The Previous Civilization Era Ends, the Flame of Civilization Is Passed On / It's Time for The Past's Paradise!

Su Nian, what had Su Nian written this time?!

Why... had he just seen Mei's corpse?!

When Kevin saw that scene, he tasted the only despair of his life.

He had never felt so hopeless in his entire life!

Chapter 41: The Previous Civilization Era Ends, the Flame of Civilization Is Passed On

Kevin's gaze turned terrified.

But the sight before him immediately filled Su with intense unease.

Before joining Moth of the Fire, Su had been a doctor researching Honkai Sickness patients.

Now, as he looked at Mei, he immediately noticed it... Honkai Sickness. He saw purple streaks spreading across the back of Mei's neck.

This was an outward manifestation of her being eroded by Honkai.

Due to her long-term research into and exposure to Honkai Energy, Mei's body had long since been eroded. Though she had held on until now with Su's medication, she knew full well that her life was about to reach its end.

"Su, I need to entrust you with something. Only you can accomplish what comes next."

This plan was called the Overseer Project.

It was to monitor Kevin as he carried out the Stigmata Project, preventing him from destroying civilization and serving as a means to restrain him if necessary.

Mei had long known that her time was running out. Perhaps Kevin had noticed long ago... that Mei had deceived him.

She had deceived Kevin by telling him that her illness had been cured...

As his partner, Mei understood Kevin.

He was a powerful warrior, but also a fragile ordinary man. When someone lost everything, wanton venting and destruction were also ways to ease the pain.

This plan was the final shackle meant to stop Kevin from going astray.

It was also Mei's final request, because she did not want to see him lose himself.

After arranging her final affairs, Mei passed away.

Until the very end, the Previous Civilization had failed to overcome Honkai Sickness. There was only an extremely costly treatment: extracting serum from the corpses of a thousand people who had died of Honkai Sickness.

A method that required a thousand people to cure one person's Honkai Sickness came at far too great a cost.

But now, it was no longer a matter of cost.

In Mei's condition, there was no turning back. The treatment could save humans who had been accidentally infected, but Mei had dealt with Honkai Energy for far too long.

A cure was simply impossible.

Combined with years of overwork taking their toll.

Her death... had been inevitable.

Kevin saw Mei's corpse through this passage of text.

For now, he was merely treating it as a VR film, but Su Nian's emotional knife strikes were utterly shameless!

It was fine to stab Kevin with angst, but why stab Mei too?!

"Hey, Kevin, don't be sad. Mei is perfectly fine. Soon enough, she'll be home waiting for you to come back and cook, right?" Elysia immediately noticed that something was wrong with Kevin.

Even if his expression had not changed, Elysia was someone who could read Chijie's emotions from behind his mask.

She knew exactly what Kevin was thinking.

"I'm fine, Elysia. I was just... a little worked up for a moment."

The realism of it all made it hard for Kevin to tell fiction from reality.

The mental stimulation was a little too intense.

Fortunately, Mei was still there, she was not ill, and her workload was not particularly heavy.

Su Nian had not yet left the writing room.

Kevin now had the urge to stand outside Su Nian's studio with his greatsword...

"Kevin, you look very cute right now, you know?"

"Ai Li, stop laughing at me."

The meeting room was instantly filled with a cheerful atmosphere.

"Ah, Mei should be getting off work around now, shouldn't she? Kevin, why don't you go home and keep her company first?"

Elysia sent Kevin home.

Indirectly saving Su Nian's life.

Otherwise, the moment Su Nian opened the door, he would have seen Kevin posing outside it.

Then Su Nian might have personally experienced the what-if route where the Herrscher of Erosion won Werewolf in the Elysian Realm...

If the Herrscher won, she would run into Kevin on the way out of The Past's Paradise.

Kevin would blast her to death right at the door.

If Kevin kept watching, there was a very high chance that he would block Su Nian's door.

On the final battlefield, before leaving, Kevin lingered there for a long time. He propped up the body of his old friend, allowing him to remain standing.

His reluctance to leave was not due to despondence. This was far from over, and they should leave standing.

But when Kevin returned to the base, he missed his last chance to see his beloved.

Mei left behind a letter, along with a test-tube baby created from their genes. He would become a human of the new era.

Kevin had no time to stop and grieve over any of this. Even crying took time.

The remaining twelve hours were still far too little.

Kevin asked Su to head to the shelter with him, but the moment he turned his back... Kevin still cried, tears falling from his eyes.

As the tears froze into ice crystals and fell, the flames of vengeance surged skyward.

That's right, the war was far from over. In the next era, he would pay any price to reduce that Honkai, which stood above civilization...

To dust and ashes.

For the Flame Chasers, only two choices remained: either be buried in this dying era.

Or enter the hibernation pods and, when civilization restarted, once again embark on the journey to fight Honkai.

At this point, Su Nian added the Fifth Divine Key, All Things Slumber, to the Divine Key arc.

The hibernation pods had limited space. Only by combining them with satellites created by the Fourth Divine Key could they endure The End's cleansing of the world.

It seemed that only the authority of the Herrscher of Ice could freeze Kevin into hibernation as well.

Reasonable. Very reasonable.

The Fifth Divine Key—Key of Stagnation: All Things Slumber

Originally an extremely cold weapon made for combat, but after the Twelfth Herrscher—the Herrscher of Erosion—incident, Vill-V changed the original purpose of its design. After the nuclear bomb she developed killed the people in humanity's last three cities, she chose to transform this weapon of destruction she had created into a cryogenic hibernation device meant to preserve life.

This era had suffered far too much. Simply staying alive... was a luxury.

And the only thing Kevin could do now was carry on the unfinished journey of the dead and give meaning to their sacrifices.

The so-called Mark of salvation was merely a long-held wish pieced together from the aspirations of old friends.

But they had also done much for the future.

They created modern humanity;

They left behind weapons and knowledge to protect humanity;

They reclaimed the human hearts of Herrschers from Honkai;

They planted an insider within the Will of Honkai;

They locked down the types of Herrschers that could appear and left behind information on every Herrscher;

They also had their ultimate plan, one that would defeat Honkai and would surely succeed...

All these preparations would become new hope.

They would create more possibilities in the next civilization.

The Previous Civilization Era, complete.

It was time to enter the main story: The Past's Paradise.

"Ryomen Sukuna? The strongest sorcerer in history? He's nothing more than a mortal born in an era without me."

Lin Qi stood before Ryomen Sukuna, looking at him with an amused expression.

"To my left is Koyuki Shimo, wielder of multiple cursed techniques, casually using both the Limitless and Ten Shadows techniques. To my right is Ooyuki Shimo, who awakened a unique modern cursed technique, and whose talent is no less than mine. As for the slashing technique, that's just our basic attack."

"Tell me, then—how is fifteen-finger Sukuna supposed to deal with this?"

Ryomen Sukuna looked at the black-haired young man before him, whose cursed energy nature was exactly the same as his own, and his four eyes went blank.

Chapter 42: It's Time for The Past's Paradise!

Su Nian had finally finished laying out the basic setting of the Previous Civilization story from Kevin's perspective.

He had participated in all the major events, and after arranging them like this, the story's background had become complete. In miHoYo's stories, Kevin was one of the Flame-Chasers with the most screen time.

The framework of the story he had built was gradually becoming more complete.

That was why Su Nian began by writing Kevin's experiences.

The other smaller stories, as well as the personalities of the Flame-Chasers, were little pieces of a puzzle.

That was the content of The Past's Paradise.

The story of the Previous Civilization had come to an end.

Now that the ending was complete, Su Nian was preparing to create the story of The Past's Paradise.

That was... the true "main text."

The Past's Paradise was the theme of the story Su Nian was writing, its true essence.

But the audience mistakenly thought Su Nian had already finished writing the whole story.

Some had even begun spamming the bullet comments with congratulations on the ending.

Ah, writing this whole story in one day was honestly a little terrifying...

The contestant next door's creative work was harder than graduating from medical school.

The drafts he wrote were worse than my thesis defense paper.

The Past's Paradise was a facility that recorded the Flame-Chasers, so then... what was the meaning of its existence?

An open ending, huh? Kevin definitely won in the next civilization era, right?

Would he win? He would win!

If he kept writing, wouldn't the length get too long? Maybe the competition would only include this much content.

Don't ask. The story could always keep going. Let's wait and see Su Nian's final result.

Contestant Su Nian... please, pick up your phone and go online!!! We want to work with you!

Wait, stop discussing the plot for now. What the heck is Su Nian writing again?!

Holy crap! He's not Superman—he's the ancient Greek god of creation!

After discussing it for a while, someone was surprised to discover that Su Nian had not stopped moving his hands?

The viewers who had just left now came rushing back.

The sound of the keyboard was still the background noise of the livestream. Su Nian was still typing!

It was as though a competition that had been about to end had suddenly gained room for a reversal.

If the host had not temporarily gotten off work, Su Nian's livestream might very well have turned into the commentary booth for some kind of competitive sport.