Honkai Star Rail: My Death Feeds Their Madness — Chapter 75

Chapter 75: Strange

In the blink of an eye, several more months slipped away like falling leaves.

Jingliu had grown noticeably taller. In another two years, when she turned eighteen, she would likely reach a slender height of one hundred and sixty-eight centimeters. The lingering traces of childish roundness on her cheeks had gradually melted away, burned off in the crucible of successive battles.

During this quiet period, Kagashi ruthlessly elevated her daily training targets.

He pushed her weight-bearing limit to four hundred catties, forcing her to sprint across vast distances at speeds exceeding two hundred li per hour. These were figures that would have once seemed entirely unthinkable for the young girl, but as Jingliu grew and her body matured, they transformed into achievable milestones.

Then came the sword. Ten thousand swings a day. Attack precision drills demanded seven strikes within a mere two seconds, with five of those strikes required to accurately pierce designated vital points. Her body flexibility training had already concluded its primary phase, now only requiring periodic maintenance to keep her joints and muscles supple.

After surviving all of the above, she was forced to choose one specialized resistance trial: high temperature, extreme cold, or lightning exposure.

There was always one that pushed her past her absolute limit, dragging her into unconsciousness.

Currently, she could not even pass the medium-tier indicators for high-temperature training, let alone endure the biting frost or the tearing voltage of the other rooms. The lowest threshold for the heat trial was six hundred degrees Celsius. The absolute highest indicator reached a hellish nine hundred and ten degrees.

It sounded exaggerated, a world of pure fantasy. Yet for the native Xianzhou people, whose bloodlines were forever altered by the grace of the Plagues Author, even an ordinary civilian could withstand two hundred degrees of blistering heat for a short duration. Yaoshi’s supposed blessings were far too widespread. Across the cosmos, different Abominations of Abundance devoured one another, plundering these twisted miracles and breeding countless monsters with bizarre, terrifying biological adaptations.

In the Xianzhou’s official registry of major Abomination threats, there existed a specific species capable of exhaling high-temperature fire attacks, with extreme temperatures easily breaching the thousand-degree mark.

Every single training regimen assigned to the Cloud Knights was designed with absolute purpose. They were forged to possess the sheer physical resilience required to contend with these monstrous enemies. Why was the probability of retired Cloud Knights falling into the mara-struck state so much higher than that of the ordinary populace? It was precisely because their enemies were so ferociously unnatural, forcing the knights to walk a perpetual tightrope between life and death.

Jingliu, who was currently taking specialized supplementary medicines to protect her internal organs from cooking inside her chest, could only last less than an hour in a high-temperature environment hovering near six hundred degrees.

Beyond these grueling trials, two final training items remained untouched.

The first was strike resistance.

Kagashi had carefully evaluated Jingliu’s current physical condition and decided to postpone this particular torment. It would not be too late to wait a few more years. In the Kagashi Family’s ancient tradition of tempering their descendants—a practice spanning over two thousand years—strike endurance training only commenced at the age of sixteen.

It was true that Jingliu was nearly sixteen, but she had entered the martial path far too late.

True descendants of the Kagashi Family began their brutal foundational training at age six. Five years later, regardless of their progress, they were thrown onto the active battlefield to temper their spirits in actual, blood-soaked combat. Only after accumulating enough grievous injuries, spending years becoming intimately accustomed to the sensation of torn flesh and shattered bone, could the strike resistance special training safely begin.

In other words, it required ten years of suffering.

Jingliu was already thirteen when she knelt and became his disciple. Now at sixteen, she had only experienced a handful of small-scale skirmishes. Forget the truly troublesome Abominations like the Borisin or the Wingweavers; she had not even clashed with the mindless Artifact Beasts or the massive Beastships they enslaved, let alone suffered a genuinely life-threatening injury.

One cannot pull up a seedling to force it to grow.

Practicing the martial path was like constructing a grand tower. The foundation was everything. If the foundation was brittle, the ultimate height of the structure would be severely stunted. Skyscrapers were never erected overnight. They had to withstand years of howling wind and torrential rain to stand tall, requiring a massive, unyielding base capable of supporting their own crushing weight.

Only after becoming a master himself did Kagashi truly understand the deep, aching dedication his parents had poured into their children all those years ago.

Since strike resistance was skipped for the time being, he could only arrange the second remaining item: agility.

The enemies Jingliu had encountered on her expeditions thus far were sluggish. Dodging their telegraphed attacks was a simple matter, and the baseline speed she had developed through endless long-distance running was more than sufficient.

But the true, elite Abominations of Abundance were an entirely different breed.

Leaving aside the Wingweavers, who commanded the skies with a maximum flight speed approaching eight hundred li per hour, the Borisin alone were a nightmare. They were the most numerous and historically the greatest existential threat to the Xianzhou Alliance. If a knight’s agility was lacking, they would be torn to shreds in seconds when facing the wolf-like horrors.

When the Borisin entered their blood-crazed state known as lunar madness, Xianzhou combat records indicated that the maximum running speed of a standard Wolf Soldier could reach three hundred li per hour. A powerful Borisin Nest Father could close the distance at five hundred li per hour, and a true war leader was not in any way inferior to the Wingweavers.

, under the thrall of lunar madness, a Borisin’s regenerative healing and raw attack power multiplied exponentially.

This was the fundamental reason the Cloud Knights drilled coordinated combat into their recruits. Without two or three soldiers working in perfect unison to suppress a single target, the Borisin were nearly impossible to put down permanently. When a warrior’s attack coverage is insufficient, and they lack the overwhelming strength to suppress ten enemies alone, sheer speed and footwork become the ultimate arbiters of life and death.

Cloud Knights did not necessarily need to excel at aggressive, overwhelming strikes. A lack of raw attack power could always be compensated for by the spears of one’s comrades. But if a knight’s speed was insufficient, if they could not react to and evade a fatal blow, no comrade in the universe could save them.

With his mind firmly made up, Kagashi looked up toward the heavy, reinforced exit of the women’s high-temperature training room.

The thick doors hissed open. Mianxue walked out, her arms carrying the completely unconscious form of Jingliu.

“In today’s high-temperature training, she lasted for fifty-two minutes.”

“Thank you for looking after her.” Kagashi stepped forward, gently taking his disciple from Mianxue’s arms.

An improvement of two minutes compared to three days ago. Not bad at all. He quietly believed it would not take many more days for her to reach the one-hour mark.

There were strict standards for duration across the different temperature tiers. The low-tier indicator demanded endurance for twelve hours at four hundred degrees. The medium indicator required four hours, and the high indicator demanded a full hour.

She still had a very long road ahead of her.

Even though Jingliu was currently wrapped in a standard-issue thermal robe designed to absorb ambient heat and rapidly lower core body temperature, her surface skin temperature was still radiating at over two hundred degrees.

Yet, as Kagashi held her close to his chest, he felt absolutely no discomfort.

Possessing the rare Pure Yang Body, he could walk freely through infernos exceeding a thousand degrees Celsius without a single hair being singed.

“It is my duty. I will continue my own training now. I will have to trouble Lord Kagashi with my younger sister’s treatment tonight.” Mianxue bowed respectfully, turned on her heel, and vanished back into the sweltering depths of the training room.

Kagashi gave a slight nod to the empty corridor. Adjusting his hold on Jingliu, he carried her out of the training facility, boarded a waiting starskiff, and piloted them back toward the quiet sanctuary of their home.

With Mianxue occupied, Qinghan was responsible for preparing and overseeing Jingliu’s medicinal bath.

Everything should have proceeded as smoothly as it always did. But unexpectedly, a strange anomaly occurred.

The large wooden basin was filled with an emerald-green medicinal liquid, specifically brewed for deep tissue and bone tempering. Usually, as Jingliu’s body absorbed the essence, the water would gradually turn clear. Today, the deep green hue remained stubbornly unchanged.

Qinghan stood by the edge of the tub, casting a deeply puzzled look at the water.

Kagashi was equally baffled. He reached into the water, pulling Jingliu’s limp wrist up to check her pulse. He tested the left hand, then the right. The conclusion was identical.

Stable.

“Strange.”

Kagashi summoned the holographic interface of his Jade Abacus, his eyes scanning the glowing text as he carefully reviewed the preparation logs for the medicinal mixture. Every single herb, every measurement, and every temperature adjustment had been executed flawlessly according to his strict requirements. There were zero errors in the brewing process.

“Could it be that Jingliu simply didn’t train to her absolute limit today?” Qinghan offered a quiet guess.

“No.” Kagashi shook his head, his voice calm but absolute.

After a brief moment of silent contemplation, he withdrew a set of slender silver needles from his coat. With practiced precision, he inserted them into specific acupoints along Jingliu’s arms and shoulders, aiming to forcefully clear any blockages in her meridians.

Minutes passed. The medicinal liquid remained a thick, cloudy emerald.

Looking down at Jingliu’s relaxed, sleeping face, Kagashi’s brow gradually furrowed.

“Help her up. I need to confirm the current state of her elixir organ.”

Qinghan immediately reached into the water, supporting the young girl’s back and lifting her upright as requested.

The wet fabric clung to Jingliu. Her once frail and thin figure had quietly filled out over the past few years, the soft contours of a young woman beginning to take distinct shape beneath the surface of the water.

Kagashi’s attention, however, was entirely clinical. Once Qinghan had her stabilized, he took a new set of silver needles and placed them directly into the unique, sensitive acupoints hovering just above Jingliu’s elixir organ. He then gently guided her body back down, immersing her fully in the medicinal liquid, and pressed his fingers to her pulse point once more, waiting in the quiet room to feel for any internal shifts.

After a long moment, he slowly released her hand.

“How is it?” Qinghan asked, her voice laced with genuine concern.

Lord Kagashi was a man who rarely ever frowned. Seeing the crease between his brows made her heart clench with the fear that something catastrophic had gone wrong with Jingliu’s internal foundation.

Kagashi looked at the unchanging green water, his expression unreadable.

“From now on, she no longer needs to perform medicinal bath body tempering.”