Deep within the Sanctuary of Surasthana—
Nahida, like a child proudly reporting to a parent, happily recounted everything that had happened recently.
Following what Su Xuan had once told her about her own abilities, she had taken over Azar's consciousness and, using his identity, carried out a series of actions.
She had even obtained the full documentation of the God-Making Plan.
But after listening to her, Su Xuan only shook his head with a smile.
"You're Sumeru's Archon. Why sneak around?"
"You could just walk out openly."
"Most people in Sumeru may not know what you look like, but among those who've heard your name, many still revere you."
"Not all citizens or scholars in Sumeru agree with Azar's God-Making Plan."
In Sumeru, many bright young people knew nothing about the Akademiya's shady schemes.
And in their hearts, they still believed in a god-ruled Sumeru.
Whether it was Greater Lord Rukkhadevata or Little Lucky Grass King Nahida, they respected both.
"People like the Scribe, the Acting Grand Sage, and the Matra still hold a lot of respect for you."
"And that kid you once encouraged—didn't he keep chasing your trail all this time?"
Hearing this, Nahida lowered her head in shame.
After a long moment, she murmured:
"If not for Father resolving Scaramouche and the Doctor in advance—stopping their later plans…"
"Then…"
"...Sigh…"
Nahida let out a heavy sigh.
One hundred and sixty-eight dream loops meant the citizens of Sumeru would have had their consciousness damaged a hundred and sixty-eight times.
The damage that does to a person's mind is enormous.
Anyone physically weak would never withstand that kind of repeated excavation of their consciousness.
Especially when she thought of those already frail from Eleazar, Nahida's heart ached all over again.
"This is my fault. I shouldn't have stayed hiding in here and let the Akademiya run wild."
Nahida lifted her small head.
Her tone was earnest and sincere as she admitted her mistake.
Su Xuan didn't comment too much on that.
He had no intention of getting personally involved in governing any nation's people.
Whether the scholars of the Akademiya were right or wrong, what kind of punishment or outcome they deserved—he had no interest in intervening.
"As for your Akademiya's mess, I think it's best to leave that for her to deal with."
"Come on. I'll take you to see Rukkhadevata."
"But before that, we need to find the last memory she left behind."
Greater Lord Rukkhadevata's final memory?
Nahida racked her brains for a good while, then drooped her shoulders and spread her hands.
"Father, I do have some vague impression in my mind about a final memory she left me."
"But I don't know what it actually is, or where it is. It just feels like scattered cheers in the distance."
"Of course she'd be 'calling' you," Paimon said, wagging a tiny finger. "How else would she get you to erase her?"
"It's not a call," Su Xuan chuckled. "It's a memory Rukkhadevata buried deep in your consciousness before she died."
"Before you see it, it'll just feel fuzzy."
"But once you do see it, you'll instantly understand that this is the precious thing she left behind for you."
As he finished speaking, Su Xuan suddenly lifted his hand.
In some hidden corner of Aaru Village, the desert sands began to churn.
A moment later, a capsule wrapped in telekinetic force shot out of Aaru Village at incredible speed and flew toward the Sanctuary, landing between Su Xuan's hands.
"This is Greater Lord Rukkhadevata's final memory?" Paimon circled the Divine Knowledge Capsule curiously.
Nahida, however, just stared, eyes wide and blank.
So this is Father's power?
All-knowing. All-capable.
Turning his hand into clouds, flipping it into rain.
Even she herself couldn't be sure what Rukkhadevata's final memory actually was. But the moment he reached out, it was in his hands.
Compared to them, the so-called Archons of this world—
He was what a true god looked like.
"This thing's been buried in Aaru Village all this time," Su Xuan explained.
"Someone dug it up, tried to absorb the 'knowledge' inside, and had their consciousness corrupted by the Abyss. Their mind collapsed, and they went mad."
"Unfortunately, nobody realized that what it contained wasn't knowledge at all, but Rukkhadevata's residual consciousness tainted by forbidden knowledge."
"So they could only blame it on being unable to handle its supposed 'wisdom'—and decided it must be a relic of King Deshret."
"Thus, it was labeled as Divine Knowledge left by the Scarlet King."
"A Divine Knowledge Capsule."
"Once the Akademiya caught wind of it, they sent people into Aaru Village to secretly bring it back."
"But on the way, they got ambushed by the Eremites' Eyes of Aḥmar band and had it stolen."
Pfft.
Ying nearly burst out laughing at his last sentence.
The grand Akademiya—Sumeru's ruling institution—actually got intercepted and looted by desert mercenaries while transporting something this important?
At that level, it was hard to imagine what would happen if a foreign army ever invaded Sumeru.
Seeing Ying fight to keep a straight face, Su Xuan chuckled.
"Hard to imagine a national force having their top-secret cargo robbed by a mercenary group, huh?"
Ying nodded vigorously.
"That's not even the funniest part," he went on. "The punchline is that the Akademiya also believed the rumors."
"They also decided this thing was 'Divine Knowledge' left by the Scarlet King. Their plan was to inject it into Scaramouche, along with the knowledge prepared to turn him into a god."
"Luckily, you showed up, traced the clues back to the Eyes of Aḥmar, and teamed up with Scribe Alhaitham to find them."
"Alhaitham must've already suspected the Akademiya by then. After he stole the capsule, he never turned it in—instead, he kept it on himself."
"In the end, that's why the Akademiya never had time to send this thing to Scaramouche."
Nahida, Ying, and Paimon all stared.
It was one thing for uneducated desert dwellers to mistake this for Divine Knowledge.
But the Akademiya?
They also convinced themselves it was Divine Knowledge?
So their deep-thinking scholar brains… weren't that much better than the desert folk's after all.
"And inside this…" Nahida pointed cautiously at the capsule in Su Xuan's hand.
"Aside from a small clean patch," Su Xuan nodded, "the rest is all Abyssal consciousness."
Nahida swallowed hard.
She didn't dare imagine what would've happened if the Akademiya had really injected those Abyssal remnants into Scaramouche.
"It's not as bad as you're thinking," Su Xuan said casually.
"It's just residual will. At worst, it would've driven him insane and made him pilot the God of Pure Mechanism into a massacre."
"It wouldn't have triggered a full-scale forbidden knowledge outbreak."
The way the Akademiya thought was a typical mortal problem when facing a supernatural world.
In a world with extraordinary forces, things beyond human understanding were everywhere.
Acting rashly on half-baked knowledge was the shortest path to annihilation.
"All right, enough chit-chat. Let's enter Rukkhadevata's final memory."
"Once we're done, I'll take you back to the Jade Chamber and haul Rukkhadevata back out of the ley lines."
The moment she touched the Divine Knowledge Capsule, Nahida's memories of it became crystal clear.
Right alongside that clarity came a new doubt.
"Greater Lord Rukkhadevata's last memory… it needs two Gnoses to…"
But before she could finish, the capsule flared with emerald light.
When Nahida opened her eyes again, she and Su Xuan were already standing inside a ruined, broken consciousness space.
Far off in the distance, the sky was a hazy, blood-red mist.
"Mm…" Nahida frowned deeply.
The instant she entered this place, the connection between her and Rukkhadevata grew much stronger.
She could faintly feel the pain, madness, and confusion Rukkhadevata had suffered in her final moments.
But that strange sensation faded quickly—and in its place, she clearly sensed someone waiting for her.
"Father, I can feel her."
"Rukkhadevata… Mother… is waiting for me over there."
"There's a boat of consciousness we can ride to her."
Su Xuan lightly flicked her on the forehead.
"Before that, I need to correct how you address Rukkhadevata."
"Not 'Greater Lord Rukkhadevata.' Not 'she.'"
"But mother."
Nahida tilted her head.
"Eh?"
Paimon and Ying both looked over at them with "we see through you" looks.
"Think about it," Su Xuan said. "Rukkhadevata is the incarnation of the World Tree."
"You're the purest branch that grew from it."
"You're literally a piece of her. Flesh of her flesh."
"That makes her your mother, doesn't it?"
"So when you see her in a bit, just call her 'Mother.'"
Nahida scratched her head.
After thinking it over, she had to admit—Father made sense.
Rukkhadevata was the incarnation of the World Tree.
She was a branch that grew from that tree.
By human logic, she really was the piece of flesh carved off her mother.
"Okay! I understand. Thank you for reminding me, Father."
After that little interlude—
Su Xuan led them onto the boat of consciousness, and they sailed through the layers of red mist until they reached the one clean patch of land in this entire space.
Before the World Tree—
Ying and Paimon stared at the white-haired little loli in the distance.
Then looked at the little bean currently holding Su Xuan's hand.
"They look exactly the same," Ying gasped. "That's really Greater Lord Rukkhadevata?"
"This is just consciousness space," Su Xuan replied. "Rukkhadevata's current appearance is modeled on Nahida's image. She definitely doesn't look like this in reality."
Ying let out a small breath of relief.
"For a second, I thought you were going to start categorizing lolis by identity."
Su Xuan: "?"
Listening to them, Rukkhadevata's remnant will froze for a moment.
Then, when Nahida arrived and immediately called out "Mother"—and she saw her hand in Su Xuan's like a family outing—that confusion only deepened.
This situation was nothing like what she'd imagined.
"Nahida, you…"
Rukkhadevata scrutinized Su Xuan and Nahida holding hands, and the others behind them.
None of them matched anything in her memories.
"Mother, this is my father, Su Xuan," Nahida said brightly.
"These two are Paimon, and Ying—she's a Traveler from beyond this world, just like Father."
"Someone from beyond this world…" Rukkhadevata murmured.
No wonder they could enter this memory space without being affected by the Abyssal taint.
So they weren't creatures of Teyvat.
"To be precise, our Boss Su is someone from beyond the universe," Paimon corrected smugly.
"That's right!" Nahida nodded hard. "Father's true origin isn't from our universe—he comes from another one entirely."
Rukkhadevata tilted her head.
"Eh?"
Nahida blinked in confusion, turning to look at Su Xuan.
He explained calmly:
"The diary copies exist in your consciousness, but they don't show up in the remnant will of someone already dead."
"So this version of Rukkhadevata doesn't know any of that."
"Once she's fully resurrected, I'm sure she'll be just like Makoto or Guizhong."
"Makoto… resurrected…"
Rukkhadevata's heart rippled, but as the God of Wisdom, her expression remained steady.
"You mean the first Narukami of Inazuma—the Raiden Makoto who fell in Khaenri'ah?"
Nahida nodded like a pecking chick.
"Father came here today specifically to revive you, Mother."
"And also to resolve Eleazar and the dead zones."
"Makoto…" Rukkhadevata said softly. "The one who died in Khaenri'ah…"
Her voice trembled, but she kept her calm.
"Revive…?"
She stared at Su Xuan in disbelief.
Then Nahida's voice sounded in her ear again.
"Thanks to Father's diary, I already know why you called me here."
"You wanted me to use my authority over the World Tree to erase your existence from it."
Rukkhadevata's eyes shook again.
Aside from herself, no one in the world should have known that.
How did this man know?
As if reading her thoughts, Nahida declared proudly:
"Father is all-knowing and all-capable."
"And…"
"I don't want you to disappear. I don't want to disappear either…"
Her voice grew quieter as she spoke.
Her little hand curled into the hem of her dress, twisting like a child who'd done something wrong.
"You disappearing?"
Rukkhadevata's remnant will struggled to keep up.
From the moment they arrived, everything she'd heard had been one shock after another.
When Nahida said she would disappear too, her mind fully stalled.
"I called you here to erase my data. Why would you vanish as well?"
"Because if you lose a core part of your memories—memories that can never be recovered—what do you think happens to you?" Su Xuan pulled Nahida into his arms and looked at Rukkhadevata with a smile.
"You're the incarnation of the World Tree. You, of all people, should understand how important memories are to an individual."
Rukkhadevata fell silent, thinking deeply.
She agreed with him.
Memories are fundamental to an independent self.
Their loss can warp a person's nature in terrifying ways.
If the God of Wisdom lost all memory of knowledge—could she still be called the God of Wisdom?
"Is this about her personality changing after forgetting me?" Rukkhadevata ventured.
"It's a lot more than just 'personality,'" Nahida replied at once.
"That one used the World Tree's authority just to whitewash a criminal."
Rukkhadevata: "?!"
Little Nahida, fists clenched tight, grumbled as she told her about the first Archon "Nahida" who erased Rukkhadevata and then went on to bleach Scaramouche's sins.
Rukkhadevata was stunned.
Of all the things she'd accounted for—
She had never imagined that once Sumeru forgot her, Nahida would do something so outrageous.
"This…" she finally managed, at a loss for words.
The World Tree was vital to Celestia.
What it stored most preciously wasn't power, but information.
Under Celestia's rules, editing the World Tree's data wasn't much different from peeking beyond the sky or probing the Abyss.
Rukkhadevata could hardly fathom that asking Nahida to erase her would create such a disaster down the line.
With a heavy sigh, she murmured:
"But to purge the World Tree of forbidden knowledge, this was the only method I could see…"
"I…"
Another sigh slipped out.
Then she asked, voice tight:
"And afterward? After the Nahida who had forgotten me did all this… what about Celestia?"
"In the future, Sumeru won't… be punished by a sky nail, will it?"
For the first time, the God of Wisdom felt her scalp go numb.
This was a dead end either way—
Was there truly no path where Sumeru escaped ruin?
"You'll know once you're revived," Su Xuan cut in before she could spiral further.
Rukkhadevata hesitated.
"But the forbidden knowledge…"
Paimon jumped in first.
"Please. That stuff is easier for our Boss Su to clean up than it is to resurrect you."
Rukkhadevata: "?!"
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