Star Calendar 8099 — Year 593 of Yuanqiao's Seclusion
In the rear courtyard of the General's residence stood a small tearoom.
It was not large, and its furnishings were simple: a low table, two floor cushions, and in the corner, a bronze burner releasing the faint scent of some unfamiliar incense.
Fu Hua knelt on one side of the table. Lifting the teapot, she poured an amber stream of tea into the cup before her guest, the liquid making a crisp, delicate sound as it struck porcelain.
Sitting opposite her was a girl who looked no older than twelve or thirteen.
She wore a dark-blue outfit embroidered at the collar with patterns even Fu Hua did not recognize.
Her posture was impeccable, her hands resting neatly on her knees. At a glance, she looked like a child raised with exceptional discipline.
"Please," Fu Hua said, setting down the teapot and making a courteous gesture.
The girl inclined her head, lifted the cup, blew lightly over the surface, and took a sip.
"Excellent tea." She placed the cup back down and looked up at Fu Hua, a faint smile touching her lips.
Fu Hua spoke first.
"Miss Theresa, since you know Yuanqiao's current condition, you still dared to come in. Aren't you afraid of being infected by Nihility?"
The girl called Theresa was about to answer, but Fu Hua raised a hand and stopped her.
"Before you answer, there is something I feel obliged to make clear."
"If you are infected by Nihility as well, I will not let you leave so easily."
It was an unmistakable warning. A threat, even.
After all, to lock Nihility inside Yuanqiao forever, the ship had already paid a terrible price.
If Theresa were allowed to carry Nihility back out into the galaxy, then the six hundred years of endurance here would amount to nothing.
Yet Theresa seemed utterly unconcerned by Fu Hua's warning. She only replied calmly,
"Of course I know what Yuanqiao is facing."
"A Nihility plague. Its incubation period lasts centuries. It spreads through air, water, touch, even sound and sight. In the beginning, the infected show no symptoms at all. But over time, Nihility takes root inside the body and eventually devours the host completely."
She paused, her gaze settling on Fu Hua.
"General Red Kite, the Nihility inside you is already close to breaking free, isn't it?"
Fu Hua did not answer.
But her silence was answer enough.
Theresa did not mind. She continued evenly,
"Rest assured. My constitution is... special. Since I dared to come here, I naturally am not afraid of Nihility infection."
"So you needn't worry, General. I will not be infected, nor will I carry Nihility out with me."
Fu Hua was silent for a moment.
Then she said, "Miss Theresa, as the creator of Nous and the second member of the Genius Society, I naturally trust your words."
At that, Theresa's smile deepened ever so slightly, and a glint of amusement passed through her pale eyes.
"Then what else do you want to ask?"
"There is one thing." Fu Hua lifted her gaze and fixed it squarely on Theresa's face.
"I am curious."
"About what?"
"Why you came to help Yuanqiao at all."
Fu Hua's eyes, veiled beneath the white cloth over her face, rested unerringly on Theresa.
In them lurked an emotion even she herself could not fully name.
"You are an Emanator of Erudition, the second member of the Genius Society, and one of the creators of Nous."
"Your identity, your status, your power—none of these require you to explain your actions to anyone."
"And yet you came to Yuanqiao. You insist on helping me. You insist on taking this risk."
Her voice took on the faintest trace of confusion.
"Why? Why help us?"
Theresa fell quiet for a moment.
"General Red Kite," she said at last, "have you ever heard the story of the lighthouse keeper?"
Fu Hua paused. "What story?"
"A story about a keeper of a lamp."
Theresa set down her cup, folded her hands atop her knees, and began:
"Long, long ago, in a very small star system, there was a very small lighthouse. It stood at the edge of that system, with no planets nearby, no life, no nothing."
"The keeper lived there alone, day after day lighting that lamp, day after day polishing its lens, day after day watching over that utterly empty stretch of stars."
"No one knew he was there. No one knew what he was doing. No one even knew the lighthouse existed."
She paused, and her voice softened.
"One day, a traveler passed through that system and saw the lamp. He was astonished, and asked the keeper, 'Why do you keep lighting that lamp? There's nothing here. No one will ever see it. No one will ever benefit from it.'"
"The keeper thought for a while and said, 'I know.'"
"'Then why keep lighting it?'"
"The keeper said, 'Because what if someone passes by? What if someone needs that lamp? What if... just what if... that light could guide someone home?'"
Theresa looked up and met Fu Hua's gaze.
"General Red Kite, right now, you are that keeper."
Fu Hua said nothing.
Theresa went on.
"Yuanqiao has been sealed away for five hundred and ninety-three years. No one knows what you've endured here. No one knows that you've been standing guard over that monster for the entire galaxy."
"You could have left. You could have spent the rest of your lives in peace. You could have dumped this rotten burden onto the galaxy and saved yourselves."
"But you didn't."
Her voice remained calm, but something bright flickered in her pale eyes.
"You stayed. You sealed the ship. You endured Nihility's corruption. You endured five hundred and ninety-three years of isolation."
"From the General to the Cloud Knights, from the elderly to the children—not one person ran. Not one complained. Not one asked, 'Why us?'"
"You simply stood there in silence, guarding that lamp, guarding a secret no one might ever know."
Theresa drew a slow breath.
"General Red Kite, before I came to Yuanqiao, I used to think the word hero had already been worn hollow."
"The galaxy is full of people calling themselves heroes. They kill a few monsters and think they've saved the world. They do a few good deeds and think themselves saints."
"But then I saw Yuanqiao. I saw all of you. I saw this Xianzhou ship that has endured nearly six hundred years of Nihility."
"And I realized…"
She looked at Fu Hua steadily.
"You count."
Fu Hua's lips moved slightly, but no words came.
Theresa did not give her the chance to interrupt.
"You asked why I came to help Yuanqiao. Why I came at all. Why I would walk onto a ship infected by Nihility."
She sat up straighter, a firmness entering her voice.
"Because you are good people."
Fu Hua froze.
"Every single person on Yuanqiao is a good person," Theresa said with certainty.
"For the sake of protecting the galaxy, you locked yourselves in this cage for five hundred and ninety-three years. You endured Nihility. You endured isolation. You endured waiting without any visible end."
"You didn't have to do any of that. You could have chosen an easier road."
"But you didn't."
"Because you are good people. Good people do foolish things. Good people sacrifice themselves for those who have nothing to do with them. Good people quietly keep a lamp burning in a place where no one will ever see it, just because what if someone needs it?"
She fixed Fu Hua with a direct gaze.
"And I…"
She raised her chin slightly, her childish face taking on a gravity utterly at odds with her age.
"I'm a good person too."
A flicker crossed Fu Hua's expression.
"If one good person wants to help another group of good people," Theresa said, tilting her head, "does she need any more reason than that?"
"I don't think so."
"Just as the lighthouse keeper didn't need a reason to keep the lamp lit. Just as Yuanqiao didn't need a reason to keep watch. Just as Mobius doesn't need a reason to ask, 'Why are we sealed away?'"
"Good people help good people. That's all."
She lifted the now-cool cup of tea and drained it in a single swallow.
"So, General Red Kite—stop asking me why."
"I came to help you. No conditions. No price. Nothing for you to repay."
"That's all."
Fu Hua was silent for a long time.
At last, she managed only a single sentence.
"…Thank you."
"You're welcome," Theresa replied lightly.
Then, without pause, she shifted to the next subject.
"General Red Kite—do you know what the authority of the Enigmata actually is?"
Fu Hua blinked, not understanding why Theresa had suddenly brought that up.
But the moment the word Enigmata was spoken, everyone watching in the present felt their hearts jump.
Fu Hua gave her own understanding of the Path in a quiet voice.
"Enigmata is forgetting. Concealment. The power to make certain things vanish from history."
"Correct." Theresa nodded. "But do you know what comes after forgetting?"
Fu Hua did not respond.
Theresa answered it herself.
"Rebirth."
"When everyone forgets something, it becomes as if it never happened. When everyone forgets a stretch of history, that history has effectively been rewritten."
She placed a crystal on the table. In the firelight, it glowed with a strange,幽幽 sheen.
"And as it happens, I possess a little bit of Enigmata's power."
The air in the tearoom froze.
Fu Hua's body gave the smallest start. For the first time, her expression showed obvious emotion beneath that white blindfold.
By Theresa's own words… did she mean to use Enigmata to rewrite the past?
"What did you say?" Fu Hua asked again.
"I said I wield a little power from the Enigmata," Theresa repeated. "Not much. Just a little. But that little is enough to do one thing."
"What thing?"
"I can rewrite the past from six hundred years ago."
Fu Hua's breath caught.
"General Red Kite, listen to me." Theresa raised a hand and stopped whatever Fu Hua was about to say.
"What I mean by rewrite is not erasing Kallen Kaslana's existence. Not erasing that war. Not erasing the destruction of the Xianzhou Alliance."
"All of that already happened. It's carved into the rings of history itself. Not even the Enigmata can fully erase that."
"But you are special, General."
She continued quietly,
"You, who carry the Hunt's true manifestation—you should know this already. Once the Path of the Hunt reaches a certain level, it acquires power over causality."
"And when Enigmata and causality are laid on top of one another, the result is the power to alter the past."
Theresa's voice grew quiet, as though she were speaking a secret only she herself understood.
"We can make it so that Nihility was never born there. We can give the Xianzhou Alliance its future back."
Fu Hua went still.
"The future of the Alliance… restored?"
She repeated Theresa's words, her voice steeped in disbelief.
"How is that possible? Nihility is a Path. It is IX's authority…"
"I never said I could erase IX," Theresa cut in.
"IX is IX. Nihility is Nihility. IX is an Aeon. I'm not that powerful."
"What I said was this: I can make that outbreak of Nihility never come into being."
She lifted a hand and pointed directly at Fu Hua's body.
"I can make the Nihility plague that Kallen Kaslana planted in you… never have existed."
Silence returned to the tea room.
Fu Hua sat without moving.
After a long while, she finally asked, her voice hoarse,
"And the price?"
Theresa did not answer.
"Miss Theresa, surely we both understand that there is no such thing as a miracle without a price."
"You can make Nihility never emerge, make Kallen Kaslana's plan fail from the start, free everyone on Yuanqiao from this plague…"
"But what is the price?"
Theresa was quiet for a moment.
Then she spoke, and her voice was calm enough to make it chilling.
"As the price of erasing Nihility, the Yuanqiao of the present—already infected by Nihility—must accept an earlier destruction as the causal closure."
Fu Hua's tone sharpened. "What do you mean?"
"It means…" Theresa drew a breath and let it out slowly.
"Yuanqiao must perish in advance."
"Not by being swallowed by Nihility. Not by being destroyed by Kallen Kaslana."
"But at some earlier point, before that war begins, it must still end—through some other means."
She looked straight at Fu Hua.
"General Red Kite. You understand what I mean."
"If I use Enigmata to rewrite the past and make that outbreak of Nihility never happen, then I must provide history with a reasonable outlet."
"A closed causal loop."
"If Nihility never existed, then why would Yuanqiao still be destroyed? History requires an answer."
"And that answer is…"
Her voice softened into something almost like a sigh.
"That Yuanqiao Xianzhou had already crashed long before."
The tearoom fell into deathly stillness.
The incense in the bronze burner had long since burned away. The last thread of smoke vanished into the air, leaving behind only residual warmth and the faint memory of scent.
Fu Hua sat on her cushion without moving.
Those eyes hidden beneath the blindfold—eyes whose color even she herself had almost forgotten—were fixed on Theresa.
"With the fate of one Xianzhou ship… you would buy the future of the other six?"
"Yes." Theresa nodded, not avoiding that gaze.
"General Red Kite, you know this better than I do. In the unaltered past, those six ships are already gone. Luofu, Yaoqing, Zhuming, Yaoqing—no. Yaoqing once, Yuque, Fanghu, Xuling. None survived."
"All I can do is use Yuanqiao's destruction to exchange for the survival of those six."
"One ship ending early… in exchange for six ships walking into tomorrow."
Fu Hua said nothing.
Theresa continued.
"Enigmata's authority is forgetting, concealment, making certain things vanish from history. But it cannot create something from nothing. It cannot conjure a causal line out of empty air."
"If I want those six ships to survive, something of equal weight has to fill that gap."
"And that thing is Yuanqiao."
Her voice dropped again, gentle as a sigh.
"General Red Kite, I know this is unfair."
"Yuanqiao did nothing wrong. You have spent nearly six hundred years guarding that monster. You locked yourselves inside a cage for the galaxy's sake. You endured Nihility's corruption. You endured loneliness."
"And in the end, I am still telling you this: you must die anyway."
"Yuanqiao will crash. It will vanish. It will become a fragment of the galaxy's past."
"And the other six ships will live on through your sacrifice."
She drew a slow breath.
"I know this is cruel. I know it is unjust. I know I have no right to ask you to accept such an ending."
"But…"
"This is everything I can do."
Theresa looked at Fu Hua in silence.
"I'm not a savior. I'm not some great hero. I'm just someone a little smarter than average, someone who happens to hold a small piece of Enigmata's power."
"I cannot save Yuanqiao. I cannot remove the Nihility inside you."
"What I can do is trade the destruction of one Xianzhou for the survival of six."
"That is all."
The tea room fell silent once more.
The candlelight flickered in the corner, shadows shifting against the wall like voiceless sighs.
Fu Hua sat still for a long while.
Then, finally, she spoke.
"Miss Theresa."
"Yes?"
"Thank you."
Fu Hua's voice remained level—so level it carried no detectable emotion—but beneath the white cloth over her eyes, something trembled faintly.
"You said that this is all you can do."
"But this…"
A small smile, one so faint even she herself may not have noticed it, touched her lips.
"This is already enough."
She lifted her head and turned her blindfolded gaze toward Theresa.
"Five hundred and ninety-three years."
"Yuanqiao has been sealed for five hundred and ninety-three years. All this time, we have been waiting."
"Waiting for hope. Waiting for an answer. Waiting for the moment that would tell us our sacrifice had not been meaningless."
"And now…"
Her voice paused for an instant.
"You have given us that moment."
"Thank you, Miss Theresa. You have done what you could. You have given what you could. That is enough."
She fell quiet for a heartbeat, then spoke again with a strange gentleness.
"Yuanqiao will crash. It will vanish. It will become history."
"But the other six Xianzhou will live on. Luofu, Yaoqing, Zhuming, Yuque, Fanghu, Xuling… they will continue sailing the galaxy. They will continue watching over it. They will continue protecting it."
"They will live on in Yuanqiao's place."
"They will live in our place."
Her voice was very light, as if she were speaking of something entirely ordinary.
Yet Theresa could hear what those words concealed.
Five hundred and ninety-three years of things never spoken aloud.
Five hundred and ninety-three years of waiting.
Five hundred and ninety-three years of solitude.
"And…" Fu Hua's tone shifted, growing a little easier.
"You said you hold a fragment of Enigmata's power?"
"Yes. Not much. But enough to do one thing."
"What thing?"
"To help you."
Theresa straightened, resolve glinting in her pale eyes.
"General Red Kite, the Nihility inside you—I cannot remove it. It was planted there by Kallen Kaslana. It is the embodiment of the Path of Nihility itself. I have no way to cleanse it."
"But…"
Her voice turned certain.
"I can make you immune to the Enigmata."
Fu Hua's expression shifted.
"Enigmata's authority is forgetting, concealment. The past rewritten by it—the past in which Yuanqiao crashes and the other six ships survive—will soon become the new history."
"When that happens, Yuanqiao will be destroyed in advance. Everyone here will die."
"Except for you."
Theresa's eyes locked onto Fu Hua's.
"I will use what Enigmata's power I possess to carve a mark into your existence. A mark beyond Enigmata's reach."
"When the new history overwrites the old…"
"When everyone forgets Yuanqiao…"
"You will survive."
"You will remember what happened here. You will remember what you protected. You will remember what Yuanqiao gave up for the sake of the galaxy."
For the first time, Fu Hua's face showed unmistakable movement.
"Why?" she asked.
"Because the galaxy needs someone who remembers," Theresa answered simply.
"That Nihility witch is still out there. Kallen Kaslana still exists. She won't disappear just because Yuanqiao falls. She won't cease to exist just because history is rewritten."
"She will keep wandering the galaxy. She will keep searching for her next target. She will keep spreading Nihility."
Theresa's tone hardened.
"General Red Kite, you are the only person who survived her."
"The only person who faced her directly and is still alive."
"If one day that witch reappears… if one day the galaxy faces the threat of Nihility again…"
"We will need you."
"The galaxy gaining another powerhouse like you can only be a good thing."
Fu Hua lowered her head and looked at her hands resting on her knees.
Dark lines snaked across them like veins, glimmering in the candlelight with an eerie sheen.
The mark of Nihility.
The curse Kallen Kaslana had planted inside her—something that could never be removed.
And yet now, staring at those black veins, Fu Hua felt something she could not name.
It was not fear.Not anger.Not sorrow.
It was almost… relief.
"Miss Theresa."
"Yes?"
"You said you can make Enigmata unable to reach me."
"I can."
"Then can you make Enigmata unable to reach someone else instead?"
Theresa blinked. "Who?"
Fu Hua raised her head. Beneath the blindfold, a faint smile had appeared.
It was the first genuine smile Theresa had seen on her face since entering this room.
Not a bitter one. Not a self-mocking one.
A real smile.
"Mobius."
She spoke the name with a tenderness that had never entered her voice before.
"That child… she's only three."
"She still has a long road ahead of her. There are still countless things for her to see, countless things for her to do."
"She should not be forgotten. She should not be erased by Enigmata. She should not become a name no one remembers in history."
Fu Hua paused, her gaze steady on Theresa.
"You said the galaxy needs someone to remember Yuanqiao. Someone to remember what happened here. Someone to remember what that witch did."
"But I think…"
Her voice thinned into something almost like a sigh.
"That child is more suited to be the one who remembers."
"She is younger than I am. More gifted than I am. She has more of a future than I do."
"She inherited all six Vidyadhara dragon lineages. She holds the power of the Imperishable. Her possibilities are infinite."
"If only one person can remember Yuanqiao… if only one person can walk out of this catastrophe carrying its memory…"
Fu Hua paused again, and the smile on her lips deepened ever so slightly.
"Then I want it to be her."
Theresa opened her mouth as if to object, but no words came out.
"Please," Fu Hua said, lowering her head in a posture that was unmistakably a request.
"Let that hope belong to Mobius."
Theresa was silent for a very long time.
Then, slowly, she nodded.
"All right."
"I promise."
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