"Well now? Our great hero who's going to save the world, what have you been busy with all these days? How many worlds have you saved? How many people suffering in misery have you helped?" Mobius sat at the dining table, sipped the soup Xin Yu had made, and asked in a teasing tone.
"It's not that exaggerated. I've just been wandering around, helped some people who needed helping, and changed some things that needed changing. You're really quite different from your future self."
"My future self?"
"Mhm, I have the ability to travel through time. Essentially, I live in this world tens of thousands of years in the future."
"Is that so..." Mobius paused, chopsticks in hand. She didn't question the authenticity of Xin Yu's ability, nor did she show any desperate craving or need for it. Instead, after a moment of silence, she asked, "In that distant future, what is human civilization like?"
"The Previous Era perished in the battle against the Honkai. A small portion of the survivors entered cryogenic pods. They guided the re-emergence of human civilization, guided the rise of human technology, and finally, after tens of thousands of years, brought human technology back to its current level, allowing humanity to once again possess the capability to fight against the Honkai."
"Then, what kind of evaluation did I leave behind in the future?"
"You are Mobius, the greatest biologist. It was you who gave humanity the possibility to combat Herrschers."
"I'm not the greatest scientist, then? Indeed, in this vast human society, there truly aren't only incompetent fools."
"I've met your future self. That you, in order to achieve your dream of eternal life and infinite evolution, modified your own body, fusing yourself with the genes of a certain monster, allowing you to shed your skin and be reborn when facing death, though your apparent age would regress."
"That is a future where I originally didn't appear. Moreover, that you is much more stubborn. You clearly care a lot about your companions and value them greatly, yet you always insist you don't care, claiming to be a demonic scientist who only straps people to dissection tables, that in your eyes, nothing is more important than your own research."
Mobius resumed the paused movements of her chopsticks. She didn't seem to care much about that future self.
Since that original future was one where Xin Yu didn't exist, it meant that future self was definitely not the same Mobius as her current self.
A person's emotions and cognition are fundamentally built upon memories, and memories originate from all past experiences.
"Xin Yu, the blood you left me, I've studied it. If it weren't for the note you left, stating that it was your blood, I truly wouldn't have believed it was the blood of a living creature. After all, no matter how I observe it, there isn't even the presence of cells in that blood. Essentially, it's more like a liquid formed from the liquefaction of some kind of radioactive material."
"It's just a pity that your blood seems to have lost its activity. Other than serving as some kind of precious sample, basically, nothing much can be researched from it."
"As for the Honkai you mentioned earlier, I previously joined an organization called the Flame-Chasers. That organization should be researching and combating this thing called Honkai. My research in this area has only just begun. But due to a lack of funding, it can only be temporarily halted. Those people in the organization are really... facing such a situation, yet they are still so timid and unwilling to conduct deeper research. In the end, it's just a waste of time."
"Funding issues?"
Xin Yu silently placed several gold bars on the table. After a thought, considering this was a large-scale experiment in a brand-new field, one gold bar definitely wouldn't be enough, so he added a dozen more.
Mobius looked at the neatly arranged gold bars on the table and recalled the anti-human scene she had witnessed in her youth: that person had transformed ordinary objects directly into gold right before her eyes.
To those who didn't understand, they would think it was amazing. But to those who understood what gold truly was, this operation was even more astounding.
"Xin Yu, what stage has humanity's war against the Honkai reached? At what critical point did we fail?"
"Against the final Herrscher of the End, even the most powerful MANTIS—oh! That's a warrior born from fusing human genes with those of monsters infected by the Honkai—even when the peak strength of future humanity combined, they ultimately couldn't change the fate of being destroyed."
"How strong is that Herrscher of the End?"
"Based on the information I've gathered, at the very least, it's a being capable of destroying stars."
Xin Yu stated this information with conviction, but in reality, the past Herrscher of the End was not nearly as powerful as Kiana Kaslana had described.
The Herrscher of the End from the Previous Era was, in essence, still a puppet created by the Cocoon of Finality, lacking a self. Though powerful, it was still limited.
And the future Kiana Kaslana, while a Herrscher of the End, had essentially embraced the Cocoon of Finality, gathering its immense power unto herself, reaching a level of a true god of Earth.
Be that as it may, errors in the information led to the birth of this misunderstanding. Firstly, Future Kiana naturally hadn't seen the past Herrscher of the End, so she used Kevin as a comparison. Then, Kiana, fearing Xin Yu's vague understanding of combat strength coupled with his disregard for his own life, was afraid he would directly go back to the past and get himself "swapped out" [defeated/killed] by the Herrscher of the End. So she exaggerated its strength, leading Xin Yu to mistakenly believe that the Herrscher of the End's power was equivalent to Kiana's [Future Kiana as Herrscher of Finality], both at a galaxy-destroying level.
But in reality, based on the strength of the Previous Era's Herrscher of the End, the current Xin Yu could already defeat it.
However, he himself was indeed unaware, still thinking he was facing an opponent at the Emanator level, or rather, a powerful opponent who possessed Emanator-level strength from birth, with absolutely no way to use the previously mentioned method of erasing them from the source.
"Although my current strength still has a considerable gap, my growth hasn't stopped. One day, I will travel to that point in time and change everything."
"I look forward to you achieving that, great hero."
Mobius smiled and nodded. Then, she stood up and sat down beside Xin Yu, her body pressing close against his. Her lips drew near Xin Yu's ear, and she whispered in that deeply alluring and bewitching tone, "Tonight, let's sleep together, just like before."
"The me now is not that little girl from before. I've grown up, in all aspects."
If it were the Xin Yu from before, his heart would surely be as still as water, without a ripple, perhaps even wanting to chuckle, as someone had already tried to tempt him like this before.
But the problem was the current Xin Yu, who was influenced by a certain extremely unscrupulous Aeon.
He... reacted.