She had pondered the meaning of her existence.
She had witnessed the cracks gradually spreading beneath civilization.
She thought that perhaps some things could only be done by her.
Sky Peak.
Chiyuan silently looked at her two former disciples before her. Their pupils had already lost all life, yet they still held the Xuanyuan Swords she had bestowed upon them. She then looked toward the hundreds of disciples throughout the Tai Xu Sword Sect. Without exception, they retained the appearances they had worn in life, like lifelike dolls. Clearly, someone had acted before she arrived.
"Midrash... no, I should call you Mostima. What exactly is your purpose in doing this?" Chiyuan spoke to Sumei.
Instantly stripping everyone in an entire sect of their lives and turning them into undead soldiers was no different from what had happened when the Twelfth Herrscher incident first erupted.
"If they're merely undead soldiers, it's not much of a problem. The crucial issue is..." Chiyuan pondered. She could not understand Midrash's purpose. She had used Chiyuan's disciples to grievously wound her, only to wipe those very disciples out at this moment.
She did not believe Midrash would be unaware that she had awakened, so Midrash's motives were deeply puzzling.
Her opponent did not answer.
As Chiyuan contemplated, Sumei and Lin Zhaoyu moved. Unlike the other people who had become undead soldiers, they seemed stronger. Chiyuan evaded Lin Zhaoyu's thrust, while catching Sumei's ambush from behind with Tai Xu's Grasp.
"No, why are the other undead soldiers..." Chiyuan frowned lightly. After effortlessly knocking Lin Zhaoyu and Sumei away, she discovered that the other transformed sect disciples had taken up positions around her in a strange formation.
"A formation? But why would undead soldiers..." Dark purple light radiated from the disciples, gathering in the sky before scattering downward.
A bizarre yet familiar sense of weakness swept over her. Chiyuan's pupils immediately contracted. "Divine Blessing Barrier?!" But how could the Herrscher of Corruption deploy the Divine Blessing Barrier? Even if she could accomplish it through a formation, every undead soldier within it, including Lin Zhaoyu and Sumei, should have suffered even greater suppression than Chiyuan herself. Yet in the next several exchanges, the two puppets seemed utterly unaffected. On the contrary, with her Honkai Energy suppressed, she was at an extreme disadvantage.
"I should be grateful... that your Divine Blessing Barrier isn't as strong as Michael's, shouldn't I?" Chiyuan murmured. She realized she could no longer hold anything back.
"Feather Dust, First Power!" With her sword heart shattered and unable to wield the Tai Xu Sword God, Chiyuan had to rely on Feather Dust to burn her own memories if she wanted to use this move again. How much damage the final strike could inflict depended on how many memories she was willing to burn.
Far East coast.
"What... is that thing?" Pardo stared blankly at the monster before her, whose upper half was human while its lower half was a horrifying land-dwelling piranha.
"Let me introduce myself. My name is Apokronia. For now, you can think of me as a replica of the Herrscher of Corruption." The girl's upper body revealed an eerie smile. "You want to kill 'me,' and 'I' feel the same way."
Sakura, standing beside Pardo, did not hesitate. She drew her blade and slashed at the girl forming Apokronia's upper half at a speed beyond ordinary sight.
With a clang, the opponent blocked the probing strike with the scepter in her hand. Then...
"This is bad, Sister Sakura. Looks like we've been surrounded." Pardo gripped her ring blades in both hands, warily watching the doll-like dark purple monsters gradually close in around them.
Sakura swiftly widened the distance between herself and Apokronia, but Apokronia had no intention of letting her go. The monster forming her lower half scuttled toward Sakura on several pairs of pointed legs, opening its enormous bloodstained maw in an attempt to tear into her.
While the lower-half monster launched a fierce assault on Sakura, the girl above it continuously wielded her scepter, sometimes summoning new puppets and sometimes using threads to restrain Sakura's movements in coordination with the monster's attack.
As she dodged one of the monster's bites, Sakura leaped into the air and unleashed a blade strike with all her strength, one that froze time itself. Its edge flew straight at the girl.
The girl's body was cleaved in two at the waist.
Sakura did not lower her guard. The next instant, the monster violently raised its head and rammed toward Sakura, who was still in midair. Sakura immediately held her blade crosswise to block the blow, only to be sent flying some distance away.
After landing, Sakura swiftly steadied herself and cut apart several beast-shaped puppets approaching her before turning her gaze toward Apokronia's upper half.
"What?!" Sakura discovered in astonishment that the girl she had clearly cut in half bore only a single crack across her body, and even that crack was rapidly repairing itself. Soon, it too vanished without a trace.
"Are these monsters... some kind of Imaginary Construct?" Pardo smashed apart a mass of puppets, only to discover that their self-repair speed was astonishing. Before long, they reassembled themselves.
"If they're Imaginary Constructs..." Light began to shine from Pardo's heterochromatic eyes. She saw the threads attached to the puppets. Some descended from high in the sky, their source nowhere in sight, while others led to Apokronia's scepter.
"No Imaginary Core?" Pardo could not help but exclaim in surprise. The Imaginary Core was the key to an Imaginary Construct's reconstruction and revival. Only by shattering the Imaginary Core could one truly kill an Imaginary Construct.
"It seems that before Midrash, I'll be the first individual to kill two Flame-Chasers." The girl forming Apokronia's upper half said with a smile. Sakura fell silent for a moment, sheathed the blade in her hand, and placed her hand instead on the hilt of the other sword at her waist.
"Seven Thunders of Purification, Zeroth Power..."
In an instant, lightning left its sheath.
Europe.
The silver-white knight swung her greatsword, cleaving apart the puppets constantly closing in around her.
The current head of the Shaniyat family directed the other Schicksal warriors as they fought the Honkai Beasts wreaking havoc through the streets.
Griseo stood behind the knight with a palette and brush in hand, watching the dark purple monsters gradually encircle them. Her brush swiftly painted across empty air, and then a centaur knight leaped forth from it, beginning to assist the silver-white knight in battle.
"They... have no cores," Griseo murmured.
"Is this the confidence Midrash accumulated over these thousands of years?" Vill-V finished adjusting the weapon she had hastily made to temporarily resist the Herrscher of Corruption and joined the battlefield as well.
"Vill-V, I think I can help." Aponia's voice sounded in Vill-V's mind.
"Aponia?" Vill-V frowned. Aponia had previously volunteered to be confined within the Shaniyat family's forbidden grounds, but releasing her... Vill-V looked up at the doll-like girl floating in the air atop a puppet dolphin.
She saw the girl controlling some of the puppets through threads, while the threads connected to the rest stretched into the endless sky.
"This is the only way..." Vill-V gritted her teeth and deactivated the devices within the forbidden grounds that had restrained Aponia.
Golden light surged from the Shaniyat family's forbidden grounds. Everywhere it passed, the puppets stopped moving, and the threads on their bodies were severed one by one as the golden light swept through them.
"After all, consciousness can connect to dreams, and dreams lie in the gap between the Imaginary and reality..." Vill-V muttered. "That leaves only..." She looked in the direction of Shenzhou. "I hope Pardo and the others are all right."
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