can't say she left nothing behind." Fu Li added, recalling something. "I searched the entire room before finally finding a battered piece of paper in a corner beneath the bed, a sheet covered with 'I'm sorry' and 'I'm not.'"
The paper was crumpled too, as if it had been soaked by some kind of liquid once.
"Host."
"Yeah?"
"Next time, remember to mention that earlier."
Fu Li protested on his own behalf. "Wait, leaving behind a piece of paper makes up for all my hard work?"
The boy could still understand the "I'm sorry" part. After all, that scumbag girl had freeloaded off his time and effort for so long, only to run away afterward.
But he could not understand the "I'm not" afterward. It couldn't be read together as "I'm not sorry," could it? That would be seriously excessive.
"Perhaps Miss Kiana had some unavoidable reason, such as not wanting to implicate the host because Schicksal was hunting her." Little AI guessed. "That's how it always goes in television dramas."
Fu Li looked at her with a trace of disdain. "You absorb trash information pretty quickly. Looks like it isn't just people; even AI falls at light speed."
"Then let me put it another way." Prometheus remained unmoved. "If Miss Kiana had not left, what would the host have asked of her as payment?"
"First, she'd have to reimburse the medical expenses." Fu Li considered it seriously. "Pills are cheaper than weapons, but altogether they cost about as much as two or three B-rank weapons. Then there was the labor fee, too. I'm a kind person, so I would simply sell her the pills at double the price."
"That really is very kind."
Before you continue