Kallen was not the only one who sprang up from a bed. Unlike Kallen's reflexive counter-attack, Himeko merely shuddered when she woke up, then fell silent upon recognizing the oddly familiar ceiling.
Where is this...?
A hint of confusion flickered in Himeko's amber eyes. She looked around, and only after confirming that her surroundings held nothing immediately dangerous did she cautiously rise.
It was a small room that looked very cozy. The furnishings were simple and practical: a bookshelf, a desk, a computer. Everything was arranged in a location Himeko recognized.
The room's layout tugged at her memories, yet she was absolutely certain she had never been to this place before.
How did I get here?
Himeko frowned, remembering clearly what she had been doing moments before.
Kallen, Fu Hua, and Natasha were each leading a squad into the Sapphire Pearl for preliminary reconnaissance and external clearing, while she was stationed outside with the Titan Squad.
Almost immediately after the operation began, all three teams reported that their leaders had collapsed simultaneously.
The three women, who were wearing the Theory of a Thousand Stars devices, suddenly fainted the moment they stepped into the Sapphire Pearl. The remaining squad members didn't dare proceed rashly and could only attempt to move the trio out first.
As soon as Himeko received the news, she immediately reported it to the base, stating that the situation was beyond their capabilities. She requested the deployment of the Quantum Cluster Calculator for predictive analysis and also told Shu to prepare for deployment to the frontline.
Himeko's terminal could still register the trio's vital signs. The data indicated they were only in a deep, induced sleep, with no other abnormal readings.
But one detail was extremely worrying: immediately after the three collapsed, the Honkai Energy concentration inside the stadium began to spike rapidly. The squad members who were trying to pull the women out at the entrance instantly felt physical discomfort.
As per their contingency plan, the squad members activated the Theory of a Thousand Stars devices allocated to them as soon as they felt discomfort and quickly evacuated the scene.
They were forced to retreat to the perimeter, unable even to retrieve the three captains.
All of this occurred in less than half a minute. In that half-minute, Himeko decided to use the capabilities of her Titan mecha to ascend and try to view the problem inside the Sapphire Pearl from above.
She rose several hundred meters, and the moment she entered the vertical boundary above the Sapphire Pearl, she lost consciousness.
And then, Himeko woke up in this room of eerie familiarity.
Returning to that strange familiarity, Himeko frowned and began to scrutinize the space.
This sudden "spatial transfer" was definitely abnormal. In Himeko's experience, only one thing could cause this: a Herrscher.
When did a new Herrscher appear inside the Sapphire Pearl?
Himeko didn't know, so she was trying her best to collect every piece of "abnormal" information she could.
This sense of strange familiarity was her starting point. She needed to comb through her memories to find where exactly she had seen an arrangement like this...
Clearly, the familiarity came from the room's setup, but Himeko was certain she had never lived in a house like this. Therefore, the familiarity could only stem from the furniture arrangement.
Among the people I know, who would arrange things like this?
This significantly broadened the scope of her thought process, but Himeko started sifting through her memories, trying to compare everyone she could recall to the present environment.
However, before Himeko could settle on a suitable answer, footsteps sounded outside the door.
Himeko's thought process stalled. She looked warily toward the door, not forgetting to reposition herself near the window and the bed, ready to act at a moment's notice.
The footsteps grew louder, walking purposefully toward her door. The person made no attempt to hide, and the rhythm of their steps was slightly irregular, sounding like an untrained adult...
But she couldn't rule out the possibility of them carrying weapons. This room wasn't large. Even if the person hadn't undergone training, she would be in grave danger if they had a handgun or an insurmountable laser weapon.
Although given the current circumstances—she wasn't restrained, wasn't harmed, the room felt domestic, and the probability of the person outside being an enemy was minimal—this was a critical moment. She had to remain vigilant.
The steel pen that had been on the desk was now reversed in her hand, concealed behind her back.
As expected, the footsteps stopped at the door. Himeko's breathing tightened slightly. Gripping the pen, she silently apologized to the person outside—who was likely an ordinary civilian.
"Click—"
The door was pushed open, and the person standing there made Himeko's pupils snap shut...
—
"Master, are you awake?" A gentle, soft voice sounded at the door, pulling Fu Hua back to reality from where she was staring blankly at the wall calendar.
The familiar voice made the hand Fu Hua had resting lightly on the blanket tremble.
She turned and saw the mature, gentle figure standing in the doorway, exactly as she remembered.
"Chaoyu?" The word that escaped her lips was slightly shaky, conveying both her disbelief at this person's appearance and her deep nostalgia.
The person standing in the doorway was, without a doubt, her eldest apprentice, Lin Chaoyu—who, if counting biological age, was actually several years older than Fu Hua herself.
She wore ordinary clothes, her black hair cascading like a waterfall, and her light-colored eyes seemed to look past the worldly changes, yet she was firmly rooted in this world.
She was simply there, seemingly fragile enough to be blown away by a gust of wind, but...
She was truly there, so real that she blocked the light from outside the door.
"It is I, Master." Lin Chaoyu was carrying a tray holding a simple, modest meal: a bowl of white congee, a glass of water, two steaming white mantou buns, and a small dish of preserved vegetables. It was a classic Taixu Martial Arts School breakfast.
Fu Hua's mouth parted slightly. She gazed at the sight before her, somewhat lost in thought. After a long moment, Fu Hua swallowed the words that had been on the tip of her tongue.
"Why are you here?" That was what Fu Hua had intended to say, but at this moment, wouldn't that question be too tactless?
Not only would it result in a useless answer, but it might also invite unnecessary trouble.
Therefore, after the words rotated in her chest once more, what came out was, "Good morning, Chaoyu."
The short silence that followed this greeting had a different interpretation in Fu Hua's heart: Long time no see.
Fu Hua's greeting surprised Lin Chaoyu slightly. She didn't say much, merely brought the tray to Fu Hua's bedside, set it down gently, and stood a single step away from the bed.
"Master, why did you suddenly return to Sapphire City?" After pausing briefly, Lin Chaoyu seriously posed this question to Fu Hua.
"More importantly, why did you faint at the Taixu Martial Arts School entrance last night?"
I fainted at the Taixu Martial Arts School entrance?
Fu Hua fell silent. The nostalgia in her heart gradually receded as her memories from before she collapsed surged forward.
When she stepped into the Sapphire Pearl, the Theory of a Thousand Stars suddenly activated, and the Xuanyuan Sword she carried reacted violently.
She had immediately become alarmed and tried to retreat from the stadium, but her head felt like it had been hit by a heavy blow. She struggled momentarily, then lost consciousness.
Fu Hua didn't know it, but because she was carrying the Xuanyuan Sword, she had sustained consciousness longer than the other three caught in this anomaly.
And that slight time bought by the Xuanyuan Sword was not useless...
Before falling unconscious, Fu Hua thought she heard a voice—somewhat familiar, yet also somewhat strange—whispering from a distance.
"If only... from the very start... things had been better..."
It was the voice of a young girl. It sounded familiar enough that Fu Hua felt she had definitely heard it before, yet strange enough that she knew she probably didn't know the owner.
Someone I know, who doesn't know me?
The memory ended there. Now was not the time for analysis. Based only on that fragmented sentence, even if she were the combined detective power of Fu Hua, Sherlock, and Watson, she couldn't guess the situation.
Her understanding of the present situation was probably less than Lin Chaoyu's. At least she had just learned from Chaoyu that she "fainted at the school gate last night."
This was the Taixu Martial Arts School. She was currently in her own room. Fu Hua was familiar with everything here; a few months had not dimmed her memories of the school in the slightest.
The surroundings were not perfectly silent. Besides Lin Chaoyu standing by the bed, the familiar sounds of the school were constantly drifting in from outside, coupled with the calendar posted in her room...
This fueled a ridiculous idea in Fu Hua's mind.
She had—for some unknown reason—been sent back six months, to December 1st.
The day the Great Eruption broke out!
Fu Hua's heart clenched. Even though Fire Moth was now operating smoothly, the day the Great Eruption descended remained the deepest and most painful memory for everyone who lived through it.
Fu Hua didn't need to try to remember; the key points of the eruption immediately flooded her mind.
5 PM in the Far East. The moment the last sliver of sunlight vanished below the horizon, the Honkai descended along with the stars and moon...
The sky that night was purple. Some people turned to ash in the purple light, while others rapidly withered and decayed amid body spasms.
The abrupt screams echoed in the ears of the survivors, like chisels under a heavy hammer, leaving a deep scar on everyone's heart.
Almost everyone had wondered what they could have done if they could go back to the day the Great Eruption struck.
Fu Hua was one of them.
The moment the Eruption began, the classmate she had just been talking to suddenly started convulsing. Fu Hua immediately sensed something was wrong, but at that moment, she hadn't yet grasped the concept of "zombies."
She thought the student might have a history of epilepsy and quickly called over nearby classmates. Only when she received no response did she realize something terrible had happened.
By then, Fu Hua knew what was happening. There was no room for doubt or disbelief; she immediately shouted for everyone to avoid the convulsing people.
But by the time she started calling out, some of the convulsing people had already turned and pounced on the normal people beside them.
If Chiba Academy hadn't been one of the top high schools in the Far East, with a spacious campus and a small, elite student body, the entire school might have been wiped out.
Later, when she arrived in the Chinese mainland, Fu Hua saw very few students, obviously due to the high density of schools there.
So Fu Hua always wondered: If I had told everyone to disperse immediately, could I have saved more people?
If everyone had scattered when the Honkai arrived, would more people have survived?
The answer was certainly yes.
But there were no "ifs." Faced with things that had already happened, people could only regret, awaken, and learn lessons.
...Are there really no "ifs"?
When she realized this, Fu Hua's breathing grew slightly heavy, but she quickly dismissed the idea.
No. The current situation is wrong, no matter how I look at it. I absolutely cannot assume I have "reborn" just because I've returned to a place I remember.
Compared to rebirth, "Illusion," "The Truman Show," or even a dying hallucination were far more probable.
Crucially, the location of her "rebirth" was the Taixu Martial Arts School, not Chiba Academy, where she should have been when the Great Eruption struck.
Coupling this with the fact that Herrschers include specialized consciousness manipulators like the Herrscher of Sentience, only one answer remained in Fu Hua's mind.
She had likely "arrived here" due to the influence of a Herrscher.
Fu Hua turned and glanced at the alarm clock in the room. Seeing 5:05 AM displayed, she breathed a sigh of relief.
No matter why she was here, there were still nearly twelve hours until the Great Eruption began.
She still had enough time to verify the nature and structure of this place...
"...Master?" Lin Chaoyu, who hadn't received an answer, still had her eyebrows slightly furrowed. The absentminded look Fu Hua wore gave her a deeply unsettling premonition.
She had never seen her Master look so dazed, as if something incredibly important had been lost and then recovered, yet she dared not believe it.
Something important to Master...
Last night—or rather, five hours ago, at midnight on November 31st—her second apprentice found the Master unconscious at the entrance and hurriedly brought her back.
They didn't know why Fu Hua had appeared here, why the Master who should have been in the Far East was suddenly here, or why the supposedly "invincible" Master would be unconscious...
Everything was a mystery, and now Master was displaying an emotion she had never shown before...
The person before her was clearly her Master, yet the feeling she gave off was like... she traversed through from another world.