"Who exactly are you?!"
She hadn't noticed anything wrong with the world at all. After all, there was no information to be found in the vast snowy plains. The only breakthrough was Fang Jie... beneath his human appearance lay a bottomless darkness that left her powerless.
"My name is Fang Jie. I come from beyond your world. If you can't understand that, just think of me as an alien, like Kalpas."
Rin reacted even more strongly to that name, but she eventually behaved herself somewhat. She couldn't catch Fang Jie, and continuing to waste what little energy she had left would only make her fall dormant again.
"I admit it, human. You are more troublesome than I expected. You seized an opportunity." Rin's tone was both disdainful and proud. "I can promise to spare you. Join forces with me. Since you know who I am, you should understand how rare this opportunity is."
Yes, the Herrscher of Corruption—the disaster that had once destroyed the world after her birth. Whether it was living beings, machines, supernatural abilities, or information, her authority could corrupt them for her own use.
"Join forces? So I can provide you with Honkai energy, or offer you my body?" Fang Jie shook his head. "Rin, times have changed. What I want to discuss isn't that, but a more sincere partnership."
"Oh? What kind of partnership?" Rin scoffed, secretly preparing a sneak attack.
Fang Jie was genuinely sincere. "Saving the world, of course."
"..."
For an instant, silence fell amid the howling frostwind. Rin froze for a moment. She had never expected that, even now, she would hear such an... invitation.
You were inviting a Herrscher—a Herrscher who had once destroyed civilization—to save the world?
Were you joking?
"This joke isn't funny at all, human. You've successfully enraged me! Do you really think there's nothing I can do to you?"
While Fang Jie had been sincerely trying to talk her down, she had already corrupted enough of his body—at the very least, enough to interfere with his mind.
The nightmare was about to begin!
"I'm serious."
Fang Jie would not lie to Kiana, nor would he lie to Himeko, and Rin...
He still would not.
But since she was an idiot, it was fine to tell her even more of the truth.
He had had enough. It had only been a few days. Even the Stellaron Spirit had... well, the Stellaron Spirit had gotten its body pierced pretty early too. It had to fight the Doomsday Beast right from the start.
He needed helpers. He needed teammates—the trustworthy kind, and ones who were not useless.
Even equipment would do.
Murata Himeko was a little too weak. She definitely wouldn't be able to withstand Otto's persecution. Rin was different, completely different. She was civilization's natural enemy. As long as she regained even a little power and did not try to confront Kevin or Su head-on, she would be fine even if she encountered Fu Hua!
That was the kind of assistance he needed.
Because he had witnessed the destruction of a city, Fang Jie had suddenly realized that perhaps what he would bring to this world was a "bad ending."
Even if, when he first met Kiana, he had merely talked with her a little longer, he might have disrupted her schedule and prevented her from stopping Raiden Mei's awakening in time.
Then one vital piece of that ending would be lost.
Not to mention all the rampant developments that would come afterward.
This was not a game that could be freely scribbled over and manipulated at will. It bore the weight of civilization. If he could not become its savior, then he should not casually destroy the world either.
So when you had a chance to choose, do not leave yourself with regrets.
"Don't rush to attack, Rin. I know you still want to continue fighting, but it's meaningless. I can leave right now, and we may never meet again... You may not care, but what about Yae Sakura? We should not be enemies. I'm willing to show sincerity and break the prisoner's dilemma between us..."
"Who cares about that traitor!"
The black mist formed a fox head again, its furious expression and crimson gaze utterly terrifying. Rin drew upon what little power remained and directly unleashed a nightmare.
Because she was an idiot, she neither could nor needed to think so much. She recklessly squandered her power and vented that immense urge to destroy.
She had long decided never to trust anyone again. That sort of thing had been severed from her long ago.
It was utterly terrifying.
But at that moment, something incomparably strange happened again. Rin felt in shock that her power against Fang Jie... could not be said to be completely useless, only that it was not very useful.
She could not even see his memories, which meant she could not weave a corresponding nightmare.
Then let Yae Village begin...
"I told you, I can leave at any time. Reality itself cannot stop me, much less a dream."
Accompanied by something even darker than the fox-shaped black mist, Fang Jie revealed only his mouth as he finished speaking, then vanished without a trace.
What Yae Village? He had no interest in going.
"What exactly is going on? I'm going to kill you. I'll definitely kill—"
Yet even Stigmata Space could not hold him.
Heh, I came in, I went out, I came in again... Hit me, idiot!
Fang Jie flashed back into Yae Village again. This was not merely a nightmare; it was also a real Imaginary Space constructed through Stigmata Space.
And through their "spiritual connection," he sensed Rin's anger. After becoming Corruption, she had already been ruled by rage and hatred, and had not yet received Aponia's blessing of humanity.
It was only because the Honkai of this world had not caught up that she had remained somewhat rational.
Well then, after teasing her a few times, she could not stay rational at all.
Pure killing intent and the urge to destroy passed through the residual corruption virus within his body to Fang Jie, causing him to—
What was happening?
His confusion lasted only a moment before realization struck him.
Just as Murata Himeko had become more Trailblazing than him, something even more wondrous had happened to Rin...
At that moment, he shared Rin's vision and saw a special existence.
Flames—endless flames, flames blazing with boundless radiance. Dazzling gold rose up, pierced the clouds, and surrounded their god: golden death, the vicious sun of destruction.
Merely existing there, it seemed capable of reducing all things in the world to ashes.
It was an incomparably special existence. Mortals found it difficult to witness its full form, and someone merely watching from the sidelines could do even less. White hair, dark skin, a damaged body, and enormous wounds...
All he could remember was a pair of burning golden eyes without a trace of emotion, as well as the path it proclaimed—something that required only a glance to understand:
The birth of the universe was a mistake. If civilization was a cancer quietly arising among the vast stars, then conflict was the only language shared by intelligent life. To correct this error and erase the universe's stain, Nanook became the embodiment of entropy.
Destruction.
Nanook.
Rin did not understand what had happened, but something changed from then on.
Power—an endless stream of power. Power had returned once again.
Fang Jie understood what had happened, but he did not understand...
Nanook, the Aeon walking the Path of Destruction, cast a glance upon powerful beings in every world who developed destructive impulses, branding them and granting them power.
This was a common occurrence in the galaxy. Devout believers, warriors, seekers of knowledge, lost wanderers... mortals would always, intentionally or unintentionally, step onto the Paths ruled by Aeons and become Pathstriders who practiced their ideals.
Thus, Rin stepped onto the Path of Destruction.
Thus, Fang Jie realized something was wrong with himself.
It was not that he was surprised he could freeload off an Aeon's gaze, nor was it the manifestation of Destruction that shocked him. It let him see himself—his self upon that Path. That was why he did not understand:
"Why do I look so black on that Path..."
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P.S. The cover was still too old and not eye-catching enough, so I changed it to one of that trashy little Stellaron's. Please bookmark, recommend, and vote for the new book!
Stepping onto the Path, Transcending Everything
In the boundless depths of the Path, he stared at... himself, whose entire face was pitch-black.
When life left one speechless, and one was unwilling to face it, silence was the only answer.
Fang Jie stared at himself in silence, like the silence of the Supreme Treasure in A Chinese Odyssey when he used the demon-revealing mirror and saw that he was actually a monkey.
Questions, answers to questions, even more questions...
In the wilderness of Jarilo-VI, beyond the places protected by Preservation, there was nothing to see but snow.
If one did not venture deeper in and merely observed it from afar, it was actually a breathtakingly beautiful sight.
The distance of a planet, the distance of a universe—not especially long, not especially short.
At the speed of the silver rails Akivili had laid across the galaxy through Trailblazing, even a single-person warp—I mean, a one-person warp for someone who could survive in vacuum, travel through space, and step onto the silver rails to warp—could cross a star system in under twenty-four system hours at speeds far beyond light.
This was also the mainstream speed in the current universe, the sort of affordable cargo spacecraft used by organizations like the Interastral Peace Corporation.
There was nothing remarkable about this. It was as countless as the stars.
The vast galaxy could contain anything.
And among those unremarkable, countless, numerous, abundant, star-filled journeys, in the first half of the journey Fang Jie remembered, he had traveled alone.
Honestly, a story about taking a "long journey" within a planet's atmosphere was not worth recording.
Even if it was not an easy task for Fang Jie.
First, he had to survive. Not survive the snowfield, but survive... the galaxy.
Second, he had to explore. Just as a mischievous calf might be captivated by tender blades of grass, just as a newborn infant was terrified by the whole world. Running about in ignorance, knowing nothing of the warning signs of cumulonimbus clouds in the sky...
Unfortunately, Belobog did not get rain.
Unfortunately, the galaxy, the galaxy...
In a vast swamp forest shrouded in mist, there was a group of hunters carrying guns, RPGs, flamethrowers, and even Tsar Bombas, all hostile to one another—this was the dark forest.
And you were a squirrel in a tree hollow, with pinecones buried somewhere unknown—this was the galaxy.
So in the end, he had to stop. Stop before the destination that was already plainly visible.
"So I had already stepped into His shadow, yet I knew nothing."
Fang Jie broke the silence. He did not deceive himself or pretend not to understand. He insisted on being sincere even with others, so how could he avoid facing himself?
Destruction manifested, the Path revealed itself, and that glimmer of light parted the mist.
It revealed the truly desperate shape you possessed.
—A nameless person, a person without fate,
who came from the far end of the wasteland, draped in the radiance of the stars.
But at the end of that light was not the sun, nor any star. It was blackness swallowing everything, and all the light you could see was merely the afterglow before being consumed.
—Nihility.
All things resisted nothingness. All things rushed toward nothingness. All things fell into nothingness.
The empty snowfield without visible end, the planet, the universe, the galaxy... above all phenomena, for no known reason and at no known time, he had simply been swept into Nihility.
At that moment, time seemed to stop.
Yes, time had stopped.
Like an outsider, Yae Sakura slept quietly beside Rin, who had witnessed Destruction, and Fang Jie. She had become a statue.
Rin, who possessed a powerful Source of Power resonance—her emotions, wishes, will, soul... her impulsive rage and destructive Source of Power—everything burst forth like droplets from the little fountain of a wishing pool, splashing into ripples of footprints originating from the Path.
She hung motionless in the black mist. In the frigid frostwind, snowflakes still fell, frozen in midair.
Fang Jie was the same, standing within halted time, cast into a halted world.
Everything in existence, the universe and the primordial void.
Shattered with a thunderous crash.
The Path of Destruction always carried that kind of magnificent thunderousness...
An explosion occurred in this corner of the Path.
And a world was born.
Before you continue