"You may want such a world, but I don't, and no one would want such a world." Both Azhar and the Herrscher were showing signs of hysteria.
"That's why you are sinners! Sinners who can't let go of their interests and external things!" The hesitation in the Herrscher's mind quickly disappeared, and she roared at Azhar.
"But whether we become sinners or the good people in your heart, we must first be human!!" Azhar's voice was never soft. "If a person can't even interact with the outside world, how can they be called a person?!"
"You can't define what a human is!" The Herrscher's eyebrows twitched violently. "No one can define what a human is! They can only decide what they are doing, and this is their drawback!
"Arbitrarily interfering in other people's affairs, arbitrarily including others in their own affairs, getting entangled with each other, and harming each other! Everyone is thinking about how to get more benefits from others..."
The Herrscher's body began to tremble slightly due to her excitement, while Azhar suddenly "saw the light again" in the Herrscher's roar.
[In a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, a pale hand pushed away the corpses on top of it. The stench of decay filled this place, adding the last piece to this hell on earth.
The rotting corpses flowed with viscous slurry, and together with the grayish-brown blood, they clung to the naked girl.
This was the City of Sighs... to be precise, this was the City of Sighs that had just been swept by the Honkai.
The already fragile order was easily shattered by the Honkai.
The City of Sighs completely became a chaotic den of ghosts, and the surviving high-ranking officials gathered together and launched the "Great Purge" of the City of Sighs.
A literal great purge.
The completely sealed city was flooded with a great flood. It was unimaginable that in the City of Sighs, where water was so precious that it could be used as currency, these high-ranking officials actually had enough water to fill a whole city district.
The flood washed the zombies and the Honkai beasts into the sewers of the City of Sighs. But the loudest screams were from the survivors who had not turned into Honkai beasts. In the end, they came to this mountain of corpses and sea of blood with the dead.
And they left a curse. In this curse, the Herrscher opened her eyes.
The world she saw at first glance was sinful. The Herrscher walked among the corpses for a full day before reaching the border. Before leaving, she took a tattered black robe and put it on.
She could feel the evil thoughts in everyone's hearts and know how every corpse was formed. Every person she stepped on was telling her their pain.
The dense evil thoughts kept lingering in her ears, completely occupying her blank mind in just one day.
Human malice tried to twist her into a monster. It was Gu Chu's appearance that stopped her alienation.
But the words of those people were already engraved in her mind, interfering with her thoughts day and night.
They said: "I am the most important. What does it matter to me what happens to others?"
They said: "I'll be happy as long as I'm happy. Other people's misfortune will only make me happier."
They said: "Only fools sacrifice themselves to help others. Helping others is a hobby, but protecting one's own interests is an instinct."
...They said—
"Only in this way can we survive in this cannibalistic world, so it's not me who's wrong, but this world."
But was the world really wrong? The Herrscher did not sink into those words. She had eyes, ears, and her own thoughts, so she decided to seek and think.
The world did nothing. It always faced everyone objectively and equally, giving them the same death.
It was always other people who influenced individuals, the exclusion of the group, the oppression and restraint of the higher-ups, the resistance and cooperation of the bottom...
Human suffering comes not only from the world, but more from others. And people can't change the world, but people can change others.
She could too. Anyone could. Before changing the world, they should first do their own thing, and only their own thing.
But no one could do it, only herself.]
"If everyone could be strict with themselves, if everyone could be like Mr. Siegfried, there would be no need for me to even be born!!" Was it Azhar's illusion that in the end, there was a hint of a sob in the Herrscher's roar?
"But I still came! Because I have this power, I must do something! To eliminate the sins caused by the interaction between people, and to let people only face the objective harm from the world!
"It's you who are complaining about natural and man-made disasters, it's you who are resenting the evil people! It's you who are pitying yourselves as victims, and I am trying my best to eliminate the so-called [man-made disasters] for you!
"I want to prevent this from happening again. Is this wrong in your eyes?!"
The Herrscher suddenly grabbed her hair in a fit of madness. A trace of tears actually appeared in her divine eyes.
"I can be selfish too. I don't want to bear this responsibility either. I could have turned around and left. I could have left this mess that no longer needed to be saved. I could have left directly..."
The Herrscher's voice gradually faded. Her words made her a little confused.
That's right... could she have left from the very beginning?
Isn't it okay to just be herself? Isn't it okay to run away?
The world is big, and humans are few. As long as she hides, no one will be able to find her!
But... why was she here? Why did she have to go through so much trouble, go against her own wishes, and break the "island" she could have formed to find others? To judge others?
A faint golden light flickered in the corner of the Herrscher's vision.
...Because she had that ability.
Since she could do something, she had to do it, to use her ability to help more people, to block more [man-made disasters] for everyone.
She shouldn't use this ability to satisfy her desire for liberation. It should fall on everyone who doesn't have this ability.
She had been confused before. If everyone in the world needed to be cleansed, what was the point of her doing all this? Wouldn't it be better to just destroy everything?
So her actions were slow, just a routine judgment of those sins.
But on that day, she saw Siegfried and witnessed a truly pure person.
The future instantly had a framework.
She was no longer worried that she would cause the complete extinction of mankind, because in this world-ending flood, the chosen "Noah" had already appeared.
Let this world be left with only the Kaslanas!
"Is there only disaster between people?"
Suddenly, Azhar's voice sounded, shattering the world that the Herrscher saw.
A vague sense of absurdity rose in the Herrscher's heart, making her look at Azhar in confusion.
She had "seen" all the activities in the Herrscher's heart. It was precisely because there was no longer any complicated information in her world that she could see everything the Herrscher was thinking.
She stared ahead, and her eyes, which had fallen into darkness, were shining in the strong light around her.
"If the bond between people only leads to disaster, do I not even have the right to call for help?
"If there should be no bond between people, how should those who extend a helping hand to others be judged?
"Put down the urge to help others, respect the fate of others. Is this what you want the world to become?"
"No!" the Herrscher denied it very eagerly, but this denial did not silence Azhar, but herself.
Azhar let out a light laugh. "You know? I used to firmly believe in God, thinking that my devout prayers would be heard by God, thinking that God would extend a helping hand in my predicament.
"But my prayers fell on deaf ears. God never answered me... so my faith was shaken. I also began to think like you said, that only I could save myself."
God? Isn't that a belief created by humans for themselves? A spiritual food filled with weakness, escape, and self-comfort...
"But it turns out I was wrong. My prayers were not useless," Azhar's next words made the Herrscher stunned.
"You said it before, this world treats everyone fairly, but people are still strong and weak, people's talents are different, and the world has already marked everyone's ranks at birth.
"So should those who are mediocre, those who are flawed, be abandoned from the very beginning?
"No, if the world is just, then ordinary people like us should also have the right to live, but in fact..."
"The world did not give you such a right..." the Herrscher muttered, subconsciously completing the second half of Azhar's sentence.
Is the world fair? Every life has its own space to live in, but it is not fair, because it did not give every life the capital to survive.
Its favoritism is blatant, so...
There is God who helps the weak who hear the cries for help.
Azhar suddenly took a step forward, and in contrast, the Herrscher who had always been standing high subconsciously took half a step back.
"And is such a God who extends a helping hand to others also guilty? Then all the gods in the world, which one is not full of sins?!
"If you think what you are doing is right, then let's judge God here! Send all the gods who pity the human world to the gallows!
Azhar roared angrily, and suddenly raised her hand, pointing at the Herrscher who was standing in front of her.
"And you who came here following the pleas of the dead... what crime have you committed!"
The girl born in a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood picked up the precious "responsibility," but people wanted to burn her with the fire stolen by Prometheus.
This is the absurd reality.
The Herrscher's pupils trembled. And in her vision, the golden light in the corner flickered.
The scales flickered faintly, and slowly fell towards the heart in the Herrscher's incredulous eyes.
She had lost...
Just because she also came because of a bond.
The canopy and the storm stopped at this moment. The dark clouds in the sky pressed down on everyone's heads, and only the occasional flashes of firelight and golden light could be seen.
The gap that Xiezhi had traded its life for had passed. Everyone outside the canopy had long been ready, but the scene that appeared made them all a little dazed.
The chains had completely faded from their dark color and turned into bright golden chains.
But at this moment, they were all floating aimlessly in the air. And among those chains, a core shining with golden light was floating out from the Herrscher's chest and into the body of the scarred little girl.
[Sinner—Herrscher of Binding]
[Crime—Knowingly breaking the law]
[Sentence—Core deprivation]
But the moment the Herrscher's core merged into Azhar's body, a look of pain appeared on Azhar's face.
A shrill scream resounded through the heavens and the earth, and then only a hoarse, low groan was left.
"Your body can't take it!" the Herrscher, who had escaped the golden light, looked at Azhar, who was enveloped in the golden light, in horror. "You're just an ordinary person! If you forcibly merge with the core, you won't even last a second!"
Azhar couldn't answer, but the skin on her hand that was touching the core was already peeling off.
Deep purple corrosive patterns were rapidly climbing up her neck, and in an instant, they had climbed up her face.
But she still held on to the core tightly, even though the flesh and blood of that hand had been consumed by the golden light, leaving only a stiff bone hand tightly holding the core.
The world is unfair. Azhar was the child who was not favored. The huge Honkai energy of the core was enough to tear her to pieces in an instant.
Her consciousness almost went blank the moment she touched the core. The whole world was moving away from her. Only the reality of death was approaching her step by step.
She looked at the lights that were getting farther and farther away from her, and just slowly closed her eyes and raised her hand.
And in her palm was only a somewhat simple syringe containing a tube of pale pink liquid.
Does attachment only bring sin? Does attachment only involve mutual calculation?
"No... how can there be only these between people?" She just chuckled lightly, and at the moment death embraced her, she stuck the syringe into her neck.
...How can the embrace of death be warm?
"Azhar..." a soft murmur sounded in Azhar's ear, with a warmth that Azhar had not felt for a long time.
"Thank you for your hard work..." It was not the god of death who embraced Azhar from behind, but the woman she had been longing for day and night.
"...My daughter."
"Yes, mother..." Azhar greedily felt this warmth. Her fingers trembled slightly, and she pushed the tube of pale pink injection into her body.
[Honkai disease—the essence is the erosion of the body by Honkai energy that exceeds the body's tolerance.
And the only way to save a person infected with Honkai disease is—
To refine a tube of Honkai energy antibody from a thousand dead people infected with Honkai disease.]
Countless figures instantly appeared in this empty space, standing behind Azhar. They were all the Honkai disease patients in the City of Sighs who had been driven out of the residential area.
They raised their hands and put them on the people in front of them. Everyone was silent, just gently pushing forward.
At this moment, everyone used their bodies to temporarily separate Azhar from death.
But how could just one tube of medicine treat the erosion of a Herrscher's core? Azhar would still die!
But this short moment gained was enough.
"Phew..." a weak, long sigh sounded. Then, it was the overlapping but only Azhar's voice.
It sounded in everyone's hearts, like the proverbs of God, along with the pouring rain!
"I, Azhar, hereby pardon everyone—
"Not guilty!"