The gray sky was still filled with falling, goose-feather snow. In the forest, the trees, with only their withered branches remaining, stood quietly in the snow. At this moment, the entire forest seemed to have fallen silent, with only Li Xuan and the Honkai Beast before him…
Not all Honkai Beasts born from the [Honkai] look the same… The Honkai Beasts that appeared in Nagazora City were only the most common type. The [Honkai] exists all over the world; whether on continents or in the seas, various Honkai creatures will be born due to the Honkai phenomenon. Naturally, the Honkai Beasts produced by different factors, times, and places are also different…
Therefore, Li Xuan was not too surprised by the Honkai Beast standing before him… It was some kind of wolf-type Honkai Beast. Although one could roughly tell it was a wolf that had been infected by Honkai energy and mutated, if you didn't look carefully now, you might not be able to tell its origin…
Exposed gums, half of its skull mutated and growing on the surface of its body, crimson eyes, bone spikes protruding from its lumbar spine… even a purplish-red Honkai energy glow flickered on the muscles where its fur had fallen off… Coupled with its silent attack just now, it was enough to show the power of this Honkai Beast.
"...To think that there are Honkai Beasts in a place like this. Do you want to eat people again?" Li Xuan casually threw the 'Feilong' wrapped in his just-removed student uniform to his feet, wielding the golden sword and speaking to himself as he met its gaze.
The Hazel Grouse, filled with the smell of blood, did not attract the Honkai Beast's interest in the slightest. It just looked incomparably greedy at the human before it, who was filled with a dangerous aura… If it were any other time, it might not have casually attacked this human… but…
In fact, Li Xuan didn't even realize that the Honkai Beast's gaze was not entirely on him, but… on his chest… or rather, the white short-sleeved undershirt he was wearing…
"Roar!~" The wolf-type Honkai Beast finally couldn't wait any longer. The faint Honkai energy fluctuation that only it could perceive was like the most delicious food in the world, causing it to go crazy… It roared and pounced at Li Xuan again…
"Clang!" When Li Xuan swung the Xuanyuan Sword and fiercely slashed at the Honkai Beast's head, the Honkai Beast might have sensed something… It abruptly retreated midway… The extremely sharp blade of the Xuanyuan Sword still made contact with the gray exoskeleton of the Honkai Beast's head, which it failed to dodge completely, creating the sound of metal clashing…
"Pfft!~" Even though the gray exoskeleton was quite hard, it still couldn't block the forceful strike from the Xuanyuan Sword. The exoskeleton on its head was instantly cut open with a large gash, revealing the purplish-red muscles beneath that were still glowing with purple light… The infection level of this Honkai Beast was already quite high…
"Awooo!~" The Honkai Beast, which was almost killed by Li Xuan in one blow, had eyes full of terror… Having lorded over this place for so long, where had they ever seen such an outrageous human… The Honkai Beast, still retaining its biological instincts, quickly tucked its bald tail between its legs and tried to flee.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!" How could Li Xuan not know the principle of hitting an enemy while they're down? A black and red pistol that looked like molten lava, [Fafnir's Blaze], appeared out of thin air in his right hand, and he directly pulled the trigger and fired. Although it was the first time he had encountered this Honkai Beast, compared to that perversely strong Honkai Beast 'Blazing Lightning,' it was as fragile as a baby…
Three crimson bullets instantly hit the Honkai Beast. As expected of a six-star weapon, the bullets hit the body not covered by the gray exoskeleton and instantly pierced through the body of the Honkai Beast, which was only focused on escaping…
"Phew~" Li Xuan breathed a sigh of relief and sat down on the ground… He frowned and silently looked at the Honkai Beast's body in the distance. It wasn't that he didn't know about Siberia; he could look up any information in the Schicksal database… Of course, for some top-secret information, even if you found it, you wouldn't be able to open it if your rank wasn't high enough…
The Schicksal database is where the 'Schicksal' organization stores all its data. Its storage space is abnormally large… so large that it could fit a billion Blu-ray discs… Any student of St. Freya High School has the qualification to view the data in the Schicksal database… Of course, the higher a student's Valkyrie rank, the higher her authority to view the data…
Li Xuan had once spent two days looking through the data in the Schicksal database to understand this other world, which was both similar to and different from Earth… Among the information was the vaguely described battle of the 'Second Herrscher'…
The Second Honkai War that erupted occurred in Siberia. Although Schicksal had anticipated it, they still couldn't prevent the outbreak of the [Honkai]… The outbreak of the Second Honkai War directly destroyed half of Siberia…
Although the Second Honkai War was resolved in the end… 'Schicksal' also cleaned up the various Honkai Beasts produced by this Honkai in the end, and also used various methods to seal away all the Honkai energy… Without Honkai energy, Honkai Beasts would not exist.
'But… why would something like a Honkai Beast appear in this place?!' Li Xuan really couldn't think of a reason.
'Forget it… I'll tell Theresa and the others when I see them. If the sky falls, there are tall people to hold it up, right?...' Li Xuan, feeling at ease, let go of his doubts and psychological burden and stood up…
"Hmm?…" Li Xuan, who had extracted a few Honkai energy crystals from the Honkai Beast's body, suddenly frowned. He put away the crystals in his hand and reached for his chest with a somewhat strange expression…
"This is…?! Li Xuan's hand reached into his undershirt in a rather indecent manner, fumbling around. With a puzzled look, he pulled out a dark blue stone fragment the size of a thumb from a small pocket on the front of his undershirt…
"The Gem of Serenity?!..." Li Xuan looked at the dark blue stone in his right hand in disbelief. Didn't this thing disappear along with Seele in that space?!
"...." Before Li Xuan could think about why this stone had appeared on him, the dark blue stone in the palm of his right hand began to melt like ice under his gaze!
"Holy crap!" Li Xuan's hair stood on end. He violently shook his palm as if he had touched something dirty, trying to fling the Gem of Serenity fragment off his hand…
Unfortunately… Li Xuan did not succeed in flinging the Gem of Serenity fragment from his hand. The gem fragment slowly melted into his body under his desperate and worried gaze, as if it had never appeared, leaving only a dark blue mark on his fair palm as proof that everything just now was not an illusion…
"Ugh!..." Li Xuan, who had just had the fragment merge into his body, suddenly paused. His thoughts seemed to freeze at this moment… The only sound in his ears was the beating of his own heart…
Li Xuan couldn't control his body, so he also couldn't see the Two Principles Stigmata on the back of his right hand slowly rotating as if it had come to life…
Although he couldn't control his body, his mind seemed to spread out, slowly moving outwards… With his body as the center, his Psionic energy scanned the surroundings like radar. Every blade of grass, every tree, the vibrant earth under the white snow, the small animals sleeping quietly in the snowdrifts… Li Xuan clearly wasn't looking, yet he could see places beyond his line of sight. The feeling mesmerized him, as if he were a god gazing upon the earth… A 3D image automatically formed before his eyes…
"Thump! Thump!~" The young heart beat faster and faster. Power was continuously fed into Li Xuan's brain, and vitality constantly emanated from his body… His 'vision' continued to extend, even reaching underground through the surface…
Li Xuan didn't know how much time had passed… In a daze, just as he felt he was about to be drowned by the incoming information… he saw it… an ice-blue behemoth and a faint human figure. The behemoth seemed to have sensed something, raised its head, and met his gaze…
Li Xuan's vision was filled only with that behemoth, or rather, his entire field of view was stuffed full by the behemoth. Before he could see clearly what the behemoth before him was… the ice-blue behemoth slightly opened its mouth and roared at him silently… The next moment, his 'God's Eye'-like vision shattered like fragile glass…
"Hah! Hah! Hah!~…" Li Xuan's consciousness seemed to return to his body. He knelt on the snow, drenched in sweat, gasping for breath… Faint white mist formed from water vapor emanated from his body…
At this moment, his mind was a complete blank… with only one thought remaining, 'What was that?!...'
While Li Xuan was gasping for breath… a strange change occurred on the patch of land covered by thick white snow beneath him… In the soil near his left hand, seeds quietly began to sprout… While in the soil on his right side, the seeds waiting to burst with life next year died as if dehydrated…
The Two Principles Stigmata on Li Xuan's right hand, which had stopped rotating, emitted a faint aura…
That was life and death…
(End of this chapter)