Responding to Anna, there were three things—
Shattered Honkai Cores;
The warmth in her hands;
And, increasingly blurry vision...
The blood in her body was still being continuously extracted by the Empty Snow battlesuit. The empowered Anna was like a God of War, moving freely through the tide of Honkai Beasts. She ignored the lower-level beasts and directly aimed for the Honkai Cores of the upper-level ones.
(Illustration: A dark blue starry sky/combat background)
One, two...
The mission completion rate fluctuated constantly, down to the first decimal place.
77.8%... 78.7%... 79.6%...
80.5%!
After killing the fourth Templar-class Honkai Beast, the mission progress finally exceeded 80%.
"Time Scar—Dispel." Just as Anna was about to utter "Dispel," exit the empowered state, and prepare to leave, Li Wu suddenly called.
"Answer." Confused, Anna fought through her dizziness to answer the call and looked in the direction where Li Wu was.
The call connected, and Li Wu's first sentence instantly jolted her awake—
"Anna! Fly up a thousand meters! Hurry!"
At this moment, Anna had already suffered severe blood loss, and her brain's processing had become incredibly sluggish. However, out of her trust in Li Wu, Anna didn't hesitate at all and shot up into the sky, reaching an altitude of a thousand meters.
Yet, the moment she took off, the snowfield beneath her cracked open. A massive Honkai Beast resembling a desert sandworm violently burst from the fissure, lunging straight toward her position with its maw wide open.
It was too fast, or perhaps Anna had lost too much blood. For a moment, she couldn't react at all.
An immense gravitational pull erupted from its abyssal maw. Fortunately, Anna was relatively far away, so the gravitational effect was not pronounced.
This giant worm-like Honkai Beast lacked the ability to fly. Having reached an altitude of over nine hundred meters, it fell back down while still dozens of meters away from Anna.
It took several seconds before Anna belatedly looked down at the ground. A lightless black abyss caught her eye; even with the augmentation of the Empty Snow battlesuit, she couldn't see into the depths of the earth.
"Emperor-class... Honkai Beast... Star-Devouring Worm..."
Anna felt a pang of terror. She had once answered test questions about this Honkai Beast in her exams, so she understood it quite well.
[Name: Star-Devouring Worm.]
[Rank: Emperor.]
[Characteristics—]
[Leyline Submersion: Lurks deep within permafrost or rock layers for long periods. Its movements cause localized geological structural collapse. Premonitions of its surprise attacks are extremely difficult to detect.]
[Abyssal Field: Continuously generates an "Energy Perception Masking Domain" in the surrounding area where its main body is located, severely interfering with energy scans.]
[Star-Swallowing Impact: Possesses ultra-high-speed vertical thrust capabilities when breaching the surface. In its juvenile stage, it can thrust up to 300 meters into the air; in its adult stage, up to 800 meters. The highest recorded observation is 903 meters. Its oral structure can generate a strong gravitational vortex, greatly restricting target mobility.]
[High-Heat Energy Cannon: Can randomly unleash massive energy beams. Danger level is extremely high.]
[Prey Enmity: Retains memory of targets it failed to kill. It will hunt them relentlessly until the target's pheromones disappear.]
Soon, Anna heard Li Wu's voice over the comms again: "Anna, fly two kilometers to the southeast and land!"
Two kilometers wasn't far.
But why didn't he just tell me to fly to a safer location?
Anna didn't know, nor could she think. Her mind was a chaotic mess, her vision blurred. She could only vaguely see the outlines of the snowy landscape, and she couldn't even see the Honkai Beasts below anymore.
The appearance of the Star-Devouring Worm had interrupted her plans, forcing her to forcibly maintain the "Time Scar: Blood Void" pseudo-authority until she left.
Lack of blood to her brain had first stripped away her eyesight.
Only half a second passed before Anna executed Li Wu's command, flying two thousand meters to the southeast.
This distance only took her a few breaths.
Upon completing the command, Anna immediately deactivated the Blood Void state. Just as she prepared to land, her consciousness could hold on no longer, and she rapidly plummeted from a thousand meters in the air.
Just as she was about to smash into a puddle of bloody pulp, something bizarre happened...
The completely unconscious Anna, when less than two meters from the ground, suddenly decelerated and landed steadily on the earth, as if some eerie power had intervened and directly altered the outcome.
At this moment, Li Wu's face was flushed red. Clutching his temple with one hand, he staggered toward her and injected more than half of the Holy Blood from his backpack into Anna's body.
This Holy Blood was originally Anna's anyway, so there was no need to worry about rejection reactions. Or rather, Holy Blood inherently caused no rejection reactions.
"You've worked very hard. Leave the rest to me."
"No matter how many times I have to repeat it, I will... bring you back home in one piece."
The rising moon gazed upon the two blood-soaked figures.
Seventy-two times.
That was the number of times Li Wu had used Return by Death.
These seventy-two times, without exception, were all to find the only path of survival for Anna.
He had asked Anna for the information on the Star-Devouring Worm during his third return.
The save point was three seconds before Anna was attacked by the Star-Devouring Worm.
At that time, Anna had already been swallowed into the belly of the Star-Devouring Worm. Corrupted by Honkai energy, she was on the verge of passing out, yet she still answered all his questions, and... she urged him to stay away from her, not thinking about her own escape...
So, to respond to Anna, Li Wu walked directly in front of a Chariot-class Honkai Beast and raised the muzzle of his gun—
Not aiming at the Honkai Beast, but at his own temple.
Because he was afraid. Afraid of that one-in-ten-thousand chance that the bullet piercing his temple wouldn't cause immediate, fatal damage...
To ensure his death was absolute, the Chariot-class Honkai Beast—which would devour humans and human corpses completely—was the best "failsafe."
On his fourth return, Li Wu carried the unconscious Anna and arrived at a distance within one thousand meters, only to be swarmed and eaten to death by the tide of Honkai Beasts.
On his eighth return, Li Wu confirmed the optimal route and figured out exactly how many meters this Star-Devouring Worm could thrust, helping Anna dodge the first wave of attacks.
For the subsequent sixty-four returns, Li Wu continuously used his lives to try and map out a "safe zone."
The Star-Devouring Worm possessed human-like intelligence. In Anna's condition, she could fly a few dozen kilometers at most before losing consciousness, only to be swallowed by the pursuing Star-Devouring Worm and die completely.
Time and time again, Li Wu watched with his own eyes as Anna, under his "commands," met her end in the worm's belly. Then Li Wu personally attracted the Star-Devouring Worm, testing exactly which places it could move to...
Mountain peaks, valleys, caves, inside the trunks of trees...
Li Wu tried everywhere he could hide. No matter where she hid, the Star-Devouring Worm could find her accurately and swallow her whole along with the environment.
Yes, even if it was a small mountain, the Star-Devouring Worm could track her down based on her lingering pheromones and devour her. There was no such thing as a so-called safe zone...
But Li Wu didn't give up.
After his fifty-ninth return, he had a sudden inspiration: If we go to the high-risk zone, will the Star-Devouring Worm still enter?
Sure enough, after Li Wu entered the high-risk zone, the Star-Devouring Worm stopped advancing, seemingly wary of something inside. But the moment he entered the high-risk zone, the extremely high concentration of Honkai energy forced him to crawl painfully on the ground, making meaningless dry-heaving sounds.
He barely recovered by relying on the Holy Blood.
It was also after injecting the Holy Blood that a new portion of memory appeared in Li Wu's mind.
The dream he had at the Cioara Orphanage that day was presented in his mind more completely and clearly. The price was that his consciousness became increasingly blurry during the process of the Holy Blood altering his body.
Before the memory could fully manifest, Li Wu directly committed suicide to force a return.
He absolutely could not pass out... once the save point updated, he would never be able to save Anna again...
The only benefit was that the system notified him he had obtained a new ability—
[Tomorrow's Loan].
The effect was to draw upon the future in advance, but he needed to make up for the "process of achieving the result" within a fixed time; otherwise, reality would be forcibly corrected.
And the process required to pre-draw Anna's smooth landing was that he had to endure the impact force of Anna crashing into the ground over the next hour.
This massive impact force was definitely something Li Wu couldn't withstand, but he surprisingly discovered he could use Return by Death to share the burden. Like an interest-free installment loan, one life shared a portion of it.
For the next five returns, Li Wu endured the damage fed back by "Tomorrow's Loan" while continuously probing for the most suitable "safe zone"—a strange little wooden cabin located somewhere one thousand meters from the high-risk zone.
It seemed someone had lived inside: a campfire, a wooden bed, dustless tables and chairs...
This place was only adjacent to the high-risk zone, but the Star-Devouring Worm would not approach.
"It feels like all the organs in my stomach are squeezed together..."
Carrying Anna, Li Wu instinctively wanted to kneel but kept his muscles tense, forcing himself to stay upright.
The various organs in his body were tightly crushed together under the massive impact, and waves of nausea and the urge to vomit constantly surged in his stomach.
On the way to the wooden cabin, he threw up several times. Stomach acid and food remnants, along with warm blood, spilled onto the ice and snow beneath his feet, forcibly melting quite a bit of light frost along the path he came from.
Once the Star-Devouring Worm confirmed whether Li Wu's pheromones belonged to a powerhouse or not, it would appear within five minutes.
So every second counted; he had to reach the wooden cabin within five minutes.
Relying on his enhanced body, Li Wu ran across the snowfield as swiftly as a lynx.
However.
With every step he took, a patch of scarlet blood fell nearby, melting the frost and snow, dyeing the earth red.
The ground continuously trembled. The Star-Devouring Worm had locked onto their pheromones and was shuttling through the earth below.
Two kilometers... one kilometer... five hundred meters... one hundred meters...
When the distance was less than fifty meters, Li Wu shielded Anna in his arms and used his body to crash open the door of the wooden cabin.
He then quickly got up and closed the door.
The ground was still shaking violently, as if a major earthquake had struck. This fragile little wooden cabin was like a small sailboat in a tsunami; any insignificant wave could completely crush it, sinking it into the vast sea as scattered wood chips.
The Star-Devouring Worm could directly tear open the earth and create an extremely deep abyss. Logically speaking, this little wooden cabin couldn't stop it at all.
But after Li Wu brought Anna into the wooden cabin, the ground gradually smoothed out.
The Star-Devouring Worm changed direction and moved toward the distance, abandoning the prey right before its eyes.
"Thank goodness, there were no accidents."
Li Wu placed Anna on the relatively clean bed, took out the last vial of Holy Blood, and took a small sip. The pain inflicted on his body by "Tomorrow's Loan" was rapidly dissipating.
If he drank too much, he would pass out directly...
Twenty-three hours had already passed. Wait one more hour, and the mission would be forcibly terminated.
By then, Schicksal would probably send someone to pick them up, right? But even if they didn't, it didn't matter. At least hiding in this wooden cabin was temporarily safe.
Once the Star-Devouring Worm left and Anna woke up, the two would have plenty of opportunities to leave.
During the final hour, Li Wu didn't let his guard down and carefully examined the furnishings inside the wooden cabin.
The room was surprisingly warm. The embers in the fireplace had not yet died out, and the firelight illuminated the interior decor of the cabin. There wasn't much furniture; the only things that could be called decorations were the bowls and chopsticks placed on the table.
"The owner of this house must have just stepped out temporarily and should be back soon."
"If I explain properly, they shouldn't drive us away, right? No, even an Emperor-class Honkai Beast doesn't dare approach here. The owner of the house is definitely not an ordinary person."
Li Wu quickly analyzed the current situation.
For some reason, a strange thought suddenly welled up in Li Wu's heart—Wouldn't it be nice to stay here forever?
This thought only lingered for an instant before being rejected by rationality.
He had to return alive with Anna.
A person couldn't be trapped in the past forever; that was meaningless.
One could look back, but absolutely could not walk back.
Outside the transparent glass window, snowflakes drifted down rustlingly. Li Wu pressed his hand against the window pane, leaving a white, foggy handprint when he withdrew it.
The temperature difference between the inside and outside was astonishingly large. Sure enough, the owner of the house is not simple.
To be able to survive long-term in this harsh environment, they had to possess strength of at least S-rank.
Li Wu understood that when facing an expert of this caliber, he absolutely could not be sloppy. He had to show a proper attitude so the other party would believe he wasn't a bad person and was worth saving.
"It doesn't matter. I can use Return by Death anyway. As long as we can communicate, I can always persuade the other party."
Li Wu secretly made up his mind.
The time on his phone passed slowly. Outside, it was a world of ice and snow, hazy and misty. He couldn't see far into the distance, only knowing that the snow was falling heavier and heavier, and the environment was incredibly harsh.
A long time passed, and the owner still hadn't returned, as if they would never return.
Until exactly one hour later, down to the minute, a deafening roar echoed from the sky. A massive black shadow loomed over the house.
It was a hovering warship...
Schicksal really values her, huh... They even sent a warship.
Li Wu's mouth twitched, pondering what exactly was so special about him to make Schicksal target him.
Several Valkyries clad in Valkyrie Battlesuits descended from the sky. With white hair and blue eyes, they were clearly Valkyries of the Kaslana family.
The immense recoil pressure of their landing cleared away all the frost and snow near the wooden cabin, revealing the barren soil.
They walked to the door, gently placed their hands on it, and pushed forward.
However, the wooden door didn't budge an inch, as if it were welded in place.
"...It's just a wooden door. If it breaks, we'll just have HQ send someone to fix it," shouted the captain of the squad, who stood at the back observing everything.
Hearing this, the two A-rank Valkyries no longer held back. They even used Honkai energy to enhance their arms. The expressions under their visors were somewhat fierce, yet they still couldn't push open the door of the wooden cabin.
This was far beyond their understanding. Whether pulling outward or pushing inward, their strength was enough to rip out the door frame along with the door. How could they possibly fail to open an ordinary wooden door?
It was as if...
Some kind of rule had denied them entry.