Honkai Double Transmigration, Taking Xilian to Honkai Impact 3

"Is A-Cheng playing a game of calling out coordinates?"

Xilian stepped into the space between them, her gaze landing squarely on him as she collided with his personal space. Her soft, delicate body leaned toward him like a willow branch swayed by a spring breeze, her small head tilted playfully to one side.

"I'm right here in front of you, A-Cheng~ As long as you wish, I will always—always be right here~"

It was a wink absolutely brimming with electricity.

In the literal sense of the word.

"Rumble—rumble—"

Thunder exploded directly in the firmament above, the flash momentarily making the dim world as bright as day.

"Mei, why don't you come down first? Even though you're a Herrscher now and your physical capabilities have improved drastically, it... it must be cold up there, right?" Jiang Cheng attempted to persuade her.

"..."

"Do you need a warmer embrace?"

"..."

"Shall we go interrogate Cocolia together? That will definitely make you feel better!"

"...Ah, I see."

The gloomy weather cleared in an instant, replaced by an endless, cloudless sky; one only had to look up to see the magnificent sunset in its entirety.

Raiden Mei descended from the high altitude immediately.

The majestic posture of the Empress of Takemikazuchi faded instantly, reverting to her original self.

"My apologies, I had too much faith in you, City-kun."

"?"

"Don't worry about me, I didn't discover anything, just a small sigh of realization," Raiden Mei shook her head, her pale, jade-like fingers pressing gently against her proud chest. "I suddenly realized that everything you told me from the very beginning was the absolute truth. It seems... I need to work much harder from now on."

"Alright, if there's anything, please be sure to tell me."

Jiang Cheng could only offer such a reply.

Afterward, they interrogated Cocolia once more. Realizing that she had failed completely and recognizing her own foolishness, Cocolia seemed to have become entirely despondent, begging only for the pain to end.

Jiang Cheng successfully obtained every detail, even including the ancestry of some of the radical members going back eighteen generations.

"Ahhh—!"

"Kill me! The winner takes all, and the loser is the villain! There's nothing left to say... just give me a quick death!!!!"

Jiang Cheng merely looked on at her screams with cold indifference.

Yes.

The winner takes all, mutual appreciation—stories like these were endless throughout history. Even if an enemy showed respect after killing their opponent, it would be reasonable.

"But are you worthy of it?"

"Ahhhhhhh—!"

After resting for half a day and recovering some strength, Cocolia began her endless screaming and wailing again.

"Regarding you, I shouldn't have had such a negative opinion. I can understand how an excellent and noble officer from that era could become disillusioned and turn to extremes after seeing her superiors engage in corruption and witnessing the untouchable power of humanity."

"Seeking power, opening an orphanage for that purpose, using the adopted orphans for experiments, and keeping the talented survivors as your own faction—I can accept things like this. If anything, compared to those bastards in Schicksal who swindle innocent girls everywhere, you at least let them live. Without your protection, they would have died long ago—died before the experiments, died in the frozen wilderness of Siberia. It was a fair trade."

"Even your conflict with ME Corp was just an ordinary political struggle, an infighting between different factions within the same organization. Such things happen countless times every moment. There is no difference between large-scale political struggles and small ones; they are all just humanity consuming itself. If it weren't for the fact that Mei has special significance to me, I wouldn't even have glanced at such matters."

Unlike before, where every word and sentence revealed his disgust and disdain for the arrogant woman before him, Jiang Cheng now seemed to offer Cocolia a measure of recognition.

It was not mere insults or belittlement.

Raiden Mei did not care at all about his shift in attitude, instead focusing solely on the keywords.

--[Mei has special significance to me.]

The girl's pale fingers rose subconsciously, tracing her own lips, touching her cheeks...

They were so hot, and her lips were curling upward.

Meanwhile, Kiana, who had joined halfway through, scratched the back of her head upon hearing the bad things about Schicksal—

So that's why the Stinky Old Man never let this young lady have contact with Schicksal.

Without a shred of doubt regarding Jiang Cheng's words, Kiana unhesitatingly accepted them as the truth.

"...Then, is it because of Nagazora..." Cocolia regained a sliver of her reason, looking up at him as best she could.

"I am not a hero."

Jiang Cheng shook his head without hesitation.

Even though he had stepped onto the Path of The Hunt, it did not mean he would become one of those noble rangers.

Rangers could not save him, and no Arbiter had ever emerged from among the rangers. Walking this path would absolutely not save Omphalos.

44. How could I possibly look up to you?

"Even your attempt to bury Nagazora is irrelevant to me, because at the end of the day, I don't know this city, nor do I know a single person in it. I don't know how they live, how they study, what they eat, what they do, or what they play... Nagazora doesn't belong to me, and I don't know it. The size of this world has always depended on how many people you know."

"Raiden Mei became a Herrscher because of your foolish indulgence. After tearing apart everyone who bullied her once and for all, and shredding the entire city that harbored malice toward her, she met the people she was meant to meet and left her past life behind. Those forced into becoming Herrschers never need to talk about atonement. Bystanders are accomplices, and besides, how many pure bystanders were there in this city? Weren't they all just spitting insults?"

The entire world one lives in feeling disgust is certainly not something a high school girl can bear.

If anything, even an adult treated this way would likely only think one thing—kill, kill, kill!

Adults, when pushed to the absolute limit, might think of taking revenge on the world, but a young girl whose mind has not yet matured will truly be like those children bullied from a young age—her spine completely broken. Under the intense negation of others, she would truly believe she is incompetent, truly believe she is useless, and believe that she... deserves to accept all of this.

Perhaps he is being hypocritical.

Perhaps Raiden Mei, having enjoyed the life of a young lady, had reason to be bullied without limit when she fell.

But he just doesn't like it. He doesn't like this sort of thing no matter what, just as he wouldn't like any piece of trash who has participated in school bullying.

There might still be some innocent people in the city, so he doesn't mind lending a hand in passing, but that doesn't mean they hold any indispensable importance to him.

"Don't all the residents of Nagazora that Raiden Mei sees want to rush up and kick her the moment they see her from afar? Just like kicking a dog, because others are doing it too. There's no cost to blending into the crowd, so they can vent their malice without restraint. Even if Raiden Mei enjoyed the affluent life of the Raiden family, as an underage girl, she absolutely had no reason to be treated this way by the group. Even if she truly were the daughter of a sinner, the only ones who could torment her would be the actual victims, not a bunch of rabble hiding in the crowd."

"And as for the truth of this so-called sin... Heh, surely no one understands better than you how innocent Raiden Ryoma is. At the end of the day, he was a researcher! So what if he repurposed things? So what if he misappropriated them?! The development results of the plasma were his get-out-of-jail-free card, even his glory. Even if he squandered ten times the money, no one would have the qualifications to deny him. Some people didn't understand, some did... but whether they understood or not, they still treated his daughter this way. Then the malice created by the group should naturally be borne by the group, and you are the same."

"So I will not call the souls of any of them. Even if they really died, it has no moral connection to me. These things alone only make me view you as an enemy that must be killed, not someone to be belittled or mocked."

"But you, specifically, did it out of hesitation. You were driven by the stupidity of guilt and greed, ugly and disgusting."

Jiang Cheng looked down from above at this radical leader, who was already in a wretched state on the screen.

"...?"

Cocolia seemed unable to understand such a statement.

Perhaps she was simply unwilling to understand. After all, understanding one's own mistakes and flaws is painful for anyone.

If humans have even a sliver of room to escape, they will turn their gaze away without hesitation, then frantically find all sorts of reasons to add patches to their mistakes—patches that are tolerable, gentle, and unrelated to themselves.

"You feel doubt about yourself as an officer, you hesitate as a leader, you frantically pursue strength, and you are unable to carry out your responsibilities as a mother... You cannot shirk any of these identities, and all of them interfere with you. You are regretful yet moving forward, and because of that, you appear—ridiculous!"

"You clearly opened an orphanage, allowing the girls who appeared there to accept experiments under semi-voluntary conditions, and through this, you achieved great progress in the quantum field. And thanks to the selfless gift of Seele—the girl who fell into the Sea of Quanta because of your experiments, yet still holds sincere love for you and Bronya—you obtained Project Bunny, a technology that transcends the era, pushing the combat power of the Titan Mechs forward by several levels."

"But you don't believe in the human heart at all. You don't believe that people can transcend the constraints of Honkai to become Herrschers with self and humanity. You only want to control everything yourself, even if the miracle called emotion has appeared before you a thousand times, even if you saw that burnt-out Deep Sea Butterfly Hairpin. So you viewed Raiden Mei as a mere enemy, a tool that must be captured and utilized. Yet, you have never once doubted whether you—Cocolia—are truly—"

His voice was measured and deliberate at this moment; his calm tone seemed sharper than any mockery.

Cocolia's pupils trembled, and she tried desperately to stop him from saying the next sentence.

"—qualified to oppose a Herrscher?"

"..."

She remained silent, without even half a response. Even when molten iron fell, it didn't elicit a single scream.

"Heh..."

Jiang Cheng sneered.

He completely ignored that look of collapse—he even took pleasure in that look of collapse.

Raiden Mei clenched her fists tightly.

[Well said!]

[As expected of Jiang Cheng!]

Deep within her heart, applause was already ringing out incessantly. That voice seemed so excited it was about to reach a climax on the spot.

Kiana, meanwhile, watched this scene through gritted teeth.

In normal times, she might have worried—"Can people with future vision even be this good at scolding others? If so, what about when I was little and liked to play in the snow without shoes, or when I was taking a bath? Wouldn't he have seen all of that!"

But the current Kiana was only filled with anger—anger that after Cocolia received her daughter's love, she actually looked down on that love and used the daughter who loved her for experiments.

This unprovoked anger continued to spread, making her feel somewhat strange, completely transcending the boundaries of anger.

It developed to the point where her knuckles were creaking, and she wanted to reach through the screen and punch her hard in the face.

"..."

The whimsical and gentle girl also realized once again how unpleasant reality is outside of fairy tales.

Xilian was not a poet; she was just a girl who told stories that people yearned for. In her stories, "the world also hides its scars and smiles for people to see."

But is the real world too cruel? Even seemingly beautiful stories end up in such a disgusting conclusion because of greed and desire.

"You are a pure clown. You can neither let go of your conscience nor your pursuits; you are only fit to sway back and forth."

Jiang Cheng looked down at her, his eyes full of contempt.

"You can't see yourself clearly, and you can't see the world clearly. You only live in your own fantasies. If I don't mock someone like you, who should I mock? Should I mock Otto, who promised Kallen he would save the world, yet remained indecisive after participating in the Black Box experiments, personally killing the girl he loved? Or Kevin, who holds the greatest power but remains indifferent to the internal friction of the higher-ups, watching his girlfriend constantly shoulder burdens with a mortal body, taking on more power and more tasks... until she worked herself to death?"

"..."

PS: Simply killing her is too easy. Torturing her heart like this is more fitting for Cocolia.

45. The Ultimate Insult to Raiden Ryoma

The first thing to do next was, naturally, to rescue Raiden Ryoma.

The journey to the prison did not take long.

Cocolia was not merely foolish; knowing better than anyone that her methods were far from noble, she naturally could not let Raiden Ryoma out of her sight.

As long as she kept Raiden Ryoma under her constant watch, then no matter what trump cards the other side held, they would have to get past her first.

And the prison she had prepared for Raiden Ryoma was certainly not a place that just any Tom, Dick, or Harry could break into.

Jiang Cheng could be certain that even an S-rank Valkyrie like Rita would need to expend a great deal of time to get in. Those experiments of hers had indeed pushed her technology forward by a significant margin; setting aside her narrow-mindedness, she was actually not too weak.

The layers of tight security measures and the excessive stockpiles of explosives could easily bring about the Destruction of the entire city block. Clearly, Cocolia was prepared to flip the table.

But unfortunately, the layers of lockdown and surveillance she had prepared were utterly insignificant to Jiang Cheng.

--Brute force was all it took.

"Who are you? Do you know where this i—"

"Bang!"

Jiang Cheng couldn't be bothered to listen to their threats. He killed all the prison guards instantly, dealt with the numerous mechs arranged in his path as easily as crushing tofu, and finally punched a hole through the main gate.

As the severed heads rolled across the floor like bowling balls, Jiang Cheng appeared before Raiden Ryoma.

"--!!!"

His eyes widened to their limit.