82. Eternity in a Single Glance.

This was a gesture that felt somewhat familiar to Su Qing'an.

Living Doll.

While both are manifestations of the power of the Herrscher of Corruption, the Living Doll itself is merely an insignificant remnant. Half of its combat power as Emperor-class Honkai Beast is attributed to the use of the power characteristics left behind by the Herrscher, which allowed it to accumulate a large amount of Honkai Energy over several hundred years.

However, the demonic form that finally appeared before Su Qing'an and Satou Yunona was not even one ten-thousandth as impressive as what they had just witnessed.

It's not just a difference in size, appearance, or strength.

When the boy met its ethereal gaze, his almost indestructible will was met with a heavy sentence.

Buddha.

In Buddhist scriptures, Ksitigarbha represents a bodhisattva who vows to appear in the six realms of existence to universally save All living beings.

What Su Qing'an was looking at was clearly a being formed from endless evil thoughts that resembled demons and ghosts, yet it also seemed as if he were truly seeing the legendary Buddha.

Those ethereal eyes held a compassion that encompassed all things.

Patience and stillness are like the earth; deep and profound meditation is like a hidden treasure.

Only in this way can one be considered Ksitigarbha.

Compassion? Evil? In the face of such a being, these concepts seem utterly illusory.

Willpower is being shaken; this is an emotion being forced into a shared experience.

Evil and compassion are two extremes, but lies and hypocrisy are themselves part of evil, and compassion created by such evil is almost unbelievable.

Like chiseling ice, one slowly pries open the malice of consciousness, revealing a chaotic stream of information.

Birth, aging, sickness, and death.

Su Qing'an seemed to have fallen into a cycle of reincarnation, living countless lives of mortals in a generation that was incredibly far removed from the present.

This is undoubtedly a hallucination, yet the mind's consciousness cannot escape the illusion.

A glance can last a thousand years, a lifetime can pass in an instant.

Love is separation, hatred is meeting, desires are not fulfilled, and attachments are hard to let go.

Time seemed to slow down in Su Qing'an's senses, as if it were hundreds of years or just a fleeting moment.

He experienced too many scenes, both illusory and real.

In this short yet long dream that was destined to shatter, he saw the girl named Hua again.

They met again and fled together, repeatedly being pursued by Zombie and Honkai Beast, but each time they managed to escape.

They depended on each other for survival, regarding each other as the most special person in their lives.

They then joined the Moth to Fire, and soon after, during a turmoil caused by the Herrscher, Su Qing'an was killed by the power that was caught in the crossfire.

In the instant his body was annihilated, the boy looked up at the Herrscher with her vibrant red hair high in the sky and sighed.

I hope she's alright.

Even though she knew it was just a dream, a lingering sense of longing and worry remained in her consciousness.

And in this scene where time seems to have slowed down countless times, the demon swung its sword.

Three seconds? Or one second?

I don't know, but if a visitor fails to escape the vortex of emotions at the moment of first meeting, the demon will indifferently sever their head.

The other party's malice was boundless and had not disappeared even 50,000 years later. Compared to such a magnitude, the will of a single human being was far too insignificant.

Let alone breaking free quickly, even avoiding being overwhelmed by the emotional waves of shared experiences and losing one's senses is a difficult task.

However, Rin's choice to face Su Qing'an and her agreement to let him confront Jizo Mitama indicates that she believes Su Qing'an is capable of doing so.

Su Qing'an is not an ordinary human being.

Compared to the entire St. Freya Academy, perhaps only Fu Hua could confidently say she was stronger than him in terms of willpower, coupled with her immense Soul Essence.

Jizo Mitama might be powerful enough to easily crush him, but to think that a battle could end with a mere attack of will is far too arrogant.

He woke up, or rather, the dream itself hadn't fooled him at all.

Su Qing'an whispered:

"Hua.."

Jizo Mitama seems to possess an innate ability to see through people's hearts. From the moment they first met, it saw through Su Qing'an's heart and precisely struck at the weak point in his will.

So even though she understood that everything was an illusion, Su Qing'an still felt a brief moment of disorientation.

On a battlefield of this scale, such a mistake can be a matter of life and death.

[Potential], this is the remedy made instinctively at that moment.

This ability was released simultaneously with the tremors of the Soul Essence when consciousness was pulled into an emotional vortex.

An invisible wave, like a sharp blade of light, struck the Jizo Mitama. Following the tide of emotions that influenced it, [Momentum] transformed from an area-of-effect attack into a precise single-target strike for the first time.

The human face that flashed across its skeletal, grotesque cheeks grew increasingly ferocious, completely obscuring any semblance of a peaceful expression that might have occasionally crossed its features.

Jizo Mitama is inherently the embodiment of hatred and slaughter. Once that false shell of evil is torn away, the word "Buddha" becomes completely irrelevant to it.

Su Qing'an drew his sword a little later than his opponent, but it didn't matter. Just as he was also affected by his opponent, [momentum] was not entirely useless against the Jizo Mitama.

The result was that the two men simultaneously handed their weapons to each other.

The katana wreathed in flames, wielded by demons, clashed with the sword in the boy's hand.

The sonic booms were deafening, and within just a few breaths, the entire space was engulfed by a turbulent storm.

It was an incredibly fantastical scene. The sword in the boy's hand was so small compared to the katana; it was as if a child with a tree branch was fighting a giant wielding a blade.

It was clearly a battle with no comparison, yet the tree branches remained unmoved.

But Su Qing'an on the field knew perfectly well that every swing of his sword was accompanied by a large amount of compressed Honkai Energy, combined with extremely high skill.

But Jizo Mitama is different; he is simply swinging his sword.

In gaming terms, the opponent is just using a basic attack.

Honkai Energy naturally amplifies every attack without the need for the Honkai to actively control it.

It is itself a condensation of Honkai Energy, so it's foolish to try to outlast it.

Even though Honkai Energy can be used almost indefinitely due to the unique nature of the Void Sword Qi, the loss of physical strength is still inevitable.

To fight against such a being would place extremely high demands on one's physical abilities.

After advancing to the State of Still Water, Su Qing'an gained the ability to surround his entire body with his inner energy to form a defensive barrier.

He called this ability [circle].

Without the [Circle], Su Qing'an wouldn't be qualified to engage in close combat with the Jizo Mitama; the sheer force of the recoil alone would be enough to shred muscles and break bones.

Using only martial arts techniques to deflect force makes it difficult to achieve complete perfection, but with the help of [Circle], Su Qing'an can transcend his original limits and get infinitely close to that perfection.

Even if you can filter out almost all the recoil, it's not a wise choice to engage in a long, direct sword fight with your opponent.

So when the clanging sound of swords clashing rang out for the eighteenth time, Su Qing'an used the recoil force from the mid- Sword Defense Style, to retreat a hundred meters and create distance.

He could now wield all the sword forms of the Void Sword Qi with perfect ease.

The boy adjusted his breathing and landed steadily.

"Rin, there's no shortcut to killing it, is there?"

Yae Rin said:

"The people of the Previous Civilization used my Herrscher Core to create a weapon called the Divine Key, and the Tenshukaku is both a forge and a prison. The prototype of the Divine Key is something that evil fears."

Su Qing'an remained silent. If he could, he really wanted to ask Rin more about the Previous Civilization, but considering Rin's cause of death and her age before death, he kept quiet about it.

He said:

"But obtaining the Divine Key is definitely not that simple."

Yae Rin replied:

"Yes, the evil thoughts we have now are the impurities that the Divine Key doesn't need. They are something that is constantly being forcibly eliminated but cannot be shaken off. Therefore, the prototype of the Divine Key is within its body."

"But to truly kill it, we must first dismantle its outer shell and extract the nascent form of the Divine Key."

"Then use it to completely eradicate evil thoughts."

"So in terms of the outcome, there are no shortcuts."

Upon hearing this, Su Qing'an suddenly understood something. The reason why Rin wanted to transform into Stigmata was not only to increase his combat power, but also to enhance his chances of pulling out the Divine Key.

He asked:

"Not just anyone can pull out the Divine Key. Even though the Divine Key is currently only in its embryonic form, perhaps that's precisely why it's even more difficult to approach."

Yae Rin said frankly:

"Big brother is right. Evil is also a part of me, so I understand that to pull out the prototype of the Divine Key, natural Stigmata- level Honkai Energy adaptability is only the basic requirement. In addition, it also depends on the adaptability with the Divine Key itself. And right now it is a prototype entangled with evil. Even if it has qualified Divine Key adaptability, the process of pulling it out will not be easy."

This was information that Rin had not mentioned before, but Su Qing'an simply listened quietly without showing any unusual reaction.

As if unsurprised by the boy's reaction, Yae Rin continued:

"But... Big brother won't back down because of this, will he? I can feel that the fear in your heart completely disappeared the moment you stepped into the Tenshukaku."

"That's not some so-called courage to suppress fear, but rather that you've truly prepared yourself for death."

"For you, life and death are no longer things to care about; you only care about what outcome this life can achieve."

"Rin hates it when her older brother doesn't cherish himself."

The girl spoke her mind frankly, and then she said firmly:

"But no matter whether the ending is already predetermined or not, Rin will stay with you until the very end. That's our promise."

The exchange of consciousness lasted for less than a breath in the outside world.

Su Qing'an smiled, gazing at the demon approaching with a sword in the distance, and replied:

"Then it's a deal."

The resounding crash of the storm seemed to come from a distant time, and the shimmering light that cleaved the present world was revealed. The sounds that reached our eardrums vanished into nothingness, leaving only the deathly silence of all things.

The brilliance of Thousand Stars shines forth here.