Honkai would develop alongside civilization. If the Previous Civilization developed technology, it would also strengthen Honkai.
The Previous Civilization's technology had already been highly advanced. They had been playing on hell difficulty from the start.
But they had no experience from predecessors to draw upon. They could only make mistakes and learn step by step, so this outcome had been all but inevitable...
Under such circumstances, even after making sacrifices and wagering nearly everything they had, they had been left with only three cities...
The fact that they had managed even that much was already a miracle.
Yes, a miracle.
The Previous Civilization itself had been a miracle.
Chapter 31, Binding Tragedy
This setting made its first appearance. It utterly countered the Previous Civilization's abilities, leaving not even the slightest possibility in sight.
The previous Herrscher enemies had been immensely destructive, but they could be approached. There should have been some hope of killing them.
They tried every possible method and kept growing stronger. With luck and strength working together, they had still managed to kill them.
The Domain of Constraint did not merely restrain Honkai Energy. It restrained the transmission of energy itself. In other words, within the domain, there was no concept of movement. Everything stood still.
Now... they could see no hope.
They were completely helpless against it.
It had been a long time since Su Nian's story had carried such a tone of despair.
Ever since Kevin had become powerful, even when sacrifices were made, they had not seemed quite so severe.
This would be the most direct time for them to feel Honkai's crushing oppression, along with sacrifices piled high like mountains of corpses and seas of blood.
A victory truly built upon lives.
Every step had come at an unbearable cost.
That was a barrier with a radius of a hundred kilometers! Since all energy within it had been weakened, Moth of the Fire could not even pinpoint the Herrscher's exact location.
It was even continuing to spread outward. The longer they delayed, the harder victory would become.
The only fortunate thing was that although her binding barrier was powerful, the high skies remained unaffected compared to the ground.
That gave them their sole sliver of possibility: it made reconnaissance possible.
Immer, Chijie's adjutant, became one of the victims of the Thousand-Man Herrscher incident. After the Herrscher of Constraint descended, Hua hoped Chijie would head to the battlefield, but the two clashed over Immer's fate.
Footprints and scorched marks stretched across the steel floor alongside his fury...
Then Chijie suddenly collapsed headfirst onto the ground.
Hua unconsciously took half a step back, as though avoiding a boundary that divided life from death.
The Eleventh Herrscher's binding barrier had already expanded this far.
This was the beginning of the Eleventh Herrscher's first appearance.
Chijie had once torn the Fifth Herrscher apart with his bare hands, before the Herrscher had even had time to cry out.
Yet this powerful, violent warrior had collapsed the instant he came into contact with the barrier.
Hua pulled Chijie out and rushed to the battlefield to join the fight against the Herrscher of Constraint.
Afterward, Chijie made a deal with Mobius, became a Flame Chaser, and headed to the battlefield.
Though his destructive power was astonishing, he did not last long within the Herrscher of Constraint's barrier. There was no reconnaissance, and drones could reach the battlefield where they were... but certain special powers remained beyond its control.
Su linked up with Chijie's mind and, after receiving his consent, used his body to race across the battlefield.
But even with Chijie and Su working together, they could only buy time. The Flame Chasers suffered grievous casualties.
Su Nian quickly glossed over these events. The Binding Tragedy truly did not contain much.
He had not experienced it personally, so he did not know much about this segment that should have been a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood...
He could not even imagine how brutal the situation had been.
Countless people worked to destroy the Herrscher. Even knowing that death surely awaited them ahead, they still marched toward it without hesitation.
Countless Flame Chasers paid with their lives to locate the Herrscher of Constraint and hold her back, even pushing her Domain of Constraint faintly toward its "limit."
The binding barrier's limit was not a limit on total energy, but a limit on power output.
All those lives had bought them only a single instant to attack.
The Flame Chasers suffered horrific casualties. At the critical moment, Chijie arrived in time, and Hua seized the opportunity to activate Feather of Dust's First Rated Power, temporarily preventing the Herrscher of Constraint from using her abilities.
Like Du Chen's First Rated Power, it transmitted one's memories into the target through something like a data cable, overloading the enemy's brain.
Perhaps because the situation was so urgent, there would be no second chance...
Hua wagered all her memories for the sake of creating an opening for Kevin.
Under the impact of Hua's memories, they finally created the only opportunity to defeat the Herrscher of Constraint.
Before she completely lost consciousness, purple Crystal Flowers gradually wrapped around her.
Elysia stepped in to save Hua and preserve her life.
There was still a cluster of flame between the petals' gaps.
That flame fell from the heavens, as though it could burn away everything... along with this deathly silence.
Before this stage, Kevin had yet to fully master Tears of Heaven's 150% power form—Jie Mie.
But now, he had mastered that form completely.
What had Kevin been thinking? At the time, that had been the only opening they had created to attack. If he failed to seize it... the consequences were imaginable.
"Perhaps he remembered how the Herrscher of Death destroyed an entire city because of his moment of softness..."
"Or perhaps he was thinking that if this strike failed to eliminate the Herrscher, civilization itself might be wiped out."
His might had reached its peak, and the Herrscher had already been locked in his sights.
At that moment, neither Kevin nor the Herrscher had any path left to retreat or evade.
Jie Mie's flaming impact indiscriminately covered the entire domain, followed by frigid, bitter ice.
Ice and fire became blades, erasing the enemy's form,
and erasing the cries of those suffering beneath the Red Ice.
From that moment on, the Eleventh Herrscher returned to silence.
An icy barrier froze the footsteps of those who walked beside him. It was impossible to tell whether the cold came from that body growing ever more frigid, or from the perilous path that allowed only one person to move forward.
Kevin stood upon that land, surrounded by red ice. It was everywhere.
All the blood that had ever flowed upon this land had frozen in midair in the very posture it had taken when it flew forth, like a crimson sea wave...
The ice associated with Kevin was always depicted as blue.
The Red Ice, however, was red because blood was mixed into it—the blood shed by his comrades.
That indiscriminate strike had killed the Flame Chasers who had been holding back the Herrscher of Constraint.
"He remembered those who came before, remembered old friends, remembered his companions, remembered everyone he could only leave behind..."
"But he was lonely, and had never believed himself to be a hero."
"Kevin defeated a Herrscher once again, but this victory had been bought with countless lives."
He had trampled upon countless dreams, and countless lives had vanished because of him.
This was a meaningless victory.
Su Nian did not continue writing. It was too heavy, truly too heavy.
Perhaps the viewers watching the livestream could not understand.
But ever since the concept of The Past's Paradise had appeared, from Su Nian learning about the Thirteen Flame-Chasers to finishing the story of Honkai Impact 3rd, he had been deeply affected.
Now that he had thought through it all from beginning to end once more, it felt as though he had entered that world himself and seen those heavy scenes.
Before he could emotionally wound anyone else, miHoYo had emotionally wounded Su Nian once more.
Heard the censors were on vacation.jpg
Sorry today's update was late. I'm trash...
My left ankle had originally been sprained, but it was almost healed. I happened to go out to eat with my parents, and then...
I'm done for! I wasn't paying attention while holding my one-year-old niece, and I sprained my right ankle too.
My left foot was not fully healed, and now my right foot was sprained as well. I had become a lame goose.
Chapter 32, Kevin... Would Your Tears Freeze?
Although the battle had long ended, the distinctive chill around Kevin still shrouded the entire battlefield.
At the center of it all, a faint purple glow vanished in an instant. The Crystal Rose that had bloomed eternally also withered before the tragedy, shattered into fragments.
Elysia held the unconscious girl around the waist and stood before Kevin. "Kevin... how are you going to explain this to her? This is absolutely not the ending she wanted to see."
"Hua will understand me. Just as I once said, we had no other choice."
Ice and frost spread outward from beneath the man's feet like leaf veins. The surrounding chill seemed to grow stronger in an instant.
On the battlefield where the Eleventh Herrscher had died, Elysia spoke that famous line.
"Look at their faces, Kevin. Will your tears... freeze?"
In such a scene, amid Red Ice like dark crimson waves, Elysia asked him that.
After this battle, seventy percent of human civilization had been destroyed, leaving only three cities.
After this battle, only thirteen Flame Chasers remained in the entire world.
That was how the Thirteen Heroes of Fire came to be.
If this was not the Tragedy of Constraint, then what could it possibly be called?
It had been so devastating that even the usually optimistic Elysia rebuked Kevin upon witnessing the horrific outcome.
As the only person present with the strength and standing to do so, Elysia... was the only one qualified to "supervise" Kevin.
Su Nian remembered that someone seemed to have analyzed what they had been thinking at the time.
Kevin had been influenced by Mei, as well as the Sixth Herrscher. He understood better than anyone the consequences of a moment's softness.
Kevin no longer clung to the past. He fought for humanity's future.
But perhaps Elysia felt this way...
If two warriors as powerful as them, working together as the main attackers, still could not kill the Herrscher of Constraint... perhaps dying and living alongside their other comrades would have been the best ending.
So many Flame Chasers and humans had already died, and the world had already become riddled with scars.
This was also a conflict born from their differing beliefs.
Every Flame-Chaser possessed their own soul and personality. That was the charm of the Thirteen Heroes of Fire.
The heavy feeling had emotionally wounded Su Nian himself.
Those who emotionally wound others would eventually be cut down themselves.
Su Nian chose to open the studio window and let the warm breeze outside ease his mood a little.
He did not know how many people were watching the livestream, nor did he know whether they could immerse themselves in the story. In any case, the more people he could emotionally wound, the better.
Su Nian found it quite regrettable. Not being able to see the comments was truly a pity—he could not transfer the smiles from other people's faces onto his own.
But if the production team gave them a comment teleprompter, the contestants would probably lose all interest in creating.
The comments were surging wildly now. If Su Nian chose to reveal his address at this moment, he might become rich just by selling razor blades.
It was midday, right during lunch break when everyone had free time. With industry experts fueling the livestream's popularity, the viewer count was soaring, yet Su Nian had directly dropped a bomb on them.
Just moments ago, the viewers in the livestream had been chatting idly.
In an instant, the livestream erupted like boiling water. They simply could not stay calm.
Before you continue