"Xin Yu, are you sure you'll be alright on your own?" Welt asked, still looking worried as he watched Xin Yu, who had pulled his hood back on and was preparing to depart. After all, he considered the young man a junior from his old home.
"Leaving should be simple enough for me. The problem now is whether you all can deal with Phantom, that powerful Annihilation Gang Lord, with minimal losses. Although I've already notified the general on the Luofu, if a strong expert like that truly goes berserk, the damage could be immense. You must all act with the utmost caution."
Xin Yu glanced at March 7th and Stelle beside him and sighed. "March, your acting skills may not be the best, but I still hope you can act as normally as possible. As for you, Stelle, there shouldn't be any issues. Most people can't figure out what you're thinking anyway."
"Don't worry! This old hand won't blow her cover. I'm a senior member of the Express Crew, after all. You, on the other hand, are in a much more dangerous situation. If anything happens, you have to let us know. We'll all figure out a way to help you."
"Right. My current situation isn't suitable for lingering. Although I don't know what Aha's prank was for, there's no doubt that it has its eyes on me now. I must leave this place. If I get hit with a few more 'pranks' like that, none of us will be able to take it."
Xin Yu truly did want to travel this vast galaxy for a while longer. He really liked it here. But how could an ordinary person possibly withstand the pranks of an Aeon? And while he himself was no longer ordinary, to those Aeons, he was likely nothing more than a slightly larger ant.
This was no place to stay. He had to leave.
After bidding farewell to the crew once more, a ripple-like pattern faintly appeared on Xin Yu's body. It spread until his entire form dissolved into the void and vanished without a trace.
And in those brief few seconds, unnoticed by everyone else, a mark of a Path flashed deep within Stelle's pupils.
"...That's not right. It was more like he briefly left the water's surface, only to re-enter it. This means he's not just an outsider. He is either a visitor from a higher dimension, or he possesses power that is on a level sufficient to transcend ours," Welt murmured.
"Xin... Yu..."
This time, Xin Yu did not actively choose when to emerge from his travels. Instead, he surrendered to the power of spacetime, allowing it to carry him along, sweeping him into an unknown temporal node.
The journey through time felt particularly long, so long that Xin Yu began to wonder if he had been sent to the extremely distant past or future.
When the surrounding power of spacetime finally dissipated completely, Xin Yu opened his eyes. He discovered that he hadn't appeared in a corner of some world as usual, but rather in a world made of pure purple.
In this world composed of purple, the concentration of Honkai energy was absurdly high. Xin Yu saw numerous crystals, formed from the natural condensation of vast amounts of Honkai, floating in mid-air.
He even saw blue crystals—formed under immense pressure as pure Honkai was compressed and stacked together—which were exceedingly difficult to obtain under normal circumstances.
Yet in this purple world, he could see them everywhere he looked.
With just a simple scan, Xin Yu found thousands upon thousands of the crystals.
The concentration of Honkai energy here was simply off the charts. But what was this place? How could there be so much of it?
As Xin Yu pondered this, a massive vertical pupil suddenly appeared above him—or perhaps it was simply "above," as the concept of gravity didn't seem to exist here. In any case, it appeared over Xin Yu's head.
This colossal pupil was also purple. On each side of it, three black, spine-like protrusions jutted out, resembling both tree branches and the sharp points of a dark, skeletal spine.
Xin Yu felt its gaze. He looked up, meeting the stare of the immense, star-sized vertical pupil.
"...A higher-dimensional being? No, that's not it. More like an Emissary of that higher-dimensional being... or perhaps a Follower? You are also growing in a peculiar way."
A ripple, nearly physical in its intensity, spread outwards. Though no sound was uttered, the psychic wave brushed past Xin Yu, conveying the being's meaning and causing him to feel a wave of headache and nausea, as if that single telepathic sentence was enough to overwhelm him.
"...A strange method of growth. If you continue to grow, you may not be incapable of reaching an equivalent level... Interesting."
"This is not a place for you to linger. I will send you away."
"Who... Who are you?"
"...You may call me the Will Incarnate."
Xin Yu's vision instantly went black. His experience this time was completely different. If his previous spacetime travels were like riding a fast and stable maglev train, then his current sensation was like having his head bashed in before being stuffed into a washing machine on a high-speed spin cycle.
After the bout of nausea, dizziness, and headache finally passed, Xin Yu collapsed on the ground, his consciousness a blurry mess.
He lay there for a long while. Only after he had recovered slightly did he shakily climb to his feet. He looked around, dazed, and found that he had appeared on a stretch of wasteland. To be more precise, it wasn't just wasteland, but a field of pure, charred earth.
As Xin Yu surveyed the area, which looked as if it had been both burned and blasted by some powerful energy, he suddenly noticed a body lying not far ahead.
Xin Yu immediately rushed over, a faint sense of familiarity telling him he knew that person.
When he arrived, he found that the body was cradling a small, white-haired girl.
"Uncle Siegfried! Kiana!"
Xin Yu stared in shock at the dead Siegfried. That was right—the man's body was almost completely destroyed from the inside, and his soul was already gone. What lay on the ground was nothing more than an empty shell.
Kiana, however, was breathing steadily in his arms, as if asleep. Yet Xin Yu could sense an incredibly potent power within her body, a power whose magnitude was on par with his own.
"What in the world happened here?"
Xin Yu understood that he seemed to have arrived in a brand new world. For a moment, he wanted to try and travel through time to save this world's Siegfried. But just as he was about to do so, he found that his ability wouldn't activate. He could still sense the surrounding flow of time, but when he tried to traverse it—to go to the past or the future—the power of spacetime became a solid wall, making it utterly impossible for him to pass through.
What... What was going on in this world?
While Xin Yu was still reeling in confusion, he suddenly heard a sound. He looked up and saw a figure slowly walking towards him from beyond the charred earth.
"Who are you?"
The approaching man frowned at Xin Yu, who had appeared out of nowhere. Just moments ago, Siegfried had sacrificed his own life to defeat the Kiana who was being controlled by the will of the Honkai. And then this fellow had just... appeared. Was he from Schicksal?
"Give her to me."
His tone was heavy. It was Schicksal's brutally crude Herrscher core fusion experiment that had led to this tragedy.
"And who are you?"
"Anti-Entropy. Welt."
???
Was Mr. Welt this young? The difference is pretty huge. It must be because this is a different world.
Welt watched Xin Yu's dumbfounded expression, his own brow furrowing. He began to carefully size up the young man before him. After a moment of observation, his expression changed drastically.
"What are you!"
He attacked Xin Yu without the slightest hesitation.