Fu Hua fell silent.
A startled cry came from afar.
Danzhu shouted at the top of her lungs, "Stop dawdling! The big one's coming!"
A great tremor struck.
With a thunderous crash, a giant Honkai Beast burst out of the ground.
Fu Hua flashed forward like lightning, closing in instantly.
As a MANTIS, she needed no time at all to deal with fodder like this.
One strike killed it.
The dust settled.
Cangxuan sensed the fluctuations around them. "Honkai energy readings have dropped to zero. The crisis is over."
Danzhu sighed in relief, a smile spreading across her face. "Looks like it was just a small-scale anomaly. No sign of a great cataclysm yet."
"There's plenty of time for Project Ember. Come on, let's head back to Mount Taixu."
The other two still looked grave.
Danzhu pursed her lips, turned, and walked away.
A secluded path at the foot of the mountain.
The wind moaned.
Looking at the shadows ahead, Fu Hua suddenly spoke. "You said I refused to clear my memories because I was selfish?"
Cangxuan sighed without answering.
Fu Hua continued on her own. "I used to be an ordinary person. I lived at the very bottom of a big city, caught in an awkward position."
"City people thought I was a hick, and country people laughed at me for putting on airs. I didn't know where I belonged."
"My future was clear back then: further education, a job, or inheriting my father's martial arts school and living an unremarkable life."
Her thoughts drifted far away.
Back to that first, innocent age.
"Many years ago, I was just a little girl afraid of the dark. What did humanity's survival have to do with me?"
"But in the blink of an eye, thousands upon thousands of years were