Jiang Cheng opened his eyes as wide as he could.
As if seeing the world for the first time, he took in everything around him.
"Me..."
"I can neither pierce Finality nor burn Amphoreus to the ground, but there's at least one thing—"
"Even I can do it."
At the edge of Earth and Amphoreus.
In the gap between them.
It was the crack where the two seals met, the only place not surrounded by a seal.
Something that should have remained hidden.
Surfaced clearly in the ripples of time.
Through his vision, growing hazy white as his body crumpled from unbearable pain—eighteen radiant bands of light, piercing the cosmos—had never been so clear.
"Bear witness, mighty being."
"My..."
"—rage!"
Destruction and the Hunt, I Have No Regrets! (Revised)
Countless stars adorned the dark night sky.
Like the deepest veil, carefully crafted by an artisan and decorated with every jewel in the world.
It flowed down like a stream, connecting sky and earth. Flawless light took the shape of waves, scattering silver specks that blurred into a dreamlike, dusky blue.
But even the entire starry sky, with its countless spinning stars and celestial bodies, could serve only as a backdrop.
There, he could see—
A dark-skinned man;
A victim, boundlessly immense and towering, his body pierced and cut by countless wounds;
Golden blood, blazing hot, streamed from his colossal body, every drop falling from its immeasurable height.
There, he could see—
An arrowhead aimed at the heavens;
Immeasurably swift and sharp, its gleaming tip seemed to keep its sights on everything in the world;
Drawing the bow, loosing the arrow—a streak of light, as if piercing heaven and earth, tore through the entire night in an instant. It flew toward him at an ultimate speed beyond imagining, beyond description by anything at all, and pierced—
—him.
"—"
"First Arrow: Dust Sees Shadow!"
Jiang Cheng could feel himself moving forward, taking several steps from the roots of the boundless light.
The sensation might sound abstract, but put into practical terms, it was—
Power.
His strength had been no better than an ordinary person's. After Honkai Energy had enhanced him in a way that was like drinking poison to quench his thirst, his vision had surpassed the limits of humanity. Now, it was undergoing its most complete transformation.
Jiang Cheng could even make out details among the brilliant stars that seemed to flicker like a backdrop.
It wasn't some fanciful tale of seeing across countless light-years at a glance and observing the lives of those who dwelled there. Rather, he was sensing something more essential, something sharper.
It was real. It was alive.
It was a paradise he could enter, one he could reach if only he ran forward with all his might.
He could go back right now and torture and slaughter those damn pieces of trash—the arrogant, foolish wastes of space—in the cruelest way possible!
He could have his revenge, an eye for an eye!
But...
Should he go back?
An inexplicable thought surfaced in Jiang Cheng's mind.
Now that he had gained this sensitivity of the Hunt, things from his past appeared more clearly before him.
For the first time, he clearly saw the thorns and flames strewn across the road. Even if he stepped onto another road that seemed completely parallel and unrelated, all that changed was that there were fewer flames and more blood-drawing brambles.
His fate could change—from a quick death to a slow one, from being killed in an instant to bleeding all the way forward.
Did he really want to face such a cruel fate?
Amphoreus had Laigushi. Could Earth in the solar system really be any better?
Honkai. Finality.
The Cocoon.
The ruler of fate, all-knowing and all-powerful, uniting the Quantum and Imaginary; the Imaginary Singularity beyond infinite space.
In truth, this was an enemy he could never hope to match, no matter what. Countless worlds, countless timelines, countless possibilities—everything was firmly in Its grasp. Even though Elysia had sacrificed her life to destroy the threads of fate, compared to the Cocoon's scale, it was still...
Insignificant.
What followed was an event closer to a miracle.
After five thousand years of two civilizations passing the torch between them, they had accomplished something beyond the bounds of understanding.
Something incomprehensible, something that had made them gods.
Could he really claim to have completely solved the Honkai?
Jiang Cheng looked at deep space, like a backdrop, and at the boundless, magnificent, wondrous paradise.
He suddenly realized—
He could leave.
This was the best time, his one and only chance. There was little chance he could enter the Path Interstice again by sheer luck, but now he could run toward the stars.
The vacuum didn't matter. No Pathstrider was unable to walk through it.
With the Hunt's gaze upon him, he could make his way anywhere in the galaxy.
If he wanted seclusion, he could enter any interstellar civilization and become a hermit or a high-ranking military officer. If he wanted to get involved in the main story, he could go to the Xianzhou. He could even seek out the Legion.
He was still young. His future was limitless.
—If he kept moving forward, he could leave this cruel world behind, leave the thorns and flames behind.
◇
"Second Arrow: Lost Sheep at the Crossroads!"
◇
There was no need to choose between others and himself, was there?
He knew better than anyone what death meant.
—Nothingness.
Jiang Cheng seemed to see the darkness that swallowed everything. It ground every matter to dust. Swallowing the light wasn't even worth boasting about to It, because even the universe itself lay beneath Its shadow. Everything in the world repeated an eternal, endless cycle.
Everything other than the Aeons was unable to escape Its grasp. It was only a matter of how soon.
Compared to It, Welt was utterly insignificant.
To risk death, to face nothingness, for a reason like this—it simply wasn't worth it.
There was no such thing as lasting beyond death in this world. Death meant the end of consciousness, the shattering of the soul, every sensation and experience reduced to nothing but scraps of nothingness.
Thud—
—Jiang Cheng took a step forward.
Knowing better than anyone what awaited him in death, he walked toward the towering, brilliant god who lit the endless starry sky with arrows—and toward the "god" behind him, who seemed poised to burn everything away, looking down upon all creation with indifference: the result of Chaos, Entropy.
It was such a stupid, stupid thing to do.
It would ruin his life.
"Maybe one day in the future, I'll hate myself for what I'm doing today. I'll hate myself for walking toward the flames and thorns, hate myself for not choosing the life I had before."
"But I still think this is what I should do now."
"My regret in the future will be real, but my anger and sorrow right now are just as real."
"Maybe in Cyrene's eyes, I seem clever because I'm always telling all kinds of stories. But I'm actually a complete fool. And the biggest sign of a fool is choosing to let anger burn when he could have made a calm decision—having a brighter future ahead of him, yet giving in to a moment's emotions."
But...
I really did prefer being a fool.
Being clever meant constantly calculating every little thing and weighing the benefits. Didn't that get exhausting?
All that reason, all that composure was being swallowed up by rage, utterly consumed—
One step,
then two.
With every step, the temperature rose unmistakably.
The change was so extreme it would have terrified anyone. In just two steps, a gentle breeze had become unbearable heat. If he went any farther, it would be like bathing inside a star.
And yet—
Jiang Cheng's steps never faltered.
As if the entire world had changed with this shift in his thoughts, the Path Interstice—where the stars shone all around, yet remained frozen and lifeless, like a backdrop—
Moved.
An incomprehensible phenomenon appeared. The distance between them shrank, and Jiang Cheng saw Its face.
No.
It was that It allowed him to see Its face.
White hair, as if Its life and everything that could burn had been burned away.
Pupils hotter than flowing gold.
And a body that not even a warrior who had fought in a thousand of the cruelest battles could possess.
Brilliant, molten-gold blood, burning hot, rolled from Its battered body. It didn't scatter into the endless depths of the stars. It fell—
onto him.
"Sss—"
Though they were in the Path Interstice, it felt so hot that even his soul might burn away. The sensation was clear in every part of his body.
There was no need to describe the pain any further. All his rage, all his pent-up feelings, would be turned into power—
A blazing flame, as if it had taken the place of his blood.
He looked up instinctively. A meteor, which should have flashed across the sky like a mere backdrop, descended.
And then.
The light arrow that tore through the cosmos arrived once more.
Before you continue