Highgate Cemetery.
Naturally, Himeko would not carry a weapon with her while visiting Siegfried's grave.
Faced with MOTH's encirclement and pursuit, Himeko, herself a MOTH warrior, naturally had nowhere to escape.
She was alone and outnumbered, with neither technological means nor any clever tricks at her disposal.
Surely no one expected her to swing the bottle of fine liquor she had brought as an offering for Siegfried and knock out those fully armed MOTH soldiers one by one?
Besides, Himeko could not bring herself to kill her former colleagues.
"Ato, knock me unconscious. Maybe that will let you distance yourself from me."
Himeko had already realized that those people were all coming for her. They could barely even be bothered to spare Ato another glance.
"Too late. You think if I switch sides now, those bastards won't kill me to silence me?"
Ato's words were resolute.
That little follower of Siegfried's had actually defied her orders and chosen to fight alongside her until the very end.
Himeko did not want Ato to be dragged into this because of her.
After all, he still had a wife and a newborn child to care for.
So what the hell had gotten into this guy? Was he planning to die alongside her in a cemetery like some pair of tragic lovers?
Every single one of them was just like Siegfried. They never learned anything worthwhile from him, only the stupid stuff.
Naturally, the outcome was that both of them went down right there.
The covert assassination unit of MOTH that Sakura had come from was certainly no pushover...
...
Himeko did not want to say much about that nightmarish experience, and Vill-V and Hua did not press her for details.
"I don't understand the struggles taking place among MOTH's upper ranks, but since you're willing to help me, I'm willing to trust you this once."
With someone holding a department-head position assisting in the investigation, her chances of rescuing Ato would naturally increase considerably.
More accurately, if Himeko went alone, she would simply be throwing her life away.
Himeko could only hope that Vill-V was not allied with the people who had tortured her.
"During those endless experimental tortures, I also learned a little about my own origins."
"I am a descendant of the Ji family, a great imperial clan that flourished on the Shenzhou continent several thousand years ago. I am also the last surviving descendant of that bloodline."
"The Ji family? What's that? Shenzhou has a family name that short?"
Compared with Vill-V, who possessed memories from two lives ago, Hua, a native of Previous Era Shenzhou, was the first to find something strange about it.
The Previous Era had no concept of surnames, so throughout Shenzhou's history, clans were never referred to by family surnames and were instead identified through other means.
For example, they might use an important event plus a place name. If a famous minister from Zhengzhou revised the historical work Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance, his family might thereafter become known as the Zhengzhou Historiographical House. If someone from Luoyang became renowned for controlling floods, his family might become known as the Luoyang Flood-Control House.
Because very few families ever became famous enough to be recorded in history, conflicts between such titles were generally rare. Even when there was a conflict, a small prefix could simply be added.
For example, if an emperor emerged from the Luoyang Flood-Control House several centuries later, that branch would separate from the original house.
The original Luoyang Flood-Control House might be geographically far removed from the emperor's branch, but the emperor's branch still needed a name of its own.
And so it might become the "Heaven-Appointed Luoyang Flood-Control House."
The achievements of one's ancestors could not be discarded, while one's own achievements naturally had to be added as well.
Thus, despite the small number of families whose names entered the historical record, their titles gradually accumulated layer upon layer and became extraordinarily cumbersome.
For example, that Zhengzhou Historiographical House eventually accumulated the title "House of Historical Compilation and Literary Transmission of Old Zhengzhou in Kaifeng, Restorers of the Realm Through Conquest."
From that title alone, one could tell that the family had rendered military service, had contributed loyally to governing the country and restoring the realm, that this particular branch lived in Kaifeng and therefore used "Old" to distinguish itself from the original Zhengzhou Historiographical House, and that because it had produced two historical works that caused a sensation throughout Shenzhou, "Literary Transmission" had also been inserted into the title.
In short, one could see that because Honkai's writers had once casually made something up, identifying a family in the Previous Era after surnames ceased to exist had become an extraordinarily difficult task.
In a normal world, a place name plus a surname would have been enough to summarize everything, such as the Chen Clan of Zhangzhou or the Huang Clan of Goose City.
The family's detailed history could simply be recorded in local county annals. There would have been no need whatsoever to stuff all of it into the family's name.
From this alone, one could see just how unconventional and bizarre a name like the "Ji family" truly was.
In Previous Era Shenzhou, anyone who heard that name would not immediately associate it with a clan.
They would only think, Does that mean the family belonging to someone named Ji?
Because it was directly tied to one person's given name, once "Ji" died, surely it would no longer make sense for the "Ji family" to keep using that name?
Once a family name ceased to be appropriate, that family would often fragment and scatter. This had always been the case throughout Shenzhou's history.
This also meant that family identity in the Previous Era was not particularly strong. (The true culprit behind almost none of the Flame-Chasers having parents has finally been found.)
Of course, having a weak sense of family identity was one thing. Whether those families themselves were powerful was another matter entirely.
The lower classes of the Previous Era might not have had much in the way of families, but families that banded together for shared interests were actually far stronger than those in modern society.
Almost every family operated like a cold, ruthless corporate machine.
...
Himeko understood Shenzhou's circumstances so well precisely because she herself had originally belonged to one of its ancient great houses.
Himeko had never cared much for the family she had come from. The person who raised her had been her father, not some abstract family clan.
Her father had married into the family as a live-in son-in-law. He was an ordinary teacher with no interests or benefits to offer them, so his position within the family had always been difficult.
Himeko's mother had died from complications during childbirth when Himeko was still very young.
Before Himeko was even old enough to form memories, her father took her to the Far East, far away from that family.
Later, when the family caused her father's death, Himeko had effectively severed all ties with them.
After that, she resolutely devoted herself to MOTH's cause.
When she heard that her family had been destroyed by Honkai, Himeko had not felt even the slightest ripple in her heart.
Revenge?
She merely raised an extra glass in celebration.
That family had been destined to destroy itself sooner or later. Honkai wiping it out had actually done her a considerable favor.
Now that she understood just how important her bloodline was, Himeko could not help but lament that there might have been more behind both her father's death and the destruction of her family than she had realized.
If only she had investigated things a little back then. At least she would not have ended up in her present situation knowing absolutely nothing.