The Transmigrator

The sky was just beginning to brighten.

Gu Yan had not slept all night. He had stayed beneath the tree, on guard against the Honkai beasts that could appear at any moment.

He was utterly lost.

Unlike everyone else, Gu Yan knew all too well how terrifying the Honkai was.

The Honkai was impossible to predict—the invasion of the imaginary into the real.

The Honkai was a trial for civilization. But when the End arrived, how many civilizations would possess the strength to stand against it?

At least this world did not.

He had spent the entire night thinking about how to survive, but in the end, Gu Yan still found no answer.

But why should he accept that?

At the very least, he had to fight for it!

To sentence an entire civilization to death for no reason was probably perfectly normal in the eyes of the Honkai God, right? But he found it utterly absurd. He did not want to become a lamb waiting for slaughter. Was there anything wrong with that?

To hell with the Honkai God!

The question had never been whether humanity could survive, but whether humanity wanted to survive.

We were all insects. We were all ants. We were all failures.

But that did not matter. Even ants clung to life. For the sake of survival, we had fought back. Even if we failed, there was nothing shameful about that!

We did not need everyone to fight for humanity,

we only needed to live as human beings. That was enough.

The people of this world dared to challenge the Honkai. That was a good thing. Gu Yan would not mock them for their ignorance. Since someone dared to resist, he himself was not fighting alone.

If that was the case, he could not keep wasting his life either.

I, Gu Xianyu, am finally going to turn things around. Everyone, make way!

"Phew~"

After taking a deep breath and looking west, Gu Yan's eyes filled with an indescribable emotion.

That was where his home was, on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

Without a doubt, both the former Gu Yan and the current Gu Yan loved this world.

Whether it was this world or the people living in it, their fates should not be decided by a god.

It was already early morning. The sun had risen, and because Gu Yan was at a relatively high altitude, he could still see the glimmer of waves in the distance.

There were several faint black specks among the clouds overhead. He could not help but wonder: If only those were planes from Huaguo!

Wait, they really were!

"There is only one distress signal around Jinshan City. Land directly nearby."

"Roger!"

Ten military transport planes and twenty-two commercial airliners!

The ruined Jinshan City had appeared in their sights. Rubble and wreckage filled the city, while discarded cars crowded the streets, bearing witness to its former glory. The buildings in the city center had been reduced to dust, and enormous craters stood out starkly.

The city was dead.

When future generations mentioned it again, their eyes would no longer hold yearning, but regret and remembrance.

The city itself would also become a landmark in history—

the site where the First Great Honkai erupted and the First Herrscher was born.

So far, tragedies like the one in Jinshan City had occurred thirty-six times.

Thirty-six cities had already been reduced to ruins by the Great Honkai, and the known death toll had reached as high as sixteen million!

That number was still rising. The Honkai had seeped into reality. The constant emergence of people infected with Honkai Sickness, Deathsworn, and Honkai beasts had shattered the Beautiful Country's order. Society as a whole was in chaos, while terrorists and conspiracy theorists took advantage of the disorder to commit evil.

Did that sound exaggerated?

In the world of the Honkai game, technology was highly advanced, and the Previous Era possessed formidable combat power. Yet after fighting the Honkai, only a handful of people survived in the end.

This was a true moment of life and death.

Returning to the rescue forces, they had already flown over Jinshan City and were heading toward the location where Gu Yan and the other man were staying.

Some of the people aboard the planes happened to look down and saw Honkai beasts crawling across the ground.

"Company Commander, there are so many monsters! What are we gonna do if they show up in our country?"

The old company commander glared at the boy, pretended to be angry, and cursed him for being a jinx before ignoring him.

"If you ask me, who cares what kind of demons or monsters they are? If one shot doesn't kill them, fire another. If bullets don't work, hit them with a shell!"

Having grown used to the old company commander's attitude, the boy did not mind.

"The terrain at the target location is somewhat complicated. A normal landing is impossible."

"Units One, Two, and Three, stay behind. All other units, proceed to the southern outskirts of Jinshan City and the other affected cities."

Inside the lead military transport plane, the person responsible for commanding the operation was issuing orders over the radio.

Even with only three transport planes remaining here, the supposedly open area could barely accommodate one of them at most, unless...

The person in charge picked up another radio.

"Senior Xu, I'll have to trouble you!"

"All right."

Only after a moment did a cool voice reply, accompanied by the howl of fierce winds.

"Brother Gu, do you think we have some kind of special status? These are military transport planes—and there are three of them! They came to pick us up!"

"Quit making a racket! Do you look like someone who just survived a disaster? With your mental state, they'll lock you in a psychiatric hospital for a few years as soon as you return home."

He pinned down Zhao Qi, who was trying to run wild, while waving the coat he had taken off at the sky with his other hand.

Gu Yan thought, That's how they always do it on TV. It should work.

But how are three transport planes supposed to land here?

Vrrr!

The vibration of the air was incredibly sharp. A keen aura radiated from the sky, startling Gu Yan into immediate vigilance.

Only after looking carefully did he discover that there was a person in front of the three planes!

A person standing in midair!

That person was several thousand meters away, and Gu Yan was relatively lower down, so he could not make out her features clearly. However, he could tell that she wore a long bamboo-green dress, and her long snow-white hair drifted gently in the wind.

Could she be a Herrscher?!

Suddenly, the woman moved.

A slender silver sword appeared in her hand, and the invisible power of heaven and earth rose and fell with it.

That was not a supernatural ability, nor was it Honkai Energy—Gu Yan was certain of that.

What is this supposed to be? Cultivation? Damn it, I quit being the protagonist!

Clang—

She swung her sword. The motion was casual and effortless, yet the sword light instantly struck the ground and cut forward for several kilometers, sending dust billowing into the sky.

That nearly scared Gu Yan senseless. He had thought she was about to attack them.

The dust soon settled, revealing a flat stretch of open ground five hundred meters wide and three thousand meters long before the two men.

Now they no longer had to worry about finding somewhere to land the transport planes.

"This, this, this..." Zhao Qi had completely lost the ability to speak.

Gu Yan—and even the people aboard the planes who had witnessed the scene—found it difficult to believe.

She was incredibly strong!

Gu Yan estimated that if she unleashed her full power, she could annihilate a city like Jinshan City in an instant.

The feeling she gave him was that with one sword, she could slaughter an entire city.

However, her sword aura held a sense of desolation beneath its sharpness, like a keen blade that had been broken.

She was powerful and incredibly sharp, but something was missing. She was damaged in many ways.

And that was indeed the case. As one of the strongest people in the world, Xu Muchi was already three thousand years old!

Three thousand years ago, she had transmigrated into this world by accident.

Now, two "transmigrators" had finally met, yet neither of them knew it!