---||---
"Master, are we... not intervening?"
The speaker was still the head disciple, Lin Chaoyu. Although everyone knew Master had already permitted them to leave the mountain and establish their own schools afterward, it hadn't become reality yet.
At this moment, Lin Chaoyu was still the undisputed head disciple. If something needed saying, it was naturally more appropriate for her to speak up.
"Master?"
Hua showed no reaction, seemingly lost in thought. So Lin Chaoyu called out again.
"Hm?"
This time, Hua finally snapped back. She waved her hand, invisible energy surging between her palms, causing her wide sleeves to crackle.
"Ling Shuang, stay by my side. The rest of you, go. I've already informed the Schicksal Valkyries beforehand; no need to worry about misunderstandings."
"Uh..."
Lin Chaoyu stood half a step behind Hua's side. Hearing her master's command, she leaned forward slightly, seemingly wanting to argue, but she quickly lowered her head obediently.
Since the head disciple had no objections, the others naturally couldn't say anything either. The next moment, they dispersed on their own, joining the battle groups clearing the Honkai Beast swarm.
Only Ling Shuang remained, holding the Xuanyuan Sword, standing dazedly on the pointed roof of a building five steps behind Hua, seemingly completely unaware of the surrounding changes.
Hua didn't make a sound either, just quietly gazed at the flame-ravaged streets below, as if waiting for something, or searching for something.
But the next moment, just as both she and Ling Shuang sensed something but before they could react, a small, icy hand landed on her shoulder. Then, a cold, viscous, yet incredibly familiar voice sounded beside her ear:
"Heehee! Didn't expect this... The little girl who used to just obey orders has matured so much. Able to make some judgments of her own now."
Hua let out a long sigh, not responding immediately.
Mobius's pitch-black right claw clamped around her throat. Correspondingly, Ling Shuang, having reacted, placed the seemingly thick, edgeless Xuanyuan Sword against Mobius's slender neck.
The scene fell into a strange calm. No one rushed to make the first move, no one rushed to speak first. After about five minutes, Hua finally asked softly:
"Mobius, do you know what Michael truly wants to do?"
"Nope."
Mobius shook her head nonchalantly. She seemed oblivious to the blade at her neck, so much so that this movement directly caused the seemingly edgeless Xuanyuan Sword to leave a bloody scratch on her almost deathly pale neck.
Before Hua could say anything, she chuckled darkly again:
"But what does it matter? I trust him. Even if he doesn't tell me what he wants to do, I trust him. That's enough."
Hua bit her lower lip hard, releasing it only after a long moment. She snorted coldly, then retorted:
"Do you think I don't trust him?"
"Depends on what you think!"
Mobius lifted her left hand, which rested on Hua's shoulder, admiring the black patterns covering her palm in the firelight.
"It's not that I don't trust him."
Seemingly influenced by Mobius, Hua also shook her head, completely disregarding the claw pressed against her neck. She then explained:
"I don't distrust Michael. Or rather, it's precisely because I trust him too much that I made this decision."
"Heh, well said. If you trust him, you should know even more that what he wants to do is correct."
"Correct? Mobius, I never thought such a narrow definition would one day come from your mouth. For different people, 'correct' has different meanings. And for us, the so-called 'correct' has only ever been one thing—defeating the Honkai. For this sole 'correct', friendship, kinship, love—all are things that must be discarded if they conflict with defeating the Honkai."
"Is that your understanding? Not entirely unexpected, I suppose."
Hua considered herself not easily swayed by emotions, especially after being bound by the Divine Key: Variation. Mobius's words might seem peaceful to a third party like Ling Shuang, but to Hua, every question felt charged with an infuriating implication—Come on, you don't understand Michael, nor do you trust him, otherwise you wouldn't be standing against him.
"But, Mobius, do you really think you understand me well?"
Does trust necessarily mean blind obedience?
She used to be like that. Whatever Mei ordered, whatever Michael wanted her to do, she would do it. Even if some things made her reluctant, she trusted them. She believed their orders were probably correct, perhaps just beyond her own understanding.
But things were different now. Dr. Mei was gone, and Michael had become the Herrscher of Finality.
This time, no one could tell her what to do, what she should do. Everything required her own judgment.
Michael had awakened her five thousand years ago, pleading for her to trust him one more time. But what did he truly want to do? This question had festered in her heart for five thousand years. She wasn't without her own answer.
Precisely because she understood Michael, she knew that Michael absolutely could not tolerate a world where Elysia didn't exist. She understood this, Kevin and Su understood this, and she believed Mobius understood this too.
Based on this shared understanding, the three had each made their own judgments:
Kevin perhaps believed that Michael wanted to gamble the entire world, just like in the Samsara world fifty thousand years ago, using means they couldn't comprehend to bring Elysia back. After all, he was Finality.
As for Mobius, Hua didn't know exactly what she thought. Perhaps, as she herself said, because she "trusted" Michael, and also because of some things Hua now vaguely understood, she was willing to follow him, obey his every instruction, even though he had never explained the full truth to her either.
Then what about Hua herself?
She was actually caught in the conflict between two extreme ideas. She certainly trusted Michael, but he was, after all, Finality... the embodiment of Honkai...
Fifty thousand years ago, she was the only successful subject of the Divine Key: Variation experiment. For a long time afterward, she would often hear a voice whispering in her ear. She initially thought the voice was just a side effect of the experiment. As time went on, the whispers became less frequent, until one day, she didn't know when, it completely disappeared.
But had it truly disappeared? No. Since meeting Michael again not long ago, that whisper returned across the span of fifty thousand years. The only difference was that now, she could finally clearly hear what the voice was saying—"Kill the Honkai!"
Just that.
And if what Michael wanted to do aligned with Kevin's judgment, then rationally considered, she really should kill Michael.
But what if considered solely as 'Hua'? She didn't believe that "using incomprehensible means to bring Elysia back," even if it meant "gambling the entire world," would be Michael's true choice.
Despite having lost her memories twice, she still believed she understood Michael well enough, at least better than Kevin.
However, she had a feeling she might have truly forgotten something. So, these past two days, she had been relentlessly using Fenghuang Down to sift through even more distant memories, even though this was a tremendous burden for her, both physically and mentally.
She had originally sworn to discard the memory-laden feathers of Fenghuang Down. After all, those memories were just another person's past to her. She only kept them because she was always afraid of one day completely forgetting even Michael. Even though this inherently overloaded her mind.
Yet unexpectedly, these memories deemed useless truly came in handy now.
She found the memory she was looking for—
She remembered, it was the dawn of the third day after Carole died before her eyes. Michael gently held her, asking if she could trust him:
"Hua, if I say I have a way to reverse everything, a way to make every harm the Honkai has inflicted upon this world cease to exist, but not through erasure, would you believe me?"
Yes, perhaps Michael hadn't changed at all.
What if he truly hadn't changed?
Was it possible that, starting from that time at the latest, through his time in the Samsara world, the one thing he wanted to do was this—reverse everything. Reverse all the pain brought by the Honkai. Allow lives that once lived so proudly, including Elysia, to continue living just as proudly.
Was such a possibility feasible?
Yes, but Hua felt even more terrified because of it.
In the process of searching her memories, she had heard Michael, intentionally or unintentionally, emphasize one sentence more than once: "Everything has its price. Equivalent exchange is the most fundamental logic of this world."
If the price required just to keep Elysia alive could be considered the world itself, then what would be the price required to keep the entire world, along with Elysia, in existence?
Equivalent exchange. What could possibly be equivalent to the entire world?
The answer was obvious. The only thing equivalent to the world was Finality itself.
So she said:
"Mobius, not only do you not understand me, you don't understand him either."
If Mobius truly understood this, she should be sharing the same thought as Hua right now—absolutely, cannot let him do this.
"Heheh!"
Mobius let out two cold laughs. "You probably don't understand what Michael means to me."
Tiny arcs of electricity began to flicker between Mobius's fingers. The Xuanyuan Sword Ling Shuang held against her neck tightened slightly. She was fully confident she could strike before this person, but without her master's order, she wasn't sure if she should lop off the head of this girl who looked even younger than her right now.
After all, this person seemed to be an acquaintance of her master; acting rashly wasn't advisable.
But the atmosphere seemed somewhat tense... Ling Shuang pursed her lips. Why did it feel like the atmosphere was shifting in another direction? Surely it wasn't Master's love rival?
Of course, she only dared to think this internally. Her expression remained cold and resolute.
Then she heard her master's retort:
"Then what does Michael mean to you?"
"Heh, do you really want me to say it?"
Mobius's tone dripped with disdain, but Hua's heart remained unmoved.
She had already plunged into endless self-questioning long before this:
To Mobius, Michael was undoubtedly a comrade, a friend, family, and even more so, a lover.
But to Hua herself, what did that seemingly eternally untouchable figure mean?
Was he the Honkai that must be killed, must be eliminated, or the object she wanted to redeem, wanted to stride towards the future with?
This was the sole reason she came here. She hadn't accepted Kevin's deduction, wanting to have a grand battle with Michael here. Quite the contrary, although she verbally contradicted Mobius, she had no firm idea of what she should actually do, whether to heed the Divine Key's counsel or follow her own judgment.
The reason she was here was simply because, regardless, she should be here. No matter what choice she made, she had to be here.
Thinking further, regardless of the decision made—whether stopping him from saving Elysia at the cost of the world, or stopping him from saving the world at the cost of himself—battle was unavoidable.
Although these so-called two possibilities were merely her own conjectures. But she had said, she believed she understood Michael, perhaps not Mobius, but at least better than Kevin and Su.
So, at this very moment, she already understood what she should do, didn't she?
"Come, Mobius!"
"Ha—"
Mobius's cry of confusion was abruptly cut off, along with her throat, severed into two pieces.
Ling Shuang withdrew the Xuanyuan Sword, wiping away non-existent blood from the blade with her sleeve. Mobius's neck merely deviated less than half an inch to the side, demarcated by the mark where the blade had passed.
Hua's breathing hitched for a moment. She turned her head. Mobius's face was still so young and tender. Michael had said earlier that among the living, only Pardofelis hadn't suffered much from the ravages of time, but in her eyes, Mobius also looked the same, unchanged.
"Sorry, Mobius..."
She touched her finger to Mobius's brow. Under the external force, the head detached from the neck and flipped backward, first landing on the roof tiles, then rolling down the slope of the roof.
"You wouldn't die just like that anyway."
As the words fell, Hua's pupils contracted sharply. She only had time to pull Ling Shuang over before seeing Mobius's headless body, standing unnaturally upright in defiance of basic physics, explode into a sky full of sludge—
Boom!
---||---
"Long time no see..."
These four words seemed like some kind of spell. Despite being determined to face Michael with hostility, when he uttered these words, Kevin still responded as if enchanted.
But before he could even utter Michael's name, a violent explosion erupted from the distant rooftop. He turned his head just in time to see the lingering green electrical arcs in the sky, like exploded fireworks.
"Mobius? She's still alive?"
Though phrased as a question, Kevin didn't seem particularly surprised. After all, the possibility of Mobius still being alive was something he had suspected for thousands of years.
He turned back, clasping his hands behind his back, making a hand signal only a Kaslana would understand—ordering Kallen to escape with the child first. He himself took this opportunity to assemble the Judgment of Shamash.
Of course, outwardly, he was still asking formally:
"Michael, regarding everything these past fifty thousand years, don't you have an explanation?"
"Huh? Explanation? Pfft... Ahahahaha..."
Michael laughed while clutching his stomach, even pointing a finger at Kevin, seemingly mocking the latter's naivety in this exaggerated manner.
"Explanation? What do I have to explain?"
Accompanied by his unrestrained laughter, Kevin's expression turned utterly cold. Azure frost energy uncontrollably emanated outwards, freezing the ruins and flames within a hundred-meter radius solid.
"Michael, I don't know what you truly want to do. But if you still remember our common goal, if you still consider yourself our comrade, at least formerly, then for your act of betrayal, you should at least offer an apology."
Kevin gritted his teeth, enunciating the long sentence word by word. This was his final effort.
Clearly, Michael wasn't buying it.
"Apology?"
Michael held up two fingers:
"First, I am no traitor. Of course, you wouldn't understand even if I told you. In short, I don't believe I need to apologize... Second, Kevin, you're fifty thousand years old. It's time to mature a little. Still talking about apologies... tsk tsk tsk!"
"Mi—chael—"
The roar echoed through the ruined streets. Correspondingly, two Cleavers of Shamash, identical in appearance, clashed together.