"Su, your lifespan..."
Kevin returned to the Seed of Sumeru and once again met his dear friend, Su.
He needed to see his comrade one last time before he left.
All of Kevin's comrades were gone. Even Hua had completely lost her memories of the Previous Era; the current Fu Hua and Hua were two entirely different people.
Everything that was Hua had vanished in the Current Era.
"Kevin, in the end, I was never able to find any trace of him. You understand—the first principle of parallel universes is that they are parallel, but in none of these worlds was there any similar shadow of him. You could even say those worlds lacked the ability to even face the Honkai."
"And I no longer have the strength to investigate his origins. To this day, we don't even know what kind of existence he is. Isn't that laughable?"
Su lamented the final moments of his life slipping away.
Time flows on like a river, never ceasing day or night.
Kevin didn't speak. He walked over and leaned against the tree with Su, watching the leaves fall. Within them were the memories left behind by their Previous Era—perhaps a bit blurry, perhaps slightly altered.
But this was the last thing Su cherished.
"Kevin, aren't you worried about what he'll do? He even wants to plunder parallel worlds. To him, worlds are like a child's first toy. He tears at them with his teeth, breaks them, explores them. In his innocence, he exhibits humanity's most primal impulse toward the material world. If he doesn't understand a substance, he'll divide it infinitely; if he doesn't understand a life form, he'll dissect and study it; if he doesn't understand a social structure, he'll delve deep to investigate it."
"When humans do these things as adults, they've already lost the pure spirit of inquiry that children possess."
"He has no intention of eliminating the Honkai, nor does he worry about the crisis it brings. He can even enact an insane plan like locking down humanity's genetic pathways to prevent the Honkai's descent."
"I have never seen an existence like this in any parallel world. Even a scientist with as wild an imagination as Mobius is a far cry from him."
Su spoke calmly, "To this day, I have never seen him make a real move. Kevin, do you think the form of Finality can force his hand?"
Kevin shook his head. "I'm not sure, because I know nothing about this so-called man from the future. If even you can't observe a corresponding existence of him in parallel worlds, it means his existence is not connected to ours. At the very least... he is not a life form that spawned from the Imaginary world."
"That's right. He's like pure matter. The movement of matter creates the spirit, and the movement of the spirit reveals matter... It's like..." Su fell silent for a moment, then sighed. "Like... an existence that has broken through the traditional boundaries of life, yet he insists on presenting himself in the form of a human life."
"You might not understand what I mean, Kevin. It's as if the Will of the Honkai decided its own existence wasn't that important, so it gave up all its Honkai authority and threw itself into the weakest life form it could find."
Kevin opened his eyes, asking with confusion, "That sounds like a Herrscher, but the way you describe it is completely different. If he's not a life form derived from the Imaginary, then what kind of being is he?"
"I don't know. If I knew, I wouldn't be lying here chatting with you. I'd be taking up arms for one last, decisive battle against the Honkai."
Su had also, for once, let go of the burden he carried. Compared to a completely illogical future-man like Noldrei, that "Suo" person was as laughable as a child's squabble.
Suo probably couldn't even defeat Kevin, let alone the Herrscher of Finality.
"Hah... Is that so?"
Kevin hadn't expected the Current Era to stumble upon something like this. Perhaps Kiana Kaslana should never have passed by that place on that day and shot that mud monster a couple of times.
If Kiana hadn't made the first move, Noldrei would have most likely followed the energy fluctuations to hunt down Raiden Mei, whose Herrscher Core was more complete.
It sounded as if Kiana had completely relied on luck to steal the good fortune of others.
"You no longer need to delve into the cocoon's backdoor to obtain the authority of the Herrscher of Finality. Just let either of those two go in. What do you plan to do next? You probably still have tens of thousands of years left to live."
Su was talking about Kevin's lifespan.
Though they were both MANTISes, Su had already exhausted his life force observing parallel worlds. Kevin, however, could still fight for a very long time, long enough to see what the future of humanity would look like.
Kevin remained silent. He no longer had any motivation to live.
His body was still brimming with infinite vitality, but his spirit was like petrified rock, like a withered old man.
Death would be the best release for Kevin's tormented soul.
Of course, he could also borrow Fu Hua's Fenghuang Down and unleash a couple of blank blasts at the universe.
But that would mean forgetting the past he shared with his friends. He would rather just die.
"Find a place... and dig a grave for myself."
This was the only conclusion Kevin could think of.
"I find the people of the Current Era a bit hard to understand. Do you know about the Second Academy City? There's a group of people there with a special job. They primarily enter other people's dreamscapes and, through interaction and analysis, fulfill the person's needs to heal their psychological pain."
"Humans are a species that is gradually losing the ability to forget pain. What's special about it is that even if you can restore the state of the human brain, you can't erase the painful memories that remain. So, they can only use Stigmas to enter dreams, dig out these painful memories bit by bit, and then gently soothe and erase them. That's what the Second Academy City is doing."
"This method is primarily based on practical experiments with bioroids in the Far East Academy City, while in Jerusalem, it's focused on psionic experiments. The two approaches work in tandem to help people gradually soothe and forget these painful memories. It's not a complete disappearance, but rather a state where recalling them no longer triggers a physical stress response."
"It's truly wonderful that the Current Era has such an ability to handle these things."
Kevin felt that such a method wouldn't work on him. His spirit was deeply integrated into the Kaslana Stigma Space, which made his willpower one of the strongest.
The thought of changing his mind or will was utterly impossible.
"In the Previous Era, just surviving was more than difficult enough. Where would we have found the extra time to think about healing the pain in humanity's spiritual world?"
The one thing Kevin never expected was that this method could actually contain the Honkai in the Current Era.
As if remembering something, Su said, "By the way, you can't die just yet. There's one more thing I need your help with. We still haven't found Griseo's location. I need to figure out a way to confirm where she is, one last time."
Kevin took a deep breath. He really had no way of refusing his friend.