Honkai Star Rail: My Death Feeds Their Madness — Chapter 102

Chapter 102: As Long As I Am By Your Side

Behind them, the boarding ramp of the star skiff lowered with a heavy, metallic hum. Mianxue and Qinghan stepped off one after another, their eyes reflecting the familiar, sprawling architecture of the Xianzhou Yaoqing. A deep flash of nostalgia softened their features. Although the two sisters had only been away from the Yaoqing for three years, they hadn’t truly returned home since the grand expedition first began.

Counting the endless days and bitter winters, it had been thirty-five years.

“We are going home,” Kagashi said, his voice a quiet anchor in the bustling wind of the port. He stepped forward, his white robes fluttering gently.

Jingliu followed silently. Her crimson gaze remained fixed on his broad back, unable to tear itself away. As she watched the steady rhythm of his steps, the memory of her awakening dozens of days ago surfaced in her mind, vivid and unsettling.

When she had first opened her eyes from that decades-long slumber, the first thing she saw was her Master keeping watch by her bedside. But his face had been terrifyingly pale, stripped of all color, looking as fragile as thin ice. After learning she had been asleep for decades, she had desperately asked him how he had managed to cure her.

Master had only smiled faintly, claiming he had found an ancient prescription.

But her intuition, honed by years of surviving on the edge of death, told her it was nowhere near that simple.

During their long voyage back to the Yaoqing, she could always catch the faint, lingering scent of blood on her Master. It was a scent that seemed to have soaked deep into his very bones and marrow, impossible to wash clean no matter how much incense he burned. Yet, to her absolute bewilderment, that metallic smell wasn’t unpleasant. Instead, it carried a strange, intoxicating intimacy that made her feel entirely at ease. It left her utterly fascinated.

Jingliu noticed that her Master emitted an aura that drew her in like a moth to a flame, making her subconsciously want to close the distance between them. She wanted to press against him… to erase every fraction of space until there was no gap at all.

She forcibly restrained the dark, possessive impulse, secretly turning the thoughts over in her mind. Was it because Master had never given up on saving her for decades? Did this mean her weight in his heart was finally different from the rest? Was that why she felt this consuming, suffocating affection for him growing day by day?

Forget it. Time would eventually provide the answer. Her life had been given to her by Master, more than once. In this lifetime, and in every lifetime that followed, she would stay by his side.

“Master,” Jingliu called out softly. “I am only one medium-sized expeditionary battle away from fulfilling the condition you set back then.”

Kagashi paused his steps and looked sideways at her, his expression unreadable.

The emotion swirling in Jingliu’s eyes was slightly apprehensive. She stood rigid, as if terrified of his refusal or his blame.

“There is no need for that,” Kagashi said calmly.

Jingliu’s heart violently tightened. She thought he was revoking her right to step onto the battlefield again, and her lips couldn’t help but press into a thin, pale line. But before she could scramble for the right words to plead her case, she heard a sentence that left her completely dazed.

“In one hundred and twenty-five days, the four hundred and twenty-seventh Cloud Knights Martial Arts Examination will be held. The victor will be promoted to the rank of Valiant Guard. Do you understand?”

Jingliu’s crimson eyes suddenly lit up with a fierce brilliance. She nodded without a second of hesitation. “Understood!”

Becoming a Valiant Guard meant securing the absolute qualification to lead an army in large-scale expeditions. Master wasn’t forbidding her from fighting; instead, he was directly handing her a shortcut to bypass the tedious years of accumulating standard combat experience.

“I will train hard, complete my rehabilitation as soon as possible, and push my strength to the absolute limit!” she promised, her voice laced with fervent devotion.

“Hmm. The previous basic training regimen is no longer very effective for your current state,” Kagashi murmured, his eyes sweeping over her as if calculating her exact physical parameters. “From now on, focus entirely on physical tempering. As for the remaining items…”

He paused, carefully judging what level of targets to set for the reborn Jingliu standing before him.

“Accuracy training: you must deliver ten strikes within zero point two seconds. Every single strike must hit the fatal mark.”

“Perform two hours of extreme agility training daily. I will arrange the venue. After completion, immediately transition into regenerative power training.”

“The training ground for impact and pressure resistance remains the Great Waterfall. You already know the location. When you can swing your sword freely and naturally under the crushing weight of the falls, you pass.”

“You must complete all of the above within three months.”

Jingliu had suffered unimaginable hardships in her youth. Hearing such brutal, flesh-tearing requirements now brought her no fear. Instead, a wave of deep nostalgia and burning anticipation washed over her. This was the Master she knew. Strict, cold-faced, but never cold-hearted. He understood her physical limits perfectly and cared for her in his own ungentle, demanding way.

It was enough to just listen to him. To obey him.

“I understand, Master. But you mentioned the examination is in one hundred and twenty-five days. That leaves roughly another month?”

“In the remaining time, while maintaining your basic training, you will follow me to practice another skill.”

“What is it?”

“Folk martial arts. Eight Extremes Fist.”

“I see,” Jingliu realized, a spark of recognition in her eyes.

She had witnessed that boxing style before. It was a fierce, hyper-violent discipline, capable of generating explosive kinetic force to crush enemies a hundred times larger than oneself with every single movement. Without heavy equipment, the vast majority of Cloud Knights would find it utterly impossible to contend with the Abominations of Abundance. Those who could tear Borisin warriors apart barehanded, just as she had done in the past, were a microscopic minority.

It wasn’t that the Cloud Knights relied too heavily on high-tech weaponry out of cowardice, but rather that human biological energy had a hard ceiling. She remembered Master telling her long ago that humans were a species built for wisdom, not raw strength. To fight Abominations—creatures whose base constitutions were monstrously superior to most Xianzhou natives—without relying on forged weapons required sacrificing far too much.

Currently, the total number of Yaoqing Cloud Knights numbered just over five hundred million. After screening through the elite ranks, there were likely not even a million who could slaughter Abominations with their bare hands. This was the tragic limitation of the Primate order, the Hominid family, and the Homo genus; they naturally lacked the organs, claws, and limbs required for high direct lethality.

Even blessed with a long life, their biological starting point was vastly inferior to the animalistic traits of most Abominations. The Borisin possessed tearing fangs, rending claws, sharp horns, and some even weaponized poison, fire, and lightning. The Foxians, at the very least, had the natural advantage of blinding reaction speeds. In stark contrast, the Xianzhou people—before receiving the curse-like blessing of Abundance—were merely ordinary humans. They possessed no inherent physical advantages besides their intellect.

Therefore, portable weapons forged from that intellect became their greatest reliance. Although the Borisin ranks included Abominations like the Zaochi Hunting Pack who were skilled at crafting armor and arms, their technological level was laughably inferior to the Xianzhou, or any other developed interstellar civilization. For a Xianzhou soldier to abandon their technological advantage and choose to fight a Borisin barehanded was no different from attacking an opponent’s greatest strength with one’s own fatal weakness.

In short: it was stupid.

Thinking of this, Jingliu realized why there were so few individuals like her Master who were willing to temper their physical bodies in such a cruel, agonizing manner. Without a monstrously strong foundation, how could folk martial arts ever inflict lethal damage on the Abominations of Abundance?

There were ready-made examples standing right nearby: her seniors, Mianxue and Qinghan. At the very least… Master had never allowed them to practice such brutal arts together.

“Mianxue, Qinghan, you two will learn this alongside her,” Kagashi suddenly instructed, his tone mild. “With your current physical strength, you can exert enough lethality to make it viable.”

“…” Jingliu’s expression instantly froze.

‘With their current physical strength…?’A dark, icy coil of jealousy slithered around Jingliu’s heart.’Did Master also understand Senior Mianxue’s body in such intimate detail…? I originally thought it was only Qinghan he paid such close attention to…’She took a slow, quiet breath, forcing the violent possessiveness down.’It’s fine. It’s fine. As long as I am promoted to Valiant Guard and fight alongside Master to accumulate military merits, everything will be fine. Sooner or later, there will be an exclusive place—and exclusive tenderness—for me in Master’s heart.’

After all, a pavilion near the water catches the first moonlight. Even if she couldn’t be the first to capture the moon, she would ensure the moon was never shared with anyone else.

The two sisters did not notice the dark turmoil churning in Jingliu’s eyes. They simply nodded in agreement without hesitation.

With a clear, bloody goal in mind, Jingliu was brimming with kinetic energy. She began her rehabilitation training that very afternoon. She hadn’t known the true extent of her changes until she finally moved, and once she started, she was deeply shaken.

She had intended to start with her most familiar routine: a weighted long-distance run, aiming for a mere thousand li just to warm up her stiff joints. Unexpectedly, she broke into a sprint and effortlessly reached a top speed of eight hundred li per hour.

Thirty-five years ago, this figure had maxed out at a pathetic three hundred. Even if she had stripped off all her training weights back then, she could only approach five hundred li per hour for a few fleeting minutes.

No wonder Master had said the previous basic training was useless for her now. It seemed that during her decades of sleep, Master had done something deep to her body…

That night, under the quiet glow of the Yaoqing’s artificial stars, she finally gathered her courage to ask him about the changes. But, just as she feared, she was met with a soft, impenetrable rebuff.

“Why ask so much?” Kagashi said gently, his dark eyes reflecting the faint light. “You will know in the future.”

“Oh…” Jingliu lowered her eyes, hiding the obsessive hunger lingering in her gaze.