This time I chose Paladin.

Chapter 244 Star Stone Appears
Yi Jian almost felt a blackout.

It’s over.

Han Jiangxue's mental state was already unstable. Although her personal abilities were perfectly fine, Nie Weiyang and Yi Jian always tried to avoid anything that might upset her.

Now... it's all over.

What could be more stimulating than killing a friend with your own hands?
Yi Jian adopted a serious and compassionate expression, refraining from uttering any unnecessary words, and instead cautiously observed Han Jiangxue.

Having fought side by side for so long, they had long since formed a solid friendship. And given his personality, it was impossible for him to simply abandon Han Jiangxue.

"...Please accept my condolences," he said. "Would you mind telling me about your situation?"

Han Jiangxue was in a daze. She tightly hugged Yun Shu's body, the icicles pressed against her skin, cold and hard as knives. Her mind was racing, sometimes thinking how much it must hurt, sometimes recalling the past, the days still at school. After a while, she realized she needed to say something: "Oh..."

She paused, her thoughts drifting back to the past.

“…I…haven’t graduated from university yet, as you all know.” Her words were a little disorganized, the ice blade pressing against her ribs. “Yun Shu was one of my roommates, and also my…best friend back then… um, I don’t know what she thinks…but we spent a very long time together. A very, very long time…so long that I can’t forget it.”

“You mean, she was your college roommate,” Yi Jian tried to translate from Chinese, “she was your best friend back then, but you don’t know how she feels about you?”

"Mmm," Han Jiangxue responded. Her eyes, blurred by tears, met Yun Shuxingchen's sparkling eyes.

The starlight gradually faded, as Yun Shu's soul departed.

It's like when you grow up, you see the old days gone by, all the good and bad things from the past are gone, and youth will never come again, and you are powerless to do anything about it.

Yi Jian rubbed his temples in frustration. He could tell that Han Jiangxue had some issues, but her obliviousness to human nature and emotions still exceeded his expectations.

For someone like Yi Jian, understanding others' thoughts is practically instinctive. He could never be like Han Jiangxue, who had no concrete perception of how even his closest friends viewed him over a period of time. Therefore, it was actually difficult for him to fathom Han Jiangxue's emotions—his feelings were too rich, and he couldn't fathom how someone as detached as Han Jiangxue could be so sentimental, just as one cannot use 100 eggs to disguise 10.

He didn't know whether Han Jiangxue's emotional responses were rich or not, because now, even when she cried, it was as if her soul and body were disconnected.

“I know that sometimes the right path and the wrong path are only a few steps apart. But…” Han Jiangxue murmured to herself, tears streaming down her face and melting into the ice. Her expression remained almost blank: “But… how could this happen? If I…”

"Stop, stop, Lao Han, stop."

Yi Jian reached out and covered Han Jiangxue's eyes.

He forcibly turned Han Jiangxue's face towards him, making her look at him, and then lowered his hand.

"That's life. Understand? That's life." His face was serious. "I don't want to criticize your old friend in front of you, but she's no longer on your path. She's here, with stars in her eyes, but the price is that others can no longer see those stars—we've followed these cultists for so long, don't you understand? They can't do anything human because their understanding has become non-human!"

"You don't need to say 'if.' Things have come to this point, and any self-doubt is just futile self-punishment; it's meaningless! Someone as efficient and rational as you certainly understands this better than I do!"

Yi Jian's words were all information that Han Jiangxue could understand, and he was certain that Han Jiangxue would come to her senses.

Han Jiangxue did indeed come to her senses.

She closed her eyes and exhaled a breath of cold air.

“…Thank you,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about things I shouldn’t have.”

“No. There’s nothing that you really shouldn’t think about, except for secret knowledge that exceeds your capacity to bear.” Yi Jian’s expression relaxed slightly: “Thoughts are always free, just like emotions.”

is it?

Is it the same in the new world?

In accordance with Han Jiangxue's usual behavior, she would have refuted him. But now, she merely smiled, a rare occurrence, and even though she still disagreed with his words, she did not offer any rebuttal.

“I know what you’re thinking about: death, survival, past, present, and future… On days like these, there will always be people who think about all of this, especially death,” Yi Jian said, looking at the corpses all around him. He couldn’t smell the blood, because the blood had been frozen by Han Jiangxue: “We all know that death is the star at the end of life, and also the first thing worth thinking about. I often think about it.”

"But, Lao Han, thinking is not the same as agreeing, and agreeing is not the same as following. I hope you understand. Life and death are preordained, and wealth and honor are determined by fate. As for the past... let it be the past."

"What if we can't get through?" Han Jiangxue asked softly.

“Then let yourself become cold-blooded, suspicious, and rude, a bastard who doesn’t care about those things.” Yi Jian shrugged: “What we’re doing is too difficult. On this path, there’s not much to cherish about our past education, because morality can’t make us tear down the barbed wire…”

"But even so, how to get through this road is the whole story. As for how the stars twinkle at the end of the road, don't worry about it."

As Yi Jian spoke, he turned his gaze slightly and led Han Jiangxue towards the door.

“…I was just about to ask,” Han Jiangxue followed behind him and said slowly, “Do you even believe what you’re saying?”

Yi Jian's eyes suddenly flickered.

"You're really good at saying whatever people want to hear. You'd be doing very well in peacetime," Han Jiangxue said. "But thank you. The fact that you're willing to say these things shows that you consider me a friend, and I'm very happy about that."

These words were as straightforward as ever. Yi Jian was slightly taken aback as he watched Han Jiangxue walk past him and lead the way out of the earthen house.

He coughed lightly and followed them out of the house. The chill had faded, and the hot evening breeze warmed them.

Yi Jian felt a little dizzy: "This is a bit like going from an air-conditioned room to the hot summer outdoors..."

“Right, I think so too,” Han Jiangxue said. “It even caused us to develop kidney stones.”

"Huh?" Yi Jian was confused: "Kidney stones?"

Han Jiangxue raised her hand, a golden light flashing in her brown eyes, her pupils also showing a tendency to stretch vertically. She did not shy away from Yi Jian, but simply tapped her forehead with her ice axe stick.

A cold mist filled the air, and a peculiar stone, the size of a mung bean and shimmering with starlight, gradually appeared on her forehead.

Under Yi Jian's dumbfounded gaze, she deftly used the tip of her ice axe to dig it off, examined it in her hand, and then threw it into her backpack, isolating it from the outside world.

"Wait..." Yi Jian murmured to himself, "...Star Stone?"

"Yes." Han Jiangxue nodded slightly: "We've fallen into a trap."

In the distance, firefly-like lights flickered in the darkness, and indistinct human figures swayed within them. Han Jiangxue stared at them, her gaze icy: "They probably sent Yun Shu here on purpose, to sway me. I must admit, they almost succeeded. If you hadn't interrupted, I might have gotten stuck in a rut, and they might have found a way to twist my thinking..."

"Currently, the mental pollution they exert exists in the form of 'star stones'."

The enemy surrounded them, but Han Jiangxue's expression had returned to normal. She raised her ice pick and tapped it on Yi Jian's forehead.

A star stone the size of a peanut emerged from Yi Jian's head. He felt a sharp pain in his forehead and saw Han Jiangxue throwing the star stone into her backpack.

“We must get back as soon as possible,” she said. “The old city has definitely been infiltrated; the enemy’s ability to psychologically corrupt people is terrifying. If Brother Nie were here, the situation would be much better…”

Yi Jian was completely dumbfounded.

He wasn't in a profession requiring high mental strength, so he had no idea when his mental state had gone wrong, or even that star stone... why was it bigger than the one on Han Jiangxue's head?

This was a question with no answer, but he quickly adjusted his state and broke out of the encirclement with Han Jiangxue. Amidst the flashing lights and shadows of battle, he didn't see that Han Jiangxue's gaze towards the dark figures was no longer as calm as usual—

—A cloud of hatred was rising in her eyes. The echoes of the past had not left her; instead, they clung to her, making the ice both harder and more fragile.

The stars watched over her, their light twinkling like a smiling face.

(End of this chapter)