Regarding the question of whether one thousand lives are enough to beat Honkai Impact 3rd.

Like the first green plant struggling to emerge from the permafrost.

The world was submerged in an ocean of light, becoming a blank, monochromatic color, while at this moment, the sword energy stirred up other waves.

The myriad sound waves rose and fell, seemingly overlapping in one place.

The world is teetering on the brink of collapse.

The sword energy, like an extremely fine and faint thread, separated the sea of ​​light created by the surge of Honkai energy, and also separated the explosion's roar and sonic waves.

Separated, everything in front of my eyes is now in sight.

A secluded mahogany corridor, exquisite screen carvings, and flickering candlelight.

High and distant, like the dome of a building.

All are like a torn scroll, heading towards a state of desolation.

Su Qing'an sheathed his sword, his heart uneasy as he gazed at his masterpiece. His fingertips traced the perfectly reproduced poem title on the hilt, calming his emotions.

This is the [Time Cut] blessed by the natural stigmata.

That's ridiculously exaggerated.

The maze game was ruined by pure violence.

The first floor of the castle tower completely collapsed into nothingness.

Yes, nothingness.

As if the illusion had shattered, the debris and the remaining intense Honkai energy fluctuations disappeared.

Instead, the area before us is no longer as vast as before.

The castle tower, the highest floor.

The illusory body, like a demon, was clad in ancient red and black armor, and its face, which was faintly visible beneath the helmet, constantly changed its appearance.

They might cry, grieve, be angry, or laugh.

Human nature is diverse, and the world is filled with extreme evil.

The malevolent spirit known as Jizo Mitama has sat quietly here for fifty thousand years.

At this moment, it stared at the intruder who had forced their way in.

It ended its long slumber in the river of time.

82. A glance that lasts a lifetime.

This was a gesture that felt somewhat familiar to Su Qing'an.

A living doll.

While both are manifestations of the power of the Herrscher of Corruption, the Living Doll itself is merely an insignificant remnant. Half of its combat power as an Emperor-level Honkai Beast is attributed to the accumulation of a large amount of Honkai energy over several hundred years by utilizing the power characteristics left behind by the Herrscher.

However, the demonic form that finally appeared before Su Qing'an and Sato Yuno was not even one ten-thousandth as impressive as what they had just witnessed.

It's not just a difference in size or appearance, but also a difference in strength.

When the boy met its ethereal gaze, his almost indestructible will was met with a heavy sentence.

Buddha.

In Buddhist scriptures, Ksitigarbha represents a bodhisattva who vows to appear in the six realms of existence to universally save all sentient beings.

What Su Qing'an was looking at was clearly a thing formed from endless evil thoughts that resembled demons and ghosts, yet it was as if she were truly seeing the legendary Buddha.

Those ethereal eyes held a compassion that encompassed all things.

Patience and stillness are like the earth; deep and profound meditation is like a hidden treasure.

Only in this way can one be considered Ksitigarbha.

Compassion? Evil? In the face of such an existence, these concepts seem utterly illusory.

Willpower is being shaken; this is an emotion being forced into a shared experience.

Evil and compassion are two extremes, but lies and hypocrisy are also part of evil, and compassion created by such evil is almost unbelievable.

Like chiseling ice, one slowly pries open the evil thoughts in one's consciousness, revealing a chaotic flow of information.

Birth, aging, sickness, and death.

Su Qing'an seemed to have fallen into a cycle of reincarnation, living countless lives of mortals in a generation that was incredibly far removed from the present.

This is undoubtedly an illusion, yet the mind cannot escape the illusion.

A glance can span a thousand years, a lifetime can pass in an instant.

Love is separation, hatred is meeting, desires are not fulfilled, and attachments are hard to let go.

Time seemed to slow down in Su Qing'an's senses, as if it were hundreds of years or just a fleeting moment.

He experienced too many illusory or real scenes.

In this short yet long dream that was destined to shatter, he saw the girl named Hua again.

They met again and fled together, repeatedly being pursued by assassins and Honkai Beasts, but each time they managed to escape.

They depended on each other for survival, regarding each other as the most special person in their lives.

They then joined the Firemoth, and soon after, during a turmoil caused by the Herrschers, Su Qing'an was killed by the power that was caught in the crossfire.

In the instant his body was annihilated, the boy looked up at the Herrscher with her vibrant red hair high in the sky and sighed.

If only she were alright.

Even though she knew it was just a dream, her consciousness still lingered with longing and worry.

And in this scene where time seems to have slowed down countless times, the demon wields its sword.

Three seconds? Or one second?

I don't know, but as long as the visitor is not freed from the vortex of emotions at the moment of first meeting, the demon will indifferently cut off his head.

The other party's evil intentions were endless and had not disappeared even 50,000 years later. Compared to such a magnitude, the will of a single human being was far too insignificant.

Let alone breaking free quickly, even avoiding being overwhelmed by the emotional waves of shared experiences is a difficult task.

However, Rin's choice to face Su Qing'an and her agreement to let him confront Jizo Mitama indicates that she believes Su Qing'an can do it.

Su Qing'an is not an ordinary human being.

Compared to the entire St. Freya Academy, perhaps only Fu Hua could confidently say that her willpower was stronger than his, in addition to her immense soul essence.

Jizo's Soul might be powerful enough to easily crush him, but to think that you can end the battle with just an attack on will is too arrogant.

He woke up, or rather, the dream itself hadn't fooled him at all.

Su Qing'an whispered:

“hua…”

Jizo Mitama seems to have an innate ability to see through people's hearts. From the moment they first met, it saw through Su Qing'an's heart and accurately struck the weak point in his will.

So even though she understood that everything was an illusion, Su Qing'an still felt a brief moment of disorientation.

On a battlefield of this scale, such a mistake can be a matter of life and death.

[Potential] This refers to the instinctive remedy performed at that moment.

When consciousness was pulled into an emotional vortex, this ability was released simultaneously with the vibration of the soul's essence.

An invisible wave, like a sharp blade of light, struck the Jizo Mitama. Following the tide of emotions that the opponent was influencing, [Momentum] transformed from an area-of-effect attack into a precise single-target strike for the first time.

The human face that flashed across its skeletal, grotesque cheeks grew increasingly ferocious, completely obscuring the peaceful expressions that occasionally flickered across its face.

Jizo's Soul is inherently the embodiment of hatred and slaughter. Once that false shell of evil is torn away, the word "Buddha" becomes completely irrelevant to it.

Su Qing'an drew his sword a little later than his opponent, but it didn't matter. Just as he was also affected by his opponent, [momentum] was not entirely useless against the Jizo Soul.

The result was that the two men simultaneously handed their weapons to each other.

The katana wreathed in flames, clashed with the sword in the boy's hand.

The sonic booms were deafening, and within just a few breaths the entire space was engulfed by a turbulent storm.

It was an incredibly fantastical scene. The sword in the boy's hand was so small compared to the katana; it was as if a child with a tree branch was fighting a giant wielding a blade.

It was clearly a battle that was incomparable, yet the tree branches remained unmoved.

But Su Qing'an on the field knew perfectly well that every swing of his sword was accompanied by a large amount of compressed Honkai energy, combined with extremely high skill.

But Jizo Mitama is different; he is simply swinging his sword.

In gaming terms, the opponent is just using a basic attack.

Honkai energy naturally amplifies every attack without the need for the Honkai to actively control it.

It is itself a condensation of Honkai energy, so it is a foolish thing to compete with it in terms of energy consumption.

Even though Honkai energy can be used almost indefinitely due to the special nature of the Void Sword Qi, the loss of physical strength is still inevitable.

To fight against such a being would place extremely high demands on one's physical abilities.

After advancing to the Still Water Realm, Su Qing'an gained the ability to surround his entire body with his inner energy to form a defense.

He called this ability "circle".

Without the [Circle], Su Qing'an wouldn't be qualified to engage in close combat with the Jizo Soul; the sheer force of the recoil alone would be enough to shred muscles and break bones.

Using only martial arts techniques to deflect force makes it difficult to achieve complete perfection, but with the help of the "Circle," Su Qing'an can transcend his original limits and get infinitely close to that perfection.

Even if you can filter out almost all the recoil, it is not a wise choice to engage in a long, direct sword fight with your opponent.

So when the clanging sound of swords clashing rang out for the eighteenth time, Su Qing'an used the recoil force from the mid-strike, which had shifted to a defensive stance, to retreat a hundred meters and create distance.

He can now use all the sword forms of the Taixu Sword Qi perfectly and freely.

The boy adjusted his breathing and landed steadily.

"Rin, there's no shortcut to killing it, is there?"

Yae Rin said:

"The people of the pre-civilization used my Herrscher core to create a weapon called the Key of God, and the Castle Keep is both a forge and a prison. The prototype of the Key of God is something that evil fears."