"Who made that rule? Dr. Mei?"
"Why should we listen to her?"
"After all these years, where is this so-called 'welfare'?"
Memories rewound.
"By the time I arrived, Chi You had already been sealed."
"All that remained were small fry."
True Fu Hua kept her eyes tightly shut.
Only after a long while did she speak softly.
"I... have regretted it all this time, too."
To her, Cangxuan and Danzhu mattered more than anything.
No matter how time passed.
Even after thousands of years.
They still appeared in her dreams.
But when she woke, all that remained was a hollow sense of loss.
On every anniversary of their deaths.
She would cross countless mountains and rivers just to offer a bouquet of flowers.
Their deaths.
Had become wounds in her heart that would never heal.
Tormenting her every day.
Leaving her blaming herself every night.
She knew perfectly well.
Black Fu Hua was not wrong.
That judgment had been utterly mistaken.
But even so.
Even now, she still needed the words "for all humanity" as a fig leaf.
To numb herself.
To prove that her choice back then had not been misguided.
After all.
Fighting Honkai was her sole mission.
Watching True Fu Hua before her gradually sink into dejection.
"After all, you are me."
Black Fu Hua's voice was low and hoarse, carrying an eerie intimacy. "You feel my pain as your own. See? What distance is there between us?"
She smiled softly, as though soothing a frightened animal she had cornered.
"Stop agonizing over it. Want to see... just how many things I've messed up in this lifetime? This wasn't the first."
Their vision abruptly warped.
The acrid smoke of an ancient battlefield hit them.
Tattered banners, broken halberds, and bodies strewn everywhere. This was the Cuman Steppe,