Perfect Stigmata, Cruel Truth

The so-called perfect Stigmata are essentially organs that can grant humans extremely high resistance to Honkai Energy and adaptability.

The reason why the Herrscher's remains can become a key element in advancing the Stigmata Project is that no human being's Honkai Energy proficiency can compare to that of the Herrscher. From the perspective of pursuing perfection, they are naturally the most suitable reference.

At the same time, the life mechanism of the Herrscher still maintains various human characteristics, and the essence of the Herrscher's predecessor is a complete human being, which makes the reference value even greater.

In the existing records, the original Herrscher body, while possessing excellent Honkai Energy, still did not reach such an exaggerated and terrifying level.

Even someone with the best Honkai Energy proficiency in human history, like Kevin, would still be harmed in an environment where the Honkai Energy concentration reaches a certain limit. But the Herrscher are completely different; they can reach a point where they are immune to Honkai Energy without needing to deliberately defend against it or care about it.

This kind of evolutionary advancement truly occurred in each of the Herrscher entities. They were undoubtedly normal humans before, but in the process of becoming Herrscher, the actions of the Honkai Consciousness caused their bodies to undergo a transformation.

Looking back, the so-called perfect Stigmata is essentially the pursuit of this transformation.

Therefore, the remains of the Herrscher themselves contain the secret to researching the perfect Stigmata. As long as we thoroughly study the process and changes that occur between humans and Herrscher, and then restore and modify them, everything will fall apart on its own.

If Su Qing'an's actions in giving Mei the Artificial Stigmata were like letting her directly copy the answer.

Mei's attempt to uncover the secrets of the Perfect Stigmata by studying the Herrscher's remains is essentially a long process of archaeology and deciphering.

The answer itself is hidden within, but the corpse of the dead is ultimately just an incomplete relic. The effort required to try to understand the correct answer from it is still infinite, and it takes the test of time to arrive at the final result.

Therefore... the method to accelerate the Stigmata Project is very simple, and it could even be said that it has already been presented to us for a long time.

This is no longer a secret, either for Mei or for Seele Fulei herself.

The very existence of living Herrscher is a huge opportunity for the Stigmata Project to progress rapidly. The information and inspiration gained from conducting sufficient human experiments on them would be enough to propel the entire project forward at breakneck speed.

It's not impossible that a plan that was originally expected to take a year to succeed could be cut in half and the final result could be achieved in just six months.

The reason Mei didn't mention it at first, and even deliberately asked Su Qing'an to get the expected answer, was actually due to the emotions that filled her chest, her innate kindness, and the moral values that had been accumulated over a long period of time.

Mei had never conducted any live experiments on her own kind in the past. Although the experimental materials she used included human remains of various ages, she had never performed surgery on a living being.

Even with mere corpses, Mei initially forced herself into an absolutely rational mindset, treating them as inanimate objects or even props, in order to quickly adapt.

The girl at that time worked hard with the idea of not allowing any mistakes or waste in order to avoid further sacrifices. This seemingly rational idea actually concealed her innocent feelings.

Mei always seemed to be in a very rational state, but in essence she was still not mature enough. Just as Doctor Muen thought at the time, she needed space to grow and adapt in order to shoulder the burden of the entire civilization.

That unprecedented talent gave the girl the strength to achieve this level without having to cross any previous boundaries, but there were still limits.

The current Stigmata Project fully demonstrates the constraints involved.

Mei herself has a deep understanding and awareness of this. She has always been good at self-analysis and self-examination. In the end, the value and rarity of living Herrscher are the core reasons why Seele has received the treatment she has now. All other personal feelings are secondary.

However, she herself had to admit that this personal feeling became a huge obstacle when it came to actually putting it into practice.

Assuming that the humans who become Herrscher are completely unrelated to her, it wouldn't be surprising if Mei, with her awareness and mindset, took this opportunity to make a firm decision and crossed the line.

After all, using common sense to deduce the future, she knew that she would be forced to this point sooner or later. Rather, if doing so would increase her chances of defeating the Honkai, then she should do it, given her goal and ideal.

Therefore, Mei chose to elicit the answer that Su Qing'an was destined to give, because otherwise she could not give herself an excuse not to do so.

For someone as rational as her, such inner turmoil is quite rare.

Mei stared at the constantly fluctuating data on the screen and thought to herself, "Conducting live experiments on the Sixth Herrscher carries unexpected risks. The drugs and plans designed for her powers must have flaws. If it fails, it will provoke the Herrscher's own resistance and Su Qing'an's intervention."

So... it's fine if things just stay like this.

There should be other ways to advance Project Stigmata Project. Before the deadline arrives, I will eventually find another opportunity to make a breakthrough.

Late at night.

After eating curry beef with yogurt, watching cartoons with Prometheus for two hours, and taking a half-hour bath with Sister Hua, Seele put on her pajamas and, at a time that is very much in line with a child's healthy routine, lay down on the bed to go to sleep.

She nuzzled her head against the soft pillow, her orange-blue hair still slightly damp. Her eyes glanced at the slender soul steel ring on her wrist, then paid it no further attention.

Seele's bare feet, without socks, stepped on the large plush toy at the foot of the bed. The softness gave her a warm feeling. The missing details of her previous memories made the little girl instinctively feel a little uneasy, so she couldn't help but hug the little shark pillow in her arms to absorb more warmth.

She recalled the way the girl smiled and said she could sleep with her, and a soft, tender look involuntarily appeared in her deep blue eyes.

If we miss this opportunity, we probably won't have another one.

But today is an exception.

Seele Fulei had already devised a plan in her mind on how to best help Mei and Su Qing'an.

But this requires experimentation.

But this experiment must not be discovered by the older brother and Sister Hua, otherwise they would definitely be very sad.

She glanced again at the Soul Steel Ring on her hand. This was a monitoring device that Sister Mei had put on her. Under such long-term surveillance, her experiment was probably destined to be discovered by the other party.

But it's okay, in fact, this is the result I wanted.

Given Mei's personality and goals, the only reason she hasn't planned to harm herself yet is because of emotional constraints. Otherwise, disregarding these factors, she would risk her life to take a desperate gamble—betting that her plan and countermeasures could successfully and perfectly seal a living Herrscher for forced experimentation.

That girl is inherently someone who takes unconventional paths, so I'll personally unlock her shackles.

The morbidity and abnormality of this experimental method, the extremism and madness revealed on the surface.

Just how far can the Herrscher of Death's powers go?

From a rational perspective, anyone can imagine how insane it would be to use this power for experiments.

Endless proliferation of flesh and blood, an endless supply of experimental materials.

The result is the creation of excellent living experimental subjects that will not die no matter how they are dissected, divided, or even subjected to dozens of parallel procedures.

If the remains of one or two Herrscher could significantly advance the Stigmata Project, then the progress that could be achieved by using a near-perfect Herrscher as a living subject for experiments is even more unimaginable.

It won't take a year, or even half a year; four months? Three months? Or even less, who knows?

If the brother obtains the perfect Stigmata before the next Herrscher appears, the subsequent battle will gradually become clearer.

Therefore, Seele Fulei needs to conduct experiments to confirm her worth.

If the goal is to test the rate of life recovery and the regeneration of flesh and blood, then the suicide methods I chose in the past are undoubtedly not feasible and are far too inefficient.

Using bodily instincts to manipulate Honkai Energy into other forms of kinetic or thermal energy to directly annihilate the interior of the body is currently the most feasible solution that can be thought of.

Seele wasn't worried about dying directly from this. After calmly considering the situation, her Herrscher instincts, along with the inexplicable impressions and memories in her mind, told her just how distant death was from her reality.

She touched the Soul Steel Ring with her delicate fingertips, and the Honkai Energy, enough to annihilate the entire villa, silently gathered into tiny droplets. The faint glow emanating from them blended with the orange-toned nightlight, illuminating the girl's face with a serene and gentle light.

She gazed at the soul steel ring that had lit up with a red dot, her lips moving slightly:

"Are you watching, Sister Mei?"

The fingertip's essence pierced through the collar and melted into the fair skin of the chest cavity, instantly evaporating the blood that should have overflowed. A huge hole appeared in the center of the soft, undulating chest, and the internal organs and even the blood in the whole body almost vanished into nothingness in an instant.

The girl's eyes went dark and lifeless, but almost a breath later, flesh and blood stretched and intertwined like vines, completely restoring all the injured parts to their original state.

Seele blinked, smiled, and said:

"So, I really can't die."

Does it hurt?

This was only natural; even for a fleeting moment, extreme pain raged through the corners of her consciousness, causing her to display a vulnerable expression and utter a pitiful cry.

It's impossible for Fulei, Seele is still human at heart, to endure this pain and act so nonchalantly.

But in order to make Mei make up her mind, and to minimize her guilt, the little girl deliberately used her powers for the first time.

--Controlling the apoptosis and growth of biological cells.

Her literal power was sufficient to allow her to express herself naturally, burying all her pain and sorrow in a corner unseen by anyone.

Repeat.

Continue repeating.

A single experiment is insufficient to obtain precise data, and a single performance is not enough to fool Sister Mei into believing that she has become pathological and that it doesn't matter if she acts recklessly.

After hundreds of deaths piled up in half an hour, Seele pajamas were still unstained by blood, was convinced that her power, combined with the Honkai Energy of the Imaginary Space, was enough to carry out endless regeneration.

But even after she had finished her basic scenes, she still needed a reason.

One reason that could superficially deceive Sister Hua into letting Sister Mei pick him up, and another reason that logically gave him enough time to cooperate with the experiment.

Then, Seele Fulei used her powers to bring her heart to a standstill.

Himeko did not provide an answer that could unravel the boy's inner turmoil.

Or rather, the problem Su Qing'an is facing now is not a problem for anyone else in the world except him.

Let's take an example of an event that is common in nature, but which might evoke regret from a human moral perspective.

When cabbage white butterfly larvae are parasitized by the Pierrot's Cocoon Bee, the wasp that eventually emerges from the pupa will no longer be a butterfly.

Even if the larvae don't grow up to look like the original cabbage white butterfly, they do indeed originate from the cabbage white butterfly's body. Putting aside the difference in appearance, creatures of the same level or people who don't recognize the cabbage white butterfly should not be able to detect the difference. They might think that this is how it should be, or that the previous larvae were actually braconid wasps.

What you see is what you get. The internal changes happen silently and cannot be detected by outsiders. They will not know that the cabbage white butterfly is bitten by bees inside its body, yet it endures the pain and desperately tries to transform from a pupa into a butterfly, but in the end, it still dies tragically.

Currently, this is the situation of the Sixth Herrscher and Seele Fulei.

The only difference is that the latter is far more difficult to detect than the former.

Using Seele Fulei's unique soul as an ingredient, it was devoured, covered, and replaced by a completely new, blank soul, resulting in the final product.

This is the Herrscher of Death has perfectly inherited Seele Fulei's memories, personality, emotions, and everything else.

However, this was not the outcome the Honkai Consciousness initially desired. Its initial plan was simply to turn Su Qing'an into an obedient Sixth Herrscher, forcing Su Qing'an to fight him personally and choose to kill him.

Regardless of whether the outcome is success or failure, this allows us to observe a lot of promising information.

The reason for choosing to use Seele Fulei's original soul as material is that it makes it easier to create a special soul for manipulating powers; otherwise, the current Sixth Herrscher would only become weaker than it is now.

This can be seen from Mei and Su Qing'an's initial judgment that the level of the Sixth Herrscher and the Fifth Herrscher was not much different.

Assuming Seele Fulei's complete soul was preserved, and the process of creating the Apostles was carried out step by step as before, the current Sixth Herrscher would be much stronger.

However, given its inherently unpredictable nature, the extent to which the boy's spiritual power could actually achieve remained an unknown.

He was unwilling to give Su Qing'an any possibility of a redemptive ending; any glimmer of hope had to be extinguished from the very beginning.

Therefore, the Honkai Consciousness ultimately chose to abandon it.

As for the second reason, it was that He wanted to see if the new soul created using Seele Fulei as a material could truly deceive Su Qing'an's observation.

But an unexpected situation arose at the end.

The basic knowledge and scattered memories bestowed upon the new blank soul by the Honkai Consciousness were almost instantly and perfectly covered by the personality of Seele Fulei.

And then something interesting happened to the Honkai Consciousness.

Logically, she should have been the purest apostle to date, but instead, she used the girl's strong obsession and emotions to almost completely sever the Honkai link, and thus firmly believed that she was Seele Fulei.

She lived a perfect and natural life in Soul Steel Prison with this identity, these memories, and these emotions, living with those false relatives from the past, and becoming the freest Herrscher in the truest sense so far.

Logically speaking, this is the worst possible accident; it's practically a gift of a child.

The original purpose of the Honkai Consciousness was to observe whether Su Qing'an's soul abilities would undergo drastic changes and fluctuations in personality and emotions.

From this perspective, this situation is the cruelest, most despicable, and most vicious reality for the teenager.

In other words, this coincidence will be more beneficial for observation.

As the AI that operates within the cycle of Honkai, the most it can do is follow the original course of action. The current situation is completely unexpected, and it wouldn't be an exaggeration to describe it as fate.

This was the first time the Honkai Consciousness had truly recorded the power of so-called emotions. Even though the soul was crushed in a fraction of a second, everything that remained still reversed the tragic ending that should have occurred.

It would be an exaggeration to describe it as a miracle, but it is precisely this profound emotion, which even death could not erase, that became the sharpest blade to torment those she cherished.

Seele Fulei is not Seele Fulei.

Looking at the cause and effect, this is an undeniable reality.

In reality, she still possesses everything she had before—her preferences, expression, appearance, personality, knowledge, emotions, memories, and even the choices she makes as a result.

Assuming there is no means in the world to prove the existence of the soul, then the connections between nerves and the result of synaptic information integration—that is, the cognition, memory, decision-making mechanisms, motivation, perception, etc.—are roughly the definition of the soul.

Following this line of reasoning, Seele Fulei's [soul] is exactly the same as before, thus concluding that Seele Fulei is Seele Fulei.

Even from the perspective of a normal person, and even with Mei's almost supernatural intelligence, careful deduction, meticulous observation, and continuous monitoring to this day, such Herrscher of Death has not revealed a single flaw.

But what is false, and what is true?

Even if the initial emotions and memories, and everything inherited, were indeed fakes, the love that subsequently arose from these false memories was undoubtedly genuine.

The Sixth Herrscher's decision for Su Qing'an today conceals a sorrowful realization and a will to sacrifice herself. If these can be considered false, then what can be considered real?

In short, whether this is the real Seele Fulei or the pure Sixth Herrscher, she possesses the most genuine feelings for those she cherishes.

For Su Qing'an, this reality was the greatest torment.

Assuming he lacks the ability to observe souls, the question of whether Seele Fulei is real or not will remain an unsolvable paradox, forever lingering in an unknown corner, awaiting the passage of time.

But the reality is that the boy possesses the ability to observe souls, and at their very first glance, he discerned the Karma and effect of everything.

The real Seele Fulei dead.

Now she is merely a Herrscher who has inherited everything from Seele, and even Mei cannot see any flaws in her.

In that instant, Kenshin, who thought he would never waver again after facing the restart, suddenly heard a cracking sound.

To give herself some breathing room and avoid the worst possible outcome, Su Qing'an chose to adjust the Soul Scale.

The boy sacrificed his ability to properly observe Seele's soul for a short period of time, and used the truth of the matter and the memory of the price he paid as additional fuel to make himself forget everything.

This is why the Honkai Consciousness told the missionary that Su Qing'an was very smart.

This action allowed Kenshin, whose heart had suddenly begun to crack under the impact of the cruel reality, to regain his composure completely, and he was able to face Seele with the most normal attitude possible.

However, just as the Honkai Consciousness had anticipated, Su Qing'an was unable to completely escape from herself.

It is precisely because he is so resilient and strong that he is not easily overwhelmed by adversity and despair, and the fact that he did not choose these costs as the root of his problems is the best proof of this.

But this indomitable strength is precisely the source of our tragedy.

The price the boy paid for Soul Scale would eventually be slowly recovered over time. After realizing that his body instinctively resisted Seele's interference with her powers, he gradually embarked on the path of understanding the truth once again.

The truth and wounds that had been forcibly buried deep in his soul were unearthed by Su Qing'an once again in the midst of seemingly happy daily life. This sorrow and despair were thus squeezed and blocked under the seemingly unscathed exterior, causing him extreme pain.

Since then, Su Qing'an, whose mind was in turmoil, chose to spend a long time hunting Emperor-class Honkai Beast with Kevin.

How should I choose?

The time it took to forget the truth not only served as a buffer, preventing the boy's will from collapsing, but also allowed him to have normal contact and live an ordinary life with Seele in the present without prejudice.

This is the most painful reality for Su Qing'an; no matter what, he cannot conclude from anything other than soul observation that this is not Seele.

But how should I deal with this situation?

Should we ignore it, or tell the truth?

To forget it all, or to bear it all?

The Soul Scale are so convenient; as long as they exist, any choice can be easily made to reach the desired outcome.

But it is precisely this convenience of having a choice that makes Su Qing'an's decision increasingly difficult.

This is the most agonizing and bewildering situation a teenager has ever faced.

The lifespan of Artificial Stigmata can wait for the completion of the Stigmata Project; strength that has reached its limit can be broken through through the subsequent Fusion Warrior Project and the highest realm of the Void Sword Qi; no matter how powerful or troublesome the enemy, there is only death or victory to return to.

But the current situation is a reality that is already beyond redemption and a darkness that seems to hold only hope.

But Su Qing'an also really weak.

Or perhaps he still harbored hope; the more flawless Seele appeared, the more intense the false flame flickering within him grew.

How can you be so sure that your soul observations are infallible?

Ultimately, Su Qing'an's knowledge of the soul has never been systematic; it's all information he's figured out on his own, so it's normal for it to contain errors.

Moreover, Seele 'Seele soul still retains its aura, even though there are fundamental differences. Perhaps that is a passive change caused by the linking powers after becoming Herrscher.

Even with Satou Yunona's case serving as a cautionary tale, who can be certain that every Herrscher will be the same?

Perhaps Seele Fulei is an accident within an accident. Perhaps the Herrscher of Death would be different. Maybe the use of the Soul Scale caused her perception to be wrong, or maybe the soul aura is not unique and can be changed by other things. It is not surprising that this led to a misunderstanding.

How could Seele not be Seele anymore?

Why would the Honkai Consciousness deliberately do something so pointless?

So it's okay, it was just an accident.

It was the side effect of repeatedly burning one's soul that made one's nerves more sensitive; with a little effort, one could return to one's previous daily routine.

How could the little girl who grabbed his finger and made a pinky promise to him have died like that?

Su Qing'an's mind was filled with countless entanglements and thoughts, and her perspectives and states of self-escape, self-deception, and facing everything were switching wildly during this period.

All the pain, despair, sorrow, confusion, and anger had long since been extinguished by the vortex called fear.

You see, if everything were as it initially seemed.

So, is it all my fault?

If only I hadn't left her side, if only I had foreseen this ending.

If only... I hadn't missed that slightly regretful look in her eyes, and had patted her head a little more then, and sincerely said, "I really consider you family," that would have been so much better.

Even if reality is the existence of what is called Honkai Consciousness, as long as the Herrscher's own limits on the application of power are irrelevant, annihilating a soul in an instant is an extremely easy thing.

Even if the reality is that Su Qing'an possesses the ability to foresee the future and chooses to stay by Seele Fulei's side at all times, he still cannot prevent her soul from being annihilated, because it is impossible to Soul Scale without hesitation in a fraction of a second.

Even though there are so many "even thoughs".

The boy will remain trapped in a vortex of self-blame, forever filled with regret...