No Difficult Questions / Hope

When Yan Luo saw Lin covering his buttocks, her face turned completely black.

She withdrew any slight goodwill she had felt for Lin Anjing earlier; having any expectations of this person would be a waste of time.

"If..."

The news anchor's voice was still playing on the TV.

But it wasn't her who spoke.

Yan Luo raised his head again, looking somewhat impatiently at Lin, whose face was half-illuminated by the television's glow. He asked rather calmly, "If one day, your life is disrupted by an illogical disaster, and humanity faces a crisis of extinction, would you be willing to give up everything you have now to fight for humanity?"

"...childish."

Yan Luo dismissed it with disdain, probably because this chuunibyou (middle school syndrome) guy had been reading too many novels and gone crazy.

"That's why I said... if."

Yan Luo put down her pen, her eyes sweeping over Lin: "What kind of crisis? Even the destruction of the world has more than one type."

"Monsters roaming, incurable diseases, energy bursts, alien invasions... and what about the crisis of humans being chosen as messengers of the gods, becoming agents of destruction?"

"Even so, it's not my turn..."

"But you will fight."

"..."

Even if you know that the fate of humanity is not something you can decide alone, you will still fight.

Yan Luo suddenly noticed that Lin's tone was different from usual; she had an inexplicable sense of familiarity with it, just like before...

"But something's different." Lin said abruptly, then asked, "Would you be willing to give up everything you have? Your friends, your classmates, your brothers, your sisters, your best friends... everything."

"... If I were to fight, I could make them..."

"What if you have to abandon them for the sake of fighting?"

"..."

"To give up their lives, to abandon their own senses for the sake of humanity as a whole, and to live only as machines."

Lin still remembers those words that Yan Luo roared at him in a fit of rage at that time.

"If you were truly an absolute idealist, unwavering in your principles and never abandoning them, and if everyone were an equal life in your eyes, how could things have turned out the way they did!"

"You will be a great warrior! You will be a valiant hero! Even I will admire and respect you!"

"But you are not... you are just a hypocrite who talks a big game... no matter which version of you you are, you are all the same!"

Such a composed person, yet in despair, uttered those words cursing him, cursing... herself.

Upon closer reflection, what Yan Luo is actually searching for is his past self.

Lin is not swayed by emotions, does not make mistakes, and exists solely as a machine to save humanity.

It was precisely because she and Lin both broke their principles, transforming from pure idealists into people who were no longer pure and absolute, that she suffered such a breakdown.

So what was Yan Luo thinking at this moment?

Chapter Seventy-Nine: No Problems

"Hmph..." Although equally rare, Yan Luo's smiles were indeed more frequent than Lin's. After pondering for a few minutes, she let out a low, cold laugh. "A multiple-choice question?"

Making a choice between those around you and more people is a classic Trolley Problem.

Why can't I have both?

"Both?" Lin never expected to hear this conclusion from Yan Luo.

His first thought was: Is there another way to cheat?

"No..."

"So I'm asking you why we can't have both?" Yan Luo interrupted Lin rudely. Although her voice and face showed no emotion, her words were full of disdain. "I just find it strange that you question setters insist on choosing one of the two? Why does it have to be an imperfect ending?"

"Because... you can only save one of them."

Who made that rule?

"..."

Her legs were crossed, and her eyes seemed to be shining.

Perhaps it was Lin's imagination, or perhaps...

"There will always be people who tirelessly say that this is reality, and reality is always cruel. You can't save whoever you want to save, and you can't achieve perfection just by wishful thinking."

Two slender hands, seemingly unable to hold anything, were crossed on her lap. She turned her head and looked out the window.

The deep starry sky shone in her eyes.

"Does anyone not know that we experience reality every moment and feel its cruelty every moment, but we will still face tomorrow?"

"But what does that have to do with how we do it?"

Why must we face an imperfect ending? Why must the trolley run over one of the vehicles? Why must I only be able to choose, instead of trying to change things?

She announced in a tone completely different from before, yet with seriousness. "Even if it's called foolish... to abandon one for the other... I absolutely will not."

Lin Mo stared at her silently for a long, long time before turning his head and looking in another direction.

"Gurgle..."

A dry, hoarse sound, in an unknown language, came from his throat.

A destructive urge surged through my mind.

Who I am?

What am I doing?

After half a year, the lost self returned to this body, like a soul bound by chains finally being liberated.

She didn't want that destructive will to gain the upper hand, so she waged a long struggle against it. After countless years, when her will was battered and on the verge of collapse, the suppression of that absolute and powerful will suddenly weakened, and she finally drove it into a corner of her consciousness.

Many people are waiting for her to go back...

She wants to protect everyone. She wants to protect Griseo, who has lost her parents; she wants to protect Eden, who can no longer sing; she wants to protect Pardo, who can no longer fight; she wants to protect Kevin; she wants to protect May; she wants to protect...

And that person too...

She now possesses power, and she can feel that she can wield the Herrscher's authority at will. As long as she regains her body, she will no longer have to fear the Honkai.

All tragedies will be reversed here.

She--

"Lin... I've proven it to you..."

She stared blankly at everything in front of her.

There is no hope.

There is no future either.

All there is is blood.

Corpse.

Die.

There were people I knew and people I didn't know.

Their only thing in common is that they are both dead now.

In a world devoid of color, a swaying pink light smiled at her, while a blinding crimson light gently brushed across her face.

Then, her face became deformed, twisted, and grotesque.

She reached out to grab the beam of light.

But the light went out in the world overcast with dark clouds.

"Elysia ..."

She stood amidst mountains of corpses and seas of blood, clutching her head, screaming, going mad, and struggling.

Finally, I remained numb with a clear mind.

She murmured.

"Someone... will save me..."

"Is Ms. Lin not coming to class today?"

After whispering with May, Kevin started talking to Yan Luo sat in front of him.

"Who knows." Yan Luo went about her business as usual. Perhaps because of her hand injury, Lin hadn't done anything last night and this morning, which caused her rapidly rising blood pressure to drop back down.

"Bang!"

What was that sound?

Yan Luo seemed to hear some noise, but when he listened carefully to find the source of the sound, he heard nothing at all.

You must have just misheard.

"Bang!"

You heard right.

All the bullets were blocked. Lin estimated the distance between himself and the opponent and quickly retreated to avoid being caught by that strange ability to manipulate gravity.

With the pistol magazine empty, Lin threw down the pistol and pulled out a loaded AR15 from behind his back.

Although there were no weapons, this world was almost no different from the Intrinsic World. Lin was able to obtain some military firearms and bullets through many channels, and he had prepared weapons in advance to deal with the possible arrival of the Herrscher.

Sure enough, he received a warm welcome from the Herrscher as soon as he stepped into the school today.

They gave a "warm" welcome with eighteen cannons.

However, although she is Herrscher, she does not use her abilities in the same way as other Herrscher who would destroy a city with a flick of their finger. Instead, she focuses on precisely hunting him down.

As Lin fired the gun with one hand, he bit off the pin of the grenade from his neck, and threw it away the moment he ran out of bullets.

"Boom!"

The Herrscher, unharmed amidst the towering flames, slowly emerged from the air, looking down with disdain at the mortals struggling in vain.

They had arrived at an abandoned housing area. Lin threw out the remaining grenades and rushed into one of the houses.

The Herrscher cannot harm other people or things, but her vision can also be obstructed.

He casually opened a grenade, and the Herrscher swept in like a hurricane, tearing the poor roof off before it could even hold for a second.

But the desolate ground was empty, and there was no one there.

At this moment, the Herrscher was slightly puzzled as to where Lin had gone. In that brief pause, two pull wires connected to the pull rings of grenades were pulled through a crack in a paving stone.

"Click".

The crisp sound of the pull made the Herrscher realize what was happening, but it was too late.

Two explosions erupted from her side, engulfing her entire body.

An attack of this magnitude wouldn't harm Herrscher; at most, it would obstruct her vision, but...

"Sizzle—"

The Herrscher lowered her head, and the floor tile was opened, revealing Lin, who was hiding inside, aiming a rocket launcher at her.

"Bang!"

As Lin pulled the trigger, he also pulled three other fuses, and three rocket launchers hidden in this dilapidated housing area were launched simultaneously, converging at the Herrscher's position!

"Boom—"

Fireworks shot into the sky, blooming on Lin Lengjun's face.

Chapter Eighty: Hope

Although it's just speculation, Lin believes that this Herrscher wouldn't subconsciously use Honkai Energy to construct a shield.

Yesterday, his punch landed squarely on the Herrscher's face, which emboldened him to launch an attack on the Herrscher today, hoping for a lucky break.