Chapter 180: The Arrow and the Echo
"Aaaahhhhhhh—!!!"
An inhuman roar ripped from your throat, a sound of pure, unadulterated agony that tore through the din of battle. Reason dissolved, consumed by a tidal wave of boundless rage and sorrow.
Neergul was gone. Vaporized.
You abandoned all pretense of defense, all strategy, all thought. You let the surging Abominations of Abundance tear at your body, their claws and teeth ripping through your armor and flesh.
The [Abundance's Blessing] stitched you back together, a grotesque, steaming mockery of healing, but you didn't care. Your sword became a blur of black light, a furious, mindless reaping.
"Die!" you screamed, your voice cracking. "All of you, die! Be buried with her!"
Just as your rage peaked, the very ground beneath you—the shattered deck of the Fanghu Xianzhou—groaned and trembled violently. A catastrophic explosion echoed from the main front.
The front line… had collapsed.
You looked up, your blood running cold, instantly extinguishing your blind fury. Through the smoke, you saw General Yueyu, a lone golden whirlwind, fighting a desperate, bloody battle. But she was being overwhelmed. Even she couldn't hold back the tide alone.
A flood of new enemies—Borisin and Abominations—surged past her flank, ignoring the general, their eyes fixed on a new target. They charged like a black river of death toward the heart of the Fanghu.
Towards the temporary field hospital.
Your heart stopped. Jiang Li. Feixiao. They were there.
"GET OUT OF THE WAY—!"
You roared, no longer fighting to kill, but to move. You desperately tried to rush through the sea of enemies, but you were entangled, pinned down by the sheer weight of their bodies. A Borisin warrior sank its teeth into your shoulder, and you tore it off, but another took its place.
You were trapped. You could only watch, helpless, as those monsters, those grotesque fiends, charged unimpeded toward the one place you had sworn to protect.
Why?
The question was a silent scream in your mind.
Why did this happen? I couldn't protect Neergul… and now I can't even protect my sister…
Why! I've worked so hard. I've trained, I've fought, I've endured this hell… Why can I still protect nothing!
Your strength, your abilities, your entire existence felt like a cruel joke. Still... too weak...
The first Abomination reached the flimsy cloth entrance of the hospital tent.
And then—the world ended.
It didn't explode. It was... erased.
The world suddenly brightened. An indescribable, piercing white light originated from the star sea, so brilliant it dwarfed the surrounding nebulae. It pierced through the entire battlefield, through the smoke, through the Jidu Mirage, through everything.
There was no sound. All at once, the screams, the explosions, the roars—all of it just stopped. A profound, terrifying silence fell over the void.
That light was not a beacon of hope. It was an arrow of judgment. And it was coming for the Fanghu.
Inside the hospital tent, Jiang Li, her hands covered in blood as she tried to bandage a wounded soldier, suddenly froze. She seemed to feel something, a preternatural chill, and slowly looked up. The impossible, pure-white light was reflected in her wide, rose-colored pupils.
On the front line, General Yueyu, her armor cracked and her body bleeding, stopped her desperate fight. She looked up at the light that filled her vision, and a strange, weary smile of relief touched her lips. "It seems… it's over…"
The moment that light appeared, your [Mystic Eyes of Death Perception] flared to life, unbidden. The pain in your head was blinding, but through it, you saw.
That was not light. It was an arrow. An arrow of pure, conceptual death.
Its trajectory wasn't just a path; it was a complex, beautiful, horrifying web of the most fundamental "lines of death" you had ever witnessed, all converging on a single point. Its target… was the Fanghu. Not just the ship, but the concept of the ship, its past, its present, its future.
It was going to end it.
No! Jiang Li!!!
The obsession to protect your sister, the primal instinct that had defined you since birth, overwhelmed every other thought. It overwhelmed your pain, your exhaustion, your despair.
You erupted with the strongest power of your life. The [Abundance's Blessing] roared within you, mending your broken bones in an instant. You broke free from the pile of enemies, a blur of white and red, charging madly towards the field hospital.
You were racing against a god. Racing against The Hunt.
Faster! Even faster!
But you couldn't be faster than a god. The light caught up.
General Yueyu's last, whispered question was lost to the void. "Emperor Bow… why…?"
[Inorin's Note: The 'Emperor Bow' is a divine weapon or ability associated with Lan, the Aeon of The Hunt, capable of firing arrows of light that annihilate targets across star systems.]
The world instantly lost all color, all sound, all meaning. The hideous Abominations, the brutal Borisin warships, the colossal, planet-sized Jidu Mirage… all of it, everything, silently evaporated. vaporized. Ended.
The Fanghu Xianzhou, your home, began to break apart, its massive jade structures crumbling into dust.
You felt no pain. You were just running.
Then, you looked down. You saw your right leg disintegrate into glowing particles. Then your left leg. Your body, your sword-wielding arm… You were still running, but there was nothing beneath your shoulders.
Inertia carried your remaining head forward, flying through the rapidly dissolving air of the hangar bay. It rolled weakly across a shattering metal plate before finally coming to a stop.
Your vision spun, a chaotic tumble of light and shadow, then settled. You saw the disintegrating Xianzhou, a beautiful, tragic firework. You saw the boundless, silent star sea.
Then, the very ground beneath your head shattered. Your head, along with a huge fragment of the ship, was thrown into the cold, airless depths of space. You were insignificant trash, adrift in an endless graveyard.
In your final moments of consciousness, you wanted to see your sister one last time. You wanted to touch her hair, to tell her you were sorry you had failed.
But nothing remained. The world, your world, returned to nothingness.
You thought this was the end.
Who knows how much time passed. Perhaps an instant. Perhaps a thousand years. Time has no meaning in the void.
Your consciousness, or what was left of it, gradually recovered. You were a... thing. A rock. A meteorite, drifting on the solar winds. You had a vague awareness. You watched distant nebulae bloom and die, their colors shifting over eons. You watched unfamiliar, sleek starships, so different from the Xianzhou, pass by like silent ghosts.
You forgot who you were. You forgot what you were. Why were you here? The questions faded, their edges smoothed away by the endless, silent passage of time. You gave up thinking. You just... existed. Floating. Drifting. Like a true stone on an endless, meaningless journey.
Many more years passed.
A sleek, dark starship, its design sharp and elegant like a stiletto, sailed into this forgotten graveyard of debris.
By the main porthole, a woman with striking purple hair and captivating pink-amethyst eyes casually swirled a glass of deep red wine. Her gaze swept over the star river, bored.
Suddenly, her gaze sharpened. Her hand paused, the wine glass stopping mid-swirl.
Among the countless, unremarkable fragments of ice and rock, she saw something. A "stone" encased in a perfect, clear ice crystal, tumbling slowly through the void.
No. Not a stone. She squinted, her focus narrowing.
To be precise, it was... a head. A young man's head, perfectly preserved, his face serene, his white fox ears tucked against his skull as if in sleep.
A slow, captivating smile curved her crimson lips. She drained the last drop of wine, her gaze locked onto the ice-bound head, admiring it as if it were a flawless, priceless work of art found in a dumpster.
Her crimson lips parted, her voice a soft, amused whisper that hung in the air like the promise of fate.
"…I found you."