Honkai Star Rail: My Death Feeds Their Madness — Chapter 99

Chapter 99: Selfishness and Hardship

Planet Atlan-13571, Cloud Knights Command Center.

Mo Tingquan stood before the glowing tactical projections, methodically dispatching the remaining detachments across the war-torn sectors. The ambient hum of the command deck broke when a secure communication channel suddenly patched through.

“What is the situation on your end?” Mo Tingquan asked, his eyes scanning the flickering coordinates.

“The detachment was nearly wiped out. Only two were rescued.” Kagashi’s voice carried a hollow, deadened weight.

“Enemy scale?”

“The Rhinoceround Hound Great Nest Father is dead.”

“…I understand.”

Those few short sentences carried a suffocating amount of information. The battlefield was simply that cruel. Hearing that an entire detachment had been pushed to the brink of annihilation left a heavy stone of grief in Mo Tingquan’s chest. Yet, he remained entirely helpless to change the past; out in the deep trenches of the front lines, no one could predict what nightmare would crawl out of the dark the next second. He simply had not expected a Great Nest Father of the Rhinoceround pack to be lurking in the shadows of this backwater planet.

“When will you return to the command center? We need…”

“Within three days. You remain in charge of dispatching. I have other matters to attend to.”

“Has the General issued new orders?”

“No. I am going to kill Abominations.”

“…Currently, there are too many detachments executing sub-missions on Planet Atlan-13571. Regulations require the chief commander to be present…”

“Following the reasonable orders of the chief commander is also a Cloud Knights regulation.”

The communication line went dead, leaving Mo Tingquan staring at the severed connection. A bitter smile touched his lips. The words were blunt, but the logic was unassailable. He understood exactly what was driving Kagashi. If Mo Tingquan were in his shoes, he would likely do the exact same thing. For a Long-Life Species, holding that much suffocating grief and rage inside for too long was a guaranteed catalyst for the Mara-Struck state.

Based on the command center’s current battle estimates, liberating Atlan-13571 was supposed to take at least another half a system month. Mo Tingquan never imagined that Liberation Day would arrive in a fraction of that time.

While scattered Cloud Knights detachments remained locked in desperate, bloody combat with the Abominations of Abundance, a blood-soaked phantom suddenly tore into the heart of the war zone.

Without a single word, the crimson shadow plunged into the thickest clusters of the enemy, ruthlessly reaping the lives of the twisted beasts. Wherever the figure passed, towering Abominations were reduced to scattered ash and severed limbs. The suffocating aura radiating from that blood-red afterimage, paired with the grotesque scenes of slaughter left in his wake, made the hair on the surviving knights’ necks stand on end.

Had they not caught a fleeting glimpse of the unique insignia of a Yaoqing Cloud Knight Vanguard etched into his ruined, blood-stained armor, many of the soldiers would have instinctively swung their blades at him. The sheer malice and vitality rolling off his body felt far too similar to an Abomination of Abundance.

Yet, despite the terrifying resemblance, no one actually raised a weapon against him. On this infested rock, there was only one Cloud Knight Vanguard capable of such apocalyptic combat power. Combined with the fact that the Valiant Guard stationed at the command center had been temporarily replaced by Mo Tingquan, the identity of the blood-soaked reaper was self-evident.

In less than three days, the Abominations of Abundance on Atlan-13571 were not just defeated; they were eradicated. Not a single shadow of the plague-spawn remained.

However, Kagashi himself had gone completely dark. He was entirely out of contact with the command grid. Only Mianxue and Qinghan, who had returned to the command center early, calmly instructed the brass not to worry about his absence. Only the two sisters understood exactly what Kagashi was doing in the aftermath of the slaughter.

With the sub-mission for Atlan-13571 concluding more than ten days ahead of schedule, new orders arrived from the main fleet shortly after the final battle report was transmitted. Detachment 1, led by Kagashi and Mo Tingquan, was authorized to return to the main ship at any time for rest and resupply. Clearing the battlefields and tallying the grim list of casualties would still take time, so the detachment was expected to formally withdraw in five days.

Mianxue and Qinghan temporarily detached from the main force, citing direct orders from Kagashi. Mo Tingquan did not question them, nor did he think much of their departure. Beyond serving as detachment captains, the two sisters were Kagashi’s personal guards.

Far from the scorched landmasses, a violent storm raged over the black ocean.

Thousands of meters below the churning surface, Kagashi had descended into a state of half-madness. He unleashed aimless, devastating strikes into the water, generating monstrous kinetic shockwaves that triggered massive tsunamis above. Had Mianxue not reacted with absolute precision, violently maneuvering their star skiff out of the impact zone, the towering waves would have swallowed them whole.

“Sister, let me go down.”

Qinghan leaped from the edge of the skiff, plunging into the freezing, violent sea. She braved the terrifying currents and lethal undercurrents, forcing her way deeper into the crushing abyss. In the past, without the aid of specialized pressure-diving equipment, she could never have survived a descent of several thousand meters. But now, the crushing depths meant nothing to her. She and her sister were no longer the fragile beings they once were. And just as they had sworn, they would never regret the price they paid.

The seabed was pitch black, a chaotic maelstrom of violent water currents. Qinghan’s physical vision was entirely useless in the dark; she relied solely on her heightened perception to lock onto Kagashi’s erratic signature.

Hours bled away before the seabed finally began to calm, the violent shockwaves subsiding enough for her to approach safely.

When she finally laid eyes on him, the scene shook her to her very core.

Punch after sickening punch, Kagashi was repeatedly shattering his own head and caving in his own torso. Bone splintered, flesh tore, and blood clouded the water. Yet, the ruined tissue and shattered bone knitted back together in the very next second, restoring him to perfect condition, only for him to destroy himself all over again.

To call it ‘the next second’ was a severe understatement. The regeneration was instantaneous. Such terrifying, unnatural restorative power would make any Xianzhou native draw their weapon and treat him as a high-level Abomination.

Yet, as Qinghan watched him tear himself apart in the dark, only an endless, suffocating sorrow welled up in her heart.

The Xianzhou Yuque. The Xianzhou Cangcheng. The Emanator Shuhu had cast his shadow over both of those catastrophic wars of the Abundance, causing Lord Kagashi to lose his family and ultimately be left with nothing but ashes. He had not yet completed his vow of revenge against Shuhu, but he was already being forced to confront the inescapable curse of the Long-Life Species: the Mara-Struck state. If he allowed himself to be taken by the Ten-Lords Commission for Interment, meeting an untimely end in the dark cells of the Shackling Prison, how could he ever exact his vengeance?

To combat the creeping rot of the mara and seize the power necessary to kill an Emanator, he had not hesitated to touch the ultimate taboo. He activated the forbidden Self-Actualization Aspect Method, twisting his own biology and transforming himself into this current state—a being that looked and healed more like a monster than a man.

When Mianxue and Qinghan had fallen into the irreversible abyss alongside Kagashi, their consciousnesses had briefly merged with his. In that fleeting union, they had seen the agonizing secrets buried deep in his past.

On the day Cangcheng fell, Kagashi already had one foot over the edge of the mara affliction. The solitary anchor that kept him tethered to sanity, the only thing forcing him to keep breathing, was the silent entrustment from his mother, Qiu Zhiyan, just before she lost her own mind to the curse.

Jingliu.

That was his mother’s final, desperate request. He was unwilling—and fundamentally unable—to fail her. Thus, a man who originally had nothing left to lose, a man who would have gladly paid any price to burn his enemies to ash, suddenly possessed a duty entirely separate from revenge. It was a duty he could have chosen to abandon. After pulling the young girl named Jingliu from the ruins, he was under no obligation to plan a future for her. Even if Jingliu spent the rest of her long life mired in inescapable nightmares, she would at least continue to survive on the Xianzhou.

But Kagashi did not walk away.

When the girl looked up at him and asked him to teach her the way of the sword, he agreed. Day by day, year by year, the girl quietly occupied the vast, empty spaces of his heart, becoming the vital anchor that allowed him to retain the last fragile thread of humanity in his mutating body.

She became his salvation. And in doing so, she became a new, paralyzing fear rooted in the absolute depths of his soul.

He had already lost everything. He could not bear to lose anything else. If Jingliu were taken from him, the broken mirror of his mind could never be mended. He would shatter completely.

How tragic was this existence?

Qinghan floated in the freezing dark, a whirlwind of bitter emotions tearing at her chest. The descendants of the Kagashi Family spent their entire lives drowning in loss. Lady Qiu Zhiyan had been terrified of losing her final relative, begging Lord Kagashi to retire from the military vanguard and live out his centuries in peace as an ordinary citizen. But in the end, she was the one who succumbed to the curse, vanishing forever from his world in a form he could barely accept.

Now, Lord Kagashi was walking the exact same doomed path as his mother. He could not—and dared not—imagine a future where Jingliu did not exist.

So, he chose to be utterly selfish. He chose to be harsh, deliberately making things difficult for Jingliu, constantly delaying the time when she would be allowed to step onto the blood-soaked battlefields of the large-scale wars. He played the role of the strict, unyielding teacher. But beneath that selfishness and calculated hardship lay a desperate, suffocating love.

If there were truly a choice in this cruel universe, who would ever want the person they cherished most to walk along the razor’s edge of life and death?