Anew

"I did something lewd with Mobius yesterday."

"... No, wait a minute, why are you suddenly saying this?"

Didn't you tell me to change the subject?

The person in the second stall remained silent for a long while before sighing softly, "I'm not interested in this. I just want to finish quickly and get out."

"Oh."

After that, the two of them did not speak again.

"..."

"..."

"Lin." The voice from the second stall rang out again, much more serious. "Did you bring any toilet paper?"

"..."

Then came a deathly silence.

"Let's continue talking about you and Doctor Mobius," the second person in the stall sighed softly. "Was it comfortable?"

No, I don't feel anything.

A single sentence caused a massive upheaval in Kosma's mind.

Oh right, Lin doesn't have a sense of touch, he can only feel pleasure at most... wait, from what he said, the erotic things he was talking about were actually only Mobius's one-sided experience...

"... Then why did you do it?" Kosma asked blankly, his mind blank.

"Because I find Mobius's reaction very interesting. When she's confused and disoriented, she's surprisingly obedient, which is completely opposite to her usual fierce demeanor," Lin said thoughtfully. "Besides, I don't have any needs in that regard. I just help her relax, and she feels much better afterward."

Kosma numbly echoed, "I see."

What exactly were they talking about?

"So, what I mean is, you should also find something to relax about," Lin said suddenly, his tone turning serious.

"...Ah." Kosma paused for a moment, then realized, "You came to...comfort me?"

"Um."

Kosma didn't know where to begin his rant—whether to start with the location or the topic between the two of them.

Are two people planning to start talking about life and death while their butts are still sticky because they didn't bring any toilet paper?

He could only rack his brains to change the subject. "Lin, you and Doctor Mobius did something lewd, what about Dr. Vill-V?"

"What's the meaning?"

"I remember your relationship with Dr. Vill-V was quite ambiguous, and I also heard that your relationship with the one in the Deepest Place was unclear, and that you had a wife before, and before that, Kevin said that there was a team member... It seems that you have maintained relatively close relationships with many girls."

Lin replied calmly, "I just want everyone to be happy."

Kosma was shocked.

He was utterly shocked by the shameless declaration and the arrogant tone.

Such words, spoken only by those whose moral compass is lower than the Somali Trench, are truly enviable... no, despicable.

Kosma wanted to subtly criticize Lin's behavior, which he would eventually reap what he sowed. "This should be called... that thing..."

He couldn't quite recall the word for a moment.

Central air conditioning.

"Yes, that's it."

"..."

The toilet suddenly became quiet for a moment.

"Was that your voice just now?"

"No, it came from next to me."

Lin's pit was the third one, Kosma's was the second, and that voice just now came from the fourth pit. The voice was very familiar and highly recognizable; it was...

"Chrono?"

"Hmph." The hoarse, low voice behind the mask was as impatient as ever.

Kosma breathed a sigh of relief; now he had paper... Wait a minute.

Kosma arrived at the toilet earlier, but it's impossible that he and Lin didn't notice someone coming up behind them, meaning that Chrono could only have arrived after them.

If constipation is ruled out, there's only one possibility left.

Kosma took a deep breath and asked tremblingly, "Chrono, did you bring any paper?"

"..."

The toilet, besides its stench, seemed to have an added air of melancholy.

"Hmph, 'central air conditioning' doesn't even begin to describe him. Not just that woman, even Sakura..."

"Don't feel awkward, just continue the topic we were talking about!"

"I bet he thinks about having two women on his left and two on his right every night before he goes to sleep."

"No, I only read romance novels," Lin interjected, trying to defend herself.

"..."

"By the way Kevin likes stories about married women, Kosma likes stories about young girls..."

"Where did you find out all this? And isn't this the wrong time to talk about this? By the way, Kevin actually watches this?" Kosma was so startled that he spoke much more fluently.

Lin was a little confused after hearing Chrono's words. What did this have to do with Ying? In his memory, Ying seemed to dislike him.

Kosma asked in a frantic manner, "By the way, do you have anything on you that you can use to wipe yourselves? Look around."

"If they had, they would have left already," Chrono said impatiently.

"Where is the mask of Chrono?"

Another long, deathly silence followed.

"...No, no, no, that's too much." Kosma's expression stiffened. "And won't that cut me? Won't it cut me?"

At this moment, Chrono frowned and asked, "Do any of you feel your butts are cold?"

Lin replied expressionlessly, "I don't feel anything..."

"I didn't ask you!"

At this moment, Kosma also felt a slight chill on his skin after Chrono's reminder. Even though the temperature in the toilet was indeed relatively low, the chill made him shiver, which was obviously abnormal.

"When I came in, I think I saw someone in the fifth stall."

"..."

"..."

"..."

Lin hesitated for a moment, then asked the question—

"Kevin, why are you here?"

In the fifth pit, a white-haired man holding his forehead lay lifeless, like a corpse.

"Today, Mei suddenly decided to cook lunch." Kevin's face showed a sense of relief, as if nothing else mattered. "Then I went to the toilet here and found that there was no toilet paper and it didn't have an automatic cleaning function like other toilets. So I wondered if I could freeze the dirt on my butt into ice crystals and let it fall off by itself."

"...Then what?"

"It's stuck."

"..."

Thus, the four men were trapped in a toilet without paper, wandering aimlessly in a world without God, like the Passion of the Nile in a myth.

As the saying goes, three cobblers are equal to one Zhuge Liang. Now that there are four of them, they can surely come up with a solution. So they put their wisdom to use and began to think about how to leave this place of trouble.

"Burn it clean with fire?" The sound of lighting a fire suddenly came from Chrono's pit.

Kosma exclaimed in horror, "That place can't be used for anything other than excretion, and it might explode, right?"

Lin's voice echoed softly, "Do you know why toilets are called restrooms?"

"... Can I use this lame joke next time?" Kevin asked.

"This isn't a lame joke," Lin paused, "But it would be a 'lame' joke if you told it."

Before the gathering devolved into a stinky exchange of lame jokes, a nearly collapsing Kosma shouted, "Didn't any of you bring communicators?!"

Everyone simultaneously searched their pockets and discovered... that none of them had brought a communicator.

"Don't worry, Su passes by here every day on his way to the lab." Kevin reassured them. These people could easily handle even Honkai Beast, so there was no way they couldn't handle their own backsides. Su would definitely notice soon...

A series of hurried footsteps suddenly pierced everyone's ears, and their eyes lit up as if they saw light piercing through the dark clouds and descending to the earth to bring hope!

"Bang!"

Then, the door to the first stall was slammed shut, and one person breathed a sigh of relief.

"I can't eat Mei's cooking again next time, especially since Kevin didn't finish it... Huh? No toilet paper?" The person at the first stall panicked for a moment, then noticed someone at the stall next to them. "Is anyone here? Can I have some toilet paper?"

"..."

"..."

"Huh? Why aren't you saying anything?"

"... Su, did you bring a communicator?"

"Kevin?!"

"..."

Chapter Twenty-Four Re-enactment

"You really are a miracle, having been confirmed dead multiple times and yet surviving each time."

"... How's that thing?"

"Thanks to you, the research has progressed relatively smoothly since the Phase Transfer Device was developed, but we are still far from achieving the ideal state you described."

"Is something still missing?"

"You should understand, Eighth Herrscher."

"..."

"But you should also understand that we cannot get support."

"Click".

The door behind him was pushed open, and Lin took a deep breath. "Okay, I understand."

Then he turned off the communicator.

The green-haired girl, sitting on a vehicle, walked over with a suspicious look on her face. "Who are you communicating with?"

"Spasi, I haven't contacted him since I came back." Lin said casually, and naturally reached out his hand to Mobius, only to have it slapped away before it was even in mid-air.

"You're pushing your luck." Mobius gritted his teeth, his sharp snake eyes glaring at Lin. "If you dare to cause trouble again, I'll lock you up with the Honkai Beast and have Danzhu write a report about the Honkai Beast eating humans."

"... When?"

Mobius was taken aback by the question, and she stammered incoherently, "Well... you... at least not in the office..."

Stared at by Lin, she involuntarily raised her voice. "In short, I can decide! And what do you think succeeding once means? We're all adults, it's normal to do that kind of thing."

She had no strength left after the event the day before yesterday. By the time she regained consciousness and woke up in bed, several hours had passed. All she could recall were some blurry images and the feeling that her brain was about to be burned.

She made a complete fool of herself in front of this guy, and that shameless bastard even tricked her into saying some extremely embarrassing things...

While Mobius was still pondering what had happened the day before, he didn't notice that Lin had already quietly put the communicator back in his pocket and left.

The Eighth Herrscher...

The waves brought the smell of fish and the salty sea breeze, gently lapping the whitecaps as they reached the shore.

Aside from the occasional child who comes to play, no one would want to vacation on this garbage-strewn coastline. Even before the Honkai and the Flame Moth were revealed to the world, it was a secluded place with few people around.