So it was thrown to Fang Jie, who was still in stasis, to the him that was not a real-number existence but an imaginary projection in that spot.
The real Fang Jie was probably still somewhere similar to Imaginary Space, projecting this "coordinate" without returning.
Rin understood it at a glance.
Throw it to him and see whether it could corrode him from outside his body.
Hehehehe, God Keys were no good things anyway. Let's see just how cursed you can get.
One had to know that God Keys had never been designed for creatures like humans in the first place. Leaving aside everything else, the vast amount of information contained in Jizo Mitama's infinitely replicating virus could turn someone's brain into mush in a short time.
If he could pull it out...
Then she would give it to him.
The clever Rin had already realized that she was completely different now, beyond what she had once been.
She would never admit it aloud, but she was happy deep down, so everything looked pleasing to her eyes.
There was also another factor she had to consider. Rin was so smart that she easily thought of this: what if it was not only her, but this brat also emerged transformed after waking up? He had been strange from the start.
So she would test it. At the very least, it would compensate him for the blade she had eaten and shut his mouth.
It was absolutely not because this brat seemed to have helped her out... The way he had invited her to save the world was something Rin could laugh at for a lifetime.
Did he really think she was stupid? You bizarre thing, calmly devouring the shell of Corruption itself, yet still talking about saving the world...
All she wanted now was freedom.
A smile spread across Rin's smaller yet healthy face, pure and excited.
"Whoosh, so much snow! I like this place!"
Rin freely spread out her power, feeling the snow, then... searching for usable information. Where exactly was this place? Give her some signal.
The information virus flowed across the frozen planet, hacking into every information network.
Very soon, beneath the seemingly barren snowfield and within a colossal creation that had long fallen silent, Rin found what she wanted—an... information network she could not quite describe, one she had to corrode for quite a while before finally hacking into it.
"Let me see."
Damn it, what kind of language was this? She had to learn it all over again... Alright, she got it now.
There was actually another kind of network, but Rin did not touch it, even though that one was a little simpler.
How should she put it? Probably because the power she used seemed similar to theirs, though she seemed to have attacked that thing when it had suddenly appeared before...
It was probably an enemy.
The information those things revealed was not anything good, either. Rin understood that well, so she stayed far away.
That huge thing that had suddenly appeared before had already stirred something in her:
"Across the universe, all we behold are enemies. Endless enemies are born from you, me, and them. Endlessly, every life requires the death of another to live."
"Since you all so yearn for the end of life, allow me to fulfill your wish with my own hands."
"Granting destruction."
Rin did not want to understand. She refused to be moved.
Even if that ideology was not mundane evil, madness, death worship, or striving toward death, it gave her a feeling that was both resolute and deeply unsettling.
And she could hear the voices of those things whose powers shared the same origin as hers. She could hear them with the slightest contact—
"Bearer of this seal, you are commanded to drive peace from every nation."
"Bearer of this seal, you are commanded to drive breath away from all living beings."
"Bearer of this seal, you are commanded to empty the world."
Go away. All of you, go away.
Rin no longer wanted to live a life of fighting and killing.
Something about how life was suffering from birth to death, how those who wanted to live and continue had no choice but to plunder from other lives. But the pleasure gained from acquiring resources through plunder could never equal the pain suffered after being plundered. Pain was the life of all living things, and conflict was civilization's only language...
Gah, I don't want to hear this!
Give me something peaceful.
Rin eagerly searched, found it, found it, and listened carefully:
"...Whether or not your world has a concept of day and night, good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to everyone. This is the Interstellar Peace Corporation Faction Radio Station. Today, we once again bring you the latest news from every faction—imprecise, unserious, and irresponsible. Let us recount another tragic and real day in the universe with the attitude of telling jokes!
Thanks to the endless lunatics of the Paths, giant beasts, and natural disasters, more than eighty civilizations were destroyed yesterday alone, while thirteen interstellar empires fell apart. Truly, an ordinary day in this Amber Era!
Rescuers claimed that they personally pulled eight of those civilizations out of hell. Let us bless them and hope they soon receive their own salvation as well!
According to the Genius Society's investigation, eighteen civilizations were exterminated by extermination scholars using eighteen different methods. My heavens, will their imagination never run dry? They come up with new tricks every day!
The Legion occupied ten interstellar empires and five planetary civilizations. Trillions entered the furnace and became Voidrangers. Before long, I bet those Voidrangers will be knocking on your doors next!
What? The Tarak Federation's civilians voluntarily became Voidrangers because the federation was too brutal?
Then...
Good riddance to the Tarak Federation!
The nine civilizations passed by the Legion on its march were silenced in advance by prewar care officers. Gravediggers made six civilizations burn all their history, completing their spiritual self-destruction. I think at least several Memokeepers from the Fables of the Stars Pavilion will be looking for trouble with them!
By extinguishing the star of the Aklon Star System, the Arsonist forced the civilizations within the system to unite. By the time a joint fleet made up of six former victim civilizations arrived, the culprit had already vanished without a trace.
The Scarred Tomb detonated the star of the Talin Star System yesterday. The supernova's eruption destroyed five civilizations. Now that is leaving a name in the universe—it will still be there billions of years later. Rumor says his next target is an entire nebula!
The Galandr Star Region got hit by the swarm. The company just invested a huge sum there, so it will definitely conduct an emergency rescue of those assets. Let us hope the six civilizations there can hold out until the company's rescue arrives.
Countless civilizations that had not even connected to the interstellar network stood in the path of a star-devouring beast's migration. They either entered its belly or became drifting space debris, impossible to find. There were also novas, of course. In the end, all of them were blasted into fragments by the Galactic Core Guard and the Catastrophe Suppression Agency, while several were subjected to on-site "archaeology" by the Armed Archaeology School!
Three inhabited planets in the Atmodeus Star System became blood food for passing Abundance denizens, who were then blown apart by the Xianzhou Yaoqing that arrived afterward. Another glorious victory today!
The Silent Hunter exposed the bloody suppression of the Kvolaga Empire. The Interstellar Peace Conference announced that it would investigate.
The Ecosystem Administrator took in hundreds of millions more refugees. Let us hope their ecological sphere could still hold up.
The Unsinkable Colossus eliminated a Legion vanguard and defended the Samlin Star System.
The City Restorer and the Planet Purifier announced restoration work on forty-three planets. Once the work was completed, the displaced original residents would have homes again. Memokeepers from the Fables of the Stars Pavilion would also salvage remembrances from worlds of death.
The City Builder completed another four civilizations.
The Spinning Savior entered the war zone between Remus and the Romulus Civilization, rescuing innocent primitive natives caught in the conflict. It used a small amount of nonlethal force to make both sides cease hostilities, held friendly exchanges with the two civilizations, passionately recounted the historical cultures of both sides, hoped they would coexist harmoniously once more, and arranged to meet again in the next Trailblaze Year.
Alright, friends, today is another day with no news from the Sea Rangers. My colleagues at the company have not seen any ranger bounty change in a very long time. I reckon they have truly vanished without a trace.
Rangers! My Rangers! If you were still around, the Tarak Federation Council would have been slaughtered long ago. How could it have driven people into joining the Legion? The Kvolaga Empire's suppression would never have happened! Come back! Our blades of the galaxy! Righteously avenging grievances, our guns of justice, the galaxy's greatest righteous faction... Wuwuwuwu.
Sigh, friends, I hope that when we meet again, nobody finds me on the branch of a primitive planet's tree. I don't want to become a monkey~
Hahahahaha, I fooled you all. I am already a little banana-sleeping monkey, spreading a memetic virus to you through this broadcast—this is not a joke.
Banana banana banana banana banana banana banana banana banana..."
"Snap!"
Rin forcefully—very forcefully, extremely forcefully—cut off the broadcast, along with the massive network's subsequent antivirus measures. Her mind was a complete mess as she confirmed the meanings of the relevant terms one by one from the information she had previously corroded.
Planets, star systems, the universe, factions, memetic viruses...
She had obtained common knowledge of the galaxy swiftly and powerfully. Efficiently, far too efficiently.
By the time Rin understood all of it, it was already too late.
Because she had read too quickly, Rin silently clasped her head in both hands. A desire for destruction naturally sprouted within her as she stared blankly at the snow with lifeless eyes, unable to utter even a curse for a long while.
"This is fake... right?"
Trying to deny reality, Rin froze for a moment, then switched to another network and corroded her way in, linking her consciousness directly to the information.
Then, enduring powerful antivirus software and losing most of her enhanced viruses, she confirmed that everything really was not real.
They were all fake news. They said too little and phrased it far too gently, tending to downplay the related events. Or perhaps the spreaders of ill omens feared being made real offline.
This real galaxy...
Rin crashed.jpg
Sometimes, the more one knew, the less happy one became.
If no one disturbed her, she could shut herself away and crawl back into the black box... Oh, she had already destroyed it and forged it into a sheath.
Rin shut down.jpg
Finally, Fang Jie returned, though not much time had actually passed in real-number reality.
He gazed at the sky, a gloomy, murky sky. Piercing through those obstructions, he saw the endless stars wheeling across the heavens.
Should he recite a poem?
"Ah, galaxy..."
Then he heard an extremely resentful shout from behind him:
"What exactly did you do? Where the hell did you bring me? What kind of awful place is this, this awful place..."
He lowered his head. Where had this salted fish covered in the words "I'm tired, destroy it all" come from? It completely ruined the artistic beauty of his melancholy mood, which could have transformed him into a Knight of Beauty.
If not for Nihility, someone like me would have become a Knight of Beauty long ago.
Looking carefully, was that Flying Fish Ball?
No, she did not have that name. Better to call her Rin. Little Rin.
Black mist radiated firelight and gathered into the physical form of a scarlet, fox-eared young woman. Yet she was not large—she was tiny, only three heads tall, with the cute appearance of an armed puppet. She rolled about in the snow, vaporizing flakes into spreading steam wherever she went...
Her body was tiny, yet filled with tremendous power.
Little Rin cried and threw a tantrum, then spared him a glance.
"You... black... sun?... You really are cursed! Wah, I'm not looking anymore!"
Little Rin collapsed, even her ears drooping. She sprawled in the snow with her limbs spread wide, rolling back and forth.
"Hey, watch how you talk. What are you making such a fuss about, you noisy little floating thing? Believe it or not, I'll send you to Honkai Gakuen 2 again."
Completely unafraid of Corruption's terror, Fang Jie treated her as nothing but a cute little creature. This was the local specialty of treating life and death lightly.
He simply ignored her and let her cry and make a fuss. Fang Jie glanced at Yae Sakura, who seemed like an outsider and was still asleep. Why was there a blade beside her?
It's mine!
Fearlessly, he picked it up in passing. He felt a... jolt, a tingling numbness like electricity surging through his entire body, and then refined it in an instant. Even his control over the power within his body improved greatly.
Compared to the Composite Blade: Willow Leaf, which could activate "Sever" when infused with Honkai energy, this blade was far stronger. It had to be more than three-star.
Without the desire to investigate further, since he had not even examined the changes in himself yet, Fang Jie clenched one hand into a fist and watched flames burn over it.
"Now, I am a qualified galactic grunt."
But,
Don't Call It Self-Destruction, Call It Backup Hidden Energy
If he did not grow stronger, he would die. Galaxy—The Grunt's Path, officially serialized!
It was like activating Deep Blue. Fang Jie lightly tapped it, and within his instincts emerged the powers and realms he could obtain through "nothing but hard work."
No, that comparison still relied too much on his own effort. Let's use a more vivid description.
It was like receiving enlightenment from a mighty being, with his strength and realm shooting upward in an instant.
When the lunatics of the Paths reached the ultimate realm of their fellow lunatic magnetic fields, a single drop of blood could create a powerhouse with eight hundred thousand horses of strength. Let alone realms beyond that.
Strengthening the body, molecular manipulation, devouring all things, matter hardening, reading thoughts, flight, psychic perception, cellular restructuring, anti-gravity, matter restructuring, atomic fission, ultimate realm, self-destruction realm, antimatter realm...
It was absolutely possible. Easily possible!
The Path of Destruction did not merely bestow the ability to control and utilize macroscopic and microscopic entropy increase. It also brought conceptual resonance at the philosophical level.
The power of the Path turned, granting him through instinct the strength to plunder everything, driving his ambition to alter the world, and forging in him the will to trample all phenomena.
A glance from an Aeon elevated an existence at the level of destiny.
Put on this golden headband, and you would no longer be a mortal, no longer insignificant grass in the galaxy. Everyone would have to regard you more highly.
Before you continue