Honkai Star Rail: My Death Feeds Their Madness — Chapter 56

Chapter 56: Purgatory

Not far from the blood-soaked remnants of the battlefield, the Xianzhou Yaoqing had not even finished its deceleration sequence before it violently banked. Its massive astral engines roared, burning at maximum output as the colossal ship tore through the void to aid the distressed Xianzhou Cangcheng.

No one could fathom how the Cangcheng’s main ship had plunged into apocalyptic danger mere moments after the General’s departure.

Kagashi had barely set foot on the Yaoqing’s deck alongside the surviving Cloud Knights. Without a second to catch his breath, he sprinted straight for the Sky-Faring Commission. He needed the Huangzhong Resonance System. He needed to hear the pulse of his home.

But the silence that greeted him made his blood run cold.

The Sky-Faring Commission of the Cangcheng… had vanished from the network. Across the entire Huangzhong Resonance System, not a single frequency responded to the desperate pings of the allied fleet.

Kagashi forced down the suffocating dread rising in his throat. His voice came out low, strained to the breaking point. “Where is the Yaoqing’s Helmsman? I need the fastest star skiff you have. Now.”

The Xianzhou flagship was a lumbering leviathan; its top speed was agonizingly slow compared to a nimble interceptor. Even though the Yaoqing was renowned as the swiftest vessel in the Alliance fleet, turning the massive ship around and completing the jump would take days. Days Kagashi did not have. His only family, his few precious friends—they were all trapped on the Cangcheng.

He absolutely refused to pace the decks of the Yaoqing and wait for death to claim them.

The Helmsman took one look at Kagashi’s eyes and understood. Without a word of bureaucratic hesitation, he authorized a top-tier star skiff for the Cangcheng Cloud Knight and assigned an elite Foxian aerial squadron to escort him.

The Yaoqing Cloud Knights were just as frantic. By the time Kagashi and the Foxian vanguard dropped out of warp into the Cangcheng’s sector, the stars themselves seemed to bleed.

It was a portrait of purgatory.

Hanging in the deep, lightless expanse of space was a crimson demonic star—Rahu. It wailed a sickening, cosmic dirge, dragging burning mountains and shattered earth as it lunged toward the Cangcheng. The fleshy planet loomed over the star skiff’s canopy, pulsating with the wet, heavy rhythm of a diseased heart.

Its surface slowly tore open, peeling back an outer shell of jagged rock, writhing tendons, and colossal vines to vomit forth a tide of abominations. It was an insatiable predator gorging itself, yet simultaneously a grotesque mother giving birth to endless horrors.

Following the rhythmic throbbing of the crimson star, a creeping infection of muscle and withered vines spilled across the void, completely engulfing the majestic hull of the Cangcheng.

Down on the long, elegant streets of the ship, millions screamed. They thrashed and crawled through the ruins, drowning in the despair of a sudden apocalypse. Golden vines sprouted violently from their mouths, noses, and weeping eyes. Flesh, metal, and jade alike were being systematically digested by Rahu’s creeping roots.

“Save them!”

The Yaoqing Foxians were paralyzed by the sheer scale of the nightmare, but their instincts as Cloud Knights overrode their terror. They pushed their throttles to the maximum, diving straight toward Rahu.

Under the sickly, nightmarish glow of the demonic star, the Foxian pilots unleashed their payloads. It was a futile gesture—like gnats throwing themselves against the hide of an immovable, uncaring god. With every breath Rahu took, the void tore open, disgorging swarms of Borisin beastships.

The sky ignited. Under the brutal pursuit of the wolf-like abominations, the densely packed Yaoqing star skiffs were reduced to fleeting sparks, snuffed out in an instant.

Rahu’s atmosphere had become a suffocating, fleshy womb of filth, acting as the rumination stomach of a cosmic beast. The Xianzhou citizens trapped within had only one final, desperate plea—to die.

But the blessing of the Abundance had mutated into the ultimate curse.

The people were swallowed and regurgitated within that churning sea of meat, undergoing agonizing dissolutions and grotesque reconstructions. Their bones melted and reformed; their flesh tore and stitched itself back together. They could not perish. They could only suffer.

Qinghan stared at the sprawling hellscape, her mind shattering into blank, white static.

She never could have imagined this. Just days ago, she had proudly delivered the news of the Expedition’s triumph, escorting nearly a million refugees to safety. Now, the Cangcheng was a slaughterhouse.

Around her, countless comrades charged blindly into the writhing mass of flesh, only to be impaled, dragged down, and assimilated into the breeding ground.

She was terrified. Her hands shook so violently she could barely hold her weapon. But there was no retreat. The docking bays were gone. The sky was gone. There was only the forward march into the meat.

“Sister… where are you?!”

Before her, the ground heaved. The flesh of the breeding ground twisted and braided itself together, rising into a towering, grotesque tree that walked upon the ruined earth. The behemoth lumbered toward Qinghan, extending a hundred wooden arms to skewer the fleeing survivors, effortlessly piercing the chests of the knights who had just fought by her side.

Qinghan gripped the hilt of her shattered sword, her breath hitching as the giant tree loomed over her.

Then, a face bloomed upon the bark. A soft, smiling face.

It was her sister.

“Little sister, it’s me!” the face whispered, its voice dripping with a sickly sweet echo. “Don’t you recognize me?”

“No…” Qinghan stepped back, tears cutting through the ash on her cheeks. “You’re not her…”

The branches rattled in a foul wind. One by one, the agonizing faces of her fallen comrades sprouted like ripe fruit along the boughs, their mouths stretching open to unleash a chorus of shrill, overlapping laughter.

In her daze, Qinghan watched a single, beautiful flower bloom upon the jagged edge of her broken sword. A heartbeat later, the steel crumbled into a pile of rusted, useless dust.

Nimble vines slithered down from the canopy, gently weaving a crown of leaves into her hair. She dropped to her knees, too broken to fight, allowing the creeping branches and the cloying, sweet fragrance of rot to embrace her, just as those warm hands once did…

Meanwhile, not far from where Qinghan knelt, Mianxue slowly opened her eyes. Her trembling pupils reflected a canopy of thousands of familiar, lifeless faces staring down at her.

She saw her sister’s face among the twisted fruit, but she could not find her own.

“I can save her. I can save all of you.” The voice did not just echo in the air; it vibrated through the marrow of her bones. “With just a wave of one of my many hands, I can make flesh grow back upon bare bone, and command the fallen petals to rise from the dust back to the pistil. You know this well.”

The strange, thousand-faced tree was speaking directly to Mianxue. It was speaking to everyone on the dying ship.

It swayed its massive branches, its trunk driving thick, pulsing roots deep into the steel and soil of the Cangcheng.

“I am Shuhu. I am The Eternal. Starting from me, you all shall obtain true longevity!”

Mianxue broke. She wept, squeezing her eyes shut, her spirit utterly crushed. She had no strength left to raise her blade. In the shadow of this cosmic horror, she was nothing but an insignificant speck, a tiny fruit waiting to be plucked. How could a mortal argue with the roots of a god?

“Sever!”

A sharp, commanding shout tore through the dark crimson sky, cutting through the wails of the dying.

A man clad in silver armor streaked down from the heavens, riding upon the blade of a sword. His eyes were cold, his focus absolute. With a flick of his wrist, he commanded a torrential rain of a thousand flying swords. The blades whistled through the air in a blinding silver storm, mercilessly hacking through thousands of Shuhu’s encroaching branches.

In a flash of steel, the vines tightly constricting Mianxue and Qinghan were cleanly severed. The suffocating illusions enveloping the two girls shattered like fragile glass.

“Oh, it’s you again.” Shuhu’s voice shifted, the sickly sweetness replaced by a dark, thrumming excitement as the Emanator recognized the man who had dared to steal its prey. “I thought you wouldn’t be able to make it back in time.”

The thousand faces on the tree twisted into a unified, grotesque grin. “I’m becoming more and more interested in you. Come… become a part of me as well…”

Space warped. Over a dozen massive branches pierced through the fabric of reality, materializing with the speed of teleportation to bind Kagashi and the two girls in a single, inescapable cage of wood. Vicious thorns violently erupted from the bark, instantly piercing their limbs and drawing fresh blood.

Kagashi didn’t flinch. His flying swords tore through the air, moving in perfect synchronization to shred the cage. The blades hooked onto their armor, carrying the three of them away in a rapid, desperate retreat.

“Since you like saving people so much, I’ll swallow you first!”

The ground directly in Kagashi’s retreat path violently exploded. Thicker, ancient roots shot upward like spears, precisely entangling Kagashi’s waist and legs. With a sickening lurch, they ripped him away from the girls, dragging him straight toward Shuhu’s gaping main trunk.

“Guard Kagashi—!!!”

Watching him be pulled into the maw of the beast, Mianxue and Qinghan screamed until their throats tore.

Just as the shadows of the branches closed over him, the sky ignited.

A colossal, burning greatsword plummeted from the heavens, crashing down with the force of a meteor. The impact incinerated the encroaching branches, burning away the sweet, sickly stench of rot and replacing it with the sharp scent of ozone and ash.

A burly man clad in heavy, battle-scarred armor slammed into the center of the battlefield, the earth cratering beneath his boots. He let out a furious, devastating roar, charging straight at the Emanator of Abundance.

Golden branches whipped out violently, attempting to entangle the old enemy, but they were instantly reduced to cinders by the roaring golden flames radiating from his body.

“Shuhu!!!”

Shuhu did not seem surprised by Teng Xiao’s arrival, nor by the endless, burning rage in the General’s voice.

Not long ago, Teng Xiao had been the first to abandon the frontline, leaving Shafeng behind to rush back to the Cangcheng at maximum warp. Faced with the choice between killing the Emanator and saving his people, the General had chosen the latter.

Unfortunately, the Emanator had its own contingencies, bypassing the fleet to manifest within the Cangcheng’s borders almost instantaneously.

“The destruction of the Cangcheng is already set in stone,” Shuhu taunted, its thousand voices echoing over the burning ruins. “Do you like the grand gift I’ve given you, Teng Xiao?”

Teng Xiao completely ignored the Emanator’s mockery. He raised his burning blade, his booming voice cutting through the chaos to reach every surviving soldier on the ship.

“All Cloud Knights! Do your utmost to search for and evacuate the survivors! Save as many as you can!”