Chapter 184 184: ...When did I become... (Bonus Chapter)
"You two..." Fu Hua looked at the pair who had emerged and immediately showed concern. But Nuwa patted her on the shoulder. "Relax — everything's fine."
"Oh, Nuwa! Fuxi!" Little Senti brightened the moment she saw them, and started to rise — but then caught herself, gave a slightly guilty little cough or two, and settled back.
"It's been so long! Goodness, I didn't think you'd wake up this quickly. I was just saying I'd use the Fenghuang Down to help you recover."
"Miss Elysia also put in a great deal of effort throughout this whole process." Fuxi glanced over at Elysia. "We owe you our thanks for looking after us these past few days."
"Well, I could hardly just leave you, could I?" Elysia smiled at Little Senti. "After all, Master was the one who tucked you both into me. For me, it wasn't anything particularly difficult."
"All part of the job. All part of the job."
The Book of Fuxi — having recharged to a more or less functional state — slipped out from Elysia's arms and hopped up onto the table, though her gait was still a little wobbly and unsteady.
"Um — I still don't entirely understand what happened, but I am very grateful that you saved my creator." She hadn't quite followed everything Elysia had just said, but the Book of Fuxi understood perfectly well that Elysia had saved her creator and the others.
"I thought you'd say 'my mama' or something like that." Elysia smiled and gave the Book of Fuxi a gentle pat on the head, then looked up at Nuwa. "Were there any difficulties with the repairs? Do you need any tools?"
"Oh, it's just a bit of age-related wear and tear — needs a new battery, and a few other minor things." Nuwa waved a confident hand. "I built little Xuan back in that era; repairing her now is hardly going to be a problem."
"As for tools..." Nuwa turned to Fu Hua with an amused look. "You haven't gone and lost every last one of our Divine Keys, have you?"
As he spoke, Nuwa beckoned to the Book of Fuxi, and she obediently slipped right into her creator's arms.
When the Book of Fuxi had been built, Nuwa had been the primary force behind it. The reason was simple enough — he'd once watched Dr. Mobius create a puppet in the likeness of Senior Klein, and had wanted a big-sister figure of his own.
Only, Dr. Mobius had been stingy about it and refused to make one for him, so he'd taught himself. Then the whole string of events that followed had gotten in the way — he'd learned the theory but never had a chance to put it into practice.
The Book of Fuxi was his first creation. As for Fuxi's role in the process, she'd essentially written the program and helped put the code together.
It was somewhat counterintuitive — Nuwa, who seemed so lively and frankly a little reckless, someone who had apparently caused no small amount of trouble, was in reality a far more capable researcher than his own elder sister. A true all-rounder in every sense, the kind of person you could use anywhere: up in the weapons testing range tossing out ideas and building armaments; down in the laboratory running experiments alongside Dr. Mobius.
He could code systems with Dr. MEI, teach himself Armed ELF construction plans on the other side, and stick his hand into virtually anything. In practice, Nuwa had had a hand in almost every single project of the Previous Era.
A genuine polymath — though none of his fields had ever quite reached the very pinnacle, always falling just a hair short of the absolute top. But even so, in that era, he had been rare, even irreplaceable.
And given how few top-tier researchers there were at the time, a talent like Nuwa was extraordinarily precious — rarer, even, than a straightforward genius.
Fuxi, by contrast, was simply a researcher with a head for business. Even Mobius had once said that if she ever gave up research and went into commerce, she'd probably have better prospects.
That said, when it came to securing funding, Fuxi was ruthless about it — and the thing was, she always walked away with the money.
It was something Mobius had never been able to wrap her head around. It was never easy when she went to negotiate. During the period when Mobius had been at her most troublesome, that group of idiots had been on the verge of slashing her budget again, leaving her in a perpetually desperate state — until Fuxi went in, talked for a while, and came back with a full budget in hand.
Mobius genuinely never figured out how she did it.
Which was also why, even though Klein was always complaining that the two sisters only added to her workload, Mobius had never actually sent them away.
Mobius was sentimental, of course — she had taken good care of the child her previous assistant had left behind. But if someone was truly useless and had no aptitude for research at all, it was still better for them to leave the front lines sooner rather than later.
"Mm, tools." Little Senti thought over what the Daoist shrine might have stored away that could possibly be useful for repairs — and after a long while, came up blank.
"Right, well — it'd be a stretch to expect this place to have anything serviceable." Nuwa nodded, unsurprised. What they had left behind all those years ago was anyone's guess as to whether Fu Hua had preserved it properly.
Setting that aside, hoping to find any modern equipment up on Taixuan Mountain was out of the question. Fortunately, they still had their Divine Keys — they could fashion a few tools from those.
He'd done it before: cobbled together a basic set of tools using Divine Keys and hand-built little Xuan from scratch. He'd left that set of tools behind afterwards, but knowing Fu Hua, it was nine chances out of ten she had no idea where they'd ended up.
"Of course not." Fu Hua shook her head, and immediately made to head toward the vegetable plot. "Wait here — I'll go get them."
"I know, I know." Little Senti suddenly jumped up and gently pushed Fu Hua back down. "You're a mental projection — don't bother going, you can't even pick things up."
"I'll go get them right now — however many you need. Actually, you know what, I'll just bring everything back."
And with that, she was already dashing outside, vanishing from view.
[It seems she's already noticed something...] Elysia watched Little Senti's hurrying figure disappear, and quietly opened a psionic channel to the others present.
[The progress is faster than I expected. Is it moving too quickly?]
[She's obtained Hua's memories.] Fuxi watched the direction Little Senti had gone. She had been observing her this whole time, and every shift that had crossed her face just moments ago had been clear as day.
This was, incidentally, one of the key differences between Little Senti and Fu Hua — Little Senti had far more emotional fluctuation and visible expression. Fu Hua's face, by contrast, was that same blank timber-plank expression that hadn't changed in a hundred years.
No matter how skilled Fuxi was in reading people, there was nothing to read in that. But Little Senti was different. The sequence of changes across her face just now had been easy to follow.
The impulse to step forward and embrace them — to act on the relationship her memory told her she should have — held back at the last moment. Along with other small tells, every detail pointed to Little Senti harboring doubts about her own identity, or at least her current state.
[But she's still only an observer, in the end. The more she's prompted to look back, the more she'll notice the discrepancies. And with everything Fu Hua knows, it won't take long for her to understand what state she might be in.]
[After all, she hasn't truly lived through those thousands of years.] Nuwa turned the Book of Fuxi over idly in his hands. [Some feelings — you just can't understand them if you haven't actually felt them.]
For Little Senti, the inner memories she had received were probably closer to watching a film. After all, it had only been a short time since the Battle of Schicksal — and even if she had begun to emerge then, she had only been reading memories from that point forward for a matter of weeks at most.
Fu Hua's memories, on the other hand — counting only the Current Era, that was at least five thousand years. Even experiencing them as memories, that was fast-forward playback at best. What she would likely be left with was something like having watched a deeply moving, deeply memorable film.
What Little Senti had inherited was Fu Hua's conviction and obsession — the will to resist the Honkai. But the other emotions woven into those memories, the ones that came alongside them — inheriting all of that together would be an entirely different matter.
"Mm." Fu Hua nodded too, and after a moment's thought, turned to look at Elysia, who was sitting cross-legged on the couch, swinging her feet back and forth. "Elysia..."
"Mm?" Elysia looked up at Fu Hua, who seemed on the verge of saying something. She raised an eyebrow, and smoothly redirected: "Oh — you mean the matter of the two Doctors? You don't need to thank me. The Doctors provided me with a great deal of help as well."
"Yes, an enormous amount of help." Nuwa glanced over at Elysia and caught her meaning, then nodded along without missing a beat.
Fuxi, beside him, cut in with equal naturalness to undercut: "Help is perhaps too strong a word — it was more that we did what little we could. An extra pair of hands. Beyond that, there wasn't much more we were able to do."
"But you came with me into the Elysian Realm — that part wouldn't have been so straightforward without you." Elysia spread her hands, then suddenly raised an eyebrow.
The blessing from Su had alerted her: someone was quietly listening in. So Little Senti had noticed something was off after all, and was beginning to make more active use of psychic perception in ways Fu Hua never would have. For instance, right now, Elysia could sense a thread of psychic energy probing the interior of the shrine.
[Shall we apply a little pressure?] Elysia glanced around at the four of them. She wasn't worried about their psychic channel being intercepted — she was using the Bodhi imprint layered with Taixuan Sword Qi, while Little Corruption on her end was also helping with the Corruption virus, on top of the link she had built through her own Bodhi imprint.
Four full layers of encryption. Even if Little Senti pushed a little harder, she wouldn't be able to break through. And from what Elysia could sense, Little Senti was currently only using her psychic energy as a passive listening device.
So there was nothing to worry about.
[Should we really start applying pressure now? Isn't it a little soon? Shouldn't we test things a bit more first?] Nuwa heard Elysia's words and was still a little uneasy. If they started pushing Little Senti now and she actually broke — what then?
[No — I agree with Elysia. I think we can begin applying a little pressure now.] Fuxi's voice followed. [But don't go too far. Give her one nudge, one thread to follow, and let her think her way through it herself. That, I think, is the right approach.]
Fu Hua sent no opinion. In practice, this was how she had always been with the group — Nuwa and Fuxi made the calls, and she was the one who went and carried them out.
She didn't remember that time, but instinct had led her to behave in exactly the same way anyway.
[Mm. I think it works.]
With the discussion in the little room concluded, Elysia spoke aloud: "But — what do you all make of the new Fu Hua? She seems so different now. Master really has changed a lot."
"No particular opinion — becoming livelier is a good thing, isn't it?" Nuwa inserted himself into the topic without so much as a flicker of expression. "Well. It has been a long time, after all."
"Change is perfectly natural. Though it is quite a big change — I haven't quite adjusted yet."
"At least it's better than the old sealed-jar version." Fuxi looked at Fu Hua with barely concealed amusement. "The old you was never this easy to tease."
"Mm." Fu Hua nodded, hesitated, thought it over, and ultimately decided it was better not to say anything at all — in case she said the wrong thing. So she just nodded.
"But she's quite endearing all the same, isn't she?" Elysia spoke, a smile on her face. "Setting aside certain questions of identity — I, for one, am quite fond of this little Master of mine."
"Whatever has happened to Master, she's still Master in the end. And with a personality this lovely — who could meet her and not like her?"
Down the mountain, in a vegetable plot, Little Senti sat perched on a stone. Beside her, jutting up from the soil, was a Divine Key she had just pulled out of the garden.
"No matter what happens... well, of course." Her voice was quiet.
Little Senti lay back on the stone and looked up at the stars overhead. Her eyes held a flicker of warmth — the gladness of being accepted — but underneath it, a creeping bewilderment.
Little Senti was not foolish. By some sort of instinct, she could read the emotions in others' hearts more clearly than most — and she could read her own just as well.
The first time she had met Nuwa and Fuxi, when she had looked back through her memories of them, she had noticed that she felt almost nothing in particular for them. What she felt came mostly from the annotations attached to those memories.
She was their companion — so she was supposed to feel glad. At their revival, or rather, their reunion, she was supposed to feel joy, even elation.
But there was nothing. She knew she ought to show something, but she couldn't bring herself to — as if everything were behind a layer of fog, or a thin veil.
She reached back through the memories searching for the emotions she should have felt — but all she could find were the annotations, the labels. Not the feeling itself. Just the record.
She realized something was wrong. She shouldn't be like this. She should have been more moved, more sorrowful, more joyful. Something.
Even though Fu Hua's deep and layered memories filled her mind, she was ultimately nothing more than an observer. She understood the weight those names and those memories carried for Fu Hua.
But that perspective — the perspective of someone watching from outside — how could it ever let her step inside? How could it ever let her feel what Fu Hua felt?
As question after question piled up, Little Senti suddenly realized something: she had been deceiving others. And she had been deceiving herself. But now — she couldn't quite deceive herself anymore.
And she had worked something else out: Elysia and the others had probably already noticed that something about her identity wasn't right.
After all, if the real Fu Hua had been right there beside them all along — then who exactly was she? Or rather, when had she...?
In her memories — no, in Fu Hua's memories — the very last moment, the moment Otto had blown her head off, the technique that had been used was indeed the zeroth Rated Power of the Fenghuang Down.
Fu Hua's body should have been completely empty after that. She was not Fu Hua....
"When... did I become a Herrscher?"
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