A Push from the Future / A Fairy Tale for Adults

Impossible... How could the real Kevin not know what the Imaginary Tree is? He's the one who's been guarding the Imaginary Tree the Past since 50,000 years ago.

Just as Mei brains trying to figure it out, someone was running towards her with brisk steps...

Chapter 88 A Driving Force from the Future

"Mei!"

Kiana?!

Mei will never forget that voice. Even when they are separated by distance, she will instinctively call out to it the moment she hears that cheerful and bright voice.

She couldn't stop herself from turning to look at the white-haired girl rushing towards her. The girl's bright, sunny face was instantly pressed against hers, making strange laughing noises and rubbing against her incessantly.

"Kiana! Come down! Don't do this, so many people are watching..." Even though Mei is now a fully- Herrscher of Thunder of Thunder who can rival Kevin, she is still the same "Raiden Mei" in front of Kiana.

Perhaps their outward appearance has changed a lot, but their inner selves must still be gentle and strong girls.

"No way! I haven't replenished Mei's energy yet today~" Kiana hugged her tightly, acting coquettishly and unwilling to let go, which gave Mei a headache.

But at that moment, Mei's expression froze.

Wrong...

Mei shoved Kiana away, puzzling Kiana.

Mei lowered her head, her expression a mixture of reluctance and indignation.

This is the Imaginary Tree, not Chienyu Academy, and she is not Kiana...

Furthermore, Mei and Kiana met after the Third Honkai War, when Kiana defeated Mei, who had transformed into the Third Herrscher. Their relationship only began at that time.

So, this is fake...

"Mei?"

Kiana's innocent face showed worry as she reached out to touch Mei's forehead. "What's wrong? Are you sick?"

Her hand drew closer and closer...

Mobius sat in the corner with a gloomy face, and the others wisely did not disturb her. Beside her was a box of... underwear.

She really wanted to tear this pile of stuff to shreds right away, but wouldn't that just send it flying everywhere? And she really wanted to ask Lin what his intentions were in preparing this "gift" for her.

Of course, she knew very well that the person who gave the gift was the one who had taken over Lin's body, but she felt that the person had Lin's memories, so he must have chosen the gift based on Lin's memories. Why would he give her underwear in particular?

Everyone else seemed so normal, but I felt so ashamed!

Lin hadn't returned after taking Immer away, and she waited impatiently, her eyes constantly drifting towards the pile of white clothes.

... What a perverse taste! No matter what style of lingerie it is, even the sexiest kind, it's all pure white. It's like they're just exposing their dirty thoughts completely.

"Wait a minute... what is this?"

Just as Mobius was internally criticizing Lin's eccentricities, she noticed something strange.

She frowned, slowly stood up, reached out and rummaged through the pile of clothes, finally finding... a storage device at the very bottom.

The words " To A'She" were written on it with a water-based pen.

The computer screen glowed in the dark office. Mobius, with a serious expression, opened the files in the storage device. There were three files, labeled in the simplest way to indicate the order in which they were opened.

Mobius first turned on the first one, which was a recording.

"If you're A'She, the person who listens to this recording, it means you've accepted the winning lingerie I've chosen. Ah, that wasn't easy..."

After hearing the first sentence Mobius wanted to smash his computer.

She resisted the urge to pull out the memory and crush it, and listened on.

"Lin, actually, you just need to beg him a few more times, and he'll do whatever you ask while looking disgusted..."

That guy! He's still so infuriating even after he left!

Mobius angrily tried to fast forward, only to find that the recording couldn't be fast-forwarded and was a full hour long, with forty-five minutes of it describing how to push Lin down, including descriptions of various locations such as the living room, bedroom, balcony, and conference room.

Just as she was wondering if the entire recording was this bastard's idea, the topic finally shifted to the "main point."

"The following paragraph is irrelevant. You can listen to it if you want, or not if you don't. It's just some unimportant information about Flame-Chaser."

Does he know how to write "putting the cart before the horse"?

His voice became much more serious, and he asked in a meaningful tone, "A'She, you are one of the participants in the Flame-Chaser project, so you should understand that even those of you who performed the surgery don't actually have a very deep understanding of Flame-Chaser."

"..."

The first-generation Flame-Chaser surgery, namely Lin and Kevin's surgery, was purely a hasty practice of a theory that had not been verified in any way. It would be an exaggeration to say that it was a lucky break. Kevin's surgery was 99% due to luck.

This also meant that these creators were completely unaware of the changes, side effects, and abilities that would occur after the Flame-Chaser were born.

It's as if they just spun a wheel without knowing what prizes they would win.

This is one of the reasons why Mobius underwent the Hypervariable Surgery on himself—only by experiencing it firsthand could he know what kind of "species" the Flame-Chaser truly were.

But she was still wrong. Even though she became Flame-Chaser, she still had no idea what she had become.

That's just the tip of the iceberg... and not even that.

Who exactly is this man? How does he know information about Flame-Chaser that she doesn't even know? And is this information true or false?

"Open the second document. It contains a gift from me. How you use it is up to you."

Mobius was unaware of this at the time.

The most important move in a game of chess has now been made.

This "thing" that was supposed to appear only during the future Ninth Honkai War appeared before her ahead of time in a quietly unfolding plan.

Mobius's heart skipped a beat. Suddenly, she had a strange premonition, an inexplicable feeling that made her click on the document seem incredibly slow...

Open... Pandora's Box...

As she clicked the mouse, the document opened, and several eye-catching words came into her view.

"Man-made... collapse..."

"And the remaining video is another... gift." With that final, serious statement, the recording stopped playing.

Mobius narrowed down the document and clicked on the last video marked with three. What was this...?

"Mobius, you wanted to see me..."

At this moment, Lin pushed open the door and entered. He stepped halfway into the room but did not go any further.

"Lord Mobius, please urge me on... Ah ha..."

"..."

"..."

Lin glanced at the pile of underwear on the table.

Then I looked at the computer speakers that were playing my voice.

Finally, he looked at Mobius's face, which was staring blankly at him.

"Sorry to bother you."

Lin thoughtfully closed the door.

Chapter 89 Adult Fairy Tales

Yan Luo opened his eyes, Prismatic Eyes, symbolizing his power as Herrscher, lit up like bright lamps in his eye sockets.

Rainwater fell on her nose.

It's raining again.

She returned to her world, this silent star where no one was.

She didn't go to the grave to pay her respects as usual, nor did she look at her own tombstone. Instead, she sat cross-legged on the ground, silently pondering in the muddy soil nourished by the heavy rain.

"But I want the best of both worlds! I want a perfect ending! I want the trolley to just stay at that fork in the road where it will never hurt anyone! Is there a problem?"

... It was so stupid she wanted to laugh.

Even though she had met countless Lins, none of them were as stupid as him. Did he think this was a game to save the world?

In reality, having ideals, ambitions, or even the ability does not guarantee that you will achieve your goals.

Everyone died at the end of the story; that was a bad ending.

Many people survive after giving their all, and that's a good ending.

And everyone transcended the tragedy... that was just a beautiful fairy tale.

After having time to peruse all the books in the world, Yan Luo often came across certain themes that she called fairy tales for adults.

It's not a fairy tale for "adults," but a fairy tale for "grown-ups."

The story is full of twists and turns, the protagonist suffers many hardships, and the world is always surrounded by crises... and the theme revolves around beauty.

In these kinds of stories, the ending always reaches a perfect conclusion in various ways. Some even go so far as to use deus ex machina to overturn the previous settings and allow the characters to have a happy ending.

Perhaps this is the fairy tale of adults; after experiencing darkness, they are more willing to turn their hearts towards the light.

But Yan Luo knew they weren't in an adult's fairy tale, and this wasn't a story either.

Reality is bizarre and sudden; those who don't want to die will die, those who don't want to kill will kill, and your friend may be laughing and chatting with you one second, and then be torn to pieces the next.

The biggest lesson she learned from her own experience is that people don't leave behind sentimental lines before they die, nor do they have spotlights shining on their corpses and rose petals falling to create a beautiful scene.

In an instant, they will become monsters, burned to charcoal by raging flames, their eyeballs and brains crushed out by gravity, and stripped of their bodily functions, turning into mummies...

Does crossing darkness lead to light? Perhaps it's just something deeper and more desperate...

"The other person has already started a new life, why are you still with Yu Yu?"

"Who!"

The sudden sound startled Yan Luo, making her jump to her feet. How could she have sensed no life nearby when the sound was so close?

"Who am I? Hmm... that's a long story. Maybe it starts from tens of thousands of years... hundreds of thousands of years? Or maybe it started a long time ago, but if I start from myself, it's only been a few thousand years." The voice pondered with some distress, then let go indifferently, "Who I am is no longer important. An ancient ghost wandering in the Quantum Sea and a loser, use whichever sounds better."

"... You imprisoned me in that World Bubble?" Yan Luo immediately realized that this kind of silent approach had happened before. When she was observing Parallel World inside the Second Divine Key, she was ambushed and thrown into the World Bubble along with Lin.

"Isn't that only natural?" the other person replied casually. "Don't worry, I mean no harm. You and that Lin have both gained a lot, haven't you?"

What is your purpose?

"What is my purpose..." He carefully considered each word of Yan Luo's question.

After a long silence, the voice reappeared.

"The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, and the carbon in the food we eat are all composed of countless stars scattered during the Big Bang, so each of us is a star."

"Every person we meet, every step we take in life, every glance we take, every time we open our eyes, every choice we make is different from another person's. Our existence and every day we live are miracles."

"What if the Big Bang hadn't happened? What if stars hadn't been destroyed? What if the Earth's topography had changed slightly? What if a different sperm had fertilized the egg? Everything would be different now. The birth of each person is itself the result of the accumulation of one tiny probability event after another."

"We come from the stars and live on this small planet. Our existence itself is a miracle, a miracle more beautiful than any fairy tale."

He chuckled softly and asked Yan Luo a question that someone had asked him long ago, "So, would you be willing to write a new fairy tale for adults?"

The heavy rain has never stopped since that day.

"Artificial Collapse ..." Mobius became more and more surprised as she examined the document. She only needed to glance at it to know whether the contents were true or false. There was knowledge about Flame-Chaser that Lin could not possibly know, and some of it was even information that current research had not yet delved into. It was as if the Flame-Chaser had been dissected inside and out and the key parts had been extracted.

That person was not simply the "time traveler" he claimed to be; he had a far greater understanding of the Fire Moths and the Flame-Chaser than people "nowadays".

The principle behind this technology called "Artificial Collapse"... or rather, another "appearance" of the Flame-Chaser is clearly written on it.

At the end of the document, that person left two sentences.

"I don't know if entrusting these to you will cause further changes to the Honkai, but someone once told me that even if there is only a one in a billion chance, there is still a possibility of success."

"I believe in humanity, and you are human beings, nothing more."

Then came a string of gibberish, like the result of accidentally pressing the wrong key while typing and then forgetting to delete it.

"What's your opinion?" Mobius asked the helmeted man standing behind her after she finished reading.

"The information is accurate." Lin affirmed the information about the Flame-Chaser in the document. "I don't know who he is, but I believe him."