Honkai, Survive

This matter is as vast as the stars, and it is worth hearing.

Within the Path, during the audience, I became the stars, and you became the world.

— This was beyond Fang Jie's scope of understanding, a true blind spot in his knowledge.

The Nihility's IX does not glance at anyone, equally obscuring the starry sky.

Nihility, what is Nihility?

0.

Meaningless.

Encompassing all, yet negating the meaning of all existence.

And Nihility, once one steps into IX's shadow, all existence: body, cognition, memory will gradually perish, self-destructing without even realizing it.

But Destruction is different. This is what normal Path travelers, especially those who have received a glance from a Star God, should be blessed with.

Shocked and silently thinking, "What, I'm a self-destroyer?" Fang Jie didn't have time to hesitate and once again experienced the novelty of Liu Grandma entering the Grand View Garden.

Knowledge surged, like instinct.

The first breath, the first heartbeat.

So natural.

He made you enlightened. This is the Path, this is a Path traveler, extraordinary, walking with gods.

The birth and progression of every Path traveler leaves footprints on the Path.

That is to say, the Imaginary space, subspace, whatever you call it, the Path space, the philosophical Imaginary concepts opened up by the Star Gods, allowing travelers to advance as much as they can, grasp as much as they can, expand as much as they can...

Becoming stars, creating worlds.

But there was a doubt, a doubt that you, I, and he could not answer.

Fang Jie looked up, towards his own darkened self, which had become dazzlingly bright.

Who is watching?

Is it myself?

But am I watching myself?

It's probably different from other travelers who have stepped into Destruction, or Nihility.

They are angry, they are fearful.

They are sorrowful, they are mad.

And myself, quietly devouring everything, only one step away from complete death.

Fortunately, he was still alive.

Tragically, he was still alive.

But who is watching me?

"So how can I see 'myself'?"

Without a mirror, how can a person distinguish themselves? Only through the observation and feedback of 'others' can one construct a self-awareness that, upon actually looking in a mirror, feels foreign.

And now, without a third party, Fang Jie saw himself.

This was too strange, just like this Path, blessed by the Star Gods' glances, continuously expanding... strange.

So, is it Fang Jie?

If a piece of calcite is transparent enough, or even if it's not transparent enough, what's important is that it possesses anisotropic crystalline properties.

This way, when light passes through it, it will undergo birefringence, splitting into two polarized lights with mutually perpendicular vibration directions, different propagation speeds, and unequal refractive indices.

In these two lights, one propagates at a constant speed regardless of the direction of propagation and obeys the ordinary law of refraction; the second propagates at a speed that depends on the direction of propagation and is a variable that does not obey the ordinary law of refraction.

And within the calcite, there is a special direction along which the speeds of the two lights are equal.

That is, the two refracted lights can couple.

Before Fang Jie's eyes, March 7th and Kiana reappeared. He tried... and he himself was disappearing.

Motionless, passively devouring everything, his own dark self disappeared.

No.

It overlapped.

On this Path, I and I became one.

This is the complete Fang Jie, the complete self-destroyer, the complete... I.

In an instant, he could no longer see or feel anything. His mind was filled with dread of the darkness, his soul felt heavy as if filled with lead, and his body became numb.

He could only watch the only light, two lights appearing as icons. That was darkness, no, the only change within the void.

Forcing down the urge to leave immediately and activate his instinctual 'teleportation,' Fang Jie stopped the operation. Fang Jie saw himself again, his pitch-black self, quietly devouring too much Destruction's Path energy, coated with a brilliant shell.

"This question already has a preliminary answer."

He couldn't and didn't want to escape, facing the answer directly.

Is this darkness you?

Is it me?

Is it?

Yes.

Back then, I was still young, accepting all comers, with no way to resist. The moment I stepped into the galaxy, the blessing followed.

Or perhaps, that wasn't me.

So, the 'Winter' I gradually developed and relied on, pretending to be dead, enduring hardship, even paralyzing my body to absorb energy...

Good things, all good things.

She treasures her Mr. Huu!

"Alright, that's enough. I understand now. It's okay, it's really okay. Everything is normal, it's great. The galaxy I'm going to see is not a spectacle that cowards can venture into. I must do extraordinary things and be an extraordinary person. At least, I have something to control."

What the original meaning was no longer important. Fang Jie's meaning was: people still need to be able to do something.

He didn't cry or throw a tantrum, like a little island bird vowing to defeat the Honkai. Fang Jie just...

looked up at the new world.

Although shocked, he didn't actually care, because he had long known about the galaxy, about this world's constant dangers and uncertainties.

Countless devils, who didn't even deign to eat people, roamed the mortal realm.

Countless beings lived for a day and died, and it was better if they died quickly. But what if they were fine just a few days ago, and now they wished they were dead?

Compared to that, the method of death was unimportant.

What was important was—

I'm still alive.

"You really think you're something."

Fang Jie said to himself, "Now, I am a Pathwalker."

He saw the appearance of the new world.

Before him was a world of light, a world of fire, and a world of darkness. This was the world of the Path.

The scene it manifested looked no different from the galaxy at first glance. It was just that he could see more, see further. But the galaxy was vast, countless stars shining, beautiful but unreachable...

Wait, I'm floating?

Because his [self] could not see, Fang Jie couldn't 'look in a mirror'. Only then did he realize he was drifting in the dark galaxy, like a star.

The [self] not far away was the sun that stole the light of all beings, illuminating the 'world' he was in.

'Every star is a Pathwalker.'

They all stood in this bottomless galaxy, shining.

They all stood in this endless Path, absorbing.

His [self] was shining and absorbing so much that it was enveloped by thick nebulae, violent lightning, energy pulses and fluid matter ejected by supernova explosions, and even more incomprehensible astronomical phenomena... all converging into a decent-looking 'sun' with a pitch-black interior, which was expanding.

Fang Jie floated amidst the interstellar medium of the universe, feeling that his [self] was naked and unrecognizable. Except for his eyes, which were still working, all other senses were losing their effectiveness.

Huh? My eyes can work now?

They were a pair of eyes that, from their original gray, finally opened, blazing, serene, silently banishing the darkness.

They turned emerald green.

His pupils, which were originally smooth, oh no, round, became angular, transforming into a dazzling rhombus-shaped gem.

Humans, always stopping when they should be moving, and often, just being able to stop was already giving it their all.

Frankly, it looked somewhat... strangely beautiful, beautifully tragic.

[Destruction] against [Nihility].

The knowledge of the Path surged forth in a way that felt like finally struggling to turn over, making one tear up, making one furious.

I knew they only bullied the self-destroyers.

Yes, knowing too much might lead to more unhappiness, but this was too much bullying.

This should have been instinctual, like being able to use a skill just by activating it. For example, a Herrscher could drive their authority with instinct. His treasured self-destroyer made Fang Jie lack the foresight to be a mere pawn all along.

Even if he might be a pawn, at most a future warrior.

In short, his [self] saw himself. If the side bearing [Nihility] and [Destruction] had transformed into the sun, then the other side was just a small satellite.

Yes, the moon.

If the starting point for ordinary Pathwalkers was to blindly absorb energy from the Path, making it difficult to awaken consciousness and approach the essence, to understand themselves, and thus undergo a metamorphosis.

Then those who received a glance from a Stellaris God could transform into stars overnight on the path of the Path.

Fang Jie advanced further, even stepping into the Nihility that no one ever glimpsed, possessing the talent to construct galaxies within this convergence of Paths.

A binary system... no, a trinary system.

Upon the grand Path, a powerful gravitational force existed between me and myself, stirring the newly opened Path space for him, causing ripples.

The soul from a foreign land had also tried to touch the Trailblaze, siphoning off quite a bit of energy.

And so, the small broken sphere was born with a roar, positioned between the two, resisting the gravitational pull from Nihility, with countless energies materialized into light being siphoned away.

It's a cosmic island!

Thus, the Path manifested as a vast galaxy, countless, endless streams of energy surging like golden ribbons of rivers into this system. The majority were siphoned into that pitch-black silhouette, with only a small portion able to flow elsewhere.

Let's call it a 7-3 split.

Meaning, seven-tenths of what flows elsewhere is siphoned off.

That's how galaxies are.

What lies beyond the light?

Fang Jie, also turning ink-green, with a mark of black blood sliding down his cheek as he struggled to open his eyes, swept his gaze across the starry expanse, across a vast sea of black stars.

'It's other stars.'

The Path responded thus, bringing him understanding.

What exactly does a Pathwalker walk?

Not just the progression through real numbers, but also the progression through imaginary concepts, exploring the footprints of those who came before, leaving imprints for those who come after...

"Truly, the road ahead is long."

However, setting aside how Nihility proceeds, what about Destruction?

Fang Jie felt himself, seeing only himself sealed by him first. From now on, he would have to use those powers with extreme caution. He felt the 'Destruction' surging within him, feeling himself capable of wielding the power contained within stars.

"BOOM—!"