Honkai Star Rail: My Chat Group is Full of Broken Timelines — Chapter 57

Chapter 58: An Old Man’s Lonely Vigil; A Regret Best Not Left to Wait

For Jing Yuan, eight hundred years was time enough to sand away a great many sharp edges.

As the General of the Divine Prowess of the Xianzhou Luofu, he had long grown accustomed to concealing his true feelings behind a placid, gentle smile. He could let the galaxy surge and the star rails shift, all while he sat within the central command tent, deciding the fate of ten thousand ships with the placement of a single go stone.

But when the news arrived—that the Winged Flame Merchant Group had vanished from the star map, their ships and all hands lost—the chess piece held between his fingertips finally landed in the wrong position.

The true aftershocks of the “Galaxy Silence” event didn’t sweep through the Xianzhou until several days later. On that day, every living being in the cosmos felt an invisible chill seize them by the throat. It was not an ordinary fear, but a deep shudder that seemed to emanate from the very origin of their existence, a terrifying premonition that in the next second, they might simply dissipate, as if they had never been born at all.

When that suffocating pressure finally receded, a patch of the star map had been replaced by a “Nihility” star system that appeared out of thin air.

The scout reports piled high on his desk, each more disbelieving than the last. “…No matter remains in that sector of space, the subspace folds have been completely smoothed out, and even the Memory Zone has lost all traces of what was there.”

One scout, his voice trembling in the recording, added, “It’s as if… as if someone took an eraser and simply wiped that entire region off the canvas of the universe.”

There was no wreckage. No residual energy signatures. Even the very memory that ‘a civilization once existed there’had become blurred and indistinct. If the Interastral Peace Corporation hadn’t confirmed, based on their careful flight records, that a merchant group registered under the name’Winged Flame’ had been passing through that sector at the precise time of the event, the Xianzhou might never have understood where they had gone.

And Winged Flame… that was the name of the merchant group Kazuki was traveling with.

Everything connected to that Nihility star system had been utterly erased in the Silence. When existence itself was wiped clean, how could there possibly be any survivors?

As night fell, Jing Yuan pushed open the door to the private backyard of the Seat of Divine Foresight. Moonlight flowed like liquid silver over the bluestone slabs, pooling around the low table under the veranda.

He sat down and reached out, his fingers breaking the wax seal on a jar of wine. The crisp, sharp aroma of spirits drifted out, carrying with it the heavy scent of bygone years.

For the first time in a very, very long while, Jing Yuan began to drink. For the General of the Divine Prowess, this was something that should have been an absolute impossibility.

The porcelain cup was filled, the amber liquid within shimmering under the moon’s pale light.

Jing Yuan tilted his head back and drained it in a single swallow. The spicy warmth slid down his throat, yet it did nothing to warm the deep coldness lodged deep in his heart.

The last time Jing Yuan had drunk like this could be traced back eight hundred years, to the boisterous gatherings of the High-Cloud Quintet. Jingliu and Baiheng were both incorrigible drunkards, and Dan Feng and Yingxing were never ones to be outdone. As the youngest among them, Jing Yuan had naturally been unable to escape their relentless pressure to join in.

That was before the Defense of the Luofu had even begun… The time between Baiheng’s sacrifice, the Sedition of Imbibitor Lunae, and Jingliu’s descent into the Mara that saw her rampage through the Star-Skiff Sea—it had all happened too fast. The time it took for him to be promoted from a Cloud Knight Lieutenant to the General of the Luofu in a time of absolute crisis was far, far too short.

As a General, he was no longer suited for drinking. In those eight hundred years, he had learned to calculate every victory and loss on the chessboard, learned to balance the myriad factions of the court, and learned to lock away every one of his emotions behind the simple phrase, “It’s no matter.”

Except for this time.

Jing Yuan filled another cup. A few drops of wine splashed over the rim, landing on the bluestone slabs and spreading quickly, like silent, unshed tears.

He drank cup after cup, his movements becoming mechanical, like a marionette whose strings were pulled by grief. The moonlight stretched his shadow long against the pillars, and for the first time, it revealed the hint of a stoop—this was not the brilliant, strategizing General, but merely an old man who had lost his grand-nephew and was approaching the twilight years of his own Mara-Struck curse.

“General…” Yanqing whispered, hiding just inside the room behind him. He peeked through a small crack in the door at Jing Yuan, whose back looked so terribly lonely.

In a way, Kazuki had been his senior brother, too. Though he was often left fuming by Kazuki’s unorthodox and frankly dirty tactics during their training spars, in private, Kazuki had always taken good care of this junior brother who was even younger than him.

Kazuki had often lectured him, telling him not to be arrogant, and to never say things like, “Out of five people, I’m going to fight three.”

Although Yanqing hadn’t understood the significance of that strange advice back then, the underlying care in his senior’s words had always been unmistakable. Knowing that Kazuki was now missing, his fate unknown, left a hollow ache in his own chest.

But he didn’t dare step forward. He had never seen the General like this—without his usual calm smile, even the simple act of drinking carried an unspeakable exhaustion, as if the sea of stars he bore upon his shoulders had finally become a burden heavy enough to crush him.

“Truly a case of the white-haired sending off the… black-haired? No, the white-haired,” a quiet voice sighed.

In another universe, within the Gramar Star System, Kazuki sat watching Firefly, who was sleeping soundly beside him.

He had no plans to leave for the time being. The hidden danger of his Mara-Struck condition was a time bomb ticking inside him; no one could say when it might suddenly detonate. Staying by Firefly’s side was the safest choice for everyone. Her martial prowess was more than enough to suppress him if he ever lost control. Besides, she had endured far too much alone in the blank space of these past two and a half years. He had to stay, to do something—anything—to make up for it.

As for the Xianzhou… he couldn’t go back. Not now.

For the long-lived people of the Xianzhou, a natural death was a gift—a cool summer night for a carefree sleep. If a person became Mara-Struck, the Ten-Lords Commission would arrive at their door, destroy their physical body, and allow their consciousness to enter the Hall of Rebirth. It was their version of cyber-immortality.

But Kazuki could never accept such an ending. This didn’t mean, however, that he didn’t care about the people in his original world who were worried sick about him.

[Cliffhanger King: Robin, can you contact my great-uncle? Could you tell him I’m still alive?]

When it came to the person Kazuki was most worried about, it was, of course, Jing Yuan. The General was already over eight hundred years old.

Although being declared “missing” wasn’t an official death notice, “fate unknown” was often a distinction without a difference.

‘Just how sad will he be when he hears the news of my “death”?’ Kazuki thought, a pang of guilt striking him.

[Pure Beauty Knight: If this were in the past…]

Robin’s reply came quickly, tinged with a hint of helplessness.

[Pure Beauty Knight: Back when I was still a galactic superstar, it would have been easy. All I would have had to do was announce a concert tour on the Luofu, and it would have naturally drawn the attention of the Six Charioteers. If I wanted to see General Jing Yuan, I’d just have to mention it in an interview, and plenty of people would have rushed to pull strings for me. But now…]

After spending the last few years as a Pure Beauty Knight, her former starlight had long since faded. The impact of the Galaxy Silence event had been too immense; even the news of her “retirement” had only managed to trend for half a day before being completely drowned out by panicked discussions of the “Nihility star system.”

Her influence now was a pale shadow of what it once was. Trying to contact a high-level official of the Xianzhou Alliance felt as difficult as ascending to heaven.

[Cliffhanger King: No… there’s a private contact method. Let me tell you…]