Honkai Star Rail: My Death Feeds Their Madness — Chapter 68

Chapter 68: The Word ‘Promise’ Is Too Heavy

After breakfast, a measured knock sounded at the door.

“Come in.”

A figure clad in the standard armor of the Cloud Knights stepped across the threshold, the metallic plates clinking softly. She offered a deep, formal bow to the man standing by the table.

“Your subordinate, Sleeping Snow, greets Lord Kagashi.”

“There is no need for such formalities in private.”

Kagashi waved a hand, his tone mild. He observed Sleeping Snow for a quiet moment, a faint sigh passing through his thoughts. The devastating battle of Cangcheng had left an indelible mark on her, hardening the edges of her once-bright demeanor.

“How is Clear Cold’s current condition?”

“The Alchemy Commission delivered their verdict…” Sleeping Snow lowered her gaze, her voice tight. “She likely will not be able to return to the front lines of the battlefield.”

Kagashi fell silent. The memory of the evacuation surfaced—Clear Cold dragging two trapped children from the rubble, her own legs caught and rapidly devoured by the writhing, parasitic flesh of Rahu. To survive, she had been forced to choose a brutal amputation. The planetary beast’s flesh carried a virulent, corrupting toxin that could rapidly erode, dissolve, and assimilate the resilient bodies of Long-Life Species. Her life was preserved, but the aftermath was severe.

“My younger sister’s newly regrown legs are far less flexible than before,” Sleeping Snow continued, the grief bleeding into her words. “Occasionally, her movements lag by half a beat. It is a fatal flaw. It is difficult for her to sustain combat on a rapidly changing battlefield.”

She swallowed hard. “The Master Alchemist stated that persistent rehabilitation might offer a possibility of recovery, but advised us not to hold onto too much hope.”

Speaking of her only remaining kin brought a heavy, suffocating gloom over the young knight.

Kagashi let the silence stretch, offering a space for her sorrow, before he spoke. “If I return from this expedition, I will examine Clear Cold myself.”

Sleeping Snow’s head snapped up, a flicker of desperate light in her eyes. “You understand medicine, Lord?”

“Then Sleeping Snow thanks Lord Kagashi in advance!”

“We are all people of Cangcheng. No more words are needed. I leave her to you.”

Kagashi gestured toward the young girl standing stiffly near the wall. He then reached for his helmet resting on the table and secured it over his head, the cold metal obscuring his features.

“Please rest assured, Lord,” Sleeping Snow responded with solemn duty. She shifted her gaze to the white-haired girl. “Miss Jingliu, let us go. I will take you to the Cloud Knights training camp.”

“Master, I wish you a triumphant return.”

Kagashi’s armored figure reflected perfectly in Jingliu’s wide, crimson eyes. He gave a slight nod, a silent acknowledgment, but offered no verbal promises in return.

The three departed the quarters, boarding different star skiffs and splitting toward their respective destinations.

Seated inside the passenger cabin, Jingliu pressed her face against the cold glass of the porthole. She stared unblinking at the star skiff carrying Kagashi, tracking its trajectory through the sky until it shrank into a meaningless black dot and finally vanished into the clouds. Even then, she refused to look away.

The horrific scenes deeply etched into her memory began to claw their way to the surface. The Abomination Planet dyeing the heavens in a sickening, fleshy crimson. The earth itself opening maws to devour countless lives, the air thick with wails and the shrill, tearing sounds of destruction.

Yet, sitting in the quiet hum of the skiff, she realized she no longer feared that Abomination Planet as much as she once did. What terrified her now was a far more intimate horror—the fear of loss. She had nothing left in this vast, indifferent universe but her Master. He was not a gentle man. During her training, his methods were harsh, pushing her to the very brink of cold-blooded cruelty.

She understood the necessity of it. It was the only way to ensure she survived, the only way to forge her into a weapon capable of enduring this universe. She also knew that whatever her Master promised, he would move heaven and earth to fulfill.

But just moments ago, he had made no promise at all.

He had not even offered a simple ‘I will definitely return’. The word ‘definitely’ carried a crushing weight, a burden perhaps even a General of the Xianzhou could not bear lightly when facing the endless swarms of Abundance. She knew she was asking for too much, demanding a certainty that did not exist on the battlefield.

Sleeping Snow switched the skiff’s navigation to the military flight path. Only after the autopilot engaged did she turn her attention to the unnaturally quiet girl beside her, noting the dark, heavy aura clinging to Jingliu’s small frame.

“Too few,” Sleeping Snow murmured, staring out at the passing clouds. “Far too few people of Cangcheng survived. Everyone has lost their home.”

She looked back at Jingliu, her eyes reflecting a shared, hollow grief. “Whether it is Lord Kagashi or us Cloud Knights, our hearts hold a fire of hatred that is hard to extinguish. Tempered by this flame, we will never allow ourselves to die easily before we have hunted every last Abomination.”

She offered a small, reassuring smile. “Have faith in Lord Kagashi, and have faith in your Master, Miss Jingliu.”

Jingliu remained silent, her crimson eyes dark and unreadable. After a long, suffocating pause, she finally voiced the question she had been terrified to touch.

“Senior Sleeping Snow… Cangcheng… how many people survived in the end?”

Sleeping Snow did not answer immediately. The star skiff pierced through a dense bank of clouds, the whistling wind outside the only sound filling the cabin.

When she finally spoke, her voice was brittle.

“Less than twenty million. Among them, nearly forty percent have shown mara symptoms, and the numbers are still rising without slowing down. Every day, a large number of people fall into the Mara-Struck state.”

She closed her eyes. “The youngest person is even only four hundred and twenty-six years old.”

It was a horrifying statistic. Even for retired Cloud Knights, whose exposure to the horrors of war accelerated their mara accumulation, the risk typically only began to climb after five hundred years of life. But that four-hundred-and-twenty-six-year-old survivor had been nothing more than an ordinary civilian.

“What about the Cloud Knights?” Jingliu pressed, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper.

“Fewer than a million Cangcheng Cloud Knights survived. So far, four hundred and thirty thousand have completely become Mara-Struck. And the Cloud Knight Vanguards…”

Sleeping Snow drew in a ragged, trembling breath.

“Only ten Valiant Guards survived. Of those still in service, only your Master, Lord Kagashi, and Lord Mo Tingquan remain. The rest have all succumbed to mara.”

The fall of Cangcheng was not only an unmatched blow to everyone, but perhaps also one that would never be repeated. Too many minds were shattered by the sheer terror of that day. The severe mental trauma served as the most direct factor inducing the early arrival of mara across the surviving population.

Among the surviving Valiant Guards, Mo Tingquan, who was under four hundred years old, showed no signs of the affliction.

As for Kagashi… after a rigorous period of medical observation, it was confirmed that he currently possessed zero risk of falling into the Mara-Struck state. Given his age and his service record, he could have easily retired, transferring to another Xianzhou ship to spend his remaining centuries in peace.

But everyone who knew him understood that such a peaceful end was absolutely impossible.

Of the Cloud Knights who clawed their way out of that catastrophe, many never entertained the thought of retreating until their final end. The blazing, toxic fire of hatred for the Abominations of Abundance could only be extinguished by constantly watering it with their blood, fighting until they died in battle or the Abominations were wiped out.

Hearing these numbers, a deep, obsessive shadow fell over Jingliu’s crimson eyes. She was young, but she possessed the sharp intellect to understand the sheer cruelty of those statistics.

“What exactly must be done to completely kill Abundance?” She spoke the words into the empty air, seeming to ask Sleeping Snow, but truly interrogating her own soul.

“I do not know,” Sleeping Snow replied, a bitter, helpless smile touching her lips.

Completely kill Abundance? The Reignbow Arbiter had pursued The Hunt for a thousand years, never ceasing the relentless pursuit of the Aeon of Abundance, yet those life-snatching Abominations continued to sprout, fester, and spread like a plague across the universe. No one could answer that question.

“The arrows of The Hunt did their utmost,” Sleeping Snow continued softly. “But they only managed to strike down that crimson star. To strike down Shuhu.”

She looked out the porthole, her expression grim. “Investigation results show that the crimson star was the ancient dead star Rahu, which was animated by Shuhu using the power of Abundance. No one can be certain if Shuhu truly died like that.”

She gripped her knees. “If that undying Abomination returns centuries later, heaven knows if it will bring an even more terrifying animated star. Before that day comes, the only thing we can do…”

“Is to begin the expedition and hunt the Abominations of Abundance without end, right?” Jingliu suddenly interrupted her, her voice sharp and cold.

“Right.” Sleeping Snow nodded.

The star skiff banked sharply, gliding through the high sky before passing through the massive gate of a military explore. This was a restricted zone, strictly prohibiting non-military craft.

They had arrived at the Cloud Knights training camp.

A faint, suffocating aura of bloodlust permeated the air. It was a pressure brought by the retired Cloud Knights who populated the grounds—veterans who had waded through rivers of blood, experienced life and death countless times, and slain numerous Abominations. They stayed in this military camp to train the youth, constantly replenishing the Cloud Knights with fresh blood.

Feeling this heavy, violent atmosphere, Jingliu tilted her head to look at the artificial sky through the star skiff’s window.

In her vision, the sky warped. Everything in her sight bled into a sickening crimson, transforming into the familiar, suffocating nightmare.

Facing that nightmare, the young girl made a silent, unbreakable vow.

If one day that star returned, she would definitely strike it down. Her parents had already been devoured by Rahu. She could not watch her Master meet the same gruesome end.

She would tear the sky apart first. Never.